Ezra Levant argues Donald Trump’s tariff threats exposed Canada’s economic and political fragility, from Quebec’s pipeline blockades to outdated NATO equipment like 1980s F-18s. He contrasts Trudeau’s weak G7 leadership with Trump’s transactional but effective approach, citing border security failures—terrorist watchlist migrants slipping through—and fentanyl policies clashing with U.S. demands. Levant praises Alberta Premier Danielle Smith for balancing advocacy without alienating provinces while criticizing Trudeau’s "post-national" ideology as eroding Canada’s global standing. Rocklink Investment Partners’ ethical, value-focused investing is framed as a bulwark against perceived globalist instability, urging Canadians to prepare for potential conflicts or crises. [Automatically generated summary]
It looks like the tariff threat is gone, well, at least for the next 30 days, but what has it exposed about Canada's economy and our politics?
Quite a lot, I think.
I want to talk a little bit about that, but first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus.
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Tonight, Donald Trump has stress tested Canada, and I think we failed.
It's February 5th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Trump is pretty busy.
I.
I mean, he's always busy.
His first 100 hours as president were as busy as the first 100 days of most presidents.
Did you see the other day, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, became the first foreign leader to visit Trump at the White House since his inauguration?
Some others had visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago before inauguration.
Trump has the minor task of remaking the entire Middle East and solving centuries of conflict.
Did you see his announcement?
The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too.
We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.
Do a real job, do something different.
Just can't go back.
If you go back, it's going to end up the same way it has for 100 years.
I'm not sure if that's going to work.
Trump does know real estate better than most people, but listen, don't count him out.
It's interesting to me that the first visitor is Netanyahu.
It's not the president of Mexico.
It's not the prime minister of Canada, Trump's neighbors.
And I understand that the first country to which Trump will go, and this hasn't been confirmed yet, will be Saudi Arabia.
Again, a very unusual choice, but he's trying to put Middle East peace at the center of his presidency.
Very interesting.
Imagine all the negotiating going on, all the different players, the countries, the religious denominations, the military, the diplomatic.
I mean, unfathomable.
But he did manage to get a peace deal in the first term.
So there's just that.
His Doge project, you know what that stands for, Department of Government Deficiency.
That's Elon Musk and his team of young computer experts.
It's just absolutely everything you could have ever hoped for or feared.
It's finding the craziest grants for the nuttiest things, shockingly huge grants, utterly inappropriate grants.
The entire U.S. AID, that's basically their foreign aid budget, so corrupt, so political, so partisan, so much of it recycled into left-wing American politics.
It's shocking.
No one ever really looked into it before.
Other things that have been revealed, almost 40% of all FBI officers were tasked with getting Trump and the January 6th protesters.
Almost half of all federal lawmen in America.
That is stunning.
Trump has made offers to many of these bureaucrats just to take a payment to go.
It's sort of like when Elon Musk took over Twitter and said goodbye to 80% of the staff, the product works better than ever with 80% fewer people.
He's offered a buyout to literally everyone at the CIA.
That's incredible.
He's also said to regular government workers, if you don't show up at the office anymore, you will be let go.
Any of those things would be full-time jobs.
Then there's the mass deportations that are going on.
Just incredible.
Rounding up people, sending them back home, typically in military planes.
Here's the BBC reporting on a jet taking Indian nationals back to India.
It's on a U.S. military jet.
Take a look at this.
A U.S. military plane carrying at least 100 Indian nationals has landed here in Amritsar in the state of Punjab.
And if you look just over this way, you can see a gaggle of media.
And behind the barricades is actually where these people are going to be processed.
Now, this is significant for two reasons.
One, this is the first planeload of deportees that has come to India from the United States under this new Trump administration.
And second, this is the first time that we know that really a military plane has been used to bring back people from the United States.
That's a departure from previous administrations that used commercial flights.
The issue of illegal immigration by Indians going to the United States is possibly a thorny issue that could come up between President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This is something that the Trump administration has said it's going to tackle, and it is going to try and get promises from countries like India to say that they're going to take their citizens back.
I wonder how many of those sneaked in from the Canadian border.
Very interesting.
Then there's China.
Then there's the wildfires in Los Angeles.
Then there's the fact that he's still trying to get his appointees through the Senate confirmation process, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Then there's Panama, where Secretary of State Mark Rubio is going to renegotiate with enormous success that kicked China out.
Trump's Canada Critiques00:15:27
Again, that gives us a hint about how Donald Trump thinks and talks.
He says, we're taking the Panama Canal back.
And in the end, what does he get?
Well, a cut rate for U.S. ships and China kicked out.
Maybe that's what he was after in the first place before talking about invading.
Oh, and he's also looking at Greenland.
Secretary of State Rubio was in El Salvador meeting with the interesting president there.
So yeah, Donald Trump is a teeny tiny bit busy, basically trying to cram in as much as humanly possible to his final term as president.
Basically, I think he spent his four years in exile thinking of everything he would do differently, and now he's getting the chance to do that.
It's not surprising then when Trudeau admitted the other day, remember this, that he hadn't had a phone call from Trump in weeks.
Remember this?
What does it tell you about your relationship with President Trump that you've been trying to get a hold of him and he hasn't been speaking with you?
I think this is a time where we've all remarked on just how active President Trump has been in engaging with a wide range of topics in his first weeks in office.
Honestly, he shouldn't even feel bad about that.
Canada is not top of mind in America.
I think Trudeau should be glad of that because if Trump was really paying attention to Canada, I think he would be much more appalled.
I think it's good.
And I think that Canadians, we go into a flutter when any American notices us.
There's other big things going on in the world.
We haven't even seen the Russia-Ukraine negotiations yet.
I think, though, that Trudeau has shrunk us as a country.
I think that we've always been a middle power.
We just don't have the population or the military or the wealth to be as powerful as, of course, China, Russia, the United States, or even Germany, or even the United Kingdom.
But we were there.
We counted.
I don't think we really do so much anymore.
Certainly not militarily, certainly not diplomatically.
You know, economically, we're interesting, but we're shrinking.
But I think that our national brain trust, the official people, the political, media, industrial complex, I think they still deeply believe that we are morally superior.
You know, that chain of bookstores called Chapters Indigo, you know, their motto, right?
The world needs more Canada.
That's sort of a smug way of saying we're better than everybody.
It sort of is, isn't it?
And it's a sister to the comments, who are Canadians?
We're not Americans, said with a bit of a sneer, who are you?
We're not American.
That's what Justin Trudeau was asked on CNN just the other day.
That was the answer he gave.
Remember this?
Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian.
One of the ways we define ourselves most easily is, well, we're not American.
There is such a depth of pride that that's not actually an issue.
That's actually an insult when an American says, well, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Well, we're not like you.
And you say it with pride.
It's not like, wow, we're not like you.
It's not, you're not in wonder and admiration.
It's a disdain.
It's a sneer.
Huh, who are we?
We're not American.
That's not an identity.
You know, at least it's not like it was in the 80s and 90s when people said, what's a Canadian?
Oh, we have health care.
Unlike America was the coda to that.
Anyways, what has Trump revealed with his two months of challenging us and taunting us about tariffs?
I think it's revealed a lot of things.
The first thing is there really is no Team Canada.
There's no Canadian champion.
Other than as a slogan.
I mean, ask Francois Legault.
Just a week ago, everyone was saying, come on, Canada, join together one for all and all for one.
Here's Francois Legault today, or yesterday, when he was asked about if he would allow pipelines to pass through the holy, holy soil of Quebec.
It's not his choice, by the way.
International pipelines of that sort are a federal jurisdiction.
But here's what he said.
If during your discussions today, the issues of pipelines came up and whether Quebec would now support either an energy east or some other kind of pipeline that would take Alberta oil out to markets other than the U.S.
Yeah.
Of course, right now, there's no social acceptability for this kind of project right now in Quebec.
But Of course, situation, the economy, and what Mr. Trump is doing may change the situation in the future.
So if there's a social acceptability, we will be open to these kind of projects.
But right now, there's no social acceptability.
So nope.
Yeah, so much for Team Canada.
It's sort of fake, and you don't have a prime minister willing to assert that pipelines have to go through.
So much for the emergency.
I think we learned that our economy is pretty brittle.
You know, these days it takes almost $1.50 Canadian to buy a U.S. dollar.
Good luck with your vacation to the States.
Good luck buying anything imported from the States.
That's why we feel poor, isn't it?
We also learned a little bit more about fentanyl and about drug gang-run camps.
You might remember earlier this year, I was in San Francisco with Abiyamini for his cross-country caravan tour.
We started in San Francisco because that's where Abby landed from Australia.
We went to what's called the Tenderloin District.
And holy moly, are they ever on drugs?
There's an extremely sad place.
Remember, I talked to that one kid on drugs, and he said he wished someone could just take him and grab him away.
Heartbreak.
Remember that clip?
What substances are you on?
Are you trying to get off them?
Yeah, that's the boxing for it.
I'll try to wean myself off of it with.
How long you been on fentanyl?
About two and a half, three years.
You're not going to stop until you're ready yourself.
What if someone came in and took you off the street here and put you somewhere, even if you didn't want to go there until you were clean?
Would that work or is that just not going to work?
The whole time I was in San Francisco in what was universally described as the worst part in the city, oh, and it was pretty bad.
The whole time I was there, all I could think about was, yeah, this is bad, but have you ever seen Hastings Street in Vancouver?
Have you ever seen, have you ever seen what they call the downtown East Side?
It makes San Francisco look like a look like a well-kept backyard in Arizona or something.
We have a fentanyl disaster in Canada.
Trump is talking about it.
Trump, you might even say, is obsessing about it.
Trump never stops talking about it.
In Canada, I guess we talk about it too, but in the opposite way, Trump demanded that Canada appoint a drug czar.
They love that phrase in the United States, a border czar, a drug czar.
Basically, it means someone with a special mission just to do one narrow thing, not a cabinet position that would do many things.
I think we have a bunch of drug czars in Canada, by the way.
Here's a headline.
Bonnie Henry, the chief public health officer of British Columbia, promoting fentanyl.
Government subsidized, government prescribed.
So yeah, we got a drug czar.
It's just not exactly what Donald Trump would think a drug czar should be doing.
So many things, though, came to mind.
It's true that much more fentanyl is smuggled into the states from Mexico than from Canada.
And it's certainly true that many more illegal aliens come in from Mexico than in Canada.
I mean, just by the million.
And I think that's because Mexico and Latin America are on that side.
But the number of terrorists, suspected terrorists, nabbed at the border trying to get from Canada into the U.S. It's actually higher and it's been growing year over year, which makes, I mean, and here's what I'm getting into with my monologue here.
Trump talked about things and made us think about things that we've either taken for granted or accepted.
I mean, why is it that terrorists are never deported from Canada?
When was the last time a terrorist was deported from Canada?
When was the last time a terrorist was even prosecuted for terrorism?
And we've got plenty.
I think we've realized that our open borders are nuts for us and for the Americans.
Canada is taking in migrants from Gaza right now.
That's something that U.S. lawmakers like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio both commented on.
They're afraid of that.
If you don't have a strong border on the north and your neighbors to the north bring in people from Gaza, you've got a problem.
One of the things Trump talks about, and frankly, it's been talked about by a generation of American lawmakers, including, by the way, Democrats like Barack Obama, is that Canada has defunded our military.
We're one of the lowest paying NATO countries in the whole alliance.
It's gotten so bad we can't even participate in exercises overseas.
And I don't know if you remember, we used to have something in Alberta in Cold Lake, the Air Force Base there, called Operation Maple Flag, which was all the NATO countries would come to us and they'd sort of do top gun type exercises.
We have not had that for years because we don't have the equipment.
We don't have the hardware.
We don't have the, you know, the up-to-date avionics and computers.
We cannot fly next to our allies because we're flying 1980s era F-18s.
We have not taken delivery of the F-35s.
In fact, during this whole tariff kerfuffle, there was talk of canceling it and buying a Swedish jet.
Yes, our important allies, the Swedes.
I think that Trump and his talk about Canada shirking our fair share, it rings true when you talk about the military.
And again, everything I've listed so far, it's something we should be doing for ourselves out of self-respect.
Out of self-respect, we should deport terrorists.
Out of self-respect, we should have an army and not rely on our American friends to defend us.
We'll never be bigger and powerful, more powerful than them, but surely we can be self-respecting.
I mentioned earlier the Doge revelations that stands for Department of Government Efficiency.
And what's so exciting is how quickly Trump is using executive orders just to cut things off.
Anything that doesn't need a vote in Congress, he's just doing like that.
Our Canadian prime minister has that power as well.
Wouldn't it be amazing if we actually started to dig into our own country's waste?
I'm getting very jealous of the Americans, aren't you?
Another thing that Trump is worried about, and it came out yesterday when Trump was meeting with Netanyahu, is anti-Semitism.
It's deeply pervasive in Canada and it's being normalized.
Compare, for example, Trump's inaugural speech.
He literally brought with him either families of those Israeli hostages or some of the hostages that were released, and they stood behind him for a large portion of his speech.
He had a meeting with Netanyahu, a leader that Justin Trudeau and Melanie Jolie say would be arrested on site if he landed in Canada because of the false arrest warrant from the International Court of Justice, which is a made-up thing.
So while Canada would arrest Bibi, Trump met with Bibi as his first world leader.
There's so many other things, smaller things too.
The attacks on historical symbols, the tearing down of statues.
Trump has protected those with executive orders.
Canada, we still have our John A. McDonald's in coffin boxes on our legislatures.
I think the most exciting thing Trump did was freeze the vast majority of American foreign aid recipients versus, you know, and he has repeatedly said that money should be spent on Americans, including those who were suffering from hurricanes or other natural disasters.
We keep shoveling foreign aid as fast as we can.
Look, we love Canada, obviously.
Canada's our home.
We're born here.
We're not just temporary hotel dwellers here.
This is our country.
We have a connection to the land and the people and the history and the culture.
Trudeau may say we're post-national, but we don't believe it.
We love Canada.
And if it's a battle over tariffs between Canada and the United States, obviously the first thing is to stop the war.
We're on Canada's side, but it was such an unnecessary war.
And I think Trump called it off before it could even bite.
But I think what we've learned doing as Trump shook our country is that maybe we should be, I don't know, 10% less smug.
And when Trump says we're taking advantage of America, I mean, we laugh, we always do, but wouldn't a true Canadian first strategy, for example, allow U.S. banks to come into our country and offer competition to our banking industry and allow U.S. cell phone companies in and allow U.S. dairy companies in and poultry companies.
I mean, wouldn't we have the self-respect to re-engage and revive our military as well?
All those things I just listed are real irritants to Americans, American industry and American politicians.
And we laugh it off when Trump says we're taking advantage of them.
Does he have a point on dairy, on banking, on cell phones?
Does he have a point?
Let me put it another way.
Would you like there to be more competition for cell phones and for banks?
I know I would.
Oh, well, as Francois Lago showed, we're back to the bad old days.
That whole Teen Canada moment, it's gone like that.
But you know, the two liberal contenders, I say two, there are more, but there's only two to count, Christy Freeland and Mark Carney.
They want to fight Donald Trump even harder than Trudeau did.
I don't think that's going to vote well.
Stay with us, Moor Ahead.
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Harper's Diplomatic Concerns00:14:42
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Well, Trump warned and warned that there would be terrorists.
He warned us in November saying January 20th was Judgment Day.
Then he kicked the can down the road to February 1st, then to February 3rd.
And indeed, he did announce tariffs, but they were gone within, I think it was 48 hours.
But an enormous stress to the political class in Canada, and obviously worries to the actual business people of this country who would be hit with such a tariff.
A tariff, of course, is a tax on Canadian products and services going into the United States.
The tax would be paid on the U.S. side, so it would make money for the U.S. government at the expense of U.S. consumers.
That would naturally push consumers towards made-in-America products or compel Canadian firms to relocate to the U.S. Of course, that doesn't work as well when, say, it's oil from Canada's oil sands, which can't really be replaced.
America buys 4 million barrels a day from Canada.
Not easy to source that quickly, and the oil sands themselves can't be moved.
But if we have a reprieve, even if it's just 30 days, what has this whole imbroglio exposed?
What has it taught us?
What are the weaknesses we might consider fixing in case the tariffs do come again?
Joining us now to talk about it is Jonathan Wellam, the president and CEO of Rocklink.
You might know Rocklink because they are a sponsor of our show.
And it's a pleasure to talk with the boss of Rocklink about his area of expertise.
Jonathan, it's great to have you on the program.
I talk about you all the time, but this is the first time we're actually connecting.
Thank you very much, Ezra.
It's a pleasure to also speak with you and be on Rebel News.
I really appreciate the Rebel News station and broadcast, and the information that you're communicating is absolutely essential for Canada, given the mainstream media is captured by our government and the left.
Well, I think you're right on that, and it's a pleasure to have a company that's aligned with our values.
Thank you for that.
Let's talk about the news.
I think it was a panic moment for a lot of companies.
I had friends who said they were considering relocating their whole business to the States because they couldn't survive with a 20%, 25% tack on of attacks.
That may yet happen.
What would your advice be for Canadian businesses, especially small businesses that are worried about things?
How do you stress test or stress proof a company?
Or are we going to be perpetually at the mercy of a tariff-happy president?
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of issues there.
I think if I were to step back for a moment, I mean, I think Donald Trump made it clear right from the outset his key concern was the influence of China in Canada and also the issue of drugs, fentanyl, which has been pouring into our country for a long time, at least the precursors and then the assembly in our country has been pouring into our country from, you know, through the West Coast primarily through Vancouver.
And then also in the last number of years, as you know, the ratcheting up of our immigration to just unbelievable numbers that are completely unsustainable and the lack of scrutiny on who's coming into our country.
And then, of course, those folks getting into the U.S.
And so I think Trump's key issue is really drugs and the border.
And so that, I think, is what we should be really focusing on in terms of the risk issues.
And I think finally, Trudeau came through at the last moment to address some of those issues, at least to enough to pacify Donald Trump and solve that issue for the time being anyway.
But in terms of tariffs, they'd be devastating.
The reality is it's like a 10 to 1 ratio.
In other words, for every $10 we send down, they send back back to us.
And we cannot compete with the United States on a tariff war.
It would be a crazy thing to do.
That doesn't mean we couldn't put some tariffs on.
It doesn't mean that we couldn't push back a little bit.
We would not want to push back full force or I think would be in serious trouble.
Good news is it has exposed incredible weaknesses in Canada, which we've known about.
I'm sure, Ezra, you've known about.
The Conservatives generally have spoken about this.
And that is that we've got a lot of assets that are landlocked in the center of our country.
All these amazing resources, oil, potash, uranium, there's a whole host of different ones, especially oil and gas in particular.
And we cannot get them to our coasts.
And so this has raised a very important discussion.
And I think we're going to be able to maybe finally get something done where we actually build the pipelines to the West Coast, pipelines to the East Coast, and we stop importing oil to this country, over a million barrels a day into our East Coast.
And we start to utilize our resources.
And we can sell to other countries than just the United States.
As much as we like the United States, it is craziness and really incompetence to be dependent on one country.
They know that.
And sort of the reality is that Donald Trump, as you know, is actually profiting off us when it comes to energy.
We are subsidizing the United States because when we send our oil from the oil sands into the U.S., it's largely trading at anywhere from a 15 to even sometimes it's been $20, $25 discount.
And so we are very foolish.
We've been incredibly incompetent.
Trudeau has not allowed the money to flow into our resource sector to develop our assets.
And that has to change, along with some of the inter-provincial restrictions, which I think people are also realizing that we don't even get along within our own country.
This is insane.
So these are good things, Ezra, I think, that have come up through the discussion.
But I think the key one is fix our borders, and we've got to deal with these drugs that are coming into Chinese influence in our country.
Yeah.
Stephen Harper was asked about this, and he said, were he prime minister now, this wouldn't have happened.
As in, things wouldn't have gotten so bad that the president would be just issuing public ultimatums on social media.
And I believe him.
I mean, Stephen Harper and Barack Obama were extremely different people.
And I think they probably disliked each other in a personal way, but they never breathed a word of that.
They were very professional.
They had a working and respectful relationship.
In fact, I remember that the Keystone Excel pipeline was a real contentious issue.
Barack Obama didn't actually kill it until after Stephen Harper was no longer prime minister.
He had enough respect for the relationship he had with Harper that he wouldn't do that thing to Canada.
Trump, I think, has no respect for Justin Trudeau.
And that's spilled over to our country.
I think Harper's right.
I don't think, I mean, it was astonishing the other day to learn how long Trudeau went without even a basic phone call with Trump.
And I'm not saying to suck up, but just to have a professional, working, regular, routine relationship with the U.S. president.
I think Trudeau really gave into his, you know, partisan-ness and said, well, I'm part of the anti-Trump world.
And he would let things slip publicly.
And I know they got back to Trump.
Trump, you know, has some vanity like all of us, maybe even a little bit more.
I think Harper's right.
I think, and maybe that's the answer to my first question.
There's no real way to win in a tariff war with America.
You can develop other markets, you can develop internal markets, but the real secret is don't get into a fight with America in the first place.
And Harper managed that.
Trudeau didn't.
No, I think your points are, I think you're dead on.
I mean, the reality is, Ezra, we're seeing the difference between real leaders and individuals who are pretending to be leaders.
The Liberal Party, again, not to just scapegoat everything on the Liberal Party, we have in Justin Trudeau someone who never ran anything before.
He's never signed the front of a check in his life.
He's never had to manage a business or enterprise.
And all of a sudden, he becomes prime minister of the country.
He's also filled his cabinet full of incredibly incompetent people who have no track record in the areas in which they're governing.
And this is a serious issue.
You contrast that with Donald Trump, who's filling his cabinet with some of the premier individuals, people who have 10, 15, 20, 30 years of success after success after success.
And that kind of contrast, we're seeing the difference between real leadership and then sort of a DEI where you hire people based upon all of the wrong attributes and not on merit.
And certainly Donald Trump knows that Trudeau is weak, and he's definitely taking advantage of that and having a little bit of fun with it.
There's no question about that.
Yeah.
You know, I think personal relationships really do matter.
I mean, the U.S.-Canada relationship is so large in so many facets that it's not just the president and the prime minister, but it makes a difference.
I've been observing Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, and her shuttle diplomacy back and forth with big shots and little shots, Marco Rubio, even a few moments with Trump himself.
And I think if all other things are equal, that personal relationship is sort of the tiebreaker.
And Smith has not given in to threats.
I think she's generally probably on the net positive towards Trump.
Like she's not an NDP or who would hate him in her bones.
I think just, I mean, we used to have a rapport, Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan.
They sort of hit it off.
I remember when they had their shamrock summit and they were singing that Irish song, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.
And it is a bit of a bond.
And maybe it makes the bigger partner in the relationship more gentle and more compromising when he's dealing with a country whose leader is a friend.
I just don't think Justin Trudeau has spent a minute trying to be friends with Trump because that's not his social circle.
And I'm not saying that we should put our Canadian interests second, but part of succeeding with a giant is to be diplomatic.
I don't think for all his bluster about being an internationalist, I don't think Trudeau knows how to actually be a diplomat or how to do a negotiation.
I think he's made things worse with every country in the world, by the way.
Well, there's no Ezra, there's no question.
I mean, if you see him on the international stage, it is not a pretty picture.
He does not have the respect of the other world leaders.
I don't think there's any of them that really respect him.
Whereas Donald Trump, I think he has a certain degree of respect from him, if not just fear.
And they're not sure exactly what he's going to do.
But he's still a leader and he's showing leadership and he's trying to protect his own country.
Trudeau is outselling our country down the river in many of the policies that he's involved in.
And so I think he lacks completely, complete credibility when it comes to the international market.
And if you see him, you know, you see the different shots of him at the G7 meetings and so forth.
I mean, he doesn't even know how to get around those meetings.
No one really wants to talk to him.
It's terrible from Canada's perspective.
We're a great country and we've got tremendous assets, tremendous gifts, and people.
And we need a leader to represent us.
And you're exactly right.
I think we do just fine with the United States.
We're a great partner.
We're filled with people who are honest, want to sell good products.
God's endowed us with tremendous resources that the world needs.
And so let's get on with it.
Let's put a person in Ottawa who respects the country, wants to develop these resources, and the capital will come back.
I'm positive in terms of Canada, if we can get a change in leadership.
We have a great country with a lot of great people.
And I think Danielle Smith has really shown the way forward in terms of how to do it.
She's been exceptional.
Yeah, I think she's really helped the whole thing.
She's been advocating for Alberta, but I listened to her.
She's not just for Alberta.
She has not thrown any other province under the bus, so to speak.
I think she's done a great job.
Well, listen, it's nice to catch up with you, Jonathan.
And I've mentioned Rocklink many times on the show because you're a sponsor.
Why don't you give us just two minutes?
What is Rocklink?
What do you guys do?
And we're grateful that you sponsor us.
And I know what your sponsorship ads say, but give us, I guess, in your own words, give us a minute or two about what you guys do.
Sure.
Yeah.
We're investment management companies.
What does that mean?
We manage financial assets.
We are registered across the country.
So we operate in all the provinces across Canada.
And we're really focused on what would be typically sold value investing.
In other words, we really look at our companies, study them well, analyze them, have a handful of great businesses that we can invest in.
And so, and we're not driven by, you know, ESG and DEI and all of the woke sort of agenda, which you talk about when you mention us on your program.
We just get back to the basic fundamentals of wealth creation by great companies, good industries run by honest and ethical people, and then stay there for reasonable periods of time.
We don't go all over the map, so we don't diversify.
We try to diversify into great areas, and that means that we can put our money where we think it's going to make the highest returns and not have sort of an institutional approach.
We can personalize, customize portfolios for people, really work with our clients.
We've got a lot of families.
We love working with them and trying to meet their long-term capital objectives.
And we do that in a very personal way with top talent.
Right on.
Well, listen, it's a pleasure to have your support and the feeling's mutual.
Thanks for coming on today to talk politics.
We'll have to have you on more often.
Great.
Thank you very much, Ezra.
Keep up the great job.
I really appreciate the work you guys are doing.
Well, thanks for that.
And it's nice to meet you.
We've been talking with Jonathan Wellem, the president and founder of Rocklink, Rocklink with a C. Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Reasons of Sentiment and Loyalty00:03:52
Susan Cleary says, if our border is that bad, why did Donald send 1,600 troops to the southern border, but not to the northern border?
Make it make sense.
I don't think our border is as bad in terms of raw numbers.
There were literally millions of people coming over from Mexico.
The number from Canada is smaller, but it's not zero.
I think the number that's problematic to Americans is the number of terrorists.
Canada welcomes migrants from places like Syria and Afghanistan and even now from Gaza.
There are people caught almost every day trying to get from Canada into the U.S. who are on some sort of terrorist watch list.
I think that's a very serious issue for Canada.
And I think Trump just wants a little bit of respect on that.
But I think he actually wants some self-respect.
I think he's trying to get Canada to grow up a little bit because we've had a child as a prime minister for nearly 10 years.
Next letter.
JD Mackinseven says, why no mention of Trudeau's World Economic Forum aspirations, that there be no national borders?
Isn't it more than possible both sides are playing us together?
I'm not sure if I'm familiar with a no national borders idea coming out of the World Economic Forum.
I think there are some ideas that they would want to have transnational.
That's the whole point of the World Economic Forum is that they aren't limited by borders.
But I don't think that's as practical as having no border on the ground.
I think they're saying ideas, bad ideas, socialist ideas, globalist ideas, taxes, jurisdictions shouldn't have borders.
Maybe you're right, but maybe I don't quite understand your letter.
Next letter from Mark Trute says, just become a U.S. state.
Together, America and Canada can become richer and more powerful and secure than both countries have ever been.
Canada will still keep their own culture, just like other states have their own subcultures within the overall American culture, which Canada is already very much a part of.
There's something to that.
It's sort of like, I suppose, if you were dating someone and someone else came along and said, hey, dump them and go out with me.
Of course, you have a moral loyalty to who you're with, especially if you were married.
You wouldn't want to be disloyal.
But if you were just casually dating someone, I'm trying out an analogy here, and someone came along, I think it would be human nature to compare.
Well, what do I have now?
And what are you offering?
And what are the risks entailed?
Now, one of the main reasons I think people would stay Canadian is reasons of sentiment and history and habit and loyalty and emotion and culture.
I mean, to me, having the queen and now the king as our head of state and our history in the United Kingdom, that actually really rings a bell with me.
It really resonates with me.
I would be reluctant to give up those things, even if someone could say, well, I got more money and I'm more powerful.
That's really Trump's promise is you'll be richer and you'll have a more powerful army.
You can imagine that in a dating question too.
Well, I'm stronger, I'm more powerful, and I'm richer.
Well, that would certainly appeal to some women, wouldn't it, to have to be with a stronger man and a wealthier man.
It's just human nature.
On the other side, you would have loyalty and history and habit.
The trouble is, Justin Trudeau has spent the last nine years trying to destroy our history and culture and habit and our belongingness.
He's saying, no, it doesn't matter who you're with.
It's just transitory.
It's just a country.
It's post-national.
Nothing really means anything.
Justin Trudeau tried to turn Canada into nothing more than a transaction.
So if a transactional deal maker like Donald Trump comes along and says, I can give you a better deal than that loser.
I'll exchange your dollars for American dollars at bar.
You'll be rich.
I can protect you more than that loser.
Trump's Transactional Offer00:01:03
We've got the world's most awesome army.
If you've removed any sentiment or loyalty out of it, that is a more compelling offer.
Now, I hope that the next prime minister is Pierre Polyev, and I hope that he revives our history, our belonging, our connection to the land, our connection to other people.
I hope he does that.
But I think Donald Trump, as my monologue said, exposed a lot of brittleness in our country.
That's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.
Good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
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