Juno News - September 03, 2025


Candice and Keean discuss a letter he received from the Commissioner of Elections Canada

Topics
holding government officials and powerful people accountable
Mentioned
Thomas Keeper Trudeau
Liberals mock crime wave sweeping Canada EXCLUSIVE： Another MP speaks out about Liberal Govt’s criminal probe into Juno News

Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

190.04

Word count

561

Sentence count

29


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk to Kian Bextie about a notice of investigation that she received from Elections Canada in August of 2018. The notice alleges that she may have violated the Canada Elections Act, and that charges may be laid against her as a result of the investigation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I don't like to make ourselves the subject of the story, right?
00:00:02.960 I would rather report on the real news.
00:00:04.880 I'd rather report on the state of our country and hold the powerful to account.
00:00:08.640 But sometimes you have to defend yourself.
00:00:11.180 And what the government is doing to independent journalists in this country,
00:00:14.600 what they are doing to general news is unbelievable in a free society.
00:00:18.840 And it just cannot stand.
00:00:20.420 We couldn't keep our mouths shut and stay quiet about this.
00:00:22.940 It's important that Canadians know what independent journalists go through
00:00:26.740 in our trade and in our practice.
00:00:28.740 that holding government officials and powerful people accountable does come with consequences,
00:00:33.460 especially when you have a politicized government that treats the media like they are the enemy.
00:00:38.980 So I'm going to read a little bit from this notice of investigation that you received back in August.
00:00:44.660 It says, Dear Kian Bextie, you're receiving this letter because the commissioner of Canada's elections,
00:00:49.300 the commissioner, has started an investigation.
00:00:52.220 It examines allegations that you may have violated the Canada Elections Act
00:00:55.820 and charges may be laid against you under the act as a result of this investigation based on
00:01:00.280 our initial review. It appears that on or about March 26, 2025, and again on or about March 28,
00:01:06.460 2025, you published articles in Juneau News alleging that then Liberal Party of Canada
00:01:10.700 candidate Thomas Keeper had conducted himself in a manner that amounted to an offence pursuant to
00:01:15.220 the criminal code, an act of Parliament specifically. You alleged that he had committed
00:01:19.840 sexual assault and common assault. The allegations have been denied as being false under the act.
00:01:24.820 it is illegal to make a false statement that a candidate has committed an offense under the Act
00:01:29.660 of Parliament, subsection 91 of the Act. And we'll talk a little bit more about the criminal code
00:01:35.180 section 91, because the Trudeau government has politicized that to put a chill on free speech,
00:01:41.100 on social media, and on independent media during elections that was brought in 2019.
00:01:46.340 Now, just to go back to this letter, it says, what is an investigation? The commissioner is
00:01:49.440 responsible for investigating cases of potential wrongdoing under the Act. The investigation
00:01:54.040 Help the commissioner gather facts and information to better understand what may have taken place.
00:01:59.660 You can learn more about the investigation by looking at your compliance and enforcement policy at this email address, at this website, sorry.
00:02:05.360 What happens next? It says you are not required to cooperate with the investigation.
00:02:10.420 You will not be arrested or detained, but what you say, the information you provide, could be used as evidence.
00:02:15.840 You may contact a lawyer or your choice, of your choice at any time.
00:02:21.140 So this is a very serious notice for a journalist to receive. It is very concerning. And like you said, we here at Juno News, you know, this wasn't just a hot take on social media. This wasn't just a drive-by smear. This was a very deliberate, very well-researched, very thoughtful act of journalism.
00:02:39.240 You consulted with many sources, people coming to you very concerned with the character of this candidate for the Liberal Party, basically telling you that this person has serious concerns around them.
00:02:52.260 As a journalist, it's your duty to inform the public about what those concerns might be.