A new deal between Alberta and Ottawa on curbing carbon pricing, former Conservative MP Nate Erskine-Smith resigns his seat in the House of Commons, and more. Plus, a story about a media blacklist.
00:00:00.000well the cardi government may be close to cutting alberta's industrial carbon tax that according
00:00:09.860to media reports the globe and mail says ottawa and alberta are close to a new deal on industrial
00:00:16.300carbon pricing paper quotes unnamed sources saying the new deal could result in the fee
00:00:25.080going up to $130 a ton by 2040, so that would roll back the Trudeau-era climate targets of $170
00:00:35.240a ton by 2030. It could also conceivably set the stage for construction of another oil pipeline to
00:00:43.600the BC coast. A lawyer representing Alberta independence in that movement says Daniel
00:00:50.060Smith, premier of Alberta, is not listening to the oil industry, which is why investment has dried
00:00:56.940up. Jeffrey Rath tells Juno News the industry has called for an end to all carbon pricing.
00:01:05.500Meantime former premier Jason Kenney says it's time to drop the gloves with those pushing
00:01:12.080Alberta independence. Let's listen. We've allowed the separatists to almost completely dominate
00:01:18.320the debate and the process for the past year you know we are Canadians we're polite we don't like
00:01:23.480having uncomfortable political arguments and what could be more emotional than tearing the
00:01:30.400country apart so I think a lot of people have just been downplaying ignoring it and I'm sorry
00:01:36.820I for one do not think that the people trying to destroy our country and wreck Alberta's economy
00:01:42.280should be getting a pass on this well Kenny himself once dismissed downplayed the movement as
00:01:48.320being run by a fringe group of angry people well despite losing his bid for a provincial
00:01:54.720liberal nomination nate erskine smith says he's still planning to quit his federal seat
00:02:01.440the carny government has currently a razor-thin majority in parliament but erskine smith told ctv
00:02:08.160news he's quitting this summer you said every vote counts your party now has a majority are you going
00:02:13.840and to resign your seat? Yes. Yes. I said what I said, and I'm going to stand by what I said. I'm
00:02:20.020going to do what I said I was going to do. I've talked to the prime minister's office. I've been
00:02:24.960in fairly regular touch. They asked me to stay on, so I stayed on. I mean, you can say I'm not
00:02:30.040a team player, but I put myself through a lot, in some cases, quite a lot of criticism in order to
00:02:34.120make sure we supported a really tough parliamentary minority. We're in an easier space now, and the
00:02:40.080last conversation I had with the Prime Minister's office was, you know, I'll give a farewell speech
00:02:44.220in June and I'll resign over the summer and they'll have enough time in an orderly way,
00:02:49.700hopefully have a nomination, and I know their nomination will be well run. Erskine-Smith is
00:02:54.200disputing the results of the Scarborough Southwest nominating meeting, claiming the vote was unfair.
00:03:01.200Well, this week we learned about a secret meeting held in Ottawa attended by staff from the Prime
00:03:07.000minister's office, a meeting to discuss a media blacklist. Blacklock's reporter learned of the
00:03:13.700closed-door session, March the 10th, to talk about which reporters would not be allowed access to
00:03:20.160government ministers. Our guest today is Rebel News reporter, actually not just a reporter,
00:03:25.600she's editor-in-chief of Rebel News. She's also president of the Independent Press Gallery.
00:03:30.860Welcome to the show, Sheila. Mark, thanks for having me on.
00:03:33.740All right, so we know that there was a secret meeting held. This was back on March the 10th. It was reported by Blacklock's reporter, and they found that the meeting was attended by key members, for instance, of the prime minister's office, and up for discussion was blacklisting reporters and deciding who is going to be granted access to government ministers and who will not be.
00:03:58.360This is the kind of stuff that you think of happening in, I don't know, under authoritarian regimes where they ban the kind of coverage that they don't like to see.
00:04:12.120This wasn't just a meeting because what came of this meeting fell into practice.
00:04:17.460So subsequent to this March 10th meeting that included Foreign Affairs, Treasury Board, the CRA and the Privy Council, we know that global affairs and immigration both then they went on to decline taking questions from independent journalists.
00:04:39.140So this was not just a discussion. This was a strategy meeting, and we saw it play out in real time further down the road. But it's not just these federal government agencies that have a blacklist. This is a whole-of-government approach, and I'm including CBC in this, because we heard from Travis Donraj that there was a blacklist of people who could and could not appear on CBC panels.
00:05:06.400And we would, of course, assume that that would include independent journalists or people outside of the media cabal in this country.
00:05:16.960And so this just goes on and on and on, and this sort of reinforces the kind of questions we think the government is getting, but also the kind of people who would then go on to analyze the government responses on these CBC panels.
00:05:29.980And you are right to say that this is the kind of thing that they do in authoritarian regimes in places around the world.
00:05:38.940We were told that the QCJO, the Qualified Canadian Journalistic Organization status, was just about tax treatment, tax subsidies, whether or not your subscribers could write off their subscriptions as a tax credit.
00:05:56.900but it's gone on to be the stamp of approval now. It's morphed into something larger than a lot of
00:06:04.800people like us here at Rebel News were raising the alarm bells about, that this isn't just about
00:06:10.380tax status. It will then become the official government approval stamp of whether or not
00:06:16.580you're a journalist. And in a free country, the government doesn't get to decide who their
00:06:22.600critics are and who gets to hold them to account. It is the media's job to hold the government to
00:06:28.380account. But right now, the way the media landscape looks in this country, there's a two-tier media
00:06:34.900system. One is government approved and one is government excluded. And at the end of the day,
00:06:42.840the only people who really suffer are the Canadian public, who should have some people
00:06:49.840holding the government to account. And if you are excluding your critics, then nobody is.
00:06:55.540Yeah. And government approved often means government funded, doesn't it? Because at first
00:06:59.660we see hundreds of millions of dollars fuddled into the kinds of organizations that the government
00:07:07.520likes. You know, they want CBC covering them. They get billion four or whatever it is, billion five.
00:07:13.980But it's not just them, certainly. It's all the, many of the newspapers, of course,
00:07:18.620other broadcasters, legacy media that has just taken and accepted. I believe it's a $500 million
00:07:28.220chunk of cash that has been available to the media, and that continues to climb. And when
00:07:35.860others have tried to find out who is getting what, the government has been cagey. You know,
00:07:40.860like how much money is the Toronto Star getting? We don't exactly know. We can guesstimate. But
00:07:46.720They're just keeping these figures to themselves. So this is a way, really, as I see it, a way to
00:07:52.960manipulate and to bring the media into what the government is doing, make them part of what the
00:07:59.440government is doing, and essentially get rid of those who won't play ball like Rebel News.
00:08:06.140Well, it's not just, as you rightly point out, CBC. And the number is closer to $600 million
00:08:14.020dollars going to the rest of the media. It's the complete CBC-ification of the total media
00:08:19.800landscape. And Mark Miller has recently testified that he's looking to expand that. So what should
00:08:28.340be noted here is that whatever they claimed this government support for journalism would do,
00:08:36.300it's not doing. They said journalism is a danger in this country. Well, for me, the only danger
00:08:41.380that we have is from government policy. But they said, you know, the media is failing in this
00:08:46.800country. And so on behalf of the people, we must prop them up so that they have access
00:08:51.160to information. But since they started these outrageous programs, the number of journalists
00:08:58.340in this country has declined. They've actually made it harder for journalists to do their jobs.
00:09:03.620They shook down Metta. Metta refused to play along. And so that cut off access to a lot of
00:09:10.600viewers and readers for independent journalists. I want to tell you the number here.
00:09:17.340It's $30,000 plus additional tax credits in funding to every person in a government approved
00:09:28.880newsroom in this country. That's the level of support these people are getting. And independent
00:09:34.800journalists out there are just trying to do their jobs unobstructed by the government and they are
00:09:40.020being cut off at the knees every step of the way. And it's playing out in real time in the support
00:09:46.980and trust that people have in the media. So the more money the government gives the media,
00:09:53.760the less the Canadian public trusts the media, and then therefore the less people consume the
00:10:00.480mainstream media. They're turning on mass to independent journalists. Reporters Without
00:10:06.200borders, measures, media freedom every single year. And for all the saber rattling that the
00:10:15.340mainstream media did about big old mean Stephen Harper, Canada's fallen from eighth place in 2015
00:10:22.840in media freedom to 21st in 2025. And I imagine it's going to be even lower when the numbers come
00:10:30.640out in 2026. Everything they do to help the media is just things that the government is doing to
00:10:38.300absorb the media into the government. Yeah, I mean, I've argued that their business model
00:10:44.940has changed completely. I'm talking about these legacy media organizations. They went from holding
00:10:51.040the government to account and, you know, providing real journalism for their viewers and listeners
00:10:57.260and readers to sucking up the government and getting as much money as you can out of the
00:11:02.740liberals. And of course, when you also have the leader of the opposition, Pierre Polyev,
00:11:07.820talk about ending these media subsidies, $600 million to your point, ending and defunding the
00:11:15.080CBC, then all of this comes into play. I mean, in the minds of reporters, you know, they don't want
00:11:21.280to end up stocking shelves at Costco. It's probably good, honest work. And God bless those
00:11:27.280who are doing it, but they want to hold on to those jobs. And so all of that is factored into
00:11:32.400their coverage. I mean, to think that they're going to be covering stories in which they know
00:11:37.620that one party is going to continue paying them off while the other one wants to defund them,
00:11:43.240you know, the independence factor ends right there, doesn't it?
00:11:48.240Yeah, you know, you start looking at some of the mainstream media coverage of the Liberals as a grant application, don't you? When you watch it, because it's so outrageous and so one sided. And you see how viciously they attack conservative politicians. And I'm not defending conservative politicians, they can take it. But that viciousness should be leveled at the government as well.
00:12:12.240I mean, they're holding the opposition to account on behalf of the government when you watch these mainstream media reports, instead of holding the government to account on behalf of the people.
00:12:23.780And then these subsidies flooding in are doing something else in the media landscape.
00:13:36.540They want to perpetuate the status quo.
00:13:38.720And I certainly take your point that by doing that, and the CRTC certainly is involved in that, you know, you're preventing newcomers, the so-called alt media, independent media,
00:13:54.780from essentially, you know, cleaning house and getting rid of the other guys, you know,
00:14:00.540letting the market play out. In other words, let the people decide who wins and who loses.
00:14:05.380And so what the government is doing is trying to hold back the tide, right? Saying by throwing
00:14:11.280hundreds of millions of dollars at these failing media organizations, they're trying to hold back,
00:14:17.000you know, the change. And by punishing you, they're trying to discredit you, I think. That's
00:14:22.740what else is going on here, you know, because they're trying to prevent you from having access
00:14:28.460to newsmakers, to decision makers, people spending the people's money. And so by doing all of this,
00:14:36.000they're trying to perpetuate the status quo, you know, keep the legacy guys going. And none of
00:14:41.980those people on that side of the equation want to stop this from happening at all, do they? I mean,
00:14:47.880they're all in. They don't like you any more than the government does. Isn't that so? I mean,
00:14:52.600You're not getting any support from CTV or Global or any of them.
00:14:57.960You know, I imagine it feels a lot like being a candlestick maker at the dawn of the light bulb to work in the mainstream media right now.
00:15:06.660But it is true that, I mean, we saw this play out in real time at the debates where Juneau news journalists, other independent journalists, us at Rebel News.
00:15:18.680we were in the media room and we were subject to some of the most vile workplace harassment
00:15:24.700I think most people would experience in their lifetime. If we worked in the mainstream media,
00:15:29.240we'd have a cry room. We were being yelled at, screamed at. And then when we were the newsmakers
00:15:36.240of the hour, really, we had CBC about 90 yards away telling complete lies about us and also
00:15:45.540denying us the right of reply. You know, if you have somebody who's making news or who is the
00:15:51.080apex of a news story 90 yards away, why wouldn't you go talk to them? And instead they talked about
00:15:57.080us and then had to issue retractions on an obscure CBC page where they post their retractions that,
00:16:04.280like everything at CBC, nobody reads anyway. But that's the protectionism that you see from the
00:16:10.620media. If you're an independent journalist, like those of us here at Rebel News, and you want to
00:16:15.540go to a press conference on Parliament Hill, you know what's going to happen? You're going to be
00:16:20.280denied because a cabal of your competitors have gotten together to have a little witch trial for
00:16:25.860you and decided that you can't join the Parliamentary Press Gallery. And if you are not
00:16:31.180a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, whether it's a conservative politician holding
00:16:35.440a press conference or a liberal politician holding a press conference, your competitors
00:16:39.780can block you from attending to protect their exclusive access to the politicians. So not only
00:16:46.360are they well-funded, but they have all the access and you're just supposed to take it.
00:16:51.180And now we have the CBC situation involved in the shady Francis Whittowson sting operation.
00:16:58.580I mean, how weird is that? It's just hard to fathom that they have money, you know,
00:17:07.880taxpayers' money in order to indulge in this kind of behavior, there really needs to be a complaint
00:17:13.360against the CBC. And those are placed with the CRTC, not with the Canadian Broadcast Standards
00:17:20.580people. And we'll have to see if that happens. Thank you for being part of the show, Sheila.
00:17:26.260Did you want to add any more to this? You know, if people want to learn more about the
00:17:31.500Independent Press Gallery, that's, I'm the president there. And what we do is advocate
00:17:36.280for the rights of independent journalists in this country. We also provide security for
00:17:41.720independent journalists as work on the street is getting increasingly more dangerous because you
00:17:46.440have the politicians demonizing you and blacklisting you, and that just mobilizes your
00:17:51.220enemies on the street. They can go to independentpressgallery.ca. And if you are an independent
00:17:56.280journalist and you need support, legal support, moral support, security support, it's only 10
00:18:02.480mucks a month to join. Sheila Gunn-Reid, thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate it.
00:18:07.500Thanks, Mark. If you enjoyed this show, consider supporting great independent journalism by
00:18:11.680becoming a premier member of Juno News. Go to junonews.com backslash straight up.
00:18:17.560You can find the link below. Helps us do what we do. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time.