Ezra Levant examines Pierre Poilievre’s 80%+ landslide in Alberta’s Battle River-Crowfoot by-election, where media-backed independent Bonnie Critchley—falsely touted as an Afghanistan combat veteran—collapsed at under 10%, exposing election integrity concerns. The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) fights three cases: challenging a $28,872 fine against Nova Scotia vet Jeff Evelyn for forest access during wildfires, defending B.C. nurse Amy Ham’s $93,600 penalty for supporting J.K. Rowling’s views, and opposing the Crown’s retrial of acquitted trucker Evan Blackman after illegal asset seizures. Alberta’s new speech-policing legislation mirrors past battles against ideological overreach, while questions about Mark Carney’s absence at a Ukraine summit and Doug Ford’s anti-Trump rhetoric highlight deeper political tensions. Poilievre’s victory signals a broader conservative pushback against institutional bias and "woke" restrictions. [Automatically generated summary]
Last night, Pierre Polyev won his by-election in Alberta.
No surprise there, but there were some very interesting details.
I don't know if you saw our live stream last night, but I did my monologue on it today to unpack some of the news.
Also, we talked to John Carpe, the head of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
Boy, he's got some very interesting cases, and he'll give us an update on three of them.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
It's eight bucks a month, which might not sound like a lot to you, but boy, it adds up for us because we don't take any government money and it shows.
Tonight, Pierre Polyev wins in Alberta, of course, but how the media covered it teaches us a lot.
It's August 19th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Oh, hey, everybody.
I don't know if you saw, but last night we had a great live stream about the special by-election in Crowfoot.
That's the rural riding in Alberta where Pierre Polyev ran.
The exact name of the riding is Battle River Crowfoot.
And that district and its antecedents have voted conservative every single time in the last 90 years, other than I think for two years.
Like it really is one of the most conservative places in the world.
The incumbent conservative MP, Damian Kouric is his name.
He stepped down so that Pierre Polyev could run again after losing his own Ottawa area seat in the general election.
Now, I know a little something about stepping aside to let the party leader run.
I don't know if you know this, but about, oh, I don't know, 25 years ago or something, I was running in Calgary Southwest, and I stepped aside somewhat reluctantly at first so that Stephen Harper could get a quick entry into parliament.
Well, I would like to sit down with him in a meeting with our local grassroots executive at Mr. Harper's convenience and have a talk about it.
So, Damian Kouric has given up a lot, and it's to the benefit of the party and hopefully the country.
Now, of course, it was going to be a slam dunk.
I mean, come on, it's Kurek himself got, I think, 82% in the last election.
And I don't know if you know this, but Pierre Polyev is originally from Alberta.
In fact, he helped on my campaign when I ran in Calgary Southwest in that doomed mission.
Keuric got about 80%, of course, and Polyev got almost exactly the same, just over 80%.
Last night, our live stream went about three hours.
Sheila, Gun Reed, and Lise Merle were on it.
It was actually huge turnout for a by-election.
I don't know if you know that.
59% of people voted.
In a by-election, I actually cannot remember a by-election that had that kind of turnout.
By-elections are typically low-energy, low-interest affairs, 20, 30%.
But this one was very strong.
The media, I think, had something to do with that.
They were hyping up.
They had this dream.
They always have the dream that Alberta is going to suddenly turn to the left.
And, you know, it did once.
It voted for Rachel Notley's NDP, but that was really a vote split in some special circumstances.
The media decided not to back the Mark Carney candidate.
They knew he had no choice.
And the NDP Hamas candidate.
No, no chance, rather.
So they backed what they, if they would make in a lab their perfect candidate, it was this one.
Her name is Bonnie Critchley.
She was running as an independent.
And they all got behind her.
It was really weird.
I mean, how was it that of the 214 candidates on the ballot?
I'll get to that in a minute, that every single media company decided at the same time that Bonnie Critchley was the one to watch.
didn't really seem to be so independent to me after all, was it?
It was quite something how she had total media support right away.
Here's the CBC story about her.
They said she was a real contender.
Here's the National Observer, a left-wing newspaper.
You can forgive them because they're based in Vancouver.
Here she is on the CBC's national news channel TV.
Boy, they must have believed she had a chance that they were putting her on the national TV show.
Take a look.
Bonnie Critchley is running as an independent candidate in the upcoming by-election in Battle River Crowfoot, and she joins me now.
Bonnie Critchley, it's good to meet you.
Thank you for joining us on the show today.
Good morning.
Well, at least it's morning here right now.
Hi, how are you doing today?
I'm very good.
How are you doing?
Tell us why you've decided to run in this by-election and run against the conservative leader Pierre Polyevin's seat.
It really boils down to my slogan, which isn't a slogan.
It's simply the truth.
It's this is our home.
This is our riding.
We just had an election and we spent all that money and we elected the candidate of our choice who promptly turned around and said, no, I don't want that mandate I asked you for.
And we're spending another $2 million to vote in the guy from Angry Guy from Ottawa who doesn't know Jack about this area.
He may have been born in Calgary, but he's from Ottawa.
He hasn't been here.
He hasn't lived here.
And even if he had stayed in Calgary, this is a very different area than the urban centers he's used to.
So you're mad.
You don't like what Damian Couric has done?
You don't like what Pierre Polyev has done, even though there is a long tradition in Canadian politics of backbenchers giving up their seat for the leader.
You don't like this one bit.
Well, yeah, I would agree.
Normally, yes, but this unseated leader didn't.
It's not that he didn't have a seat.
It's that he didn't bother to show up for his constituents.
So they fired him.
And now he just assumes we're going to vote him in when he lived in the same town as his constituents.
We're 3,000 kilometers west.
Do you think he's going to show up here ever?
And here she is in the Taiyi, which is a left-wing site funded by San Francisco leftists.
I refer to this one because it actually went full in on the conspiracy theory that this Bonnie Critchley could be Pierre Polyev.
Let me just look at that headline there.
The military vet who could end Polyev's political career.
Well, if she would have won, I mean, that would have ended it.
Her fight is daunting, but indie candidate Bonnie Critchley isn't one to back down.
On the face of it, Bonnie Critchley is an unlikely giant killer.
Yeah, I'd say extremely unlikely in the end.
Now, let me stop you there before I'm not going to read anymore.
She got less than 10% of the vote.
I mean, good for her.
Good for her.
I mean, good for her for running.
And she had a heck of a media management team or PR firm, and we don't know which.
She tried to paint Polyev as the outsider, which I suppose he is.
I mean, he's been in Ontario for more than a decade.
But she's an outsider too.
She just moved back to the area after being away for a very long time.
And I read the Taiyi article, and they really tried to make it seem like she was the true conservative, unlike Pierre Polyev, by saying four times that she was a combat veteran in Afghanistan.
And she went on a combat mission there.
Now, it's true she is in the military, and she was in Afghanistan.
And let me say without any sarcasm or winking or nudging, she absolutely deserves our full respect and thanks for serving in the military.
But it is a lie to say she was on a combat deployment.
It's just not true.
The Taiye story uses that word combat four times.
Now, she obviously read that story, but she never corrected them.
That's a kind of stolen valor.
I'm not saying she didn't serve, but she did not serve in combat.
That makes her a liar.
One of the things she was mad about, about Polyev, that like her, he parachuted in the riding.
I mean, she said that on TV.
Now, of course, that is what most leaders do when they're looking for a seat.
Justin Trudeau did not live in Papineau riding when he first ran.
He cleared out the local candidate and he ran.
Mark Carney did the same thing.
He was living in the United Kingdom, and suddenly he's running in the Ottawa area in Nepean.
He didn't live there.
He brushed aside the local liberals.
But funny enough, Bonnie Critchley did not have that same problem with over 200 fake candidates who managed to get their name on the ballot.
Almost none of them who lived in the riding or even set foot there.
Crowfoot is a great place, but you don't go there unless you're going there on purpose.
You don't pass through Crowfoot.
200 names, fake, fake, fake, the human equivalent of spam.
They never visited, let alone lived there.
And because of that, of course, a great number of them did not even get a single vote because they couldn't even vote for themselves.
They don't live in Crowfoot.
They're fake.
This whole thing was a scam, a hoax.
And it caused voters to have to write in the name of the winner because otherwise, I mean, imagine 214 names on a ballot.
Hey, if you had to write the name of your candidate on a ballot, no checking.
Do you know how to spell Pierre Polyev?
It's a bit of a tricky name, isn't it?
Like I say, it's a scam.
It was an organized group, many of whom shared the same financial agent.
It's a trick.
It's an anti-democratic way to suppress voting, but only perpetrated against conservatives.
This is the second time they've targeted Pierre Polyev.
They haven't targeted any liberals.
Isn't that a head scratcher?
But fortunately, Albertans are not easily tricked.
And in the end, 80% went for Polyev.
Less than 10% went to the giant killer, Bronny Critchley.
Just 4% for Mark Carney's liberals.
The NDP got 2%.
I guess there's not a lot of Hamas supporters in Crowfoot after all.
I note that the People's Party of Canada got 0.3%.
Now, I like the PPC's policies.
And I've always liked Maxine Bernier.
But look, if the party is getting 0.3% in Crowfoot, Alberta, I think the moment has passed.
So what do we learn from last night?
Well, not a lot, really.
Conservatives win in rural Alberta.
That's not really news.
That's old.
Albertans did not abide the trickery of the 200 fake candidates, most of whom were from out east.
To the great people of the special areas whose ancestors were told a century ago, including Damien's great-grandparents, that they'd never be able to farm on that land.
Too tough and too dry.
And yet, on the homestead signs that you drive by on the highway, those old names are still there, and their great-great-grandchildren are still making those fields blossom.
They never gave up, so I will never give up.
To the great because as my mother, who's here today, taught me, when you get knocked down, you get up and you keep on going.
If you believe in what you're doing, you march forward.
And so I say to all of the people, not just in the great region of Battle Ridge River Crowfoot, but right across this country, to anyone who has been knocked down, but has got back up and kept on going.
You haven't given up, so I won't give up.
Together, we will work together.
We will fight together.
We will sacrifice together to restore the opportunity that our grandparents left for us so that we can live it, leave it for our grandchildren, so that we can once again restore a country that is strong, self-reliant, and sovereign.
That is the country we're in this for.
That is why we stay united.
That is why we go forward.
May God keep our land glorious and free.
Thank you very much.
I think that's what motivated the high turnout, actually.
People saw that there were some shenanigans.
Elections Canada cannot be trusted to run fair elections.
Incredibly, at least one of the fake candidates was a former Elections Canada employee.
Isn't that funny?
The media cannot be trusted.
I mean, I put it to you that if 200 fake candidates were to run against Mark Carney, corrupting the system against a Liberal, you know that the CBC would have contacted every single one of them to out them, to ask them, who are you?
Civil Liberties Under Threat00:02:53
Who put you up to this?
Who paid for it?
Have you ever been out there?
Why are you doing this?
But they were in league with them.
The final takeaway is the saddest, though.
Central Canada seems to prefer a billionaire oligarch banker with three passports who supports Hamas, who's obsessed with net zero emissions, who hates Donald Trump, and who half a year into his term as prime minister has not yet produced a budget.
Yeah, I'm afraid we're in trouble as a country.
Stay with us for more.
Well, you know, the Democracy Fund is close to my heart.
That's a civil liberties charity that we helped pump up to fight the massive battle during the pandemic.
But I'll tell you a little secret.
We modeled the Democracy Fund after the granddaddy of all civil liberties groups in Canada, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom.
They have been at it for more than 10 years.
And you know that because we've been talking to them ever since Rebel News was born.
We've probably interviewed their various lawyers.
I'm not even exaggerating when I say 100 times.
And the reason is they are defending people who the rest of the so-called civil liberties movement ignore.
It is my observation that the, quote, traditional civil liberties groups in Canada, like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, they don't actually support freedom of speech for people who are conservative or Christian.
Just for a few examples, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association hit the snooze button during the entire pandemic when we had a civil liberties bonfire.
That was some of the gap that the Democracy Fund was set up to meet.
And that is what the Justice Center has been doing since I was knee-high to a tadpole.
And joining us now to talk about three very important cases that the JCCF is doing is our friend John Carpe, the boss and founder of the JCCF.
Great to see you again.
You know, I don't think you get the proper kudos because you have been in the trenches every single day.
And some of the cases are, quote, glamorous, but some of them are not at all.
But you're always there, John.
So on behalf of our viewers, thank you.
Well, so glad to be with you again and chatting about some of the current violations of charter rights and freedoms.
It seems like things might get worse before they get better in Canada.
That's the way it's looking.
Yeah, I'm afraid you're right.
There's always some news.
I look forward to the days when there are, when there will be no more civil liberties news.
Alas, mankind is flawed and we're all sinners.
And I think that we will never be done this fight.
I want to talk about three different cases with you, John, because you guys are doing some really good work.
Nova Scotia's Civil Liberties Violation00:15:03
I want to talk about this Nova Scotia and, frankly, other provinces, New Brunswick, etc., have done atrocious civil liberties violations in the name of stopping the fire.
They've really brought in climate lockdowns.
I want to talk about that for a minute.
I want to talk about our friend Amy Ham.
That's the nurse in British Columbia who was fired as a nurse by her professional association because she dared to put up a billboard praising J.K. Rowling's views on transgenderism.
And finally, I want to talk about a trucker named Evan Blackman, who was acquitted, but the Crown is so vindictive, they're retrying him.
Three things.
Let's deal with each of them in five minutes.
John, first one, Jeff Evelyn.
He's a military veteran.
I interviewed him about a week ago.
He loves walking in the forest with his dog.
He got a $28,000 fine.
He's a client of JCCF.
Tell me a little bit about what you're going to do for Jeff.
And I understand you might have a bigger project afoot.
Go ahead.
Well, Jeff's very courageous to have exercised his liberty to walk in the forest in the face of a completely irrational ban.
This is like seeking to punish people.
It's not connected to stopping fires.
You or I or anybody else walking through the forest doesn't, it's not rationally connected to preventing forest fires.
If a province passes a law, you know, no campfires or no smoking in the woods, no cooking in the woods, okay, fine.
Those are reasonable laws that are connected to the goal.
So we are providing lawyers to help Jeff for Jeff Evelyn so he can fight against this prosecution.
And the defense in court is not going to be pretending he didn't go into the woods.
The defense will be that the law itself is an unjustified violation of our Charter, Section 7 right to liberty.
But in addition to that, see, that prosecution might take, or it will take months or even years, right?
These things just take a long time.
This prohibition on walking in the woods is in force from August 5th to October 15th.
We want to see what we can do to get that ban lifted so that the good people of Nova Scotia can enjoy walking in the woods and going fishing and hiking and camping and so on and so forth, you know, before October 15th.
So we're also going to file a court application for judicial review seeking a court order to strike down this policy as an unjustified and unreasonable violation of liberty.
So we're doing that proactively in addition to helping Jeff to fight this $28,872 ticket.
Yeah, that's astonishing.
You know, you used a phrase earlier that rang a bell from my days in law school.
It was rationally connected because under our Charter of Rights, which is sort of a watered-down version of the U.S. Bill of Rights, the government is explicitly allowed to violate our rights if it's demonstrably justifiable.
And the Supreme Court came up with a three-pronged test.
And is it a minimal impairment?
That is, are they violating our rights the least amount necessary to do the job?
Is it a pressing and substantial problem?
Now, wildfires are a pressing and substantial problem.
Okay.
And then finally, is there infringement on our liberty?
Is it rationally connected to the problem?
And I think you're right to say that's where they're most likely to fail.
Walking in the forest does not start fire.
Smoking might, cooking might, arson would.
So this reminds me so much of the pandemic when you had irrational moves that were scientifically invalid, but it made lawmakers feel good.
Minimal impairment, you're not allowed to walk at all in the forest, even on your private land.
I think you got a winner here, John, but judges might be caught up in the mania, the wildfire mania, just like they were caught up five years ago in the COVID mania.
Well, fortunately, the judges in Nova Scotia are not getting bombarded every hour of every day, of every week, with this message about extreme fire hazard, and we're all in this together, and we all have to give up our rights to walk in the woods in order to stop the fire.
Judges are not getting this media propaganda on a daily basis or an hourly basis, whereas with COVID, the judges were getting this message just pounded into their heads 24 hours a day.
And sadly, as I've outlined in my book, Corrupted by Fear, we've seen judges that actually wrote the media narrative into their court rulings without there being evidence to support that narrative.
So I think we're in far better shape in Nova Scotia because whichever judge hears it is not going to be in a state of fear with hourly propaganda about the dangers of forest fires and how a ban on walking in the woods is going to save us all from these deadly forest fires.
So it's going to be a lot easier for the judge to look at this rationally.
One more really important point is the government also has to demonstrate that the law is doing more good than harm.
And so the government didn't even bother with the COVID lockdowns to look at the harms.
But here, walking in the woods brings a lot of physical, mental, spiritual benefits to people.
It's like when they shut down the gyms and when they shut down the outdoor parks.
Remember they drew those stupid circles in the parks and told people they couldn't go to the park outside, which was the healthiest place.
Oh, I'm getting so many terrible flashbacks.
All right, listen, I want to talk about a couple other cases, but that's such a good one that you guys are doing.
Our friend Amy Hamm, the nurse in BC, has been hounded out of the profession, and my heart breaks for her.
It's deeply unfair and unjust.
But to add a layer of humiliation to it, her professional board, which has stripped her of her right to practice nursing, has given her a bill for $93,600.
So they had a kangaroo court that drummed her out of the profession because she disagrees with transgenderism, even though she never took it out on any patient.
There was never a complaint.
She was never hostile to any patient whatsoever.
Outside of her work, it was an extracurricular thing.
She expressed her politics.
Not only did they strip her of her career, destroy her job, but now they're sending her a bill.
It's like what Stalin would kill someone and then send the family an invoice for the bullet.
That's what's happened here.
Tell me what's going on with Amy Ham.
I hope you guys are fighting that fine.
Well, absolutely.
So it's just a disgrace.
The British Columbia College of Midwives and Nurses obviously completely captured by anti-science, transgender ideology, when they punish one of their own members for stating in public that there's only two sexes and that women are entitled to safe spaces like bathrooms, change rooms, female sporting composition, competitions, and so on.
The big culprit, though, is the politicians who allow these professional bodies to run rogue and to impose their woke ideology on professionals.
You know, similar to the Law Society of Alberta forces every lawyer to take this woke ideological course on Aboriginal issues where you have to tell the law society that colonization is a very terrible thing and decolonization is a good thing.
In Alberta, it's being fixed, at least in part.
There's legislation that is coming that is going to basically say to the law society, you can regulate how well a lawyer is acting for his client.
You know, make sure that the lawyer is ethical and not stealing trust funds.
You can regulate how doctors are treating their own patients.
You know, like it's unethical for a doctor to have sex with the patient, so the college can step in.
But you're not going to regulate the speech of doctors and lawyers.
And so what needs to happen in BC and Alberta and every province is for the provinces to change the law to simply tell these, the Law Society, the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Association of Professional Engineers, the teachers' colleges, etc.
You are not to police the speech of regulated professionals.
That's the solution because it's really easy to get upset with the college, the BC College of Midwives and Nurses, and they should be ashamed of themselves for their reprehensible behavior.
And then this vindictive $94,000 penalty for a baseless prosecution that they themselves commenced.
And then it's like, oh, now you've got to pay us $94,000.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
But the bigger problem is with politicians who are not reining in these woke ideologues.
You know, you just made me remember, and I can't believe I forgot.
A few months ago, I was asked to participate in a roundtable with the Alberta government to talk about industry professional associations censoring their members because, you know, 20 years ago or whatever, when I was, I mean, I haven't practiced law in a very long time, but 24 spurious complaints were made against me to the law society of Alberta when I was still a member of the law society.
None of them had anything to do with me lawyering.
Not one.
I never had a single complaint.
I mean, I didn't do a lot of lawyering.
They were all political complaints.
Like people would send a copy of my Toronto Sun newspaper article to the Law Society and say, that's illegal.
Like it was that ridiculous.
There were so many complaints against me.
At one point, I was told that 10% of all the work of the Alberta Law Society was dealing with my politics.
Can you believe it?
It was awful.
And I got through, I mean, I'm maybe a little bit more conflict-oriented than our friend Amy Hamm.
But I was delighted to be called by the government to tell the story of how the Law Society was abused, hijacked, and weaponized to turn it into a political weapon.
So I was very glad to hear it.
And if they are promulgating those changes, if they are going to take that censorship power away from the professions, I'm very glad.
And if my testimony had anything to do with it, I'm double glad because like I think there were 24 or 26 complaints against me.
Every single one of them was thrown out, but every single one of them required me to fight.
I mean, I sort of know how Amy Hamm feels.
I mean, what happened to her was more disastrous, but I know the feeling of being surrounded.
Hey, we have time just for one more quick update.
A trucker named Evan Blackman, who was prosecuted, he had his bank account seized and frozen illegally by the government.
He was prosecuted for a crime.
He was acquitted.
But you tell me if I'm wrong here, Doug Ford's Department of Justice appealed his acquittal, which is insane.
The vengeful vendetta.
You can't blame that on Justin Trudeau, I'm afraid.
You can't blame that on Mark Carney.
This was Doug Ford's Department of Justice.
Tell me a little bit more about Evan Blackman's case.
So he was a protester in Ottawa.
He was arrested, criminally charged, even though he was on his knees with his hand over his heart, singing O Canada.
And at other times, he had his hands stretched out to encourage protesters to cooperate with the people.
Yeah, a judge called him a peacemaker.
A judge actually called him a peacemaker.
But the province just can't let it be, can they?
No, this is petty, vindictive, and it appears to be very political.
You've got the crown prosecutors in Ontario who are, they've complained publicly that accused rapists and accused murderers are walking away scot-free without a trial because the crown says they don't have enough resources to properly prosecute these cases.
And then you've got this Supreme Court ruling in Jordan that says that serious crime has to be brought to trial within 30 months.
And the Crown says, oh, boohoo, poor us.
We don't have the resources.
And so, you know, very serious criminal charges are not being, there's no trial taking place.
And there's a double standard there.
You see, I don't live in Toronto, but I did see footage back in March, a bunch of Muslims shutting down Young and Blur for evening prayers.
And I've heard from other people in Toronto that this is a routine weekly thing where protesters will obstruct a highway, meaning just any street, legal term, is a highway.
And there's just police are not laying charges.
Whereas you get people like Evan Blackman, who was protesting for the wrong cause, the wrong cause being anti-lockdowns, anti-vaccine passports, and the Crown's going after him aggressively and just throwing the book at him.
Yeah, I mean, Tamara Leach is all of these things.
I mean, 50-plus days of hearings.
They want seven years in prison for her.
I mean, 50 days of court.
How many, like a murder trial might take a week or two.
So that going after Tamara Leach is more important than going after half a dozen murderers, because that's what we're talking about when you have limited prosecutorial resources.
It's so gross.
And I think we have to say, you know, conservatives like to blame Justin Trudeau or Mark Carney, and there's a lot to blame them for, but not this.
This is 100% Doug Ford.
Hey, John, good luck in these three cases.
Each of them are very interesting.
And we know Jeff Evelyn, we interviewed him last week.
We know Amy Hamm.
We think she's great.
She actually came on our Rebel News cruise this year.
And I don't know Evan Blackman, but he sounds like a good guy.
And so I'm glad you're representing him.
What's the best way for people to keep in touch with all you guys are doing?
Is it jccf.ca?
Is that your website?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Justice Center Constitutional Freedoms, jccf.ca.
Go to our website.
If you'd like our email newsletter, then you can subscribe to that.
And if you want to donate, we'll give you a tax receipt.
And we exist thanks to the generosity of Canadians that support our work to defend freedom in Canada.
Role in Ukraine00:04:14
I think you've made an enormous difference over the years.
And like I say, you have been a role model for what little work we've done here.
It was you who set the precedent.
So thank you for that.
Great to see you again, John Carpe, our guest today, the boss of the JCCF.
Stay with us, Moorhead.
Your letters to me.
And these are all from premium subscribers like you who put comments under the video.
The first one is from Gary Shoutson, who says, Ukraine is a European problem, not a Canadian one.
Mexico, China, and India were not there.
Well, that's the thing.
Listen, I do not support the violent invasion of one country into another.
I just don't.
We want peace.
That said, I don't think that the Western media's portrayal of Vladimir Putin reflected the global response to him.
I mean, India sopped up all the oil and gas that Russia no longer could sell to Europe.
Although, by the way, I should tell you, Russia still sells more oil and gas to Western Europe than Western Europe spent on weapons for Ukraine.
It's really weird how the money was recirculated.
Places like India, China, they really didn't feel like that battle was theirs.
I think there was a special role that the Biden family played in Ukraine and that American politicians had in Ukraine that made that such an American issue.
Obviously, I want the war to stop.
I want the killing to stop, and I want there to be a long-term peace.
Of course, I do.
But I don't think that we've been well served by either the political or the media treatment of this crisis over the last two and a half, three and a half years.
Next letter is from James McCann, who says, the office was already crowded.
Why would President Trump invite people he already owns and have little or nothing to offer?
You're talking about the fact that Mark Carney was not there.
Well, remember there was that one guy, the head of Finland, Alexander, I don't even remember his last name.
Will you forgive me for forgetting the name of the leader of Finland?
I don't know the mayor's name of Moscow, which is a city of 20 million.
I don't know the prime minister's name or president's name of Finland, a country of 5 million.
He was there.
I don't really understand why he was there and Canada wasn't.
It doesn't make sense by the normal metrics.
How much population does Canada have?
How much money did Canada give to Ukraine?
Canada beats Finland on both counts.
I just think that Mark Carney and Donald Trump don't like each other.
And I'm a little bit baffled by that because I really think Donald Trump helped ensure that Mark Carney won.
And a last letter today by Roman Koff who says, looks like Trump is trying to minimize Canada, didn't like the pushback in retaliation on tariffs.
You know, it's tough to deal with Donald Trump, and I don't envy the Canadian diplomats who have to do it.
But the word diplomat implies being diplomatic.
I don't understand what's going on with Mark Carney's attack dog, Doug Ford, who every single day says atrocious and astonishing things about Trump that he must know, that he does know, will necessarily be counterproductive.
Doug Ford is a nobody to the White House.
He's not a member of the federal government.
He has no power to enter into trade deals.
He's a provincial premier.
The only thing he can do is hurl insults, which I think are strategically designed to prick at Donald Trump's pride and ego.
One has to ask, why is the Premier of Ontario deliberately and counterproductively picking a fight with the United States?
Why?
Isn't he risking his auto industry?
Isn't he risking other industries in the country?
I do not understand his scheme.
I'm not impressed with it.
And in no way is it anything conservative?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Let me know what you think.
That's the show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.