The Ricochet Podcast - Dealing with Canada

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

It's Justin Trudeau's last day. A time to rejoice for the friends of liberty to our north. But the economic spat between the US and Canada has had the unwelcome consequence of restraining the latter's Conservative Party momentum. Thankfully, Ezra Levant returns to the Ricochet Podcast with a solution, which he laid out in a recently published book with a title that shows he knows how to speak our language: Deal of the Century: The America First Plan for Canada’s Oil Sands. He explains his pitch to the president and brings us up to speed on the political scene of our dearest neighbor. Plus, Steve and James talk taxes, the Columbia University crackdown, and Lee Zeldin's big moves at the EPA.- Sound from today's open: Trudeau's farewell & Ezra Levant seeking answers from Black Rock's CEO in Davos in January

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It's incompatible technical issues. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall it's the ricochet podcast I'm James Lilings joined by Stephen Hayward and we're gonna be talking to Ezra Levant about what oh Canada so let's have ourselves a podcast this may be my last day here in this office but I will always be boldly and unapologetically Canadian.

My only ask is that no matter what the world throws at us, you always be the same. Why are you running away from simple questions? Just answer a question. Have you talked to President Trump yet? Don't push me. When was the last time you answered a question that you didn't know was coming? Welcome everybody it's the Ricochet podcast number 732. I'm James Lalex on a beautiful proto spring day in Minneapolis I'm joined by Stephen Hayward in

California I presume unless of course you're off in Bruges or Peru or somewhere you peripatetic fellow. No I'm at home today and where it's pouring rain, so you have better weather than I do. That's good. Charles C.W. Cook is not with us due to a joyous family occasion, so in his absence, we will attempt to say things in that accent that somehow makes us sound smarter

than we actually are, and that's the one thing I envy Charlie for, among many other things, like the fact that he's in Florida and the fact that, well, he doesn't have to confront perhaps what we are gonna confront right now today. Steven, I'm almost tempted to say that I could just make something up about what's being proposed or what's happening

or what's being criticized. And by the time this gets out and by the time next week happens it'll be true it will have happened the continual blizzard of stuff that you could that that follows from this administration one of the things that interested me last week is the proposal to cut taxes for anybody who's making under $150,000 now I support I support this, but I should also note that I am the author of How to Make Exactly $149,999 a year.

So I kind of have a vested interest in this. But on another level, I do not. I kind of want everybody to pay taxes. And I would think that in your striking while the iron is hot mode here. This would be a great time to say, you know what, we're going to abolish the entire IRS. We're going to have a flat rate tax. Right. And everybody's just going to fill out a postcard. And that's that. What's a no, I'm in complete agreement. We don't want, uh, we don't, we've already

skewed the income tax to the upper brackets already, contrary to what you hear repeatedly from Elizabeth Warrens of the world. And you do want people to have a stake in the government. I've long thought that you want even low income people should pay a little bit so they have skin in the game. And so, in other words, it's going the wrong direction to do it that way. And yes, the flat tax is the right solution. The usual complaints about the flat tax, of course, is you mean to say that Warren Buffett would pay the same rate as his secretary, to which I would say, yes, that's precisely

and exactly what I have to say. Because that seems to me, in our democracy, where we're searching for equality, I know that equities replace equality, but still, bear me out. I'm an old guy. It would it would seem to be that there's something fundamentally unfair about a series of laws that are skewed adjusted and According to how much money maker property you have I've always wondered exactly how they got the Constitutionality of a progressive income tax passed the Supreme Court. Can you I know nothing? I know nothing so could you tell me exactly how that happened? Well they did. They required a constitutional amendment because Congress did

pass an income tax in the 1890s and the Supreme Court struck it down for violating the so-called direct tax clause of Article 1. It's a little weird what a direct tax means but in practice it meant that you could not do direct taxes on individuals without doing apportioning it according to population by state. A lot of reasons why they did that and it's kind of strange. But so the tax incomes directly required the 16th Amendment. Now the amendment says nothing about the progressivity of the rates. If you go back and look at the debates in Congress, some people said, well first of all, the proponents said, oh it would be a very modest tax on just the very high upper income people, you know, start at 5%, most people won't pay it, which they didn't for

decades. And the alarmist said, you know, we don't trust you, we think the rate might get as high as 10% someday. So that's how we got it. But yeah, but the Buffett thing, look, if you say the same rate as his secretary, if he makes 10 times the amount of a secretary, he'll pay 10 times the tax. Now the odd thing about this proposal is, you know, Buffett's a strange guy. He takes a very tiny salary from Berkshire Hathaway. I think it might even be $150,000. And he's, you know, he always just lets the value of his company is his sort of main compensation,

which is not taxed until he sells it. So I'm tempted to say the opponents of this should say, somebody wants tax break for Democrat billionaires like Warren Buffett, just for the confusion and mayhem it would cause. The other tax that people root about is the consumption tax. And that we get away, do away with the IRS entirely

and fund the government by tariffs and or consumption taxes. And I've heard that argument back and forth and I'm always, you know, I hear the argument and I say, you know what? There's a lot of sense to that. There really is. And then you hear the counter argument and say,

you know what? There's a lot of sense to that too. I'm. And then you hear the counter argument and say, you know what, there's a lot of sense to that too. I'm not crazy about a consumption tax for a variety of reasons. I don't like, I mean, it strikes me like the vat. Where something gets built in and ends up creeping its way into every single aspect of a product's construction or manufacture

until eventually the price of everything goes up. And you can say, well, yeah, I mean, the price of everything would go up, but you'd have more money because you wouldn't be taxed with this users at this this exorbitant rate by the federal government and I just there's just something about the absolute simplicity of a flat tax and the ability and the idea that you could just like do your taxes in a trice without really thinking. Because here's the thing, everybody knows this.

You do your taxes, you send them in, and then if you get them wrong, the government will tell you what you got wrong. And I always, every April 15th as I'm mailing it away, or on March when I'm dropping it off at the tax preparers, I always say, look, if they know what I owe, why don't they just tell me? Why do I have to go through this whole thing

and then bite my nails out of fear that I forgot something? So maybe come the 15th, we may talk about that more as a culture, but this is really the time. Did you ever see, of course he's passed away now, but Don Rumsfeld used to send in a letter to the IRS with his tax return every year, saying, here's my tax return, I've signed it like you require, but I cannot vouch for the accuracy of it

because no one can. Because you call the IRS, by the way, people have done this, you call the IRS helpline, and if you get through, they'll tell you one thing, you call it again and get through, you might get a different thing. You can't even get consistent guidance from the IRS. But I'll say this about the consumption tax,

my fear is that we would get both, right? We'll end up with the income tax. And I think that's what the left really wants. Yeah, the value added tax, the problem with it is it's a hidden cost. It's usually 20% or more, it's really a sales tax. Now, I have thought once in a while, as a theoretical or a talking point, that maybe we ought to, there's some reasons why consumption tax is a better tax or tax efficiency reasons and so forth, but I like the idea a little bit in theory, because it would connect the cost of government to all citizens.

And if citizens were actually made to pay for all the government they get, they might want less of it. So my point is, is that there's a small window, maybe, and listeners will tell me I'm out of my mind and they're probably right, that the case for broader based consumption taxes on everybody would actually change the body politic

in favor of much less spending. Maybe that's too optimistic. I think it is too optimistic because a lot of people just won't make that connection. They won't figure it out. And besides they like what they're getting. I mean, look exactly how we've seen about 20, 30, 40% of the population. Absolutely shriek because Doge has gone and taken away and demolished one

agency, one agent. Right. Um, I was reading today, I mean, Columbia, do you think Columbia is going to get its 400 million back this year or, uh, because they've made a whole bunch of changes shall we say they've sort of retrospectively decided that they acted poorly before when it came to the protests and now they're they're cleaning house because apparently the prospect of a hanging has concentrated their mind wonderfully do you think they'll get their money back I don't know I think here we want to borrow the old Reagan slogan from the late Cold War

trust but verify I want to make sure old Reagan slogan from the late Cold War trust, but verify. We want to make sure they go through with the expulsions, that they go through with enforcing new standards, including no one protesters can wear masks on campus and so forth. And so I think you want to keep the pressure on and actually build the pressure. I mean, look, the problem with Columbia, and I think they've already put their Middle Eastern Studies program in receivership, the problem with Columbia and these other places is, as Anas Stepman put it, who lives there in Manhattan,

is that these universities have become madrassas. I mean, almost literally so, in these Middle East Studies departments, and some college presidents are gonna have to wake up and say, the problem is not just our rules of enforcement on protests, it's the stuff we're teaching and the faculty we're hiring and they need to get rid of them wholesale.

Well, Politico had a headline yesterday that said, Republicans have long hated universities and now finally there's their chance to show by dismantling them. Which, I don't know, it brings to mind the old adage that the right knows the arguments of the left but the left does not know the arguments of the right. Yes. I mean, we swim in a culture where it's inevitable

that we're gonna hear the arguments of the other side, but they don't, so let me explain it to them. It is not that we are a bunch of bourgeoisie idiots who don't want none of that book learning and think everything can be found in the good book and perhaps at the foot of your papi telling you some folk wisdom from six generations ago. No, that's not it at all.

We actually are quite fond of history and culture and great art and great literature and science and the rest of it. The problem is that all of these things have been politicized out of recognition by the people who made the long march through the institutions. We would be very happy if the English literature department

was concerned with, oh, I don't know, English literature as opposed to finding the latest example of Wokary to trot out some genderqueer notion of this, that, or the other, or some marginalized experience. I mean, yeah, you could have that in there. You can require part of it. But if you're telling me that a certain ideological conformity is not taken over the universities, in the arts, in the science, and in the sciences, then you're just not paying attention. Let me send you some links. So that's it. It's not that the right hates book learning and smart folk and feels inferior to them. No, it's the fact that this anti-civilizational, anti-western civil civilization mindset seems to have taken place. And frankly, it's no good, no like it,

and we're sick of it. Oh no, you're absolutely right. I could go on way too long about this. I'll just say that the rot in the humanities is just, it's unbelievable. And then you notice here and there, and I know a lot about this because I'm in the higher education world most of the week,

you will find that where there is a good great books program that teaches the humanities and philosophy and history the old fashioned way, often you'll find these little programs tucked away in major liberal universities. They're wildly popular with students because they're not teaching jargon and woke ideologies and all that kind of nonsense.

They teach it the old fashioned way. Let's read Shakespeare instead of implying our own theories about the social order today and say that kind of nonsense. They teach it the old-fashioned way. Let's read Shakespeare instead of implying our own theories about the social order today and say that, oh, Shakespeare was a closet gay with father issue, whatever the heck, some Freudian thing, right? That was popular for a while. Let's just read him and let him speak to us directly and then talk about it like normal human beings. That's done so little, but on the other hand, like I say, they're very popular when you do it that way and more universities should get a clue.

Absolutely so. Well, the problem is of course, when they're losing all this money, John Hopkins I think got 800 million is that they have to start letting some people off. That's really hard to do. I mean, eventually it'll all shake out I suppose, but firing people is tough

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bamboo HR comm slash free demo when we thank bamboo HR for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast and Now we welcome to the podcast from the great north as rule event Co-founder and CEO of rebel news and he's an author of many books including the just published deal of the century the America first plan forada's oil sands welcome israeli doing great you know today the new uh... canadian prime minister was just sworn in about an hour ago and he's true to two point zero in fact he's worse than trudeau

but he's also a little bit smarter than Trudeau. So that's bad news. Well, I'm here in Minnesota, which is practically Canada, and I'm afraid he's gonna make make rumbling noises about annexing us and being the next province. But tell us more about this guy. He's come out of nowhere and we here in the states on the conservative side, we were poised to see Pierre pounce and replace Justin, but now it seems as if the the conservative movement in in Canada is on the back foot thanks to a resurgence of nationalism, economic nationalism. Tell us more about this new guy and what you expect out of him. Sure, his name is Mark Carney and he's been out of Canada for decades. He was the head of the Bank of Canada,

which would be like our Federal Reserve, but then he went and he became the head of the Bank of England, which is sort of weird for a Canadian, and he's been away from Canada ever since. He has three passports now. He's a globalist in the true sense of the term. He was on the board of the World Economic Forum in Davos, that sort of crypto

government. He made a gazillion dollars as an oligarch. He was the chair of Brookfield Asset Management, which is like a mini BlackRock. And there's nothing wrong with being a big shot investor at all, except for like BlackRock, Brookfield had an ESG obsession. So they had all these assets under management and they basically compelled, they ordered, they demanded that any company they invest their investors' money in subscribe to woke DEI methodology, including a huge emphasis on net zero anti-energy ideology.

including a huge emphasis on net zero anti-energy ideology. He literally said he was a fan of Greta Thunberg. This is supposedly a serious global policymaker and investment manager saying he was guided by Greta Thunberg. He has come back to Canada. I don't think he actually lives in Canada. His wife lives and works in New York. Brookfield Asset Management just moved to New York. He's got three passports. And again, listen, there are people who fly around the world all the time. That's great. But they don't generally say, I now want my next thing to be Prime Minister of Canada.

And it happened immediately. Let me just give you one last detail. Justin Trudeau was a deeply unpopular prime minister after nine years of scandals. So his party basically said we're going to get rid of you. And you can do that in a parliamentary system through what's called a vote of non-confidence. So all the MPs would gather in the parliament, there would be a vote, and the government would fall, and there would be an election. The writing was on the wall, he was doomed. So the minute before that could happen,

he ran to what's called the Governor General, who is the King's representative in Canada, and said, please dissolve the Parliament immediately, lock the doors immediately. And the King's Governor General agreed. It would be like on the eve of a vote to impeach a president if the president somehow managed to lock all the doors to Congress and just, nyan, nyan, I'm not letting you in. So for three months Trudeau governed without parliament. In fact, parliament has still not been recalled. And in this interregnum, the Liberal Party had its leadership vote. But here's where it gets super crazy. 400,000 people signed up for the Liberal Party in its leadership vote, but here's where it gets super crazy.

400,000 people signed up for the Liberal Party in basically a primary, but 250,000 of those votes were disqualified and we have no explanation of why. And of the 150,000 who voted, they allowed children as young as 14 to vote and they allowed foreign nationals to vote as long as they were permanent residents. So most people who were registered were not allowed. And amongst those allowed were children and foreign nationals. And I won't get into other bizarre things, people being excluded. And anyhow, Mark Carney has been installed, selected, appointed, parachuted in. I don't know what words you would use.

He's not even a member of parliament, which I can't even remember the last time that happened. We have a prime minister who is not allowed to sit in the parliament because he doesn't have a seat. I think that he hasn't even, I would be surprised if he's even been to every Canadian province. We have just had a kind of soft coup. And final detail before I cork it. It's incredible. In recent elections, the Chinese Communist Party has had an exerted effort to influence local elections in Canada. And this isn't a rumor, this has been reported by CSIS, that's our CIA, and the Mounties, that's our FBI. They targeted 11 districts and they really tried

to destabilize those and they bust in voters, like it was quite an operation. And we had a judicial inquiry about this and the Chinese communists have a huge interest in manipulating Canadian democracy. And so all of a sudden, I look at those 400,000 votes and the quarter million that were nuked, and it was an all online voting process.

Of course it could be hacked. You have an illegitimate prime minister selected illegitimately. When there's an illegitimate prorogation and dissolution of the House, we are in the worst of times. Now there is a great Conservative leader in Canada named Pierre Pauliev. Unfortunately, Donald Trump yanking the chain of Trudeau and saying, I want to annex you, I want to make you the 51st state.

That has hurt the pride of a lot of Canadians who have recoiled against it So the unintended consequence of mocking Trudeau has been to pump up the liberals. Anyways, that's my update Sorry for going on for so long. No, that's the state of affairs in Canada Yeah, it's fascinating and appalling and what I question is why why this guy? I mean if you have this cabal that is going to foist upon the country somebody that's gonna do their bidding exactly Wouldn't you at least find somebody malleable you could dress up in the reignment of Canada and politics and patriotism and the rest of it And make him sound like he's one of the people as opposed to finding somebody who was just a cardboard cutout cliche Of the sg transnational globalism. I mean it's so blatant. I don't I I don't get why it was him

Well, he's campaigningant, I don't get why it was him. Well, he's campaigning as Captain Canada in two ways. He is saying accurately that he was the head of the Bank of Canada a couple of decades ago. That's true. So he can claim, well, I worked for Canada, I helped guide us through economic storms. That's what he's saying.

And because Donald Trump is, Trump's got that banter. He's got that Manhattanter, he's got that Manhattan, you know, style nicknaming people, you know, he even did it to people who are now his allies and friends, little Marco Rubio, lion Ted Cruz, now these people are his allies, Trump's got that style which is a little harsh to the Canadian ear, which is maybe a little bit sensitive. And so when you say to someone, hey, join the United States and be a state, I mean, for some people, as a thought exercise, they say, oh, that's a good idea. We'd be wealthier, we'd be freer, we'd have an army.

But for many other people, it would be like going up to a married woman and saying, ditch your husband and run off with me. So it's an indecent proposal of sorts. I mean, I guess if someone was contemplating a divorce or if they weren't married yet, they would treat it as a real proposal. But I think that's how it landed emotionally, is a lot of Canadians say, how dare you,

even though we have our flaws, we're not just going to join you. And I know it was banter and I know it was Trump just yanking the chain of Trudeau, but I think that that gave the Liberal Party a new story to tell. We are the defenders of Canada. Anyone who's not with us is an American shill. And you're not for Trump, are you? Because Pierre Pauly of the Conservative

Leader of Canada had a 20-point lead over the Liberals. Now, maybe it's a 10-point lead, I've seen some polls that put the Liberals ahead because the Liberals are saying, we're Captain Canada, if you're not for us you're a traitor, they use that word, and we must unite to stop the evil Trump. Wouldn't you rather, if you're a left-wing Canadian, wouldn't you rather run against Trump than run against a popular conservative Canadian? So that's the situation in Canada. Yeah, so Ezra, it's Steve Hayward out in California

and I feel your pain because we suffer under our version of Justin Trudeau in the form of Gavin Newsom. The less said about that, the better. Look, I wanna turn to your new book. I wanna talk a bit about this 51st state business, but I want to work into it in a roundabout way through your new book, A Deal of the Century about Canada's oil sands.

Can you give us just a thumbnail sketch of what you're on about here? And then I got a follow-up question about whether it's a good idea, depending on this and that. So go ahead. Sure. I don't think all America,

I don't think most Americans would know that the third largest oil reserve country in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, is Canada. And it's just, you know, a couple hundred miles north of Montana in my home province of Alberta. And it's sort of a newfangled technology. It's oil sand. So it's literally sandy oil. So how did you get the oil separated from the sand? It took them a while to figure that out. But when they cracked that secret about 25 years ago, wow, it just...

And so today, Canada is the number one source of oil imports into America, which is a wonderful thing because it's displacing conflict oil from OPEC. I like to call the oil sands ethical oil. If I was thinking like a liberal, what are the ethics of oil? Well, are you environmentally responsible? That's a good one. Do you take the proceeds from your oil and use, do good things with it or do you spend it on terrorism and the military? That's a good question to ask Qatar or Russia, right? Are you respectful of workers?

Do you pay them well? It's a good question to ask the petro-states in the Gulf. And finally, do you respect civil liberties? Canada is one of the few ethical oil producers in the world compared to the conflict oil of OPEC. Now, that's an argument that might win over some liberals, but if you're an America first Republican, I think there's a different way to phrase it.

And the reason I'm talking about oil is this, Donald Trump has repeatedly said, we have a huge trade deficit with Canada, that ain't fair. Well, the reason there's that huge trade deficit is because of the oil. And if you weren't buying Canadian oil, you'd be buying it from Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, God forbid, Iran. None of those places are better options. So Trump wants to put a tariff on the

oil sites. Trouble is, you know, you put a tariff on a Honda factory in Mexico, you can move the Honda factory to the states states and you've got what Trump likes. American jobs, American factory in the American market. But you can't, the tariff is not going to move the oil, oil is not going to get up and move down to the states. So what's happening is that tariff and Trump has proposed a 10% tariff on oil. Well, all that's going to do is add 10% to the price of the oil that is the feedstock for these American refineries. One more thing about that American, about that oil sands, who's actually in Alberta developing the oil sands? It's Americans. Imperial Oil, that's the local subsidiary

of Exxon Mobil. And Canadian companies, guess who owns them? Big US pension funds. So you've got Americans producing the oil, Americans refining the oil, America, America, America. The USMCA gives America preferential access. It's as American as can be, terrifying. It doesn't do any of your America first ideas. So here was my pitch, and I call it Deal of the Century. That's this new book I wrote. Why do I call it Deal of the Century?

Because Trump thinks like a real estate man. He says he wants to acquire Greenland. I can see why if you look at the map. He's talking about Panama. That's smart. Well, Canada is, the oil sands is a bigger deal than either of those times 10. Because there's 170 billion barrels of ethical oil just sitting there. And I did the math. If you double the production, double the annual production of the oil sands, which Alberta, the premier says she wants to do, and if America bought that, it would displace all of the OPEC oil that America buys. And what's the value of that? 50 years at

approximately 70, 75 bucks a barrel, it's a little bit less than that now, that's a 13 trillion dollar deal. But the best part is America is no longer beholden to the Persian Gulf. Did you know that the fifth fleet, the United States fifth fleet costs about $50 billion a year just to patrol the Persian Gulf sea lines? It's like you have agreed to be the $50 billion a year Brinks truck to let the Saudis and the Bahrainis and the Emiratis sell their oil. You're the global cop. If you didn't have to do that, like you could still mess around in the Middle East if you want to, but now you don't have to because they're all coming down through the Keystone XL pipeline and others. So here's the big win and I'm trying to phrase it as

an America first thing. Right. Number one, you get all the good stuff from Canada without having to have the side effects. You don't need a huge Democrat voting electoral college. You know, you don't need the French bilingualism. Like you want to acquire Canada really? You want another democrat, you know, two more democrat senators? I don't think you do. How about take the good stuff and when and if you're really going to pay Canada 10, 13, whatever trillion dollars over 50 years, well now you got something to trade and now you can say, hey Canada, you got to reinvest in your military now. You got to defend the Arctic with us. You got

to get those F-35s going. No more messing around. And by the way, can you let our dairy in, which Canadians would want, it would lower prices. And by the way, how can we can't have American banks on your main streets offering mortgages? You're not forced to get a mortgage from an American bank, but can we please at least be allowed to sell them? So Trump's demands are actually Reasonable and if Trump says I'll buy all your oil and by the way I hope Trump likes this idea because you know who's been sniffing around the Alberta oil sands or the Chinese, right? The Chinese in fact, they actually bought an oil sands company about 15 years ago. They would buy it all if they could.

That's right, I think, so I love the idea. I've been following the oil sands story for a long time and I'm sure as you know, if there's any kind of oil, if you think environmentalists hate fracking, they really hate the oil sands in Canada and never mind if what they think about is accurate or not, that doesn't matter. It has the bonus of freaking them out and outraging them even more. But this is an argument against making Canada the 51st state. If I'm Alberta and I'm the oil sands owners, the last thing I want is to be under the regulatory jurisdiction of the United States.

Because actually, Alberta has a much more permissive regulatory structure, which is why the industry has flourished there. So I mean, Alberta has always struck me as the Texas of Canada, the one province that might really like to join the United States, except that our EPA, even under Trump, would screw it all up. So that's one argument against the union idea idea. Anyway, I love the idea. You said one other thing though that's on my mind which is quite aside from the merits of integrating what's the old Bernard Shaw line at American England or two nations divided by a common language?

That's just as true of Canada and not so much, you know, A and a boot, but sort of the cultural differences are much larger than a lot of people notes. And as you point out, you're likely to get two Democratic senators if it was just one state, but also 40 House seats or something like that, because Canada is the size of California population-wise. And I'm looking at this thinking just the politics of it are terrible from a Republican point of view. I don't know what Trump is thinking Well, I know what Trump is thinking because Senator Marco Rubio told us he told Captain

Herridge if I'm saying her name right? Yeah, she asked him where did this whole Canada 51st state thing come from and Marco Rubio said this he said when Justin Trudeau flew down to Mar-a-Lago a couple months ago Trump asked Trudeau flew down to Mar-a-Lago a couple months ago, Trump asked Trudeau, what would happen if we zeroed out our trade deficit? And Trudeau, who's sort of stupid and has never negotiated anything in his life, blurted out, well, that would be the end of Canada. If you watch that interview between Marco Rubio and Catherine Harridge, Rubio, I mean, it was very plausible the way he described it. Trump said, what happens if we zero things out?

Trudeau said, it's the end of Canada, which is a crazy thing to say. First of all, it's not true. Second of all, what you've just told Trump is your existential dread of what could happen, and now he knows where to poke you. This is the master of giving people mean nicknames. Trump immediately said, oh, well, you should become the 51st state. And Trudeau's face, I could just imagine when he realized the weapon. So that's where it came from.

It's a taunt. It's like Little Rocket Man, or it's like any of his other tweets. And Trump is huge. I reread parts of Art of the Deal and I really recommend that to people if you want to understand what Trump's doing with these tariffs. He talks about hyperbole, he talks about knocking the other guy off balance and of course that's what he's doing but here's what Trump I think is missing. Trump is used to real estate deals where the other side wants it badly,

and Trump knows you've got to be able to walk away. That's half of your strength. But what happens, and this goes back to your very first question to me, what happens when the guy on the other side, the guy on the Canadian side, has the moral hazard of wanting the negotiation to fail? In fact, a successful negotiation between the

Liberals in Canada and Trump would be terrible for the Liberals because then you would remove the demon, the risk, the ogre, the threat. There is no deal that Trump could offer the Liberals that they would accept. They flip the tables on them because they need to fight against them. In fact, perversely, the more damaging to Canada the fight is, the more the liberals can say, you see, and by the way, that also hides their own economic mismanagement. So, Trump thinks he's in a deal where the other guy has no cards. He uses that phrase a lot, hey Zelensky, you have no cards. And it's true, it's true, it's true, but what happens if the other guy has a weird strategy,

a kamikaze strategy that says, I want Trump to smash Canada like a bowl of eggs because I need that victimhood to run and beat this Pierre Poliev. That's what I don't think Trump quite grocks, because I don't think he pays very close attention to Canada. And he has actually, contrary to his own instincts, strengthened the liberals up here. I'm something of an expert on Canada myself, because twice a year in Cancun,

I have conversations with people from Canada. I'd love to go down there, and what a cross-section they are. I'd love to go down there and what a cross section they are. I mean, I've really had fascinating conversations about economies in Canada, but one of the things that people keep avoiding and dancing around, perhaps because they're Canadian, is the subject of demographic shifts and change in Canada.

And I don't mean to put a bow around Steve's questions about the oil, but we have you for a limited time. And I am curious exactly as to how Canada is dealing or not with what some perceive to be a shift in its demographic makeup. Or if it's just no big thing and everybody's whistling and moving along and hail Canada and use your maple syrup and whatever. That is, in my opinion, the number one issue in Canada.

Justin Trudeau has raised the immigration and temporary migrant workers, temporary students to two million people per year legally. And proportionately, that would be like 18 million a year in the US. That's just the legal. That's not even illegal. And that's the problem we have. And if you come to Toronto, you'll say, am I in Toronto? There are 4.9 million people in our country on temporary permits that expire at the end

of this year. That's more than 10% of the population. You can see it with your eyes. Every issue is exacerbated. Obviously, housing prices, especially in the big cities, are beyond the reach of ordinary people. The average home in Toronto and Montreal is more than $1 million. Inflation of other goods, of course, energy costs, we've got a carbon tax. And of course, what happens when you bring in hundreds of thousands of migrant workers? You depress wages. So, Canadians have wages being depressed, housing prices being inflated, inflation everywhere. There's one million foreign nationals who claim to be international students. There aren't even 1 million Canadian students in university. There are more foreigners, and by the way, they come here as students. They never even go to a school. They're fake schools set up in strip malls, you know, the local college. They're so, it is so outrageous.

A huge effect is economic. Of course, we have a so outrageous, a huge effect is economic. Of course, we have a welfare state and welfare state medicine. You can imagine what that does. These people in the main come from low trust societies. So they discover the Canadian tradition of food banks. Well, they just do their weekly shopping at food banks now. There's no such thing as a food bank in Canada. In fact, some food banks now say no foreign students allowed because they just, oh, these suckers are giving away free food. I don't need to shop. And then you have the extreme side of that where you have pro-Hamas extremists like you had in Colombia, not just in Campton universities, but on the streets in Jewish neighborhoods. In Montreal there was a

Hamas riot. So every, and Trudeau is doing this on purpose, and his successor Mark Carney is doing the same thing. They can count. There are now two million Muslims in Canada compared to 400,000 Jews. So do the math. So Ezra, I'm going to give you a broad last question here. When I first heard this Trump idea of making Canada the 51st state, one of the first things I did was dust off my shelf, because I'm an academic, a 35-year-old book, Continental Divide by Seymour Martin Lipset, very distinguished American political scientist, sadly deceased now. And, you know, I'm sort of aware of some of the cultural and political scientists, sadly, deceased now. And I'm sort of aware of some of the cultural

and political differences between the US and Canada. And the book really alerted me to how deep and profound they really are. I think Americans really don't pay much attention to Canada, sorry, not much, except maybe during hockey season. And Canadians, I mean, like James, when I visited Canada, mostly British Columbia, but also other Canadians I know, there's a lot of deep pride in the country, as there should be. And while not anti-American,

although there's some of that everywhere, but while not anti-American, I think there is, I think maybe justly, a sense of wounded pride that America sort of regards Canada with benign neglect or disdain or, again, make funny about people saying, g people saying a boot and so forth. So I don't know what's your sense of I mean you mentioned politically this is reinvigorated the Liberal Party in a foolish unintended consequence but to what extent is this in an odd way maybe helpful to some of the problems you just mentioned in other words reinvigorating some sense of Canadian pride and nationalism and therefore resistance to some of these adverse trends you point to.

You know it's funny because under Justin Trudeau our founding Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, was stripped off the $10 bill. Statues of him were put either torn down or put in wooden coffins. Our national anthem lyrics were changed by Trudeau. Our passport, all the imagery in the passport was stripped. Trudeau denounced Canada as a genocidal project and he said the genocide was continuing. He told the New York Times in his first year of government that Canada was a post-national state with no core values. During the trucker convoy, the symbol the truckers appropriated for their flag was

the Canadian flag. They flew the Canadian flag, they sang the Canadian anthem, and those were demonized as right-wing hate symbols. Woke ideology saying that Canada, which was the end of the Underground Railroad, no, we're the racist ones. They actually had Black Lives Matter up here. We were the place where black people fled to get away from slavery. So we had this whole woke denaturing of Canada. And in the last 60 days, suddenly the people who hate Canada and told us it was a sin to be Canadian are now saying, rah, rah, pass me the Canadian flag. So it's all fake. It's all fake. Yeah.

The man with three passports who has returned to grace us with his leadership is now saying he's a Canadian. No, he's not. He hasn't lived in Canada for years. So it's a lie. Justin Trudeau went on Anderson Cooper's show a couple months ago, and Anderson Cooper said, what is a Canadian? That's a good question. Imagine the man who's been prime minister for nine years answering, we're not American. That's your answer, a negative. And it's an insulting negative. That's like saying, who are you?

Well, not you. There's an arrogance to it. We have a national bookstore and their chain motto is the world needs more Canada. There's sort of a patronizing, condescending. And the thing is, in a way, Trump exposed that. He said, we'll swap your Canadian mini-bucks for our real dollars one-to-one. Yeah, reminding us that we're poor up here.

He said, we'll defend you, unlike your undefended North. Yeah, that's sort of a thing. And so it did hurt, partly because it's an indecent proposal to ask Canadians to abandon their loyalty, which, and by the way, 40% of young people in one poll that I saw, young men in Western Canada, 40% of them said, I'm up for that. Why? Because they can't make a go of it in Canada. And they also like Donald Trump's pride and nationalism. So, by the way, his indecent proposal has some takers, but for most Canadians, they're saying that's a little bit too much and that Trump chutzpah, which Trump supporters love. I love it, but I can also see how it hurts people's feelings and the liberals are so malleable that suddenly

they've, you know, decided that they're patriotic. They're not patriotic. They're not reducing, they're bringing in migrants from Gaza, that's insane. So, oh, believe you me, there's no real Canadian pride going on, just symbolism and jingoism, just to get through this moment against Donald Trump. I hope it doesn't work, but the polls are narrowing. When Canadian liberals start condemning church burnings, then you'll know that they're really, really, you know, feigning an appeal to the population.

If Trump had been actually the master of the insult nickname though, I think he would have started referring to Trudeau as Castro Jr. Well, he did allude to that on occasion. Oh, did he? Oh, did he? Yeah, he did. Oh, he knows his stuff. And he actually knew Margaret Trudeau in her wild child days. That's Justin Trudeau's mom. He refers to her in one of his books. I can't remember the title, but it's not out of the deal. It's another one of his books. How she, I mean, Justin Trudeau is gone now, literally today was his last day.

And I think the only saving grace for his nine years was he was sort of dumb, like he had a high emotional EQ, like he was very good at being friendly and relating to people, but he was sort of dumb when it came to policy and sort of lazy. So there were a lot of terrible things he planned that didn't get done. He planned one of the worst censorship regimes known in the world called the Online Harms Act that would have included life in prison for a hate crime. There is no life in prison in Canada for anything, not even for murder, but they would have been for hate. They would have had all... He would have established three new censorship bureaus.

The only reason we've spared those, by the way, is because of his dissolution of parliament to save his skin. So, if Trudeau had been more industrious and got these bills through earlier, he would have done a lot more damage. I mean, believe me, he's done a lot of damage and immigration is a bell that I don't know if you can unring it. But Canada is a much weaker country now than when Trudeau took it over. One of the reasons he juiced immigration so much was to hide the fact that we are actually in a recession on a per capita basis. We're getting poorer every year per capita. The only way to hide that is to bring in five percent of your population every year. That's insane

There's no country in the world that does that well at least you space to put them given the unoccupied nature of vast swaths of the country, but no I I Want Canada to thrive I want Canada to be proud of Canada I want Canada to be a partner and I hate what's going on both of the government and the relationships between the two because it's Like watching your parents fight don't please make up and everything will be well Hey folks deal of the century is what it's called deal of the century the America first plan for Canada's oil sands That's as was latest and of course you can get him at rebel news and elsewhere We enjoy your work and we thank you for coming on this the ricochet podcast and and good luck

Thanks, great to see you guys again. Bye bye. So, you know, when I was mentioning the church burnings in Canada, which seemed to be a consequence of people being angry at the church for all of the native schools and the deaths that they attended, if I recall correctly, they did a lot of soundings

with the ultrasound of the ground, and they couldn't turn up these mass graves. You've read these stories, Stephen? Oh yeah, no, it turned out to be a complete hoax. Kind of like all the church burnings that Bill Clinton said he remembered from his childhood when the historical records show there were none anywhere around where he lived.

But this is a favorite. Well, look, the left relies on the hoaxes much of the time. Bill, do you actually remember specifically the details of the Bill Clinton years? Because I do, I was there. And when people start to paint the 90s with a nostalgic brush that people painted the 70s

with in the night, I mean, inevitably every era gets sort of dipped in candy, and it was great in a suite before the awful times came. I I don't and sometimes I wish actually that I had that thing that comes with age where you just start to forget and you burnish memories or of course dwell on things but you know what aging the aging process is not our friend it can you can do things to your productivity and your life goals in your career and beyond require productivity. So you need energy and the aging process does not exactly give you endless energy and productivity unless of course you look into something called qualiacenulitic. As we age everyone accumulates

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Dot-com slash ricochet for an extra 15% off your purchase and we thank quality of signal ethics for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast Before we go Well, where do we end here? Apparently there was a CR. They always call it a CR, like everybody knows what that is now, I guess. Do we? Well, it's when you don't pass a budget like you're supposed to, in which we haven't been doing for almost 50 years now, passing a budget properly, the way the law says we should.

So they just say, we call it an omnibus continuing resolution, which means just keep the government going at current levels, except these things are always cobbled together in the middle of the night. They're always slip some extra things and new spending in and Republicans have sometimes tried to block it. And then Republicans when they have a majority had to rely on democratic votes to pass it. So they finally got wise to this game and passed a Republican only version. And that has put the Democrats in a panic

because it's got some spending cuts in it. I think they're modest, but still the arrow is in the right direction. And the Democrats, so I suppose here, political sciences will tell you that the way you can tell there's a real tectonic shift in politics going on is not when you change your own party as Trump has done, but when you compel the other party to move your direction.

Reagan did that to the Democrats in the 80s. Margaret Thatcher made labor moderate and so forth. Well suddenly Senate Democrats were thinking all week, we're going to borrow the favorite feudal tactic of Republicans and shut down the government. And apparently they have already collapsed on this because I think there are enough senators who say this is insane. And by the way, would you like to be, as you know, these government shutdowns, non-essential personnel stay home.

Do you want to be designated as a non-essential personnel in the age or the moment of Doge? I don't think so. I think the Democrat, apparently all the rumors are that the Democratic senators met in the caucus midweek and they were yelling and screaming at each other so loud you could hear it out in the hallway. So you know again this is Trump's genius and Republican, rare Republican confidence in Congress. They're actually gonna pass something that moves the ball down the field in our direction and divide the Democrats

along the way and that's just lots of fun. in our direction and divide the Democrats along the way and that's just lots of fun. I would be happier if the CR had to be printed out in every single person you voted on. It had to initial the page. Every single page. Yeah, not with an auto pen, Biden style. I mean, because I don't think they're even at the point now.

I mean, when you sign an EULA on your computer, all they ask is that you scroll to the end. The know, the program detects that you scroll to the end, you click the box and you hit accept. But I would like something just to know that they had to go through the gruesome process of at least acknowledging the length and depth of these things. On the other hand, one of the things we like about Doge

and the new administration is their ability to prune and remove to make things less complex and less burdensome. The headline you're gonna see next week week, if not already of course, is that the Trump administration proposes an increase in the amount of mercury in the air. I mean I'm absolutely certain that's what it is and what that would be is is the administration saying okay there's a regulation here that says the acceptable parts per million in the air or parts per billion is a point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one and we're gonna make that point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero two negligible non-noticeable non-lethal nothing of the sort but

making a change that doesn't crimp shall we say this that of the other thing in the economy that'll be the main headline it comes comes from Zeldin, the EPA, tweeting out, I mean he wrote a Wall Street Journal article about it, but I found out about it in a tweet thread where he discussed 13 or 14 consequential regulatory rollbacks that will help energy production and prosperity. So essentially moving us back to 2020

when the Biden administration came in. And apparently in 2020, this was a dystopian mercury filled hell hole out of the dark, satanic mills belching their poison into the air all around the country. So if we roll back to 2020, I guess we'll have to still hope that we can survive. I'd like to roll it back a little bit more,

somewhere between Iron Eyes know having a fake tear and Maybe Bill Clinton juice and the cafe standards. I don't know but there's there are so many regulatory boat anchors that are draped around the economy and so many of them come from the EPA and Regulations that have been not exactly codified in law, but somehow summoned into existence by the bureaucrats. So what do you think about these little steps here? I mean, it's EV mandates going the way of, I love how the people who say that Trump is doing

what he's doing to make money for his rich technocratic buddy, Elon, then turns around and does away with the EV mandates. Isn't that sort of counter to the other, and truly inconsistent? Yes and not really. I mean, what the Biden administration was doing was heavily subsidizing Elon's competitors. Now, Elon built his company on some subsidies,

but has become profitable and the leading maker in the world. And Musk actually said, I think even before the election, that getting rid of the mandates and subsidies would help his company. So it works either way. You're right. It's a wonderful irony. I do think though more broadly, what Zeldin has announced is something really fundamental. It's not just tweaking some regulations here or there or even rolling them back.

But the two big ones, and the problem is I'm a wonk and so I don't want to be wonky on a podcast because... Oh, wonk away. Well, just briefly, I mean the two things he is going after is first a thing called the endangerment finding And what essentially is what the Obama EPA used to say? Oh co2 the stuff that each human being breathes out 800 pounds worth a year is a dangerous health hazard And they're gonna try and roll that back and they've done some I know a bit of the background They've done careful legal work to make this stick. And that will kick the props out from under the EPA

trying to nationalize the electric utility industry, which is what Obama tried to do. And Biden was trying to do it again. The other one is, and this gets boring in a hurry, and so I won't, I'll get rid of it in a hurry. They're gonna redo the cost benefit analysis of prospective global warming. And that's called the social cost of carbon. And as I say, I won't bore listeners except to say,

well, do this. The Biden EPA said that the present value of future climate damages in economic terms is $150 a ton. I think that was the figure, maybe a little higher. Now, almost nobody ever says what is the social benefit of fossil fuel use and the one really credible economist is a Dutch guy named Richard Tolle who's very well respected in environmental economics. He did a calculation a few years ago said the social benefits of our fossil fuel use is at least $400 a ton. I think it's probably much higher and all these look this is economic flim flam and mumbo jumbo and you change the assumptions you get different numbers but the problem is the benefits of fossil fuels are

overwhelmingly positive and no one knows this better than my friend the new Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and he's gonna be delivering hammer blows to all this stuff and it's gonna be fun to watch. I think the show is almost over for the climatistas as I like to call them. It may be, you know, wonkery to you, and it may sound boring, but it's actually important to every single little aspect of the economy, if we're coming up with social goods

and the rest of it in declaring, yeah, I think you're right. I mean, as we've learned, it always pulls low. It's never up there in the top five or seven issues that people are particularly cared about it's something that people nod and pay lip service to but then live their life precisely if they do I'm very concerned about the climate I'm getting on a plane tomorrow aren't those mutually isn't there some sort of consistency no there isn't because I pay carbon credits I plan it etc no it will seem to be one of those fevers from which we awoke later.

I hope. Yeah. So there's that. I mean, but then again, there are people who I'm sure blame Elon for a great deal of carbon dumping into the atmosphere because of course of his SpaceX rockets and those people are probably at this very moment demanding that he turn them into electric vehicles somehow Somehow, you know if we can just develop a Star Trek warp factor in the you know, the the Replicators all will be well All is now over because we come to the end of the podcast and we release you now to your life to listen to something else will it be as interesting and as

into the podcast and we release you now to your life to listen to something else. Will it be as interesting and as wonk-filled as Stephen and Ezra have given you? I don't think so. That's why you come back week after week. But you have not left us a review on the Apple podcast thing. Have you yet? No, I mean, I've been begging you for 732 episodes.

Please do it now so I can stop kvetching and kvelling at you. You also might want to avail yourself of the fine products of Neurohacker and BambooHR, our sponsors. Support them for supporting us and of course, of course, I leave this for last because it's, I have to say it, week after week. If you would just go

over to ricochet.com, yeah I know that place, and go check out the member feed. Oh what's that? You can't because you're not a member? Well you know, sign up out the member feed. Oh, what's that? You can't because you're not a member? Well, you know, sign up and for a few little coins, it's just, you know, you have access to the same civil center-right community you've been looking for all your days on the internet. Stick around, of course. You can go to the comments and ricochet and add your thoughts if you are indeed a member.

And I'll see you this weekend at the diner, which is also held on the Ricochet Audio Network. That's right. Many podcasts, many topics, many great voices and many more podcasts to come too. So we'll see you next week. Hope Charlie's with us. Stephen, hope you're with us as well. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Bye-bye. Bye, James. Ricochet. Join the conversation.