Arrested for doing journalism in Canada — why the silence from other journalists？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
184.71912
Summary
In case you haven t heard, he was arrested for what? For trying to do journalism on a public sidewalk, in the public interest, about a public figure? I'll tell you the story if you missed it yesterday, and why the deafening silence from other journalists is deafening.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my friends. Today, I recap what happened to David Menzies yesterday.
00:00:04.620
In case you haven't heard, he was arrested. For what?
00:00:08.360
For trying to do journalism on a public sidewalk, in the public interest, about a public figure.
00:00:16.300
I'll tell you the story if you missed it yesterday.
00:00:18.520
Before I do, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus because you've got to see the video.
00:00:23.600
And that's the number one thing you get with Rebel News Plus.
00:00:25.360
You get the video version of these podcasts, and I want you to see with your eyes.
00:00:30.860
The five police cars swooping down on little old David to arrest them.
00:00:36.440
So just go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe.
00:00:54.660
Tonight, a journalist was arrested in Canada for doing journalism.
00:00:58.700
Why the deafening silence from other journalists?
00:01:02.400
It's September 3rd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
00:01:06.480
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:10.160
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:14.240
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
00:01:20.100
You're watching my nightly show that's behind a paywall.
00:01:32.120
My daily show plus weekly shows from David Menzies and Sheila Gunn-Reed.
00:01:40.480
But I hope you also know that for almost six months now, we've been doing a daily live stream.
00:01:45.740
Every day, weekdays, at 12 noon Eastern time, there's just so much news to cover.
00:01:50.880
And doing it live is a great way to cover hot stories while they're still hot.
00:01:56.020
It's like a call-in radio show, except people can type in.
00:02:00.780
And YouTube has a thing called Super Chats, where people chip in a few dollars.
00:02:04.500
Their comment gets highlighted in a bright color on the screen, and it sticks around a little bit on the ticker.
00:02:09.980
And we like to read those comments out because YouTube actually shares 70% of that money with us.
00:02:17.020
I do them three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, usually.
00:02:20.200
David Menzies, Sheila Gunn-Reed do it a couple times a week, usually.
00:02:26.780
And you may have seen it, but let me provide some updated news since then.
00:02:32.700
But the reason I tell you all this is because I want to make sure you're not missing out on one of our favorite ways to talk about the news.
00:02:38.200
These daily live streams and your ability to chat back to us in real time.
00:02:42.380
Okay, so we had a noon hour live stream, as we do.
00:02:45.060
And then we had a special live stream that started in the late afternoon because our reporter, the amiable David Menzies, was arrested.
00:02:56.740
And more than 100,000 people watched a live stream we did from the actual scene.
00:03:06.300
And it was sort of rickety because the cell phone coverage wasn't that great and the wind made it really hard to hear.
00:03:12.500
But still, more than 100,000 people watched because they were shocked that a journalist was being arrested in Canada for doing journalism.
00:03:19.780
I was shocked, too, and I was furious, and I was spitting bullets.
00:03:24.980
And we had brought along the toughest lawyer we know, Giddy Mammon.
00:03:28.420
And he took the high road trying to explain to the police why freedom of speech matters and how their instructions to clear a public interest journalist off a public street while he's doing journalism about public matters, how that's unconstitutional.
00:03:52.780
No, no, you believe that I advise my clients to break the law.
00:04:01.460
We're not here to argue, but it's a simple at once.
00:04:10.460
I think it's incredibly important that you know.
00:04:50.360
Arresting a journalist for trying to ask questions of the mayor.
00:04:57.640
Peel Regional Police pulling their men off of a murder...
00:05:07.800
You're at the back of my officers, my colleagues.
00:05:16.680
There's a different standard for the Trespass Act in public property.
00:05:20.280
They're taking up a proper way instead of coming up here.
00:05:23.420
Why are you listening to a hand-scrawled note that's not even served?
00:05:29.560
I could verbally ask you or tell you that you're not allowed on the property.
00:05:34.400
If I didn't have the right to be here, he has the right to be here.
00:05:38.120
Not when an agent of the property has asked you not.
00:05:42.620
You're confusing private property with public property.
00:05:46.700
Four cars and all you cops pulled off the shooting file.
00:05:54.020
We studied the law in advance like we did when we went to Toronto City Hall.
00:05:57.980
Toronto Mayor John Tory had allowed a gross, unhygienic, illegal shantytown
00:06:03.980
to be set up right outside City Hall, and he wouldn't enforce a law against it.
00:06:08.800
That's bad enough, but rather, City Hall security and Toronto police told us
00:06:15.240
So we went back big time with bodyguards and lawyers,
00:06:18.040
and we reasoned with the police, and it actually worked.
00:06:20.940
The police knew we were right, and after haggling with us for, I don't know,
00:06:23.840
20 or 30 minutes, they just admitted it and let us in.
00:06:30.260
I'm going to walk there now, and that'll go one of three ways, I think.
00:06:35.960
One is, I'll go by myself, and I'll probably get attacked.
00:06:41.480
The other is, you come with me, and I don't think they're going to lay a glove on you.
00:06:45.900
But I know how tough it is to be a cop these days.
00:06:56.940
Because the only reason I'm here with 15 of my friends is because we were shooed away from the town square yesterday,
00:07:04.840
and thought the president of the company himself is going to come down and prove that in Toronto,
00:07:09.620
the town square is a place where a journalist can go peacefully.
00:07:16.840
And if I get personally attacked, we need to know it.
00:07:24.020
I'm going to do it whether or not you guys are there.
00:07:25.600
Well, the thing is, I did mention that to them, and they don't launch you on the property right now.
00:07:32.820
I mean, their opinion matters not at all to me.
00:07:35.420
What I'm saying is, why don't you shoot some footage from here and get what you can get here
00:07:39.520
while we're standing here and make sure that you guys are safe right now?
00:07:44.200
Because I'm a free citizen, and that's my town hall.
00:07:55.780
I'm not interested in playing legal games with mall cops, officer.
00:07:58.280
So unless you have any last-minute things to say,
00:08:01.280
I am now going to walk with my bravest cameraman and David.
00:08:12.440
I hope you guys will just walk with me to the stairs.
00:08:15.460
I'll do five minutes of journalism, and then I'll call it a day.
00:08:22.840
I thought that was a magnificent performance of, I guess, outdoor lawyering.
00:08:31.120
You can already hear the moans from the sacred circle of the Autonomous City.
00:08:35.600
And we're being met with the mall cops, for lack of a better term.
00:08:45.960
But in the end, I said, look, I'm going in, and you know the law.
00:09:10.540
This, I understand it was David and me, and our lawyer, Giddy Mammon, who were just standing
00:09:14.820
outside the arena on the public sidewalk, and no one else was there.
00:09:20.320
There was actually no one else to cause trouble with, other than Patrick Brown's personal private
00:09:29.440
For example, did you know that you can't hide your identity if you're a security guard?
00:09:37.940
I pressed them first, just to push back at them.
00:09:45.160
And certainly it makes this individual guilty by his opinion.
00:09:52.220
I do not want you to take a picture of my license.
00:10:44.640
The law says nothing about putting your phone down.
00:10:45.440
I'm going to show it to you, but I don't want you to take a picture of my license.
00:11:00.200
I'll show you as long as you put your phone down.
00:11:06.420
If you don't do that, mate, you're breaking the law.
00:11:08.500
But it doesn't say that you're allowed to be confused.
00:11:16.040
I was mad because of how they had been treating our people.
00:11:18.740
But look, those mall cops really have no power over us.
00:11:24.080
But it wasn't so funny when literally five police cars rolled in with real police just
00:11:29.480
a few minutes later to arrest David Menzies, a 58-year-old journalist armed only with a microphone,
00:11:36.040
literally standing in the hot summer sun with me and Giddy, all by ourselves.
00:11:45.100
Not when literally that same day, the front page of the Toronto Sun had a huge story about
00:11:49.160
a gangland-style shooting at a cemetery in Brampton, part of a gang war.
00:11:54.920
And the Peel Regional Police, that's who police is Brampton, thought it was important enough
00:11:59.380
to take five police cars worth of cops away from that gangland shooting investigation that
00:12:05.120
chased down David Menzies, who was literally doing nothing more than standing in an empty
00:12:09.840
parking lot on public property waiting to do political journalism.
00:12:13.980
Why not just let us stand there in the sun until we got bored and left one, two, three
00:12:23.080
Obviously, it was a setup with political motives.
00:12:25.100
No real police would have done that on their own.
00:12:34.660
But a ticket for $75 and being marched off the property by a cop, I hated that part.
00:12:40.280
If it were just a $75 ticket, less than the most, I don't know, average speeding or parking
00:12:50.180
You don't arrest someone when you give them a parking ticket.
00:12:52.840
Why did they stuff David in the back of a police car?
00:12:57.880
Why did they make him sit in the back there for so long?
00:13:02.540
To abuse him, to punish him, to psychologically mess with him, to let him know that if he
00:13:06.600
continues to embarrass Mayor Patrick Brown of Brampton, that he will be punished again
00:13:11.160
and again, and maybe next time it'll be painful handcuffs done too tight, and then maybe next
00:13:15.440
time it'll be night in jail, and maybe it'll be Friday night, so David will spend the weekend
00:13:24.580
That's why you arrest someone for a laughable $75 ticket.
00:13:28.540
All because David caught Patrick Brown sneaking in to play hockey in the public arena from
00:13:34.700
which he had just banned the children of his city from doing the same.
00:13:39.040
Holy mackerel, I think I see Patrick Brown himself.
00:13:56.380
No, I'm just coming to check in on our facility, so I'm going to, we're going to check you,
00:14:07.120
Mr. Brown, how come the kids in Brampton can only practice sports, but your buddies can
00:14:14.420
So, I don't know why you are harassing people in the city of Brampton, but you shouldn't
00:14:23.360
So, your guys handed out 122 bylaw violations in one week.
00:14:32.600
Mr. Brown, why is there a hockey game going on in this arena?
00:14:38.160
I thought you're only allowed to practice sports, not play them.
00:14:42.000
And who is paying the $1,000 a day, Mr. Brown, for this rink?
00:14:50.660
Mr. Brown, are these taxpayer dollars being used for your buddies to play hockey on this
00:15:03.480
So, Mr. Brown, why is there one law for me and one law for thee in this city?
00:15:16.220
So, we're obviously going to fight this ticket.
00:15:22.880
Just to be clear, trespass is an important law.
00:15:26.200
If someone in your house is in your house, your yard, your business, you have the right
00:15:31.600
There are some limits when you operate as a public space, like a major shopping mall.
00:15:36.080
If you have big signs saying, hey, everybody enter the mall, there are some rights that
00:15:40.840
And of course, you can't discriminate as a business based on, let's say, race.
00:15:45.280
So, a mall couldn't kick out someone for being black, for instance.
00:15:48.740
But generally, trespass laws are used by private property owners without limit.
00:15:54.720
But this was a public facility, a sidewalk on a parking lot on a public place.
00:16:00.400
And parks in Brampton are covered by their own law that has a narrow list of reasons you
00:16:06.400
Breaking a noise limit, being abusive of other people, loitering past 11 people.
00:16:22.460
But you can't have a mayor say, you can't go into a public park of my city because I
00:16:30.560
If a mayor were to do that, we would just laugh at him and say, you're just a little
00:16:44.400
Even if the politician of the town doesn't like someone, there's no enemies list of people
00:16:53.940
But even more so, when David is at the park, not to play frisbee or to play hockey, but to
00:17:00.460
ask questions to the mayor about his misconduct.
00:17:02.480
Then not only has the mayor not met the test to throw someone out for trespass, but it's
00:17:08.200
The journalist's right to do journalism, which is protected in our Charter of Rights Section
00:17:14.240
It's not just a parks bylaw that you're making now.
00:17:16.380
Now it's the charter right to freedom of the press.
00:17:18.960
And that's what bugs me about these cops in Peel Region.
00:17:23.680
They were there to follow orders, no matter how corrupt or illegal the orders were, no
00:17:27.600
matter how bizarre the hand-scrawled trespass orders were.
00:17:31.600
Like this weirdness banning Rebel News from any park for a year.
00:17:42.340
It wasn't served on our corporation, this notice.
00:17:48.980
That's literally as weighty as a child's doodle.
00:17:56.580
It's a doodle from a private corporation, you know, security guard paid by the mayor.
00:18:03.640
I should tell you, after David was walked off the property, I walked back on with two
00:18:07.140
of our cameramen, Mocha and Efron, all the way to the front, near the cops, near the private
00:18:13.420
Maybe they were picking on David because he's so friendly, and I was growling so hard at the
00:18:22.360
So I just went back after David was walked off to show them that I don't bend the knee,
00:18:26.620
and they didn't want a piece of it for some reason.
00:18:37.460
The cops ought to be ashamed of themselves for being Patrick Brown's playthings.
00:18:41.640
I'm really embarrassed for the Peel Regional Police.
00:18:43.600
I think maybe they were a little bit embarrassed, too.
00:18:46.220
You may not think it because I rail against political police so much, but I'm actually pro-cop.
00:18:57.100
I hate the criminal gang that toppled the Sir John A. MacDonald statue in Montreal.
00:19:01.540
By the way, the Montreal police were right there watching the whole thing.
00:19:05.600
So am I supposed to cheer for those political cops watching as Sir John A.'s torn down?
00:19:10.480
Or the political city of Toronto cops who abided the shantytown in front of the city hall for a month and told us to leave?
00:19:15.940
Or am I supposed to cheer the RCMP who abide the lawlessness along Canadian pipelines?
00:19:20.760
Or am I supposed to cheer the RCMP in Alberta who stood idly by at the railroad blockades early in the year
00:19:26.880
until some normal Alberta boys just moved the junk themselves in 10 minutes?
00:19:34.980
But when it counts, the cops obey their left-wing political masters and they allow politically correct crimes to precede them.
00:19:42.340
And when David asked the question of a thin-skinned mayor after catching him red-handed in the arena,
00:19:53.980
If you call the Peel Regional Police and tell them your bike is stolen, they won't even come.
00:19:59.900
They might come by later on in the week when they have time.
00:20:18.460
As in the official media, the fancy ones who say that we at the Rebel are not real journalists.
00:20:24.900
Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun mentioned this arrest in his column today.
00:20:32.420
Of course, the fancy media party types say that those two aren't real journalists either.
00:20:39.240
But what about the CBC, CTV, Global, the Global Mail, the National Post, all the civil liberties groups, the media fancy pants from them?
00:20:52.420
They ban us from press galleries when they can.
00:20:54.200
Rex Murphy's own colleagues at the National Post are trying to get Rex Murphy fired from their own company.
00:21:02.280
And, of course, politicians just hate us because they don't control us because they don't pay our salaries like they do with the media party taking the bailout.
00:21:11.340
We're going to fight his $75 ticket all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada if we need to.
00:21:15.380
And we'll demand disclosure of all internal police communications.
00:21:18.560
I simply don't believe that real police would send five police cars to arrest David Menzies with a political direction.
00:21:26.040
That $75 ticket is going to cost the police and Patrick Brown a lot more than it costs us.
00:21:33.300
If you want to help us fight back, not with violence, that's the way of the left, but with the law, that's our way, please do.
00:21:48.160
We sent out an email too quickly yesterday from our head office erroneously stating that he was sent to jail.
00:21:58.420
But jail is obviously the next step for him if he dares to do any more reporting on Patrick Brown.
00:22:05.420
Say, what do you think of us moving our reporting of Patrick Brown from the ice hockey arena to City Hall?
00:22:11.920
Do you think the police would still kick out David from City Hall and arrest him there?
00:22:22.240
And do you think the media party would still remain silent about that if they did?
00:22:32.440
Well, joining us now in person is the very courageous David Menzies.
00:22:52.300
I mean, obviously, you weren't going to be thrown into a dungeon.
00:22:56.160
But to be arrested, to be manhandled, put in the back of a tight-fitting police car, no air conditioning, it's demoralizing.
00:23:05.740
I mean, we thought you were going to be sent to jail because you were in that car for a long time.
00:23:11.320
Or as I like to call it, Ezra, another day at the office.
00:23:13.840
I mean, it was this time last year at the Andrew Scheer press conference at a rec center, too,
00:23:19.800
that the RCMP roughed me up, handcuffed me, and thankfully the Durham Regional Police saw how ridiculous that was
00:23:30.580
All kidding aside, this was basically, I thought, us replicating our late June caper going to Nathan Phillips Square,
00:23:39.540
a filthy tent city occupied by thugs, was violating 11 sections of the Trespass Act,
00:23:45.560
yet they got to remain there for three entire weeks.
00:23:48.280
And City Hall security and police were saying, get out of here, you're causing a disturbance,
00:23:54.360
i.e. practicing journalism, and you'll be arrested.
00:23:58.700
And you said, oh no, we don't bend the knee for that kind of nonsense.
00:24:05.320
But when a police officer just doesn't even listen to the law, says, I don't care what you have to say,
00:24:10.780
didn't care what I had to say, didn't care what Gideon Mammon, our lawyer, had to say,
00:24:14.520
and physically grabs you and stuffs you in the back of a police car,
00:24:21.140
And unless we were going to do something shocking and physical,
00:24:25.100
like try to pull you out of the car, which obviously we wouldn't have done,
00:24:31.620
On location, now after you were fraud marched off the property,
00:24:37.360
me and a couple of the other guys walked back on just to prove that,
00:24:41.020
despite what was done to you physically, we were not defeated.
00:24:48.520
Now it shifts to fighting the $75 ticket, and it would make no commercial sense to do that.
00:24:56.520
But we are doing it because we don't believe it's a legitimate fine.
00:25:01.360
We don't believe that you were trespassing by doing journalism on public property.
00:25:05.940
But probably the most important thing to me is using the disclosure requirements of the government.
00:25:12.080
When the government prosecutes you, they have to do something called disclosure,
00:25:16.220
They have to give you all of their stuff that relates to it,
00:25:20.080
especially anything, they use the phrase exculpatory, anything that's to your benefit.
00:25:25.980
So they don't just have to give you stuff that they want to.
00:25:30.000
They must give you stuff that they don't want to show you.
00:25:34.060
And I expect that we will find what is so obvious to me,
00:25:39.120
five police cruisers do not swarm a reporter who's standing by himself outside a hockey arena by himself.
00:25:46.500
That doesn't happen unless there's some hidden hand.
00:25:49.100
And this is what we need to hang the action on, Ezra, I think.
00:25:53.820
So just to give the viewers context, when I first went there in the first week of August
00:25:57.600
for my first caper to catch Patrick Brown up to his ice hockey shenanigans,
00:26:04.060
I was given two tickets by Paladin Security, one for me personally, one for every rebel employee.
00:26:11.980
Now, I remember our lawyer, Aaron Rosenberg, literally laughing out loud when he saw this
00:26:18.040
because he had never seen such a thing where an entire company's employee base was given a ticket.
00:26:24.800
Secondly, to call this a ticket is a stretch because these were pieces of paper
00:26:37.160
It's not something that would be recognized by a court of law.
00:26:39.880
And from what I could tell while I was seated in the backseat of that cruiser, Ezra,
00:26:43.460
it looked like the argument, the debate between you and the police officers on Wednesday
00:26:48.720
was they were saying, you've got to fight this in court.
00:26:51.720
And you were saying, rightfully, I think, there's nothing to fight.
00:27:01.220
I mean, if someone came on your property, you could have a note saying get off.
00:27:09.700
And the reason why, I mean, there were problems with the form of those notices.
00:27:24.360
There were a lot of problems with it in its form and substance.
00:27:30.480
Because if you're on public property, you can't be ousted from public property without a particular reason.
00:27:38.420
And simply the mayor not liking you, that's enough for the mayor to kick you out of his house.
00:27:49.480
I don't like you get off public property because I'm the mayor and I'm the king of all I survey.
00:27:55.700
And that's the problem here is that these police were, and they got to be smarter than this.
00:28:01.660
If you're on public property doing public interest journalism and some mayor says, get him out.
00:28:09.920
Yeah, you know, we're getting a little context, aren't we, Ezra, to what happened more than two years ago when Patrick Brown was thrown out of his own party on that cold January night, even though it looked like the PCs were headed to forming the next government and probably would have still formed the next government.
00:28:27.720
I don't think they would have gone the supermajority Doug Ford got.
00:28:31.240
But, you know, and back then, of course, there was Patrick Brown throwing social conservatives under the bus by flip-flopping on the sex ed education, throwing the fiscal conservatives under the bus by endorsing a carbon tax for a manufacturing province.
00:28:45.720
And so when there was no other conservatives to throw under the bus, his own party threw him under the bus.
00:28:54.280
I mean, like, he was en route to becoming the premier of the biggest province in Canada and settles on becoming mayor of Brampton, a place he has no connection with.
00:29:08.800
And it kind of reminds me of Glengarry Glen Ross, remember the sales contest, first prize Cadillac Eldorado, second prize set of steak knives.
00:29:16.820
But he's acting as though he's got the power of a premier.
00:29:21.120
And I kind of misspoke there because this would be even inappropriate for a premier or a prime minister to do to direct police to shut down the practice of journalism.
00:29:34.600
I don't know what they did to deserve Patrick Brown.
00:29:38.920
Now, I saw that our friend Joe Warmington made mention of your arrest in his Toronto Sun column.
00:29:44.900
I'm very glad he did, and I appreciate that solidarity.
00:29:46.840
But other than that, maybe I haven't been looking hard enough, but I have not seen any other journalist, any other media company, any other media lawyer, any journalist NGO, like the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, Penn International, Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists.
00:30:08.100
Like, there's the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
00:30:11.460
I just named six groups that normally have a lot to say about journalist rights.
00:30:20.340
The live stream yesterday was watched by well over 100,000 people of you being arrested, and we were tweeting up a storm.
00:30:27.120
And I know a lot of these mainstream media journalists follow me on Twitter, follow Rebel News on Twitter.
00:30:34.380
I think they're saying, yep, go ahead, arrest David Menzies.
00:30:38.860
And we might not like Patrick Brown, but we sure hate the Rebel.
00:30:43.980
I mean, the only media interview I've done, the only one I was asked to do, was from Saga 960 Talk Radio in Mississauga, and it went very well.
00:30:55.540
Mark Patron, Joe Warmington, two journalists in this entire country who said a word.
00:31:10.800
Even as a hater, if you're in the media business, you should get on board a crusade like this.
00:31:16.980
Because this is not about supporting the rebel.
00:31:19.780
This is about taking a stand for freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press.
00:31:25.980
I think once upon a time, not too long ago, 15, 20 years, we'd have all sorts of media allies.
00:31:34.140
I mean, when I was growing up, I didn't know much about, when I was a real youngster,
00:31:41.760
I would see Nazis, I don't know if it happened, if I was just looking at news or if it was more history I was looking at,
00:31:49.820
but in Skokie, Illinois, when you had neo-Nazis marching where there was a Jewish community including Holocaust survivors.
00:31:57.240
I think maybe I was looking at an old newsreel of that because I don't remember the year of that.
00:32:01.460
But I was astounded that the lawyers that the ACLU sent to defend those Nazis, to defend the Ku Klux Klan,
00:32:23.920
we utterly disagree with these Nazis and these Klansmen.
00:32:27.300
We're sort of rubbing it in their face that we're Jews and blacks.
00:32:31.220
But we know that it's better to fight for our freedoms in the first ditch than the last.
00:32:42.940
they knew that they had to defend the law in the rough cases if they wanted it for their own friends.
00:32:51.480
And those five or six groups I just mentioned, they all think,
00:32:54.540
oh, I hate Rebel News and David Menzies more than I love freedom of the press.
00:33:05.780
I think you would find people at the ACLU, Ezra, that endorse cancel culture,
00:33:12.460
which is just another fancy way of saying censorship.
00:33:20.520
it was a poll result in the United States on college campuses.
00:33:27.380
In other words, the majority of students said that they would be amenable
00:33:31.600
to the First Amendment being modified if it was to banish any kind of free speech
00:33:42.120
These are American students on American college campuses saying,
00:33:45.540
yeah, you know what, this First Amendment thing,
00:33:47.700
it's kind of going too far with the freedom of speech.
00:33:50.720
Well, I mean, even finding lawyers, Gideon Mammon was great.
00:33:56.900
But you'd be shocked at how many lawyers are so cowardly.
00:34:00.800
Lawyers, again, maybe I'm showing my age, but when I went to law school,
00:34:04.660
it was really made crystal clear that when you defend a client,
00:34:10.740
And if you're in criminal law, it doesn't mean you like murderers.
00:34:19.380
It means you know that the system requires professional lawyers to follow the rules.
00:34:26.620
I mean, it's meaningless if we just declare someone guilty without a proper process.
00:34:30.860
So the defense lawyer is an extremely important person.
00:34:34.060
And it takes a little while to understand that because when there's an odious, odious criminal,
00:34:41.800
And it's hard to say, okay, I understand why the lawyer is necessary.
00:34:47.920
And second of all, even if he's guilty, we have to follow the process.
00:34:50.860
Today, trying to find a lawyer in Toronto who will simply go and fight for rebel news
00:34:57.860
and our freedom of the press and freedom of speech is surprisingly hard
00:35:02.520
because all these socially, upwardly mobile young lawyers
00:35:08.940
who actually think they're going to be appointed to judges or get a QC or they're just,
00:35:18.320
And they'll take a murder as a client, but they won't take Rebel News as a client.
00:35:22.840
And I had this discussion with Aaron Rosenberg,
00:35:25.020
and he was speaking of his generation, the millennials.
00:35:30.100
We'll take on cases of murderers, serial rapists.
00:35:33.260
Omar Khadr's got an unlimited line of would-be pro bono lawyers.
00:35:39.640
But going to bat for a client that has wrong speak, wrong thoughts,
00:35:52.960
I hope, hopefully, Ezra, there'll be the pendulum swinging back
00:35:57.640
so that the next generation is going to actually recognize
00:36:09.380
I think a lot will depend on the 2020 presidential election in the United States.
00:36:18.060
And we've got a few more moves up our sleeves that we're not done with yet in Brampton.
00:36:22.300
But I would say that yesterday was the best result we could get
00:36:33.840
I really believe right now, if I was a personal friend of Patrick Brown and had his ear,
00:36:39.640
he is suffering through buyer's remorse for what he did.
00:36:43.260
As I said the other day, the worst thing he could have done,
00:36:46.720
the knife with the twist, if he wanted to screw us, would have been to do nothing.
00:36:52.400
Have us stand there like a bunch of stooges in the sun in an empty parking lot.
00:36:58.140
And it would be a giant, enormous, and expensive nothing burger.
00:37:01.960
But instead, if the disclosure turns out that he or his minions were behind this
00:37:08.560
incredible police response, you know, to basically exterminate a mosquito with a bazooka,
00:37:18.740
It'll look so bad from your point of view and from my point of view.
00:37:21.840
But I think in his own weird way, I think that Patrick Brown thinks it was a victorious day yesterday
00:37:27.620
because you were thrown in the back of a police car.
00:37:32.900
We know that if you have a choice between being a bully, which he is,
00:37:38.100
or being a noble champion for free speech and civil rights,
00:37:50.460
He was taken down a whole bunch of notches in life.
00:37:56.180
Those good people don't deserve to have that punishment.
00:38:11.380
I simply do not believe that five police cars are sent within minutes to arrest a journalist
00:38:19.320
standing on a public sidewalk armed with nothing but a microphone without the meddling of a crooked mayor.
00:38:27.080
And you're right when you say, Ezra, the good people of Brampton don't deserve this.
00:38:31.900
He has been on a jihad in terms of these Wuhan virus tickets.
00:38:36.600
At last count, I believe it was well over 500 Bramptonians had been given those $880 pandemic tickets.
00:38:48.620
but Patrick Brown was looking at a mechanism where this person could be financially ruined with a $100,000 fine.
00:39:01.040
He's going after them for lack of social distancing, playing in fields, not wearing a mask.
00:39:06.280
Things he himself has no respect for, even though he signed those things into law in the city of Brampton.
00:39:17.140
And hopefully we can get a court to teach him a lesson.
00:39:28.320
As I said yesterday, I think we're going to wind up spending $75,000, when you think about it,
00:39:33.520
to appeal this and go to the Court of Appeal, and if necessary, all the way to the Supreme Court.
00:39:38.760
It frankly will cost probably more than $75,000.
00:39:41.620
But it's about setting the precedent and setting the new standard, the principle.
00:39:46.060
Let the Supreme Court tell every would-be thug politician in this country that you can hate journalists all you like.
00:39:52.480
It's probably a good default setting for politicians to hate journalists.
00:40:01.360
And if you need the Supreme Court to tell you so, well, we need to do that.
00:40:20.380
Wow, Patrick Brown, one law for thee and one law for me.
00:40:29.500
Who knew that the four cruisers were just on standby?
00:40:33.600
If they didn't even come one, and then a bunch later, another, and then a bunch later, they were ready.
00:40:42.600
Thank God the conservatives booted Brown before there was ever a chance of him becoming premier.
00:40:46.200
Can you imagine the mess we would be in if he was in charge?
00:40:48.900
Oh, not just ideological, just absolute corruption.
00:40:55.180
Finally, the police are going after the bad guys instead of harassing innocent robbers and arsonists, a.k.a. rioters.
00:41:02.500
I mean, there are gangland wars going on in Brampton, but let's take five police cars off that because the mayor's feelings are hurt.
00:41:11.620
There's a lot of terrible mayors in this country.
00:41:16.820
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.