Ezra Levant mourns Charlie Kirk’s murder, a conservative activist key to Rebel News and Canada’s 2022 trucker convoy protest—100 km long—that exposed Justin Trudeau’s failed emergency powers and bank account freezes. Trudeau’s 2024 resignation, triggered by internal rebellion and a rigged Liberal leadership vote (50% unqualified voters), risks Mark Carney’s globalist agenda, including reviving the Online Harms Act (C-63). Levant details police targeting journalists like himself during pro-Hamas protests, comparing Canada’s eroded free speech to the U.S. First Amendment, and warns of media colonization via subsidies. He urges Americans to avoid meddling while Canadians fight for freedom, stressing trade ties over political divides. [Automatically generated summary]
Ezra here, just jumping in with a quick recording from London.
I recorded the earlier part of today's show when I was in Toronto, and then I hopped on a plane overnight to come to the UK, where we're having our conference on freedom and mass immigration and Tommy Robinson, culminating in Tommy's rally on Saturday.
When I heard the shocking and terrifying and heartbreaking news that Charlie Kirk, the conservative pro-America activist, had been shot and died.
Terrible news for anyone to be murdered in that way.
Political assassination is shocking in larger ways.
And he's a great man who loved the West.
And in fact, the very ideas that we're focusing on at this conference, Western culture, defending West against violence.
I'm not going to speculate on who it was that murdered Charlie, but it's a shocking piece of news.
And I just wanted to commemorate his passing and have him in our hearts.
He was kind to Canada.
He loved Canada, even when we maybe didn't deserve it so much.
He loved rebel news and was kind enough to give us a forum to promote our ideas to the larger world.
And we miss him.
And I'm worried about America without him.
He was such an important voice for and to young people.
I truly believe that he moved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of young people towards freedom ideas and pro-Western, pro-American ideas.
And I worry that he will leave an enormous void behind him.
So I want to share with you a few of my moments with Charlie Kirk over the years.
May he rest in peace.
Ezra, I want to go back in time because we just were recollecting on January 6th and how far we have come.
Pierre Polyev's Reflections00:14:41
I think there's a similar type of moment that deserves recollection where you guys had your dark winter of the soul, which was the Canadian trucker incident, which if I'm not mistaken, was three years ago or four years ago.
I can't quite remember.
February 2022.
Okay, yes.
Okay, three years ago.
No, no, no.
Thank you.
Similar type of time span where that, in my personal opinion, looking as an American into your country, seemed as if where you guys really turned a corner into Soviet-style totalitarianism.
Walk us through this, Ezra, how those events unfolded and how you guys never gave up.
It was the most important civil liberties moment in a generation in Canada.
All of our federal political parties were think-alikes when it came to the lockdowns and forced vaccine mandates.
There was a no-fly list in Canada.
If you weren't jabbed, you could not fly.
You could not get on a ship.
In the second largest country in the world, you couldn't fly.
It was very authoritarian.
And we had a weak conservative and name-only conservative leader back then who was cool with all this.
So who was there to fight for our freedom?
No professors, no media, no political party.
Independent truckers on their own started a convoy to Ottawa because they had been hit with a vaccine mandate, which is crazy.
Truckers are the most solitary workers other than maybe a lighthouse captain.
And to say that the truckers now had to get a jab to continue to work.
So all these truckers started this long convoy to Ottawa, and it just grew and grew and grew.
And soon it was 100 kilometers long.
And people came out just to view it with their own eyes.
It was the first real thing they saw in a year because of all the propaganda on TV.
And because it was sort of leaderless and it was self-funded and organic, people thought, saw this is the first real thing.
And it started to embarrass Trudeau because they went to Ottawa.
Now, Trudeau thought, uh-huh, this is my January 6th moment.
I'm going to play the Democrat message track from January 6th.
These are violent insurrectionists, domestic extremists.
He tried all that, but it didn't work because the truckers were completely peaceful.
They didn't storm any building.
They had bouncy castles and hot tubs.
And their niceness, their Canadian-ness shamed Trudeau, and he was starting to lose face.
So then he pulled the emergency rip court.
Justin Trudeau brought in martial law.
He declared a national emergency.
We didn't even have that on 9-11, Charlie.
This is the first time the law has ever been used.
And it put Canada under a form of martial law.
And he and his deputy, without any legal process, started seizing and freezing private bank accounts of anyone who they could find at this protest.
Hundreds and hundreds of families suddenly, when they went to the grocery store, their credit cards, their banks were frozen.
It was an outrageous violation of civil liberties.
And who knows how far he would have gone?
That was our moment.
And I think Canadians looked into the abyss and said, whoa, what has happened to us, the true North, strong and free?
And Charlie, if you look at the polls, that was when Trudeau started to fall.
And the two and a half years since then.
And so that was the most terrible and wonderful moment in my lifetime in Canada when ordinary grassroots people stood up to Trudeau and stood up to the regime media.
Charlie, all the media in Canada agreed with Trudeau on martial law.
They agreed with demonizing these ordinary truckers.
They wanted Trudeau to go further.
They were happy to write the script the same way the Democrats did on Jan 6.
So it was a moment where ordinary people, I would use the word the proletariat, because these were grassroots, ordinary, unfancy people.
They stared down Trudeau.
Trudeau blinked.
And we are freer now because of it.
By the way, last point, I mentioned that back then, Canada had a conservative in-name only leader of the Conservative Party.
And he told his MPs, you're not allowed to even meet with the truckers.
Well, his MPs had a revolt, sacked him as leader, went to hang out with the truckers, and that's when the Conservative Party of Canada chose the real Conservative, Pierre Polyev.
So the Truckers not only saved Canada from Trudeau, the Truckers helped renovate and rejuvenate the Conservative Party.
Pierre Polyev, who is set to have the biggest election win in Canadian history if polls hold up.
He is the party leader because of the truckers, Charlie.
So, Ezra, one minute remaining here, and I do want to keep you for another segment.
Do you believe that this can be the beginning of a more robust, conservative, common sense realignment?
Oh, yes.
And I look forward to Pierre Polyev and Donald Trump working together constructively.
Let's be honest.
Trump and Trudeau hate each other.
It is a mutual thing.
And that would be bad for both countries, especially bad for Canada because we're the smaller partner in the partnership.
But you put a thoughtful, Canada-first, freedom-loving conservative in office in Canada and have him and Donald Trump have a heart-to-heart, you're going to get things done for both countries on trade, on border control, on national defense, on foreign policy.
Trudeau has been pro-Hamas.
Pierre Polyev is not.
You're going to see our two countries become best friends again, Charlie.
I'm very excited about it.
There is a widespread Western revolt against beta male open border liberalism.
There is a widespread revolt in the West to close our borders, kick out the invaders, shrink inflation, and to restore national sovereignty.
An alpha male renaissance.
Breaking news today, Justin Trudeau is resigning as governor, I mean, prime minister of Canada.
Joining us now is Ezra Levant, a Canadian journalist and rebelnews.com.
Ezra, I kind of want to say congratulations because you guys have been investigating and criticizing this maniac and this lunatic for quite some time.
I have a couple different questions I want to talk about as regards to how this all works.
But first, walk us through this breaking news, Ezra.
Sure.
Trudeau has announced that he's resigning, but not till March 24th.
Now, he's resigning just days before he was having a caucus meeting where his own liberal MPs were going to demand that he resign.
So he's preempting them.
But he's doing a sneaky move, Charlie.
In a parliamentary system like Canada has, in parliament, that's our version of Congress, the ordinary MPs, members of parliament, can vote no confidence and bring the government down and force an election.
So Trudeau has asked the governor general, that's the king's representative in Canada, to dissolve parliament.
It's called proroguing.
So not only did Trudeau not really resign today, he's kicked the can down the road almost three months, but he's dissolved parliament so no House of Commons business can happen, no bills can be passed, no question period where people scrutinize the government.
But mainly, Charlie, he's not letting MPs have a vote of no confidence.
So in a way, he's suspended democracy just to give himself three more months of power and perks.
So I guess one cheer, not two cheers for three cheers for what happened today.
So just walk through the process of why this took so long.
And do you believe one of the reasons he is stepping down is this Western trend that is rejecting leaders like Trudeau, Harris, Biden, and that are going towards leaders like Maroney, Millay, that are going towards leaders like Bukele, like Trump, and maybe even Poliver.
Do you think that is playing into Trudeau's calculus here?
Well, that's part of it.
The conservative leader in Canada is pretty good.
His name's Pierre Polyev.
He's pretty right-wing.
I mean, right-wing in Canada isn't quite right-wing in the U.S., but Polyev is excellent on economics and fiscal and monetary policy.
He's gotten a lot firmer on immigration.
Not Donald Trump firm, but better than any leader we've had in decades.
He's talked about replacing the woke culture in our military with a warrior culture.
And most importantly, in my mind, Charlie, Pierre Polyev has a Trump-like approach to partisan media.
He calls out reporters in real time.
He has promised to defund our state broadcaster called the CBC.
So I'm quite encouraged about Pierre Polyev.
I think the fact that he's strong and, you know, you could say the phrase alpha male, that's sort of part of it.
But I think Trudeau has had so many scandals and so much corruption, and he's been so badly behaved over the last months that his time was coming up.
I mean, Trudeau has been polling so low.
Last poll I saw put him at 16%.
And his party MPs are worried they're going to be wiped out.
So they were going to vote to kick him out on Wednesday, Charlie.
This is Trudeau just buying himself three more months and leaving on his own terms.
He was going to be fired on Wednesday.
From a country that we're having a little tussle with right now, but we just love this guy.
He's a patriot and he could be an honorary American anytime he wants.
He's a freedom fighter.
Ezra Levant, Canadian journalist, rebelnews.com.
Ezra, before we get into the plan of what you have authored, and you made the case in the Wall Street Journal, I want to just kind of just take a step back here.
And how are Canadians processing all of this between our two countries?
Well, the Liberal Party of Canada, they've decided that it's easier to run against Donald Trump in the next election than to run against the Canadian conservative leader in the next election.
So you've never seen a Canadian election like this before.
All the liberals are talking about is Trump.
And by the way, Trudeau is gone now, but we've got Trudeau 2.0, a guy named Mark Carney, who is even worse.
He was on the board of the World Economic Forum.
He's got three passports.
He's the ultimate globalist.
He was the head of the state bank, the Federal Reserve.
It's called the Bank of Canada.
And then he went over to the UK and he headed the Bank of England.
And while he was there, he was friends with Elaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's right-hand woman.
So this guy is the worst.
I don't even think he lives in Canada.
His wife still lives in New York where she works.
He was selected in a Kamala Harris-style fake primary where foreign nationals were allowed to vote and children as young as 14.
So this guy was installed and he's going straight to the top of the Canadian political food chain.
And he has decided that running against America, running on an anti-American platform, and obviously anti-Trump is his way to win.
Trouble is, that's terrible for ordinary Canadians.
So explain this to me.
Was this a party vote?
I mean, what exactly was the process here?
Yeah, Trudeau, for nine years, he's been in so many scandals, people are sick of him.
So he resigned and he said, I'm out of here as soon as the party chooses a successor to me.
So they had an internal vote, but that internal vote is so fishy.
400,000 people registered to vote, but only 150,000 of those were qualified and certified and verified.
So more than half of the votes were not qualified.
What the heck was going on?
And like I said, he didn't have to be a Canadian citizen to vote.
And he didn't have to be a grown-up.
So 14-year-olds and foreign citizens chose our new prime minister and he goes straight to the top.
It would be as if Kamala Harris became president, but at least she was on a ballot in 2020.
This is so undemocratic.
And he doesn't have a mandate.
He's down in the polls and he knows that fighting with Trump will prick Canadians to come.
He's playing Captain Canada.
But the trouble is when you fight with Trump over economics, you're going to get hurt.
It's just a fact.
America is 10 times bigger than us.
And I'm really worried that there's what's called a moral hazard here, if you know what I mean.
Donald Trump is used to negotiating with people who want a deal.
And Trump is the one who's not afraid to walk away.
That's how Trump did it in New York City when he was a real estate developer.
But in this case, Trump is the one who wants a deal, but it's in the liberal party's interest not to get one.
They want the fight.
And believe it or not, they want the economic damage that the fight will cause so they can blame Trump for our looming recession rather than their own economics.
It's really the worst of times in Canadian politics.
But more to the point, I hate the fact that we're fighting.
It's like Batman and Robin are fighting.
We're the junior partner.
There's no doubt about it.
But I think we've got a friendship and a respect.
And like, I can't think of two countries that are better friends.
And I'm worried that our liberal leaders are wrecking that just to win an election.
Free Speech Clashes00:12:06
I think you're right.
And look, I think all this is going to simmer down.
I have great respect for Canadian patriots, not Trudeau, but the rank and file of Canadians have always been so decent and so good to us.
And I think the 51st state thing is just a negotiation.
Ezra, welcome to the program.
Ezra, take some time and educate our audience on what you went through this last weekend and what is going on in the unfree country of Canada.
Thanks, Charlie.
Great to be back on the show.
And consider Canada a warning to Americans.
If you don't hold tight to your constitutional freedoms, especially your First Amendment, you will go down the path like Canada and the United Kingdom.
So consider us a warning from your near future.
I live in a fairly Jewish neighborhood in North Toronto, and I saw online that some pro-Hamas extremists came right into this residential neighborhood.
Like there's no political targets here.
There's no embassy or anything.
They just came to an area with apartment buildings where Jews live.
And they recreated the final moments of Yahya Sinwar.
That's the now deceased leader of the Hamas terrorist group.
So they set up this whole ornate display.
It was really gross.
And I thought, wow, that's crazy.
It would be like someone setting up a Hitler display or, you know, frankly burning the KKK burning a cross outside a black church.
So I went down there because I'm a journalist.
I run rebel news.
And I went in pretty low key.
I just wanted to take a photograph of this insane sort of display.
And the police came up to me and said, you're not allowed to do that.
I said, well, I live here.
I'm a citizen.
I'm a neighbor.
I'm on the public sidewalk.
I'm not even talking to these Hamas folks.
I'm just taking a photo.
And the police sort of strong-armed me away.
Now, that bothered me, but I wasn't going to do anything about it.
But another cop came up and said, your mere presence here, just by being here, is illegal because it's, quote, causing a disturbance and inciting the crowd.
And you can see there's some activists behind the cops there waving Palestinian flags.
They weren't criticizing me as a journalist.
They were criticizing me as a Jew.
They were talking about the intifada and they were talking about genocide and stuff.
I'm a free speech absolutist, by the way.
I mean, I find that sort of gross.
But the cops were basically saying, you cannot stand on the street because these Jew haters will be triggered.
And I said, well, I'm sorry, they don't have a veto over my civil rights.
Well, these cops took the path of least resistance.
They knew it was easier to arrest me because I wouldn't riot.
So they arrested me, handcuffed me, took me to jail.
And they were acting as the concierge for these pro-Hamas extremists right in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood.
And what gets me is, since when do they run errands for the terrorists?
If they're law enforcement officers, enforce the law, let me stand on a sidewalk.
And if these thugs really are going to hurt me, don't arrest me, protect me or arrest them.
And by the way, a lot of them are foreign nationals who have no legal right to even be in Canada.
So that's what happened to me yesterday.
I finally did get out of jail.
And by the way, the police at the jail were quite nice to me.
I think they realized this was BS.
But this has happened five times in 2024 to one of our other journalists.
So this is now a half a dozen times journalists have been arrested simply for doing journalism in Canada.
Beware, Americans.
We are a warning about your future.
So I just, Ezra, just re-educate the audience.
I guess you don't have a First Amendment at all, nor did you.
You had your charter, a Declaration of Rights, but it means absolutely nothing.
And just so we are clear, you are doing an act of journalism.
Yes, correct?
This was an act of journalism.
That's right.
That's what I do full time.
It happened to me in my neighborhood, so it was very quick for me to go over there.
The police know us because we have interacted with many of them before.
There was this one moment where I said to one of the senior cops, I said, you're not the law.
He said, yes, I am the law.
I said, no, you're a servant of the law.
Charlie, we do have a watered down version of your First Amendment.
It's Section 2B of our charter, and it specifically protects the free press.
And it looks good on paper, but it has never been interpreted as boldly as the American First Amendment.
But still, in Canada, what this cop did to me was illegal.
It violated my rights.
Trouble is, I've got to now go to court, sue the police, and maybe in two years' time, I'll have my hearing.
In the meantime, like I say, this is the sixth time they've simply snatched our reporters off the street.
In this case, it was me.
And they interfere with us because by the time justice catches up to them, Charlie, it's one, two, three years into the future.
Believe it or not, one of our reporters was actually shot by a mountie during the trucker convoy, not with a bullet, but with a riot gun.
And she was injured and the police absolutely targeted her.
That was the only shooting in the entire, that was the only act of violence in the entire trucker convoy was a cop shooting a rebel news reporter, which is astonishing.
So we're still in court over that.
Justice up here is very slow.
And in the meantime, the cops do what they want.
And unfortunately, they become woke, especially the Mounties and the Toronto Police Service.
They're run.
I think a lot of the beat cops are pretty good people, and they don't understand this new two-tier policing.
They don't understand why they have to be concierges for these pro-Hamas folks.
There was actually another pro-Hamas protest in Toronto that they blocked off a road into a residential neighborhood.
They blocked it.
They stopped Jews from coming and going to their homes.
And what did the police do?
You're going to find this astonishing, Charlie.
They brought coffee and donuts to the Hamas blockade to keep them warm because it was chilly out.
The police literally brought coffee and donuts to these pro-Hamas thugs.
And I say pro-Hamas because they are.
Like they're reenacting these terrorist moments.
They're shouting for death to the Jews.
And what gets me is the cops said, because you're upsetting them, your presence here is illegal.
I don't live in Gaza.
I live in Canada.
And unfortunately, the cops are acting like Sharia police instead of Canadian police, Charlie.
So, Ezra, I know I mentioned this previously, but I want to reiterate it.
Can you talk and speak to the importance of what you wish you had as far as alternative media and free speech?
What if Canada had the, so Canada's like the size of California.
So Just in California, imagine if you had free media, open media, alternative media, influencers, and laws that allow you to do those things.
What would Canada look like?
It would be completely different.
We are constantly fighting for even basic freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and it is a very costly battle because we do not have the First Amendment.
We have something that's sort of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy version of the First Amendment, but it's subject to so many limitations.
We rely on it to fight back all the time.
I mentioned earlier that there's a leader's debate that the government runs here.
That's weird in itself.
But why would Trudeau nationalize debates?
The answer is to choose who gets to attend, including journalists.
Twice, Rebel News was banned from attending simply because they didn't like our conservative tilt.
Twice, we managed to go to the federal court and get a court order allowing us in.
So the freedom of speech is there enough that occasionally we can win, but we're always running to the courts because there's a political culture that doesn't value free speech anymore.
We have things called the human rights commissions, which are nothing of the sort.
They basically weaponize any complaints that you're making mean tweets.
Justin Trudeau introduced a terrifying bill called C63, the Online Harms Act, that would have made it literally against the law to hurt people's feelings.
And truth is not a defense.
Fair comment is not a defense.
Religious conviction is not a defense.
That bill was sort of evaporated by the election, but I believe Mark Carney is going to reintroduce it.
Let me tell you, freedom of speech is the most important freedom because with it, you can fight to recover all the others.
It's a little bit tough sometimes free speech because you have to give it to your opponent if you want it for yourself.
So you really have to love it because we all don't like what our critics say.
But in Canada, they're snuffing out free speech.
Last point, Charlie.
It's not just that they have a stick to beat people they don't like.
They have a huge carrot for the journalists they do like.
They have colonized the media.
I mentioned what would it look like if PBS was larger than all media combined.
That's what Canada is like.
We have a state broadcaster here that has a larger staff than all private media combined.
Imagine how that distorts the debate.
And whatever private media that there is now gets about a $30,000 per journalist yearly subsidy from the government.
So they're all pulling for team Mark Carney.
There's really only a handful of independent journalists left.
So they I think in Canada soon there'll only be government-funded journalists or government-banned journalists.
It is not a healthy state of affairs.
Elon Musk, frankly, is the most consequential man in politics because he has strengthened our freedom of speech.
And thank God Donald Trump won because he's fixing the censorship problem in social media, which benefits us up here in Canada.
If Trump did not win, Rebel News would be out of business because Twitter and the free speech that's now seeping back into social media would be gone.
In closing here, are you guys going to give up?
Is now this, hey, you know, the Liberals won.
What is the battle cry for the Canadian patriot?
Because I just have such respect for you guys because even though that, you know, people in California say, Charlie, it's so bad here.
I said, no, no, no.
Go to Ontario.
Go to Toronto.
Go to Ottawa.
Are you going to give up?
One minute remaining, Ezra.
No, I love this is my home.
I mean, for generations, my family being here.
This is my country.
I'm not going to give it up without a fight.
We fought during the COVID lockdowns, which were extreme up here.
Remember the Canadian truckers?
They came and they broke the fever and they set an example for the world.
And remember, no politicians supported them.
They didn't have a big super PAC behind them.
It was grassroots people saying, enough is enough.
That inspires me, those truckers.
So we're going to keep fighting.
And again, I'm a glass half-full guy.
The Conservative leader of Canada got the highest vote that his party has received in a generation.
I think that he'll break through next time.
He's got a conservative working class coalition, including young people.
It's pretty unique around the world.
I think it can win.
And I would just say to our American friends, don't give up on us.
Don't annex us.
You don't need to.
You already have a free trade agreement that'll give you all the oil and gas and minerals you can buy.
So you don't need to annex us.
That spooked Canadians.
That's, frankly, a reason why the Liberals eked out a win.
But let's get back to being best friends.
You can be Batman and we'll be Robin.
We're the junior partner in the friendship.
But let's be best friends again is what I have to say.
Ezra, God bless you, my friend.
Hope to see you soon.
It's a depressing picture from my view, but your optimism and positivity is remarkable and noteworthy.