CBC’s investigation into “misleading YouTube video” was an unethical smear
Episode Stats
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Summary
The CBC launches its election war room on behalf of Justin Trudeau, and it's got a plan to stoke fears about Sharia law before the federal election. Ezra takes you through the whole thing, and explains why it's a good thing we're not allowed to criticize the Prime Minister.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my rebels. Today is, I take you through a very weird story of the CBC. I know that doesn't
00:00:05.760
narrow it down, but this one's special. They have this huge, rambling, thousand-plus-word rebuttal
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of some video on YouTube. I mean, it had 50,000 views, whatever, but it was such a nothing,
00:00:18.740
but because it dared to criticize the precious one, Justin Trudeau. Oh, my God, did the entire
00:00:24.760
CBC go to work rebutting it? The crazy thing is, they spend thousands, over a thousand words
00:00:30.380
rebutting it, but they never actually show you the video itself. I will. So you've got to watch
00:00:35.520
today's. You're listening on a podcast, but you know you can watch these podcasts, too. I mean,
00:00:40.380
it's a TV show, and it's eight bucks a month to subscribe, but you get a show every day from me,
00:00:45.940
and you get one once a week from Sheila Gunn-Reed and David Menzies. It's eight bucks a month,
00:00:50.280
sorry, eight bucks a month, or that's 80 bucks a year if you buy it all in advance, and you even
00:00:54.260
get a bigger discount if you use the coupon code PODCAST. So, I mean, especially today when we're
00:01:00.040
showing you the vid, you really got to see it with your own eyes. So please go to therebel.media
00:01:05.220
slash shows to subscribe. Okay, here's the podcast.
00:01:13.740
Tonight, the CBC rolls out its election war room on behalf of the liberals. They're turning the
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propaganda up all the way. It's July 23rd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
00:01:24.260
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody
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Once upon a time, oh, right until the moment Stephen Harper stepped down as Prime Minister
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in 2015, once upon a time, the media party knew what its job was, hold the government
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to account, speak truth to power, balance the mighty resources of the governing class by
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shining a light of public scrutiny on them. Dissent was positively patriotic, and no form
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of criticism of power was too rough. When an extremely rude bigot drove around in Alberta
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with a truck with an extremely rude sign about Stephen Harper, the CBC championed him as
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a free speech hero. Gee, they don't do that a lot with Trudeau, do they? They even told
00:02:22.900
people how to chip in to that guy's legal defense fund. And when not enough people were disparaging
00:02:28.120
Stephen Harper crudely enough, naturally, the CBC did it themselves. Remember this rant?
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Stasi Steve, Hare Harper. That's implying that Stephen Harper was a Nazi. But hey, it's okay
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because journalism or something. Remember this?
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So, help save poor Stasi Steve this season. God knows Hare Harper doesn't have enough sense
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So that's what the media used to do when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, and the media was
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even worse with Rob Ford, the late mayor of Toronto. I remember when the homepage of the
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Toronto Star had a cell phone picture snapped by a source of Rob Ford walking into a Kentucky
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fried chicken to buy lunch. That's all it was. He was just walking into a KFC. But this was a huge
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gotcha moment for the Star because Ford had said he was trying to lose weight. And the Star's massive
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network of informants caught Ford going to KFC. He's a liar! Resign, liar! The Star literally paid
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cash to Ford's friends to record him secretly on their cell phones in private homes, in private
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conversations. It was an absolute invasion of privacy. Nothing to do with this public conduct.
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But hey, it was about holding government to account so the grubbier the better. That was then.
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But under Justin Trudeau, the media has flipped sides. Now they hold the public to account on behalf
00:03:46.900
of the government. They hold independent media to account like us. The CBC, the media party demonize us
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and any independent media. But really, it's you they want to regulate. Let me show you a bizarre
00:03:59.000
story on the CBC. Now that they've formally launched their pro-Trudeau election war room,
00:04:05.160
look at this. How a misleading YouTube video is stoking fears about Sharia law before the federal
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election. And the sub-headline, video posted to Facebook groups that spread disinformation.
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It's a huge story. I think the reporter must have worked on this for weeks. It goes on and
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on and on. To do what? Holding some Facebook users to account for watching a video that they
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have watched too? What, for having the wrong point of view or something? Here, let me read
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this story. A short, grainy YouTube video circulating on social media purports to show evidence of
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an imam claiming that if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is re-elected, he will institute Sharia
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law, the legal code of Islam based on the Quran. So that's news? You know there are one billion
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hours of YouTube watched every day, right? I mean, it is endless. It is unlimited. There
00:05:08.120
are lies and there are truths. There's jokes and satire. There's lonely people talking to
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nobody. There's surprise celebrity stars. There's animal videos. There's a billion hours
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a day. I'm not sure how that's even possible, but it is. And the CBC found something on the
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internet they disagreed with. It's like that cartoon I showed you last week. Come to bed.
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I can't. Why? It's important. Someone on the internet is wrong. It's a laugh when you or
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I say that. It's fun for you and I to talk about things on the internet. That's what the
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comment section is for on YouTube or Facebook or Twitter. It's just a big comment section.
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We can mouth off if we like, but for a government journalist at the state broadcaster to spend
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a week going deep on rebutting some video she didn't like very much. How weird is that?
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Like I say, a normal journalist might want to, you know, hold powerful people to account
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on behalf of citizens. Not in Canada. In Canada, the state broadcaster holds powerless people
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to account, hold them to account for the government. The CBC is really a species of snitches, to be
00:06:18.000
honest. They're hall monitors. But let me read a little bit more. But the video was taken out
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of context, according to the man featured in it. And it was created by Sandra Solomon,
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known for her anti-Islam views. Oh, well then, if Sandra Solomon is known for her anti-Islam
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I met Sandra Solomon once. She is known for her anti-Islam views. And I think she comes
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by them honestly, though. She was born a Muslim and grew up in Islam. I wonder why the CBC never
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mentioned that in this huge article. Don't you think it's relevant? Don't you think it's
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important? It's like those women in that amazing video who were freed from ISIS. The first thing
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they did, they all ripped off their niqabs to feel freedom, to feel the sun on their face.
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It's relevant that they were under the yoke of radical Islam. Why would the CBC leave that part
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out about Sandra Solomon? She grew up as a Muslim woman and has rejected Islam and especially its
00:07:20.420
treatment of women. Why would they hide her Islamic nature from viewers? Is it because they're trying to
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paint her as some, I don't know, white supremacist or something? I put it to you that Sandra Solomon
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knows more about Islam than anyone at the CBC does, both about Islam in theory, but more importantly,
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Islam in practice, especially if you're a woman. They have a story about her being harassed by police.
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Let me read that part. Sandra Solomon was investigated by Peel Police in March of 2018 for ripping out pages
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of her Koran and placing them on windshields of cars parked outside an Islamic centre in Mississauga,
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Ontario. At the time, police investigated behavior as possibly hate-motivated, but they did not lay
00:08:04.440
charges in the case because it was determined that no criminal offense has taken place,
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Peel Police spokesman said. Again, why does the CBC keep it a secret that she herself was born Muslim
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growing up on the Koran? Obviously, she's rebelling against it like some Catholics rebel against
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Catholicism. Just for an example, why is she cast as a hate criminal when obviously she's railing
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against what she thinks is a hateful book that choked her for however many years? Why would the
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CBC even say she was investigated if no charges were ever brought? Why the smear? Because they're the
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CBC. They're a smear machine. This will be a regular feature in the run-up to the election. So back to the
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video that the CBC was correcting. What's funny about this extremely long article is that they never
00:08:47.660
actually show the video to you? I'm curious about it now. Aren't you? I mean, normally if something is
00:08:53.120
fact-checked, whoever's doing the fact-checking, they show you the thing and then they check it.
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Why didn't that happen here? Again, it's very weird to fact-check some private citizen on a private
00:09:04.720
YouTube page. That's not the CBC's mandate. That's the Liberal Party's war room mandate. So Sandra
00:09:10.460
Solomon had no voice in the story. She's not quoted in the story. Her video has no voice. It can't speak for
00:09:16.280
itself. But the Muslim man featured in her video has a voice. Here, let me put some more of the CBC
00:09:23.060
propaganda to you, the rebuttal. And then I'm going to end actually by showing you what the CBC
00:09:27.820
doesn't show you, what they're correcting. The video itself includes a short section from a speech
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about Islam delivered by Mufti Asim Rashid in Kamloops, BC in October 2017. It also features a
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picture of Justin Trudeau praying in a mosque and ends on a clip of Trudeau championing diversity,
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which is then covered up by a photo illustration of a small child wearing a Make Canada Great Again
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hat. Okay, this is a really weird story. It sounds like a goofy video, but the CBC spent a week on
00:09:56.840
this. Here, here's some more. Reached by phone, Rashid was surprised to find that a clip of his speech
00:10:01.820
was circulating. I had no idea that someone would use that clip in that way, he said. Rashid told
00:10:06.360
CBC News that his comments on arbitration referred to the Ontario government, which had allowed
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religious-based arbitration from 1991 until Premier Dalton McGuinty said in 2005 there will be no
00:10:15.720
Sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration. The Liberals then passed an amendment
00:10:20.780
to the province's Arbitration Act. In fact, the CBC said, nowhere in the video does Rashid mention
00:10:28.160
Trudeau or the 2019 federal election. In fact, during the portion of the speech used in the
00:10:33.580
misleading video, Rashid said he was actually referring to the former Stephen Harper conservative
00:10:38.360
government. Okay, it's a bit of a ramble there, but the point is, according to the CBC, Sandra
00:10:44.460
Solomon is full of hate. She's a liar. I mean, the Muslim imam himself explained things, just accept
00:10:50.540
his explanation. And even if she is telling the truth about Sharia law, this Sandra Solomon liar,
00:10:56.500
well, it's Stephen Harper who was going to bring in Sharia law, people. Yeah, no, no, no. Sharia
00:11:03.020
courts, that was a project of the Liberals in Ontario that was thankfully stopped. Now, what
00:11:09.960
we're talking about here is a YouTube video. That's it. But you're not allowed to see it
00:11:15.060
because the CBC doesn't trust your ability to make up your own mind correctly. They want
00:11:20.160
to give you a thousand plus words of rebuttal, but they won't show you the actual video.
00:11:24.340
But, of course, they're going to take a run at Maxime Bernier. They hate him because he
00:11:30.760
talks about immigration and Islam and things like that. And it's also a warning to Andrew
00:11:34.620
Scheer, if you dare talk about immigration or Islam, we'll treat you this way too. Here's
00:11:41.860
Just this week, People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier accused Trudeau in a tweet of
00:11:46.440
having room in his party for people who want to institute Sharia law. In another tweet this
00:11:50.920
week, Bernier accused both Trudeau and conservative leader Andrew Scheer of pandering to people
00:11:58.280
I'm sorry, Maxime Bernier has nothing to do with this video other than the CBC hates him,
00:12:04.420
so they're just going to lump him in. Oh, and the Yellow Vest movement? This is quite a conspiracy
00:12:09.220
theory the Liberals are making here. I mean, they're tying together a YouTube video and Maxime
00:12:16.980
Bernier and the Yellow Vest and Stephen Harper. That is quite a theory. Some might even call
00:12:24.380
that fake news. But here's my favorite part of the story. You see that photo there? Here's
00:12:29.700
a poster. That's what they call it. Whereas it's obviously just a printed piece of paper
00:12:34.940
in a plastic sleeve. It's not a poster, but the CBC includes it. And here's how they caption
00:12:41.120
that. They say, this poster spreading disinformation about Trudeau was passed out during a Yellow
00:12:46.680
Vest protest in Alberta in January, named withheld by a request. But hang on, hang on, hang on.
00:12:51.280
What's the disinformation? Let's read that poster. What's the falsehood in it? Remove sovereignty.
00:12:59.740
That's what the UN does. Create divisions in Canada. Yeah, every pollster will confirm that's
00:13:05.980
happening, not just regionally. Trudeau demonizing Alberta in the West, but along grievance lines,
00:13:11.340
exacerbated by Trudeau's identity politics. Mass Muslim immigration. Yeah, that's happening.
00:13:18.300
If you look at the proportion of Muslim immigration, 50,000 from Syria alone. Obvious example.
00:13:24.740
Ruin the economy. Yeah, check. He's destroyed the oil patch and $100 billion worth of projects.
00:13:32.140
Canceled all the pipelines. He's done that. Massive debt.
00:13:35.980
Check. Money to the UN. Check, check, check. I'm sorry. I'm going through this. And not only is it
00:13:41.100
pretty factually accurate, but most of these things aren't even true or false. They're just
00:13:47.100
matters of opinion. They're conservative opinions, but they're opinions. And that's what the CBC hates.
00:13:53.320
It's like the anti-CBC, this little poster. How pitiful it is that the mighty state broadcaster with
00:13:59.120
$1.5 billion a year is going to war against some poor schmo on the street who printed out like a
00:14:05.700
poster and carefully put it in a plastic sleeve. Total cost of that, I don't know, 10 cents?
00:14:11.620
Cost of living rent-free in the CBC's minds? Priceless. What a strange story this is. But the
00:14:17.680
strangest part is the video itself isn't in there. No link to it, even with warnings. Now,
00:14:23.960
I found it fast enough by myself by Googling. I'm sure Trudeau will try to get it taken down from
00:14:28.500
YouTube. I want to show it to you in full. It's only about two minutes long. Most of it is that
00:14:33.880
speech by the imam in BC. No edits. It was a speech in 2017. And the last part of the video
00:14:39.980
is some opinions about Trudeau dressing in Muslim desert garb and saying the shahada. That's a Muslim
00:14:47.860
prayer that is actually the only requirement to convert to Islam. You say the shahada. The prayer
00:14:52.480
basically says there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger, his only messenger.
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Trudeau has said that prayer. He says it. I don't believe he's a Muslim. I don't believe Trudeau has
00:15:03.760
any religion. I think he only worships himself. But I know that he said the shahada. It's a bit of a
00:15:10.480
dress up. I mean, he dresses up for everything. He's like an actor who actually means nothing. He just
00:15:15.220
loves the costume. So here's the video in full. This is by Sandra Solomon. This is not by me.
00:15:20.160
I wouldn't even show it to you. I don't I don't even think it's that that interesting or that well
00:15:26.040
produced. But my God, the CBC is obsessed with it. But they will not show it to you. So
00:15:30.640
here I will. Here's what we're talking about in full.
00:15:34.200
And what I said about the Canadian government, the Canadian government wanted the Muslims to be able
00:15:44.840
to regulate their own issues of marriage and divorce and set up systems of mediation and
00:15:50.960
arbitration to solve their problems amongst themselves through Sharia law so that it's not a
00:15:57.160
burden on the court system which is already so fall down. The Canadian government wanted people
00:16:04.040
like myself to sign off on custody cases where there was an allegation of parental abduction to verify
00:16:14.040
that is the parent who has taken the child off to that country. Are they Islamically authorized to do so or not?
00:16:22.680
Because there are many Muslim countries that would need to see that from a Muslim scholar.
00:16:27.960
That's what Sharia law is. And the government told us that we would like you to have this system and we would like to work on these initiatives.
00:16:38.760
At the Montreal mosque, Trudeau was photographed participating in a prayer ritual reserved for practicing Muslims
00:16:47.400
or those seeking admittance to the Islamic faith, the Maghreb Salah. Part of the prayer is called the
00:16:54.520
Sha'ada, which in Arabic means to testify to the truth that Allah is the one true God and Muhammad
00:17:02.120
is his one true prophet. We are a place that has figured out that diversity can be a source of strength,
00:17:15.400
And that's it. That's the whole thing. The first and most obvious point is the CBC seriously spent a thousand
00:17:23.080
plus words rebutting that. That wasn't even the thing. It was a clip of a speech and then a brief comment
00:17:29.400
about Trudeau dressing up like he's in Aladdin and saying the Shahada. The production value of the video,
00:17:35.160
very low. It was clearly homemade. True, 50,000 people have seen it, but so what? People watch a billion hours a day.
00:17:42.440
First off, what was actually false about the video? The Imam said what he said. Trudeau dressed how he dressed.
00:17:48.680
And he did say the Shahada. That's sort of all that's in there. What's disinformation about that?
00:17:54.040
What do the yellow vests have to do with it? What does Stephen Harper have to do with it? What does Maxine Bernier have to do with it?
00:17:57.960
Nothing, nothing, nothing and everything, because this is what the election campaign is going to be like.
00:18:02.840
Panicky, crazed left-wing activists pretending to be journalists screaming at ordinary Canadians for
00:18:08.680
discussing things they're not supposed to be discussing. This is the journalist behind this,
00:18:13.720
Andrea Belmar, but she's not really a journalist. I mean, she's a government journalist, but that's
00:18:19.640
more she's a hall monitor, telling other people what they can or can't do,
00:18:24.280
tattling on you if you say something she doesn't like. That report on Sandra Solomon was
00:18:29.640
journalistically unethical. It didn't quote Solomon herself. It misled viewers by hiding the fact that she was
00:18:34.600
actually born and raised a Muslim. It said she was investigated for a hate crime when, of course,
00:18:39.080
she wasn't charged at all. It's clearly a political setup. That's a smear. It smeared others, too.
00:18:43.800
Basically, the Trudeau CBC hate list. I'm shocked they didn't mention the rebel.
00:18:49.480
It wasn't journalism. It was politics paid for by taxpayers and laundered through the CBC.
00:18:54.120
Expect a lot more of it. That video by Sander Solomon on YouTube, it wasn't particularly
00:18:59.880
persuasive. It wasn't particularly newsworthy. It was pretty unobjectionable. I mean, the imam said
00:19:05.880
what he said. That video contained no hate, no call to violence, nothing really. It was just amusing,
00:19:13.800
just a point of view. And the CBC condemned it because you're only allowed one point of view,
00:19:21.000
just in Trudeau's. And as far as Sharia law coming to Canada goes, maybe Andrea Beaumont might want
00:19:27.960
to do some real journalism and actually report on the tens of millions of dollars Trudeau recently
00:19:32.760
announced that he's going to shovel into the enforcement of M103, the anti-Islamophobia motion.
00:19:39.240
But that would be too much real journalism, too much real work. And more to the point,
00:19:43.880
it doesn't help Trudeau in this election, does it? Maybe in that way, maybe Sander Solomon's right.
00:19:55.000
Welcome back. Well, the last time we saw our next guest, it was an old blighty. Andrew Lawton of TNC.news
00:20:17.320
joined Sheila Gunn-Reed and me at the UK-Canada Media Freedom Conference. He joins us now via Skype.
00:20:23.960
You're back in London, Ontario. It's nice to see you. We've talked a little bit about that UK
00:20:29.000
experience. And we're back in Canada, which has more press freedom than the UK. But I think the
00:20:35.160
threat to our press freedom, Andrew, is as much from the stick of censorship, but it's also the
00:20:40.520
carrot of bailout money. Tell me the latest with, I understand there's a new bailout scheme,
00:20:46.440
an additional bailout fund that's being offered to Canadian journalists. What's the details?
00:20:50.520
Well, I'm still trying to sift through the full scope of this, but it appears like an expansion,
00:20:57.320
not just in terms of the dollar figure attached to bailing out media enterprises, but also
00:21:04.440
the definition of who qualifies for it. And this is very much an example of, I think,
00:21:10.360
moving the goalposts and perhaps a very politically motivated example, where you've got a number of
00:21:15.880
outlets from the guidelines that were released by the committee last week, outlets that are saying,
00:21:20.280
oh, we don't think we'd qualify under this. So by even talking about expansion, I think there's
00:21:25.240
a bit of damage control there of, okay, anyone we missed in the first round of defining this,
00:21:30.200
we're probably going to get in the second round. So I'm not optimistic that this is much more than
00:21:36.440
just an attempt at mending some of the frustration that media outlets who don't think they're eligible
00:21:43.880
are experiencing, which unsurprisingly are all of the independent outlets who I think are a lot more
00:21:49.320
deserving and probably a lot more in need of these funds than the big, you know, centralized corporate
00:21:55.240
media. You know, I have in front of me an article from Le Divoire, which is, of course,
00:21:59.720
a French language newspaper in Quebec. And it talks about a complaint by my old boss, and I know you
00:22:08.920
were on the Sun News Network for a bit, Quebecor. They looked at the government grants and said,
00:22:15.000
they said, hey, this benefits our competitor, La Presse. We want more. And so instead of saying,
00:22:21.720
oh, we'll make it more even handed, they're just adding more millions to the pot. And it's,
00:22:27.400
so it's actually new money. And basically, it depends on how connected your lobbyists are.
00:22:33.000
I mean, I like Quebecor, but I don't want my tax dollars going to
00:22:37.480
to pay them off because they're in some welfare contest with La Presse. I don't think any media
00:22:44.680
should be paid by Justin Trudeau. And here's another observation, and you were making this
00:22:48.760
to me just before we turned the camera on. The more and more money Canadian media takes from Justin
00:22:54.040
Trudeau, the more it seems they obsess over Donald Trump and his flaws, rather than inspecting our
00:23:01.320
own leader and his flaws. It's almost like for every hundred million dollars the media gets,
00:23:06.920
they'll drop one story about Trudeau and add one story about Trump. What do you think of that?
00:23:13.560
Well, obviously, the motivation is a bit unclear as to whether it's the bailout causing it. But
00:23:19.960
I do think that the whole problem with the bailout is that it forces, I think, any thinking Canadian
00:23:25.480
to question what impact, if any, that's having on coverage. Because he who pays the piper calls the
00:23:31.960
tune. And when hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into media coffers, you have to question
00:23:37.080
everything that media outlet receiving the money does. And one trend that I've seen a fair bit of
00:23:42.520
in the last couple of years, but I'd say even more so now, is the media's incessant obsession on
00:23:48.920
Donald Trump, not just covering what Donald Trump says and does, irrespective of any Canadian
00:23:54.600
contact or context, rather, but even asking Canadian politicians what they think about Donald
00:24:01.800
Trump when we are, I think, three months to the day away from an election. And a notable example of
00:24:06.920
this, of course, is Trump taking aim at the so-called squad of Congresswomen in the US saying,
00:24:12.360
if you don't like what's happening in America, leave.
00:24:14.920
And irrespective of what one thinks of his tweet or tweets on that, I don't think anyone could argue
00:24:21.160
that Andrew Scheer's position on it is particularly relevant, nor is Justin Trudeau's. But again,
00:24:27.240
the media was putting to both of them, to Andrew Scheer and then separately to Justin Trudeau,
00:24:32.360
this idea of will you condemn Donald Trump's tweets? And of course, what they say, it doesn't
00:24:37.480
go far enough. So then the media reports on that. And when we're this close to an election,
00:24:42.600
and the stories are, in my view, distraction stories, there's a big problem with the caliber
00:24:48.840
of coverage here. Yeah. And it's not even a responsible question for a politician to ask.
00:24:52.840
You know, that's for pundits to ask an answer if you're obsessed with US minutiae. It was a domestic
00:24:58.360
political matter between two parties, asking the leader of the opposition of Canada, I mean,
00:25:03.360
put the shoe on the other foot, it would be weird if Canadian journalists or American journalists
00:25:08.200
asked Trump to weigh in on a spat between Trudeau and Scheer. It's just, it's just junk journalism.
00:25:13.880
I, um, I want to say I've got in my hand here the Le Devoir article, and it's translated in English.
00:25:19.880
I want to read one sentence from Pierre-Carl Pelletot of Quebec, or he was complaining that the money was
00:25:27.240
going to the pro-liberal press. But here's what he said, and I want to give the guy some credit.
00:25:30.760
He said, in addition to raising serious questions about the ability of journalists
00:25:36.520
to remain independent and free from economic and political influence, this concern is all the more
00:25:42.040
justified because the press has always supported the Liberal Party of Canada and its various leaders
00:25:46.920
since past decades. So I think Pierre-Carl Pelletot, the boss of Quebec Corps, understands the risk,
00:25:52.840
but his solution is just, give me money too. I don't see a lot of people calling for an end to
00:25:57.720
the bailout. Let me ask you about that. I see Andrew Coyne is grousing about this media bailout
00:26:04.360
in the papers, but his paper, the National Post, is going to take it, just like Andrew Coyne takes
00:26:10.440
money from the state broadcaster, the CBC. I don't see any principled objectors out there, Andrew. I
00:26:17.160
don't see anyone who could take the money not taking it. I see most journalists being silent about it,
00:26:22.920
a few of them noisily saying, I'm against this, as they cash their checks. I really think
00:26:29.480
mission accomplished for Trudeau. He's managed to corrupt the Canadian media, not with a stick,
00:26:34.360
but with a carrot. You know, I actually think that they're, I've seen a little bit of pushback
00:26:40.520
from journalists, although to be honest, they should be pushing back to their bosses, to the
00:26:45.560
publishers. And I don't know if these battles are happening quietly. I'm not seeing them unfold
00:26:49.800
publicly because it's their bosses, the media publishers in Canada, that are putting now
00:26:54.520
Canadian journalists in an untenable position where they have to be the ones that are writing.
00:27:00.440
And, you know, if editorial directives are coming down that, you know, go beyond just the typical
00:27:06.200
endorsement offer or editorials we see, then that's going to be an area where their integrity is going
00:27:11.320
to be called into question. And you and I talked months ago about the idea that I had put forward
00:27:16.280
that any journalist who's a member of Unifor should have to disclose that status in stories
00:27:22.680
they write about the election. The rationale for that being that Unifor has declared war
00:27:27.480
on Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives, effectively supporting the Liberals. So anytime there is some
00:27:33.720
connection or affiliation that could call into question the caliber of content, even if it's just
00:27:38.840
an optics one, we need to be asking, what are we doing to avoid that? And I'm not seeing a lot of that
00:27:44.600
here. What I would say is important is that we focus on the overall structure of this and the
00:27:51.960
existence of it as well. I mean, the Canadian Association of Journalists has put out lots of
00:27:56.760
critiques of the process, but critiquing the process doesn't go so far as to get at the real
00:28:04.600
crux of this, which is that this bailout shouldn't exist in the first place. So the discussion shouldn't
00:28:09.160
be, how do we do it? It should be, how do we stop it? Yeah. Yeah. Not enough voices saying that
00:28:14.280
because I think they know what their publishers would say. Publishers would say, well, we're going
00:28:17.480
to lay you off next week. So it's take this money or leave. And, and these journalists, you know,
00:28:23.480
journalists are the ultimate voyeurs. They, they are not the man in the arena. They, they're the critic.
00:28:29.400
As Roosevelt said, it's not the critic who counts. And it's very easy for journalists to be
00:28:35.080
principled when they have no skin in the game. As soon as they get skin in the game,
00:28:38.920
they throw all their principles away. And I say that as a member of the journalistic class,
00:28:42.680
and I'm proud that we don't take dough up from the government. I know you don't either, Andrew.
00:28:46.360
I want to ask you about one last thing, and thanks for letting me pepper you with
00:28:48.920
all these different subjects, but I think they're all a little bit related. Today, I took our viewers
00:28:53.560
through a CBC fact check story of a Facebook video made by Sandra Solomon. It wasn't particularly
00:29:01.080
viral, had about 50,000 views, wasn't particularly controversial. She actually never makes an
00:29:05.800
appearance in it. It's just a clip of an imam in BC talking about Sharia law. And then like a 30
00:29:12.280
second commentary about Justin Trudeau dressing in desert garb and saying a Muslim prayer called the
00:29:18.200
Shahada. So, you know, I didn't think it was that interesting a video. It was shared a little bit on
00:29:23.800
Facebook and Twitter, but no big deal. And the CBC did this enormous fact check debunking of this
00:29:30.120
private citizens online video. And I just thought the whole thing was really, really weird.
00:29:36.440
Instead of fact checking the government, the CBC was fact checking citizens criticisms of the
00:29:42.520
government. That truly feels like a state broadcaster. I mean, it wasn't even that
00:29:47.240
interesting a video. It wasn't that well produced. It wasn't, it wasn't that well watched. I was just
00:29:52.280
thinking, what is going on when the CBC is going after individual private citizens for Facebook posts?
00:29:58.040
What's going on? Well, one of the big problems here is that the word of the day, I think this year,
00:30:04.280
is disinformation. You've got newsrooms that are hiring disinformation reporters. You've got
00:30:09.560
outlets that are starting up these entirely new sections to deal with fact checking in the election.
00:30:15.660
And the problem is that for all we hear about the threat of disinformation and fake news and,
00:30:20.820
you know, this grandiose Russian conspiracy that the Russians have, you know, installed a president in
00:30:25.160
the US and they're going to come for the Canadian government next, we're not actually seeing the
00:30:29.180
volume of disinformation that you'd think. This is like the Y2K scare all over again. There's all of this
00:30:35.540
sizzle, but absolutely no stake whatsoever. And these outlets now have to justify their own existence. And
00:30:42.260
if you say, find disinformation, well, you know, there's nothing that's getting 50 million views. There's
00:30:47.080
nothing that's getting 10 million views, nothing that's getting 1 million views. Oh, yeah, here's this
00:30:51.160
thing that your uncle shared on Facebook that poor people saw. Let's do a fact check of that. And
00:30:55.640
we're going to see a lot more of that, Ezra, because these people have committed themselves to
00:30:59.900
this narrative that our elections are being upended by fake news. And if there's none there, they have
00:31:05.600
to create it. Yeah. You know, I'm still waiting for the CBC to do a fact check on the fake news about
00:31:12.160
Trump-Russia collusion. They probably published a thousand stories about it. It was debunked and then they
00:31:18.040
just sort of went silent. Listen, Andrew, you're one of the good guys. We love the website you're
00:31:21.880
with, TNC.news. It was great to see out in London. Maybe give us 30 seconds about your plans for the
00:31:27.900
months ahead. What can we expect to see on TNC.news? I know you're there, Anthony Fury, Candace Malcolm.
00:31:34.860
You guys got a great lineup. What else are you up to? Well, we've got a scoop coming tomorrow that
00:31:40.280
actually ties in with what we're talking about now, except instead of the media monitoring what private
00:31:45.560
citizens are posting. It's actually the government. So that'll be coming down the pipeline in the next
00:31:49.600
24 hours. Very interesting. I'm really pleased to see you guys growing and succeeding. And it's great.
00:31:57.700
I feel less alone now to know that there's another independent conservative media group out there
00:32:03.580
besides the rebel. Congratulations. And may you go from strength to strength. Thanks very much. Good
00:32:08.000
to talk to you as always. All right. There's our friend, Andrew Lawton, one of the good guys,
00:32:12.060
that's for sure. And by the way, in addition to TNC.news, there's also that website, The Post
00:32:16.320
Millennial. Our friend Barbara Kay writes for them. I have a little glimmer of hope that there is an
00:32:21.780
alternative set of sources of news besides the media party. And I think the misconduct of the media
00:32:27.400
party is making us all grow. All right. Stay with us. Some final thoughts next.
00:32:32.000
Well, my friends, as you're watching this, I am actually coming home from the United Kingdom. I
00:32:50.120
recorded this and then I hopped on a plane and I went to London to go to Belmarsh Prison to visit
00:32:55.560
Tommy Robinson to see how he's doing in the clink. As you know, he's been jailed for contempt of court.
00:33:01.700
The first journalist in the UK imprisoned in nearly a century for that non-crime. It's not a crime,
00:33:08.680
civil contempt. I'll let you know how he's being treated because he was tortured last time.
00:33:12.320
He was starved. He was thrown in solitary confinement. He was subjected to threats of
00:33:16.100
violence. So as soon as I'm back, I'll give you a full report for those of you who are interested.
00:33:22.920
And then I know not everyone cares about Tommy Robinson. But to me, I see him as a canary in the coal
00:33:27.040
mine. It's Tommy today. It's you and me tomorrow. All right. Until next time, on behalf of all of us
00:33:32.920
here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night and keep fighting for freedom.