Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation joins me to discuss the arrest of journalist David Menzies, and why the media should not be funded by the federal government. She also discusses the growing number of journalists on government payroll.
00:01:00.000He was trying to do his job to ask the Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, a former journalist herself, some questions on the street.
00:01:10.580Freeland, who has been an outspoken advocate for free speech and freedom of the press, didn't do anything.
00:01:22.400As the opportunity to defend freedom of the press was literally 18 inches away from her.
00:01:28.220As David Menzies was being tackled and handcuffed and stuffed in a police cruiser.
00:01:34.080We know it's all fake. Freeland, in the past, tried to block me from attending a press conference at a media freedom conference that she was hosting.
00:01:47.220She's just another liar, another liberal liar, especially on this issue.
00:01:54.620And joining me today to discuss what happened to David Menzies, why we should not be funding the media, and then why the media has all but ignored the lavish parties.
00:02:09.260As federal bureaucrats have been throwing themselves, is Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a former journalist herself.
00:02:20.100Take a listen to the interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
00:02:24.120So joining me now is my friend, good friend of the show, Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:02:36.960And we have Canadian Taxpayers Federation issues that we need to talk about.
00:02:41.640But I want to talk to Chris, first of all, because Chris was a journalist.
00:02:47.360And she, in her role at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, is vehemently against government bailing out and or controlling, because I think they're probably the same issue.
00:02:59.860The Canadian news media, it's created a landscape where the mainstream media is effectively a monopoly that controls access to politicians.
00:03:09.900And they never get the market correction they so rightly deserve, because they continue to produce content Canadians don't want.
00:03:17.980But the government continues to shoehorn it in front of the eyeballs of Canadians and fund the failures.
00:03:23.920And this is particularly top of mind right now, because as we're filming this on Tuesday, my friend David Menzies was arrested on the street for doing absolutely nothing wrong,
00:03:35.460except trying to ask the Deputy Prime Minister a question.
00:03:40.860Chris, thanks so much for coming on the show.
00:03:42.840And thanks so much for your advocacy for taxpayer responsibility, but also for keeping the media independent in this country.
00:03:54.080However, sadly, that ship has really sailed for the vast majority of it.
00:03:57.740This is really key, Sheila, because we have three pillars that we stick to for our mandate at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:04:06.160It's lower taxes, less waste and accountable government.
00:04:10.380And there's no way that we can hold government accountable unless we can speak truth to power.
00:04:16.560Unless journalists are free to question authority figures, we don't care if they're right-wing or left-wing journalists or they always vote, you know, whatever, you know, fill in the blank for the party.
00:04:33.500And for people who don't yet know, the term free press means free from the state, free from government interference and government funding.
00:04:47.380Because, again, there's no way that you're going to be able to hold any government to account if you, on the one hand of the vice, are putting more and more journalists on government payroll.
00:04:58.240And then on the other side of the vice, you are crushing independent journalism through over-regulation and gag orders.
00:05:07.540That is exactly what is happening in Canada right now.
00:05:12.000So we've got the big behemoth that we're all familiar with, the CBC, which takes more than a billion dollars from taxpayers every single year.
00:05:20.840That's been the case for a long time, and we want the CBC fully defunded.
00:05:25.020What's new under this current administration is that other media, what people usually refer to as legacy media or mainstream media, are increasingly now on government payroll.
00:05:39.500And for those who are on government payroll as journalists, the amount they get from the Trudeau government has now doubled.
00:05:47.500So it used to be roughly $14,000-ish per year.
00:05:53.260Our friends over at Black Locks Reporter, that don't take government money, figured out this amount.
00:05:58.200And so did the folks over at Canada Land, who don't take government money.
00:07:04.020And you can see exactly who is funded by the media or by the politicians based on their silence.
00:07:13.800For example, what happened to David Menzies on Monday afternoon is the biggest story in the world.
00:07:19.980David is spending almost all of today, this is Tuesday, doing outside appearances with some of the world's largest networks, including Fox News.
00:07:30.340It is trending on Twitter. Conservative politicians are weighing in, and I'll get to that in a second.
00:07:36.120You know who's not weighing in? The mainstream media.
00:07:39.000Pierre Polyev, to his credit, on Monday night he tweeted that it was crazy what he was seeing happening on the street to David Menzies.
00:07:46.760Now, just before we started recording this, he released this tweet.
00:08:54.660I mean, I'm not, you know, a green newbie, but I also wasn't reporting in, you know, the 18th century or something.
00:09:01.340It was only, I would say, 10, 15 years ago that, to your point exactly, and I can give examples, the media, if they were being silenced or pushed out or pushed around, I don't even recall, actually, ever seeing a journalist pushed or pushed around or arrested in this manner.
00:09:22.000And I've been in, like, riots, so that was pretty surprising to see.
00:09:28.140But whenever there was kind of this attempt by the government to stifle the access of media, media would team up together, like, regardless of whether or not, you know, you voted differently or you think your editorial board would write a slightly different op-ed than the other.
00:09:45.300So, when I was at CTV, I was over in Charlottetown, and the Conservative Party, the caucus, who were in government, were having their annual general meeting.
00:09:54.740Now, they were having it, this is Charlottetown, so it's a small town, basically.
00:09:58.360They were having this meeting in this, you know, kind of big complex of a hotel.
00:10:03.860And they said, oh, no, no, you can't come in here because it's a private event and you're not allowed in.
00:10:09.420But did you know that the CTV Bureau is actually located in this building?
00:10:13.020So, I have this magnetic card and I can go where I want.
00:10:17.100The Globe and Mail and a whole bunch of other reporters teamed up with me and refused to ask any questions until I was allowed into my studio.
00:11:13.440You just did it out of a sense of duty.
00:11:16.160And I don't see that happening anymore.
00:11:18.020You know, it's sort of ironic that this is Chrystia Freeland's security detail pushing around David Menzies because, I think it was two, three, three years ago, maybe even four, pandemic makes things blur together.
00:11:31.120Sorry, the pandemic overreaction by the government.
00:11:33.380But she hosted, in conjunction with the UK Foreign Office, the Media Freedom Conference.
00:11:40.400And at that Media Freedom Conference, Freeland herself, a former journalist, I should point out.
00:11:47.600Yes, I was going to say, let's point that out.
00:11:50.760She's a former journalist who claims to be an advocate for the free press.
00:11:54.880She had an opportunity to defend the free press about a foot and a half away from her as the police were arresting David Menzies and she didn't do a damn thing.
00:12:02.620But she also tried to block myself and Andrew Lawton from True North from attending a press conference at the Media Freedom Conference in the UK.
00:12:15.700Global News, their UK bureau, and Al Jazeera, of all outlets, stood up for us and said, we're not going to a press conference unless you let these two in.
00:13:09.080And we had a bunch of legal research from the time that Rachel Notley had blocked me from attending press conferences at the legislature and had to have a basically a royal commission to determine that she had done something wrong.
00:13:22.060But we had a bunch of legal research that we had paid for, and we gave it to this far left wing agitator journalist for free because his human rights don't depend on his politics.
00:13:34.060Interestingly enough, in a few short years, the script is totally flipped, and journalists only defend journalists that they like these days.
00:13:42.980And that's a major problem because now this isn't just the fact that freedom of expression, which is our version of freedom of speech up here in Canada, it isn't just that our freedom of expression is being strangled by overregulation from the government.
00:13:58.480It's that it's that it is now seeping down into the culture of the newsrooms and the culture of journalists.
00:14:07.140And unfortunately, I'm seeing more and more.
00:14:12.800I know there are young people who are joining independent media and asking tough questions.
00:14:17.080But generally speaking, I'm seeing this sense of permission seeking all the time in young journalists.
00:14:25.380It's like, you know, please, mother, may I please, daddy, might I that is not towards the state towards government.
00:14:32.960And that is not the instinct of a journalist.
00:14:36.340You have to stay within the law, of course, don't commit crimes and assault people don't be a nut job, we get all of that decent people understand that and how to stay within the law.
00:14:46.460But it's not supposed to be an easy job.
00:14:49.560It's not supposed to be comfortable, right?
00:14:52.680Even making fun of politicians, you know, you don't think that gets awkward sometimes.
00:14:56.600And it's like they're a human being and you're making fun of them for wasting money.
00:15:01.240But it is our job as journalists and in some cases advocacy organizations to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.
00:15:09.760And it's that last part that's important, because it's so easy to get intimidated, to want to go along with the cool kids, to not rock the boat, and to ask to not ask those tougher questions, right?
00:15:43.080A lot of these journalists are now on payroll from the government and they have to know deep down that this is not going to end well, that this is not true journalism, that they have to disavow government funding no matter what happens.
00:15:57.640That could mean that their newspaper goes down.
00:16:00.220That could mean that their company has to be restructured.
00:16:03.020Like, I've been part of a media group that is no longer with us.
00:16:08.920But for the sake of being able to hold government to account, regardless of who's in power, and regardless of the politics of journalists, we have to get there.
00:16:17.560And I wanted to flag something really quick.
00:16:19.460Do we have time, Sheila, to flag what's coming?
00:16:22.360Okay, so like we've touched on before many times on your wonderful show, we've got Bill C-11, okay, which is often referred to as the Online Censorship Act, I forget what the government calls it, which is now being applied to online media.
00:16:37.620We don't yet know exactly what that looks like, but the CRTC has already warned people that providers of platforms, of podcasts, are going to be subject to it.
00:16:50.360So that means Apple Podcasts, that means YouTube, that means probably Rumble, depends on how you listen to your podcast.
00:17:04.360That's the online link tax, we call it at the CTF, because that's why you can't see news on Facebook, okay?
00:17:10.760Google just caved and they signed a deal with the government.
00:17:13.060Again, that is money going directly from these big tech giants to the government and then to the media companies, in some cases the CBC, so direct government graft there.
00:17:25.880What's coming next, probably, we don't know yet for sure, is this spring we're likely going to see a reintroduction of this so-called Online Harms Bill.
00:17:38.340Now, that sounds okay, because who wants to harm people on the internet?
00:17:43.200But the catch here is the government could very, very likely put terms like misinformation and disinformation in there.
00:17:55.340And some of the reasons why the government wants to do this, according to the folks who are writing columns for the Toronto Star and who are part of the advisory group,
00:18:04.420are because people are getting radicalized online due to misinformation.
00:18:17.720Are they talking about government criticism?
00:18:19.960Because those are two very different and big things.
00:18:23.700Now, there's been this trend to give the CRTC just this infinite amount of power.
00:18:32.720You and I were talking about this before we started recording.
00:18:35.040The CRTC in C-18, that's the Online News Act, the link tax law, they have been granted the power to create a code of conduct for newsrooms.
00:18:49.960So, this government agency can create a code of conduct for newsrooms.
00:19:18.380Google just signed a deal with the government, which means there's a remaining pot of money there.
00:19:24.760And these news agencies are desperate because Justin Trudeau tried to fix a system that wasn't broken and cut off a big chunk of their money.
00:19:33.220So, now they need this money from Google to save jobs, to keep their companies alive.
00:19:38.640If you want that money from Google, you have to comport with the code of conduct.
00:19:43.520And guess when the code of conduct will come out?
00:19:59.240Whenever there's the government involved with the uses, you know, elements of free expression, there's always a hook.
00:20:05.860And so, now, who gets to write the code of conduct?
00:20:09.940The government or hand-picked journalists selected by the government who, like, again, now we're going to have people's own ideological positions, their biases, and their own personal politics inflicted upon newsrooms, no matter which newsroom it is.
00:20:28.960Again, folks, this is why this is really critical for free expression to have a free press.
00:21:03.860It was largely left-wing groups that were organizing physical, everybody-show-up-with-your-placards-and-your-little-noisemakers protests against the invasion of Iraq because they opposed it.
00:22:07.240What if people were not able, in their little, you know, commune and hippie left-wing groups, able to organize and express themselves freely?
00:22:16.220They wouldn't have been able to organize that actual physical protest.
00:22:20.020Maybe it would have changed what the government did.
00:22:23.040This is why you have to, folks who are listening who think this is fine, imagine that your guy or gal is not the leader.
00:22:32.300Imagine you've got somebody in there who's prime minister with whom you vehemently disagree.
00:22:36.700But they get to call the shots on what you can see online and what you can say.
00:22:41.780This is why this free speech is critically important.
00:22:52.820And that is the present-day overlay of what you're talking about.
00:22:56.260Now, going back to the Code of Conduct, as I was talking about it and then you were talking about it, I was like, you know, this reminds me of something very distinct.
00:23:02.560It was called the Accurate News and Information Act.
00:23:05.820Here in Alberta in the 1930s, the Aberhart government passed a law that forced the newspapers to print the government's op-eds in response to journalism that was critical of the government.
00:23:21.060Now, the Edmonton Journal took it all the way to the Supreme Court, I believe, overturned the law and won a Pulitzer Prize for it.
00:23:30.340But that is exactly what it looks to be.
00:23:35.960That is something that will be in this new CRTC Code of Conduct.
00:23:41.080Blacklocks is reporting that, and it's the same old liberal consultations, just like when they consult on gun laws and it's like every activist and feminist group but never gun owners.
00:23:55.240They're consulting with activists like the National Council of Canadian Muslims who are saying that there is not enough ability to have retractions, to force retractions in a newspaper.
00:24:13.420And so this has to be written into the CRTC Code of Conduct going forward.
00:24:19.380And I would like to know how Paula Simons, a liberal senator, a former journalist at the Edmonton Journal, how is she going to vote on this sort of stuff?
00:24:32.580That's a great question because we have a lot of former journalists who are in—
00:24:54.880And like your reference to, often referred to as Bible Bill Eberhardt, that was overturned.
00:25:00.600And if that was overturned, like, almost 100 years ago, folks, what are we doing?
00:25:06.560Why are we doing this now, all of a sudden, all over again, but in a much more far-reaching manner?
00:25:12.100Because this is going to affect all of your shows on the internet.
00:25:16.920So all of the podcasts, all of these quote-unquote alternative journalists that you rely on right now, left and right-wing, are now going to come under probably this Code of Conduct and or C-11 and or whatever is coming down the pipe for these so-called online harms.
00:25:34.340Now, this could get tricky in the spring.
00:25:38.940Not so sure, but I'm reading some academics who are warning about this.
00:25:43.660So I'm not part of the consultation, but I'm reading academic papers on it, or at least the executive summaries of them.
00:25:49.420They're warning that the government could make it a form of omnibus bill and that they might group together things like disinformation or what the government calls misinformation with laws that concern, how do I put this, images of child abuse.
00:26:12.460So absolutely no decent person could possibly speak out against toughening those laws, of course.
00:26:19.640But the risk here is that the government might tack on things like, oh, things we call disinformation, things we've decided are misinformation.
00:26:52.660But labeling somebody misinformation and then criminalizing that expression, like, we're in really dark territory.
00:26:59.220And again, if folks want to see tougher laws about the other nasty stuff I did mention, that can be done in its own bill through the justice minister.
00:27:50.860Now, switching lanes to, you know, the thing that you and I care about, me as a journalist, you as a taxpayer advocate, holding the government to account.
00:28:00.720You and I had a very interesting text conversation yesterday about something I called expensive duck salami.
00:28:07.100Tell us what the CTF has uncovered, please, Chris.
00:28:13.380Okay, so to my point about the beauty of independent and investigative journalists, my friend and colleague, Ryan Thorpe, he is the Taxpayers Federation's investigative journalist, a real one.
00:28:26.160We pay him and he lives in Ottawa now.
00:28:28.320They were an endangered species, as you know.
00:28:31.000And so we went out in the wild and we just, you know, gently captured Ryan and we put him in this little terrarium and he lives near Franco, near Parliament Hill, and he writes amazing things.
00:28:41.400And so he found all of these ATIP documents, access to information.
00:28:46.180And it turns out that, you know how bureaucrats are accused of, you know, scratching their behinds while watering houseplants and not really doing a whole lot for their middle management jobs.
00:28:58.860They've actually spent around $400,000, so almost half a million bucks, over the last decade on, what is it, public service excellence awards.
00:29:09.700And these are not just shoutouts on email or a pizza party at the last Friday of the month or something like that and, like, you know, a funny prize.
00:30:04.240Yeah, like, so the Teddy Waste Awards, the ones we give out every year, I forget which director.
00:30:10.660I think it was an Ontario director, like, 20 years ago, found these pig statues at a garden center on, like, you know, liquidation, and we spray-painted them gold.
00:30:21.840Like, I have them here, like, I have to keep them now for some reason.
00:31:45.800So more than $400,000 over the last decade, including during the Harper administration, I will point out, has been blown on these public service awards galas.
00:31:56.740And again, these are ceremonies with gowns and red carpets and hired photographers.
00:32:01.960And, like, there's this other pork something.
00:32:19.200If they want to have a get-together at one of their local groups down in Ottawa once or twice a year and hand out their little plastic stuff, that's fine.
00:32:28.300Well, and what really struck me in that article was that these are awards for excellence, yet almost none of these departments are hitting their performance targets.
00:33:19.020If you as a manager or a deputy minister or whatever who's in charge of this nonsense, if you're willing to blow taxpayers' money on this nonsense, year in, year out, it's like the broken windows theory, then you are willing and able and capable of blowing big-time taxpayers' money.
00:33:45.980And some of these people are the people who are supposed to say no to the politicians when the politicians are like, actually, this, please, you know, like, this is the expense I need to spend.
00:34:07.000How do you talk your minister down from their harebrained idea of some bullet train?
00:34:11.020Like, when, you know, your department just finished throwing this massive gala.
00:34:15.620Again, this leads to the culture of irresponsibility with taxpayers' money, and it's one of the reasons why this government has almost doubled the debt.
00:34:23.860So we're more than a trillion dollars in debt now.
00:34:28.420If you started counting to a trillion right now, it would take you 30,000 years.
00:34:34.820That's how long it's going to take us to pay it off.
00:34:39.560If you started stacking loonies, it would take you 30,000 years to count up to a trillion of them.
00:34:44.840So, again, this is critically important.
00:34:47.320We are now, I think the last time I checked, I think we're now paying more on our interest charges on our debt than we do, I think, for health care.
00:34:56.520However, I know as a line item, technically, in the Department of National Defense, I'm sure there's other expenditures elsewhere in the budget, but as a line item, we're already paying more.
00:35:16.200And if you're trying to think of a billion, okay, because governments will try to snow you with numbers, okay?
00:35:21.360The next time somebody says a billion dollars, picture a hospital, because that's roughly how much it costs to build a small but good new hospital, or picture a thousand new police officers paid for the next 10 years, or a thousand new nurses, or a thousand new paramedics, because it's about $100,000 a year for that salary.
00:35:45.320Picture that, on the street, a thousand of them, for the next decade, the next time somebody says a billion dollars was wasted.
00:36:05.500Chris, tell us how people can, first of all, find out about the work that you do at the CTF, but also get involved, because the CTF is all about their citizen army.
00:36:16.940Yes, and we've got a big one, but we want it to be bigger, because this is how we push politicians into making the right decisions.
00:36:24.000Because politicians absolutely must hear from us all the time, because otherwise they get, what did you call it? Captured?
00:37:06.180Sign the stuff you care about, cancel the carbon tax, and then you'll start getting correspondence from us.
00:37:10.840And then the next time it's time to all gang up on a minister, or urge an entire committee to vote one way, or threaten to doorknock against them in the next election as a group of friends, then you'll get our updates.
00:37:23.940So, yeah, head on over to our website.
00:37:40.660It feels like you're not alone anymore in this fight.
00:37:43.540And also, you get access to stories that the CTF does that the mainstream media just won't touch.
00:37:50.360So, incredible research, great journalism that you might not find anywhere else.
00:37:55.880And so, you know, part of my job here at Rebel News is trying to find out what the politicians are doing behind closed doors with your money, and you guys do such a great job of that over at the CTF.
00:43:07.620People should stand against the obstruction and malicious prosecution of members of the press at the hands of any authority, regardless of their personal views.
00:43:16.840Whether you recognize Menzies as a journalist or not is inconsequential.
00:44:42.720In an age where personal identity is acknowledged, his self-identification should be enough.
00:44:48.420The federal government accepts a man's claim of being a woman and provides free tampons for him in the men's washrooms of all federal buildings, CBC included.
00:44:58.180Similarly, misgendering is considered a human rights offense.
00:45:01.960Therefore, pretending that assaulting a journalist is acceptable because the government and the state news agency don't recognize a news organization is appalling.
00:45:12.080The prime minister has made no effort to hide his thoughts about Menzies' employer and has publicly voiced his displeasure.
00:45:19.200However, it is not up to him to choose who is a journalist in Canada.
00:45:22.780His vocal contempt for Rebel News and other independent media may have influenced the animosity and lack of neutrality in the federal officer who unleashed on Menzies.
00:45:34.620As a matter of fact, it is precisely because the state media and government officials dislike Menzies and his employer that Menzies and his colleagues, that's me, deserve as much or perhaps even more protection from an independent police force.
00:45:51.680I could not have said that better, you know, especially from the CBC news organization that cannot bring itself to call Hamas terrorists, actual terrorists, even though it's a registered terroristic entity here in Canada.
00:46:10.740And they can't tell you that David Menzies has been a working journalist in this country for 39 years.
00:46:22.640And my friend David Menzies does more journalism in a day than most members of the subsidized mainstream media will do in a week.