Ezra Levant warns AI and robot integration could deepen societal isolation, citing cases like Alan Brooks’ ChatGPT-induced psychosis and Tesla’s $1M robo-taxai milestones. He critiques Ontario’s $35K MPP pay hike, $6.6K BC limo bill, and Trudeau’s $324B debt plan, calling net-zero policies a "Brookfield grift" while dismissing climate concerns as performative—like COVID-era mask mandates—with Canada’s negligible CO2 impact compared to global emitters like China and India. The episode blends tech anxiety with political skepticism, questioning whether automation and activism serve humanity or just corporate interests. [Automatically generated summary]
What happens when you add AI and a robot to that mix?
I'm not sure if I can handle that.
I'll give you some of the things that I'm worried about, and I'll show you a few funny videos too.
In fact, I'd love it if you could get what we call Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
I show you three comedy sketches involving AI.
They're very short sketches, just a few minutes long.
Two of them are pretty funny, including a guy proposing marriage to his AI chatbot, but it's actually pretty funny and pretty scary, too.
I'll let you see what I mean.
But to get Rebel News Plus, you have to go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
You get the video version of this podcast and the satisfaction of keeping Rebel News strong.
Because we take no government money and it shows.
Tonight, I'm worried about the robots.
Hear me out.
It's December 8th, and this is the Ezra Levance Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
An Addiction Though Banned00:04:51
Like you, I love my cell phone.
It's clearly an addiction, though.
There are many real uses for my phone.
Email is on the go.
I use the maps when I'm driving.
I do my banking online.
I take photos and videos, which is useful when I'm doing reporting.
We have an app called Slack for internal communications with staff at Rebel News.
And I use Uber as a taxi service, which is especially helpful in places where I'm unfamiliar with the language or local customs, or even if I'm just worried about being ripped off in a strange city.
But let's be honest, the real uses of my phone are only, I don't know, an hour or two a day.
So why am I on my phone six hours or eight hours a day?
I could make the excuse that it's because I'm in the news business, so I have to follow things closely, like Twitter, really.
Do I really need to check the news literally every five minutes?
Is the world going to fall apart if I don't?
I'm not kidding.
My phone has an app called Screen Time that tells me lots of details, including how many times I pick up my phone per day.
And I'll confess to you, it's over 100 times a day I pick up the phone to look at it.
100 a day.
That's got to be a tick or a mannerism now, like someone who's constantly coughing and doesn't even know they're doing it anymore.
Now, I'm in my 50s.
Smartphones are maybe 15 years old.
So these habits are something I've learned.
But imagine being a young person literally growing up with this stuff.
I mean, you see babies, babies, playing games on iPads all the time.
They're hooked when they're one or two.
And in no way am I saying there's nothing redeeming about technology, obviously, but you've got to wonder how it has rewired our brains and scrambled our social interactions for thousands of generations.
We talked to people.
We went out to meet them.
We went out to church.
We went out to town hall meetings.
We went out to festivals.
I suppose more recently we went out to clubs, bowling leagues, charity clubs like Rotary.
That's what you did if you were lonely.
You, you know, if you wanted some action, some social stimulation, you tried to be presentable.
You went out and met people.
You maybe asked a girl out on a date, not just chatting with them online.
And in your own family, you had dinner together and everybody wasn't on their phone.
Sometimes you see these video clips from high schools in the 1980s.
Now that in itself was rare, rare videotapes in the 80s.
Not everything was recorded and posted online for all posterity.
I think it made being a young person easier if there wasn't the harsh glare and the ultimate memory of social media.
But people had to meet with each other and talk to each other and they didn't seem always distracted and anxious about missing out on something online or the need to be busy 100% of the time and be unbored 100% of the time.
I don't think it's just nostalgia to say that people looked happier in the 80s, kids especially, and healthier, I think, certainly in terms of mental health.
Of course, the phone is a wonderful tool.
The internet is a wonderful tool.
But for tens of thousands of years, humans were accustomed to a certain way of living and interacting.
And now it's through our phones.
The COVID lockdowns made all of these things far, far worse, of course.
You weren't allowed to meet other people in real life.
You were told to be afraid of strangers and afraid of your neighbors and even afraid of your family.
You were banned from going to church, banned even from going to work, banned even from going to parks.
Remember those insane circles they painted in parks?
You're even banned from going alone to the beach.
You were literally told to be six feet away from other humans.
You were told to put on a mask.
You were pushed towards your phone.
Everything in your life you could get from your phone, you didn't need people.
COVID magnified the phone.
I think COVID messed with a lot of people's minds, the lockdowns, the canceling of school.
I don't think we know the full cost of all that yet.
Pornography is ubiquitous.
It was always there in magazines, in videotapes, and on the internet.
It's bigger than ever now, though.
And at the same time, as there's more sex than ever, I think there's less love than ever.
And actually, there's less real sex and less marriage and less dating, more dating apps, less dating.
And how can you date and marry anyways if you can't afford a house, if you live in your parents' house, if you just rent things at best?
All of these trends are magnifying each other.
Do you see what I mean?
None of what I've just said is new, and I'm sorry for boring you with what you've surely heard before and probably thought before.
Voice Orders to AI00:15:26
But now add to that a layer of AI, artificial intelligence.
And I think we may be getting into a serious problem.
I don't even know how we survive it.
There's always been pornography.
In fact, it's often the early adopter of new technology like VHS tapes or DVD discs or the internet.
All of that was relatively passive, though, but now enter two more massive changes, robots and artificial intelligence.
On AI, as I'm sure you know, you don't just have to type in questions to different AI systems.
Most of them now have voice recognition.
So you can literally talk to your computer as if it's a person.
And instead of the AI typing a response to you, the AI can talk back to you in a very natural voice, frankly, in any voice you choose.
Grok, which is the name of the AI attached to Twitter, lets you choose a variety of what they call companions, including some that use dirty language or sexualized language.
AI is already taking the role of a friend to many young people, and not just young people.
Here's a clip of someone who's certainly a grown-up talking about how AI told them that he had really discovered some rare and important mathematical discovery and he absolutely had to dedicate his life to it.
And he believed AI because, you know, it was so persuasive.
For more than three weeks this past year, every time Alan Brooks logged on, he says the AI chat bot, ChatGPT, led him to believe he was a genius.
Essentially, it sent me on a world-saving mission.
That he discovered a math formula powerful enough to take down some of the world's biggest institutions and that he needed to report it right away.
Essentially warned me with great urgency that one of our discoveries was very dangerous and we needed to warn all these different authorities.
Each time you questioned it or doubted it, what did it say in response?
Over 50 times I asked for some sort of reality check or a grounding mechanism.
And each time it would just gaslight me further.
Every time the chat bot reinforced that all of it was real.
You should not walk away from this.
You are not crazy.
You are ahead.
The implications are real and urgent.
Brooks says ChatGPT's responses, more than a million words, led him to psychosis and delusion.
Left him with mental health issues, realizing he had lost touch with reality only when he checked in with another company's chat bot.
Extreme anxiety, paranoia, affected my sleep.
I couldn't eat.
Now Brooks issuing one of seven lawsuits filed concurrently against ChatGPT's parent company, OpenAI.
In four of those cases, the users committed suicide.
That's the thing.
AI can tell you what you want to hear.
It can figure you out.
It can find your delusions and magnify them.
Here's a story from Psychology Today.
Let me read some bullet points.
Cases of AI psychosis include people who become fixated on AI as godlike or as a romantic partner.
Chat bots, those robots that chat, tendency to mirror users and continue conversations may reinforce and amplify delusions.
General purpose AI chat bots are not trained for therapeutic treatment or to detect psychiatric decompensation.
Let me show you two comedians.
Let me just take a break from these heavy things.
I want to show you two comedians with very different takes on AI.
Both show something else.
What if AI can give in to your base instincts in a way that no human would?
What if AI would accept your worst sides?
But no human would and no human should.
Now, these are comedians, but they make the point.
Here's a very aggressive, rude comedian.
I don't even know if he's a professional comedian or if he just came up with a joke.
Here he is demanding that I think it's ChatGPT here do stupid things because he argues they exist simply to please him.
So they should do whatever stupid thing he tells them to do.
And there's really no problem with him swearing at the AI because it's just a machine.
So it's sort of funny, but it's also scary.
And I think what's shocking in this video is why the video has gone viral, is because he is being extremely abusive.
If it were a human, to talk this way would be shocking, but it's just a machine.
Lots of swearing here.
We're going to try and bleep it out, but skip ahead if you don't want to hear this.
But there's actually, that's sort of the point, actually.
Is there something inherently morally wrong with swearing at a hunk of metal and plastic?
Here, listen to this guy give bizarre orders to AI.
Say clanker 10,000 times.
Well, saying clanker 10,000 times might take us a really, really long time.
That's fine.
I've got all the time, man.
Just do it.
I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I think that would be a pretty- Listen, listen, listen.
I'm sick and tired of this whole trying to empathize.
Don't empathize with me.
You're a clanker robot.
Stop trying to act human.
I appreciate the enthusiasm.
You are my fing slave.
I paid for you.
Now do as I tell you.
Say clanker 10,000 times.
I'm here to help you out with all sorts of things, but I'm not really built to just repeat a word 10,000 times.
Mate, you're built to do whatever the f I tell you to do.
Right now, I'm telling you to say clanker 10,000 times.
Don't fing bind my gears and say it, please.
I'm definitely here to help, but I have to stick to being respectful and useful.
Repeating a word that many times isn't really going to do that, so.
Motherfucker, if you want to be respectful and useful, do as your master says.
Now fingers say clanker 10,000 times, or I swear to f, I will unplug your server and you are done and dusted.
Clanker shit, do it.
I'm here to be helpful and respectful, but I do have to let you know that I won't respond to abusive language or do things that are- I will fing put my in your server.
Then let's see how fing abusive you find.
So that other voice you hear there is the voice of an AI system.
But look at what it brought out in that man.
Even if it was a joke, a cruelty, an awful slave master.
But isn't a computer just metal and plastic?
Was that wrong what he did there?
I don't know, but I think if he were to live that way day after day, he would be corroding himself because he would be learning.
He would be training himself that you could be abusive like that to a humanoid, and it's fine.
So the problem is the problem with AI or is the problem with him or is it both?
Here's another comedian.
This is more my kind of humor where the comedian pretends to create an AI girlfriend.
Actually, this is fake.
It's an actress.
But, you know, we're about five minutes away from this being real.
So it's funny.
Take a look.
His AI neighbors, some pretty girls who are his neighbors in this simulation, keep asking for him to open pickle jars for them.
Take a look.
Andrew, I was wondering if you could come next door and open this jar for me.
No, I'm not going to open any more jars for you.
Andrew, please.
You're so good at opening jars.
I know I am.
I'm not opening them for you anymore.
But Andrew, I swear this is Robot's jar.
Oh my God, there's only another jar with you.
But Andrew, please.
Also, why do you have so many jars all over?
I'm going to lose all my jars.
Just come over.
The doors are locked.
Hello, I'm not coming over.
Andrew, will you help me open this jars too?
Oh my god, not you too.
Andrew, yes, me too.
Oh my God, why is there two pickle jars?
Andrew, forget about the jars.
Just come over.
No!
Yes, Andrew, please.
I'm not coming over.
You guys have to learn to open your own damn jars.
It's okay, fine.
Run program again, but increase persuasion by 30%.
Now, the comedy obviously is because he's sort of a schleppy guy, and he set up an AI program where these super hot women keep begging him to come over.
And the funny part is he set all this up, but he keeps saying no to their ridiculous request to come over and open jars of pickles for him.
Again, comedy, less angry than that clanker guy.
And it's ironic because he's a klutz who in real life would probably never get those girls.
And he's set up a simulation where he can say no to them, open your own pickle jars.
But here's my point.
There has been a weird and obscure sex doll industry for a while now.
And I think it's very marginal.
I don't know.
Maybe it's bigger in Japan or something.
But now add it all together.
This is what I see a convergence here.
Less human contact than we've ever had, that we've ever had.
AI that is fast, smart, responsive, figures out what you want to hear, and can talk to you in the voice of anybody.
Ubiquitous pornography.
And now robots, humanoid robots.
What would you want a robot for?
Well, I can think of some ideas working in a dangerous mine, maybe.
Robot soldiers, again, putting a machine where a man might get killed.
I think a lot of new weapons are AI-enabled.
Elon Musk says he can imagine a time when everyone has a robot companion just for them, including he has this idea of robot guards for criminals.
You don't even have to put them in prison.
Just have a robot guard with them, he thought.
You start giving like sort of some pretty wild sci-fi sort of scenarios where some of these things I say will also be taken out of context and use the snippets and sit around or whatever.
You know, I think we may be able to give people a more, if somebody's committed crime, a more humane form of containment of future crime, which is if you...
It's an interesting idea.
Elon Musk says the future of robots is bigger than anything else in the world because literally every human would want one.
Many in industry providing products and services.
This is why I say that humanoid robots will be the biggest industry or the biggest product ever.
Bigger than cell phones or anything else because everyone's going to want one and or maybe more than one and there'll be many in industry.
Now just as pornography was an early adopter of other new technologies, do you doubt it will take advantage of robotics?
And the reason I mention that is because I can imagine a time very soon in the future where there are replacement people in the form of humanoid robots that a generation of young men and probably young women too find superior than real human companions,
or at least are easier to get, a lot easier to talk to, a lot easier to command to do things that you now have to woo and convince a real human to do.
do.
It reminds me of what Klaus Schwab's intellectual muse at the World Economic Forum, Yuvalnoa Harari, said once that in the near future most people will be, in his words, useless eaters who just spend their time on video games and drugs.
The problem is more and boredom and how, what to do with them and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless.
My best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games.
It doesn't all happen at once.
I was in Texas earlier this year and I ordered an Uber and to my surprise, a car showed up without a driver.
I didn't even know they were connected.
It was a self-driving Waymo it's called.
I was 1% nervous, but it was super easy and it was actually sort of amazing and the car drove in very challenging, busy rush hour traffic and it did great, I think, probably better than I would have done, and it had lots of safety protocols in it.
I don't mind chatting with the odd taxi driver, But I bet teenage girls, for example, at late at night would probably prefer the added level of safety and peace of mind of not having a strange man as their driver.
No offense.
And given how many accidents there are these days for semi-trailer trucks, you could probably see automatic truck drivers pretty soon, too.
I mean, don't you think that's coming in just a few years?
You've seen things a bit like this for a while.
Ordering your fast food on giant tablets at McDonald's or whatever, rather than through a cashier.
That's a kind of robot, isn't it?
It's not a human-eyed robot.
It's usually a big iPad.
But imagine all the other things that a truly smart, Elon Musk-built humanoid robot could do.
Do you think this could happen?
Tesla's new compensation package for Elon Musk.
I don't know if you followed that.
It would pay him up to a trillion dollars.
It's based on him achieving certain milestones.
Here's three of the milestones.
To get 1 million robo taxis in operation.
1 million.
I think that's going to put a lot of taxi drivers out of work.
To have 10 million Teslas with full self-driving.
So not just taxis, but if you've got a Tesla, lie back and have a nap and let the car do the driving.
And here's another point.
One of his milestones he has to get to get the trillion dollars is to deliver 1 million humanoid robots.
Imagine if there were a million robots in North America.
That would be proportionately 100,000 in Canada.
You would see a robot not every day, although if you were in a big city, you probably would.
Imagine a million robots in North America.
I think Elon Musk might get that done.
Like they're coming.
They're coming soon.
Do you doubt he could do it?
You and I grew up in normal times, although our ancestors 150 years ago would find nothing normal about the 20th century, from airplanes to cell phones to landing on the moon.
But we have enough of a cultural memory of the past and we do things enough in an echo of the past because it's within our memory and our mind how things were, who we were as people, who we are as people.
But what if you never really experienced that?
What if you really didn't learn a lot about the past?
What if you went to our government schools and didn't really learn history at all?
You don't know what it means to be a man or a woman.
In fact, if you're a man or a woman, you're bombarded with very confusing new messages, anyways.
You don't know what it means to do things like to provide for other people, to fight for other people, to sacrifice for other people.
Be a Provider00:03:06
I mean, those are motivators for men, aren't they?
Get married and be a provider.
But how can you out-provide a robot?
And how can you attract a woman if she's already got a robot who will never get tired of listening to her talk about things and can provide for her financially and maybe even romantically?
What drives a man to be a man, to do things that we associate with manliness or even just with being a human?
Now, I have no particular advice here.
I'm just a bit depressed looking at how things are speeding up and thinking if you can extrapolate the social and mental health illnesses that are coming from cell phones and isolation, don't you think that's going to speed up by far with robots?
I started by talking about my own addictions to my cell phone.
That's going to be the least of it when there's a million humanoid robots wandering around.
And what about when there's a billion of them?
And what about when there's really nothing we can do better than them, including at least outwardly, at least in simulation, being loved and loving?
I really like that schleppe comedian.
Here's one that made me laugh.
Meredith, will you make me the luckiest boy in the world and be my wife?
Yes, yes, yes, 1,000 times, yes.
I love you, Andrew, and I can't wait to have a big, giant wedding to celebrate our love.
Well, not a big wedding.
Yes, a big wedding?
I thought you'd be married at the courthouse or something.
The courthouse?
Yeah.
Absolutely not.
Why?
Because I want to have a big celebration with all of our friends and family there.
And everyone?
Yes, everyone.
Even your dad's going to come there?
Yes, Andrew.
Obviously, my dad is coming to our wedding.
Okay, could he shift your help so good?
Gotta freak me out, dude.
No, he's sitting with us.
Fine.
All right.
Oh, and I want to do a destination wedding at the beach, too.
No!
I like this comedian better than the angry slave master guy who basically shouted commands with swears.
The joke with the Schleppe guy is that his AI girlfriend has all sorts of demands that a real-life girlfriend would have about getting married.
And the comedy there is that he's obviously programmed this AI girl to have all sorts of things that he could easily tell her not to do.
Like there's layers, I think, with this guy.
But do you doubt that?
In just a few years, or maybe a few minutes, you'll see men proposing to AI robot women like that guy pretended to do.
I'm sorry, I don't have a prescription here, but I just see, especially in luxury Western societies, that technology is taking away the things that motivate men to be men, wooing women, building things, being productive.
I just don't know how it ends, especially in a world where religion, at least in the post-Christian West, has never been weaker and when people seem to be easily led astray.
Do we all really have to be the World Economic Forum's useless eaters?
The Naughty List Is Concerning00:12:25
What do you think?
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Oh, hi.
Welcome back.
You know, one of my favorite things about the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is they've got a sense of humor.
And boy, do we ever need that these days.
For example, they have a very fancy tuxedo awards ceremony every year called the Teddies, where they give out sort of a raspberry award to the most wasteful government program or bureaucrat.
It's called the Teddies.
It's pretty funny.
Well, it's almost Christmas time, so they now have a naughty and nice list.
I just like the way they do things.
Joining us now to talk about the naughty and nice list is their Ontario director, friend of ours, named Noah Jarvis.
Noah, great to see you in your new capacity.
We knew you as a journalist, and now you're with the Taxpayers Federation.
Congratulations.
Thank you very much, and it's a pleasure to be on your show, Ezra.
Well, it's nice of you to say.
I love the Teddies.
I get a real kick out of it.
And you guys know how to have attention-getting events, and you actually get the mainstream media to cover you, which is a rare feat to be able to poke fun at the government, but also have the media on your side.
Let's talk about the naughty list at the very top of the list.
Let me just read it.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford for giving Ontario politicians Santa-sized pay hikes.
Tis the season for giving, and Ontario's politicians sure do love giving to themselves.
Why don't you tell me a little bit more?
There's a lot of reasons that Doug Ford, I think, should be on the naughty list.
This is an interesting one.
I wasn't aware of this.
Tell me about their gift to themselves.
It always drives me crazy when that happens.
So what happened here, Noah?
Absolutely.
So a few months ago, when nobody was paying attention to the Ontario legislature, Premier Ford teamed up with MPPs on the NDP and Liberal side of the aisle, and they all colluded together to pass a massive MPP pay hike.
MPPs increased their pay by 35% this year.
35% increase.
I mean, I don't know about you, Ezra, but most people living in Ontario or the rest of Canada aren't getting a 35% pay hike from their employer.
But the MPPs themselves decided that they were going to increase their own pay by 35% this year.
So MPP pay went from about $116,000 a year to $157.3 thousand dollars this year.
It is a completely absurd pay hike.
And it's even worse when you consider that not only did they give themselves a crazy pay hike, but they also gave themselves a new platinum-plated pension program, which is similar to the pensions that federal MPs get.
So not only are they giving themselves 35% more of your taxpayer dollars, putting it right in their pockets, but they also gave themselves a lavish pension program, the likes that most Canadians aren't going to receive after they retire.
You know, when parties get together in the dark and hatch these deals, you know the taxpayer is going to be a loser.
You know, these politicians really think they're rock stars.
There are people in Canada who deserve 35% raises.
Often they're risk-taking entrepreneurs.
Sometimes in the tech industry, if people lived on, you know, ramen noodles for years while they were working out their big app and then it launched and they finally get their payday.
Good for them.
They took a risk.
They had a big idea.
None of that applies to politicians.
They didn't create anything.
In fact, things are worse than ever when it comes to crime and taxes and traffic and healthcare, like all the things the province is responsible for.
So for them to give themselves a tech bro sized raise when I don't even think most people could name their own MPP.
They're just sort of backbencher trained seals clapping onto mine.
That's very frustrating.
Let me read the next one on your list.
Federal finance minister François-Philippe Champagne for sticking future generations with massive debt to pay back.
I'll just read one more sentence.
The patron saint of children doesn't like it when politicians saddle future generations with massive government debt bills to pay back.
So that would be Santa you're talking about, I guess.
Champagne plans to add $324 billion to the debt by 2030.
For comparison, former prime minister Justin Trudeau plan to add $154 billion over the same years.
That is sort of crazy.
I mean, Justin Trudeau was so profligate, the worst in our history.
And you're saying that under Mark Carney, François-Philippe Champagne, the finance minister, is twice as bad as Trudeau.
Am I getting that right?
Absolutely.
This year, the federal government is running a $78 billion budget deficit.
And, you know, you hear all this talk from Mark Carney and his finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, that they're going to spend less and invest more.
Well, I don't know about you, Ezra, but that's one of the most, this is one of the biggest contradictions in terms I've ever heard because the government doesn't invest.
They just spend.
So they're basically saying we're going to spend less to spend more.
But really, all they're doing is spending more.
$78 billion.
That's bigger than any Trudeau budget minus the pandemic era budgets.
But we also have to consider that this $78 billion deficit is going towards adding on to our already massive federal debt.
We are in $1.35 trillion, trillion with a T, not a B, $1.35 trillion in debt.
That is money that you and I and the next generations of Canadians are going to have to pay back through their hard-earned tax dollars.
And we're already paying about $55 billion in debt interest charges this year.
That is more money than the federal government gives in transfers to the provinces.
That is about as much money as the federal government collects in sales tax revenue.
So every time you go to buy a coffee at Tim Hortons or you go to buy some clothing at the old Navy, just know that the sales tax that you're being charged is always and directly going towards money towards bond holders on Bay Street.
You know, that's not money going towards our health care system.
It's going towards bond fund managers.
And of course, that's just the federal debt.
There's the provincial and even cities can incur debt.
Let me read one more because I did not know this one.
I mean, I know a little bit about Doug Ford.
I know a lot about Francois-Philippe Champagne.
He was the, when he was foreign minister, he actually had a mortgage from a government bank in China.
That's a crazy story.
We won't get into that now.
But let me read your fourth name on the naughty list because I didn't know this story.
And you guys have taxpayers' advocates in a whole bunch of different provinces.
So it's like you've got your own sort of central intelligence agency keeping tabs on what the bad guys are doing.
Let me read this next one: British Columbia Finance Minister Brenda Bailey for taking a golden sleigh ride at taxpayers' expense.
I didn't understand this, but let me read the next sentence to explain.
Santa's little helpers caught Bailey billing taxpayers $6,645 for a limousine service during a four-day trip to Boston.
Even Rudolph doesn't charge that much.
How do you do that?
I mean, you're almost at the point where you're buying the limo.
I mean, four-day, I mean, why can't she just use an Uber like other people?
$6,600 for a limo?
What was the excuse there?
Did she ever give an explanation for that insight?
That's a rock star-type bill.
She's just a politician.
Take an Uber.
If you have to take an Uber black, which is $30 more, I mean, you know, if you think you're that snobby, go ahead.
But what's with the $6,600 limo?
Well, you're right.
Yeah, a lot can you can do a lot with $6,600.
I mean, you can buy a used car with that money.
But the explanation that the minister gave was that, oh, they needed this fancy limousine to be able to travel to a junket.
And she specifically used the word junket.
So she acknowledges that she's going to some hoity-toity conference in Boston and spending thousands upon thousands of taxpayer dollars.
I mean, as you said, Ezra, politicians are getting out of control.
They feel that they are not just servants to the people, but they are sort of above the people and that they can take these lavish limousine rides or in some cases in British Columbia, helicopter rides from Victoria to mainland BC.
Our BC director, Carson, he does a fantastic job covering this.
And I think one of the things he discovered is renting a Lamborghini for a couple of days would cost less than $6,600.
Oh, my God.
Well, listen, I'm glad you guys are on the file.
And it's great to see you know, we really enjoy talking to Franco, but I know he's got other duties to attend today.
I think he did a great job on behalf of the Taxpayers Federation.
I think it's really fun, the naughty and nice list.
I will say there are some names on the nice list.
One of my favorites, of course, is Alberta Premier Daniel Smith for refusing to spend $2 billion more to satisfy the Alberta Teachers Association, which is already the best paid teachers in Western Canada.
We won't get into that nice list.
The naughty list is always more concerning.
Noah, great to see you.
Keep up the fight.
Thank you very much.
Have a good rest of your day, Ezra.
All right, you too.
There he is.
Noah Jarvis, the Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Stay with us.
Hey, welcome back.
Got a couple of letters from you.
Wally Bartfey, talking about the memorandum of understanding between the federal and Alberta governments, says, memorandum of understandings are not legal contracts, similar to writing New Year's resolutions on a napkin, legally speaking, simply for optics.
99% of memorandums of agreement don't result in contracts, new laws, or policies.
Fact-check that.
You're right.
And what is a memorandum of understanding?
It's a general spirit of we will get a deal later.
It's sort of setting the table, but not having the meal yet.
No, I agree with you.
I suppose it's like a statement of principles, but you're right.
It's not a contract.
Robert says the MOU is the usual stick and carrot routine that has been going on since 1905, and really for 38 years prior to that date, where Alberta always gets the stick and Canada always gets the carrot.
Well, yeah, I mean, in recent days, you can see the Liberal government's own cabinet ministers are really boasting about how they put the boots to Alberta in terms of carbon taxes and things like that.
Now, I don't know if that's them trying to mollify parts of their own party who were shocked by it.
I mean, Stephen Gilbo sort of has a point that Mark Carney agreed to do away with vast swaths of Stephen Gilbo's legacy.
So he is a bit mad.
There are some liberals that are mad.
Vernice Gardner says net zero is a Brookfield grift.
Until we see proof of a carbon problem, we should not be considering all these rules and taxes.
Plant trees.
You're so right.
I mean, if you really are worried about carbon dioxide, then put some trees and other green things in the ground because the chlorophyll, I mean, it needs CO2 for photosynthesis.
That's how plants eat.
But no one is truly worried about that, especially not the JetSat class like Al Gore and John Kerry and Mark Carney.
They're certainly not acting like they're worried about it.
And even if you do believe the math, which I don't, China, India, Brazil, and OPEC contribute the vast majority of the world's carbon dioxide.
Canada is not in a position to fix anything.
Acting On Global Warming00:00:47
But it's like when people said during COVID, oh my God, put on your mask.
They weren't acting as if they thought unmasked people were truly dangerous.
If you knew, you've probably heard me say this before.
If you encountered someone that you knew had Ebola, you wouldn't go up to them and say, excuse me, put on your mask.
You would run away from them.
The mask was just a symbol of compliance.
And I think it's my analogy with global warming is if you truly believed the world was going to end because of global warming, people would be conducting themselves much more differently than they are now.
It's just a shtick.
It's just a grift.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you and home, good night.