The Rebel to Rabble Review: Budget panned by all sides

While it’s a safe bet that Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland wasn’t expecting her inaugural budget to score a five-star review from the avowedly right-wing Rebel Media, she may not have been prepared for site co-founder Ezra Levant to declare it the “worst budget in Canadian history,” and “a laundry list of socialist dreams that are stowing away in this crisis.”

After going through all 724 pages of the “monstrous budget document” — which, he says, he doesn’t think Freeland has even read, and definitely didn’t write, as “that’s what lobbyists are for, right?” — he concludes that it’s not actually a budget at all.

“A budget implies a balance,” he writes. “You earn something, you spend something. You keep things under control This isn’t a budget. This isn’t even a wish list. This is the great reset — using the pandemic as an excuse to nationalize swaths of the economy; to demonize and eradicate other industries; and to divide us based on race and sex.”

To emphasize that point, he did a few word searches to “show what the government cares about.”

The results: “The word forestry appears six times, half of which are a ‘gender analysis’ on the industry,” which is “criticized for being too pro-male,” and 11 references to mining, “mainly to show how un-feminist it is.”

Gender “was mentioned 757 times,” while “racialized” (114), racist (3) and racism (40)” also “made frequent appearances.”

Levant’s conclusion: “There’s your Great Reset right there. “(It’s) even worse than anything Pierre Trudeau could do.”

Levant is significantly more upbeat about the future of Rebel Media itself, in the wake of YoutTube’s move to suspend ads on the Rebel channel.

“We’re done half of our YouTube jail term — remember, it was our first strike, so we’re being suspended for a week,” he reminded his audience last Friday.

“You know what? We’re not dead. Our videos are being watched. Our website was very busy. Our loyal supporters still support us.”

He’s also seeing a steady increase in numbers on two “friendlier platforms” they’ve been working with since the troubles with YouTube began: Rumble and Odysee, as well as a third, soon-to-be-launched alternative with “anti-censorship architecture.”

Amid the ongoing existential battle for easy access to eyeballs, the Rebel team continues to provide cross-country coverage of the anti-lockdown movement. It starts in Ontario, where video editor-turned-correspondent Lincoln Jay headed to Gravenhurst to follow up on “shocking footage” of an Ontario Provincial Police officer “shoving a 12-year-old boy to the ground at a local community centre” over the weekend.

“I knew the only way I was going to get the other side of the story was if I visited the scene of the incident itself,” he wrote.

Back in Toronto, mission specialist David Menzies stopped by the weekly anti-lockdown rally outside Queen’s Park to see if the “draconian orders” handed down by the provincial government against outdoor gatherings “would result in a whack ’em and stack ’em reception from the rank and file of the Toronto Police Service.”

Spoiler alert: It most emphatically did not.

“Even though hundreds of members of Yahoo Nation showed up, clearly violating the outdoor-gathering rule, we did not witness a single ticket issued, nor an arrest, nor a free Uber ride by way of the police paddy wagon,” he reports.

“Within hours of the new rules being announced, many Ontario police departments publicly announced they would NOT be enforcing Premier Ford’s orders to randomly stop citizens and demand their identification. And so it was that, for a delightful change, police allowed the Queen’s Park demonstration to go ahead — and even escorted the protestors through the streets of downtown Toronto.”

Meanwhile, Alberta correspondent Sheila Gunn Reid joined GraceLife congregants for an outdoor service at an undisclosed location “to worship without complying with restrictions on religious services,” after “provincial health authorities, RCMP, Paladin Security, and a private-fencing contractor seized control of the church property” earlier this month.

The church has “gone underground to escape the Alberta government’s enforcement of health orders,” she notes, adding that “Christians in China and parts of the Middle East routinely worship in underground, unofficial ‘house churches’ to avoid persecution by the state.”

She also checked in on “Alberta’s original restaurant rebel,” Chris Scott, the proprietor of the Whistle Stop Café in Mirror, Alta.

“Way back in January, (he) opened his diner in defiance of the lockdown restrictions on dine-in restaurant service,” she reminds Rebel viewers.

He’s now “back in a standoff with the government” over the latest move to temporarily ban indoor dining.

“Chris is unwilling to close, and the government wants to make an example of him,” she writes. “The Whistle Stop remains as busy as ever, and Chris remains firm in his conviction to do what’s right, no matter what kind of bullying the government has in store for him.”

Finally, the Gunn Show extended a Rebel-style welcome to Calgary-based reporter Adam Soos, the newest addition to the Rebel Media masthead.

“I’ve known Adam for a while now, and I’m glad he’s joined the team,” she says.

“We walked together at the March for Life a few years ago in Edmonton. I ran into him at an anti-Trudeau event in Calgary after that. And he’s done some work for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. He is definitely a fellow conservative traveller.”

Over at Post Millennial, Nico Johnson provides his take on the appointment of “failed Liberal MP” Ralph Goodale to serve as Canada’s emissary to the United Kingdom, which, he notes, “was made, even though he has neither any experience in the diplomatic service nor in the United Kingdom.”

Elsewhere on the site, Noah David Alter recaps an exchange between Ontario Government House leader Paul Calandra and an unnamed reporter over just how well Premier Doug Ford is managing the current pandemic.

“When asked by a reporter if he still has ‘confidence in Doug Ford to remain as premier,’ ” PM reports, “Calandra said that ‘the premier has done a spectacular job throughout this.’ ”

Finally, True North News contributor Andrew Lawton examines the “climate capitulation” of Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, who, according to Canadian Taxpayers Federation director Aaron Wudrick, “has reneged on a key leadership-campaign promise.”

Trending on the progressive-left side of the Canadian activist mediaverse:

• Passage essayist V.S. Wells damns with faint praise a federal budget that, in her view, “doesn’t even live up to (the Liberals’) low standards.” It offers “some small, gradual changes that might make things a little better, one day, maybe,” with “glaring omissions” in key areas such as pharmacare, affordable housing, and a wealth tax.
• Freeland’s fiscal to-do list also gets a failing grade from Canadian Dimension contributor Christo Aivalis, who makes the case that, despite “decent elements,” its “flaws and omissions are too significant.” It therefore “fails to meet the needs of Canadians during the greatest crisis facing this country since the Second World War.”
• Even so, Rabble’s Karl Nerenberg thinks that, by promising to spend billions on child care, the budget could leave “progressive voters” with a “hard decision to make” when they eventually go to the polls: “Do they trust the Liberals to actually carry out the ambitious plans outlined in this budget?”
• For its part, Press Progress points out that, during the 2015 campaign, Team Trudeau attacked then-New Democrat leader Tom Mulcair’s promise to raise the minimum wage, calling it “a mirage (that) wouldn’t help 99 per cent of workers,” only for Freeland to promise to do that very thing in her budget.
• Finally, U.S. President Joe Biden’s high-level climate summit “shows Canada is stuck in the slow lane,” according to Ricochet contributor Eric Doherty, who urges the government to “follow the U.S. shift away from highway expansion.”