Ezra Levant (17:44)
By the way, which first nations can stop the pipeline? In the liberal view, there are 600 bands in Canada. Do they have to be along the pipeline route? Can any one of them block it? Or does it take two? Or is there a magical number? And who in the band can it be? The Chief justice talking? Does there have to be a vote? And where does this power come from? Is this a new law somewhere? Are we now taking the position that there is a veto over industrial projects by a particular ethnic group? Can other. Can people who were married to aboriginals speak out on this? What's the plan? Or is the idea to keep it so vague that no one would be foolish enough to try? Hey, while we're at it, could we understand the new rules here? I mean, laid off steel workers get not only total sympathy, but lots of money. But oil and gas workers get neither. They have to pay for the privilege of working and building. They have to spend money on things like carbon capture that. No one, no one is trying to capture the carbon in real life. It's not of any value. And oil and gas is called dirty. As opposed to Mark Carney's clean energy. By the way, out of the corner of your eye, have you been watching Donald Trump lately and the Department of War, as the old Department of Defense is now called and Venezuela, you paying attention to that at all? You know, a few months ago, Trump declared drug cartels to be terrorist groups and he's been blowing up little smuggling boats for weeks now. There's an important legal reason to declare them terrorist boats. Changes the law of how you go about killing someone. It's not a criminal matter anymore. It's a war really. But you don't need the USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest ship ever built. The largest, newest American nuclear power to aircraft car. You do not need the USS Gerald R. Ford to take on little speedboats. The US Navy has mustered a mighty flotilla off the coast of Venezuela, and they've even reestablished an old Air Force base on Puerto Rico. They've just started using it again for jets that are too large to fly on an aircraft carrier because it's only about less than an hour's flight from Puerto Rico to Venezuela. That is an impressive show of force. And the whole world knows what the US Military can do after watching some of its activities, including against Iran. But look at this on the State Department's official website. I had to check twice to make sure this was real. This is real. Wanted Nicolas Maduro Moros Reward increase of up to $50 million. That's like the kind of rewards they would post in the Wild west, you know, bounty. 50, $50. Except for this. At US$50 million, that's a lot of money and no tax on it. That's a lot of money for anyone, let alone in a poor country like Venezuela. If you are Maduro's bodyguards, are you tempted just a teeny tiny bit? Or maybe if you're some political rival or some general in the army, are you tempted to take the 50 mil? Why not? If Maduro's gone, pretty sure the country is going to have a better path forward. Certainly you would have a better path forward for your family and $50 million. You know, I'll do another monologue another day about Venezuela and why I think Trump's going to topple Maduro. One way or the other. I think he's going to do it. But today, let me just talk about oil. I bet a lot of people would think Saudi Arabia has the oil world's largest oil reserves. And they'd be almost right. Saudi Arabia is a huge oil producer along with the United States and Russia. They each pump around 10 million barrels of oil a day. It's enormous. But in terms of reserves, I.e. proven oil still in the ground. Did you know that Venezuela is number one in the world? It is the biggest. It's bigger than Saudi Arabia, but I bet you can believe this. They barely produce a million barrels a day compared to 10 million for America, Russia, Saudi. That's what socialism and corruption will do to you. So imagine Venezuela post Maduro. Let's say something happens and Maduro is toppled or flees. Someone takes the 50 mil. I don't know. Maduro runs away. I don't know. And a new leader is in place. And the country is poor. It's unmoored from its former Allies. So I don't know if you know this, but Venezuela has sort of been colonized over the last few decades by Russia, China and Iran. And also, I know this is sort of crazy. Even Hezbollah has a base of operations in Venezuela. Can you believe it? All of those groups are on the back foot right now. I mean, obviously America is not just the global power, but it's the regional power. Remember the Monroe Doctrine? That's this American foreign policy doctrine that holds no other major power can operate in the Americas. They all have been. The fastest way to get Venezuela on the path to prosperity, though, which is the path to stability and the path to freedom is to develop its massive oil reserves. And you can bet the United States will be first in line. In case you don't know, you know, as Venezuela started going down the road of socialism a few decades ago, they expropriated billions of dollars worth of assets from US oil companies like Exxon and Chevron and ConocoPhillips. They were all operating in Venezuela until Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro came along and just grabbed them, just took them, just seized them, nationalized them. And they had some help from Russia and they were allied with Cuba. But all of those allies are looking weak right now. You think Russia's going to divert military equipment and manpower from Ukraine to help Venezuela? You think Iran and Hezbollah, which are both smashed, are going to come to Venezuelan's aid right now? Do you think China's going to muck about there? I think that Venezuela is going to be toppled and it's going to be an oil player pretty back soon. You know that Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips are all going to be back in Venezue minutes after any soldiers land. And you can bet that Venezuela will soon go from a million barrels a day to 3 million barrels a day where it was about 25 years ago to why not 5 million or 10 million barrels a day? They got as much oil as anyone in the world. Why wouldn't they be on par? And here's my point. That oil is going to go to the United States. Most likely. It's the closest huge market. And which do you think is going to happen sooner? That new Venezuelan oil coming up to the United States by tanker ship right into Texas, right into Louisiana, where all those refineries are that process heavy oil. There's heavy oil in two places. One is called the oil sands of Alberta. The other is called Venezuela. That Venezuelan heavy oil is going to come into the United States. Do you think that's going to get there sooner? Or do you think Mark Carney and Talib Noor Mohammed, that guy, that MP from British Columbia, the premier of British Columbia, grudgingly, is going to allow an oil pipeline to be built by the year 2040? Let me phrase it one more way. If you personally just pretend for a minute had billions of dollars to invest in oil, would you try to get to the front of the line in Venezuela and get in on that action? Or would you choose the 10 to 15 year, heavily politicized plan that Mark Carney has for you? Oh, if he's not too bored by it already. So yeah, my heart goes out to a thousand unemployed men in Algoma. It really does. They're learning what it's like to be in a country where heavy industry is considered boring and dirty and where the Prime Minister has no clue what to do about anything other than to give temporary handouts. Stay with us for more. You know, I really enjoyed myself at the Alberta UCP convention and we also had sort of a pub night, a get together for a couple hundred of our supporters, which was really fun and thanks to everybody who came out. I didn't quite have the chance to talk to every single person there, but I think I spoke to most people and I really appreciate your support. Thank you for that. In addition to the show yesterday, we had Angelika Toy and Sydney Frizard, a couple of our young reporters who did streeters, interviewed people and just basically made their presence felt. I was so proud of our whole rebel news team. We had Lise Merle there and Lyndon Dunkley from the back of house. I was there, Sheila Gonritz as a whole rebel news effort. And I think we asked some good questions, if I may say so myself, or at least better than what the CBC would have asked. Again, one of my favorite things about Danielle Smith is she wasn't shy to take questions. In fact, on the Saturday after her big speech there was a line of reporters and I think a majority of them were independent citizen journalists. It was wonderful to see. I saw Drew north there. I saw Juno. I thought it was really great. Anyways, let me leave you with a few videos from Angelica and Sid.