Ezra Levant critiques Mark Carney’s evasive 2023 remarks on Canada’s stalled $500B energy exports to Europe, despite Germany’s demand for alternatives to Russian gas, while Tim Hodgson’s Liberal-backed port plans face skepticism due to decades of anti-pipeline policies. Meanwhile, Jeremy McDonald’s assault charges after defending his home highlight Canada’s inconsistent self-defense laws, where police often prioritize deterrence over justice, contrasting with Doug Ford’s public castle doctrine support. The episode exposes regulatory gridlock and legal hypocrisy, questioning whether Canada’s energy potential or personal freedoms will ever align with democratic principles. [Automatically generated summary]
I don't know what he thinks he's going to accomplish there.
It's such a small fraction of our trade compared to Canada-U.S., which is the big action, but he has no success there.
So I think he prefers Europe anyways.
He's a European citizen, as you may know.
I talk about that, and I also interviewed Tristan Hopper about self-defense laws in Canada.
So that's ahead.
But first, I want you to get a subscription to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast, because I'm going to play a bunch of clips, especially of Mark Carney and his new energy minister in Europe.
But I want you to see what they say.
Go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
And not only do you support Rebel News, but you get all that content.
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That's rebelnewsplus.com.
Tonight, why do liberals speak to you in that certain foggy way?
It's August 26th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
When I was much younger, I worked as Preston Manning's assistant in parliament in the late 1990s.
That was in the last century.
One of my jobs was to manage question period for the opposition.
Of course, it's not called answer period for a reason.
The idea was to make the questions stand on their own so that no matter what excuse the government would come up with, the point would come across in the question.
I got to know not only the Reform Party MPs, which was pretty fun, but the style of the various liberal cabinet ministers who answered.
Every day we'd have a dress rehearsal before the actual QP, as we called it.
And I would sometimes play the role of different liberals, which was fun.
Now, this was a generation ago, so the names might not even ring a bell for you.
This was the era of Alan Rock and Paul Martin and Ann McClellan.
Rock was atrocious, always was.
But boy, I long for the days of the moderate liberal.
There used to be such a thing like Paul Martin, who actually balanced a budget, and Anne McClellan, who actually helped birth, at least legally and politically, the oil sands.
I mean, don't forget that part.
Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney have spent the last 10 years trying to destroy the oil sands in every possible way.
But 25 years ago, the liberals tried to grow it.
They were proud of it.
And although Jean-Cretchen, the prime minister, signed the Kyoto Protocol, he literally did nothing about it other than say he cared.
I should also point out that Cretchen pumped the brakes on Brian Mulroney's immigration extremism.
Yeah, you heard me right.
Under Mulroney, immigration tripled from around 85,000 people a year to around a quarter million.
Cretchen actually reduced it a bit, if you can believe it.
Yeah.
Today's liberals are completely unrecognizable by those standards, absolutely dedicated to out-of-control spending and taxing and borrowing.
Environmental extremism is so important to them.
Feminism and banning anyone who's pro-life.
You cannot be a pro-life Catholic in the Liberal Party.
You can be pro-life Muslim.
Of course, every Muslim is pro-life.
It's a very strange party now compared to really the Big Tent coalition of Cretchen.
Today, it's mass immigration, the diaspora politics.
I would actually give anything to reset Canada to what it was like back then.
I was always a conservative or a reformer, but now I sort of look at the Paul Martin, Jean-Cretchen liberals and say, you know, I'd sort of vote for that now too if I could.
Bit of a trip down memory lane for me.
Kretchen sometimes answered questions in question period, but often he would let his deputy handle them.
And forgive me my long detour here, but that's actually one of my points.
The deputy prime minister for a chunk of Kretchen's term as PM was a soft-spoken member of parliament from Windsor named Herb Gray.
He was the consummate loyalist, self-deprecating.
He made an art out of being low energy, low-key.
He joked about herbomania.
Step Forward Meeting00:03:35
You know, he just swallowed up questions in question period by taking all the energy out of them.
We called Herb Gray the Grey Fog.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, but I regret I must take issue with the premise of his question insofar as, I mean, he would just bore you to death.
No anger, no fire, just a fog machine, a fog into which you could walk and you could never be seen again.
But there was something lawyerly about it, I guess.
And even though it was low energy, it wasn't just duck speak, as Orwell would say.
It wasn't just babbling.
It was a bureaucratic answer, but it was an answer, I guess.
But the past is a different country, isn't it?
What a world we're in now.
Did you see the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the big gathering at the White House last week for Vladimir Zelensky?
Trump and the seven dwarves, I call it, each of the European leaders trying to appear so important when everyone knew the only decider in the room was Trump himself.
But they had all flown over all the way to America, so they were given about two minutes each to say their piece.
Do you remember Keir Starmer?
That's a British PM.
Do you remember his two minutes?
Just listen to this and tell me if you understood any of it or if it was duck speak, not Herb Gray bureaucratic speak, but just do you understand what any of this means?
Thank you very much, Mr. President, and thank you for hosting us here.
Can I start where Emmanuel started, which is we all want peace.
The war in Ukraine has had a huge impact, particularly on the Ukrainians who've borne the brunt of it.
But it's also had an impact on Europe and on the United Kingdom.
There's not a family or community that hasn't been affected.
And when we talk about security, we're talking about the security not just of Ukraine, we're talking about the security of Europe and the United Kingdom as well, which is why this is such an important issue.
I think this is such an important meeting as a group.
I think we've had a discussion on the phone a number of times, Mr. President, but be able now to be around the table to take it forward.
And I really feel that we can, I think, with the right approach this afternoon, make real progress, particularly on the security guarantees and your indication of security guarantees of some sort of Article 5-style guarantees fits with what we've been doing with the Coalition of the Willing, which we started some months ago, bringing countries together and showing that we were prepared to step up to the plate when it came to security.
With you coming alongside the US alongside what we've already developed, I think we could take a really important step forward today, a historic step actually, could come out of this meeting in terms of security for Ukraine and security in Europe.
I also feel that we can make real progress towards a just and lasting outcome.
Obviously, that has to involve Ukraine, and a trilateral meeting seems the sensible next step.
So thank you for being prepared to take that forward, because I think if we can ensure that that is the progress out of this meeting, both security guarantees and some sort of progress on trilateral meeting of some sort to bring some of the difficult issues to a head, then I think today will be seen as a very important day in recent years in relation to a conflict which has gone on for three and a bit years.
And so far, nobody's been able to bring it to this point.
So I thank you for that.
The only part I understood was that Keir Starmer believes that every single family in the United Kingdom has had their lives changed by the war in Ukraine.
Pipelines and Ports00:15:04
I'm just not sure that's true.
And Trump gave a funny look right at that moment to JD Vance, who was standing in the room when Starmer said that.
But Starmer is one of those modern robotic duck speakers who say nothing.
And after a while, you realize it.
And then you can't unhear it.
And you begin to despise even the sound of his voice.
If you don't follow UK politics, you won't know what I mean about Starmer.
But it's basically the bizarre style of speaking that Christia Freeland has perfected.
We have a very impressive deficit of some $60 billion in the last budget.
So when do you foresee a return to a balanced budget?
Ms. Freeland speaks first.
Mr. Jogin, we are all liberals.
And we will not repeat conservative misinformation.
We are not going to do the Conservatives' work for them.
The reality is that Canada's financial record is very strong.
We have a AAA credit rating.
We have the lowest debt to GDP ratio in the entire G7.
But speaking of our economy, we have to begin with the fact that we're living in a completely different world.
Let's begin with the threat that Donald Trump poses.
And as Karina suggested, we have to seize the opportunity of this wave of Canadian enthusiasm to build to attract investment and jobs.
Just so irritating, usually starting with an obsequious thank you for your question and then giving a rambling response that is completely unconnected to the answer that just burns up the time, talks out the clock.
And after you hear it a half dozen times, you realize it's not an answer at all, but it's actually a kind of insult delivered with a straight face.
How dare you ask me about that?
I'm going to thank you for it and then just burn up the clock talking about whatever I want to talk about.
Yeah, well, Mark Carney and his clones have perfected it too.
Just take a look.
So Carney was in Europe because, of course, he is.
He's a citizen of Europe.
He has an Irish and a UK passport.
So that's his favorite place.
He quit Canada to go there for a bigger opportunity.
And I'm not sure he's done social climbing there yet.
He said he wants Canada to join the European Union.
So he's back there and he thinks that's the place for him to be.
Donald Trump is holding our country's private parts in his fists.
But instead of dealing with Trump, which is the vast majority of our trade, Carney is over in Europe pretending that they can in some way replace our access to the largest market in the world that's just across the border by car and truck and train.
You know, 90% of Canadians live within an hour of the United States, but Mark Carney thinks Germany is going to save us.
It's so weird.
So let's start with a question put to Carney when he was in Germany about selling energy to Europe.
Now, the Germans came to Canada a couple years ago begging for our energy, real energy, natural gas, not solar energy or electric vehicle fake subsidies, green scam energy, but actual natural gas, because that's what they use.
And they're buying it right now from Russia.
And it's not just shaming them, but it's undermining them because they actually, Europe spends more on Russian natural gas and other energy, including oil, than they do to give Ukraine in aid and weapons each year.
Let me say that again on a sheer mathematical basis.
If you asked me which side of the war Europe is on, the mathematical answer would be Russia.
Because if you're measuring strictly on who Europe gives its money to, Europe gives more money to Russia than to Ukraine because of energy.
But Justin Trudeau said, no, we're not going to sell you any LNG.
There's no business case for it.
So Europe wants to change that.
Justin Trudeau refused to sell oil and gas, refused to let it even be produced, let alone shipped, let alone sold.
180 degrees opposite of Jean-Cretchener and McClellan.
But German reporters are more honest than many Canadian reporters.
And here's a little exchange.
Prime Minister, just one question about raw materials.
Could you please explore a bit more what Canada can realistically actually offer to Germany and Europe, given the fact that ports on the East Coast and also pipelines are still lacking?
Okay.
Okay.
You're welcome to take the second part of my question if you wish.
Thanks for the question.
Look, there's a huge range of immediate opportunities with respect to critical metals and minerals, and there are medium-term opportunities with respect to all forms of energy, including LNG and hydrogen.
And I'll quickly explain how we make those happen.
Our government is in the process of unleashing half a trillion dollars of investment in energy infrastructure, port infrastructure, particularly intelligence infrastructure as well with AI.
And a number of those investments, the first of which we will be formally announcing in the next two weeks, are with respect to new port infrastructure.
And some of the examples in the public domain will include from reinforcing and building on the Port of Montreal, Contra Co, a new port effectively in Churchill, Manitoba, which would open up enormous LNG plus other opportunities and other East Coast ports for those critical metals and minerals.
So there is a lot happening.
It's the number one focus of this government is to build that infrastructure and particularly infrastructure that helps us deepen our partnership with our European partners and particularly Germany.
So yeah, no pipelines.
More money for a port in Montreal.
Gee, that's a shocker.
A plan for Churchill, Manitoba.
So that will be 10 years.
Are you kidding?
If you think it's going to be any faster, just duck speak.
Throw in a mention of AI.
Why not?
Half a trillion dollars.
That's what he's going to unleash.
Does that mean tax dollars?
What does it mean that he's going to unleash half a trillion dollars?
Why is he the decider?
Do we have a centrally planned economy now?
Just a bunch of baffle gab.
Was there a single word in there that answered the actual question, how are you going to move any of this energy to Germany without pipelines or ports?
And by ports, those big LNG liquefaction ports where they take natural gas, supercool it, which it liquefies, it puts it in those funny-looking tankers and sends it over there.
You can't just build those.
Oh, but we have a huge range of opportunities, he said.
And how long do you hear that?
How long do you hear him say those things again and again and again before, like Christia Freeland and Kirstarman, you realize that you're just being lied to?
It's just a way to burn up the time.
He's been prime minister for 166 days, by the way.
Do you think any of these things are going to be built even in his first term?
God forbid there's more.
But in fact, Canada does sell our natural gas to Europe just like we do sell our oil to the world.
Now, you might find that surprising because we don't have LNG export ports.
But the answer is it goes to the United States of America.
We sell, I don't know, 90% of our oil directly to the United States, same with our gas.
And our exports, that's going to America.
And they take it.
And they might process it or mark it up and then they resell it on the world market.
And maybe that's why Donald Trump prefers Mark Carney.
No pipelines built in Canada means more profits for the U.S. to resell our goods stuff.
Here, get a load of the Polish Prime Minister to Canada speaking some truth on the CBC of all places.
Take a look.
Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kind of famously said there was no business case to sell Canadian LNG to Europe.
Well, when you look at what the Americans are doing, they sent 44 million tons of LNG to Europe last year.
They're obviously seeing a business case for what they're producing.
Is Poland interested in Canada's natural resources and LNG in particular?
Is that something that you would like to see advance as these two countries get closer together?
Yeah.
Well, remember, some of that LNG that is coming from the United States to Europe, to Poland, is also Canadian LNG.
But it is being sold for a much higher price, I would say, than when it would come from Canada.
Yes, we are constantly interested.
We would like the Canadian LNG market to open to Europe.
We would like to see the Canadian gas flowing to the East Coast on Canada and the Canadian gas flowing in European pipelines.
This is one of the energy topics that we are working on with Canadians for a number of years.
There are others which are also very significant and we are much more successful in the other areas than gas so far.
But if you're able to make a push in that regard, that would be to the benefit of Europe and that will be to the benefit of Canada.
Hey, but remember, guys, there's no business case for our energy.
That's what the master industrialist and tycoon and oilman Justin Trudeau said.
Hey, have you ever seen this guy before?
I hadn't.
His name is Tim Hodgson, and he's Canada's new energy minister.
He used to work for Mark Carney at Goldman Sachs and at the Bank of Canada.
They're old friends.
Take a listen to him in Europe.
He was announcing he was so excited to go there.
Parliament is coming back on September 15th.
And until then, we're making every minute count.
That's why I'm heading to Berlin with the Prime Minister to build Canadian-German partnerships in energy and critical minerals to shore up our economies, industries, and security.
And we're not showing up alone.
We are bringing a Canadian business delegation to find new European markets for our energy and minerals.
By working with our allies, we can give Canadian industry the market certainty it needs to build projects of national interest and ensure our resources reach across oceans, not just across our borders.
Thank you.
And again, welcome aboard.
Hey guys, they're building.
They're shoring up.
They're finding new markets for energy.
They're giving certainty to investors.
And they're not small-minded people who think America is the answer.
They're crossing oceans, not just borders.
How do you sell energy to Europe if you don't have any pipelines?
And if you won't for probably a decade, why do you think people in the industry don't already know where energy is bought and sold?
We're discovering new markets.
You don't think oil men know where oil is bought and sold?
And they need politicians to tell them about new markets.
We're doing a favor to the industry by showing them new markets.
Was that the missing piece of the puzzle here?
Canadian oil men just didn't know where to sell their oil and gas.
And the Europeans just didn't know who makes oil and gas.
And luckily, Mark Carney and Tim Hodgson are going to connect them and unleash this.
Was that the problem the whole time?
Or maybe has it been the anti-pipeline laws, the anti-tankership laws, the anti-oil sands laws, the anti-emissions laws, and until a few months ago, a carbon tax, which was going up every year.
And by the way, has not been abolished.
It's just been temporarily set to 0%, but it could be reset tomorrow to a higher number.
Yeah, talk about uncertainty.
But you know who can make sense of all this?
A government journalist named David Aiken.
He knows what the oil and gas industry needs for the Goldman Sachs boys, Mark Carney and Tim Hodgson, to do what the private sector can't do.
To them, private industry isn't even in the game.
This is about governments making the decisions, government making the deals, government making the funding when things fail, governments bailing them out, just shoveling more money into it until it happens.
Here, take a listen.
Quick question on financing.
I wonder if the government of Canada, as it did with Transmountain, is considering participating in an equity stake in either mineral developers or transporters of energy, or might assist with some other levels of financing as we approach the budget.
In other words, other than signing partnerships, is there some tangible way the government of Canada will put some skin in the game financially to help private sector proponents?
So there's a number of different tools that we have, be it through the Canada Infrastructure Bank, through CDEV, through EDC, through BDC, through some of these are so risky, these projects, that even BDC is not going to take that risk on.
That's why we bought Transmountain because of the risk profile.
Needed the government backing, right?
So, again, there are tools like the Canada Growth Fund that take first-of-a-kind risk.
So the government is going to use all the tools it has to responsibly develop projects, to do it in a way that's responsible for Canadian taxpayers and do it in the right environmental way and in conjunction with First Nations.
Did you hear that part where David Aiken did some liberal explaining, where he said the Liberals bought the Transmountain pipeline because the company couldn't handle the risk?
That's a lie.
The government of Trudeau is what killed the pipeline.
The U.S. owners were about to sue Canada for billions, but instead, Liberals said, no need to sue us.
We'll just give it to you.
We'll buy this dead pipeline that we killed for billions of dollars.
Huge profit margin for Kinder Morgan, which was actually building it with private money.
And then the Liberals bought it at a massive premium.
And do you think the Liberals know how to build pipelines?
They used tax dollars to do what a private company was going to do on their own.
Absolute financial disaster.
I think in the end, it was four times more expensive than the original budget.
But to David Aiken, it's a success story.
And did you hear Hodgson?
Not a word about Canadian entrepreneurs, Canadian companies.
It's all government funds, government subsidies, government banks.
These guys are not capitalists.
They are crony capitalists.
It's a big difference.
Someone Breaks In00:17:21
By the way, how soon until this will happen, how soon?
Timeline for building the kind of point and pipeline infrastructure that would just allow you to export as much as you want to sell and as much as they want to buy.
So I'm not an engineer.
I think the goal and what I've seen the proponents talking about is being able to Shipping is as little as five years.
So that's what their goal is.
Oh, five years at the soonest.
Got it.
So we're going to be shipping LNG to Europe by 2030 earliest.
Hey, thanks, guys.
Thanks for helping get Europe off of Russian oil and gas.
I shouldn't say oil, though.
There are no plans to get Canadian oil to market.
Not a word about oil other than it's not going.
Canadian oil, liquid oil will not be moving through Ludwig Bay or through Georgia.
I'm not aware of a proponent who's talking about that right now.
Yeah, that was a pretty quick clip.
The last question I think was the best, though.
Why would anyone trust a liberal to get an energy deal done?
I mean, these aren't the Cretchen Liberals.
These are the Trudeau Carney Liberals.
Do we face a credibility gap?
Because it takes time to get projects going, approved, and actually being developed and exploited.
What's the kind of conversation you're having with the people?
I looked around that room today, and there were an awful lot of German companies that were pretty interested in working with us.
The Liberals destroyed the oil and gas industry.
Do you think they're going to rebuild it?
They're not even saying that they will.
They're maybe going to get some gas going.
They're not going to get the oil industry going.
They say the soonest they expect anything to be built is in five years.
So that means 10.
Not a word about private industry, all managed from the top, like the UN does, like the World Economic Forum does, which makes sense.
That's where Carney is from.
How long do you think Canadians will put up with all these buzzwords and all these self-cheerleading press conferences and all this fog?
Well, my observation is Canadians will put up with it indefinitely.
Stay with us for more.
Well, I measure the success of rebel news journalism in various ways.
Sometimes the reaction we get, sometimes if we change public policy.
But the depth of the reaction, not just journalistically, but in terms of people chipping into the legal defense fund, tells me that the case of Lindsay, Ontario native Jeremy McDonald has struck a chord, not just with Ontarians, but with people across Canada.
You know the story.
Jeremy McDonald asleep in his home at 3 a.m., which is a good thing to do at 3 a.m. when someone breaks into his home with a crossbow, which is a weapon that means to kill.
Incredibly, McDonald manages to get the best of it and in an altercation leaves the intruder, a serial criminal known to police.
Well, I won't describe the details of it.
I'll let the court hear them.
But let me just say the intruder was repelled.
Police came, charged the intruder, but also charged Jeremy with very serious offenses.
I think assault with a weapon was the name of one, or aggravated assault.
These are not minor charges.
And if the intruder happens to die, and I hope he doesn't, those charges could be elevated to manslaughter.
So what is the state of self-defense in Canada, especially in your home?
There is no excuse whatsoever.
There's no lawful justification for breaking into a man's home at night.
So why is it that the police have charged him?
We've done some talking and interviewing on this subject.
My colleague Tamara Ugalini talked at length with a criminal lawyer on the matter.
But I think an excellent survey of the state of the law was done by Tristan Hopper, a columnist with the National Post.
In his compendium called First Reading, he writes, You can legally shoot, stab, and bludgeon home invaders in Canada, but that doesn't mean prosecutors won't put you through a year's long legal odyssey.
And joining us now to talk about that is Tristan Harper.
Tristan, thanks so much for making the time.
You really went through these cases.
How did you find them all?
Pretty easy.
It's something I've sort of been looking at on and off since 2011.
So there are some sort of, if you speak to sort of legal experts or lawyers who specialize in them, there's a few sort of cases they'll point you to.
There's a few, there's a few that are high profile, and then there's a few that have gone under the radar.
So I guess what's interesting about Lindsay Ontario is this is obviously getting a lot of attention.
You have everybody from Daniel Smith to Doug Ford weighing in on them, but it's not an atypical case.
There's been any number of cases just in the last few years, very similar, in which someone's asleep in their home.
Home invaders, they either kill them or injured them, and they are faced with criminal charges.
So cases like this have happened a lot.
This one, probably because crime is so high right now, and it's easy for all of us to sort of imagine ourselves in the shoes of Mr. McDonald, is getting more attention than is typical.
I think you're right.
I think there's a few layers.
First of all, this guy is a known serial criminal and he was out on the street.
I think that bothers a lot of people and we hear that story more often than the opposite.
I think the brazenness of it, I mean, breaking into a house at that hour and there were accomplices on the street and the crossbow is just crazy.
And I think my theory, Tristan, is that one of the reasons police charged Jeremy McDonald, the homeowner, is because they want to tamp down any member of the public who's getting big ideas about finding an alternative solution to home security other than the police.
I mean, we all know the Toronto police officer whose advice was have your key fob to your car near the front door so that when your home is raided, it's easy for the criminals and they don't linger.
If that is what the state does to protect us, maybe some more adventurous men are going to say, yeah, you know what?
I'll let others take that advice.
I'm going to defend my own house.
My theory is police charged Jeremy McDonald not because he did something wrong, but because they want to set an example and stop anyone else from thinking of defending themselves.
What do you think?
It's keeping the peace principle.
So, you know, deeply embedded in Canadian culture is this idea that we keep the police, they keep the peace rather than doing the right thing.
And those are very different things to do.
I mean, an issue you covered quite often is all these anti-Zionist protests on the streets all the time.
I mean, the right thing would be to stop, you know, open terror supporters from, you know, illegally blockading roads.
But instead, you keep the peace.
You do the less disruptive option, which is to let the anti-Zionists just have free reign over the street.
So, yeah, you could argue about it from that perspective.
The pattern I saw when I was looking at, because there are cases, there was one in Alberta, one I found in Ontario, in which there is a dead or injured home invader and no charges are laid.
So you have a homeowner who was not put through this legal odyssey that Mr. McDonald's put through.
The ones I looked at, in which that wasn't the case, and usually the pattern is you're hit with second-degree murder or manslaughter or assault charges, and you're arrested, you have strict bail conditions, you have to spend tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on your legal defense.
And then a few months later or two years later, the crown ends up dropping the charges.
So yeah, you basically put through this two-year legal odyssey.
Now, in all of those cases, and this isn't universally the case, the homeowner, there was something that they weren't squeaky clean.
So, maybe their son sold drugs from his bedroom.
Maybe there was one illegal 22 firearm in the house.
Maybe they were facing unrelated drug charges somewhere else.
So, police are called to the scene.
There's a dead guy on the ground and they say, well, you've got drug debt.
How do we know that this wasn't just a drug dead going wrong?
So, rather than actually investigating the true case of it, you just have an imperfect individual who was still placed in a dangerous situation and had to defend themselves.
You just refer it to Crown and the truth eventually comes out.
But in the interim, whether it's five months or two years, you've put this essentially innocent individual through a legal hell.
So, that seemed to be the pattern that emerged for me.
It was just police, rather than determining what the case was here, you found, you know, you saw a marijuana pipe and you said, no, okay, this, you know, this is a job for the prosecutors, rather than getting to the root of what actually happened.
You know, I think that's a very wise perception.
I think you're right.
You know, Lavrentiy Beria, the old Soviet secret policeman, said, show me the man, I'll find you the crime.
And the thing is, none of us are perfect.
And if we are in our own homes, maybe there's something that, you know, uninvited police into our homes might see something that maybe I'm not making a confession here, by the way, but I think you're exactly right.
Police might say, oh, you're not as squeaky clean.
But the thing is, the right to self-defense doesn't depend on you being a squeaky clean, you know, virtuous saint.
And what I love about the castle doctrine, as the law is sometimes called, where a man's home is his castle, it's ancient.
It's not just an idea cooked up in the United States.
It's an ancient principle from the United Kingdom, from which we take our laws also.
And in particular, the king or his soldiers cannot come into your house without a warrant.
Imagine that.
You're in a kingdom, especially centuries ago.
But the king himself cannot bust down your door without a legal reason.
And I find that so important to our whole notion of our place in democracy, property rights, just so many things depend on that.
We don't seem to have that.
You know, I take your point.
In the end, we have that, but anyone who dares to assert that right is put through two years of hell first.
That's what your report basically says.
Yeah, the typical response is, yeah, if someone breaks in and you've killed them, you're probably going to be arrested that night.
The best case scenario is that you're home the next morning and no charges are laid.
And that does happen.
But yeah, if you're an imperfect individual and the people profiled, they didn't do anything wrong.
But maybe they weren't just an upstanding member of the Rotary Club who just happened to have someone in their basement.
They lived in a rough neighborhood.
Things have gone wrong in their lives.
So it seemed to me more of a case of just bad police work.
Now, I guess one factor in the police's defense is if you've actually killed someone and you're guilty of it, you always, almost always claim self-defense.
So it's the most common cause.
So police show up, there's a body, you kill them over a drug debt.
You say, oh, he charged in and he tried to kill me, so I had to shoot first.
So there's been several cases which did not succeed at the Supreme Court level in which you've had a pretty obvious case of it's a gangland killing or it's a crime of passion.
Someone claims self-defense and that's slapped down by the courts.
So, I guess I would argue in these cases, it's the job of the police before that two-year legal odyssey has proceeded to sort of determine what is the truth.
You know, this person claiming defense, self-defense is potentially different than the actual criminal claiming self-defense to get away with killing someone.
You know, I want to talk about Doug Ford.
And he took to the microphone very soon after this.
Let me play a clip of Ford referring to the case of Jeremy McDonald.
Here, take a look.
Everyone hear about the story in Lindsay?
So, this criminal that's wanted by the police breaks into this guy's house.
This guy gives him a beating, and this guy gets charged.
Like, and the other guy gets charged.
But, like, something is broken.
I know someone breaks into my house or someone else's, you're going to fight for your life.
This guy has a weapon.
You're going to use any force you possibly can to protect your family.
I'm telling you, I know everyone would.
I'd be scared to break into Kevon's.
Look at this.
He's like a linebacker.
He beat the living crap out of the guy as he should.
Because, no, enough's enough here.
Violence and breaking in people's homes, putting guns at their heads.
And guess what?
Some bleeding heart judge, little Johnny, he didn't have a good upbringing.
So we're going to let him out on bail five more times because he's on his fist, you know, being let out on bail five times, just to go do the same thing the next day.
I'll tell you one thing.
I get more calls than anyone in the country.
People are done with this.
They're absolutely done.
They're finished.
You should be able to protect your family when someone's going in there to harm your family and your kids.
You should use all resources you possibly can to protect your family.
And maybe these criminals will think twice about breaking into someone's home.
That's not the first time Doug Ford has talked about this.
In fact, he used the phrase castle law himself before.
I just want a quick flashback to that.
Take a look.
I mean, he's talked about it several times, and he himself would have had a car was stolen from his property, but because police are stationed at his house, they quickly intercepted it.
But here's where he was talking about castle law.
Take a look.
Did you hear about the guy that these thugs came up, you know, ready to steal his car?
They're all in their masks and everything.
So I guess he was a hunter or something.
He shot up in the air.
I don't recommend that, by the way.
But he gets charged.
I got to find out this guy's name and number, and I'm going to hold a fundraiser for lawyer fees for him.
He should get a medal for standing up.
It's like down in the U.S., we should have the castle law.
Someone breaks into your house, and I know any of these people here, someone breaks into your house and they're coming after your kids and you're coming after your spouse, you're going to fight like you've never fought before.
You're going to use anything that you have, be it weapons, baseball bats, knives.
You're protecting your family.
These thugs shouldn't be coming in there.
Here's my point, Tristan.
You got the Premier of the province.
He's been Premier of Ontario for seven years.
During that time, he has appointed many judges to the provincial court.
He is in charge of the prosecutors.
Of course, he doesn't meddle in each case, but he sets broad policy.
He's in charge of the legislature.
He could make amendments to certain things.
I know the criminal law is a federal matter, but there are certain things provinces can do.
He supervises the police.
He supervises the prosecutors.
Here's my point.
Do you buy it when the politician most responsible for the state of affairs in policing and prosecutions says he's for castle doctrine, but he stands by passively while a man is charged?
I mean, how can, on the one hand, he claim he's for it when for seven years he's done nothing to bring it into effect?
Are you going to ask me to argue if Doug Ford says things that are not backed up by any kind of policy or systemic changes whatsoever?
I guess so, yeah.
So, I mean, he could argue, he could be comforted by the fact that the reason these issues are so easily seized the public narrative is because we can all imagine ourselves in those situations.
So, that's why it's very hard for prosecutors to make these charges.
I couldn't find a single case in which there was a case of a home invasion and someone actually was convicted, unless it was a lesser charge of sort of they did have an illegal firearm in the house or something.
Because all you have to do is once you get in front of a jury, you're like, you know, I'm sitting there.
I did not ask for this.
I hear glass breaking downstairs.
I grab a lamp or something and charge in.
So, yeah, I think there are, like a lot of things, you know, be it the rise in auto thefts, the rise in stranger attacks, any number of horrifying crimes that are becoming more and more regular.
There are fixes that can be done to make these go down, sometimes incredibly simple fixes.
You know, I remember the days when fixing crime was complicated.
Now it's quite easy.
Decisions Behind Charges00:02:38
Just stop letting, you know, serial criminals out to continue breaking the law.
You know, find a way to stop that.
So, yeah, if you're just going to sort of express sympathy with Mr. McDonald, but you're not going to sort of back it up with potential changes to enshrine this case.
So I guess if I could get inside Doug Ford's head, maybe he's being a little cautious.
He's still thinking, well, what if we find out Jeremy McDonald knew the guy?
Or, you know, he was coming in for some other reason.
And this wasn't a pure.
That's a good reason for the premier not to meddle in any live case to begin with.
I mean, the right answer is not to talk about any cases before the courts.
But Doug Ford didn't choose that discretion.
And that's what the police are saying.
So the police, Canadian police, you know, classically give very few details about any of these things.
So it's easy for us to speculate.
But they're claiming, if you follow this through the court, you're going to come around to our side.
Now, they've said that in all of the prior cases I mentioned, in which someone didn't do anything wrong.
And five months later, their life was ruined.
And now the charges are dropped.
But that's what their claim is.
They're saying, well, there's something that's going to come out that this isn't going to be your pure case of home invasion.
So I guess that's the biggest credit I could potentially give to the police service in this case.
But at the worst case scenario, yeah, he just defended himself and they decided to throw the book at him because he punched him once more than he should have.
You know, Justin Trudeau legalized marijuana.
It's now in every corner store of this country, every corner of this country.
But for a decade or two before that, police forces, prosecutors, usually at the provincial level, all made the decision.
We are not going to prosecute people for simple possession of a small amount of marijuana.
It's just not in the public interest.
And frankly, there is not a reasonable chance of conviction.
It was a decision to use discretion not to do something, even though it was in the criminal code.
And we see that all the time.
There is nudity, for example, in pride parades.
Nudity that in other cases would yield a prosecution under the criminal code.
There's a section against nudity.
My point is police have the ability to make these decisions.
And for some reason, neither Doug Ford nor, frankly, Danielle Smith of Alberta have said we simply, as a matter of policy, will not prosecute these.
And my hope is that the case of Jeremy McDonald changes that.
By the way, folks, if you haven't chipped in yet, feel free to go to castle lawnow.com.
That's a website we've set up with the only authorized crowdfund to help Jeremy McDonald.
First Amendment Flag Burning00:03:21
I've spoken to him a few times on the phone, and obviously he's rattled by this whole thing, to say the least.
Tristan, thank you very much for taking the time.
I really would recommend to anyone to follow Tristan in the National Post.
He has columns, but he also does these compendiums that I just think are great surveys of the news.
What are you working on now?
And what's the best way for people to follow you?
Go to the National Post, buy my book, Don't Be Canada, or we have a new season of my podcast.
Canada did what?
Coming up very soon.
Canada did what?
Excellent.
Thanks for taking the time with us.
I really appreciate it.
And it was an excellent read.
I think you, if I can contrast, said the CBC, it felt like they were deploying expert after expert to say, no, do not defend yourselves.
It felt like a weird campaign by the CBC.
Do not defend yourself.
And I think your essay here is a good counterpoint to that.
So thanks very much.
All right.
I hope everyone stays safe.
Thank you very much.
There he is, Tristan Hopper.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Cecilia 9169 says, it's my understanding is there was already a law against burning the American flag, like what those people were burning our flag.
So I'm so glad that he has done this because in Obama White House, they let it.
Actually, burning the American flag has repeatedly been held by the courts to be expression and protected by the First Amendment.
I read Trump's executive order, and about two-thirds of it, really, is saying that they will respect the U.S. First Amendment.
Otherwise, this thing would be struck down in a moment.
He said two things, really, three things.
The first is they would sort of test what the limits of the First Amendment is, okay, recognizing that the First Amendment covers a lot of it.
The second thing is that if you burn a flag while in a riot, where it's not really about expressive comment, expressive content, you're not expressing a view, it's becoming a weapon or something, that that will be prosecuted.
How often does that happen?
I don't think it happens very often.
And then the final part was, if you are here on a visa, if you are a foreigner and burn the flags, get out.
And that's not even a First Amendment thing.
It's a you are expressing your opposition to America as a country.
I don't know if that will survive the First Amendment.
I would think that the First Amendment is something that citizens can avail themselves of.
I don't know if it'll work in the deportation context, but I think Donald Trump, or at least the lawyers who crafted that executive order, know that burning a flag is part of the First Amendment, which is why the flag is so powerful in a way, because that's the freedom so free that you can burn the flag and it's still allowed.
I don't know.
It's an interesting way to approach the culture war.
If you read the executive order, it really realizes that free speech is strong.
Next letter from Mark Hachette, 1809.
It says, Queers for Palestine, it's like turkeys for Thanksgiving.
Queers for Palestine Showdown00:00:53
It was quite a showdown between the Queers for Palestine and the regular Pride Parade.
The police didn't do anything to move the Queers for Palestine because they know the pecking order.
I remember a decade ago, I wrote a column about politically correct poker, probably 20 years ago now, where I said, you know, straight white men, it's like playing poker and maybe you have a pair of twos or something, pretty low hand.
And then I said, well, if you're a woman, it's slightly more.
If you're black, it's slightly more.
Disabled, gay.
What's the tippy top political poker?
Well, these days, it's obviously Hamas.
It's obviously Islam.
I mean, LGBTQ2SL Plus is pretty powerful, but nothing can top Hamas.
It's a very upside-down way we're living, I think.