EZRA LEVANT： Social media censors grilled in the US, why does it never happen in Canada？
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Summary
In Canada, we have more accountability and checks and balances in our system than the U.S. Congress. Why doesn't that ever happen up here in the States? You're fighting for freedom, you censorious bug!
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. Interesting, and I'm a little bit jealous of it. America had hearings in their
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Congress about Twitter's censorship. I'm jealous in that we rarely have the same banter and
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inquiries, and, you know, we just don't have the same accountable checks and balances in our system.
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I'll show you what happened in the States. I'll play you video clips of some of the exchanges,
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and if you're like me, you'll wish we had more of that in Canada. But first, let me invite you
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to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. I want you to
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see these congressmen and these Twitter executives going head-to-head. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com,
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click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. You get my show every weekday, and you get the satisfaction
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of knowing that your eight bucks a month helps us keep the lights on here because we do not take
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any money from the government. All right, here's today's show. You're listening to a Rebel News
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Podcast. Tonight, social media censors were grilled in the U.S. Congress. Why doesn't that
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ever happen up here? It's February 10th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
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You're fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug!
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If you remember the Trump years, whenever there was some hearing about Donald Trump,
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some accusation about Donald Trump, the impeachment process against Donald Trump,
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Canadian media couldn't get enough of it, even though every single one of those fusses
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resulted in a big nothing. Do you remember the Mueller investigation for Russian influence?
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It came up with nothing. There must have been hundreds of stories. I can't think of a single
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American left-wing activist. Like, remember Michael Avenatti, who was going to be the next
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president of the United States? He's in prison now. The Canadian media loved covering every
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jot and tittle, every trifle and trivial matter that was to embarrass Donald Trump. But there have been
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hearings in Congress this past week that, as far as I know, have not been covered anywhere in the
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Canadian mainstream media, although they are of great substantive gravity. The hearings are for the
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former executives of Twitter. These hearings are happening only because the Republicans have the
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majority in Congress now, so they can set the agenda. And, very fortuitously, because Elon Musk bought
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Twitter, took it private, spent $44 billion, and released some powerful secrets about what Twitter had done
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under the previous regime. In fact, not only did Elon Musk release this, he invited independent
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journalists, including many on the left, to go to Twitter headquarters, sift through hundreds or
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thousands of internal memos, and publish their results on Twitter. There was several tranches
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of these Twitter files, as they've been called, showing political interference, especially in the last
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presidential election. COVID interference, including where a Pfizer executive, Scott Gottlieb,
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actively interfered to stop critics of Pfizer and scientists with alternative viewpoints,
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including that natural immunity was powerful. One of the scariest things that was revealed in these
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Twitter files is the FBI merger with Twitter. It was basically used not only to capture information about
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people that the FBI wanted to learn about, but to shut down comments and political conversations that the FBI
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wanted to stop. Since when was that the matter for police? But I've been saying this even before Elon Musk bought
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the company and revealed it. Twitter really is an information operation, a spy network where you are the
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product. I mean, think about it. If you don't have to pay to use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google,
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Twitter, if you don't have to pay, are you what's for sale? Well, the answer is, of course. And that's not a shocking
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thing to think about. When you read a newspaper, you may buy the newspaper or pay for a subscription,
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but really the advertisers are buying you, the audience and your eyeballs. It's not a shocking
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concept. The thing is, when you're on Twitter, it's much more than just what you're reading. It's
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everything you send in what's called a direct message. Every direct message you send through
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social media becomes the property of that company. You may not know this, but the terms of service of
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Facebook and Instagram, when you upload a photo to those websites, you grant Facebook, Instagram,
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and the rest of them a license to use those however they like. You may think, well, maybe they're going
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to do it to advertise their system, but actually much more troublingly, they sell that information about
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you. Well, to advertisers for sure, but imagine the treasure trove of information available to the CIA,
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the FBI, the State Department. Because remember, Twitter is an international service in many
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languages. The old board of directors of Twitter didn't have a lot of tech bros on it. It was full
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of people in their 60s and 70s and maybe even their 80s who were known for their role in the military
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industrial espionage complex. These are people who didn't know anything about the online world other than
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that's a great way to gather information on people and to spread information that you want to spread.
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It wasn't just Americans, of course, foreign agencies too, including the Saudis who had a major
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investment in Twitter and whose spy agency was caught using Saudi staff at Twitter to spy on dissidents.
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TikTok, one of the most popular social media apps in the world, is obviously a Chinese spy app.
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Anyways, what news we have is that these Twitter executives under the former regime
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have been called to testify in Washington, D.C. And indeed, they attended. Sometimes tech leaders
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simply resist or refuse to attend, but they were there. Now, I have to tell you very candidly,
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some of these representatives asked good questions, excellent questions even, but some of them,
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in my view, they didn't. Now, I completely sympathize with them. But in the case of,
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for example, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, two conservative Republican congressmen,
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their questions of Vijaya Gaddy and Ewell Roth were more painful complaints of how they had been censored
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and abused. They were more howling at the injustice than they were lawyers doing a cross-examination.
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You'll see that. And you might not particularly be impressed by their questions, but you should be
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impressed by the fact that this is allowed to happen at all. And you might think to yourself,
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why don't we ever ask such questions in Canada? I want to show you the first clip of Representative Nancy
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Mace, a Republican, asking questions of Vijaya. That's her name. She was one of the senior censors
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at Twitter who had previously told the public there was no shadow banning. There was no
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censorship. Vijaya Gaddy is her name. I'm going to play for you several minutes of this. It's
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fascinating. One of the most interesting things said here is that this congressman herself
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regrets getting the vaccine. And one of the things that she is furious about is that she was not able
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to get both sides of the story medically about the vaccine because of Twitter's ideological
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censorship. She actually regrets it and wonders why they censored doctors, medical doctors with
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great expertise. Here, let me play a few minutes of this. I thought this was illuminating.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Twitter files were not just about Hunter Biden's laptop.
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Twitter files make it apparent Twitter worked overtime to suppress accurate COVID information.
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Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford who once tweeted an article he wrote
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about natural immunity. Thanks to Elon Musk's release of the Twitter files, we learned some of
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his tweets were tagged with the label of trends blacklist. Apparently, the views of a Stanford doctor
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are disinformation to you people. I, along with many Americans, have long-term effects from COVID.
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Not only was I a long hauler, but I have effects from the vaccine. It wasn't the first shot,
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but it was the second shot that I now developed asthma that has never gone away since I had the second
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shot. I have tremors in my left hand, and I have the occasional heart pain that no doctor can explain,
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and I've had a battery of tests. I find it extremely alarming Twitter's unfettered censorship spread
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into medical fields and affected millions of Americans by suppressing expert opinions from
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doctors and censoring those who disagree with the CDC. I have great regrets about getting the shot
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because of the health issues that I now have that I don't think are ever going to go away. And I know
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that I'm not the only American who has those kinds of concerns. Another example of what Twitter has done
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to censor folks is from Dr. Martin Koldorf, a Harvard-educated epidemiologist who once tweeted,
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COVID vaccines are important for high-risk people and their caretakers. Those with prior
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natural infection do not need it, nor children. The Twitter files reveal this tweet was deemed false
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false information because it ran contrary to the CDC. So my first question this morning of Ms. Gatti,
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may I ask of you, where did you go to medical school? I did not go to medical school. I'm sorry?
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I did not go to medical school. That's what I thought. Why do you think you or anyone else at
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Twitter had the medical expertise to censor a doctor's expert opinion?
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Our policies regarding COVID were designed to protect individuals. We were seeing...
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You guys censored Harvard-educated doctors, Stanford-educated doctors, doctors that are educated
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in the best places in the world, and you silenced those voices. My next question is, the U.S.
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government... Oh, excuse me. I have another chart I want to show you, Ms. Gatti. I have another tweet by
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someone with a following of a full 18,000 followers. This person put a chart from the CDC on Twitter.
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It's the CDC's own data, so it's accurate by your standards, and you all labeled this as misleading.
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You're not a doctor, right, Ms. Gatti? No, I'm not. Okay. What makes you think you or anyone else
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of Twitter have the medical expertise to censor actual, accurate CDC data? I'm not familiar with these
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particular situations. Yeah, I'm sure you're not, but this is what Twitter did. They labeled this
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as inaccurate. It is the government's own data. It's ridiculous that we're even having to have
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this conversation today. It's not just about the laptop. This is about medical advice that expert
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doctors were trying to give Americans because social media companies like Twitter were silencing
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their voices. I want to play for you another clip. This is a very interesting exchange between
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Representative Byron Donalds, a Republican. I think he's from Florida. He was grilling Yoel Roth,
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really the chief censor of Twitter. In fact, he briefly worked for Twitter even under
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Elon Musk until he was finally sacked. Byron Donalds asks questions, and there's another FBI man who was
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briefly with Twitter under Elon Musk until he was sacked. And look at this Republican, ask about how the
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Biden team would simply make requests to Twitter and they would jump right on them, request to
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censor critics of Biden. Take a look at this exchange. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Real quick,
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Mr. Roth, you've stated already that what happened with the New York Post story was similar to
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the hack and leak scenarios from 2016. You also said that you've you actually were opposed to
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deleting the New York Post story. Who advocated for the removal of the New York Post story?
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The company's decision to treat it as a violation. Mr. Roth, who at the company
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actually went over your recommendation because you're pretty high up?
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Who overrode you? The decision was communicated to me by my direct supervisor. Who was that person?
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Her name was Del Harvey. She was the vice president of trust and safety at the time.
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All right. Thank you so much. Ms. Gaddy, real quick, you said to the chairman earlier,
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and I want to paraphrase what I heard earlier, is that Twitter had no contact with anybody from
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the Biden team. Is that correct to your knowledge? Not to my knowledge.
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Put that up for me. Okay. Over my right shoulder, we have an email reference. This is like this is
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Saturday, October 24th, 539 PM, referencing five different tweets. Is that with a Twitter email
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chain? Under the line, it's more to review from the Biden team. Does anybody have a comment on how
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much interaction was happening with the Biden team at Twitter with respect to tweets that they wanted
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Twitter to review? Ms. Gaddy, Mr. Roth? I'm not familiar with this email.
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So you're not familiar with this email, Mr. Roth? Are you familiar with this email?
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Only from what's been reported in the Twitter files.
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Did you ever have contact with anybody from the Biden team?
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No, sir, I did not. We explicitly separated the teams that would interact with campaigns
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from teams like mine that were responsible for content monitoring.
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How big was the organization in Twitter that was actually working with campaigns?
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I couldn't say for sure. Did you ever have any contact with the DNC?
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Directly? No, I did not. Did anybody at Twitter have any contact with anybody at the DNC?
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I think it's likely that somebody at Twitter did, yes.
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In these emails, it's listed that these are tweets that had to be flagged from the Biden team.
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That's what's in the files. You have no idea how many people actually
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engaged with the Twitter team or how frequently that engagement happened?
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No, and again, that was by design. We kept those functions separate from content moderation so
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that we could impartially assess reports like that.
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Do you know how many tweets were actually flagged and taken down at the behest of the Biden team?
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I wouldn't agree with the characterization of it as being at the behest of them.
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These tweets were reported and Twitter independently evaluated them under its rules.
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But the email is very clear. More to review from Biden team. The response three hours later at the
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bottom, hold this up real quick so you can see. The request at the bottom, it says, handled these.
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My understanding is that these tweets contained non-consensual nude photos of Hunter Biden,
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Hold on, real quick, Mr. Roth. How could you know so much about the content of these tweets?
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I mean, as far as I'm concerned, these are just web addresses. I don't know what's in these tweets.
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You have these things committed to memory that you know the content,
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but you don't know who you talk to, who you talk to at the Biden team?
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Sir, I didn't meet with the Biden team, but there was extensive public reporting
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about these tweets specifically that uncovered what they were.
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You know the contents of the tweets. It was obviously at Twitter. But you have no idea how
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often people who worked in your organization had with the Biden team during the end of the 2020
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presidential elections. All right, I want to show you another clip. This is from Lauren Boebert, who
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is a controversial conservative. And of course, the left would say every conservative is controversial.
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But, you know, I acknowledge that she's a spicy, feisty Republican. And by the way,
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that's allowed under freedom of speech. She was clearly hurt that she was censored by Yoel Roth.
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I want to play this for you. And again, I don't think this was particularly good cross-examination
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if this were a court of law, but it's a court of public opinion. And Lauren Boebert certainly has
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her fans. Take a look. Watch for yourself. Mr. Roth, Ms. Gaddy, did either of you approve
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the shadow banning of my account at Lauren Boebert? Yes or no? No, I did not. Not to the best of my
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recollection. Well, let me refresh your memory, because on March 12th, 2021, and Mr. Roth,
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I know you looked at it because fascist Twitter 1.0 had a public interest exceptions policy, which means
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for members of Congress to be shadow banned, it had to go before you, Mr. Roth. So I'll ask again,
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did you shadow ban my account? Yes or no? Again, not to the best of my recollection.
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So the answer is, Mr. Roth, yes, you did. I found out last night from Twitter staff
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that you suppressed my account for this tweet. It's a freaking joke about Hillary Clinton being angry
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that she couldn't rig her election. It's a joke. But in response, being the sinister overlords that you
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all are, you placed a 90-day account filter so I could not be found. And now we see here that Twitter
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staff said the visibility filter on my account excluded me from top searches, prevented notifications
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for non-followers, and much more. This is considered an aggressive visibility filter. You silenced members
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of Congress from communicating with their constituents. You silenced me from communicating with the American
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people over a freaking joke. Now, who the hell do you think that you are? The smugness of you,
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Bill Roth is incredible. You know, one of the criticisms of Twitter in the pre-Elon Musk era
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was that it was extremely harsh on conservatives, on Republicans, on anyone politically incorrect,
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on anyone who would misgender a trans person, for example. But they had no problem with, say,
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the Ayatollah of Iran or various Chinese dictators. They banned Donald Trump, who was a sitting
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president at the time. But they let every dictator in the third world on Twitter. They banned Lauren
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Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, but they allowed child pornography. They simply wouldn't take it down.
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Well, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had some questions about that. She was banned,
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but the porn was allowed. Take a look. So glad that you're censored down. I'm so glad you've lost your jobs.
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Thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter. And you know what? Let's talk about something a little bit further.
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It's amazing to me, Mr. Roth, as the head and trust of safety at Twitter, your ability, or should I say
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inability to remove child porn. Now, here's something that disgusts me about you. In your doctoral
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dissertation entitled Gay Data, you argued that minors should have access to Grindr, an adult male
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gay hookup app. Minors? Really? You know, Elon Musk took over Twitter and he banned 44,000 accounts that
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were promoting child porn. You permanently banned my Twitter account, but you allowed child porn all over
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Twitter. Twitter had become a platform, you said, connecting queer young adults. You also wrote on
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Twitter in 2010, can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?
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In 2021, while you were the director of trust and safety on Twitter, an underage boy and his mother
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announced a lawsuit against Twitter because Twitter was benefiting from and refused to remove a lewd video
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featuring this boy and another minor. That is repulsive. But you violated me. What were my tweets? Okay,
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let's talk about them. I was talking about the deaths being reported on VAERS. By the way,
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that's on the CDC website. I was also saying that I didn't think any entity should enforce a non-FDA
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approved vaccine or mask. Guess what? A lot of people agreed with me, but you called that COVID
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misinformation. By the way, I'm a member of Congress and you're not. I also said the controversial COVID-19
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vaccines should not be forced on our military. You want to know something? Republicans stop that
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in the NDAA. I'm not just referring to pornography in general. I'm talking to child pornography,
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which of course is the product of actually raping children and abusing them. Why was that allowed
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for years on Twitter? I think it's a fair question, even if it's asked in anger by someone who was
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personally hurt by Twitter censorship. Now, of course, it wasn't just Republicans who asked questions of
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Twitter. The Democrats were there. And with a very small exception, the Democrats loved the censorship.
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You would think that Democrats would share the belief in a free system. I mean, aren't we all in
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this great public debate together? Don't we all think that ideas should, you know, truth and falsehood
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should grapple? Incredibly, the vast majority of Democrats excused or applauded the censorship of
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Twitter because they know Twitter was on their side. And these censors were absolutely anti-Republican.
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Here's Representative Jimmy Gomez lobbing softballs to that same Yul Roth about Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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Please explain to us why Miss Marjorie Taylor Greene or the representatives from Georgia was removed from
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Twitter. Thank you for the question, Congressman. My recollection is that her personal account was
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banned from Twitter after repeated written notices due to repeated violations of the Twitter rules.
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Can you add a little specificity to the violation of the Twitter rules?
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Yes. Again, I didn't have access to my Twitter email, documents, anything that would have let me
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prepare to answer that in more detail. But my recollection is that the Congresswoman repeatedly
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violated Twitter's policies about sharing misinformation about COVID-19. She received
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multiple written warnings about that conduct. She received multiple timeouts related to that conduct.
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And then ultimately, consistent with the written and published policy,
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those repeated violations resulted in her account being permanently suspended.
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Well, like I say, Americans are lucky that they have a Congress and a political system
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that's more responsive than us. I'm flummoxed and stunned every time I consider that our third
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branch, you know, there's various branches of government. There's the legislature. That's easy
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to understand. That's your elected lawmakers, your MPs at the federal level, your MPPs or MLAs
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at the provincial level. That's easy to understand. There's the executive. Those are cabinet ministers who can
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make decisions on everything from going to war to interest rates, things like that, although they
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would claim that interest rates are independent. And then the third branch of government is the judiciary,
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the judges, which serve to be a check on legislators or the executive branch that gets too big for its bridges,
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too big for the Constitution. But alas, here in Canada, our judiciary has yet to weigh in.
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The Supreme Court of Canada has yet to bother itself with anything regarding the lockdown,
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or that civil liberties bonfire. Isn't that incredible? We do not have the same active
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checks and balances in democracy that they have in the United States, and I'm jealous.
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So they had these hearings, and these hearings were televised, and there was a congressional record.
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And what did the media party say? Well, as I said, in Canada, our media simply ignored this.
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They would follow every detail in a Mueller investigation about Russian influence or
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the endless Trump impeachments. But this, censorship by one of the world's most important social media
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companies, they couldn't be bothered. Here's the media party saying the Twitter files are no big deal.
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15% of Americans care about it. But Jen Psaki, the problem also with these hearings are,
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you look at these issues, they never produce it. The Twitter files. You remember the Twitter
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files? Oh boy, that was right. It's going to be the end.
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It's fascinating that the Twitter files had such an extraordinary blind spot. It ended up being the
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most biased thing I've ever seen in my life. Because we find out after the Twitter files come out,
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I guess Elon didn't give them all the information about, like, Twitter executives cowering in the
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corner and doing whatever Donald Trump wanted them to do. You've got the Twitter files, you've got the
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New York Post, the Hunter Biden laptop thing. These things have been looked at. It's just like when,
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when they were, you know, who's his special character? Durham. It's just like Durham. I'd read Durham's
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pleadings and I'd say, okay, I, there has to be something here. And Mika will tell you, I read one
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pleading all day and I called about 30 legal experts. I go, what's here? And everyone of them said,
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I've been reading it. I don't think anything's here. Conservatives keep doing this. They did it with
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Durham and their witch hunt against the FBI. They did it on Hunter Biden's laptop and their witch
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hunt against Twitter. They did it on the Twitter files and their witch hunt. Like, they only want
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to go after blue witches. They don't want to go after red witches. These things never, ever produce
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the punch they expect. No, I mean, and to go back to Mike Barnacle's earlier point, I mean,
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this is like a word salad of right wing craziness, right? I mean, and if you are just a normal person,
00:26:19.420
80% of the country, by the way, that is not on Twitter, and you're hearing things like Durham,
00:26:25.420
woke mobs, many of the sentences in Sarah Huckabee Sanders's speech the other night,
00:26:31.100
you, you tune in and you think, I have no idea what you're talking about. I am, I have to go buy
00:26:36.940
eggs. My healthcare is too expensive. My prescription drugs are too expensive. I'm not sure about gas. It
00:26:43.820
seems down, but I don't want it to go up. And it just feels very far away. So in a strange way,
00:26:49.740
the, this Republican strategy right now has made them seem like this, like right wing elite society
00:26:55.820
that is not connected with what is actually happening in the country.
00:26:59.500
Yeah. MSNBC and Jen Psaki, who of course was a senior Democrat official, they both agree that
00:27:06.740
Hunter Biden laptop story. It's not even real. And here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying,
00:27:13.380
the whole thing is a waste of Congress's time. Let's do something more important,
00:27:18.100
like impeaching Donald Trump twice. Take a look at AOC.
00:27:21.780
Let's, let's, I just want to start off right here at the top here. This isn't even my line
00:27:27.220
of questioning, but I'd like to submit to the record, a Washington Post article,
00:27:30.980
now warning about Hunter Biden laptop disinformation, the guy who leaked it.
00:27:36.660
Here's the deal. Before I even get into my questions, I think that the story here with the
00:27:42.660
New York, with the Washington Post reporting is that what they're saying right here, when the New
00:27:46.900
York Post first reported in October, 2020, that it had obtained contents of a laptop computer,
00:27:51.540
allegedly owned by Joe Biden's son Hunter, there was an immediate roadblock faced by other news
00:27:56.820
outlets that hoped to corroborate reporting, as many did. The newspaper wasn't sharing what it
00:28:02.100
obtained. New York Post had this alleged information and was trying to publish it
00:28:08.340
without any corroboration, without any backup information. They were trying to publish it to
00:28:12.980
Twitter. Twitter did not let them. And now they were upset. I believe that political operatives who
00:28:18.580
sought to inject explosive disinformation with the Washington Post couldn't get away with it.
00:28:23.700
And now they're livid. And they want the ability to do it again. They want the ability to inject this
00:28:30.820
again. So they've dragged a social media platform here in Congress. They're weaponizing the use of
00:28:36.900
this committee so that they can do it again. A whole hearing about a 24-hour hiccup in a right-wing
00:28:43.780
political operation. That is why we are here right now. And it is, it's just an abuse of public
00:28:51.060
resources and abuse of public time. We could be talking about health care. We could be talking
00:28:55.140
about bringing down the cost of prescription drugs. We could be talking about abortion rights,
00:28:58.820
civil rights, voting rights. But instead, we're talking about Hunter Biden's half-fake laptop story.
00:29:04.980
I mean, this is an embarrassment. Well, I'm jealous of America for a number of reasons. One of them is,
00:29:10.820
hey, can we have the Canadian version of Twitter files? Can we know about Justin Trudeau or Gerald
00:29:18.500
Butz contacting Twitter to tell Twitter to throttle or ban or suspend their enemies? You doubt it
00:29:24.260
happened? Obviously, all of this is happening at the other social media companies too. It's not just
00:29:30.100
the Twitter files. You know Facebook, YouTube, Google, Instagram, and the rest of them are doing
00:29:35.620
this too. It's just, we found out about it because Elon Musk bought the company, took it private, and then
00:29:41.220
revealed the dirt on his own company. The third thing I'd say, and you heard me talk about this the
00:29:46.420
other day about our lawsuit against, not against Twitter itself, but against Stephen Gilbeau,
00:29:53.380
the environment minister, former heritage minister, for blocking Rebel News and our access to the
00:29:58.900
government service. I'm very excited about that lawsuit. I'm amazed at how much interest it's had
00:30:03.460
nationwide. Over 100 newspapers touched on it. And we are having that trial in June, which is not very
00:30:11.140
far away. I'll keep you posted. In fact, I'll upload some more information to twitterlawsuit.ca.
00:30:18.020
I think we've actually got a chance. And it's not so much that relying on that source of information,
00:30:25.780
that Twitter account of the environment minister, is the most important thing in the world. It's
00:30:32.260
important, and we have a right to it. And I am interested in what the environment minister has
00:30:36.820
to say. It affects me as a citizen, and I have a right to it. But it's also important that the
00:30:41.860
federal government know that it simply cannot punish people based on their political differences with us,
00:30:49.300
that they simply can't ban people from getting access to government services because they disagree
00:30:55.300
with us or because we disagree with them. I look forward to that trial, and I'm optimistic, a little
00:31:01.620
bit, a little bit optimistic. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:31:17.140
Well, you know it's got to be bad if the CBC is covering it. Roxham Road is what I'm talking about.
00:31:24.340
About 100,000 illegal migrants have crossed the border from the United States. And of course,
00:31:30.580
there is no such thing as a refugee from the United States. It's one of the safest,
00:31:35.380
freest countries in the world. These are often people who are escaping law enforcement in the
00:31:42.020
United States, either for being a fake refugee applicant in that country, or some of them are
00:31:47.380
actually criminals fleeing justice of another sort to Canada. Justin Trudeau only too happy to receive
00:31:53.540
them. But the news in Radio Canada, the French wing of the CBC today, is even crazier than normal.
00:32:00.180
And the only reason I cite the CBC is because you know it must be bad if they're talking about it.
00:32:07.140
Let me read to you the translated version of their story.
00:32:09.940
U.S. federal agents are said to be driving migrants to Roxham Road. The Canadian police
00:32:20.500
would have been informed of this situation, learned Radio Canada. Let me just read the first sentence.
00:32:26.180
It wouldn't just be American taxi drivers bringing migrants to Roxham Road to cross the Canada-U.S.
00:32:31.220
border. According to information obtained by Radio Canada, that's the French CBC,
00:32:35.860
American customs agents would also be involved in such transport. Some even reportedly made a
00:32:43.700
business out of it, off duty, picking up these people in Plattsburgh, New York. It is in this city,
00:32:50.980
located about 30 minutes from the border on Roxham Road, that most of these migrants arrive by means
00:32:55.700
of a regular bus line. It's been known for a few months, told one of our sources. Incredibly,
00:33:02.740
the Americans are shipping their illegal migrants to us, and Trudeau, only too happy to receive them.
00:33:10.420
Joining us now via Skype from La Belle Provence of Quebec is our friend Alexa Lavois. Alexa, great to see
00:33:17.540
you. I love the fact that you have covered Roxham Road many times, and you're able to report both in
00:33:23.700
English and in French. Tell me more about this story. Do you share my view that if the CBC is covering
00:33:29.860
this? It's probably because it's really, really bad. Yeah, it is bad, and if they are reporting on it,
00:33:39.860
it's because they cannot close their eyes on it. They have no choice to tell it, and that means
00:33:46.260
that it's really, really a bad news. Yeah. Well, what do we know about this? Because,
00:33:51.700
of course, there have always been traffickers, if you want to use that word. We've,
00:33:55.540
you know, sometimes they're buses, sometimes they're just taxi drivers who just know where
00:34:00.100
to go. I mean, if you've never been to Roxham Road, you might find it hard to get to, but,
00:34:04.900
you know, these taxi drivers know it well. They charge people, I don't know, 100 bucks a pop.
00:34:10.020
They're not making millions, but if you've had 100,000 people go through, this is a large industry,
00:34:15.780
and there are some serious organized traffickers behind this because they know that the Canadians
00:34:22.260
will simply take them. Who really is behind this latest wave? Is this a political decision by,
00:34:28.980
I don't know, the mayor of New York City or the governor of New York or Joe Biden himself? All of
00:34:33.700
them are Democrats. Well, at the same time, Justin Trudeau is not doing anything to solve the problem
00:34:42.180
here in Canada. And we know that the US have already some problems too, and in the south border. So,
00:34:50.500
probably they just say, why not shipping them to Canada? They can, like, take more to see, like,
00:34:57.220
how many we receive. They can, like, probably take some of us. But the thing is, what we know so far,
00:35:04.660
we know that some van and bus is starting from Florida in the south, bringing them up. We know that
00:35:15.300
some people arrive by flight, some people arrive by private van, some people take some taxi from
00:35:22.580
not only Plattsburgh, but in New York directly to Roxham Road. We know that now the taxi is
00:35:30.340
advertising it. Now we know that New York City mayor say that he's tax-funded the bus ticket to the
00:35:39.060
migrant to go on the north. And now we heard that same like the federal agent is driving them to our
00:35:47.220
border. So, when we look at it, every single person is involved to bring us more migrants to cross
00:35:56.180
illegally. But I want to show, like, to read a part of the article. Anyone is prohibited from
00:36:04.740
organizing or encouraging the entry of one or more people into Canada. But all these people
00:36:13.940
are guilty to do so. That's a great point. You have lawmakers or law enforcers becoming law
00:36:22.260
breakers. It's so weird they're doing this. And I really have to think, Alexa, that they're doing this
00:36:27.300
with the approval, if not the direction of the authority. Like, the idea that you would have
00:36:35.220
border guards on the U.S. side, that you have police on the U.S. side, engage in human trafficking
00:36:40.180
like this is so shocking. And it's, I don't know, I mean, I suppose it could just be corruption.
00:36:47.460
There is such a thing as corrupt cops on the take or whatever. But I would have to think this is being
00:36:53.940
done with the approval of the big bosses. And if you say that there is tax money being used to take
00:36:59.460
buses all the way from Florida to Canada, that's crazy. But like you say, where's Trudeau? Let me ask
00:37:04.900
you this. This is getting some play in Quebec, en France, on Radio Canada. Have any spokesmen for
00:37:12.660
the Canadian federal government? Because this isn't, of course, the problem is faced by the cities and by
00:37:17.700
the province, but the responsibility for the border lies clearly with the federal government.
00:37:23.140
Has Justin Trudeau or any other cabinet minister or federal MP addressed this issue yet? Because this
00:37:31.140
has got to be a huge story. But Mr. Legault has already said that we need to close Ruxham Road. And
00:37:38.740
afterwards, he came back after having a meeting with Justin Trudeau saying that they will just
00:37:45.700
probably deport the migrant to other provinces instead of closing it. And now we have all these different
00:37:55.140
leaders of the party who put a new project of law at the National Assembly saying that they want to use
00:38:08.980
the police of Quebec to arrest the immigrant. But we have already the RCMP who do the same job,
00:38:18.740
what they will do more like the police of Quebec, arresting them and bringing them to immigration. And
00:38:23.940
after that, driving them to hotel room, it would be the same thing because the federal need to act,
00:38:32.740
but the federal doesn't want to. And it seems like they will not touch Ruxham Road until like someone
00:38:40.420
else is, is, uh, elect at the, uh, for being a leader of this country. Yeah. It's incredible because
00:38:46.580
of course, uh, the police literally meet these border crossers. Like if, and you've been there and
00:38:54.660
some of our other reporters have been there, the very first people who meet these border
00:38:59.380
crosses are the police. It's not like the police don't know about this. The police have set up
00:39:04.260
what used to be temporary structures, permanent structures. They immediately, they, they literally
00:39:09.940
help these people bring their luggage over that little ditch. So the idea of more, the police are
00:39:15.700
not the problem. The police are instructed to do the paperwork and then set these people go,
00:39:21.460
let these people go. So in 2017, 18, it was just tent. And now it's a big infrastructure
00:39:30.740
been built there. And I would say when these migrants cross into Canada, they are not like
00:39:38.820
aggressively arrest. They have been brain and just tell them like, show us your passport, bring your
00:39:46.260
belongings with you, and please make sure your money, uh, your paper money is come with your passport.
00:39:53.380
And now on the door, what is the most outrageous is they have now a paper. I was not, wasn't there
00:40:00.260
before in all language to tell the migrant what to do when they arrive. Huh? I find this incredible.
00:40:08.260
And it'll be interesting to see if the federal opposition leader, Pierre Polyev remarks on it.
00:40:14.260
They have said they are against Roxham Road being an open wound like that. But Pierre Polyev has not
00:40:20.180
spoken out against Trudeau's mass immigration policy in general. Has Polyev talked about this
00:40:25.780
latest news or is it too fresh for him to have commented on yet?
00:40:28.820
I didn't see anything in the news from Pierre Polyev comment.
00:40:33.860
Well, we'll keep our eyes on that. Of course, uh, you're based in Quebec, I think, and you've been
00:40:39.220
to Roxham Road before. I think it sounds like a fascinating thing and let's make sure we keep
00:40:43.700
covering it because although the, the CBC has done a good job here, I know that they will be doing their
00:40:50.580
best to minimize this and to keep that flow of illegal migrants going. Alexa, keep up the great work in Quebec.
00:40:56.260
Thank you. All right. There you have it. Alexa Lavoie, one of our favorite people. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:41:02.340
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me on the Manny Montadegrino interview. Don Hussey says,
00:41:18.580
congratulations, Ezra, on an excellent and timely debate of national importance. Please take this
00:41:23.620
outside the paywall in its entirety so it can be shared widely. My old vet friends and I have never
00:41:29.540
been more concerned about the future of Canada and Canadians as we have been since Trudeau was first
00:41:33.860
elected prime minister. Thank you for your consideration. Hey, that's not a bad idea. As you
00:41:37.540
know, about once a month, I like to take a show out from the paywall in full just to show it to the world.
00:41:44.900
And this is a good contender. So thanks for the suggestion.
00:41:49.700
Fake news was mentioned, brought back thoughts of my father's stories of his experiences after World
00:41:54.980
War II. I asked when I was a youngster, did the bad guys get punished? I was perplexed when he got to
00:42:00.900
Joseph Goebbels punishment for death for lying media. He told me the lying was most responsible
00:42:06.900
for all the deaths on both sides. I sure understand now we are infiltrated with the same lies.
00:42:11.620
Love the rebel. Thanks very much. We'll keep up the fight. Of course, you have to be careful about
00:42:16.900
criminalizing lies because sometimes a lie is later found out to have been the truth.
00:42:22.500
And of course, we learn things all the time. We have to be able to challenge what is regarded as
00:42:28.340
a fact. We have to constantly subject our understanding of the world to acid tests,
00:42:33.220
to criticism, to skepticism. That's the way forward to progress. As they say, let truth
00:42:38.020
and falsehood grapple. So I'm very cautious about banning a lie. A lie suggests someone deliberately
00:42:46.740
said something false. But most of the time, what we call lies in politics is just someone else's
00:42:51.700
opinion. Salty B says, When does the C-15 bill go into effect where they monitor you online? I'm not
00:43:00.980
really brushed up on what's going on with that, but it doesn't sound good at all. Well, you know what?
00:43:06.660
I have to look up C-15 because I'm not familiar with it off the top of my head. I've been more
00:43:10.500
focused on C-11, which is the regulation of social media. Perhaps that's what you mean. But I'll dig
00:43:16.580
up C-15 and make sure I get smarter on that. C-18 is another. There's three bills that the government
00:43:23.460
is looking at to censor the internet. And there's a fourth one they haven't introduced yet called the
00:43:27.940
Online Harms Act. Like I always say, there are four laws or proposed laws to censor the internet.
00:43:33.620
That's more laws than they have on, you know, proposals to fix the cost of living or deal with
00:43:40.660
inflation or anything substantive. If you want to know what Justin Trudeau cares about, look at his
00:43:45.860
legislation. And numerically, by far, what he cares about the most is censoring you and me.
00:43:52.100
Well, that's the show for today. Until tomorrow, or actually, rather, until Monday.
00:43:56.260
On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.