Less than a day after U.S. President Donald Trump signed off on a trio of executive orders targeting a wide swath of Canadian products for yet another round of tariffs — this time, at 50 per cent, the highest allowable under the previously obscure section of the Tariff Act used to deploy the order, which is currently set to come into force on Aug. 19 — Rebel News commander Ezra Levant kicked off his nightly broadcast with a broadside critique of the reaction from Canada’s premiers — who, by a serendipitous twist of timing, had descended in Charlottetown en masse for their yearly summer summit.

“The premiers are all at it, having a taunting contest with Donald Trump,” he noted.

“Well, he wins all of those, but the big loser, of course, is going to be Canadian exports. I don’t know why the premiers can’t control themselves and just get a deal rather than get even.”

He does, however, have a theory, as it turns out.

“I think it’s because maybe they don’t want a deal,” Levant suggested.

“They want to shift the subject to the ‘Trump-induced recession’ — that’s what they’re going to say to cover up their own recession, and, in some cases, corruption.”

Trump “is a challenge for any national leader,” he noted.

“The U.S. and China have a prickly relationship, especially with Trump being a nationalist. That makes getting a trade deal tough. What’s Canada’s excuse? Why can’t we get a deal done? All the other countries in the world are, and we have by far the most to lose. I truly believe that Mark Carney and Doug Ford don’t actually want a deal, they prefer to have a weak, shrinking economy in which they are the bosses.”

The Rebel recap of his monologue also takes aim at Ford for “threatening Alberta’s oil patch and Saskatchewan’s potash industry” in his initial response to the latest threat.

“Instead of fighting for Canadian jobs at the table, his answer is to put western jobs on the chopping block. Is that really his to sacrifice? It’s political theatre, pure and simple, and it’s western workers who pay the price.”

In closing, the recap gives the final word to Trump’s top trade advisor.

“The real issues, according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, are clear: the dairy cartel, provincial liquor restrictions, and autos,” it concludes.

“Why should Canadians across the country pay double for milk and cheese so Quebec can maintain massive tariffs on American dairy? Provincial booze bans aimed at “hurting” Trump are empty gestures that only hand the Americans more ammunition. And threatening to dismantle the U.S. economy while importing tens of thousands of Chinese electric vehicles a year is not a serious position. These are unserious men in serious times. Mark Carney has not told the premiers to stand down. He has not defended Alberta oil or Saskatchewan potash either. Western Canada is left to pay the price.”

For her part, Alberta-based Rebel Sheila Gunn Reid fired off a fresh fact check in response to a social media post from the Alberta New Democrats.

“(Alberta Premier) Danielle Smith prioritizing her relationship with the Trump administration, they just announced 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian exports,” the party-run account noted on X.

“Albertans are paying the price while she puts her political interests first.”

Not so, according to Gunn Reid, who included a real-time reply from Levant in her rebuttal.

“The White House specifically exempted Canadian energy products from the latest round of tariffs. That’s significant because the United States is by far Alberta’s largest export market, purchasing about 90% of Alberta’s international exports, and energy accounts for the overwhelming majority of those exports. While some Alberta manufacturers may be affected, the province’s largest export sector is not.”

The administration “did not cite Danielle Smith” in announcing the new tariffs, she added.

“The White House says the tariffs are part of its broader trade dispute with Canada over issues including retaliatory tariffs on dairy, automobiles and other trade measures, including a ban on U.S. booze, which Alberta removed a year ago. Neither the White House announcement nor President Trump attributed the tariffs to Premier Smith or her relationship with the administration.”

In a separate post, which was also billed as a “fact check,” Gunn Reid took on Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller’s “proposed new regulations” related to the use of French in private businesses, which “would require federally regulated employers with more than 100 employees in designated regions, including Calgary and Edmonton, to provide services in French and give employees the right to work in French,” she explains.

“But do the numbers support expanding these requirements into Alberta? Combined, fewer than 2,200 people in Alberta’s two largest cities speak only French, despite a combined population of 4.5 million. In practice, employers covered by the legislation will have a strong incentive to hire bilingual English-French workers for many customer-facing and service positions, potentially putting the vast majority of Albertans who do not speak French at a disadvantage when applying for those jobs.”

Reporting from Montreal, Rebel correspondent Alexandra Lavoie checks in on the apparently no longer ongoing legal battle facing Sergio Da Silva, “a Transition Montréal candidate, bar owner and contributor to Cult MTL,” who “had published statements online including ‘Murder your local transphobe’ and ‘If any politician talks about anything other than ways to fix the cost of living, simply murder them,’” she notes.

“Da Silva recently appeared on a podcast and portrayed himself as the victim of a smear campaign. He claimed Montreal police called him approximately one week before the election and ordered him to surrender. According to Da Silva, he was arrested over alleged online death threats and remained subject to release conditions and a publication restriction until July 2.”

But “more troubling is Da Silva’s claim that the prosecution was ultimately abandoned. He is now fundraising to cover more than $6,000 in legal fees, with his campaign reportedly collecting approximately $9,000 in two days,” she reveals.

“Rebel News contacted the SPVM and Quebec’s Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions. Police referred questions to the DPCP, which said no public information was available. The DPCP’s guidelines state that reasons for declining charges are generally confidential unless disclosure is considered necessary to preserve public confidence. But how does secrecy preserve confidence in a case involving alleged threats against politicians and members of the public?”

Meanwhile, Rebel contributor Tamara Ugolini goes through the fine print of a fresh batch of “newly uncovered emails” released under federal access information laws that were sent during the “frantic early days of what would become the global COVID-19 pandemic,” when “Canadians were expected to look to Dr. Theresa Tam, then Chief Public Health Officer, for straight answers.”

Instead, “they received a troubling disconnect between private awareness and public messaging,” she contends.

“On January 7, 2020, Tam received an email titled ‘Chinese News coverage of the Wuhan disaster,’ that “highlighted concerning developments in Wuhan, including an unidentified respiratory outbreak, and flagged concerning increases in flu data from Toronto Public Health specifically. At that point, Canada’s official line was that no similar cases had been detected domestically, no Canadians had fallen ill abroad, and existing travel advisories were sufficient. Maddison was quoted as saying the federal government was ‘closely monitoring’ the situation in coordination with provinces and the World Health Organization. Just weeks later, on January 20, Tam continued to project calm in public statements, claiming low risk to the public.”

As she sees it, “the timeline raises serious questions about what officials knew — and when,” she notes.

“It wasn’t long before that Canadian Armed Forces members were returning from the Military World Games in Wuhan in late October 2019, some isolated on flights home with severe respiratory symptoms. Still, by the end of January 2020, the public message remained reassuring: no cases in Canada. By late January 2020, when Canada’s first official cases emerged, opportunities for early containment had already narrowed. These emails and timeline paint a picture of officials who had intelligence from Chinese media, their own global networks, reports from returning military personnel, and yet maintained a public posture of low risk.”

Rounding out the Rebel roster, Levant posted an update on his threat to sue the “scandal-riddled Regina Police Service” after his account was blocked on X.

“They backed down,” he announced. “They’ve agreed to stop blocking me on Twitter (now X). But buried in that same letter, they’re still making veiled threats,” he notes.

“The Regina Police Service says it does not intend to block me, Rebel News, or any affiliated person going forward. But — and here’s the catch — it ‘reserves the right to moderate comments’ to enforce its own ‘policies and community standards.’ Which policies? Perhaps the same policy that approved the loudspeaker I criticized in the first place. A win is a win. But that pretzel of a letter tells me this force still needs a lesson in civil liberties.”

Over at Juno News, Clayton DeMaine files an “exclusive” follow-up on the controversy surrounding a Windsor, Ont. Goodlife Fitness “after rumours online suggested that a staff member might have been fired after an incident last week where a Sikh TikTok influencer alleged he had been ‘racially singled out’ when asked to leave the gym for wearing a kirpan.”

In fact, “a spokesperson for Goodlife Fitness told Juno News that ‘no one has been, nor will be, terminated as a result of the interaction in our Windsor club,’” he reports. (A quick search reveals that a similar statement was also provided to Sun Media’s Bryan Passifiume.)

Elsewhere on the site, Alex Dhaliwal highlights Ford’s suggestion that Canada “could dismantle the U.S. if we wanted to, if we all worked together,” adding: “They need to feel the pain.”

Rounding out the right-of-centre media roster, The Counter Signal contributor Quinn Patrick crunches the numbers from a recent poll by Abacus Data.

“The gap between the Liberals and the Conservatives is closing in as the Carney government now only holds a six-point lead, with much of their support coming from Canadians aged 60 and older,” the story notes.

“Their favourability remains the result of fears over U.S. President Donald Trump and other international threats.”

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

• As wildfires continue to rage in Ontario, Ricochet reporter Jon Thompson talks to a representative of the union representing Ontario firefighters “sounding the alarm over ‘government mismanagement at the highest levels,’” and warning that its “culture of relying on surge funding to pay for forest fires is costing Ontario a lot more than money.”
• Also keeping an eye on Ontario’s wildfires: Canadian Dimension contributor Mark Winfield, who warns that the province “needs to both adapt to the reality of a changing climate and its consequences, and develop a serious strategy for not making the problem worse,” but argues that “so far, Ontario is failing on both fronts.”
• In her latest piece for The Maple, Emma Paling looks at how Prime Minister Mark Carney “promoted his plan for a new Alberta pipeline on social media” as “dozens of wildfires burned across northern Ontario, creating dangerously poor air quality across much of the province.”
• Finally, The Breach’s Desmond Cole examines how “Black prisoners in Ontario’s jails are being assigned to harsher living conditions than other prisoners, through the use of an artificial intelligence tool that claims to predict their behaviour,” prompting a class action lawsuit that contends the practice violates their Charter rights.