Juno News - Debates Commission CANCELS post-debate scrums (w⧸ Ezra Levant)

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. Today is Wednesday, March 25th,

00:00:06.260 2026, and we have a great episode for you today. Today's episode is sponsored by The News Cruise.

00:00:11.120 I'm very excited to tell you about that. We'll get to it in a few minutes. I am very excited

00:00:14.620 today to be speaking with Ezra Levant, the founder of Rebel, one of the foremost free

00:00:18.980 speech activists in the country. And we're going to talk about the state of independent media.

00:00:23.080 But first, I just want to talk about this breaking news story that's developing. And that is that

00:00:27.620 the former mayor of Calgary, Jody Gondak, had her home raided by police amid corruption allegations.

00:00:34.700 Gondak confirmed that officers attended her residence with a warrant and seized her cell

00:00:39.380 phone. So this is from Juno News. RCMP executed warrants and seized evidence from the homes of

00:00:44.420 former mayor of Calgary, Jody Gondak, and two other Calgary political figures. As part of an

00:00:49.460 ongoing corruption investigation, the searches targeted Gondak, former city councillor Sean

00:00:54.640 Chu and sitting Ward 10 Councillor Andre Chabot. All three have said that they are cooperating

00:01:01.120 with the authorities. Gonduk confirmed that officers attended her residence with a warrant

00:01:05.600 and seized her cell phone. I have been fully cooperative with respect and respect the legal

00:01:10.720 process, said Gonduk. At the same time, this has been very invasive and my lawyer and I will be

00:01:16.880 reviewing it closely to ensure it was justified. Calgary Police Services confirmed that it

00:01:21.800 initially received a complaint in October 2025 and referred the matter to the RCMP. She said

00:01:27.500 she's cooperating with investigators, but described the search as highly intrusive, really crazy,

00:01:33.400 wild story. So I'm going to introduce our guest, Ezra Levant. You know him well. He is the founder

00:01:38.480 of The Rebel. Ezra, welcome to the show. And maybe you can comment on this wild story out of Calgary.

00:01:44.100 Yeah. I mean, to have a raid on a former politician's home is very dramatic. They

00:01:48.740 would have needed to most likely go before a court on an ex parte basis, which means

00:01:53.400 the element of surprise. So courts are very reluctant to make a dramatic ruling where the

00:01:59.600 other party is not there. One of the fundamentals of our law is here, the other side. But what if 0.95

00:02:05.260 the element of surprise is necessary? So they would have had to have quite compelling documents,

00:02:11.340 typically affidavits sworn by police called an information to obtain an ITO. So I haven't seen

00:02:16.320 those, obviously, they've been kept secret while the raid happened. They will later be released.

00:02:22.840 It'll be fascinating to see what was so shocking that a court allowed a sneak attack raid on really

00:02:31.700 the most prestigious office in the city, the mayor. So, you know, we obviously can't judge

00:02:36.580 yet. Everyone's innocent until proven guilty. But boy, this looks bad. Well, especially because of

00:02:42.100 the sort of corruption angle of it right like we do have so much trust in our public officials in

00:02:47.620 this country and when you hear about corruption allegations i'll just be perfectly frank as i

00:02:52.180 think about the third world i think about the developing world and you know the fact that

00:02:55.940 when you're in mexico like people bribe the police and if you're you're traveling in asia people 0.65

00:03:00.180 bribe you know border guards and things like that like like that kind of activity is third

00:03:04.900 role activity so it is quite shocking for it to be happening in one of canada's major cities to

00:03:09.540 a person who was not too long ago the mayor and someone who was very broadly respected presumably.

00:03:14.740 Yeah, I mean we talk a lot about the high trust society that we all grew up in

00:03:19.300 and this is a very low trust feeling where your politicians are allegedly involved in corruption.

00:03:25.540 We see it in other parts of the country. In Toronto there was a massive

00:03:29.220 revelation that a bunch of police were colluding allegedly with criminals, tipping off criminals

00:03:36.740 to whereabouts of different people so i'm i'm afraid that corruption is very much part of

00:03:42.420 canada in 2026 that's not something i think any of us would have said a generation ago so i'm

00:03:47.940 i'm upset about the trend it's totally shattering our illusion of canada as a sort of like good

00:03:53.820 actor and the boy scout uh the global boy scout is like well we're probably not that way and

00:03:58.580 unfortunately there are corruption issues ezra i always like talking to you about the state of

00:04:03.500 the media uh you are you know one of the leaders the leader of the independent media brigade uh you

00:04:09.020 know a bunch of different independent groups have spawned off of uh what what you created over at

00:04:14.140 the rebel i know you guys celebrated your 10-year anniversary last year and i i think you know when

00:04:18.860 i look back at my career as an independent journalist one of the high points was certainly

00:04:23.260 when uh my organization at the time true north teamed up with your organization the rebel

00:04:27.820 to basically sue the trudeau government to ensure that we would get access to the independent

00:04:33.020 uh to to the uh debate to the the federal leaders debate um back in 2021 uh interestingly at the

00:04:39.980 time it was andrew lawton who was my journalist and he's now a federal mp and your journalist

00:04:44.060 was keen bexty who is now my co-founder here at juno news um and so it's it's all kind of connected

00:04:48.860 but interestingly we had an update on the debates commission because you know that was 2021 we got

00:04:54.540 our journalists in um during the debate in 2025 they let us in as well our journalists dominated

00:05:00.620 the debate. And I thought that was fantastic. They asked questions that the legacy media were

00:05:04.840 just incapable of asking questions that Canadians thought were, you know, most Canadians probably

00:05:10.560 agreed that they were necessary questions. And yet the media like totally freaked out about it.

00:05:16.200 So, but before I get to the update, the update is that the debates commissioner, Michelle Cornier, 0.97

00:05:20.920 was in a committee meeting earlier this month, and he recommends getting rid of the whole system,

00:05:25.740 getting rid of the whole debates. We'll get to that in a minute. I just want to give the audience

00:05:29.240 a little taste of what i'm talking about so here flashback about a year a year ago to the federal

00:05:35.160 debates uh commission debate and here is what it looked like with independent media including a

00:05:40.520 couple journalists uh for here at journal news and a couple journalists uh from rebel just asking a

00:05:44.520 series of really good questions let's roll that clip in your estimation was justin trudeau a good

00:05:49.800 prime minister do you believe that women biological women have the right to their own spaces their 1.00

00:05:55.640 Their own sports, their own change rooms, their own prisons, their own homeless shelters.

00:06:01.600 Since 1941, a pipeline has brought oil from Portland, Maine to Montreal.

00:06:07.300 Over the years, it has brought hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, much of it from OPEC dictatorships.

00:06:14.500 Why have you never, not even once, opposed OPEC conflict oil being imported through an aging pipeline?

00:06:22.020 Why do you prefer OPEC conflict oil over Alberta ethical oil?

00:06:28.020 Sorry, I didn't get your outlet.

00:06:30.280 Drea Humphrey with Rebel News.

00:06:31.720 Okay.

00:06:32.960 You know I'm going to go with this, though, right?

00:06:35.600 Can I speak?

00:06:36.540 Yeah, you can.

00:06:37.060 I'm just going to say you know where I'm going to go with it, though.

00:06:38.880 Over 200 Christian places of worship have been attacked in Canada since 2021.

00:06:44.100 Many served First Nations communities.

00:06:46.520 many were historic and they diverted police and resources and put others at risk what do you say

00:06:55.140 to canadians who see your refusal to answer especially from one of the few media outlets

00:06:59.960 here that are not funded by the state as proof that a vote for you is a vote for a dangerous

00:07:06.180 radical party that gaslights the public into thinking it stands against hate when its silence

00:07:11.380 is instead emboldening christophobia your question is another example of why i don't respond to

00:07:17.860 agencies like rebel news that promote misinformation and disinformation so that was such a fun time and

00:07:23.560 i really do feel like that is where independent media has a chance to shine right no one can stop

00:07:28.300 us we have a judge who's ordered us to be let in so despite all of the best wishes of all of the

00:07:33.840 fancy people who run the media companies who run the you know the cbc and who run the government

00:07:38.960 They don't want us there, but they can't stop us.

00:07:41.900 And so it's like the one time a year where we actually get access to politicians, we

00:07:44.600 actually get to ask questions, and it just absolutely drives them crazy.

00:07:47.640 So I'll let you respond to that.

00:07:50.340 Sure.

00:07:50.640 I mean, I thought the questions asked by the independent media were exactly independent,

00:07:55.260 like they were not part of the official narrative.

00:07:57.700 And they were denounced viciously for that, unrelated to the debate, right wing, we're

00:08:05.180 in Canada.

00:08:05.980 And Michel Cormier, who is the executive who runs the government agency called the Debates Commission, he said to Parliament the other day that our questions were, quote, peripheral.

00:08:17.560 Well, who says? I mean, there are different questions. They're relevant.

00:08:22.480 But even if they were peripheral and unrelated to the election, so what? It's a right to ask them.

00:08:28.540 And really, one day, every four years, we get to put a question to Mark Carney, because he hides and he bans us, even though he's made promises to allow independent journalists, and he doesn't.

00:08:40.000 What's crazy to me is that one question every four years is too much for this system to happen, and they all circle the wagons to try to expel us.

00:08:48.740 And here's the crazy thing that I think everyone should know.

00:08:52.360 The government nationalized leaders' debates.

00:08:54.740 No one asked them to.

00:08:55.940 It was all about control.

00:08:57.200 And since they can't keep out independent journalists from Juno or Rebel or anyone else anymore, because two federal courts in a row said they couldn't, what's their proposal?

00:09:08.840 Their proposal is to shut down the Q&A altogether.

00:09:12.720 Since they can't keep out the ones they don't like, you, me, Drea Humphrey, Kian Bextie, et cetera, they would rather shut it all down during the election.

00:09:24.420 Their job was to promote debate, to allow Canadians to learn more, but they would rather

00:09:30.460 shut that down. 0.96

00:09:31.440 That's what Michel Cormier told Parliament.

00:09:33.460 Rather shut it all down than allow you, your team or my team, have one or two questions

00:09:38.460 every four years.

00:09:39.360 By the way, Mark Carney, he's a grown-up.

00:09:42.220 He's pretty smart.

00:09:43.320 He's not new to this.

00:09:45.000 He can handle Kian Bextie.

00:09:46.960 He can handle Ezra Levant, Drea Humphrey.

00:09:49.540 I mean, what's the worst that could happen?

00:09:51.760 I mean, it's so incredible how protective the regime media are of the regime.

00:09:58.700 Well, it's so interesting because from my perspective, Ezra, when I watch the legacy

00:10:02.440 media debates, I feel like they totally miss the point of the country, right?

00:10:07.560 Guaranteed every debate, there will be about a quarter of the time spent on the environment.

00:10:11.680 Look, I love the environment.

00:10:13.020 I grew up in Vancouver.

00:10:13.900 My favorite thing to do is go out to go hiking or go out to go camping.

00:10:16.540 I love spending time in nature.

00:10:17.640 I think it's really, really important.

00:10:18.420 I don't want to hear a quarter of the debate talking about climate change policy, right?

00:10:23.780 That is not a huge priority to me.

00:10:25.980 Do you know what is a priority to me?

00:10:28.540 Preserving our way of life, right?

00:10:29.860 Making sure that my cities are safe, right?

00:10:32.320 Why don't we talk more about immigration and crime and the issues that I think matter,

00:10:36.580 and including cultural issues, right?

00:10:37.920 Like our entire society lost its mind and suddenly decided that men can become women,

00:10:41.800 and it's totally fine for guys to go into female locker rooms, 0.99

00:10:44.860 totally fine for guys to play in girls' sports. 0.83

00:10:46.640 Like, those are important questions, not just to me as a conservative, but really to Canadians all over the country. The media make the debates so narrow that they're almost irrelevant, right? So the fact that you do have a bunch of kind of like wild, maverick-type reporters getting up there willing to ask tough questions, and to point, yeah, actually, Mark Carney handled it pretty well. That kind of showed a bit of his character, which again is the point of the debate, right?

00:11:10.720 So we have this stuffy, elite class of journalists that want to dictate what the country cares about.

00:11:18.120 But the country doesn't really care about those things, right?

00:11:20.460 And so I think it's just so important that we have the media there.

00:11:23.240 And I think it's so telling how the legacy media reacted.

00:11:26.220 I have a little montage here, as you're going to enjoy this, of just how the CBC reacted, how the journalists just melted down.

00:11:32.720 And they just couldn't believe their own eyes that free-thinking people were allowed to ask questions.

00:11:38.220 Let's roll this clip.

00:11:39.060 The post-debate scrums were dominated by right-wing media groups who flooded leaders with questions on topics unrelated to the debate.

00:11:46.720 I think the debate commission is going to need to be accountable for what's kind of happening here.

00:11:51.820 They've opened up the scrums and the press access to a bunch of groups who sometimes are registered charities or have been defined by their owner as not actually a journalistic organization or have been ruled by the federal court to not be a journalistic organization.

00:12:04.500 True North is a very right-wing website, and there have been issues in the past with who gets allowed into these scrums and who's allowed to ask questions of the leaders. The Debates Commission was the one who decided that these people were allowed to come in and ask these kinds of questions.

00:12:24.060 At one point, when some of those last questions came up, I just checked to make sure, yeah, no, we're in Canada.

00:12:30.160 Imagine the chutzpah, that they, that those losers, those government regime journalists, all taking a paycheck from Karani, by the way, imagine the audacity that they get to decide what is or isn't a relevant question.

00:12:42.640 what we, I mean, hey, ask your own questions. We'll ask our, I would never say, how dare the

00:12:49.540 CBC talk about global warming? I would just roll my eyes. But they fancy themselves something

00:12:55.260 superior. Hey, I saw an ad, sort of an old timey Instagram channel of things in Canadiana in the

00:13:03.940 past. And it was an ad in 1974 for CBC's The National. And back in 1974, when Canada's

00:13:11.800 population was about half of what it is now. They were getting 2 million views a night. They were

00:13:17.720 boasting about this in their ad for The National. These days, the numbers are so low, they don't

00:13:21.800 release them. The last numbers I saw were that the CBC's The National gets about 250,000 views.

00:13:27.980 So Canada's population has doubled, but the viewership of CBC has fallen from 2 million

00:13:33.620 to 250,000. And I think that the smaller it gets, the more strident they become and the more

00:13:42.160 Canadians just don't even pay attention. In their last report to Parliament, the CBC boasted that

00:13:47.320 4.2% of Canadians watch them on TV. 95% of people don't. It's a bit of chutzpah that they regard

00:13:56.720 themselves as the keepers of the debate. No one even cares about the CBC. We're just forced to

00:14:02.340 pay for them. Well, that's how I felt. I felt that the debate itself was just kind of predictable

00:14:07.340 and boring. And all the questions were already things that the politicians talked about day in

00:14:12.140 and day out on the campaign. So they all had their scripted response, right? And so the part that was

00:14:16.540 interesting and unique was the thing that we added to the end to make them think on their feet and

00:14:22.520 answer questions that they feel uncomfortable doing. As we saw, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh

00:14:27.080 couldn't even do that, right? He just had to go to, I don't answer your questions. And then of

00:14:31.340 course, yeah, the CBC's response there. I mean, especially knowing now what we know, Ezra, about

00:14:36.360 how these two individuals, David Cochran and Rosemary Barton, are like bullying and gatekeeping

00:14:42.080 inside the CBC. Remember, Travis Dan Roche had that explosive testimony where he disclosed that

00:14:46.860 those two are kind of like hated within the CBC. And yet they were saying like, you know, this is

00:14:53.420 peripheral or this is outside the topic of the debate. That was a point, right? The debate was

00:14:57.720 boring and all the questions were really predictable and our questions were not. So isn't

00:15:02.900 that what the scrum is supposed to be? And then them trying to police us saying, oh, True North

00:15:07.220 is very right-wing. It's a very right-wing website. And oh, they're a charity, therefore

00:15:11.460 they can't do news. I mean, come on, give me a break. But the news that made us talk about this

00:15:17.440 today, Ezra, is the fact that the debates commissioner appeared in parliament. You referenced

00:15:22.560 that he was speaking to committee and he has made his recommendation that canada cancel the media

00:15:28.960 scrums so they want to continue to have this government funded debate structure and that the

00:15:35.920 idea is because the government's paying for it all canadians are supposed to have access to it

00:15:40.000 it's not just you know hosted by one outlet like if it was only hosted by global maybe it would

00:15:44.400 only be accessed by global news uh journalists and that might not be fair to the other journalists so

00:15:49.520 you know they had this government structure so that all journalists could have access

00:15:52.640 rosemary barton said the debates commissioner were the ones that let us in not true it was

00:15:56.400 actually the judge that ordered them to let us in because they tried to not let us in and then

00:16:00.080 the judge came in and said actually canada's a free society with a free press and these are

00:16:03.840 journalists they have you know there's a free speech right to go in um and so the the solution

00:16:09.360 after a year of hawing and humming and thinking it through is just to scrap it so i want to just

00:16:15.280 play this quick clip of michael cormier recommending that they get rid of this whole

00:16:19.760 thing um this is for march 12 2026 this is sought three where cormier is questioning like what is

00:16:25.440 a journalist well we're not supposed to be the ones that determine that and he basically just

00:16:28.880 says that the post scrum was counterproductive as well so this raises an issue that goes beyond the

00:16:36.240 commission what or who makes up a journalist some have told us that we don't have the authority to

00:16:46.080 decide and so we have a very large definition of a journalist and we include different models of

00:16:55.840 journalism but during the last election it created a problematic environment for a lot of journalists

00:17:05.120 and it also raised issues with press conferences that were counterproductive

00:17:13.360 they were not productive for anyone i disagree i thought they were super productive but ezra

00:17:18.560 what did you make of that whole thing i just love that line it created a problematic environment

00:17:24.160 for a lot of journalists so other people who were watching other journal founded a problem

00:17:32.640 that we were asking our questions and i just just turn that over in your brain for for a couple of

00:17:39.640 times look let's say every single thing they said about us was true that we were peripheral that we

00:17:44.600 were right wing that we're not real journalists etc okay so what like why why are you in such a

00:17:51.500 tizzy it's because they believe in their mind that they are this elite like like an oracle or a high

00:17:58.340 priest a society they think they're like a profession that you have to beg to enter like

00:18:03.620 an ancient guild and we are outsiders who are peasants and we don't have their aristocracy

00:18:09.300 like they actually think there's some priestly class with some magic by the way the reason why

00:18:16.240 Juno and Rebel are successful and the reason our questions are interesting is because the

00:18:20.820 regime media has not done a good job they haven't vetted Mark Carney they didn't vet Justin Trudeau

00:18:26.000 we didn't have a chance to put a question to Carney directly, but my question to him would

00:18:31.060 have been, do you still have three passports and why? If I had a follow-up and it would have been,

00:18:35.900 what was the residence in your last tax return? Is that why you had an Irish passport? Why are

00:18:41.300 you still holding hundreds of millions of dollars in stock? I mean, those are basic vetting

00:18:48.320 questions, so simple, not right-wing, just who are you, Mark Carney? You've come back to Canada

00:18:54.420 after a decade away. None of those basic vetting questions. And that's what terrifies the other

00:19:01.020 journalists, that we might have a real question better than them. We might show what real

00:19:04.960 accountability journalism looks like. We might actually get a scoop. Like, literally, why would

00:19:10.940 they care that once every four years we put a question? Last point, you know, you mentioned

00:19:15.800 Andrew Lawton, and I used to see him in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum when we

00:19:19.900 would go every january he did such a great job there and this january we were in davos again

00:19:25.640 and in a 24-hour span i scrummed justin trudeau for about 10 minutes which was pretty fun christia

00:19:32.160 freeland for about the same melanie jolie briefly and francois philippe champagne i talked to four

00:19:38.320 cabinet ministers or one former pm in a day that was more access than i had in 10 years to the

00:19:47.300 liberal government. And it's because the police in Davos don't block journalists. They only stop

00:19:53.340 you if you're a threat or something. And obviously we weren't. So isn't it funny that we have to go

00:19:58.180 halfway across the world to put a question to our own cabinet ministers? And by the way,

00:20:01.900 our questions were good, if I may. And there's something really creepy about Canada. It's really

00:20:07.960 banana republic-ish, where the government pays the regime journalists and keeps out. I've always 0.73

00:20:14.260 said, soon in Canada, there will only be two types of journalists, those paid by the government and

00:20:20.460 those banned by the government. And we're pretty close to it. It's really unbelievable. And I mean,

00:20:25.940 to your point, you ask great questions. We loved your questions in Davos. It's so outrageous that

00:20:31.540 you weren't able to ask those questions on home soil that you had to go abroad. I want to go back

00:20:37.240 to Drea Humphries, your journalist, because she raised a question that to many Canadians, Ezra,

00:20:42.240 this is the most important question. This is sort of when our country really started unraveling. Yes,

00:20:47.080 it happened during COVID as well. But the moral panic over the unmarked graves, which has broadly

00:20:52.380 turned out to be a hoax, right? And so Drea Humphries had the foresight to ask that question

00:20:57.420 during the debate. We showed it to you a minute earlier. I just want to throw to Rosemary Barton

00:21:01.860 again. This is CBC's chief political commentator. And this is how she reacts. She's almost in tears,

00:21:07.040 right? She doesn't want to talk about this. The questions that the rebel and the Juneau News

00:21:11.000 think up this specifically the rebel it causes them so much anxiety and consternation they just

00:21:18.500 can't handle it so she has to jump in and accuse drea of trafficking misinformation and then making 1.00

00:21:24.460 a false claim let's roll this clip this is thought 10 rebel news in particular traffics and

00:21:29.180 misinformation facts uh lack of facts and uh as you heard in that question which was uh woven with

00:21:36.120 some truth and some things that weren't true. Yes, there have been burnings of Christian Catholic

00:21:41.700 churches. Yes, there have been remains of Indigenous children found in various places

00:21:47.380 around the country, which she misrepresented. So I don't know, maybe Rosemary doesn't just,

00:21:52.640 she doesn't know the issue. She doesn't have her facts straight because the CBC issued a rare

00:21:57.060 correction, Ezra. 24 hours later, this appeared on the CBC News website. As CBC News has reported

00:22:04.200 on multiple occasions, what several indigenous communities across Canada have discovered on the

00:22:09.480 site, former residential schools are potential burial sites and unmarked graves. So no, they

00:22:14.620 haven't found remains. Actually, no remains have been found in the places where they were alleged

00:22:19.320 Rosemary doesn't have her facts, or she just was hoping to push government propaganda and hope that 1.00

00:22:24.280 she wasn't caught. And then they quietly put this correction at the bottom. Again, this is why

00:22:29.120 these debates are so important because we are getting the facts out there. And while many people

00:22:34.240 will listen to Rosemary, although to your point earlier, not as many as they would like, right,

00:22:38.080 the CBC numbers have plummeted. But the fact that that is now on the record, I think is helpful.

00:22:42.460 What do you think? Yeah, Rosemary Barton hosts a show called At Issue, where they have a panel

00:22:46.820 with the entire political spectrum from A to B. It's the same three tired voices in Ottawa,

00:22:53.080 Montreal, and Toronto, Althea Raj, Andrew Coyne, and Chantal Ibert. It's a hermetically sealed

00:22:58.660 world. And when I say the spectrum from A to B, it's sort of a joke, but they do not allow rogue

00:23:03.880 opinions on anything important, whether it's the medical assistance in dying or life issues or

00:23:08.940 firearms ownership or Donald Trump or global warming or any of these, or truckers. You're

00:23:14.560 just not allowed to have a different opinion. And they're so terrified that in a, what's a wrong

00:23:21.740 think, that's what Orwell could be terrified that a wrong think idea might penetrate their defensive

00:23:26.920 Shield, and one of their viewers might say, hey, what was that you just said? I didn't know that.

00:23:32.260 Are you saying 100 churches were vandalized or burned? I didn't know that. I'm going to look

00:23:36.560 into that myself, and I'm going to start Googling because I can't find that news in the CBC.

00:23:41.500 They need everyone to be in this false consciousness, and COVID was the best example

00:23:47.380 of that. No one was allowed to even dissent, and by the way, that seeped into YouTube and other

00:23:51.960 places. They needed the pretense of unanimity. They needed everyone to think, everyone agrees,

00:23:58.080 I can't dissent. That's why they're panicking, because we had the national audience there for

00:24:04.160 a moment, maybe a million people watching live, and they heard for the first time questions they

00:24:09.880 didn't hear anywhere else. That's actually why they were terrified. Partly, it's personal distaste

00:24:14.700 for us. Partly, it's professional rivalry. But I think mainly it's ideologically, they could not

00:24:20.840 allow a mind virus to be planted that hey think for yourself maybe the cbc isn't telling you the

00:24:26.760 whole story a hundred percent okay as we're going to take a minute to talk about the sponsor of

00:24:31.160 today's episode which is the news cruise and i'm very excited to announce that this news cruise

00:24:35.720 is a joint rebel juno news venture we are going on a cruise november 28th to december 5th 2026 so

00:24:42.120 just the next winter but this same calendar year in the eastern caribbean leaving from fort

00:24:47.720 lauderdale you can go get your tickets come on this cruise kian bexy is going to be there 0.69

00:24:52.520 ezra you're going to be there go to thenewscruise.com so it's thenewscruise.com follow that

00:24:58.840 link go get it go get a cabin go go have a vacation if you can have a vacation you might as well

00:25:03.080 surround yourself with like-minded canadians you want to meet people who share your ideas share

00:25:07.640 your values and you get to hang out with some of your favorite journalists ezra what a great idea

00:25:11.720 i remember i went on one of these with you oh gosh i don't know i guess it was a decade ago now

00:25:15.720 But I still keep in touch with many of the people that I met on that cruise and still

00:25:19.740 sort of have friends that I keep in contact with.

00:25:21.800 So why don't you tell us a little bit about this cruise?

00:25:24.040 Sure.

00:25:24.400 I mean, I've been doing these cruises in one form or another for more than 20 years.

00:25:27.820 And there's some people who come almost every year because some people really like cruising.

00:25:31.580 But even if you've never been on a cruise before, you should really consider coming

00:25:34.880 because every night we have dinner together and we rotate the tables.

00:25:39.000 So one night you'll have dinner sitting at my table.

00:25:41.180 The next night you'll have dinner sitting at Key and Bextie's table.

00:25:44.040 The next night, Sheila Gunn-Reed.

00:25:45.400 So we're bringing a bunch of Rebels, and I thought, well, let's team up with Juno News.

00:25:48.640 Let's make it the independent media.

00:25:50.880 And so there's going to be Juno people there and Rebel people there. 0.97

00:25:55.000 And when the ship is in port, your time is your own.

00:25:58.060 So you could go explore Puerto Rico, which we're going to San Juan, which is one of the

00:26:01.600 most beautiful cities in the Western Hemisphere.

00:26:03.360 It's amazing.

00:26:04.340 So you'll be free to do cruise stuff.

00:26:06.960 But when the ship is at sea, which can be a little bit more boring maybe, that's when

00:26:12.160 we have our panel discussions, our seminars, our Q&As, and you get to hang out with other Rebels

00:26:17.100 and Juno supporters. And like I say, the dinners are the best part. Imagine spending seven days at

00:26:23.380 sea with your favorite Juno and Rebel personalities. And by the way, it's a fundraiser for both Juno

00:26:29.820 and Rebel. A few hundred bucks is tacked onto the ticket that goes to, you know, it's a fundraiser

00:26:35.100 for both of our companies because we don't take government money. So this is not just fun and

00:26:40.120 educational. You know what? In closing though, what I hear so much is what you've just said.

00:26:45.400 People make friends because they can let their guard down and have honest conversations without

00:26:50.680 being afraid that someone's going to jump on them because they say something conservative.

00:26:54.900 I love these cruises. And folks, if you go to thenewscruise.com, you can sign up. And actually,

00:27:02.840 it's selling pretty well. I hope we have a full house. I think you will. I think it's going to

00:27:07.880 be so much fun. And again, I mean, Canadians love to go on vacation, right? It's cold in the winter.

00:27:12.320 Might as well go on a vacation with the people who, you know, are trying to change the country

00:27:17.760 and shape the world and meet fellow like-minded Canadians. As we really have you here, I want to

00:27:21.820 talk to you about the story that we have been reporting on In Depth, the Candace Malcolm Show

00:27:25.620 and Juno News, which is the story of, I don't even really know how to describe it, the rise of

00:27:30.680 open Jew hatred in Canadian society, primarily in Toronto. And so this is something that's been

00:27:36.120 brewing under the surface, honestly, probably for years or decades. But it really started to come

00:27:41.860 out in the open after October 7. Somehow that emboldened the Islamists and the extremists to

00:27:47.580 come out and sort of be open in their Jew hatred. We've seen a lot of rallies, the Free Free Palestine

00:27:53.480 people blocking freeways. They started protesting in residential neighborhoods, which I find very

00:27:58.440 disturbing, right? And actually, when I came to your rebel headquarters over Christmas, you showed

00:28:03.200 me a picture of you being arrested by going to one of these rallies, which is really truly shocking

00:28:07.300 that you would get arrested for going in your, you know, in your community and opposing these

00:28:12.320 people who are protesting residential neighborhoods. Well, things have really spiraled out of control,

00:28:16.700 I would say, since Operation Epic Fury started and the Iran campaign. We obviously saw Al-Quds 1.00

00:28:23.080 Day open support of terrorism. That happens every year. But synagogues started getting shot up. So

00:28:28.360 they'd go in the morning and their front door would be full of bullet holes. And then it also

00:28:32.840 happened at the U.S. consulate. Very, very concerning things. I think this should be the

00:28:38.560 biggest national news story. We don't really hear that much about it, but there is a little bit of

00:28:42.620 an update, which is that the Toronto police will finally act to stop the protests marching through

00:28:47.880 these neighborhoods. And so they came out and basically just announced that this was going to

00:28:53.600 stop. I'm wondering, I mean, this is your community in your city. Can you comment on it? What's

00:28:59.440 happening? And do you think that the police are doing enough? Yeah. So every Sunday, there are

00:29:05.880 dueling protests. Actually, these days, there's only the pro-Hamas, pro-Iran protests at an

00:29:11.800 intersection in a fairly Jewish neighborhood, Bathurst and Shepherd. And they scream anti-Semitic

00:29:17.060 things. In the past, they were using PA systems to bombard Jewish residential homes. But what

00:29:23.060 they started to do a couple months ago is they would go from this intersection, then they would

00:29:26.960 start walking down residential streets like no offices no schools no not just going down the

00:29:34.520 houses and they would see jews and start screaming anti-semitic things like terrifying moms and kids

00:29:42.780 it was shocking and the police walked with them escorting them this wasn't so the police were

00:29:50.040 walking with these and and most of them in bathers and shepherd they're about 90 or 95 percent foreign

00:29:56.220 nationals. So these are not Canadians. In fact, many of them, I suspect, are amongst the 700

00:30:02.360 Islamic Revolutionary Guard, IRGC, terrorists that Canada has identified. If we've identified 700,

00:30:08.700 why are they here? Like, why haven't we deported them? I believe that a number of them are the 1.00

00:30:13.000 activists. And a couple of weeks ago, there was a big rally outside the U.S. consulate. They called

00:30:17.900 it Al-Quds Day, which is an Iranian propaganda day. There, you had every communist, hardcore

00:30:25.480 left-wingers. So I was surprised. I'd say it was about 20 or 30 percent white, woke, leftist

00:30:31.420 communists. And then about 70 percent were pro-Iran activists. I was really glad to see that Juno had

00:30:38.480 Clayton Domain there covering it, too. I think it's very important. And the police, I'm not looking

00:30:44.020 for hate crimes and speech crimes. How about just take care of the real crimes? Assault, uttering

00:30:49.640 threats, harassment, stalking, trespass, vandalism, shooting at synagogues and schools. I'm not

00:30:56.940 looking for new hate crimes to be put on the books. I'm looking for existing laws to be

00:31:01.140 affected. There's Section 176 of the Criminal Code says you're not allowed to beset a place

00:31:05.940 of worship and interrupt it. A couple years ago, the Pro-Hamas people took loudspeakers right

00:31:11.800 outside a Jewish synagogue and shouted Nazi-style epithets at it all day. That's actually against

00:31:18.500 section 176 of our criminal code. Look it up. And why won't the police act? And all I'm looking

00:31:24.540 for is for the police to treat this, oh, say the same way they would treat it if it was happening

00:31:29.380 to a mosque. On the weekend, I went to New Brunswick. There was a church that was torched.

00:31:34.060 Now, the church was no longer in use, but a church was torched in New Brunswick,

00:31:39.480 and I don't think there was a single news story about it. I just saw it on Twitter,

00:31:43.060 and I went to see it for myself. Over 100 churches have been vandalized or torched,

00:31:47.700 and we alluded to this earlier, that was sort of part of Dre's questions to Jagmeet Singh.

00:31:52.160 So what's crazy to me is that the Jewish community is under a crime wave. And I'm not

00:31:59.040 talking about word crimes or hurt feeling crimes. It's a, when you shoot up three synagogues in 1.00

00:32:04.960 five days, that is real crime. And where's the, you know, last point, I know I'm going on here.

00:32:11.800 One of the city councilors said, we need more police. We need RCMP. We need Ontario Provincial

00:32:16.340 police. Both of those police forces refused to help, and I'll tell you why. Because we have

00:32:21.840 millions of people in Canada who vote, who come from endemically anti-Semitic cultures,

00:32:28.280 and the politicians can do the math. There are more people who hate Jews, hate Israel, 0.84

00:32:33.420 hate Zionism, hate, just they're full of hate for the West, than there are Jews or Jewish supporters. 0.99

00:32:39.680 So the mayor, the premier, the prime minister have done the calculations. I see that Mark Carney 0.98

00:32:44.220 denounced israel occupying southern lebanon when they're going to extirpate hezbollah why didn't

00:32:49.420 he put out a press release about hezbollah there i because he knows who his market is and i think

00:32:55.080 unless we deal with immigration and frankly repatriate a lot of foreign nationals who are 0.96

00:32:59.860 here on false pretenses i think this is going to get worse and i think you're going to see more and

00:33:04.040 more jews leave for the united states which makes me very sad it makes me sad too as i think it's

00:33:09.660 sign of a very sick society when you know people who fled nazi europe in the 20th century uh who 0.84

00:33:19.020 you know came to canada and had safe refuge are now picking up and leaving and i speak to a lot

00:33:24.380 of people from toronto not just conservatives do right like like actual former liberal jews or just

00:33:29.980 just even secular jews that don't really feel safe and comfortable in canada it's a very terrifying 1.00

00:33:36.060 calculation and you're totally right that it all just stems from reckless immigration so it's i

00:33:41.020 guess good to see the police are finally starting to pay attention they kind of have to when it's

00:33:45.020 spilling out into violence in our streets um but it sort of feels like too little too late

00:33:49.260 and again it's to me it's a sign of a very unhealthy society ezra i always appreciate

00:33:53.980 your time i could talk to you for hours and probably talk about every topic under the sun

00:33:57.580 but we appreciate uh your time and uh thanks for joining us great to see you thanks for having me

00:34:02.980 All right, folks, that's Ezra Levant of The Rebel.

00:34:05.540 That's all the time we have for today.

00:34:06.480 Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:34:07.420 I'm Candice Buckham.

00:34:08.060 This is Candice Buckham Show.

00:34:08.920 Thank you and God bless.

Juno News - March 25, 2026

Debates Commission CANCELS post-debate scrums (w⧸ Ezra Levant)

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