Rubio tells the West to wake up. Was he talking about Canada?
The U.S. secretary of state’s Athens speech had no apologies, no land acknowledgements and no mention of Canada — but every line landed here.
Article by Rebel News staff
On last night's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra played more than a dozen clips from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's address on the Pnyx in Athens, the hill where ancient Athenians met in assembly 2,500 years ago, with the Parthenon behind him.
Headlines framed the 3,500-word speech as Rubio telling Europe to wake from its slumber. Ezra argued that undersells it. The speech contains no apology and no land acknowledgement, and although Rubio never says the word "Canada," his diagnosis of a West that pulls down its monuments, opens its borders, outsources its industry and lets its military wither has a Canadian address at every stop.
The episode drew the contrasts point by point. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, spoke of a West born in Athens and carried to the New World, a 2,500-year inheritance Ezra noted he claims with pride. Justin Trudeau, by contrast, once told the New York Times that Canada has no core identity. Rubio cites Jesus Christ, Augustine and Aquinas; when he did the same in Munich in February, Prime Minister Mark Carney denounced it in French as "Christian nationalism" — in a country whose Charter opens with the supremacy of God.
SECRETARY RUBIO: The Greek philosophers’ search for the structure of the universe was inherited by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.
— Department of State (@StateDept) October 7, 2026
The hunger for new knowledge gave birth to Magellan’s first expedition around the world; to Columbus’ discovery of the Americas; and… pic.twitter.com/AHhcFYCNZE
Then came the numbers. The OECD projects Canada will post the lowest growth in living standards of any economy through 2060. Sir John A. Macdonald's statue was toppled and beheaded in Montreal, and the head is still missing. Temporary residents reached 3.15 million by the fall of 2024. Stellantis, GM and Algoma Steel have shed thousands of jobs. A leaked defence briefing found only 58 per cent of the forces Canada promised to NATO could actually respond.
Ezra closed on Ursula von der Leyen's offer to make Canada an associate member of the EU, asking how answering to a parliament an ocean away differs from becoming the 51st state.
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Ezra Levant
Rebel Commander
Ezra Levant is the founder and owner of Rebel News and the host of The Ezra Levant Show. He is the author of multiple best-selling books, including Ethical Oil, The Libranos, China Virus, and most recently, Trudeau's Secret Plan.
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