00:07:41.740for a magnanimous minister to speak up and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not how journalists
00:07:47.440should be treated. Oh, wait, hang on. I'm told she actually did put out a statement about
00:07:53.900journalists being essential to liberal democracy. Oh, okay. I stand corrected. Let's watch that.
00:08:01.420And there is no part of our liberal democratic garden, which is more threatened by the jungle's
00:08:08.780resurgence than the free press. The danger is often specific and physical.
00:08:15.620Many of you have probably already, in fact, realized that this – have seen the number
00:08:29.820of journalists that have lost their lives over the last few years. So let's just remember
00:08:35.460them for a minute and let us also salute their courage because the troubling reality, as
00:08:43.320was explained in detail during meetings today and yesterday, and that the journalists and
00:08:50.920workers in the media are more and more targeted and more and more abused and attacked. And
00:08:58.120This must stop. We have to work together in order to ensure that journalists can carry out their
00:09:06.860work in all safety and without any kind of worry for reprisals. Wow, that was a bold statement. Oh,
00:09:16.920wait. No, hang on. It looks like that was from 2019. Okay, she had nothing to say in the last
00:09:26.66048 hours or so. My, my, my, I wonder why that is. Could it be that her bold, big proclamation for
00:09:33.760press freedom was merely lip service? Well, that clip that I just shared was from the Global
00:09:39.380Conference for Media Freedom, which took place in London in the United Kingdom in 2019. I had the
00:09:45.060great privilege of going there. I was accredited by the UK government to be a journalist at the
00:09:50.600Global Conference for Media Freedom. But you may find it to be a little bit weird as to the why
00:09:58.200she was there. This was this big thing that she wanted to do, this big giant thing that she wanted
00:10:03.960to do with the UK. And what we found, which was quite fascinating here, is that it was Chrystia
00:10:11.040Freeland who blocked Sheila Gunn-Reed from Rebel News and me from attending a press conference she
00:10:17.660was holding at the Global Conference for Media Freedom. And it was only a rare bit of unity from
00:10:23.680our legacy media colleagues who said, we're not covering your press conference unless you let
00:10:28.220them all in. We have not seen that unanimity or any support, in fact, for David Menzies. So in
00:10:34.900fact, the only people that are offering any are qualifying it by saying, well, I don't like rebel,
00:10:40.940but maybe the police officer went a little bit too far with this. So Christian Freeland, perhaps
00:10:47.020not actually a supporter of press freedom. The reason I wanted to revisit this, Ezra Levan has
00:10:53.060announced that they are suing not just Freeland, but also the RCMP and York Regional Police for
00:10:59.620this. I know they're still working out the details on exactly why, but Ezra joins me now. Ezra, I mean,
00:11:05.780this is something that you've basically had to just contend with, with David Menzies. And I know
00:11:10.460that there are a lot of people, when the Conservatives have spoken up in support of David,
00:11:15.080as they did yesterday, that have said, oh, well, hang on, they were the ones who not that long ago
00:11:19.620were kicking them out and calling the police. But I don't think that's, you know, an accusation of
00:11:24.380hypocrisy. I think if anything, it's to say that they realize that that is not what politicians
00:11:29.420should be doing. And I was critical when that happened, as I know you were. So that being said,
00:11:35.100the media is not offering any support right now. Yeah. And I'm not surprised by that. I mean,
00:11:40.520And I remember when I was growing up, I would study legal cases where the media, all the different rivals, all the different competitors, would each chip in a couple of thousand dollars to hire a lawyer together to fight every free speech freedom of the press case in Canada.
00:11:59.560So CTV, Global, CBC, Toronto Star, Global Mail, they would each chip in a few grand and they would hire an excellent lawyer who would go to court on any free speech matter.
00:12:09.900and say, Your Honor, I'm here on behalf of basically every journalist in the country.
00:12:15.160You see that with publication bans right now still to some extent.
00:12:18.180That's right. So that's the one place you see it. But I have not seen it for general free speech
00:12:23.740cases in 10, 20 years. So what happened to David Menzies yesterday, and we've all seen the video,
00:12:30.40014 million people have seen the video in about 36 hours, by the way. We see that David had clean
00:12:36.800hands. He didn't push anyone. He didn't threaten anyone. He didn't swear at anyone. He didn't
00:12:41.540assault anyone. And we all saw the worst. That was astonishing that he was arrested. But we all saw
00:12:47.080how the cop pushed him, sticking out his arm, getting in his way and say, you're under arrest.
00:12:54.180He's a plainclothes cop who didn't identify himself, by the way. And so we all saw how the
00:13:00.140police immediately lied about it and tried to gaslight David saying, oh, you were aggressive.
00:13:04.200you were pushing people around, pack a lies. I get the feeling that these bodyguards for
00:13:10.180Trudeau and Freeland do this all the time. This is just the first time it was caught on tape.
00:13:16.280So normally, I mean, if this were a CBC reporter that Doug Ford did this to, or Danielle Smith did
00:13:23.800this to, or back in the day, Stephen Harper did this to, you might well see that consortium
00:13:28.800of media companies hiring a lawyer together and you would see a national condemnation of this
00:13:34.580but no it's david menzies of rebel news and actually by the way he's the only person in
00:13:39.340our company with a journalism degree um and i mean i so we're all citizen journalists here but he's
00:13:46.180actually the most credentialed of us and he was doing real journalism and it's astonishing to me
00:14:18.920So yesterday, I checked the Twitter feeds of all the so-called free speech groups, Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, Amnesty International, Penn Canada, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Canadian, sorry, the Council for the Protection of Journalists, about six different groups, not one of them had anything to say.
00:14:42.740And I think it's because Trudeau has successfully colonized the media.
00:14:48.280And most of those groups I just referred to are too busy applying for grants from Trudeau and Freeland to upset them.
00:14:56.420Anyways, we're going to take things into where that's a very long way of saying we can't rely on anyone to help us.
00:15:22.700Now, we're still formalizing the lawsuit, but I would imagine it would encompass false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, negligent investigation, assault,
00:15:36.000and charter violations violating David's freedom of the press.
00:15:41.540And by the way, I'm not the only person who's worried about this.
00:15:44.720I see the RCMP has claimed that they are reviewing the incident.
00:15:48.600Now the CBC will, I can tell you in advance, they're going to whitewash it.
00:15:51.860But I'm not going to let them go so easily.
00:15:55.260They abused, lied, arrested, detained, assaulted David Menzies and said,
00:28:34.780Speaking from my own experience in government, I cannot say that every single question that
00:28:40.940I am asked by a journalist is welcome or easy to answer. But I am absolutely convinced that the
00:28:51.480fact that journalists are present to bear witness, the fact that journalists are present to hold
00:28:59.460governments to account, makes governments better. So freedom of the press is an essential human
00:29:09.000right and it is an essential element in making democracy strong essential the questions are
00:29:18.420sometimes unpleasant you don't always like them uh then okay arrest that man all right well glad
00:29:24.320we're consistent at least uh we are going to move on from this for now but i suspect this story will
00:29:29.220have a few more developments in the days and weeks to come uh we've spent a fair bit of time on the
00:29:35.780show in recent weeks talking about immigration. Now, this was something that came up when I sat
00:29:39.860down with Conservative leader Pierre Polyev for a year-end interview, which was, well, I guess,
00:29:45.960as the name would suggest, near the end of the year last year. And I was asking about immigration,
00:29:50.320and I said, listen, we have a housing crisis. You've talked about this. Here are the immigration
00:29:54.180numbers. Are those inflaming the housing crisis? And he basically said, well, yeah, you have to do
00:29:59.780the numbers. There are only so many houses being built. There are this many people coming into the
00:30:03.580country, but he would not commit to what his number would be. Although he said that when he
00:30:09.480forms government, if he forms government, his immigration target, which for the liberals is
00:30:14.380500,000 a year, but is truthfully higher than that when you take into account foreign students,
00:30:19.560temporary foreign workers, and so on, that the number would be tied to economic metrics. It
00:30:25.020would be tied to housing, it would be tied to labor force availability, and so on. Now, I think
00:30:30.640there is a bit of an issue when we only look at immigration on the narrow economic grounds. While
00:30:36.660these are important, it is not the totality of the immigration issue. There are issues to do with
00:30:41.880culture and integration. These were very controversially discussed in the 2015 election,
00:30:47.680but as a result, it's become this big no-go topic that no one is allowed to bring up.
00:30:53.920Well, if there are issues here, and we're going to take an honest high-level view of immigration,
00:30:58.600can we have a grown-up conversation? Aaron Woodrick, who is the Domestic Policy Program
00:31:04.900Director for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, had a fantastic piece over at The Hub about this. Let's
00:31:10.620see if we can kick off this grown-up conversation. Aaron, always good to talk to you. Thanks for
00:31:15.560coming on today. Always a pleasure, Andrew. So let me just first ask you why this gets so
00:31:21.440narrowly pigeonholed into being an economic issue when obviously immigration is going to be more
00:31:28.520complex than that? I think it's because it's safe turf for people, right? If we're talking about
00:31:33.480economics, if we're talking about the obvious thing, which is that we have a housing problem
00:31:37.640and immigration as arithmetic, that I think is safe turf. I think it starts to get a little
00:31:43.420more uncomfortable for people when they're starting to imply that they're uncomfortable
00:31:47.620with large numbers of people who are not like them coming here. And look, I understand why
00:31:53.660this is a minefield. Some people can interpret this as just being hostile to people who aren't
00:31:57.920like you or racist. I mean, there are people who are like that, but a lot of it also is just human
00:32:02.400nature, right? Like we are more comfortable around people like us who speak our language,
00:32:07.280who practice our religion, who have the same cultural tastes as we do. That's just human
00:32:12.100nature all around the world. And so I think it is fair to have a conversation, especially in a
00:32:16.880country like Canada, which is, as I make the argument in the piece, largely been built by
00:32:21.100immigration and fairly successfully at that. You know, what is the rate of immigration that we're
00:32:27.620all comfortable with that's optimal for canada that gives canadians who are already here the
00:32:32.020most benefits the newcomers most benefits and that you know ensures that we can all continue
00:32:35.940to get along um you know this is a problem that a lot of countries are struggling with and canada
00:32:39.780is no exception but we need to have this conversation out in the open because pretending
00:32:44.100that it doesn't matter and pretending that um it is it's not creating any tension uh does not do us
00:32:49.060any favors i i think there there have been waves of this discussion and i wouldn't say they've
00:32:53.460always been constructive or productive i think post 9 11 certainly a lot of people were talking
00:32:57.780about uh the integration aspect of immigration i think we're seeing another wave now and in canada
00:33:03.700you you see this on a number of fronts i mean you have uh ethnic tensions on the calistan seek
00:33:09.780separatism issue especially out in some parts of british columbia you've got uh now the wave of
00:33:14.420anti-semitism and and again i'm not going to broadly uh in in broad strokes here malign any
00:33:20.260individual group but you have a lot of people that are immigrants from arab or muslim countries that
00:33:24.820have views on israel that don't align with i think where a lot of canadians are and we see this in
00:33:28.900some of these protests you have uh then on the other side the gender uh the gender ideology
00:33:34.260fights that were taking place in the fall where you had some of those same people muslims saying
00:33:38.340well hang on my values don't align with these things so no one can say there isn't a conversation
00:33:44.260there. But as we see, the longer you don't talk about it, the more hot it gets.
00:33:50.640Yeah, you know, and that's a problem. You know, we have to recognize that, you know,
00:33:55.840when we talk, for example, about integration, right? About the idea that when you come to a
00:33:59.680country, you're kind of joining a national project, right? And nobody expects you to,
00:34:03.800you know, you move to Canada and the next day, suddenly you're pouring maple syrup on your
00:34:08.200cereal and you've got the toque on. I mean, but what they do expect is that over time,
00:34:13.020You know, you kind of, if not assimilate, which is a dirty word in a lot of quarters, integrate, sort of at least merge your past with our future together.
00:34:21.440I think most people think that's a reasonable compromise.
00:34:23.780And there's all kinds of things that impact how that happens.
00:34:26.480It's how many people from your home country are here when you get here.
00:34:30.140Are you able to live in Canada, essentially amongst the community from your home country entirely?
00:34:34.760What does that impact, does that have on your integration?
00:34:38.020You know, government, whether the government is signaling to you that there's an expectation that you're supposed to start to adopt or integrate Canadian ways, you know, respect Canadian laws, Canadian values, or whether it's sort of, you know what, you come here and you can just do your own thing and you don't need to pay any attention to the national project.
00:34:53.600So there's a bunch of different factors at play here. But I think most Canadians, you know, look, again, I think there are some who are just genuinely, if someone has a different skin color, they don't like them.
00:35:03.840I don't think that's most Canadians, though. I think most Canadians, what's more important to them is that people come here and they want to be Canadian. They want to feel Canadian. They want to live together with other Canadians rather than side by side. And I think that is the sort of general consensus that's really there. We just have to figure out, you know, what's the right level of immigration that allows us to get there?
00:35:23.460Yeah, and I would also say even if someone views immigration purely as an economic calculation, if there's enough space and there are enough jobs and enough resources, I don't really care about anything else.
00:35:33.320Let's just accept that premise for a moment.
00:35:35.560There is a threshold that will exist for Canadians as how many is too many.
00:35:40.520And it's not to say that they're right or wrong, but it's that people are going to have their own threshold.
00:35:44.520And once you push above that, whatever it is, you start to have Canadians turn on immigration and turn on immigrants themselves, which I don't think anyone wants.
00:35:54.820And I mean, it's an unpleasant conversation because we can say, well, Canadians shouldn't have an issue with it if there's enough space and there are enough jobs.
00:36:01.800But if they do, any government that overextends that is naturally going to, as you talk about in your piece, erode that consensus around it.
00:36:10.820Yeah, and I think it's a sliding scale.
00:36:12.440And I think what's important is that, you know, it's OK for some people to be uncomfortable with people that aren't like them.
00:36:18.920That doesn't necessarily make them racist.
00:36:20.620And I really, really like to reserve that term for people who sort of are very explicit in saying they think lesser of people who, you know, have a different skin color.
00:36:28.840Being, you know, just being more comfortable with people who speak your language or practice your religion or things like that.
00:36:33.560That's normal. I don't I don't begrudge people that.
00:36:36.860And I think, you know, I think we need to allow for that roommate.
00:36:40.220To me, the analogy to me, Andrew, is kind of like some people, they like to try different
00:42:49.980Obviously, any business that's doing well wants to keep doing well.
00:42:52.880And they're going to pull all the levers they can, including trying to press your governments into not allowing more competitors.
00:42:58.140I think as consumers, as voters, we need to be very, very aware about that.
00:43:01.840They're not looking out for our interest.
00:43:03.180They're looking out for their own self-interest.
00:43:05.240And really, if we're really interested in competition and lower prices, it shouldn't matter, you know, which company is delivering that.
00:43:11.540What should matter is that consumers are getting lower prices and better service.
00:43:15.540Yeah, and telecom is probably a great example because everyone's had a terrible customer service experience with every one of the companies.
00:43:22.100And everyone's had at a certain point a call drop on every one of them.
00:43:25.220But they all claim to have like the fastest network, the largest network.