- So now, if you, if you gave 10 bucks
maybe your account can be freezed by your own bank.
You know, you do that in a communist country.
In a communist country. Not supposed to happen in Canada.
But Justin Trudeau is doing that right now.
You don't need to use these kind of powers
to be able to solve the situation,
to resolve the situation in Ottawa right now.
(ethereal instrument music)
- I'm Dave Ruben and joining me today is the founder
and leader of the People's Party of Canada,
Maxime Bernier.
Maxime, old friend, welcome back to The Ruben Report.
- Thank you very much.
Very pleased to be with you.
- I wish we were talking under better circumstances,
but unfortunately
the man who is your Prime Minister up there in Canada
has exercised these emergency powers.
We're gonna get into all of that.
And you've really been at the forefront
of fighting for freedom from a Canadian perspective,
for many, many years.
I thought I could just throw to one video real quick up top,
because I've had you on the show a couple times
over the years.
First time was about three years ago this month.
And we did an event together about two and a half years ago
in Canada and, and ANTIFA showed up.
And a bunch of sort of hysterical lefties,
who have seemingly taken over your government, showed up.
And I think a bunch of people will remember this.
- [Woman chanting] Nazi scum, off the streets.
Nazi scum, off the streets.
(chanting continues)
Don't touch me.
Do not touch me.
- All right, so the reason I started with that
is because you have been talking about freedom
and liberty and choice and individual rights
in Canada for many years.
That right there, that woman yelling,
you know, "You're Nazis", et cetera, et cetera,
yelling it to a woman, whose husband who is next her
actually fought against Nazis in World War II.
That has been much of the response.
And it seemingly has leaked into your government now.
So I thought that would be a good place to start us off.
- Yeah, absolutely. You're right.
You know the world culture,
it's all in Ottawa right now in Parliament.
And as you know,
Justin Trudeau said to the protestors that are in Ottawa,
and I was there the last two weekends,
that they're racist and xenophobe.
And he tried to discredit the people that are participating
in that protest.
I call that a rally, you know because I was there,
people were smiling.
That was fun, dancing on the street,
and it was fun
because these people that were there understand
that the end of all these mandates is happening.
And right now, you know, in certain provinces in Canada,
like Saskatchewan, Alberta, Quebec,
they will lift all their mandates this month.
So it's only the federal government that is saying,
"No no no, we need to put more restriction on your freedoms"
with that Emergencies Act that Trudeau use this this week.
- How closely are you associated with the truckers?
It's a little hard to tell how these groups
are all associated,
who is coordinating all of this stuff,
but clear in two weeks they made a lot of forward movement.
As you just said, some of the premieres started saying,
"Hey we're gonna scale this stuff back."
Trudeau then had a moment to say, "Okay, let's do it.
Let's relax on this stuff."
And instead he put his foot on the gas.
- Yeah. He doubled down.
He doubled down on restrictions,
and you know there's no emergency in Canada right now.
And you know, if you use that Emergencies Act
you must show the threshold is very high.
And you must show that we are in a war in Canada.
There's insurrection in Canada, or democracy's in danger.
That's not the case.
And a lot of experts, legal experts said this week
that there's no justification for Justin Trudeau
to use that Emergency Act.
And actually the premier of Quebec,
the premier of Alberta, the premier of Saskatchewan
said to Trudeau, "We don't want you to use these powers.
We don't need that Act.
And we don't want that in our province."
But Trudeau didn't listen, and he went and he used it.
And now, you know, in Ottawa the police will act
and I don't know what can happen.
But that protest was very peaceful
and people were happy to be there and we'll see.
But Trudeau has one solution that he can use,
and that would be very, very effective.
It's to end the mandates at the federal level.
Actually, as you know
I cannot travel in my own country by plane
because I'm not double vaxxed.
That's unconstitutional and illegal.
And that's why I'm suing right now the federal government,
because of that.
But Trudeau can end that tomorrow.
There's no scientific reason for that.
There's no justification for that, but no,
he's doubling down with that legislation.
- So I get that guys like you and I
maybe are in a little bubble.
We love freedom.
We're around an awful lot of people who like to live freely.
I know it's a very radical idea,
but do you have a sense of who is really supporting Trudeau?
I don't see many people actually supporting him.
Even just personally looking online,
I don't see a lot of support for Justin Trudeau.
I don't see a lot of support
for exercising these emergency powers.
I see an awful lot of pushback,
but I don't see the people that are like,
"Yes, he is doing it right.
And these people are racists and you know,
they should have their heads crushed by the government."
- No, the way that he is managing that crisis,
he didn't have a lot of support from the population.
And actually we are growing our support.
We, the People's Party, you know,
we created that party in 2018.
Our first election was in 2019.
We had 1.6% of the vote.
Our second election last September 5% of the vote.
And now the last poll this week
we're supposed to be around 10%.
So we are growing. Our support is growing.
But for Trudeau the way that he managed that crisis,
for him it's a power grab, that's it.
And I believe that more and more Canadian understand that.
And I don't, if we have an election tomorrow,
it won't be good for Justin Trudeau.
- What do you think his endgame here is?
I mean, he's obviously scared a lot of people
and I want to talk to you
about what your Deputy Prime Minister said.
Obviously, Chrystia Freeland,
who you know gave this just unbelievably, awful speech
and that they're gonna freeze bank accounts and all that.
But before we get to that,
what do you think his real endgame is?
Is this purely,
"I'm gonna scare the hell out of these people.
Enough of them will disappear,
and my reign of power will just continue."
Is that, is it as simple as that?
- It may be something like that, but you know
it's very difficult to understand what he wants to do.
Actually, what we know is for being sure
that the thing that a bunch of violent people
are in a Ottawa right now, and that's not true.
And more and more people understand that it's not true.
And actually, as you know, the bridge,
the Ambassador Bridge, we had a protest over there
and the police was able to solve that peacefully.
And now the bridge is open.
So without adding Emergencies Act enforce.
So I don't know.
Trudeau, like he said during the last electoral campaign,
he is very good at devising the population.
Good Canadians and bad Canadians.
And for him the good one
are the one that are listening to him
and having the two shots or three shots
and all these mandates
and Canadians that want to have more mandates.
And that must stop. But no, he is doubling down on that.
- And it's worth mentioning
that Trudeau was reelected not too long ago
with less than a third of the popular vote.
That's just an important little piece to say.
So when the Deputy Prime Minister got up there, Freeland,
and said this thing about how they will freeze bank accounts
for people who donate to the truckers.
That they're gonna make sure that they cannot crowdfund.
That they're gonna figure out ways to regulate
cryptocurrency and a series of other things.
First off, I don't that they can do all that stuff.
I mean, regulating crypto.
The whole point of crypto is so that you can't regulate it.
But putting that aside,
I can imagine that that the average person
that is out there with you in Ottawa,
the average truck driver,
who these are not wealthy people for the most part.
They're just, you know, decent working class people,
they get scared, they get scared.
And then suddenly they don't want donate.
They don't want to be photographed out there.
And maybe that threat does enough to end this thing.
- Yeah, but you know it's sad.
It's very sad that in Canada
you use that kind of power to, you know.
These people that are giving to the truckers
are not terrorists.
They're not part of being in a violent,
you know, actions or something like that.
They're giving money to the truckers
because they believe in freedom
and they want to get regain their freedoms.
That's it.
So now if you, if you gave 10 bucks
maybe your account can be freezed by your own bank.
You know, you do that in a communist country.
In a communist country. Not supposed to happen in Canada.
But Justin Trudeau is doing that right now.
You don't need to use these kind of power to be able to,
to solve the situation,
to resolve the situation in Ottawa right now.
- Do you think, I mean, at the end of the day
I know he's head of the Liberal Party,
and we've often talked about classical liberalism together,
but this man is no liberal in any real sense of the word.
He's either a socialist or a communist,
or a fascist I would argue at this point.
What do you think really drives him?
What do you think is really driving him at this point?
Because he did not have to do this.
There was a moment a few days ago
where some of the premieres were saying,
"We're gonna scale back."
And clearly you guys were gonna hear the message.
It was obvious.
But he didn't, as I said.
So what do you think he really is trying to accomplish?
- Well I believe that, you know, power grab.
I believe that he enjoyed the fact that he can have
all these power and putting more restriction on our rights.
I believe that he is acting
like a communist dictator right now.
And I believe that he's enjoying that.
Because there's no reason to use that,
and to do that, to stop that.
There were very to stop the protests
at the Ambassador Bridge peacefully.
So you can do that.
And the answer is, end all these mandate.
And provincial governments in Canada
are listening to the truckers and ending all these mandate,
except the federal government.
It's, you know, there's no logic in all that.
And I hope because the Parliament will have to vote
on that legislation next week.
And I hope it won't pass.
If it doesn't pass, it would be the end.
If that legislation, that Emergency Act is enforced,
Trudeau will have another 30 days to use all these power.
If not, that would be the end.
And I hope we still have political parties in Ottawa,
in Parliament, that believe in freedom
and believe in our country.
And I hope that they're gonna say "No"
to Justin Trudeau next week.
- Are you hopeful that the Conservative Party,
you guys have a Conservative Party
that is not really conservative.
It's sort of, it's sort of liberal,
but that's for a whole other conversation,
but are you confident that perhaps you guys
and the more liberty-minded people can guide them properly?
It does seem maybe at some level that this Candice Bergen,
who's now heading the party is at least,
at least pretending to be a little for freedom?
- Yes, she's pretending, but we'll see.
Actually as you know,
Trudeau doesn't have the majority in Canada in Parliament
and he will need another party to pass that.
And the NDP, the strong leftist,
said that they will vote with Trudeau.
So that may pass in Parliament
and you still have the Senate in Canada,
and maybe the Senate will be able to stop that.
But I don't count on the Conservative Party anymore.
Like you said, they're intellectually, morally corrupt.
They're not conservative.
They're doing politics based on survey.
They don't have any conviction.
They were not there the last two years.
I was alone fighting for freedom.
Doing some rallies, being out there speaking with Canadians.
But the Conservative, they agreed with everything
that Trudeau know did for the last two years.
- I know you don't want extra credit for this,
cause I know you as a friend, but you actually got arrested,
what about a year ago?
The video, you took the video as it was happening.
It was pretty extraordinary.
You know, we'll we'll lay it in right here
so people can see.
- [Officer] Afternoon, sir.
We're in part with the RCMP.
If I can get you step outta the vehicle,
I'm going to place you under arrest right now.
Right now you're under arrest
under the Provincial Health Orders.
Okay. So if you can just put your hands behind your back,
face towards vehicle.
Okay. Gimme one hand here.
- [Second Officer] I'll get your signature okay? Thank you.
- [First Officer] The other hand.
Do you have any weapons or anything on you, sir?
- Weapon? No. No weapon. Only my words.
[Officer] Anything on you that's gonna hurt me?
Or anything like that? - Sorry?
[Officer] Anything on you that's gonna hurt me
or anything like that?
- No. No anything will hurt you, only my words.
Only my philosophy. Only what I believe in.
- [Officer] Okay.
Alright. Come on over this way.
I'll explain a few things to you here right away.
- That moment for you,
and what you said was just so perfect.
So beautiful.
Your words are what you have.
That's what they fear, in essence.
This can't be fun.
This can't be fun, what you're going through there.
- Yeah. I didn't expect that.
You know, after rally in a park, being arrested
and put in jail for 12 hours, for a non crime in Canada.
That happened last summer.
And like I said, in my speeches,
I'm ready to go back to jail, to fight for our freedoms.
And I will always fight for what is good for this country.
- Maxime, what can people do to help?
You know, obviously we're trying to amplify
the message here.
People are trying to help with crowdfunding,
whatever they they can do.
And it has nothing to do with supporting racists or bigots
or homophobes or transphobes or any of the other nonsense.
Which is exactly why I played that video up top,
cause that's what they were yelling about us
three years ago.
What else can we do to help?
- Well first of all, they can follow me on Twitter
@MaxineBernier.
They can also go on our website,
peoplespartyofcanada.ca
They can donate.
They can help us.
This new political party is growing step by step.
And I believe that the future will be better for us,
for Canadians, if we have more support.
But our support is growing.
So they can go and read our platform.
They're gonna see that we have a platform
that is based on, for principle, individual freedom,
personal responsibility, respect and fairness.
Thank you for giving me that opportunity
to speak to you and with your viewers.
- Maxime, I know you will always fight for Canada
but I want you to know
that I've got an extra guest room here.
If you ever consider political asylum, Florida ain't bad.
But I know you wouldn't do it
cause I know you're gonna fight for your country.
- I appreciate that.
Thank you, Dave.
- If you're looking for more honest
and thoughtful conversations about international issues
instead of nonstop yelling
check out our international playlist.
And if you wanna watch full interviews
on a variety of topics, check out our full episode playlist.
They're all right over here.
And to get notified of all future videos
be sure to subscribe and click the notification bell.