Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Why is Rebel News involved in so many lawsuits？

00:00:00.180 Hello, my rebels. I was not in the chair yesterday. My good friend David Menzies was taking over for me because I was in another chair going through a court process.

00:00:09.420 As you know, we have been convicted of illegally publishing the book called The Libranos. I was fined $3,000 for that.

00:00:19.000 Well, we're appealing that, and there were five lawyers on the other side yesterday.

00:00:24.000 I'll tell you about the hearing, and I'll tell you about the seven lawsuits we have with the federal government.

00:00:31.420 You're probably saying, well, that's a lot of lawsuits. It's a lot of lawyers. You bet it is.

00:00:36.160 And I'll tell you why I think we have to do it. That's today's show.

00:00:41.740 Before we get to it, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.

00:00:46.160 That's the video version of this podcast. Every day I tape a video. We have lots of pictures and videos, and I think it's a great experience.

00:00:53.620 You get a lot out of it. But more than that, the $8 a month, that keeps Rebel News alive because we do not take the government dough.

00:01:01.300 We do not take the government dough. So we rely on you.

00:01:05.500 If you can, please go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe, $8 a month.

00:01:09.840 It makes a lot of difference. Thanks. Here's today's show.

00:01:16.940 You're listening to Rebel News Podcast.

00:01:23.620 Tonight, why is Rebel News involved in so many lawsuits?

00:01:30.040 It's April 13th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.

00:01:35.000 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:38.740 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:42.820 The only thing I have to say to the government, the wire publisher, is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:48.660 Hey, nice to see you again. I wasn't here yesterday.

00:01:56.920 Well, actually, I was in the office, but I spent much of the day online.

00:02:01.620 These days, a lot of court processes are done via Zoom or something like that.

00:02:06.600 And I had, for hours, I was involved in a case about the Libranos.

00:02:11.460 Remember that, my book from the 2019 election season?

00:02:17.080 Well, if you might recall, that book was a huge bestseller.

00:02:19.660 It was actually my most popular book I've ever written.

00:02:22.200 I think it sold more copies even than ethical oil.

00:02:25.100 Of course, that meant it was deeply hated by Justin Trudeau himself.

00:02:29.760 And over Christmas, I received a letter from Trudeau's Elections Commission claiming that the book was illegal, that it wasn't really a book, even though it was a bestseller, that it was actually a campaign, I don't know, campaign expense.

00:02:46.000 And then I had to register with Elections Canada.

00:02:49.060 They literally used those words.

00:02:51.000 They didn't like the book.

00:02:52.220 They didn't like the lawn signs.

00:02:53.420 Well, you might recall that I was summoned to Ottawa to answer questions in some sort of interrogation.

00:03:00.580 I call it an interrogation because they literally hired two 30-year veterans from the RCMP, like on their anti-terrorism and anti-drug beats, to grill me.

00:03:11.120 Here's an excerpt from that.

00:03:13.840 I went in the meeting and I recorded it because I just knew in my bones no one would believe that I was interrogated for writing a book.

00:03:21.500 I just know that everyone would say, oh, Ezra, you're exaggerating.

00:03:25.960 Yeah, no, here, take a look for yourself.

00:03:28.180 Can I see the complaint against me?

00:03:32.080 The letter that you received?

00:03:33.740 No.

00:03:34.400 I presume that you're investigating based on a complaint.

00:03:37.780 Oh, this is still part of the investigation.

00:03:39.540 So we'll have to, once the investigation's been completed, the commissioner will have to make a decision.

00:03:47.140 At that point, he'll have to decide if that is releasable or not.

00:03:50.680 It's not something that usually is released, no.

00:03:53.080 So it's a secret complaint?

00:03:54.860 It's not a secret complaint.

00:03:56.060 It's just a complaint that's part of the investigation.

00:03:58.540 And to keep the integrity of the investigation right now, you'll understand that we can't share everything that we have.

00:04:06.140 Oh, I don't want everything that you had.

00:04:07.380 I just, if I'm here to meet a complaint, but you won't show me the complaint, how can I possibly meet the complaint?

00:04:16.280 How can I possibly respond to something that you won't show me?

00:04:21.980 Well, I think the letter was quite clear on what the infraction is alleged, and this is what we want to clarify with you.

00:04:30.540 Well, did you generate the complaint, or was it from an outside party?

00:04:34.760 No, we didn't generate the complaint.

00:04:36.320 Okay, so someone external to your office generated the complaint?

00:04:42.180 That is usually the case.

00:04:43.700 Is that the case in this case?

00:04:45.140 Yeah.

00:04:45.880 Yeah, we did not generate the complaint.

00:04:47.180 Okay, was it the Liberal Party that generated the complaint?

00:04:49.680 We can't go into that, sir.

00:04:51.080 So you won't tell me who the complaint is?

00:04:55.240 The complainant is.

00:04:56.380 Is that the secret?

00:04:56.820 Yeah, no, not at this point.

00:04:58.760 So at what point do you tell me who the secret is?

00:05:00.880 The commissioner is the ultimate responsible person for the investigation and how this is decided.

00:05:09.360 So how do I know what conduct has been complained about if you won't tell me?

00:05:14.540 I won't play you the whole thing.

00:05:15.720 You might remember that it was really startling.

00:05:19.780 I basically said, yes, I plead guilty to writing a book.

00:05:24.260 If you think that's against the law, let's test it out in court.

00:05:27.340 Well, they took me up on my offer and they convicted me of publishing an illegal book.

00:05:32.300 Particularly, they said that it was the promotion of the book.

00:05:36.180 You can see these lawn signs here.

00:05:37.940 It was just the cover of the book with three words.

00:05:41.240 Buy the book.

00:05:42.100 Now, you might say, well, Ezra, that is a pretty political book.

00:05:45.140 And he did do it in an election season.

00:05:48.320 How is that not a campaign expense?

00:05:51.140 Well, the answer is the law itself realizes that people can talk about the election without having to register.

00:05:57.360 For example, every newspaper in Canada endorses or opposes a candidate.

00:06:04.020 Every blogger, every person has an opinion.

00:06:06.680 You don't have to register with the government to have an opinion.

00:06:09.040 And in fact, the law has a special exemption, as you can see here, for books and the promotion of books.

00:06:16.840 So not just was my book exempt from their rules against, you know, campaigning, but the promotion of the book.

00:06:24.640 We had a nice billboard.

00:06:26.240 We had the lawn signs.

00:06:27.660 We had websites.

00:06:28.740 We had it all.

00:06:30.340 But they convicted me nonetheless, even though there were 24 books during the same period of time about the election.

00:06:36.820 You'll notice that the law says a book is exempt if it's bought and sold for a fair market price.

00:06:42.420 I think Libranos was priced at 15 bucks, which maybe was a little high, actually, and would have been published whether or not there was an election.

00:06:49.540 I don't really know what that means.

00:06:50.740 If there was no election, we would publish it for sure.

00:06:53.900 But they claim that because I timed the book for the election, like the other 24 books, that somehow made it illegal.

00:06:59.760 They convicted me, and we are—and then they had a second hearing.

00:07:04.020 They convicted me again, and now we're appealing it to a real court.

00:07:09.660 I should tell you that on the Zoom call yesterday, there were five lawyers on the other side, all paid for by the government.

00:07:18.080 Some of them were government lawyers by definition.

00:07:21.040 Others were a hired gun-for-hire law firm called Borden Ladner Gervais, which seems to be getting all the censorship files from the government.

00:07:29.720 They're also the law firm that twice tried to kick us out of the leaders' debate.

00:07:33.360 So maybe it's good to have Borden Ladner and Gervais on the other side because they lost twice.

00:07:39.720 There were five lawyers on the call on the other side, and one of the lawyers said there were three other lawyers on the file.

00:07:47.840 That's eight lawyers that you—I apologize, Mr. Taxpayer and Mrs. Taxpayer—that you are on the hook for.

00:07:57.440 And we had one lawyer on our side, our free speech lawyer, Aaron Rosenberg.

00:08:00.920 So it was an examination on an affidavit I won't get into.

00:08:03.940 It was not the trial itself.

00:08:05.560 It was sort of a preliminary thing.

00:08:07.540 But it took hours and hours.

00:08:10.000 And yesterday alone did not cost $3,000.

00:08:16.700 Our lawyer isn't as expensive as Borden Ladner and Gervais.

00:08:19.080 But you might say, Ezra, look, the fine for publishing your book, The Libranos, was only $3,000.

00:08:28.360 You sold thousands of copies of the book.

00:08:31.140 Why not just call that a cost of doing business and just pay the fine?

00:08:35.440 Like, literally, you were spending tens of thousands.

00:08:38.100 It might turn into $100,000.

00:08:40.080 But by the time we're done, why are you spending $100,000?

00:08:44.380 It probably will be that much.

00:08:46.520 To fight a $3,000 fine, that doesn't make any sense.

00:08:48.940 What are you trying to make every lawyer in the country rich?

00:08:52.460 No.

00:08:54.540 We have to fight on principle.

00:08:57.420 It's not about the $3,000.

00:09:00.000 It's since when in this country does the government interrogate authors about their books

00:09:04.540 and criminalize books that are not registered with the government?

00:09:08.080 And this is done with RCMP officers, 30-year veterans of the force.

00:09:16.100 Even if it was a $1 fine, don't you think we have to appeal?

00:09:21.640 I learned yesterday from the lawyers on the government side that never in Canada's history

00:09:29.480 has an author or a book or a promotion of a book being prosecuted in this manner.

00:09:36.440 That's what they said.

00:09:38.080 Under oath, the government's told our lawyer that this is the first time in history it was done.

00:09:43.840 And what a coinkydink!

00:09:45.840 It was me and our book on the Libranos.

00:09:48.540 Gee, isn't that just a striking coincidence?

00:09:51.940 You see why I say we have to fight it?

00:09:53.760 Imagine if we let this precedent stand.

00:09:57.040 So that was what I was doing yesterday, which is different from the lawsuit we filed last week.

00:10:05.660 I did a show on it, you might recall.

00:10:08.020 You can see it for yourself at WeAreSuingTrudeau.com.

00:10:12.380 It's the lawsuit against the Canada Revenue Agency for banning us from getting the QCJO,

00:10:19.220 Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization, news license, journalism license.

00:10:24.180 We were rejected.

00:10:25.780 We had a one-year review by five secret government agents.

00:10:29.920 I'm calling them secret agents because we don't know what they said, how they deliberated.

00:10:34.700 Our lawyer repeatedly asked to have some participation, was repeatedly rejected.

00:10:40.560 We don't know what they looked at.

00:10:41.840 We don't know who they heard from.

00:10:43.380 We don't know what advice they got.

00:10:44.960 It was a secret hearing by Trudeau's handpicked committee that rejected us for this QCJO news license.

00:10:51.700 So we're suing the Canada Revenue Agency, which is terrifying in itself, but they're in charge of this.

00:10:57.540 Now look at what Jonathan Goldsby, who's over at the left-wing website CanadaLand.

00:11:03.060 As I told you the other day, CanadaLand is a bunch of lefties.

00:11:05.520 But actually on this issue of QCJO news licenses, they share our point of view.

00:11:11.840 Here's what Goldsby said.

00:11:14.540 He said, this is the seventh lawsuit the rebel has launched against the federal government and its agencies in the last year.

00:11:24.120 And you can see on there, there's the leaders debate case.

00:11:27.960 We've done a couple of lawsuits over that.

00:11:31.080 There's this new QCJO case.

00:11:34.080 And there's a Stephen Gilboa Twitter case.

00:11:36.240 And I don't know if you remember that one.

00:11:38.300 Again, it probably looks absolutely trivial.

00:11:41.840 Stephen Gilboa, when he was heritage minister, when he was in charge of coming up with the censorship by JIS, he had a government Twitter account.

00:11:48.640 So, I mean, I don't know if he has a personal account.

00:11:50.260 He probably does.

00:11:51.060 Just like he probably has a personal Facebook page just for family photos and stuff.

00:11:55.860 But, of course, everyone in government has public pages, too.

00:11:59.220 You can have a political party page.

00:12:01.240 But there's actually government Twitter accounts, obviously, where they publish news, where they publish official broadcasts, where they make announcements.

00:12:11.340 So it's a kind of service.

00:12:12.840 It's what in the olden days would be a newswire or a fax or a press release.

00:12:17.540 Governments have Twitter accounts.

00:12:18.640 And they're run by the public sector.

00:12:21.000 I'm not talking about political party stuff, campaign, election, campaign stuff.

00:12:24.860 That's political party stuff.

00:12:25.920 I'm talking about the government of Canada, not even political offices, but just the civil servants in the Heritage Department would have run his account.

00:12:33.900 We know, for example, that Catherine McKenna had 24 staff working on her Twitter account.

00:12:39.940 These weren't her personal staff.

00:12:41.160 These were government staff.

00:12:44.020 I think that's obviously ludicrous.

00:12:45.800 And she's a narcissist.

00:12:47.040 And it was off the hook.

00:12:48.380 But there is a justification for having news promulgated on Twitter for the government that I understand.

00:12:55.480 It makes sense.

00:12:55.900 In fact, I require it.

00:12:57.760 I'm in the news business.

00:12:58.660 I need to know news.

00:12:59.840 And the Heritage Minister, Stephen Gilboa, was making an announcement that applied to me personally as a Canadian and applied to me personally as a journalist and our company.

00:13:11.600 So Stephen Gilboa banned me from his Twitter account, blocked me.

00:13:17.980 Now, if he didn't want to hear me chirping at him, there's a function on Twitter called mute where he would never have to hear or see anything I have to say.

00:13:25.160 It's like if there was a mute button on a human being and someone was shattering, shattering, you could just mute them.

00:13:30.280 It's a wonderful invention.

00:13:32.320 Instead of muting me, which many people do, he blocked me.

00:13:36.000 So he didn't just save himself from hearing what I had to say.

00:13:39.620 He banned me from the government services of his Twitter account.

00:13:44.380 He banned me from learning announcements.

00:13:45.920 He banned me, and as far as I know, only me, from hearing what the government had to say.

00:13:50.520 Again, I don't care if he bans me from his political party stuff, and I don't want to see his personal stuff.

00:13:55.540 But the ministry of the Heritage Department, I want to and I demand as a taxpayer and as a citizen to see what they're saying.

00:14:04.840 Now, he's now the environment minister, but it still applies.

00:14:07.680 He has banned me from Twitter.

00:14:08.680 Now, our lawyers wrote to them and complained, and they refused to bend the knee, and so we're in court, and we are suing Stephen Gilboa for blocking us from getting his Twitter account.

00:14:22.420 Now, you might say again, look, this is even less than the $3,000 fine for running the Libranos.

00:14:27.880 I mean, you're literally suing someone because they won't let you follow their Twitter account?

00:14:34.560 Why are you wasting money?

00:14:36.140 Why are you wasting time?

00:14:37.480 Why are you enriching lawyers?

00:14:39.400 I'd have to count how many lawyers were on that file.

00:14:41.640 I don't remember.

00:14:42.920 Actually, I was cross-examined in that case a couple of weeks ago.

00:14:46.700 It was very brief.

00:14:47.500 I didn't have much to say other than he banned me.

00:14:50.760 My point is, you would think that there's no financial sense there.

00:14:56.160 Why would you spend thousands, and who knows, maybe that case will cost $100,000 too.

00:15:00.520 Why would you spend $100,000 suing a politician because he blocked you on Twitter?

00:15:06.780 I mean, get a hobby.

00:15:08.800 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:15:12.140 Because it's not just about being blocked on Twitter.

00:15:16.100 Do we really live in a country where because of a personal bias or a personal vendetta

00:15:22.580 or a grudge, a politician can say, I am not letting you, my political enemy, have access

00:15:33.000 to a government service.

00:15:34.820 And you might think a Twitter account is trivial.

00:15:37.440 And I suppose in the scheme of things, it is.

00:15:39.440 Although I need to learn what the government is doing about the world, about the country,

00:15:43.460 and about my business.

00:15:44.260 I remember when we filed this suit, he was the heritage minister, the censorship minister,

00:15:47.640 who was passing rules that affected our company.

00:15:51.380 But if a whimsical, capricious, grudge-driven politician can simply ban you from accessing

00:16:00.820 public services, why couldn't that carry on to other things?

00:16:06.840 Why couldn't that carry on to your personal taxes?

00:16:10.340 Why can't it carry on into your access to hospitals?

00:16:15.680 Well, that would never happen.

00:16:18.160 Well, of course, it wouldn't happen at once.

00:16:19.620 But if you can set the precedent, the politicians can have an enemies list.

00:16:25.300 Well, it won't stop there, will it?

00:16:27.620 And I tell you that the reason we have seven lawsuits against the federal government, of

00:16:31.180 course, we're suing various police forces for roughing up our staff.

00:16:34.800 We have a lot of litigation.

00:16:36.840 And that's why I was with it yesterday.

00:16:38.140 But I'm grateful for my friend David Menzies taking over for me.

00:16:42.740 We are suing because no one else is fighting these battles for freedom.

00:16:46.840 I shouldn't say no one else.

00:16:48.340 There's the great folks at the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, and there's a

00:16:51.300 handful of others.

00:16:52.620 But there used to be a civil society that would stand up against abusive governments of any

00:16:58.640 stripe.

00:17:00.120 What's interesting is that we were banned from this QCJO.

00:17:03.080 We were denied this government journalism license.

00:17:06.260 And I should tell you, of course, that Canada Land talked about that, even if it was just

00:17:14.020 on Twitter.

00:17:14.520 But I haven't seen any other coverage in any other Canadian media.

00:17:21.440 So a news organization, Rebel News, which has published 30,000 news stories, which has dozens

00:17:25.920 of journalists on staff, which publishes 10 news stories a day, was denied the government

00:17:32.700 news license on the most absurd grounds.

00:17:34.940 They're saying 99% of what we do is not news.

00:17:37.300 And not even a blip, not even a ripple, nothing other than, I think, Canada Land.

00:17:42.720 I don't know if anyone else treated the story, except for the largest news broadcaster in

00:17:50.180 North America, except for he's not a Canadian.

00:17:52.920 He's based in the United States.

00:17:54.300 His name is Tucker Carlson.

00:17:55.640 And when he heard about it, he was so worried, he called me up or had his staff contact me

00:18:01.100 and invited me on his show with his 5 million or so viewers to talk about it.

00:18:05.820 Let me play for you my four-minute appearance.

00:18:09.780 Four minutes goes by pretty quickly on TV.

00:18:12.720 It's very brief.

00:18:14.000 But when you have 5 million people watching, it packs a wallop.

00:18:17.560 Here's my appearance on Tucker Carlson's show last night.

00:18:20.020 The reality is organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation

00:18:31.440 on the science around vaccines, around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic

00:18:38.960 and be there for each other and keep our kids safe, is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate

00:18:46.620 anger and lack of understanding of basic science.

00:18:52.000 And quite frankly, you're, I won't call it a media organization.

00:18:57.380 So you criticize me, therefore you shouldn't be able to talk.

00:19:00.920 That guy's a fascist, just to be totally clear.

00:19:03.420 Ezra Levant is not.

00:19:04.500 He founded Rebel News.

00:19:05.480 He joins us tonight.

00:19:06.160 Ezra, thanks so much for coming on.

00:19:07.520 This is one of those stories.

00:19:08.440 It's just hard to believe, reading it as a longtime fan of your country, that this could

00:19:12.820 be allowed to happen.

00:19:13.780 Have we overstated it?

00:19:14.760 Well, it's not yet illegal to do journalism without that license.

00:19:20.980 It's a government license called the Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization License.

00:19:26.820 A government panel reviews you.

00:19:29.060 They spent one year reviewing Rebel News, looking through more than a hundred of our stories,

00:19:34.060 a panel of five people in secret.

00:19:36.400 We don't even know what they said or did or what they looked at.

00:19:39.220 And they claim that only one percent of our stories are news.

00:19:43.500 So we don't get the license.

00:19:45.500 Now, we're not outlawed, but there's all sorts of sticks and carrots that come with it.

00:19:49.640 For example, just last week, Trudeau announced that he is going to compel Facebook and Google

00:19:55.300 to downrank non-licensed journalists like us and boost his trusted, friendly journalists.

00:20:03.660 So we're going to be hidden and he's going to compel the Internet giants to punish us.

00:20:08.740 He's also changing the Income Tax Act to punish us.

00:20:12.640 If you have a government license, your subscribers can write off their subscription at tax time.

00:20:17.800 If you're an independent journalist like us, no dice.

00:20:21.180 Of course, there are hundreds of millions of dollars that he is hosing with a fire hose

00:20:25.720 at his trusted licensed journalists.

00:20:28.280 And he's now compelling Google and Facebook to fund journalists too.

00:20:33.000 So now you've got literally 99% of Canadian media companies that are dependent on Justin Trudeau

00:20:39.860 and soon Google and Facebook for a huge chunk of their revenues.

00:20:44.740 There's no way those journalists can be free and independent.

00:20:47.680 We're not banned yet, although we are banned from government events, as you said earlier.

00:20:52.540 But I'm worried that he's done all this in two years.

00:20:54.880 The worst is yet to come.

00:20:56.920 He may well ban us yet.

00:20:59.280 Well, if he's forcing the tech monopolies to downgrade your content, I mean, it's a distinction

00:21:04.000 without a difference.

00:21:04.840 You're banned from reaching readers.

00:21:08.400 So my question is, what about the rest of Canadian media?

00:21:11.740 They're going along with this?

00:21:13.000 Has anyone at the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, stood up to defend you?

00:21:16.820 Any of your newspapers to defend you?

00:21:19.680 1,500 Canadian news media companies are on the take.

00:21:24.120 Now, they don't all have these journalism licenses yet, but they're all taking money from Trudeau.

00:21:28.820 He made a special $61 million payment to them right before the election.

00:21:34.060 None of them reported that.

00:21:35.760 1,500 news media companies cut up a $61 million gift.

00:21:40.200 None of them reported that.

00:21:41.640 So the thing is, since they're in on it, they can't very well report it, and they certainly

00:21:45.940 can't very well object to it.

00:21:47.880 It used to be that the liberals of Canada were for civil rights and free speech and separation

00:21:53.320 of, you know, government and the media.

00:21:55.340 Those days are done.

00:21:56.920 You can really count on one hand's fingers the independent media left in the country.

00:22:01.880 And Trudeau hates them.

00:22:03.000 We were the ones who covered the trucker rebellion, as you know.

00:22:05.360 And Trudeau hated the truckers because they were the one group that opposed him.

00:22:09.980 He hates us for the same reason.

00:22:11.900 He seized the bank accounts of truckers without legal process.

00:22:15.940 I'm worried that if he's gone this far in two years, by the time he finishes his term

00:22:20.900 three years from now, I'm worried that he's going to start to treat us like the truckers.

00:22:25.880 I don't know.

00:22:26.340 Will he seize our bank accounts?

00:22:27.740 Will he ask Google and Facebook to delist us altogether?

00:22:31.420 I know that sounds paranoid, but so far he's done everything he threatened he would do.

00:22:37.160 It's China, and they're so fragile.

00:22:39.560 You're one little news organization, and they can't stand any scrutiny.

00:22:42.940 It really tells you a lot.

00:22:44.660 Ezra, thank you so much for coming on tonight.

00:22:46.320 Godspeed.

00:22:46.800 We are rooting for you, for sure.

00:22:48.280 Did you catch his last question?

00:22:49.720 There was only two questions to me.

00:22:51.760 It's where are the Canadians?

00:22:54.340 Where is the CBC?

00:22:56.980 Well, that's the thing.

00:22:58.320 They've all been bought off.

00:22:59.460 They've all been co-opted.

00:23:01.620 How can you object if you're on the system, if you're in the system?

00:23:07.900 Now, I should say today, just before I came in the studio, I saw that my old friend,

00:23:11.940 Laurie Goldstein, the former comment editor of the Toronto Sun, who's now semi-retired,

00:23:16.360 he made a few tweets about it.

00:23:17.660 Let me read them for you.

00:23:19.600 He links to that rejection letter.

00:23:21.600 Remember the rejection letter?

00:23:22.680 The one that had the absurd report that they reviewed 276 Rebel News articles,

00:23:28.180 and only 1% of them were news.

00:23:29.500 So, you can see he links to that, and he said, this is the CRA's rejection of Rebel News's

00:23:35.560 application to be designated as a qualified journalism organization.

00:23:39.620 It is literally like something you would expect to find in George Orwell's dystopian vision

00:23:43.640 of the future, 1984.

00:23:45.440 See below.

00:23:45.980 And he links to it.

00:23:46.840 Then he says, the advisory board found that Rebel News produces content which is of general

00:23:53.220 interest, including coverage of democratic institutions and processes, and not primarily

00:23:58.260 focused on a particular topic.

00:24:00.720 Okay, that's true.

00:24:01.700 However, the advisory board's assessment is that Rebel News does not produce original news

00:24:07.940 content on the basis that the content was found to be largely opinion-based and focused

00:24:12.540 on the promotion of one particular perspective.

00:24:16.760 And I'll just read some more.

00:24:17.700 This is, I'm just going through, I just want to give Laurie credit because he's, other than

00:24:21.840 Cannellan, I think he's the only guy who's spoken out.

00:24:23.920 He says, the term original news content is not specifically defined in the legislation.

00:24:28.320 And then Laurie says, this is utterly bizarre and, in my opinion, dangerous in a democracy.

00:24:33.300 The advisory board's reasoning for rejecting Rebel News could just as easily be applied

00:24:37.320 to the Toronto Sun and the Toronto Star.

00:24:39.960 He's so right on that.

00:24:41.740 I mean, let me show you again, the Toronto Star, I don't know if you know this, I mean,

00:24:45.640 we've talked about it before.

00:24:47.560 They have welded into their company a set of ideological missions, like it's actually

00:24:52.840 part of the corporate structure.

00:24:54.940 These Atkinson principles named after one of their early publishers, editors, and they're

00:25:00.080 truly socialists.

00:25:01.420 They're actually, I think I would call them communists, it's about, you know, nationalizing

00:25:05.080 the means of production, like it really is the kind of thing that communists talk about.

00:25:08.980 And that's not my cup of tea, and it's laughable how anti-worker the Toronto Star is when it

00:25:16.940 comes to issues like letting workers keep their money, tax time, and most importantly, letting

00:25:22.680 workers resist forced vaccination, firing union members en masse if they won't get jabbed,

00:25:29.600 et cetera.

00:25:30.920 I don't believe the Toronto Star is pro-worker, but they claim they are.

00:25:35.480 They're extremely ideological in practice.

00:25:37.920 They have a constitution that says they must be ideological.

00:25:41.820 As Laurie points out, everything used to deny us that status could be the same for the

00:25:48.380 Star, and Laurie's, you know, self-aware enough to say it would apply to the Toronto Sun too.

00:25:52.860 The Toronto Sun is more my cup of tea.

00:25:54.960 I like their populist style, their conservative style.

00:25:57.880 I don't agree with everything they do.

00:25:59.160 But surely, if Rebel News can be called prospective journalism or opinion journalism, so can the

00:26:05.580 Sun and the Star and pretty much every single thing in this country, even the Weather Channel.

00:26:10.660 They don't shut up about the theory of man-made global warming.

00:26:14.100 So we've got Tucker Carlson in the United States.

00:26:15.920 We've got Canada Land on the left.

00:26:17.440 We've got Laurie Goldstein doing some tweets.

00:26:19.180 Where's everybody else?

00:26:20.860 A journalism license?

00:26:22.440 That's what I called it last night.

00:26:24.500 And, you know, I think Tucker, you know, his first question implied that he thought that

00:26:29.600 maybe it was illegal to do journalism in Canada more.

00:26:32.460 It's not there yet.

00:26:33.980 But if the government has their way and Google and Facebook are forced to de-boost Rebel News

00:26:40.340 and boost our competitors, it is de facto banning us.

00:26:44.400 So I was thinking about my appearance on America's leading show and wondering, well, why is no

00:26:49.520 Canadian even talking about it?

00:26:50.640 And I know that I jab the media party all the time, and so they don't want to be friends

00:26:53.780 with me.

00:26:54.280 That's fine.

00:26:56.040 But don't they see that a government licensing journalism is un-Canadian?

00:27:01.000 That a government sitting in judgment of journalists is upside down?

00:27:04.700 Journalists, and indeed every citizen, whether you're a journalist or just a regular person,

00:27:09.820 it's for us to judge the government.

00:27:12.200 We're the one who takes their measure.

00:27:13.840 The government is taking our measure?

00:27:16.060 The government is vetting journalists?

00:27:18.220 That's upside down.

00:27:19.380 And I thought, where's the Canadian Association of Journalists?

00:27:25.300 Well, I'll tell you where they are.

00:27:26.340 They were the lead lobbyists for this.

00:27:29.980 You think they're going to speak out against it?

00:27:31.380 This is what they wanted.

00:27:33.260 It's a guild.

00:27:35.480 Keep out their competitors and get the dough.

00:27:37.720 And where's the CJFE, the Canadian Journalist for Free Expression?

00:27:43.260 Boy, that's a case of false advertising, if ever there is one.

00:27:48.840 I went to their website today to see if they had anything to say about this, and they claim

00:27:52.220 to speak truth to power.

00:27:53.420 Really?

00:27:53.800 Wow, that's a pretty bold claim.

00:27:56.900 They're pretty much defunct.

00:27:59.140 I saw this.

00:28:01.340 A CBC government reporter named Carol McNeil.

00:28:03.900 Well, I'm proud to be elected to the board for CJFE, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression,

00:28:10.140 which has a long history of defending free speech and helping to protect journalists in

00:28:14.340 distress wherever they are.

00:28:15.960 The Ukraine-Russia war proves once again this work is never finished.

00:28:19.880 Well, I'm sure I'm glad that the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression are sticking

00:28:23.980 up for Ukrainian reporters, except for they're not really, because Vladimir Zelensky himself

00:28:29.400 is the one who's banned any reporters who are critical of him.

00:28:34.000 Maybe I can get the Ukraine Journalists for Free Expression to care about us, because

00:28:39.080 that Canadian Journalists for Free Expression don't.

00:28:41.400 But how could she?

00:28:42.720 Carol McNeil is a government journalist.

00:28:45.860 She is employed by Trudeau's state broadcaster.

00:28:48.160 How could she possibly criticize the QCJO news license when she works for Trudeau?

00:28:56.980 It used to be just the government news, the TVO in Ontario, which is a provincially-owned

00:29:02.820 state broadcaster and the CBC, were in the bag for the government.

00:29:07.300 But now that every other website and newspaper is on the take, who is left?

00:29:12.980 So yesterday I was frustrated that I was spending hours in this court case.

00:29:16.780 And it was one of, as you can see, seven on the federal level alone.

00:29:21.020 And we have many others suing police around the world.

00:29:24.040 And I thought, why are we doing this?

00:29:26.160 Why are we spending so much money?

00:29:27.880 Why are we spending $100,000 to fight a $3,000 fine for publishing a book?

00:29:33.440 Why are we spending $100,000 to fight some politician blocking us on Twitter?

00:29:39.320 Why are we going to spend $100,000 fighting this news licensing?

00:29:43.040 Well, that one, probably a matter of life and death for us.

00:29:45.480 Well, we have to sue and fight.

00:29:50.220 Because really no one else is, not on these issues.

00:29:54.200 You know, when I was growing up, I remember when I was in law school reading about the

00:29:58.160 consortium.

00:29:59.200 What's that?

00:30:00.220 Well, it was a nickname that the media industry gave themselves whenever there was a case

00:30:06.140 affecting free speech in the country.

00:30:07.560 All the newspapers and TV stations would chip in, I don't know, maybe $5,000, and together

00:30:13.740 they would hire a top, top media lawyer who would go to court to fight some censorship,

00:30:20.500 some press ban, some act by government that was so egregious that it might not have affected

00:30:27.300 any of them directly.

00:30:28.900 It might have only perhaps affected one of the media companies directly.

00:30:32.000 But all their competitors, the entire industry knew that they had to stick together all for

00:30:37.720 one and one for all on free speech stuff.

00:30:40.400 Otherwise, they'd be picked off one by one.

00:30:42.700 And the benefit of the consortium, that's what they called themselves, was that they could

00:30:47.480 hire truly top-notch lawyers, and each newspaper would only have to chip in maybe $5,000.

00:30:53.220 If you had a bunch of newspaper and TV and radio stations each chipping in $5,000, you could

00:30:58.740 hire a pretty top gun lawyer to go and defend them.

00:31:02.960 And more than that, when that lawyer shows up in court and says, Your Honor, I'm here to

00:31:06.800 represent the consortium, CTV, CBC, Global, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, the

00:31:13.720 judge says, oh, wow.

00:31:15.500 So this is a heavy, it's almost like you had a good faith public intervener.

00:31:21.500 Where's the consortium now?

00:31:25.160 Where are all these companies chipping in together?

00:31:28.740 Well, the consortium is hard at work, lobbying the government for bailouts, and to shut out

00:31:35.260 their competitors.

00:31:35.940 That's where the consortium is.

00:31:38.080 You want to know who's fighting for freedom in the courts every day?

00:31:42.500 It's rebel news.

00:31:45.080 Stay with us for more.

00:31:46.120 The consortium is the hardworking trucker who delivered the goods and services that we

00:31:54.800 know now.

00:31:55.900 We need it.

00:31:56.480 Well, that is the scene as it was last night in Calgary.

00:32:03.460 Pierre Polyev, one of the leadership contestants for the Conservative Party of Canada, a massive

00:32:08.880 event.

00:32:09.340 I dare say that it's not only the largest event to date in the Conservative leadership

00:32:14.380 race, I put it to you that with that many folks, more than 5,000, it was larger than any

00:32:21.500 general election event by any of the parties in the 2021 campaign.

00:32:27.040 Now, you might say, well, that's because there were still some COVID restrictions and there's

00:32:31.200 some truth to it.

00:32:32.060 But getting that number of people out, it's got to be, that just is a sign of something.

00:32:39.340 Here to tell us what it's a sign of is our friend Adam Sose, our Calgary-based reporter,

00:32:44.040 who had a very busy day yesterday.

00:32:46.340 Adam, great to see you again.

00:32:47.580 I want to get to your question to West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin, who was in town.

00:32:55.520 That's an interesting story.

00:32:56.880 We'll put that aside for a second.

00:32:58.800 Tell me about that Polyev event.

00:33:01.080 And where was it?

00:33:02.440 How many folks were there?

00:33:04.240 And what was it like in the room?

00:33:06.500 Yeah, you know, you said it's a sign of something, and it's a sign that this is an entirely different

00:33:10.640 animal altogether.

00:33:12.220 I think past elections were very much sort of, I guess this is the guy who might do the

00:33:16.620 best, but I'm not really excited about it, whether it be Leslyn Lewis or Pierre Polyev

00:33:20.060 or some of these other candidates.

00:33:21.340 I think now people are actually torn between who they want to support.

00:33:24.320 So this event took place in South Calgary at Spruce Meadows, a well-known equestrian sort of

00:33:28.800 facility, a giant building called the Equiplex.

00:33:32.760 And apparently 7,800 people registered.

00:33:36.260 And it got to the point they actually delayed the start of the event because traffic was

00:33:41.000 backed up in Calgary for quite some distance.

00:33:43.960 Even Kian came quite early and he got stuck in the traffic and just made it there in time

00:33:49.040 for us to record.

00:33:49.800 But it was an absolutely packed house.

00:33:52.260 I'm hearing at a certain point that they simply stopped sort of verifying registration, which

00:33:56.760 they were kind of just letting people in anyways.

00:33:58.800 But they're saying it might even be beyond the registering count.

00:34:02.820 But 5,000 are the most conservative estimates I've seen.

00:34:05.860 I've seen other people saying 8,000.

00:34:07.440 I would have guessed 6,000 to 7,000 people at the very least were on location.

00:34:12.360 And very much like you said, it is a sign that there is something different happening here

00:34:16.200 for the first time in quite some time.

00:34:18.360 There's actually some excitement within the conservative movement, whether that be provincially,

00:34:22.800 whether that be federally, for a leader.

00:34:25.940 People actually want their guy.

00:34:27.640 They want their gal.

00:34:28.560 They're rooting for somebody actively, not just settling on somebody.

00:34:32.420 And that's why we see these massive crowds.

00:34:34.920 Yeah, there was never anything called Aaron O'Toole mania.

00:34:38.920 It was sort of, oh, fine.

00:34:40.440 And I think Andrew Scheer was the same thing.

00:34:43.040 It was sort of, oh, fine.

00:34:45.100 And so I think there's an actual energy there, a positive energy.

00:34:51.100 But I think there's something more than that.

00:34:52.880 It's not just personality-based.

00:34:56.140 I think it's the last two leaders in the conservative party were sort of self-hating conservatives.

00:35:03.620 And I know people would say, no, that's not true.

00:35:05.840 They're solid conservatives.

00:35:06.760 Well, maybe in their hearts they were, or in the privacy of a one-on-one conversation, they could be really butch.

00:35:14.020 But as soon as they were exposed to the glare of CBC camera lights, they would turn meek and into conservatives in name only.

00:35:25.700 And my beef with Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer, I mean, I had some quarrels with them on policy issues.

00:35:32.740 Both of them were too cowardly on global warming, et cetera.

00:35:35.600 Aaron O'Toole was absolutely useless on the pandemic.

00:35:40.240 But they were just absolutely terrified of and compliant to, submissive to, the media party.

00:35:50.000 And so you couldn't count on them for everything.

00:35:52.180 And I think people could detect that.

00:35:54.380 And people almost felt let down in advance.

00:35:57.620 I think there's a hope that maybe Pierre Polyev actually means it when he says these conservative things.

00:36:05.880 Yeah, and I think that is very much the case for some of these candidates.

00:36:09.260 They come into a room, they tell you what they're thinking, regardless of what you may think about that.

00:36:13.880 Keep in mind, the nights before last week, we had two events for Dr. Leslie Lewis.

00:36:17.900 There's 300, 400 people at the first one, over 1,000 at the second one.

00:36:21.680 So people are coming out in mass and they're attracted to these candidates that aren't compromising.

00:36:25.740 I think they can also detect there's a bit of a trend of some folks out there who are quiet during the protests, during the trucker convoy, throughout all this.

00:36:32.920 Now they're trying to sort of cash in and say they're always a part of that.

00:36:35.920 But I think Dr. Leslie Lewis and Pierre Polyev, to an extent, were a little bit stronger in their support of that forthright.

00:36:42.660 But there is a certain element of integrity, unwillingness to fold, and this is where I stand, take me or leave me.

00:36:49.620 I'm not just a windsock going wherever they feel the political current takes them.

00:36:53.580 People want to know who they're voting for.

00:36:55.480 They want to know who's representing them.

00:36:57.280 Now they want representation.

00:36:58.340 They don't want an ideologue who's going to tell them what to do and how to do.

00:37:00.760 But they at the very least want to know where someone they're voting for stands on important issues.

00:37:05.180 Yeah, I saw a poll today by Abacus Research.

00:37:08.080 Of course, they're owned and run by a liberal partisan, Bruce Anderson.

00:37:12.140 But I still put some stock in their polls.

00:37:16.080 When they had this one slide, and I'll show it now, obviously, Conservative Party supporters are supportive of Pierre Polyev.

00:37:25.060 But just as much so are PPC supporters.

00:37:28.200 So what Abacus did is they said they surveyed the public, and then they broke it down by who these different survey respondents said they supported.

00:37:39.540 I think Pierre, going from memory, I think Pierre Polyev was actually more popular amongst PPCers than CPCers, which tells me that he has caught the freedom, resist the lockdown, stand with the truckers vibe.

00:37:52.800 That previously had been owned by Maxime Bernier.

00:37:57.020 I mean, I will give Pierre Polyev and Leslie Lewis credit.

00:38:00.820 They were amongst the first conservatives to stand with the truckers as opposed to Aaron O'Toole.

00:38:05.400 But they were pretty quiet for a pretty long time on the lockdowns.

00:38:10.320 There was an atrocious bonfire of our civil liberties for years.

00:38:16.900 And they said nothing.

00:38:19.580 So, I mean, late they come.

00:38:21.800 But still they come.

00:38:23.300 And I suppose better late than never.

00:38:25.240 But there was a year and a half there where they were silent as mice.

00:38:29.460 Yeah.

00:38:29.720 And it's extremely unfortunate.

00:38:31.100 You know, for the first couple of weeks of this, I even know sort of constitutional lawyers who were like, well, a week or two, we don't know what's happening.

00:38:37.500 If this is as bad as they say the Spanish flu, some measures are sort of sensible.

00:38:41.820 Even Stong's constitutional lawyers said there are places in place.

00:38:45.600 But at a certain point, these health bureaucrats, health officials have to answer in court, have to justify it.

00:38:49.860 That's where we completely lost things.

00:38:51.880 I would understand and even forgive a politician for a month or two until the facts started to become clear.

00:38:58.140 But there has to be some accountability and there has to be questions asked, tough questions on why they were so quiet for so long.

00:39:06.620 And now, and we said this, I said this possibly on your show, I said on the live stream, certainly, politicians can't suddenly after two years pretend that they were on the other side the whole time.

00:39:15.920 That's not how it works.

00:39:16.840 You don't get to pretend the past didn't happen.

00:39:19.060 But if they're willing to take active steps, if they're willing to, let's say, advocate for policy that mitigates further trampling on our constitutional freedoms, that's sort of how they can make up and make amends for some of the missteps in the past.

00:39:32.600 I noticed that last night, Pierre Polyev referred in particular to the truckers.

00:39:37.820 So he's not shying away from that.

00:39:39.400 I noticed that a lot of the pundits at the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star and the CBC said, oh, my God, he's with the truckers.

00:39:46.200 And even Jean Charest is saying that disqualifies Pierre Polyev.

00:39:49.580 But here's Pierre Polyev last night invoking the truckers.

00:39:54.280 So he's not shying away from that.

00:39:55.700 Again, that's what Andrew Scheer or Aaron O'Toole would do.

00:39:58.460 They would say, oh, Gary Mason of the Globe and Mail doesn't like the truckers.

00:40:03.400 No one in the real world has heard of Gary Mason, but I have and I'm scared of him.

00:40:07.420 So let me backtrack.

00:40:08.540 Pierre Polyev did.

00:40:09.240 And here he is throwing out a shout out to the truckers last night.

00:40:13.600 Whether it is the hardworking trucker who delivered the goods and services that we needed.

00:40:19.600 We need it.

00:40:28.460 We delivered goods and services across the border every single day without a vaccine for two years.

00:40:36.160 And suddenly, Justin Trudeau suggested that he was going to spread a virus, even though that same trucker is all alone, all by himself, in the cab of his truck all day long.

00:40:47.180 He feels like he's lost control of his life.

00:40:49.420 And when he stood up and spoke out and raised his voice in peaceful and democratic protest, he was called a criminal by people like Justin Trudeau and Jean Chiré.

00:40:59.480 Well, you know, it's a contrast not just between Polyev and the other leadership candidates and Polyev and the past two Tory leaders, but it's also a contrast between Polyev and Jason Kenney, his former caucus colleague who is now the premier of the province, who is a disaster policy wise, opinion poll wise.

00:41:20.340 He's fighting for his life within the party.

00:41:21.800 And again, it's the same people like Jason Kenney could not pull a crowd of five, six, seven thousand cheering supporters anywhere in Alberta.

00:41:30.540 Part of it's the novelty of Pierre Polyev running as a candidate.

00:41:34.160 And part of it is people just kicking the tires.

00:41:36.340 But I think that the main difference is that Pierre Polyev actually is using the language and the ideology and the belief of freedom.

00:41:45.800 And he's not he hasn't, you know, abandoned those things for the sake of power.

00:41:51.200 I'm excited by it.

00:41:53.240 It's not just Calgary.

00:41:54.840 Polyev has had large events throughout Canada, including in pretty small towns.

00:41:59.960 Yeah.

00:42:00.560 You know, it's incredible.

00:42:01.720 Last night at the end of the event, there was a lineup of probably four thousand people waiting to shake Pierre Polyev's hand to take a picture with him.

00:42:10.060 And they told me that this was by far the biggest lineup they'd seen.

00:42:13.320 But they told me that there was a lineup of probably two thirds, a third of the size of this one.

00:42:18.620 And Pierre Polyev stayed there until 1 a.m. shaking hands.

00:42:22.420 I have no doubt that last night he stayed there until 2, 3 a.m.

00:42:26.860 We were actually supposed to have an exclusive with him.

00:42:28.540 But then when the lineup went around the block effectively, they said, we're going to schedule something outside of an event before he comes next time.

00:42:35.980 But Justin Trudeau couldn't draw a crowd like this.

00:42:38.460 Aaron O'Toole, if he'd won, couldn't draw a crowd like this.

00:42:41.460 No one can draw a crowd like this.

00:42:43.280 It's a different animal altogether.

00:42:44.960 And on the plus side, at least hopefully there's some hope that Jason Kenney sees, hey, I can actually advocate for freedom.

00:42:52.700 And if there's a small percentage of whether it be the liberal mainstream media or NDP activists who want to badmouth me, let them go ahead.

00:42:59.680 They're not going to vote for me anyways.

00:43:01.200 I'm not too hopeful.

00:43:02.220 Jason Kenney tends to not be making really good decisions right now, obviously, as we know.

00:43:06.620 But maybe he'll take some influence from Pierre Polyevre and from the new direction of the Conservative Party in Canada and open his mind and enforce some freedoms, Alberta strong and free.

00:43:18.980 You know, I'm doing an interview with another MP today.

00:43:21.400 Sheila Gunn-Reed did an interview with an MP the other day.

00:43:23.360 The age of Aaron O'Toole and this apologetic, self-hating conservativism is over.

00:43:28.480 And it seems very much like Pierre Polyevre is at the vanguard of a new era of sort of proud and strong conservativism in this country.

00:43:34.680 Yeah, well, you know, you mentioned that you had a rebel exclusive with Polyevre that was derailed because he had four hours of handshaking to do, fair enough.

00:43:43.120 But it is worth noting, I mean, I talked before about how both Scheer and O'Toole were afraid of their own shadows, would do whatever the CBC said.

00:43:50.400 And it's not just Pierre Polyevre, I mean, Lesley and Lewis.

00:43:53.520 In fact, I think all of the leadership candidates except for Jean Charest have talked with us.

00:43:59.380 I mean, some are slightly more shy than others.

00:44:01.160 Lesley and Lewis made one of her first campaign stops right here in our studio in Toronto.

00:44:06.400 But this is what I mean about an unapologetic, and here's my thinking on that.

00:44:10.120 I mean, of course, I have my personal interest in that.

00:44:12.500 I am part of Rebel News.

00:44:14.180 I love our reporters.

00:44:15.720 And when people say I'm not going to talk to a Rebel News reporter, I feel it personally as a sort of slight.

00:44:22.200 I mean, we've survived a lot better than Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer did.

00:44:26.040 We'll outlive them.

00:44:29.000 But it wasn't the personal slight.

00:44:31.640 I mean, I don't care.

00:44:34.020 Other than it was a proxy for about 10 other things.

00:44:38.340 Because if you are a so-called conservative leader and you won't meet with Rebel News unless you have a very specific reason, and I've never heard of one,

00:44:48.220 what you're saying is, I don't have the courage of my convictions.

00:44:53.360 I know that I'm going to be jumped on by the mean girls of the media party.

00:44:57.060 And so I will let them govern my actions, these mean girls of the media party, the CBC.

00:45:02.420 And if I can't stand up to that now, I mean, imagine what else you would cave into.

00:45:08.960 If talking to a journalist from a conservative outlet is anathema, is something you can't do, you can't do anything.

00:45:17.240 Because you've got a tough job.

00:45:19.920 Like, I know, I'm pretty sure you're not going to defund the CBC.

00:45:23.660 I'm pretty sure you're not going to rein in the public sector.

00:45:26.860 I'm pretty sure you're not going to take on the public health deep state that keeps calling for lockdowns.

00:45:32.060 I'm pretty sure you're going to be a weakling in foreign affairs, whether it's dealing with Biden or Putin.

00:45:37.240 Like, if you can't handle the mean girls of the CBC because you're talking to the Rebel News,

00:45:42.200 that tells me pretty much everything I need to know about your courage.

00:45:46.540 Go ahead.

00:45:48.100 I was going to say, it speaks to the fact that we were there, a number of other media outlets.

00:45:53.160 Unfortunately, virtually no media outlets covered Dr. Leslie Lewis's event.

00:45:56.140 We were the only ones there.

00:45:57.040 Someone showed up for five minutes.

00:45:58.540 There were quite a few media outlets here.

00:46:00.160 And at a conservative leadership event, that is the base that you're trying to pull,

00:46:04.620 a thousand or so of the people came up to me, talked to me, shook my hand, thanked Rebel News for what they were doing, what we're doing.

00:46:11.080 One lady was crying and shook my hand and thanked us for being the only ones telling the truth.

00:46:15.300 If you want to win the conservative leadership, you have to talk to conservative media.

00:46:19.600 That's a plain fact.

00:46:20.820 And you have to talk to conservative media that asks questions that people are interested in.

00:46:24.260 That's the only way you're going to win this race.

00:46:25.920 And we're going to be there covering the story, as always, at leadershipreports.ca, getting those reports out and actually having feet on the ground, not leaving a campaign after five minutes.

00:46:34.600 Yeah.

00:46:34.840 Well, I mean, listen, you're doing great journalism.

00:46:36.460 And as you said, sometimes we're the only people there.

00:46:38.480 But we've been the only people there during the entire pandemic.

00:46:41.300 We've been really the media, and you in particular, have championed the case of Arthur Pawlowski, which is perhaps the most important case, most important storyline we've covered over the last two years.

00:46:52.580 And people trust us.

00:46:54.680 You know what?

00:46:55.140 I mean, Jason Kenney and I used to be quite close, I should have you know.

00:46:58.460 And I wasn't quite close with Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, but I was chummy enough with him and his late brother.

00:47:04.720 And the fact that we hold their feet to the fire, despite these personal and, quote, partisan connections, I'm a member of no political party, but you would think, oh, Rebel News, you're going to – in fact, just some left-wing reporter asked me yesterday, oh, you're in the tank with the conservatives.

00:47:19.100 I said, really?

00:47:20.340 Tell that to Jason Kenney.

00:47:21.600 We've got a big billboard on the side of the highway targeting him for his treatment of Arthur Pawlowski.

00:47:27.940 Part of the reason Rebel News is successful is that people know, we'll call it like we see it, even if it means holding conservatives to account.

00:47:35.700 In fact, that may be our most valuable trait, is that – like, it's very easy to criticize Justin Trudeau.

00:47:44.060 Well, not for the media party that are on the payroll, but, you know, that's not courage of your conviction stuff.

00:47:49.600 But can you criticize Jason Kenney or Doug Ford when they pull a mini Trudeau?

00:47:54.540 Can you criticize them when they put in a lockdown?

00:47:57.940 Will you criticize Jason Kenney as vigorously for jailing a pastor as you would criticize Justin Trudeau or Rachel Notley?

00:48:03.880 Have they done the same thing?

00:48:04.940 And I think that, actually, it's when we take on conservatives in a principled way that we earn our credibility with the base.

00:48:12.880 And so, like you say, Rebel News, if you want to talk to conservative party members and voters in this country, how you handle Rebel News is really seen as a litmus test for things.

00:48:24.120 So I think you're doing great work.

00:48:25.380 I'm glad that the conservative leadership candidates have abandoned that bizarre and self-destructive strategy of Aaron O'Toole and the other guy's name I've just temporarily forgotten, and I don't think I'll ever look it up again, Andrew Scheer.

00:48:41.440 Let's take a break from the leadership contest, and thank you for your work there.

00:48:47.080 You had a busy day yesterday.

00:48:48.580 Not only were you at the Pierre Polyev event with up to 7,800 people, you started the day by talking to a U.S. senator.

00:48:57.000 I mean, in Canada, our Senate's a bit of a joke.

00:48:59.300 But in the United States, senators are incredibly powerful people, even senators of a small state.

00:49:04.140 And one of the reasons it makes them powerful is that they can be independent-minded.

00:49:09.180 So there's a Democrat from the state of West Virginia, his name is Joe Manchin, but he thinks for himself.

00:49:15.040 And he often, given how tight it is in the Senate, is the voice that stops Joe Biden from doing bad things.

00:49:21.280 He stops.

00:49:22.180 I remember one of his first campaign ads was a picture of him shooting a gun and using the Kyoto Protocol as a target.

00:49:29.760 I'm Joe Manchin.

00:49:30.740 I approve this ad because I'll always defend West Virginia.

00:49:34.480 As your senator, I'll protect our Second Amendment rights.

00:49:37.380 That's why the NRA endorsed me.

00:49:39.380 I'll take on Washington and this administration to get the federal government off of our backs and out of our pockets.

00:49:44.960 I'll cut federal spending, and I'll repeal the bad parts of Obamacare.

00:49:49.840 I sued EPA, and I'll take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill.

00:49:54.980 So there's a guy who stands with fossil fuels, of course, lots of coal in West Virginia.

00:49:59.520 Tell me a little bit about what Joe Manchin, who's a Democrat, was doing in Calgary, and then we'll play the clip of your exchange with him.

00:50:06.560 You know, so he is actually very much an advocate for energy resources, particularly in light of Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, the United States facing a deficit.

00:50:15.160 He said 500,000 barrels.

00:50:16.440 I think it's actually 700,000 barrels they used to take in daily from Russia.

00:50:20.900 Keystone XL is on the brink of being done.

00:50:23.380 It would bring 830,000 barrels a day into the United States, offsetting that, and then some also further barrels to help with the supply issues that they're having in the United States.

00:50:33.120 So he has been asking Biden to reinstate Keystone XL.

00:50:36.880 I believe even with some other bills that he's the swing vote on, he's been sort of posturing that maybe Keystone's one of the things he wants incorporated, but very much an advocate.

00:50:45.900 He has a long history of bipartisanship, despite being a Democrat, on issues like energy, abortion, immigration, gun control.

00:50:52.800 So it's extremely interesting because some of his talking points sound very liberal and environmental, very Democrat, and then other things sound very sort of Trump, conservative, Republican.

00:51:02.820 It was so interesting to be there with him and to have him advocating for this.

00:51:06.340 But it's interesting because he is very much right.

00:51:08.560 He's saying the most ethical environmental thing we can do is instead of tanking oil from these countries that are human rights violators that have no environmental restrictions in place whatsoever,

00:51:19.440 we should be working with our long-term allies, and that means exporting between Canada and the United States, solidifying and unifying that relationship.

00:51:26.960 So he and Jason Kenney were touring Alberta and discussing energy security broadly.

00:51:31.560 Yeah, well, that's the ethical oil argument.

00:51:33.280 Here's your question to Senator Manchin.

00:51:35.720 Adam Sos here for Rebel News, a question for Senator Manchin.

00:51:38.440 In your opinion, what is driving the resistance within the Democratic Party and the Biden administration against importing ethical, readily available, and more environmentally responsible Canadian oil supply-growing demands?

00:51:50.880 And why is the United States increasing oil imports from undemocratic serial human rights violators like Venezuela and Iran instead?

00:51:58.440 I ask the same question.

00:51:59.900 I think it's a lack of knowledge, lack of understanding.

00:52:06.240 You know, how many people have come up, how many senators have been up, how many people from the administration have been to Canada to understand how valuable Canada is to the United States of America and vice versa.

00:52:16.760 We're all one.

00:52:17.760 It's North America.

00:52:19.180 And North America could be the energy leaders of the world.

00:52:22.580 It really could be.

00:52:23.580 Of the cleanest energy production in the world.

00:52:25.880 I'm doing everything I can.

00:52:27.140 I intend to have Premier and a delegation come down to the United States, to the Capitol, and my committee, and basically testify on what you do, how you do it, how well you do it, and how much we need each other and how we depend on each other.

00:52:43.640 Not only the oil now.

00:52:45.000 When you start thinking about all of the critical minerals, just take uranium.

00:52:49.180 You know, and I said this, my history tells me that the Manhattan Project that we used to end the World War II and save the world from fascism and totalitarian type of regimes, that came from right here.

00:53:06.760 It came from you all.

00:53:08.460 In Saskatchewan, I think, in this part of the world, you had the richest uranium that we used.

00:53:12.380 And so we've been connected that longer than people know.

00:53:16.580 They just don't realize.

00:53:17.900 So maybe my administration doesn't realize how well you do what you do.

00:53:23.400 Well, good stuff.

00:53:24.120 I tell you, you're doing a great job, Adam.

00:53:26.220 And I hope you continue to cover all the candidates.

00:53:29.860 I know that Jean Charest was in Calgary.

00:53:32.580 And I'm not sure if Roman Baber has been out there.

00:53:36.660 But, you know, Calgary is a stop.

00:53:39.720 Of course, all of them will have to make because it is such a conservative city.

00:53:44.360 Look forward to the rest of your reports.

00:53:45.640 And that's at lockdownreports.ca.

00:53:47.740 That's where, sorry, pardon me.

00:53:49.760 That's a different website.

00:53:51.120 This is leadershipreports.ca, right?

00:53:53.980 That's right.

00:53:54.880 Yeah, you got it.

00:53:56.100 And that's where, you know what, we do have a lockdown reports one.

00:53:58.880 That was for covering the lockdown.

00:54:00.640 But this is leadershipreports.ca.

00:54:03.160 And that's where you'll find all our coverage of the conservative race.

00:54:05.780 All right, Adam, keep it up.

00:54:07.660 Will do.

00:54:07.960 Thanks.

00:54:08.180 Appreciate it.

00:54:08.700 Okay, cheers.

00:54:09.260 Take care.

00:54:09.600 That's Adam Sose in Calgary.

00:54:10.920 Stay with us more ahead.

00:54:19.080 Hey, welcome back.

00:54:20.000 Your feedback to me, DriftRacerBee, talking about criminalizing Holocaust denial, said,

00:54:26.060 I hold the opinion that anything you are not allowed to discuss freely and explore opposing opinions and facts is most likely the thing that should be discussed.

00:54:35.780 The fact that this cannot be denied or even questioned is a big red flag as to the claims made about it.

00:54:41.880 And this applies to any subject, not just the Holocaust from World War II.

00:54:44.740 Well, that's the thing.

00:54:45.740 You know, I'm 50 years old.

00:54:46.760 That is so old now.

00:54:48.100 So I was born in 1972, which was only 27 years after the Holocaust.

00:54:55.560 So from the Holocaust to when I was in, you know, grade one was about 30 years.

00:55:02.720 And it's been 40 plus years since I was in grade one.

00:55:07.120 Do you see what I mean?

00:55:07.640 So that was still the Holocaust was a historical thing, but there were still survivors and you would learn about it.

00:55:14.320 But for and there was this motto, never forget or never again, excuse me, never again.

00:55:22.540 Well, the amount of time from the Holocaust to when I learned about it and they were still saying never again.

00:55:27.060 And from that moment when I learned about it to now, it's greater now.

00:55:31.340 The passage of time, it's everyone doesn't know these things.

00:55:35.760 You have to teach them again.

00:55:37.120 And you have to let people ask questions, even skeptical questions, even hard questions.

00:55:42.120 Because you have to convince people who have never heard it before.

00:55:47.080 And if you become defensive and clam up and blame people and attack people for asking questions, then I grant that some questions are asked in bad faith.

00:55:56.220 But if you make it illegal to even ask questions, you're just begging people to defy you.

00:56:02.360 You're pricking their contrarian streak, their skeptical streak.

00:56:06.360 You want to build a conspiracy theory?

00:56:08.720 Tell people they're not allowed to talk about something.

00:56:12.120 Someone with the nickname, I still have hope, says the truth does not need protection.

00:56:16.800 Set it free.

00:56:17.520 It will defend itself.

00:56:18.380 Only lies need laws to protect it.

00:56:20.400 That is an ancient truth.

00:56:22.000 I mean, the lie may get a head start in a race.

00:56:25.380 There's no doubt about it.

00:56:26.360 Lies often have a head start.

00:56:28.300 But let truth and falsehood grapple.

00:56:31.880 That's the way.

00:56:32.640 And people will learn.

00:56:34.800 That's our show for today.

00:56:36.420 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.

00:56:40.380 And keep fighting for freedom.

00:56:42.460 And let me leave you with our video today from our friend Lewis in the UK.

00:56:46.160 He's talking about the truth about global supply chains.

00:56:49.080 This is an interesting one.

00:56:50.520 All right.

00:56:50.900 See you tomorrow.

00:56:51.260 So, the official narrative is as follows.

00:56:54.740 The war in Ukraine, Russia sanctions, and of course, COVID.

00:56:59.120 They are all to blame for the global supply chain crisis.

00:57:03.080 Which means people like me and you have to pay more at the shops and at the pumps.

00:57:08.240 But in this video, I'm going to lay out what we know so far.

00:57:11.260 So, our political masters from around the world, who, by the way, are definitely not in cahoots with each other,

00:57:17.860 have been warning of this impending food and supply crisis for a while now.

00:57:22.680 Joe Biden has declared that food shortages are going to be real across the globe.

00:57:28.520 And blames the war in, of course, Ukraine.

00:57:31.580 Now, of course, we know that the West has been putting in sanctions on Russia as a form of punishment for its actions in Ukraine.

00:57:38.260 Well, I'm not sure the temporary removal of Starbucks, McDonald's, and Pornhub really has had a devastating effect.

00:57:46.420 But some of the other sanctions have had negative consequences for life of Russian people.

00:57:52.440 We know that the sanctions against Russia were just returned in kind by the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

00:57:59.260 And now the West is in a fuel crisis.

00:58:01.900 On all sides of the political spectrum, politicians are clamoring to say we should not be dependent on Russia.

00:58:08.260 Russian oil.

00:58:09.300 Well, perhaps we should have thought about that decades ago, and not now when the world is so globally interconnected,

00:58:16.520 and parts of Europe are already dependent on Russian oil.

00:58:19.980 Germany.

00:58:21.740 The joke of it all is that somehow it's morally repugnant to buy oil from big bad Putin,

00:58:27.300 but it's okay to give your money to Islamic extremists over in Saudi Arabia.

00:58:32.100 Nah, sorry, mate.

00:58:32.940 I don't get my oil from the Russian aggressor.

00:58:35.640 I prefer my oil from the Saudi religious radicals who have public executions,

00:58:41.200 criminalise normal behaviours, and fund proxy wars around the world.

00:58:46.600 Anyway, there may be a grain of truth in that sanctions could cause food prices to rise.

00:58:52.560 Ukraine is one of the world's largest wheat-producing nations.

00:58:56.100 Back when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, it was known as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union.

00:59:03.080 And as a country, Ukraine nowadays produces around 10% of the world's wheat.

00:59:08.980 As it stands with the ongoing situation in Ukraine, the harvests will be negatively affected,

00:59:15.520 and there will be much less wheat being produced.

00:59:17.940 Now, if there is a shortage, let's be honest, will the manufacturers take the financial hit

00:59:23.460 or pass the price raise to the customers?

00:59:27.300 I think we all know the answer to that.

00:59:29.560 Limitless profits at the expense of everyday people.

00:59:33.220 But it's not just oil and wheat prices that are being affected by the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.

00:59:39.920 Russia itself is a large exporter of fertiliser around the world.

00:59:44.220 The sanctions and the restrictions have meant that the Russian fertiliser,

00:59:48.280 which helps cultivate British, American, and European fields, isn't getting through to the farmers.

00:59:55.220 So the farmers will have to pay more to produce the food,

00:59:58.640 and again, the knock-on effect trickles down to the public

01:00:01.720 in the form of inflated food prices and scarcity of produce.

01:00:07.320 But hold on, aren't we meant to be building back better after the COVID crisis?

01:00:11.800 Wasn't that the mantra from our political masters?

01:00:15.980 Build back better for us?

01:00:17.940 Or is it them?

01:00:19.360 Or is it that the COVID crisis hasn't even finished yet, according to them?

01:00:24.140 Now, looking to the east, we have China.

01:00:27.000 Currently, the CCP are turning Shanghai into what looks like a dystopian nightmare.

01:00:32.300 There is a scarcity of food, everyone is controlled by the social credit system,

01:00:53.800 and if you dare to sing on your balcony, a drone will come out and yell at you in Chinese.

01:01:00.260 The Chinese have decided to pursue the zero-COVID approach,

01:01:04.060 which we know, from New Zealand's policies, is absolutely impossible.

01:01:09.240 Shanghai has the world's largest port, and as we speak, the containers are stacking up.

01:01:15.640 The port has created a huge backlog, which will in turn drive up container prices,

01:01:20.900 and again trickle down to the consumer level in the form of price rises.

01:01:26.960 So much is shipped through Shanghai that it's hard to express in words

01:01:31.160 roughly 10% of the world's shipping containers pass through Shanghai.

01:01:36.260 A good example of this is just behind me.

01:01:39.600 Many of the containers you see would have passed through Shanghai within the last 12 months.

01:01:45.280 Absolutely everything is being affected by what's happening in the world today.

01:01:49.920 The war in Ukraine, the sanctions on Russia, and the never-ending COVID crisis.

01:01:57.020 The question is, how much of this is actually just by design?

01:02:01.680 And how much of this is just a coincidence that everything is wonderfully blending into a never-ending crisis?

01:02:08.800 We've gone straight from COVID to war and famine in the blink of an eye.

01:02:14.380 One moment it was the unvaccinated who were being hounded as the enemy,

01:02:18.220 and now it's the everyday Russian people who are the target of being cancelled simply for just being Russian.

01:02:26.700 So let's be honest, if we really are on the path to building back better,

01:02:32.200 then what on earth is better going to look like?

01:02:36.380 And who is it going to be better for?

01:02:38.880 That's the real question.

01:02:40.160 So this has been Lewis Brackpull reporting in Felixstowe for Rebel News.

Rebel News Podcast - April 14, 2022

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Why is Rebel News involved in so many lawsuits？

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