Ezra Levant reveals the UK government—under Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer—secretly flew 24,000 Afghans (not 4,500) via ARAP after an 18-month-suppressed 2022 data breach, exposing sensitive details while silencing courts, media, and even Parliament. Meanwhile, Alberta’s independence push stalls as Premier Danielle Smith lacks a clear legal strategy, despite potential 72% pension boosts for workers via provincial plans; critics like Jeffrey Rath urge tax withholding under the Clarity Act, while federal Conservatives may abandon Western demands to appease Ontario/Quebec. Levant ties Canada’s economic woes to mass immigration, citing wage suppression and housing inflation, questioning whether populist policies can overcome elite resistance. [Automatically generated summary]
It's a court order that then orders you not even to talk about the court order.
You're not even allowed to say you know it exists.
What a shocking thing.
And a huge one was just lifted in the United Kingdom.
Craziest story you'll hear today.
That's ahead.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
I want to show you a video from the British Minister of Defense talking about this super injunction.
I want to show you other news stories.
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Tonight, the British government convinced the British courts to force the British media to stay silent as they secretly flew thousands of Afghans into the country.
It's July 16th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
There's a legal concept in the United Kingdom that we don't have in Canada, and I don't think they have it in the United States either.
It's called super injunction.
Now, you know what the word injunction means.
It's typically an order, usually a court order.
An injunction, we have them all the time in Canada to compel people to do things.
And one of the kinds of injunctions we have is a court-ordered publication ban.
In courts, it's usually if there's a minor involved, if a youth is charged with a crime, most of the time his identity will be kept secret.
If a youth is a victim of a crime, especially a sex crime, their identity will be kept secret.
Another example is a jury trial.
Before the jury is selected and sequestered, there's a publication ban on any salacious allegations the police or the prosecutors might make so the jury pool does not get tainted with some false allegation.
But what these all have in common is you know they exist.
You know there's a publication ban and you know the rough reasons why.
It's a child.
It's an accused criminal.
In some cases, the publication ban will later be lifted.
That's sort of normal where we come from, but in the UK, they have something called a super injunction.
It's an injunction, a publication ban that has an extra layer on top.
You're not even allowed to talk about the publication ban.
It's like a ban on talking about a ban on talking.
And the idea is to swallow up any words that might come from a thing that's going on.
It's pretty incredible.
It's the most powerful injunction I've ever heard of.
It feels something that could only be applied in a sort of police state.
I don't even know if a super injunction would be lawful in the United States with their First Amendment.
And I don't think it's ever been tried in Canada.
But there has been a super injunction in the UK that was only lifted about a day and a half ago.
And only now are we learning about the most astonishing thing.
First of all, this super injunction was actually requested by the government.
And by the way, super injunctions, they're against the whole world.
I think the phrase in Latin is admundum.
The entire world is ordered by a court in the UK to stay silent about something.
Obviously, if the fact had leaked out in the United States, someone on Enterprising could have published it there and taunted the British courts.
But this was such an unusual case.
It was requested by the British government.
It was granted by the British courts.
It kept the facts secret, even from members of parliament and members of the House of Lords.
That's their version of the Senate over there.
So cabinet ministers knew about it.
The Prime Minister knew about it, but not even MPs.
And I remind you that this superinjunction about two years ago, it kept the secrets during the last UK elections, which were actually on July 4th of last year, just over a year ago.
So this superinjunction was brought in by the Conservative government, run by Rishi Sunak at the time, one of the worst prime ministers in British history.
But the Labour Party won the election on July 4th, and they kept this super injunction in place.
I say again, it was the government that requested it.
And the new Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, who's a lawyer himself.
Both of the parties, Labour and Conservative, both of the leaders, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, are for open borders mass immigration.
And both of them supported a super injunction about the most insane story you're ever going to hear.
It's crazy, it's kooky, it's absurd, it's laughable, and it is the state of affairs over there.
Here is their current defence minister trying to explain.
The British public have always recognised the bravery and dedication of our outstanding armed forces personnel who serve around the world to keep our nation safe.
The UK made a commitment to the Afghans who worked for and with our armed forces during combat operations in Afghanistan.
It was a commitment that we would repay the moral obligation we owed to those who fought alongside us, resettling them in the UK through the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy Resettlement Scheme, or ARAP for short.
The Defence Secretary has now announced that in February 2022, under the previous government, a defence official mistakenly emailed a data set containing personal information of thousands of Afghan citizens who had applied to the ARAP scheme.
This serious and shocking data breach, discovered 18 months later, was a clear violation of data protection protocols.
The previous government responded by requesting an injunction to prevent public disclosure of the breach and setting up a secret Afghan response route to resettle Afghans at the highest risk of Taliban reprisals due to the breach.
We are now announcing that we are closing the route and supporting the injunction being lifted, putting this into the public domain for proper scrutiny for the very first time.
Although the details of the route were not public, everyone who came to the UK under this route has already been counted and published as part of the existing immigration figures.
To date, under this route, around 4,500 people have been resettled or are in transit to the UK, a small proportion of total Afghan arrivals.
When we came into office, we began a detailed assessment of the situation, which led to an independent review led by a former Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence.
You're finding out now because the independent review commissioned by our government concluded that the threat has come down.
And after carefully considering risk, transparency, and cost to the taxpayer, we have decided to close this scheme and bring it into public knowledge.
We have now notified affected individuals, launched a dedicated website to support and provide guidance to those affected, and reaffirmed our commitment to processing any applications that are outstanding within Afghan resettlement schemes.
You may rightly be concerned, as I was, by this information.
But our action shows this government will take the decisions necessary to ensure transparency and accountability while maintaining our commitment to those who served alongside our armed forces over many years.
He started off by saying that there was a moral obligation to bring all the Afghans to the UK.
Where did that obligation come from?
Is there a moral obligation to bring home?
The whole idea of going to war in Afghanistan, if I recall George W. Bush correctly, was to fight the bad guys over there so as not to have them over here.
And there is no vetting of these Afghans.
And in fact, certain who were flagged as having security risks are allowed in anyways.
He says that 4,500 came through this scheme, but other reports put it up to 24,000.
And in fact, they're allowed to bring their families with them, which means there'll be well over 100,000 Afghans brought into the United Kingdom.
And they have some sort of moral claim.
Here's a news story that one man brought 14 dependents with him.
Just incredible.
There is no security screening, and even those with red flags, as I say, are accepted.
They are allowed to choose whether or not they want to work.
If they want to, great, not sure what their skill set is.
And if they don't want to, that's fine too.
The British will house them and give them welfare for the rest of their lives, and I guess their children's lives and their grandchildren's lives.
They're allowed to bring in their family.
And veterans report that they are getting preferential housing.
These thousands of Afghans that were brought in in unmarked planes secretly under this superinjunction, many of them were housed at housing on military bases, as in the housing that was supposed to go to military families.
Veterans say they were kicked out and these Afghans were allowed in.
They're quickly learning the British way, or they're quickly being weaponized by British lawyers, not sure which is which.
I see that 650 of these Afghans have now decided to sue the British government for a data link.
So these are people from a medieval level economy.
The average GDP per capita in Afghanistan is $450 a year.
They live on less than $1.50 a day.
You better believe they're going to be millionaires when they're done suing the government for this data leak.
Were there really tens of thousands of Afghan translators?
That sounds a bit high.
Soldiers are saying there were tops 1,000.
And even if you take the government's numbers, which I don't, that 4,500 have since come over, it's clearly a political decision to use this as an excuse to bring them in.
Seriously, there are data leaks all the time.
Since when is this kind of a policy decision kept a secret during an election, no less?
Total complicity of what I call the Union Party in Canada.
I think we've broken away from the Union Party.
The Conservative Party has a different point of view.
But in the UK, the UK Labor and the UK Conservatives on this issue of immigration are in lockstep with each other.
And what of the media itself?
Most media did not know about this, but there were several reporters who were in the thick of the story.
They were called into government offices and handed the super injunction, as were their companies.
Now, some of them did lawyer up and try and argue for the super injunction to be lifted.
You have to give them credit for that.
But they failed, as you heard.
And for two years, this was a secret.
There were reporters who knew about it and decided to abide the law, the greatest secret in recent UK history.
I suppose there were greater secrets during various wars, but this was a peacetime decision to cover up a political failure, not a national security story.
Their lawyers tried to get the super injunction lifted, but none of the journalists involved thought this story was important enough to break it against the injunction.
Now, that would be contempt of court.
It would be against the law to publish this story in the face of this ruling.
But none of them thought it was of a great enough public interest that they would suffer those consequences.
And none of them thought that perhaps they would inform someone in the United States on the lowdown and have them publish it.
Because I think actually, in the United Kingdom, the regime in the media, I think they called the regime media fairly, they agree with the open borders government.
You sort of had a teamwork effort here.
You had the Labor Party and the Conservative Party both demanding from the court party that the media party, and I use party for each of them because they're all the same point of view.
They're all on the same team.
And they all agreed with each other.
And there wasn't a single dissident willing to risk it.
Let me quote to you from someone who I enjoy reading what he has to say.
It's Dominic Cummings, a former senior advisor to Boris Johnson, who's, I guess you could call him sort of like the Steve Bannon in the UK.
Let me just read his tweet, which is spot on.
Some of the names may not ring a bell, but it's not even that important.
Next move on Wallace's Afghan debacle: lawyers swarming to bring compensation cases for the Afghans.
They've been traumatized.
Mental health, I showed you, that's already happening.
So, as well as moving soldiers' families out of their homes for the Afghans, as well as bringing the dude who blackmailed the Ministry of Defense because obviously he was at risk in Afghanistan.
They actually did that, the guy who said, I got you.
And bring his family because the European Convention on Human Rights gives a right to family life.
And bringing all the rest of the families also because the Convention on Human Rights costing billions.
The next move will be to bring billions to compensate them for bringing them here.
Then there'll be the billions in benefits.
Then there'll be all the money spent dealing with their inevitable crimes.
And remember, our courts have decreed, and our MPs have accepted that the worse their crimes abroad, the more they are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, because the more at risk they are if deported from reprisals in countries outside the ECHR.
And remember, the courts have decreed that no crime, however horrific, is more important than giving them their rights to family life.
Even when these rights apply to stepchildren, they have raped.
Put Aside The Lies00:04:58
The system is working bang on as intended and will continue until regime change.
I know that sounds crazy, but that's already happening.
Suing because of the data leak.
Okay, so you brought them to the UK.
Well, suing because you forced us to come to the UK.
And then we don't want a job.
And they are not going to be asked to have a job because they were relocated.
It is the worst.
And to call this a state secret shows that you can't trust freedom of speech anymore.
They're all in on it.
Just incredible.
In case you missed it, the blackmailer himself was allowed in.
It's just, this is the most astonishing thing I've seen.
And it reminds me of my friend Tommy Robinson, who served seven months in prison because he published a video that he believed was in the public interest that a court told him was not.
I'm talking about his own documentary on censorship.
Tommy made the decision that the world had to see that, and over 160 million people saw it on Twitter before he took it down.
He paid a big price for that, and he told me he didn't regret it.
Not so for the regime journalists.
They were only too happy to keep this whole disgraceful mess a secret.
By the way, in the UK, they often measure crimes based on nationality.
Something I think we should do here in Canada too.
And in every study, Afghans are the rapiest.
They rape at a far higher rate than any other nationality because rape is tolerated in Afghanistan.
It is culturally accepted.
And this was something that astonished British, American, and Canadian forces who served in Afghanistan.
They would come across these young boys.
There's a phrase, bachabazi, they were dancing boys.
They were sexual slaves for the Afghan allies of the West.
And the nightly screaming of the boys gave many soldiers PTSD.
If you don't believe me, take a look at this.
I've heard this story a hundred times.
This is just one of a thousand instances of Western allied soldiers, in this case Brits, saying to their Afghan allies, Why are you raping the children?
Watch this all the way through.
He actually explains his rationale at the end.
Before that briefing had happened, Major Stuben knew that three young boys had been shot dead on police patrol bases.
All three of them were chai boys.
So young boys who'd been abducted by the police commanders and were used as servants.
They serve tea, but also sex slaves.
They're raped by the police commanders.
And you see them on every base.
You see several boys, sometimes in uniform, sometimes not, but 13, 14 years old.
It's very common practice there.
Three of them have been shot dead by the police, one possibly by another chai boy, nobody's quite sure.
And he's just found out that a fourth boy has been shot at point-blank range in the leg for trying to escape.
And, you know, I was there, so he let me follow him to meet the acting police chief and confront him about this.
Yesterday, we had unfortunate news come in.
A young boy, about 13, maybe 14 years of age, was shot.
Now, there's a couple of things on there that you and I have talked about.
In fact, we've had all the PB commanders in this very room about having young boys and civilians on PBs.
Yeah, I have mentioned it more than 20 times.
I know, I know.
And my way from there.
Why was there a boy on that PB?
Why is it?
What did that commander say to you?
Absolutely disgusting.
Put aside the £7 billion that have already been spent on this scheme.
Put aside the smashing of democracy to get this done in secret.
Put aside the fact that the courts were in cahoots with both parties and that the media, well, they protested.
I'll give them that, but no one was brave enough to break the ban.
Put aside all that, they are bringing in thousands of men who you know are liars.
There weren't 24,000 translators for the Brits and who, as a nation, rape.
Do you think that's suddenly going to end because they're on an eight-hour flight to London?
Stay with us for more for an excerpt from our new weekly show called The Buffalo.
Hey, welcome back.
You know, we have a daily live stream.
The Buffalo Excerpt00:15:05
Sheila Gunread typically hosts that with different partners, sometimes Lise Merle, sometimes David Menzies.
And we're starting a new segment every week.
We're doing a show on the West and Western independence and Western issues, Saskatchewan, Alberta, the prairies, BC.
And let me show you an excerpt from today's debut episode.
Take a look.
Oh, hey, good morning, everybody.
My name is Sheila Gunread.
I'm the host of our daily news and opinion show Rebel Roundup.
And what we're bringing to you today is the inaugural episode of something we're calling the Buffalo Panel, wherein we devote the at least first half of the live stream to Western-related issues.
And so it won't just be me talking about these things.
On Wednesday, I am always joined by my real life best friend and Regina-based co-host, Lise Merle.
But we are also going to be going forward bringing in a rotating cast of panelists.
And I am really excited to tell you about today's panelists, not just because one of them signs my paycheck.
So that should be an indication that one of our panelists today is, of course, Rebel News boss man Ezra Levant.
He'll be joining us from the studio in Toronto.
But don't worry, it's not like we have an Eastern elite telling us Westerners what to think and what to say.
Ezra is, of course, an Albertan at heart and by birth.
And we're also bringing in our friend Corey Morgan.
He's a columnist and host over at the Western Standard, but he's also someone who has thought deeply enough about Western issues that he wrote a book called The Sovereigntist Handbook.
So we will be bringing in our panelists.
Olivia, do we want to do that now?
I'm sort of flying blind.
There's everybody.
It looks great.
What a surprise.
And I guess I'm going to be leading the conversation.
You are going to join me as I learn how to fly the airplane after it has taken off of the tarmac.
And so we're all just, we're in this together now and there's no getting out.
So, Ezra, I guess, you know, you're the boss of the company.
Why are we doing all of this?
Sure.
I mean, as you mentioned, I was born and raised in Alberta and my heart is still there, although I've been in Toronto long enough that I can no longer claim I'm in exile.
This is home for me now.
I want to let you know, though, if you go from Alberta and go west and go west and now you're over the Pacific and keep going west and now you're over Asia and keep going west, if you go west far enough, you will reach Toronto.
So I'm actually super far west.
I'm the deep west, even though I'm here in the big smoke.
All right, I'm kidding.
I'm just self-conscious.
But look, Toronto is the capital of many things in this country.
It's the capital of business.
It's the capital of immigration.
It's the capital of media and political correctness.
But Alberta and the West in general is the capital of entrepreneurialism, the capital of the free market, of individualism.
And it's a restless place of ideas.
So many great ideas that benefit the whole country come from the West.
And at first, they're sometimes ridiculed, like Ralph Klein, for example.
But soon those ideas catch on.
Preston Manning on the books was unsuccessful, but he planted the seeds of ideas.
I put it to you: were it not for Preston Manning, Paul Martin would not have balanced the budget.
It would not have become a sort of political requirement in parliament for all parties.
Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, so many ideas and thought leaders come from the West, and it is a different culture.
It is obviously true that Quebec is a distinct society.
Of course, their language itself tells you that.
Newfoundland's a distinct society, I'll have you know, and the West is too.
And so we have a deep respect for all things Western.
You're our chief reporter based in the West.
And I think hosting this weekly conversation called The Buffalo, which by the way was supposed to be the name of the first province of one province together, Alberta and Saskatchewan were supposed to join Confederation together as a mighty province called the Buffalo on September 1st, 1905.
They were split at birth.
Anyways, it's our homage to the West.
We love the West.
And this show, which will be hosted in the West and dominated by the West, is there to prove it.
So thanks for letting me rant a little bit.
It's great to see Lise, who does such a great job every week.
And I've really come to know and admire and appreciate Corey Morgan for his deep thinking on this idea.
We've had the pleasure of working with Corey at a few of our town halls recently.
And I really regard him as a thought leader, someone who has really pondered how it would work, what should it be, what it should not be.
And so to have him on the show, first of all, we love the Western Standard.
I have a little bit of paternity in that name myself.
And we're grateful to you being so collegial, Corey.
We know you work for Western Standard, which on paper is a competitor of Rebel News, but we regard you as an ally, first and foremost.
So thanks for being here.
And thanks for letting me have a few introductory words like that.
That's great.
And it's sorry to interrupt you, Corey.
It's great to see a physical newsroom.
That's kind of jarring.
You don't see many of those these days.
They're rare.
Derek's pretty stubborn about wanting to have an actual news convoluting.
Okay, I think we will get right into it just to respect everybody's time.
We have the Alberta government launching the Alberta Next panels, where, according to the Premier, they're talking about big ideas like provincial policing, pension reform, and protecting our rights from federal overreach.
I guess I'll go to Lise first.
Why isn't Saskatchewan doing this?
Well, that is a fantastic question, Sheila Gunried, because if you were in Saskatchewan looking for your provincial politicians, you would be hard-pressed to find them, other than outside of very small pressers making very important but small announcements.
We are not having conversations like this on the provincial level in Saskatchewan, and we should be, because if left up to the people, without any, well, guidance or leadership, well, the people might be apt to do something drastic in the next election, like give us an NDP government, which would be terrible.
So it would be great.
It'd be great to see our provincial government do something similar.
Now, I want to show a couple clips that came out of that panel.
We've sort of gone through a few of them.
One from Jeffrey Rath.
So, Jeffrey Rath, co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project, was at the Alberta Next panel, and he questioned the Premier over federal tax collection on the open mic portion.
So, let's show that clip, and then I want to get Some feedback from you guys about what you think went down there.
Olivia.
Well, Ottawa continues or has ignored us and will continue to ignore us.
It doesn't matter what we do here tonight or what the outcome of this is.
They will continue to ignore us.
There's one question, one question only, that needs to be on a referendum, and that is: do you support Alberta exiting Canadian Confederation and becoming a sovereign nation?
At that point, at that point, then you'll be able to negotiate with Ottawa.
Then you'll be able to negotiate with Quebec.
Without that, they will continue to ignore us.
If they do not know that we are serious and we can leave at any point in time, we will not ever get a pipeline to the Atlantic Ocean.
It is time to put the separation question on a ballot so that Alberta people can decide.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I would say.
Okay, that was the wrong clip.
That wasn't the Jeffrey Roth one, but that was just a clip of just what happened on the open mic.
I think the Alberta government might think that this Alberta Next panel could placate people, but I think they're going to get a lot of that on the open mic portion where people are saying, Look, we have to vote to separate, even if it just means a negotiating tool.
Corey, what do you think?
Well, yeah, Premier Smith's in a tough spot because while the majority of her party membership tend to be sympathetic towards independence, the majority of the province isn't quite there yet.
And she has to appeal to the majority of the province to try and stay in power.
There's concerns among people already dedicated to the independence approach or referendum approach that this is going to be like Jason Kenney's Fair Deal panel, where a bunch of hearings were held, a bunch of talk was had, and nothing happened.
So is this actually going to lead towards something, towards changes, whether it's a referendum or things like a pension plan or collecting our own taxes, or is just an exercise that's kicking the can down the road?
So I believe that part of her challenge as she holds this challenge around the province is to make sure that people feel confident that this is more than just a navel-gazing exercise and it's going to lead to something.
Or if anything, it's going to divide the party potentially and cause some issues from within.
Lise?
I love how the government of Alberta is saying, you know, hi, we would like to talk about pensions and policing and some of our smaller issues.
And the people of Alberta come in guns blazing, like, nope, we need to threaten to leave.
We need to threaten to leave right now.
And there's no way that the government of Alberta can pretend that they didn't hear them loud and clear.
I think this is going to be something we hear at every single one of their Alberta Next panels.
And it'll be interesting to see how the government of Alberta responds.
Because Corey's right.
Of course, they have to ask the people of Alberta what they want next to happen, but they can't ignore the humongous elephant in the room where a great many of their supporters are saying, we've had enough asking the federal government to play nice and we're done.
So it'd be interesting to see.
Well, it is.
Sorry, go ahead, boss.
You know, I was listening to that question asked, and I don't know who that was, but I like what he said.
And here's my thoughts.
There's a saying in politics: have as many people to your right as to your left.
That's one of Morton Blackwell's rules.
And it's good for Danielle Smith and for her party and for her other MLAs and for her cabinet ministers to know that there are people to her right.
And so they cannot be ignored.
They don't have to necessarily be obeyed to the letter, but it's always a good idea.
If you have as many to your right as to your left, you're going to walk a straight line.
You never want to be in the position where you silence that one side, and you'll start to curve to the left.
And others need to hear it too.
People, by definition, it makes Danielle Smith look moderate and reasonable if you have people asking for her to be harder lying.
So I am in no way objecting to that.
And it shows the media, it shows Ottawa observers that there is something cooking in Alberta.
The entire federal government was recalibrated after the last separatist referendum about 30 years ago to detect any inkling of upset into Quebec and immediately ameliorate or in some ways attend to it.
They don't have the same seismograph in Alberta.
So you have to magnify the sounds of discontent for Ottawa to hear it.
They don't care as much.
They don't have as many political operators on the ground.
They don't have as many cabinet ministers.
So it's important that Ottawa and the Ottawa media know that there is discontent in Alberta.
So I'm pleased with what I just saw there.
One last thing I would say is whenever you open up the mics, it's probably a good idea to have a few of your friends there who are saying something that you want to be the topic of conversation, because if you're having a forum, especially a traveling forum, and you're opening it up to anyone, other people will say, ah, now I've got a platform for my agenda.
And that's fine.
It's part of democracy.
Just make sure that her agenda knows what it is and she has people there to elocute it because others will make their points too.
Anyway, I was pleased with what you just showed.
Yeah, me too.
Now, we found the clip of Jeffrey Rath, co-founder of the APP.
He's questioning the Premier over federal tax collection on the open mic portion.
And I think she's going to get a ton of this as these things go forward.
And kudos to the APP because these are tough questions that people want to ask.
Go ahead.
My name's Jeffrey Rath.
I'm from Foothills, Alberta.
So, Premier, the first thing I wanted to say with the greatest of respect, when you say there's no legal mechanism to stop sending taxes to Ottawa and collecting 100% of the taxes in Alberta, with the greatest respect, you're incorrect.
The legal mechanism is Section 1, sub-3 of the Clarity Act, and that's voting Alberta the hell out of Canada on a clear question.
Thank you, Jeff.
And then my last point on that is simply on a moving forward basis, I'd like to see a straw poll in this room, and that's one, not do we want to spend another five or 10 years bashing our heads against an unamendable constitution versus how many people in this room want a clear vote on independence within the next 12 months.
Okay, so thank you.
But go ahead.
I actually disagree with him that there's no mechanism by which to withhold taxes to the federal government because Scott Moe did that with the carbon tax and basically said, come and get me.
And they didn't because, well, frankly, I don't think there are big enough handcuffs.
He's got ham hawks for fists, but he called their bluff.
They didn't do anything when he said we're not sending the carbon tax.
Yeah, the federal government was completely, he called their bluff, is what he did.
And they didn't do anything in response.
However, when you're talking about when you're talking about income taxes or Taxes that can't be argued constitutionally.
Incremental Steps Toward Sovereignty00:04:01
I think that's probably what the question was.
We didn't hear the question in the lead up.
Why don't you just turn off the bags of money going to Ottawa?
And Danielle Smith replied that there's no legal mechanism.
But I love that Jeffrey Rath just barges in and goes, Well, actually, there is a solution to this.
Where Danielle Smith, you know, where Premier Danielle Smith would have said, you know, there is no way for us to really do that.
We have agreements in place, legal requirements in place that make us send the money to Ottawa.
And in comes Jeffrey Rath with an absolute solution.
Like, I love the sound of that.
I love the sound of that.
Well, if we don't have a legal mechanism yet, let's use the legal mechanism that we do have.
Let's find solutions.
So go ahead, Corey.
Yeah, well, currently, I mean, part of what that question comes into, and I know Jeff always wants to go to the final nuclear solution, which, you know, I'm sort of on board with.
I don't think there's quite enough Albertans on board for it yet, but I like moving towards it.
He's doing a lot of work towards it, as is the APP.
But getting back to that, I think it's an extension of what's been talked about since the Alberta agenda.
In Quebec, there's two separate tax returns: your provincial and your federal.
And they're talking about splitting it.
So Alberta would have its own provincial form, its own federal one.
It doesn't solve every problem, but it keeps inching us towards that door.
It takes away one more question where people say, Well, what will you do if you become independent?
How are you going to deal with tax collection?
Well, you know, as a matter of fact, we have our own agency, we have our own setup.
We'll just change the rates and then just, you know, stop with the federal dispersion of it.
So it's another one of those things kind of along the lines of the Alberta agenda moving towards it.
But it doesn't stop things like GST remittance, corporate taxes.
It's a little more nuanced than that, but it's one more step that could be pursued.
An incremental step.
Yeah.
Incremental steps towards sovereignty.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think it's important actually to show people just how much money they're sending to the feds to have those two separate forms.
I think it's important in the arguments of transparency.
But also, speaking of incremental steps, I don't know if you guys saw that Fraser Institute report this week.
Median workers in Alberta could receive 72% more under the Alberta pension plan compared to the Canada pension plan.
Just by repatriating our pension, that's how much more we could save.
That's another incremental step that Albertans could do.
And I don't think it has been properly explained by the provincial government to people on this issue.
I see that there's a lot of opposition to an Alberta pension plan.
And I think when the dollars and cents are explained, I don't know how anybody could object to it.
Yeah, that was one of the things the Alberta Prosperity Project was really pushing on as well.
And the provincial government sort of blew the rollout when they started talking about a provincial pension plan.
And they kind of lost the narrative and it allowed opponents to really inject fear because people are fearful.
And I saw that when I traveled to meetings, there's a lot of seniors on fixed income.
They're afraid of change.
And even though you explain, you know, by the numbers, you would certainly be better off under a provincial plan, but it's not been successful in undercutting that nervousness with them.
So the numbers are there.
The benefits are most definitely there.
And it would certainly put pressure on Ottawa because if they lost that extra revenue that's showing up the plan from one of the provinces, they're going to have to really approach the rest of Canadians to explain why they're going to have to cut benefits or raise premiums.
But the Alberta government really has to frame it better.
The Fraser Institute's doing what they already should have done.
I think the obvious thing to do is to set up an Alberta pension plan and let people choose it if they want so they don't have to leave the CPP.
And I think almost immediately when people say, oh, it's not, it hasn't been a catastrophe.
I'm getting more bang for the buck, people will move over.
Danielle Needs Stephen00:15:18
But I think Corey's right.
And one of the things Donald Trump has insisted on is not doing things that would scare seniors, not talking about those kind of entitlements.
He's got bigger fights to fight.
Let me use one more Trump lesson because there are some lessons with a man who wants to do something radical.
And in his case, the remigration of millions of people he calls invaders.
Who is his architect of that?
Well, the man on the ground who's getting it done is named Tom Homan, and he's a military style, can-do, ass kicker kind of cop character.
But he's using a strategy quarterback by the deputy chief of staff named Stephen Miller, who is using such creative legal means, for example, a law from the 18th century, I think it's called the Alien Act or something, like to deal like laws that have not been used in centuries, legal tools that have never been used.
Maybe the Democrats have used them and never a Republican.
And I think that Danielle Smith needs to get legally savvy quick.
Let me tell you two recent examples saying she's not.
In her transgender compromise, which was quite balanced, she rather naively, I might say, did not include the notwithstanding clause in the first draft.
Well, gee whiz, what do you think a Trudeau court is going to do to that?
Find it a violation of the charter.
Why not just dispense with this Laurentian taboo against the Section 33 notwithstanding clause and just put it right in there?
And you'll have the CBC huff and puff about it for a couple of days.
But so what?
It's part of the charter.
So, and I see just the other day, I almost couldn't believe it when we covered the story.
I sent a note to Sheila saying, is this true?
And I checked it out.
It's true.
That again, on the trans issue, the province is saying we can't stop out-of-province trans athletes from competing in Alberta.
Sure.
Who told you that?
That's exactly what you can do.
You can't stop Albertans in other provinces doing shenanigans there because you don't have, but you have absolute jurisdiction in Alberta over things that happen in Alberta.
And if you don't, you need lawyers.
And I know that I myself like lawyers too much.
And people from the conservative side, especially populists, have a well-deserved skepticism and even in some cases, a dislike for lawyers.
Lawyer jokes.
There's a lot of reasons we don't like lawyers because sometimes they're on the cutting edge of things we of illegal moves we hate.
But on the same side, a smart, talented, creative lawyer on our side evens the odds.
So I would say this.
I think Danielle Smith, who herself is not a lawyer, and I don't think she particularly thinks like a lawyer, needs to find herself a Stephen Miller, needs to find someone she completely trusts to quarterback the legal strategy.
And it may mean going to the private sector.
It is not an unusual thing for the government to hire private lawyers who are experts in their field.
If you dip into the lawyers at the Justice Department, odds are you're going to get that bureaucratic NDP mindset.
A career lawyer in the government of Alberta, based in Edmonton, is going to be a lefty.
He's going to be on the wrong side of all these issues.
Danielle Smith needs to find herself a Stephen Miller, a killer lawyer who is not crazy, but who is radical.
They're different.
And she needs to take a lawfare approach to it, because I promise you they're going to take a lawfare approach to her, and they already are.
So whether it's knowing how to navigate things on the constitutional file and sovereignty or how to get her agenda through prickly courts, she needs a legal dream team.
I don't think she has one.
I think she needs to get one.
I think it's got to come from outside government because the government lawyers aren't it.
It would double her effectiveness.
She will be undone in the courts more than she will be undone in the polls.
Thanks for letting me rant.
No, I'm glad you did.
Okay, let's, my job to keep us on track here.
Just more over to Ezra's point about the premier needing to have people to the right of her.
She, after her, I think, I don't want to say heated, but probably energetic, frisky Alberta Next panel, she tweeted out that Albertans aren't afraid to speak their minds.
And that's exactly what we saw at the Alberta Next panel.
These conversations matter because they shape the bold future.
We're building together.
Now, I appreciate her saying those things insofar as she's not responding the way Jason Kenney would to those sorts of criticisms that her panel faced at the mic.
What did Jason Kenney call his own base that disagreed with him?
Lunatics?
Kookie?
What did he say?
He said he needs a new base.
He called separatists in Alberta grifters.
So instead of, I mean, instead of responding in language that you could expect from the likes of Justin Trudeau to talk about Albertans, she actually said, like, look, people are frustrated and we need to talk to them.
She at least acknowledges that these people, by and large, are in the UCP fold.
Yeah, well, she's showing respect to a different point of view and giving them that time at the microphone and recognizing, and it's a balancing act, you know, not coming out right and saying that she necessarily agrees with their views, but they certainly have every right to express them and it represents a large segment of Albertans.
I think what's going to keep coming to a head, though, is people want to head to the referendum.
There's all these other questions, but as you can see, all roads keep leading to that referendum.
I think, you know, again, she shouldn't take a side on the referendum, perhaps, but she needs to facilitate, make it clear, it's going to be held.
So that way the energy for those who want full independence could be directed towards there and making that path.
Otherwise, everybody will just keep answering at these panels.
Look, these are great ideas, but we need the referendum.
So I think that just needs to be peeled off and moved towards it.
Yeah, agreed.
And I don't think there's a leader in the country who does it better than Danielle Smith when she says Alberta, well, says without saying, the people of Alberta are smart enough to decide for themselves.
She gives the people of Alberta the credit where credit is due.
She knows that the people of Alberta have had it with the federal government and have some real burning ideas about what happens next.
And she's unafraid to listen to them.
Nobody listens better than Danielle Smith.
Nobody.
Yeah, I can't imagine that she thought that these Alberta next panels would go any other way than they exactly are.
You know what I mean?
Like she had to have expected that her panelists would be getting an absolute earful about separation on the mic.
And they should be unafraid to get an absolute earful.
These are the people that they're meant to govern.
These are the people that elected them.
They should be unafraid to listen to them.
And they're doing a bang-up job of listening.
You know, I was a young boy once, and I was caught up in the excitement of the populist conservative movement of the day called the Reform Party.
Although Preston Manning sometimes claimed it wasn't conservative, I remember a speech he would give where he says, like a hockey team, it had a right wing and a left wing.
Sometimes he sort of talked in a Christian way that he thought there could be a grand harmony of left and right.
It was an unusual opinion.
Anyways, I probably went to 100 events with Preston Manning.
I was the head of the Young Reformers at the University of Calgary, and then I became sort of a busybody troublemaker.
And then later I went to work for Preston, and I observed a strategy or a tactic that he had.
And he used it especially when he was at big party conferences where he wanted to do big things.
For example, I remember when the Reform Party just ran candidates in the four Western provinces.
And I remember when he wanted to expand that nationwide.
Well, that's a tough, tough move, isn't it?
When your motto is the West wants in and you're trying to fight for the West and now you're going to run candidates in Toronto.
Well, Preston would shape the question and he would provide two different answers and he would put it to the ballot, but he would frame them in a way that you knew which one you sort of had to do.
He sort of pre-cooked the answer.
And it wasn't particularly Democratic, but it was endorsed by the people.
It's just that the choices he put to them were his own.
And Stephen Harper later criticized that.
My point is, he knew the desired outcome for his plan, and he got it.
He didn't win everything.
In the end, he was turfed by Stockwell Dave supporters and then turned on them.
But my point is, what is Danielle Smith's plan?
I think she would like to remain a premier within Canada.
I think so.
So how can she craft a strategy and put questions to the people that take some of the energy from the independence movement and apply it to get the things that she wants, if that's what she wants?
I don't think she wants to be the first leader of an independent Alberta.
I don't think so.
Is she using this as a bargaining chip against Ottawa?
I don't know.
But I'm just trying to think to how Preston Manning managed some very challenging issues, and he had a tactic that he put the choice to people.
I don't exactly know what Danielle Smith's proposed future is.
Maybe she's still figuring it out.
And that's another thing.
I mean, I like Danielle Smith.
I've known her since we were in university together.
I don't quite know who her inner kitchen cabinet is.
I don't mean her legal cabinet, but who does she call when she really wants an honest chat and honest advice from people she believes are looking out for her?
I don't know who that is, especially on this issue.
You're right, Lise, when you say that she listens very well.
She does.
But you can't just be like a seat cushion and have the impression of the last person who sat on you.
You have to have your own core values.
You want to absorb information and you want to tip your hat to other forces within democracy.
It's got to be some compromise and log rolling.
It's got to be.
But what is her destination?
What is her destiny?
Where does she want to go?
Preston knew it.
I don't know if Danielle Smith knows it.
Maybe she does.
Is she articulating it?
Does she have really trusted lieutenants, including, like I say, the Stephen Miller character who's going to be the absolutely killer strategist and tactician?
I don't know.
But I think she needs that because she will be up against every force of the establishment in Ottawa.
And frankly, Pierre Polyev is going to run or campaign for the United Canada.
Of course he is.
He's part of a Federalist Party.
And the media all will run against her.
And the unions will run against her.
And the deep state will run against her.
So she's got to get smart and tough.
And I'm not saying she can't.
I'm just saying she's got a limited amount of time.
What do you think of that, Corey?
Do you know where her destination is?
Do you know what she's trying to do?
And do you know who her trusted advisors are?
I sort of agree with where you're going on it.
I don't believe she wants to become the president of an independent Alberta or something like that.
But she also understands there's just a growing rift that she has to somehow fill.
As for who's inside, it's interesting.
Rob Anderson, you know, is her chief of staff.
That's not the kitchen cabinet sort of thing, but he was quite vocal prior to joining Premier Smith again in this government as a, you know, the Free West group that he had going with Barry Cooper and others.
So if there's any voice talking in her ear, it's probably Mr. Anderson's lately, and he's certainly a strongly independence-leaning person.
So with the meeting coming up in Edmonton next, I think now that they've gotten one meeting out of the way, we'll get a better idea of how they want to direct and move this towards.
You know, they kind of got that first one done, whether they were happy with how that went or not.
We'll see with how they manage the next one.
Yeah, we'll see if they tighten up the mic.
That's for sure.
Hey, I know we're running out of time, so I'm going to skip over the Poly Dev clip because we sort of reacted to it on the live stream yesterday.
But I want to talk to Corey about this one, this article from the Western Standard from Jen over there.
Sorry, Alberta at odds with Quebec in willingness to kill the dairy cartel.
And this is written by Jen Hodgson, who does a great job over at the Western Standard.
Corey, I know that you, like me, are vehemently against supply management because, well, I'm a farmer on the other side of it as a price taker, not a price setter.
I don't get my prices artificially inflated.
In fact, a lot of times I deal with tariffs.
But this is really something that has been holding up trade negotiations with the United States.
And instead of just figuring out a way to unwind this Soviet-style nonsense, this is the thing that, you know, Canadians are facing tariffs because of.
Yeah, well, and it's turned into a regional rift now because it has been slowly but surely growing disproportionately within Quebec, where those quotas are assigned.
And Western agricultural producers who look at it, we're in the breadbasket in North America.
We could have some incredible dairy operations out here if only we could expand the ability through those quotas.
So the interests are quite different.
Quebec has that interest in protecting this market that they've sort of sucked in from the rest of the country through the supply management system over these years.
And the West is realizing, whoa, we're losing out on a whole bunch of potential, not to mention now that it's causing a trade rift on everything, and it's come up into the discussion.
So there's going to be a difference of opinion, but we know probably where the Kearney government's going to land when they're taking a side on this.
And, well, it's just one more time where the West can scream and shout, but our interests aren't going to come before Quebec's.
Right.
And Ezra, this is an issue that we're not going to see any daylight between the Liberals and the Conservatives on.
We know how influential the dairy cartel is with the Conservative Party of Canada.
They can make and break a leader.
Yeah.
And we've seen that in the Conservative Party's leadership in the past.
You know, I was just thinking when you say no daylight between the Liberals and the Conservatives, remember the last election how the Liberals and the media always insisted that the Conservatives prove they are as anti-Trump as the Liberals are.
Conservative Mps And Alberta Independence00:04:50
And no amount of proof was enough.
And the Conservatives were outdoing themselves.
In fact, they were even dabbling in some anti-I was going to say anti-Semitic, anti-American language.
Yeah, for sure.
They're going to do the same thing on the Alberta independence question because everyone on this panel is thinking about the West right now.
But what decides federal elections, in which Pierre Polyev has a keen interest, is Ontario and to a degree, Quebec.
And so every time they ask Pierre Polyev or one of his backbench Alberta or Saskatchewan MPs about independence, they're doing so with the thought of an ad to run in Ontario and Quebec in mind.
And so you will see Pierre Polyev not only oppose independence, but be called upon to oppose it more strenuously and more vigorously than anyone else.
So it's going to be an interesting phenomenon when you have backbench conservative MPs.
I know you asked me about the dairy cartel, but it is sort of related.
Is that Alberta MPs, including conservative MPs, have a very Western-friendly point of view.
A lot of them have that genetics of the old Reform Party that was just those four Western provinces the West wants in.
But they are going to be tested by the media and by the liberals and by the liberal media for purity tests every day.
Will you denounce independence and will you applaud dairy cartels on command?
Do it now.
I know I just asked you yesterday, but do it again.
And if you don't do it again, that's proof that you don't.
And like it's going to be a very, I think the greatest weapons the liberals will field against Alberta independence will be Alberta conservatives who are not permitted to speak candidly because it would contradict the federal mission of their party.
I'm brainstorming here, just brainstorming.
Yeah, it'll be like wear the ribbon, march in the parade.
You must.
You must.
Where's your ribbon?
You know what?
We've hit over halfway through the show.
So I know that Corey has a job he's got to get back to.
I know, Ezra, you do too.
Thanks for joining us, gentlemen.
Thank you, Corey, so much for giving us a little bit of your time today.
Let us know, Corey, how our viewers here at Rebel News can find your work and also pick up a copy of the Sovereigntist Handbook.
Certainly, WesternStander.news, all my stuff is up on there.
And the Sovereign Tist Handbook, you can find it on Amazon just with a quick search.
I really appreciate the invite to come on, and it's always a pleasure to talk to a great panel like this.
Great.
Thanks, Corey.
We'll have you back on again very soon.
Thanks, Boss.
We'll talk soon.
Let's get an ad break and then we'll come back with the rest of the show.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me on Mark Carney's portfolio.
Peter Batista says, imagine owning a sports team and betting on a competitor's team.
Isn't this an equivalent to where you invest in another country and pretend to represent the previous?
Shame, shame, shame on all the duplicitous liberal Canadians.
You're so right.
I mean, it sort of came up during the campaign.
Why was he stashing his Brookfield stock in tax havens?
Which, by the way, the CRA is suing him over in some accounting ways.
And he said, well, you know, I'm just doing the best for my, doing the best for my customers.
Yeah, and that's a good thing.
That's a good excuse if you weren't prime minister.
But now that you're prime minister, you just don't feel any obligation to follow the law, to pay your own taxes, to invest in your own country.
I just get the feeling that this guy is still looking around.
He's at a party and he's looking around the room for something more in someone more interesting to talk to than you.
You know what it's like at a party when someone's sort of always looking for someone more interesting?
That's Mark Carney.
He was at the Bank of Canada.
Oh, that's more interesting.
I'm going to go to the Bank of England.
Oh, the UN, that's more interesting.
Oh, I think I can go to Canada and become Prime Minister.
Oh, let me see if I can trade up.
He's looking to trade up, isn't he?
Alessandro Bracchi says, the fact that he's taking a holiday says it all.
What a joke.
Exactly.
I mean, Parliament has sat for, I didn't count, but I'm guessing it sat for 10 days this year.
But he needs a vacation, doesn't he?
Sher Shot Fire says, what I think is really funny, Donald Trump's only been in office for six months, and the Canadian people want to blame Donald Trump for a Canadian economy that's been crashing for well over 10 years.
How funny is that?
The Canadian people don't want to blame their own government.
There are so many problems in Canada, and they have been hidden in part by mass immigration.
If you bring in 2 million people a year, just the momentum of that many people, they need a house, they need a cell phone, they need basic stuff, that's going to force the economy to grow.
But it's growing at a rate that actually, on an individual basis, it's shrinking.
On an individual basis, on a per capita basis, Canada has been in a recession for years, as this correspondent points out.
We are getting poorer on an individual basis.
So to hide it, they're bringing in millions of people, and they are not bringing in doctors and lawyers and engineers.
They're bringing in people who work at Tim Hortons and work at 7-Eleven, entry-level jobs, driving down wages and driving up housing prices.