Ezra Levant warns the U.S. may sanction UK officials enforcing the Online Safety Act, targeting platforms like Gab and BitChute that withdrew in April 2025 over fines up to £18M or jail time. Trump’s August 7th executive order bans banks from using political/religious criteria for debanking, raising questions about Canadian banks like TD and Royal Bank. Alberta’s government-owned ATB could block federal abuses, but Tamara Leach’s denied account suggests screening persists. If Canada follows the UK’s path—losing sovereignty to censorship and open borders—U.S. intervention may mirror financial and speech crackdowns already seen under Trudeau’s leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
Inviting Subscribers & Internet Censorship00:01:41
Hello, my friends.
I saw a very interesting story that the United States is considering putting sanctions on British officials who are threatening to censor the internet.
Could you imagine that?
Sanctions on a British bureaucrat?
Well, imagine if they tried that in Canada.
Would you like that?
Or would you think that's Americans butting into our business?
Or do you think that we need the help?
We'll talk about it today.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month, which we really rely on because we don't take any money from the government.
This is how we pay our bills.
Rebelnewsplus.com.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, what's the line between needing America's help to fight for freedom and giving up our sovereignty?
It's August 21st, and this is the Azure Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
I saw an amazing headline at Infowars.
I like InfoWars, and I love their founder, Alex Jones.
And this looks like hard news, not just commentary.
They had a real scoop here.
Let me read a bit of it to you.
You can find it on their website, of course.
Headline says, Exclusive, U.S. set to sanction key staff at UK's speech regulator.
Willingness of Trump admin to sanction the UK over free speech is a historic development with profound implications for global internet governance.
Wow.
Nigel Farage's Internet Censorship Concerns00:07:20
Well, that is certainly true.
The UK really has a strict media regulator.
It's called Ofcom, which sounds like it's right out of Orwell, isn't it?
Ofcom is Newspeak for Office of Communications, which has power over traditional broadcasting like TV and radio as well as the internet and even the post office, I guess.
It's very heavy-handed.
I've seen them punish and censor my favorite UK news channel, GB News, for being too conservative.
It's really weird to see that kind of government interference.
It feels very pre-internet era, like when there were a handful of official TV channels and the entire range in points of view from A to B as opposed to A to Z.
It's like Canada's CRTC regulator.
And I love to spell out what CRTC stands for, just to show how archaic it is.
You know, that stands for Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission.
I don't know what a radio television is.
Do you?
Who knows?
I wonder if they still regulate the talkies on the silver screen or even gramophones.
Where is your radio television, young man?
Anyways, like our CRTC, Ofcom is now regulating the internet, and they're using a new law over there called the Online Safety Act.
Doesn't that sound so similar to our own Online Harms Act that Trudeau proposed and it was vaporized when he prorogued the government?
But I think that that bill is coming back.
And their online safety act is being sold the same way our Online Arms Act was, which is the same sales pitch that if you don't support government censorship of politics, you must actually be in league with child pornographers.
They had a whole campaign in the UK there where if anyone objected to the Online Harms Act, they were accused of being pro-pedophile.
I am not kidding.
Here's an example of it.
That's what they said to Nigel Farage.
Take a look.
I see that Nigel Farage is already saying that he's going to overturn these laws.
So, you know, we have people out there who are extreme pornographers, peddling hate, peddling violence.
Nigel Farage is on their side.
Make no mistake about it.
If people like Jimmy Savile were alive today, he'd be perpetrating his crimes online.
And Nigel Farage is saying that he's on their side.
I'm sorry?
Not the side of children who are...
I'm going to ask you to clarify.
Do you honestly think to say Nigel Farage is on Jimmy Saville's side?
When it comes to online activity, we have seen unfettered access of adults to children via social media.
When we put in the age verification, it stops its strange adults getting in touch with children.
So make noise.
This is a major leap.
You're going to stick to the fact that you said that Nigel Farage is on Jimmy Saville's side.
Nigel Farage is on the side of turning the clock back to the time when strange adults, strangers, can get in touch via messaging apps with children.
We have now asked to age verify the age in which people can have access to online content so we can protect children from unwanted, dangerous content and also those messaging services where people can get access directly to it.
Nigel Farage wants to turn the clock right back when all of that, oh, I have absolutely no doubt about it.
People are perpetrating more crime online, more danger to children online.
And Nigel Farage has said he wants to overturn every single one of the laws that keeps children safe in our country.
It's an interesting extrapolation, but we've got your views on it.
Yeah, I don't think that worked.
I think that actually really backfired on them because everyone saw it was just a smear.
Same tactic used here in Canada.
The Online Harms Act in the UK did have some anti-child pornography elements into it, many of which are already in law, just like the Online Safety Act, their Online Harms Act here.
They both had that.
But I think that was a distraction, a misdirection, so they could sneak political censorship into it like a stowaway.
Just today, for example, a young mother named Lucy Connolly was released from prison in the UK.
She had been sentenced to 31 months in prison for an intemperate tweet.
She said something like, they can burn down those migrant hotels for all I care.
I mean, it's not a nice thing to say.
And she quickly realized that and she deleted that.
And she obviously didn't mean for someone to actually go and do that.
It was not an incitement to violence.
No one was incited by it.
It didn't happen.
It was just a woman who was frustrated with the mass murder of British girls that had just happened at the hands of actually a son of migrants.
31 months in prison for a mother, first-time offender, that's more time in prison than many actual rapists in the UK get.
That's what I mean by internet censorship.
That's the kind of thing that the Online Safety Act over there or the Online Harms Act over here would do.
They are further down the road in the UK than we are here in Canada.
And you can't just put this on the Labour government over there, by the way.
The Labour government has been in office for 13 months.
It's atrocious.
But the so-called Conservative Party, they were in office for 14 years before that.
They were the ones who actually wrote and passed this law, just like they were in the ones who presided over mass immigration for 14 years.
So you can't just say left-wing, can you?
Anyways, it's worse than ever.
All sorts of political conversations are being mass censored in the UK, especially anything touching on illegal migrants, smuggling of migrants across the English Channel, refugees, bogus refugees, refugee hotels.
In other words, the most important news in the UK right now is banned in the UK by Ofcom and this censorship law.
You know, 30 people a day are being arrested for mean social media tweets.
30 a day in the UK.
Now, that has caught the interest of the United States government for a variety of reasons.
I mean, Americans do like freedom.
Another reason is that most social media companies in the world are American companies.
So if those platforms are being censored overseas, it's an American company that's being limited.
Donald Trump and his team have a special hatred for social media censorship, since that is what was used so brazenly against him and other Republicans in the run-up to the 2020 elections.
It's one of the reasons he became good friends with Elon Musk, who bought Twitter.
Even though they're a bit estranged now, Trump's commitment to free speech endures.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance have mentioned freedom of speech several times to Europeans, especially in the UK, and the Europeans do not like it, which tells me it's a very good thing.
Here's JD Vance in his first European speech speaking in Munich, warning them about losing their values.
And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War's winners.
I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to be, quote, hateful content.
Praying Under Surveillance00:03:19
Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action.
I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend's murder.
And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden's laws to supposedly protect free expression do not in fact grant, and I'm quoting, a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.
And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs.
A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
Now the officers were not moved.
Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility.
He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
Now I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person.
But no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.
Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime.
In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.
And here they are again when Kier Starmer, the British Prime Minister, perhaps they are, but we've had free speech for a very, very long time.
We're very proud about that.
Starmer's choice of words is pretty interesting when he talks about free speech.
He always says the UK has a great history of free speech.
Yes, it certainly does, but we're more concerned about the present and the future, aren't we?
A few weeks ago, a congressional delegation, so not the president, but elected congressman, went over to the UK to raise these issues directly with the government.
I think they went to Ireland also.
That's sort of amazing.
It's almost like an intervention with a friend that's off track, isn't it?
Reddit Defies UK Censorship00:14:55
And just the other day, the social media company Reddit, based in the United States, sent a scorching letter to Ofcom saying they do not have offices or operations in the UK.
So Ofcom's threats of censorship and fines and even arrests or other punishments will be resisted in U.S. courts.
But it was a letter widely circulated to U.S. political leaders too.
A showdown is coming.
What I mean by that is Reddit was saying to the UK: if you try to censor an American company, you will feel political pain.
All right, so back to the Infowar scoop.
Let me read a little bit from the story.
A senior official at the U.S. State Department is set to sanction key personnel of the UK's main regulator of internet broadcasts and telecoms, Ofcom, for infringing on U.S. citizens and U.S. companies, according to Ofcom Watch founder and chairman Norman Richmond.
Gab and BitChute, two American platforms known for their unfiltered content, faced a stark choice under Ofcom's enforcement of the Online Safety Act.
In April 2025, both announced their withdrawal from the UK, refusing to comply with what they labeled government censorship.
Quote, the very first line of sanctions that the American administration is looking at is actually imposing travel sanctions and economic sanctions against individuals in the UK government who were involved in enforcing the censorship, Richmond told this writer at Infowars in an exclusive interview.
I'm slightly skeptical about the travel, but maybe not.
I mean, they have banned the out-of-control Brazilian judge Alexander de Moraj from traveling to America.
Back to the story.
The move follows a March 2025 meeting in London where American diplomats delivered a stark warning.
Backed by President Trump's executive orders, the administration targets Ofcom's enforcement of the Online Safety Act, a law Richmond calls a censorship weapon aimed at American free speech.
I'm almost done.
I'll just read a little more.
The confrontation stems from Ofcom's aggressive stance under the act, which imposes fines of up to 18 million pounds or 10% of a company's global revenue.
In severe cases, it can block services in the UK or jail offenders for up to two years.
This March, Ofcom notified major U.S. social media platforms of their obligations, prompting a swift U.S. response.
I won't read the whole thing, see it for yourself.
But imagine if these fancy pants British regulators would be banned from visiting the U.S. I'm not so sure about if there really would have financial sanctions, but holy moly, imagine if they were not allowed to use Western credit cards or the SWIFT system or any U.S. banks.
I mean, you cannot use, you cannot send an e-transfer.
You cannot use a North American credit card for anything to do in Russia.
Imagine if that kind of punishment were put on the censors.
It's not quite the sanctions put on Vladimir Putin or Nicholas Maduro, where their money is seized and they're forbidden from banking.
Although maybe I don't know what is alluded to there by their source.
But imagine if it was just travel, which I think would be perhaps more plausible.
Imagine the fancy pants who could no longer go to New York or LA or Florida or Disneyland or wherever they want to go.
And everyone likes to visit the U.S. Even people who hate the U.S. like to visit the U.S.
It's such an amazing country.
But even if those bureaucrats can do without visiting the U.S., imagine the humiliation and denormalization to be banned from traveling to America for violating civil liberties.
I suppose some hardcore leftists would wear that as a badge of honor, but I doubt that most would.
I doubt they would want the publicity at all either, by the way.
Most bureaucrats thrive in the darkness, don't they?
They don't want their names being known.
Now, I'm interested in America and I'm interested in the UK, and this is very interesting news to me, but I live in Canada and Canada is my home.
So I wonder, could the United States take a similar interest in our freedom of speech and lack thereof?
I don't want Canada to be a plaything for foreign politicians or foreign oligarchs, although even as I say those words, I realize that our prime minister is exactly that.
A foreign oligarch, three passports, lives in London, just came back to rule us.
So yeah, we are being run by a foreign oligarch.
In so many ways, we have hollowed out our own country and become a branch plant.
I mean, those automakers in Ontario, Ford, Honda, Toyota, those are not Canadian brands.
Much of the oil patch is owned by Americans.
We already are at the mercy of foreign commerce.
But that's nothing compared to our most important measure of sovereignty, our own borders, our national defense, our control of our territory.
We have demeaned ourselves.
We've called ourselves genociders of Indigenous people.
We've opened the borders to millions of people who don't know us and many of whom hate us.
What is Canada now but an easy touch for immigration, especially given that Trump is deporting millions?
And do you remember that Chinese hot air spy balloon?
You know, it drifted over Canada first before the U.S. shot it down over their territory.
We couldn't.
We can't defend ourselves against even a hot air balloon.
We were completely beholden to the U.S. We're just lucky they're so nice about it.
So yeah, I wish we could solve the censorship problem in Canada on our own, but our courts don't seem to agree.
Our parliament doesn't seem to agree.
Our media doesn't seem to agree.
They're all happy with a layer of censorship.
So does it prick my patriotism to have Americans come to our rescue if they would by sanctioning Canadians?
Yeah, I mean, part of me would say butt out, but you know what?
No.
I'd welcome it.
Imagine if every cabinet minister who touches the Online Harms Act or other censorship laws would be banned from visiting the U.S.
That would pack a lot more punch in Canada than it does in the UK.
I mean, I don't know how many people in London vacation in the States, but in our Canadian parliament, oh, I think the majority of MPs go down to the United States, Florida or Phoenix or wherever.
So yeah, bring it on.
I look forward to Marco Rubio or JD Vance doing for our freedoms what our own political leaders won't.
Stay with us for more remember our friend Ava Chipyuk she's She's a lawyer for civil liberties.
We got to know her during the pandemic lockdown and the civil liberties bonfire that ensued.
She was a lawyer for individual truckers and she was actually there, if I'm not mistaken, at the public order inquiry into the Emergencies Act.
She challenged the government for its imposition.
As we know, it was later found to be illegal and unconstitutional.
The federal court of Canada ruled that putting Canada under a form of martial law was unconstitutional.
And in particular, Justice Mosley of the federal court focused on the bank seizures.
Imagine the scattergun shotgun approach of just getting names of individual truckers, usually by trolling the media.
Oh, the CBC named this guy, the CBC named that guy, sending those names to banks and saying, cut off their entire family.
Because of course, many families have a joint bank account.
Mom and dad share the same funds.
So mom is at the grocery store, and suddenly none of her credit cards work when she's trying to check out.
It was that invasion of banking privacy, that lack of any system that caused the Emergencies Act to be declared illegal.
Well, here's a wrinkle that maybe you haven't expected.
Ava Chipiuk, the same lawyer, had her own bank account most recently shut down.
They said it was for questionable transactions, but that sounds very fishy to me.
And it reminds me of when Rebel News had our mortgage applications scuppered by the Royal Bank.
We were approved by the branch, but the national office said that we had a reputational risk.
Is that where we are in Canada now?
That a lawyer who dares challenge the government on behalf of a client finds herself debanked.
Well, I read a very interesting essay on the subject just the other day.
The headline is: Ottawa's Emergencies Act proved how quickly bank accounts can be weaponized.
And then our author, who we're going to speak with in a minute, is in Alberta.
And so he says, Alberta must act now to protect its citizens.
What does he mean?
Well, we'll go to the man himself.
I'm talking about Marco Navarro Gini.
He is the VP of research with the Frontier Center for Public Policy.
Great to see you again, Marco.
Thanks for taking the time.
It's been a very long time.
It's great to have you back.
Likewise, thank you.
It's good to be here.
Now, tell me a little bit about Ava Chipiak.
We know her as a civil liberties lawyer.
How did she get?
How did this whole banking thing come about?
I mean, I read the story elsewhere.
Did she give you any insights about how it went down, how they banned her?
Did they do what they did to us, which is sort of not give us any info, just keep us in the dark?
She basically sent a letter which she published on X, basically letting her know that she had X number of days to put her affairs in order because they were basically shutting her down.
They didn't say much more than that, and she hasn't really communicated much more than that because she may potentially sue.
And so she's keeping tight-lipped about it.
And I understand now, it's tough suing a bank.
It's an uphill battle.
You know, there is a notion that a bank doesn't have to do business with you because it's not a government agency, but they're so highly regulated, they really are like a public utility in a way.
I mean, they're so heavily regulated.
There's so few of them.
They have such power over us as individuals.
And they're so closely in sync with the government.
When Christy Freeland demanded that the banks seize people's accounts, none of them refused.
None of them said we need a legal process.
So I don't know.
I think that she'll have a tough time suing.
And I find banks in this country very unresponsive to customers.
They're more interested in what the government says.
And let me throw one more thing at you.
I'd love your comment on this.
Mark Carney, when the lockdowns and when martial law was imposed, he wrote an essay in the Globe and Mail.
And I know you referenced this in your op-ed.
He said the government should go further in a way.
He called the truckers seditionists.
I mean, he absolutely supported the bank seizures and wanted the government to go further.
So, this is a real risk, isn't it?
It is very significant.
Look, let's start with Cartney and maybe walk backwards.
Cartney may be, in some respects, the source of the idea of including these kinds of tactics into the Emergencies Act.
We know that he's pretty tight with Christian Freeland.
You know, Freeland is the godmother of one of his children or some arrangement like that.
But so it's not just people who dissent, essentially.
It could be anyone who has an idea that doesn't quite fit with the government, anyone who promotes some idea that is opposed to some policy in government.
So, that's bad enough.
But, Carney came out, as you pointed out, and said that essentially people who protest government policy, namely the truckers in this case, are seditionists.
He's saying that they're traitors to the crown and to Canada.
And so, that's in part what prompted me to write this, because if this keeps going and he is now the chief legislator of the country and the most powerful political figure in the country, then Canadians would have no recourse.
And so, it got me thinking: how could Canadians under these kinds of circumstances now find ways to protect themselves?
And that's why I started thinking about the sort of not quite parallel system, but there is a different kind of banking system that is regulated by provinces.
And Quebec has probably the strongest one.
I would say Alberta, not too far back from that.
And so, in the op-ed, I urge the Alberta government and Premier Smith to figure out ways to establish barriers against this kind of federal abuse.
Yeah, I'll talk about those in one second, but you just made me remember.
I mean, I remember seeing Mark Carney's op-ed during the Trucker convoy and during the Emergencies Act, and I didn't think much of it.
I thought, oh, some former central banker here is weighing in from the UK.
I don't really care.
But I forgot that he was an advisor to the government.
I forgot he was godfather to Christia Freeland's, or vice versa.
You know, there was some family connection there.
And, of course, when it comes to using banking as a weapon, who would know better than the former chief central banker of Canada?
He would know how to use finance as a weapon.
I think it is very plausible that the idea to seize and freeze bank accounts came from Mark Carney.
He was writing about it.
He called people seditionists, and he would have, you know, his first thoughts would be about weaponizing banking.
But let's talk about the possible solution.
And it's an Alberta-centric solution.
I don't know if there are other provinces where the province literally owns a bank, but that's part of the legacy of Alberta.
It goes back almost 100 years during the 3030s, the Great Depression, when banks were failing, when banks were not giving out loans.
The Alberta government, under the Social Credit Party, if my history is correct, created a bank called the Alberta Treasury Branches.
And because of that background, because of that provenance, I think it's politically been difficult for conservative governments who might otherwise privatize it, but it has sort of a legacy.
Alberta's Banking Legacy00:12:04
And there are some parts of the province that really love the ATB.
And so the government itself has a bank.
And I don't know if that's common.
I don't know of any other government-owned banks in Canada.
So if Alberta has a government-owned bank, you lay out things that that government-owned bank could do to be a kind of firewall to stop Mark Carney or others from doing that again.
Why don't you give us some examples?
And by the way, correct me if I've got my ATB facts wrong, but I think I'm right.
No, no, you're absolutely right.
It was created in 1938 essentially to protect Albertans against what was seen to be the abusive power of Laurentian banks in central Canada.
So the parallels here are very much pertinent.
Let me backtrack a bit before ATB and say that there is a system of in Quebec, they call them the Qu's Populaire, right?
They are essentially banking co-ops.
And they are all federated and they're kind of a monolith that is regulated by an act of the province.
And they're regulated also by something called the Autórité de Marché Financier, which is a single regulator.
And so they offer a formidable wall against that kind of overreach because they're strictly regulated by the province.
We don't have quite that strong a setup in Alberta.
And so I went and I looked at ATB precisely because ATB is a branch of the provincial government.
But in reality, just about any province can do that if they wished and if they have co-ops and sort of that kind of parallel banking.
The Alberta government, because it controls ATB, then is uniquely positioned to go even further.
A, because it owns the Alberta Treasury Branch and therefore can directly order the Alberta Treasury Branch never to cut off Albertans from their financial services.
But also, Alberta has something even greater than that, and it's called the Sovereignty Act, the Alberta Sovereignty Act.
And under the Sovereignty Act, it's actually called the Sovereignty Act within a United Canada because we don't want to give you the impression that we want to separate.
Alberta can legally refuse to enforce federal measures that directly infringe the constitutional rights of Albertans.
And so this places this kind of federal shenanigans directly in conflict with the purposes of the Alberta Sovereignty Act.
And that's why, in this respect, in addition to the other tools, Alberta is probably best positioned to fight this kind of abuses.
So give me an example.
Let's say, God forbid, we would have another lockdown and there would be protesters from Alberta.
And maybe it's a climate lockdown this time.
I don't know.
Maybe it's some rule you're not allowed to walk in the forest, something insane like that, just to pick a random idea.
So let's say we have a second round of this, because I think a lot of politicians learned the wrong lessons from the lockdown.
They thought it went well.
They realized what they could get away with.
What would the ATB do or what would the government of Alberta give us some specific examples of how they could push back at a Mark Carney bank raid?
What could they do really specifically?
Let me give you an example of something that has happened, and then that'll probably illustrate things a little bit better.
We know, for example, that the federal government has essentially enlarged its list of weapons that they want to confiscate from Canadians.
And this happened even before the enacting of the Alberta Sovereignty Act.
The Attorney General in Jason Kenney's government issued orders to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the federal police, not to seize weapons that were lawfully procured and legally possessed.
And he cited essentially this duty that the Alberta government has to protect the property and the rights of Canadians.
So there is outside of the new act that precedent.
In terms of now the banking, for example, if the federal government issued orders on the basis of national security or emergencies or the criminal code of Canada, there isn't really a heck of a lot that Alberta or any province could do in the long run to stop the feds.
But what it can do is take the fight to them to make it politically unsavory and very difficult to enact that kind of abuse.
So they could, for example, instruct the Alberta Treasury branches to make sure that political neutrality is always the main issue, right?
That no one, because of their political views or religious views or any dealings that have nothing to do with criminal issues, would prevent anybody from having banking, the right to bank.
The other one, of course, is that Alberta could instruct the bank, namely the Alberta Treasury Branch, not to do any of those sorts of things without due process, because that's kind of part of the problem now.
Remove the reputational risk issue, which also is, as you pointed out, has happened to you as well.
It should make sure that people are notified directly when this is going to happen so that they're not just simply found with their proverbial pants down.
And they could enact a financial rights act to protect Albertans from being denied services that otherwise would be lawful activity.
The feds could do a whole bunch of things to make their life miserable.
They already do.
But this is about essentially standing up to a bully.
Yeah.
I mean, imagine that.
Like, literally, you're in the checkout of the grocery store and none of your cards work.
Like, just imagine the humiliation, the fear.
Did I miss a payment?
Did I do something wrong?
Like you say, there was no notice.
It was a sneak attack.
There was no legal process.
There was no customer relations process.
Hey, there's one thing I want to ask you, and I appreciate your time.
It's been on my mind ever since it happened a few weeks ago.
The United States, the president, issued an executive order banning banks from using political or religious tests for, quote, reputational risk.
And they gave specific examples of how that had been done.
Christian bank customers pro-MAGA, pro-Trump, pro-firearms, like a lot of things that are politically flavorful, but not illegal at all.
Banks were using those as a criterion to debank people.
It's listed right there in the executive order.
And now the Trump administration has not only told banks they can't do it, but it's authorized regulators to go to inspect banks and even go back historically.
So I think that's a pretty big deal.
I don't know if that would apply to Canadian banks because a lot of Canadian banks do business in the States.
Is that considered a different entity?
I don't know, like the Royal Bank that debanked us.
They do a lot of business in the States.
You mentioned TD Bank does.
But here's the thing.
Even if the U.S. executive order doesn't apply to Canadian banks, I think that the government of Alberta should issue a very similar directive to the ATB itself.
I don't know if ATB uses political or religious screening, but they should be ordered not to and just have it codified.
What do you think of that?
Just baby steps.
And maybe Premier Smith can say, all right, we're doing this ourselves.
And I challenge the Royal Bank and Scotia Bank and TD Bank and all the other banks to adopt this ethical code of conduct.
Like, I think, why shouldn't the province of Alberta demand that the CEOs sign a pledge to remove political and religious bigotry from their lending?
I mean, why not?
And by the way, I think that would be wildly popular.
Everyone hates the banks, and a lot of the time for good reason.
Yeah, that's absolutely correct.
Yeah, the presidential order came on August the 7th, so literally two weeks from today, two weeks ago.
And it's called the guaranteeing fair banking for all Americans.
So it kind of gives you a flavor of it.
I also don't know exactly how it would apply to Canadian banks who operate in the United States, the Toronto Dominion Bank, the Royal Bank.
They have wide presence in the United States.
But ultimately, yeah, it probably doesn't exonerate them either because they're foreign banks.
What is interesting about the presidential order for Canada, and in application even to Canadian banks, is that it makes it clear that there is an affirmation that financial access is now a kind of a civil liberty, not a privilege, you know, not something that is dependent on the largesse of the state, but it must be exercised as part of your citizenship.
And so it recognizes also, because Eva Chipio is not the only case.
I learned from a tweet that Tamara Leach put out that the Alberta Treasury Branch denied her even the right, not the right, but she was not allowed even to make an appointment to open an account.
So the ATB itself, the government bank itself, well, then it certainly does need that kind of code of ethics.
Isn't that very interesting?
Absolutely.
Very interesting.
And so Trump is also recognizing what many of us see: that bureaucracies weaponize these kinds of financial services and they weaponize language like reputational risk, right?
Because what exactly does that mean?
They get to fill it in a way, the way they please.
It also highlights the importance that the state has a duty to protect the finances of its citizens, not abuse them, right?
And so there is a policy shift here in the United States that is inspiring, that could inspire more Canadians.
It certainly has sort of given me food for thought about how Alberta should do the same.
Wow, you've given me a lot.
And I did see that tweet by Tamara Leach, and I forgot about it.
So she actually wasn't even allowed to have a meeting with Alberta Treasury Branches.
I tell you, if Bible Bill Aberhart were around, he would say, what has the ATB become?
It wasn't standing up for Albertans.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you.
We've been talking with Marco Navarrogini.
He's the Vice President of Research for the Frontier Center.
What's the best website we can see your stuff?
Our website is fcpp.org.
And you can find it.org.
Excellent.
Well, thank you so much for this.
Lots of food for thought.
And hopefully, some of this will see some action.
I'm going to think some more about Tamara Leach's case.
She's so compelling.
She was victimized once by Ottawa.
She should not be victimized again by the Alberta Treasury branches.
Great to see you, Marco.
Judges Pretending to Weigh Cases00:01:14
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Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Betty DeRoche says, it was also Doug Ford who was responsible for the idea to jail Tamara Leach and Chris Barber for eight years.
This is ridiculous.
Yeah, you know, I don't think Doug Ford can have it both ways.
Some would say he shouldn't talk about court cases before judges at all.
And there's a lot of truth to that.
You don't want political interference.
But he was saying, oh, this guy's got the right to defend himself, castle laws.
So he's weighing in.
He's pretending to weigh in on the side of the homeowner, but it is his police, his prosecutors, and in many cases, his judges who are doing all this.
It's a bit of chutzpah on his part to pretend he's not deeply involved.
Jason Uren says, they're criminals.
They're over here illegally.
Says everything you need to know.
If you're talking about illegal migrants, you're exactly right.
The moment they come into the country, they break the law.
How can you take them at face value on anything after that?