EZRA LEVANT ｜ Federal court rules against our COVID jail Charter challenge (but we're fighting back)
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
168.28929
Summary
Rebel News loses in court today, and we're going to appeal. Here's why we think we have a chance at an appeal, and why it's a good one. Today's episode is a 10-minute summary of the ruling.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my Rebels. We had a setback in court today.
00:00:03.260
The Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Canada dismissed our charter challenge of the hotel COVID jails.
00:00:11.240
Well, we're not going to take that lying down. We're going to appeal.
00:00:14.080
If you want to learn more about the ruling, you can find it at nocovidjails.com.
00:00:20.060
But what comes next is about 10 minutes of me going through the ruling.
00:00:24.440
And hopefully I cover enough bases to give you a feeling for it.
00:00:28.020
So, if you want to see the video version of this podcast, as always, you can just go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe.
00:00:36.020
We do a TV version of it every day. Plus, you get access to other paywalled shows I recommend.
00:00:41.300
It's just eight bucks a month and it helps us pay our bills. You can do that.
00:00:44.880
And like I say, if you want more about this court ruling, you can go to nocovidjails.com.
00:00:50.800
We lost our COVID jail charter lawsuit in the federal court. We're going to appeal. I'll give
00:01:13.240
you the details. It's June 18th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.
00:01:19.240
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:22.920
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:26.980
The only thing I have to say to the government, the why I'm publishing, is because it's my bloody right to do so.
00:01:32.860
Terrible news. This morning, a judge on the federal court of Canada ruled that Justin Trudeau's airport
00:01:44.500
COVID jails are legal. Rebel News went to court challenging that law under the Charter of Rights
00:01:51.340
and Freedoms. We hired two of the best constitutional lawyers in Canada. I spoke with the lawyers this
00:01:57.100
morning. I have instructed them to appeal this ruling to the federal court of appeal.
00:02:03.740
Trudeau, through the unlimited resources of the Justice Department against us, it's really a David and Goliath battle.
00:02:10.120
I hope you'll help us cover the cost of our fight. Please go to nocovidjails.com.
00:02:15.820
If you want to help, by the way, you'll actually get a charitable tax receipt for that from the Democracy Fund
00:02:21.180
so you can deduct it from your taxes. Please help if you can.
00:02:24.300
Let me tell you a little bit about what happened, and then I'll tell you why I think we have a chance
00:02:29.400
on appeal. The judge, Chief Justice Paul Crampton, ruled that jailing healthy people, law-abiding people,
00:02:37.260
citizens who have done nothing wrong, jailing them for up to three days, and billing them
00:02:42.440
thousands of dollars for the cost of it, is just a minor inconvenience, not an important violation
00:02:49.080
of our liberties. I'm guessing he himself hasn't had to stay in one.
00:02:54.300
And the fact that the quarantine makes no sense from a health point of view, it's no
00:02:59.400
safer to send someone to a hotel for three days, where they will have contact with many
00:03:04.060
people, as opposed to sending them straight home by themselves.
00:03:07.260
Well, the judge didn't mind. He actually wrote that it's Canadians' duty to suffer through
00:03:13.020
such indignities to save lives, even though the government provided no evidence that these
00:03:17.740
costly schemes have saved lives. In fact, there was evidence that the COVID jails are dangerous,
00:03:24.380
whether it's COVID outbreaks at these COVID hotel jails, or cases of alleged rape there that the judge
00:03:31.720
acknowledged. Justin Trudeau and the rest of the ruling class themselves don't have to follow these
00:03:38.320
rules. The president of the CBC, for example, flies back and forth to Canada from her home in New York
00:03:44.940
City every week. She doesn't quarantine anywhere, certainly not in an airport hotel. Trudeau himself
00:03:51.420
just got back from a week of boozy parties in Europe, violating every quarantine rule, mask rules,
00:03:58.540
social distancing rules. And when he came back to Canada, he reportedly spent a few hours in one of
00:04:05.660
these COVID airport hotels and then just left. So yeah, rules are for the little people.
00:04:10.540
We sued the government because we had sent our then reporter, Kian Bextie, to report in Florida.
00:04:17.820
And he had to come back to Canada through one of these COVID jails in Calgary. When he was in the
00:04:23.820
hotel, he came into contact with no less than 14 people, as opposed to just taking his own car home
00:04:30.140
from the airport. It's ridiculous. Our lawyers did an excellent job. Sarah Miller and Robert Hawks ran
00:04:37.420
circles around the government's lawyers. In cross-examination, they were able to get some
00:04:41.580
incredible admissions from the government's witnesses. And they really grilled the health
00:04:45.740
bureaucrats the government sent out to defend the law. But in the end, Crampton sided with the
00:04:51.900
establishment and against the people. I've read the ruling. In my opinion, it's a political document
00:04:57.500
designed to make this problem go away. And fair enough. If the entire media and entire
00:05:03.740
political establishment and the airline industry itself seem fine with all this and the other awful
00:05:09.420
parts of the lockdown, so why would a top judge go out on a limb by himself and what? Become a pariah
00:05:15.820
at all the Ottawa cocktail parties? Our lawyers were in court alongside lawyers from the Justice
00:05:21.340
Center for Constitutional Freedoms. And there were a handful of other individuals who sued on their own.
00:05:27.020
All of our cases were bundled together and heard at once. But I note there wasn't a single lawyer in
00:05:33.100
court from a liberal civil liberties group. There were no tourism or travel or business groups. No
00:05:40.220
chambers of commerce there. No political group. No opposition political party. Nobody. Nobody who we
00:05:48.140
ought to rely on in society to protect us from authoritarian measures. I think the government got the message
00:05:54.380
loud and clear. No one important cares about this. Well, I care about it and I hope you care about it too.
00:06:01.260
So we're going to appeal. Here's what Justice Crampton said. Like times of war and other crises,
00:06:08.940
pandemics call for sacrifices to save lives and avoid broad-based suffering. If some are unwilling to
00:06:16.060
make such sacrifices and engage in behavior that poses a demonstrated risk of the health and safety of
00:06:21.660
others, the principles of fundamental justice will not prevent the state from performing its essential
00:06:27.100
function of protecting its citizens from that risk. Exactly what sacrifices has anyone from the ruling
00:06:34.540
class made? A judge or Trudeau himself? Trudeau? The judges? They haven't lost a day's pay. In fact, for Trudeau,
00:06:43.180
his workload has been a lot lighter than usual, hasn't it? I mean, the government has had a nice long
00:06:48.780
staycation. The entire ruling class has had the time of their lives. Imagine comparing what's going
00:06:54.460
on to a war. The only comparison I see is to war profiteers, people who love the new rules and are
00:07:00.860
doing just fine by them. And what health and safety benefits exactly did the judge mean? I read the
00:07:07.900
ruling. There's no evidence that these COVID jails have stopped anyone from getting sick. The government
00:07:13.580
doesn't even try to collect any such data. But we know that there have been outbreaks at these
00:07:18.940
very same COVID jails. Outbreaks of the virus there, of course there are. What's so weird is,
00:07:25.180
if you land in Canada and you have the coronavirus, you are not sent to one of these hotels. Only
00:07:32.060
healthy people are sent to these quarantine hotels. I'm serious. The law is a joke and this government is a
00:07:37.260
joke and this judge stood by him. Well, we're appealing. Section 7 of our Charter of Rights
00:07:43.580
guarantees life, liberty, and the security of the person. I think a court of appeal could be
00:07:48.780
persuaded that detaining our reporter for no provable benefit deprives him of his liberty and
00:07:55.020
isn't in accordance with the principles of justice. It's arbitrary. It's overly broad. Section 9 of the
00:08:02.300
Charter guarantees that Canadians can't be arbitrarily detained. You're healthy. You've done nothing wrong.
00:08:09.260
Why should the government be able to scoop you up for three days? And then there's the law itself,
00:08:13.500
the Quarantine Act. It delegates certain powers, but Trudeau's cabinet in issuing these orders just to
00:08:21.100
detain people, they far exceeded those powers. It's just not in there in the law to let them do what
00:08:26.620
they're doing. You can read the whole ruling for yourself at our website, nocovidjails.com. It's
00:08:33.740
over 130 pages long. Frankly, it's a very frustrating read. But you'll see the importance of our participation.
00:08:39.820
You know, if you read the ruling, rebel news and our arguments and our facts are mentioned more than
00:08:46.780
50 times in the ruling by the judge. If we hadn't been there, our ideas and arguments would not have
00:08:56.460
been put to court. Some of them were made by other lawyers, to be sure. But we had unique points that
00:09:00.700
we made. And I think our lawyers were also the most effective at grilling the government's own
00:09:06.380
witnesses. There were other excellent lawyers in the room, but I think ours were the best and made
00:09:09.660
the most interesting points. So if you think we have to continue the fight to appeal, please help us.
00:09:15.580
I've already told the lawyers to start working on the appeal. We've spent about a hundred thousand
00:09:19.260
dollars on this so far. And I know that's a huge amount of money, but there was so much cross
00:09:23.740
examination. All the government experts took a lot of time. I'm sure an appeal will probably
00:09:29.100
come close to $50,000 more. This is a civil liberties case though. So you'll get a charitable
00:09:35.580
tax credit for anything you can chip in at NoCovidJails.com. So that's a plus. Thanks for your help.
00:09:42.060
We have to do this because everyone else in society who's supposed to be doing this,
00:09:47.660
they're not doing this. We have to fight for freedom.
00:10:06.220
Welcome back. Well, the whole point of science is to test a hypothesis, run an experiment, see if the
00:10:14.540
facts are in line with your theory. And if not, adjust your theory and test again. If you've got
00:10:20.460
it right, are you sure you've got it right? If you're wrong, what can you learn from it? That's
00:10:25.340
the process of all progress. And yet all those basic principles, in fact, the very root of the
00:10:31.580
word science to observe, has been thrown out during the pandemic as the science has been treated more
00:10:38.220
like religion or as I would call it, superstition. And yet the scientists have been so wrong so often
00:10:45.180
on everything from masks to vaccines. Yesterday, one MP had a little summit in Ottawa with three experts,
00:10:54.700
including people who have spent their lives in various related fields like immunology,
00:11:00.140
criticizing the mainstream scientific narrative, a political narrative masquerading as science.
00:11:07.820
The MP is Derek Sloan, and he had three people from the scientific medical community with him.
00:11:13.900
Derek joins us now via Skype from Ottawa. Derek Sloan, great to see you. Thanks for being here.
00:11:18.460
Did I accurately describe your summit yesterday of three scientific, I'm not even going to call
00:11:25.340
them dissidents because they're just people asking questions with what scientists are supposed to do?
00:11:31.660
Yeah, that's a good, good summary of it. It was a summit on censorship, scientific censorship.
00:11:36.940
And oddly enough, right in the middle of our live stream, which was an official parliamentary press
00:11:42.540
conference that was being broadcast on CPAC. We also did a Facebook Live to capture it as well.
00:11:48.620
Facebook shut it down about halfway through, right in the middle of Dr. Bridal's presentation. So
00:11:54.700
censorship is alive and well. And you're right, we're living in a time of sort of a medical priesthood
00:12:00.380
where, you know, the people at the top, whether it's Dr. Tam or others, sort of tell us
00:12:04.540
what the hidden knowledge is. And we just have to go along with it. But that's not how science really is.
00:12:10.620
And I was proud to host these doctors yesterday.
00:12:13.100
Yeah, I watched about half of it on YouTube live stream. And the whole time I was thinking,
00:12:20.140
because we've been through YouTube censorship before. I mean, I understand Facebook censors.
00:12:24.220
YouTube is just as bad. They have a whole list of things you're not allowed to say on YouTube,
00:12:29.980
including about other remedies like hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin. I just don't know enough about
00:12:37.660
those alternative prescriptions, but they're not, they're not like wacky homemade things. They're,
00:12:45.660
you know, long standing medicines used for other ailments. The fact that YouTube, a bunch of woke,
00:12:53.580
you know, tech leftists are telling scientists and doctors what they can and cannot say,
00:12:58.860
I find very odd. This does not apply to any other ailment. I can tell you, if you look at YouTube's
00:13:05.180
rules, it only applies to COVID-19. You just can't talk about the most important subject in the world
00:13:13.740
in a way they don't like. But here's the thing. As of right now, that entire press conference you had
00:13:21.580
yesterday is still available on YouTube, on CPAC's channel. And it has about 140,000 views.
00:13:30.380
So I wonder if YouTube is saying, well, maybe we're not going to censor an official press
00:13:36.380
conference by a member of parliament in the parliament of Canada. I tell you, if that was
00:13:39.740
on our channel, Derek, it would be taken down by now. I wonder what's going on there. And I'm not
00:13:43.900
looking for them to censor it at all. I'm just sort of stunned that they haven't because they censor so
00:13:48.700
many others. Well, I think it would be a red line for social media to actually censor a parliamentary
00:13:55.660
process. I mean, CPAC is kind of our official, I mean, it's not owned by the government, but it's our,
00:14:01.580
you know, our equivalent of C-SPAN, right? It does, it plays all official, you know, parliamentary
00:14:07.900
proceedings in the House of Commons committees and otherwise. It would be, I believe YouTube is,
00:14:15.180
you know, afraid of crossing that line. I mean, if they're censoring democratic processes in our
00:14:21.740
House of Commons, I mean, that is, that is extreme beyond any measure.
00:14:27.020
Well, I agree with you. However, as you just mentioned, Facebook just did it. And I am quite
00:14:34.380
certain that there will be very little, if any, concern expressed by any authority on that, whether
00:14:42.780
it's the Speaker of the House or anything. I don't know. Maybe there's a point of privilege in there
00:14:47.180
for you. Why is Facebook censoring a, I mean, you have what's called parliamentary privilege. I mean,
00:14:55.180
I know this was not in the chamber of the House of Commons, but it was on the precincts of the House
00:14:59.580
of Commons. You have special privileges as an MP. You can, for example, stand up in parliament and
00:15:05.420
defame someone. Not that you would, but that's legally protected. This is an emanation from parliament,
00:15:11.340
official parliamentary event. And Facebook, based in California, just said, no, no, you can't hear
00:15:16.940
from Canadians. You can't hear. What's that by, but foreign political meddling?
00:15:22.460
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, the censorship level is extreme. And, and, you know, in a,
00:15:27.820
in a normal time, I'm sure I could ask for unanimous consent from the House to, to censor,
00:15:33.660
uh, face, uh, censure, you know, C-E-N-S-U-R-E, uh, you know, Facebook for what they've done.
00:15:39.740
Uh, my guess is if I tried to do that, I would not get unanimous consent.
00:15:44.140
And, um, but listen, in normal times, there's all kinds of things we could do, uh, to address this,
00:15:49.100
but instead the liberals are bringing forward the opposite types of things like Bill C-10.
00:15:53.340
And, uh, you know, they're talking about hate speech legislation, uh, for online regulation.
00:15:58.460
So the liberals are doing the opposite of what needs to be done. The censorship that we're
00:16:02.060
seeing is right in front of our face and we need to act. Yeah. Well, I, I think that in,
00:16:08.140
in your case in particular, I don't think you would find any assistance from the liberals or even
00:16:13.340
from the conservatives who threw you out of the party on even more ridiculous grounds. Let me ask
00:16:19.180
you this. We sent a reporter, Drea Humphrey, just outstanding, a young reporter from Vancouver. We
00:16:26.220
flew in Ottawa for this and we sent a videographer, Catherine from Toronto. So we, we went to great
00:16:32.380
lengths and went, you know, literally to great lengths to be there. Um, who else was there from
00:16:39.340
the media? Because you're an MP, there's not a lot going on in Ottawa these days. You had three
00:16:44.220
qualified experts talking about the issue of our time, talking about censorship, including at the
00:16:50.540
hands of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. And I mean, again, I didn't watch the entire
00:16:56.140
press conference, but from what I could see, there was a single question put on like a phone call to
00:17:02.060
you and that's it. I haven't seen any coverage of it. Were there any media there?
00:17:09.180
So basically no. Uh, so the CPAC of course is, is operated by the big television companies. So there
00:17:15.820
were, there were some cameramen and so on from the big companies because they, they have to, you know,
00:17:21.100
broadcast these types of things. Um, no, we, we were ghosted. There was, there was a question from,
00:17:26.620
from, from, uh, from a reporter from a, from iPolitics.ca. I believe someone from the Western
00:17:32.620
Standard reached out to us after the fact. Um, but no, uh, there was not mainstream media coverage.
00:17:38.540
And in fact, Ezra, I'm thinking about doing a whistleblowers, uh, sort of summit for people in the media,
00:17:45.100
because, uh, both Dr. Bridal and myself have been reached out to, uh, from some members of the media
00:17:51.660
who say, listen, we'd like to be covering more of what you guys are doing, but our editorial boards
00:17:55.820
are preventing it. I am going to be soon issuing a call to other members of the media to confidentially
00:18:02.060
give me their information so we can do something similar that we did with the medical whistleblowers.
00:18:07.260
Well, the thing about medical whistleblowers, I mean, if you're, for example, you have the associate
00:18:11.180
professor of immunology, he's got some protection. In fact, he started his remarks yesterday by saying
00:18:16.460
that his administration at least stood by him. He's got tenure. It's tough to dynamite out a
00:18:22.460
tenured professor from university. I mean, they can be mean to him, but good luck firing a professor.
00:18:28.540
Um, journalists are not the same. There's no such thing as tenure for a journalist.
00:18:33.020
Journalists are sacked every day and no one cares. So I don't know if you'll find the same
00:18:37.820
courageous journalists coming forward because they'll be fired immediately. Um, I want to get
00:18:42.540
back to what Facebook did to you as, as I noted, and I'm not trying to jinx it. Um, CPACs, that's the,
00:18:49.660
that's the cable company, the, the nonprofit, uh, consortium of for-profit cable companies
00:18:57.260
that broadcast everything on Parliament Hill. I think I got that right. So they, they sort of broadcast
00:19:01.900
anything, anyone, that's the job. Yes. And YouTube hasn't shut them down. Good. I don't want them to,
00:19:09.340
but Facebook did. I think you've got to do so. I don't, I'm not telling you what to do. I just think
00:19:15.260
you gotta, I think you've got to not let that pass. No one else will care about it. None of the other
00:19:21.020
parties. Um, I think Facebook should be sensitive right now to its political meddling because the
00:19:27.500
government is saying, Oh, don't worry about it. We're just going to regulate, we're just going
00:19:31.660
to regulate social media, but we'll never misuse it to silence our opposition. Like Facebook turned
00:19:38.940
off the feed of an opposition MP who is criticizing, you know, the government narrative. And how is that
00:19:49.740
acceptable? I don't know. I don't know what tools you have at your disposal as an ordinary MP, but I
00:19:54.940
just, I mean, I know what I could do if that was done to me, nothing, but maybe you can do something
00:20:00.700
by virtue of your standing as an MP. Yeah. I really like what you're saying. And no, I'm not going to
00:20:06.400
let this go. And I've been thinking of different ways to address it, maybe with a question in question
00:20:10.300
period or some other, uh, you know, question to the speaker. Yeah. I think the speaker, I mean,
00:20:14.660
I think the speaker, uh, should be appalled. I mean, he's a liberal obviously, but the speaker
00:20:19.500
should be, uh, I think, I forget the name of the new speaker, um, should be appalled that any one
00:20:25.500
of his MPs of any party is being silenced. The speaker represents the MPs. Absolutely. Yeah. No,
00:20:32.100
I, you know what? I think there's, I mean, listen, this is a very big issue. If, if all of parliament
00:20:36.480
wanted to do something about this, they could, uh, you know, with respect to the speaker, I'm going to
00:20:41.160
look at some of my options. My guess is that they would say that, that Facebook is outside of the,
00:20:47.200
the, the, the, the ambit of the house of commons. So, you know, if, if, um, you know, the, the
00:20:53.060
privilege as he would see it is, is related to me being able to speak in the house of commons,
00:20:56.940
whether or not social media, uh, you know, transmits that it would be outside of that
00:21:02.420
immediate scope. But I will think about this and I will see what I can do to raise awareness on this
00:21:08.080
issue because you're right. It's, it's really appalling. And it's not the first time we've seen
00:21:12.000
this. I remember they, they censored a meeting that governor DeSantis had, but it wasn't,
00:21:16.440
it wasn't in, uh, you know, the, the legislature. It was, it was a meeting of elected officials and
00:21:21.940
appointed individual individuals discussing official business. But this was something on
00:21:26.560
parliament Hill that was, uh, you know, an official press conference that was covered by CPAC and,
00:21:32.500
uh, you know, Facebook shut it down halfway through now. It still is actually up in Facebook on two
00:21:37.240
parts, but you're right. Uh, I've never had that happen before where they just, you know, we had
00:21:41.600
thousands of people watching live and it just, the numbers just started going down and then it
00:21:46.940
was zero and then it was off. Um, so very bizarre, never had that happen before. And I will do
00:21:52.380
whatever I can to, uh, to continue raising awareness and, uh, and get some answers on this.
00:21:57.660
You know, I mean, Facebook, they're odious. Mark Zuckerberg is a God complex, you know, all these
00:22:03.420
tech giants, these oligarchs, they are what they are. But the fact that, I mean, you mentioned
00:22:09.460
someone from iPolitics called and I called in to ask a question. I heard that and we had our people
00:22:14.540
there. Um, I find that more troubling because at least in America, when you have a right wing or a
00:22:21.280
left wing or a dissident or an unusual political character, they're covered by the media. Uh, the
00:22:26.560
media might mock them. The media might attack them. But I think that the, uh, you use the word ghosting
00:22:34.220
they, you know, the absolute pretending you don't exist. It's not like they're busy.
00:22:39.160
There's nothing going on in Ottawa. They've had the laziest 18 months of their life.
00:22:46.160
Um, they could have called in, they could have watched it on YouTube and called in. None of them
00:22:50.520
did it. I think it's a form of de-platforming you. Just like when Maxime Bernier was arrested,
00:22:57.320
there was either silence on that or cheering. I think there's something deeply wrong with our
00:23:04.180
media party that, that they're, they are acting like liberal partisans and that they can't restrain
00:23:11.540
their hatred towards conservative populist dissidents like you and Maxime Bernier. So they think,
00:23:17.480
well, I could either attack him, but that gives him more oxygen. I'm just going to pretend he doesn't
00:23:22.960
exist. I think that's a really, really broken media system that won't you. I mean, forget about
00:23:28.900
you. You had three of the most interesting speakers I've heard on the pandemic completely cut off.
00:23:36.360
Yeah, no, you're totally, you're totally right. And, uh, yeah, I mean, listen, um, the media is
00:23:41.480
supposed to, uh, you know, uh, air, uh, you know, the non-mainstream views, right? Like, I mean,
00:23:47.680
they're not supposed to just be a mouthpiece for the government. That's, I mean, that's a communist
00:23:51.660
country, right? If the media is just a mouthpiece for the government and not actually, you know,
00:23:56.480
holding them to account or, or, or airing things that are being brought up by people who are
00:24:01.280
dissenting, I mean, they're not doing their job and it's clear that they're complicit. Uh, you know,
00:24:05.780
I believe a lot of rank and file in media are, are starting to get frustrated by this. And hopefully,
00:24:10.520
when I opened my whistleblowers forum for them, we can, we can find a way to address this more broadly.
00:24:16.340
Yeah. Well, listen, I'm glad you did what you did yesterday. And I'm glad we sent our reporter
00:24:20.500
from halfway across the world to come and be there. Uh, that's the length we went to cover it.
00:24:25.360
Uh, the rest of the media party couldn't bother walking down the street. Derek Sloan, great to
00:24:29.760
see you. Thanks for your time today. Absolutely. Talk to you soon. Right on. There you have it,
00:24:33.740
Derek Sloan. Uh, by the way, at least until it's taken down, we will have the entire press conference
00:24:39.500
embedded on our website from CPAC's own YouTube channel. I'm quite certain that if we were to upload it
00:24:46.220
to our own YouTube channel, we would get what's called a strike. We would be suspended for two
00:24:50.780
weeks, but we can embed on our website, CPAC's channel. And if they're shut down, it'll just
00:24:56.380
leave a little hole on our website, but we won't be hurt. So check out the whole thing there. Stay with
00:25:00.880
us more ahead. Hey, welcome back. I I'm disappointed that we lost in federal court today. I really
00:25:17.820
thought we had a chance the way the hearing went, the government had so many terrible admissions.
00:25:23.020
They, they really were on the back foot the whole time. I think this is a very political decision.
00:25:27.540
Hopefully the federal court of appeal will apply the law as I think it ought to be
00:25:32.240
strengthening our right to due process, strengthening our right to be free from
00:25:36.240
arbitrary detention. And of course, same to the government, the quarantine act just simply
00:25:41.160
doesn't allow you to do this, to imprison healthy people for three days, just because it just doesn't
00:25:46.400
let you do that. So if you want to help us go to nocovidjails.com. Now, yesterday I talked at
00:25:52.820
length about Andrew Neil. He's the excellent journalist at GBnews.uk. That's that new British
00:26:00.100
news site. And I was talking about how he was fighting him back against cancel culture. And I
00:26:04.680
was sort of leading up to it. But last night he did a five minute monologue on his response. He's so
00:26:11.220
smart. Instead of describing it to you, let me show it to you in full. So I'm going to say goodbye now,
00:26:17.660
but don't go away. Here's five minutes of Andrew Neil explaining how he's fighting against cancel
00:26:33.000
Welcome back. Tonight, a Media Watch special. We ask companies boycotting GB News for peddling hate.
00:26:45.420
Now, since GB News launched on Sunday night, our young and diverse team of reporters across the
00:26:52.060
country have covered. Nissen's plans to invest more in Sunderland, regeneration of Skegness,
00:26:57.920
whiskey production in Hoyk, pressures on the hospitality sector in Newcastle, the pollution charge
00:27:03.900
in Birmingham, house building and brick house, flooding in Bedfordshire, Scotland's fan zone
00:27:09.780
in Glasgow, the struggles of the wedding industry in Ipswich, COVID infection rates in Bolton,
00:27:16.620
that's a hotspot, vaccinations in Abergavenny, the debate over Irish language lessons in Belfast,
00:27:23.500
and of course, Wales's wonderful Euros win in Cardiff. Now, some of these stories you won't see on other
00:27:30.620
news channels. All of them are important to the communities involved, and not a scintilla of hate
00:27:37.420
in any of them. We've interviewed the Chancellor of the Exchequer, reported on growing anti-Semitism
00:27:43.180
in London, and covered the country's many mental health problems. Again, not an iota of hate in sight.
00:27:52.380
Indeed, the only hate this channel has broadcast was when we showed film of a BBC Newsnight reporter
00:27:58.140
being attacked by a baying anti-lockdown mob, and we condemn that unreservedly.
00:28:05.780
Yet a number of companies, some of them well-known brands, have decided to stop advertising
00:28:10.620
on GB News. They've bowed to pressure from a fringe group called Stop Funding Hate,
00:28:17.060
a misnomer if ever there was one. It's quite remarkable that serious, important executives
00:28:22.920
in well-established companies can be so easily cowed. They've all taken the knee to stop funding
00:28:30.440
hate. It's important that they, and you, realise to whom they are in thrall. SFH doesn't stand
00:28:38.620
for a liberal, inclusive society. It's dominated by far-left agitators and cranks that push for
00:28:45.720
advertiser boycotts of any media organisation with which it disagrees. Its default position is to
00:28:52.840
smear anything it takes against as a peddler of hate. In GB News' case, SFH started rounding up
00:29:00.760
the lynch mob four months before we'd even started broadcasting. So I don't think we're talking open
00:29:07.200
minds here. If advertisers want to see real hate, they should have a look at the social media postings
00:29:13.420
of SFH supporters. They smear and threaten businesses and people who won't do their bidding with words
00:29:20.080
like vile, scum, toxic, and many more words that we can't repeat here tonight. Yet through fear or
00:29:27.720
ignorance, some companies do as SFH bids. Woke nonsense has reached the boardroom, and corporate
00:29:35.860
capitalism is becoming the useful idiot of bigots bent on censorship. Now, I understand that in some
00:29:42.780
cases it was not the bosses of the brands that pulled their ads, but their advertising agencies.
00:29:47.900
Fair enough. There's still time for you to have a word with your agencies, who work for you after
00:29:52.860
all, and risk doing you huge harm. But all these brands should understand that this boycott business
00:29:59.540
can play both ways. GB News viewers are incensed with advertisers who've taken against us for no
00:30:06.100
reason. Many have written to these advertisers to tell them so. And our numbers, our viewers are
00:30:12.060
growing for three nights in a row. This show has been the number one rated show in its time slot on
00:30:19.320
any news channel available in the UK. And if you add our audiences, our friends, our allies, our
00:30:25.800
sympathizers, together we can muster millions of supporters on social media. It's not a good idea to be on
00:30:33.180
the wrong end of them. We will not go there. We have more important work to do. We want to provide
00:30:39.260
a high quality news channel which reputable advertisers are proud to use and which delivers
00:30:45.520
great results for them. So far, not a single example of hate has been given in evidence to
00:30:52.320
justify the boycott of this channel. But this program issues a standing invitation to the bosses
00:30:58.020
of any company or agency that thinks to the contrary, to come on air. We'll look at your
00:31:04.160
examples. If you have them, we'll discuss them together. Our studio door is open. Because you're
00:31:10.520
in the politics business now. And that's where you are when you succumb to political pressure.
00:31:16.520
And then, like politicians, you have to be held to account. And that's tonight's Media Watch.