Juno News - December 28, 2022


Ezra Levant on Rebel News, independent media, and disrupting the status quo


Episode Stats

Length

40 minutes

Words per Minute

176.51459

Word Count

7,080

Sentence Count

484

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:00:10.700 Coming up, we talk about the era of independent media in Canada, but not so long ago, there was only one, and it was Rebel.
00:00:18.640 We'll talk to the Rebel Commander, Ezra Levant.
00:00:21.560 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.
00:00:24.800 Hey, welcome along. This is Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:00:32.320 It is Wednesday, December 28th, 2022, and I hope you're all having a wonderful, wonderful time.
00:00:39.460 This is that weird twilight week between Christmas and New Year's where you don't know what day it is.
00:00:44.600 You are in a sugar coma every step of the day. You've got turkey bursting your fridge at the seams.
00:00:51.100 You've got leftover chocolate. It's just, it's terrible, and you are listening to this show,
00:00:55.700 so I hope you are in the midst of trying to seek and preserve sanity throughout this weird sort of inter-holiday twilight period.
00:01:03.540 We are going to be back next week with regular programming, but we're taking advantage of the holiday season
00:01:09.900 to talk about some of the big picture issues and go in-depth with some of the favorite guests we have on this show
00:01:16.460 through the year that we oftentimes are talking about in shorter segments and for a very specific purpose.
00:01:22.920 And today, I want to speak to Ezra Levant, who I've known for many years.
00:01:26.700 I used to appear on his show back in the Sun News Network days, and I also followed him as a blogger years earlier than that.
00:01:34.120 Read his book, Shakedown, which chronicled his fight for free speech in Canada,
00:01:38.720 which, as current news indicates, is a fight that very much still needs to be waged.
00:01:44.040 But I thought it would be a useful opportunity here to talk about the side of Ezra you don't often see,
00:01:50.380 and a little-known fact, he was almost on the track to go into politics,
00:01:55.460 and his seat that he was going to run in ended up getting Stephen Harper as the candidate.
00:02:00.960 So, Ezra, again, I think could have been in a parallel universe prime minister,
00:02:06.600 but we'll talk about that in a moment here.
00:02:09.780 The rebel commander himself, Ezra Levant.
00:02:12.780 Ezra, good to talk to you again. Thanks, as always, for coming on today.
00:02:16.300 My pleasure.
00:02:17.580 Now, I wanted to go back.
00:02:19.120 One of the big things that I find comes up is that we have, both Rebel and True North,
00:02:24.160 I think, seen fairly significant audience expansions in the last year.
00:02:27.740 And there are a lot of people that I've known that have come over that actually have no idea who we are,
00:02:34.400 and they've, you know, somehow stumbled upon stuff that we do.
00:02:37.720 And it's interesting, so I thought I would take this opportunity with the holiday season upon us
00:02:42.340 and not having too, too much happening news-wise to delve into how you and Rebel got to where you are.
00:02:50.160 Because, you know, in like a parallel history, you could have been prime minister right now.
00:02:54.680 Like, people forget that you were standing for a seat at Parliament at one point.
00:02:58.960 Well, I think that's overstating things.
00:03:00.780 I mean, I likely would have been a backbench Conservative MP.
00:03:04.860 At least I was on that course.
00:03:06.520 I was running in a by-election about 20 years ago.
00:03:09.160 And then, as the quirk of history was, I stepped aside a little bit grudgingly
00:03:13.240 for Stephen Harper in Calgary Southwest, and he became PM.
00:03:17.860 So that's the whole thing, though.
00:03:19.880 The magic might have been that seat.
00:03:21.160 Well, you know, I had political ambitions.
00:03:26.120 Obviously, I was running for office, but those didn't come true.
00:03:29.260 But, you know, when one door closes, another opens.
00:03:32.140 And I was always interested in the media.
00:03:35.180 Even in high school and university, I wrote for the college papers.
00:03:39.300 When I was in my early 20s, I started writing for the Sun chain of newspapers.
00:03:43.980 And, you know, I wrote books.
00:03:46.340 I started the Western Standard magazine when Alberta Report went out of business.
00:03:50.660 So I was always interested in the media.
00:03:52.860 And I always knew, even though I dabbled in politics, again, since I was a teenager,
00:03:57.660 whenever I was in politics, the challenge seemed to be the media.
00:04:02.360 They were the filter.
00:04:03.500 They were the real political arbiters.
00:04:06.780 They were the biased lens.
00:04:10.260 And so whenever I was on the political side of the divide,
00:04:12.960 I felt like the battle was on the media.
00:04:15.140 And so when I was ejected from politics 20 years ago,
00:04:19.420 I set my sights on media work that I always felt was the most important part.
00:04:26.080 Western Standard, Sun News Network, Sun Newspapers,
00:04:29.640 and now, finally, Rebel News Network.
00:04:33.260 And I suppose one of the differences is politics can be about power.
00:04:38.740 If you're a cabinet minister, if you're a prime minister,
00:04:41.060 you have the ability to actually do things.
00:04:43.020 The media can't do things.
00:04:45.840 They don't have the power, but they have the influence.
00:04:48.020 They shape the battlefield of ideas.
00:04:50.380 They shape what people know about.
00:04:53.280 And so although my political ambitions, I have not returned to them in 20 years,
00:04:58.800 what we're doing on the journalistic side,
00:05:00.840 and we're also activists over here at Rebel News.
00:05:02.800 We get involved sometimes.
00:05:03.960 We don't just report the news.
00:05:06.300 Every now and then we stop and fix something.
00:05:09.680 I feel like it's been very similar work to what I would have done had I become an MP,
00:05:15.940 with one difference is I have more independence.
00:05:20.680 Unless you're the top dog in a political party, you really must be obedient.
00:05:27.040 And I suppose if you're a critic on a particular file,
00:05:29.660 you can put your mark on things, but you have to really operate as a political team.
00:05:36.120 And if you're not the boss of the team, sometimes that means you're reading talking points you don't really agree with.
00:05:41.620 I mean, I remember when Andrew Scheer decided, I think it was Andrew Scheer,
00:05:47.520 decided that the party wasn't going to dispute certain things.
00:05:52.040 Aaron O'Toole was when he basically signed on to the carbon tax.
00:05:57.200 Well, if you were a conservative MP, you had to nod along and read those talking points,
00:06:01.540 or you would be ejected.
00:06:03.300 That's just not in my DNA.
00:06:05.720 So running Rebel News and doing our activism, I can express myself journalistically.
00:06:11.080 We can do things as activists.
00:06:13.680 We don't have the strictures of a party.
00:06:16.380 But we can assist true conservatives in politics by helping shape the battle of ideas.
00:06:25.500 Well, that's such an important point because politics is fleeting in a lot of ways,
00:06:31.280 in a way that culture isn't.
00:06:32.700 And I even look at going back into Canada.
00:06:35.520 I've got some frustrations with certain aspects of the Harper legacy.
00:06:39.940 But let's just take for granted that we had 10 years of a conservative government.
00:06:44.360 We had four years of a majority government in which theoretically there was nothing stopping
00:06:49.320 Stephen Harper from doing anything that was on the conservative wish list.
00:06:53.320 And, you know, whatever I think should have been done that wasn't done, there were some
00:06:57.160 victories in that period.
00:06:58.520 You had, for example, the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
00:07:02.900 You had a rollback of some firearms restrictions.
00:07:06.040 You had tax reductions.
00:07:07.920 And you fast forward less than a decade from that point.
00:07:12.740 And a lot of those victories are completely gone.
00:07:16.200 I mean, sure, the GST is still at 5%, but more gun control is coming in now than ever existed
00:07:21.340 before Stephen Harper rolled back some of these measures.
00:07:24.600 Section 13 is coming back in a supercharged way.
00:07:27.980 C-11 wasn't on anyone's radar.
00:07:30.020 And it's probably going to be the law of the land.
00:07:32.140 And so politics is always going to have this back and forth.
00:07:35.660 And I think, you know, just as the left has the bureaucracy, which tends to just keep
00:07:40.180 its agenda going, I think the right has always been absent of in that fight of what do we
00:07:46.280 have that is lasting between conservative governments?
00:07:50.440 You know, I think Stephen Harper was an excellent prime minister.
00:07:53.240 But if I had to list his two greatest failings from my point of view, one of them was he
00:07:58.240 did not take advantage of the opportunity to appoint truly conservative judges to the courts,
00:08:04.660 especially to the Supreme Court.
00:08:06.600 I mean, he actually appointed most of the judges on the court, and yet it continued its
00:08:12.480 hurtling journey to the left.
00:08:14.820 He just didn't care about it enough.
00:08:16.800 And he could have even been bolder than Donald Trump was because we don't have the same Senate
00:08:22.540 advice and consent committee system.
00:08:25.620 The second thing I think he did, it was actually something he did not do.
00:08:30.460 He did not uproot the dominant government propaganda device, namely the CBC.
00:08:37.520 And he did not, when he had the chance, protect a nascent rival, the Sun News Network.
00:08:43.480 And I don't just say that because I'm an alumnus of that place.
00:08:45.980 I know that a private investor, a Quebecor, run by Pierre-Carl Pelletot, put tens of millions
00:08:53.400 of dollars into an excellent all-news channel, just like CTV's news channel, just like CBC's
00:08:59.400 all-news channel.
00:09:00.380 I think he spent 50 million bucks on it.
00:09:02.740 So the quality was there.
00:09:03.840 There was 200 of us.
00:09:05.480 And Stephen Harper sat by idly as the regulator, the CRTC, euthanized it, killed it.
00:09:12.680 A regulator whose board is appointed by the government of the day.
00:09:17.060 Yeah.
00:09:17.300 And I mean, there is no way any liberal prime minister would have allowed some board to
00:09:24.260 kill a left-wing TV station.
00:09:27.060 He was the only truly conservative media outlet in Canada.
00:09:30.380 And literally on the eve of an election, he let the CRTC kill it.
00:09:36.260 And he didn't lift a finger.
00:09:37.240 You think Jean Chrétien would have done that?
00:09:38.640 You think Justin Trudeau would have done that?
00:09:41.000 I'm not talking about giving grants to the Sun News Network.
00:09:43.960 He let it be devoured by the lobbyists and bureaucrats of the CRTC.
00:09:48.820 Imagine if he had set Sun News Network up on equal terms to CTV News Channel or CBC's News
00:09:55.200 world, imagine if he had done what conservatives always claimed that they would do, is not
00:10:01.180 abolish the CBC, but privatize it, sell it.
00:10:03.980 Air Canada was privatized.
00:10:05.680 It was a source of money for the government.
00:10:07.620 And it actually set that airline free.
00:10:09.360 If Stephen Harper had allowed a balanced, objective private sector media in this country,
00:10:18.760 we would be in a much stronger position.
00:10:20.900 Those are my two biggest quarrels with Stephen Harper.
00:10:23.260 I would add leaving the Senate vacancies as well, because the Senate could have been a
00:10:29.720 real check and balance against the liberals had Stephen Harper filled those seats.
00:10:33.940 Yeah.
00:10:34.580 And that was a purist idealism that was absolutely devastating.
00:10:40.880 I mean, Trudeau instantly packed the Senate.
00:10:43.880 He laughed at Harper's do-goodery.
00:10:46.340 But yeah.
00:10:47.460 And yeah, back to Rebel News and True North, and there are a handful of other independent
00:10:51.260 media, Black Locks is one.
00:10:55.280 Let's actually link those Sun News and Rebel here, because I don't even think the sign
00:10:59.580 had been taken off the Sun News building before you started Rebel.
00:11:03.980 And I know famously, Sun's absence left a huge void in the Canadian media landscape for
00:11:09.480 the reasons you mentioned.
00:11:11.160 And I was excited.
00:11:12.100 But I would say a little bit, not leery is the right word, but I was curious about what
00:11:17.920 was going to happen.
00:11:18.620 Because, you know, you've got this big studio, you've got this team around the world, you
00:11:22.480 send people all sorts of places.
00:11:24.260 I've been grateful enough to travel with some of you Rebels on a number of occasions.
00:11:28.520 But when Rebels started, it was you in your living room.
00:11:31.660 Yeah.
00:11:31.780 Well, I had a sense that the end was near at Sun News Network, because I was watching
00:11:37.080 the CRTC slowly slice and dice Sun News, and I saw the valiant effort of Corey Ternank and
00:11:43.380 others in that company to save it.
00:11:45.160 But, you know, it was pretty clear the end was coming.
00:11:48.740 And so I started thinking what would happen next.
00:11:51.060 And I also thought, well, how can I capture the audience I have on TV and take them with
00:11:58.780 me somewhere else?
00:11:59.440 And we started asking our viewers to sign up on a website, typically for petitions or
00:12:06.760 things like that.
00:12:07.480 But I knew that every night I was getting thousands of viewers on regular TV, and very soon they
00:12:13.240 wouldn't be able to find me.
00:12:14.280 So I had to be able to find them.
00:12:15.700 So in the last year of Sun News, I started petitions, and we really did deliver the petitions.
00:12:23.140 But what we were doing is we were building up a customer database of Sun News viewers.
00:12:27.940 So when the Sun News shut down, and people didn't know where to find us suddenly, because
00:12:33.380 we ended without any notice.
00:12:35.960 Well, and TV is a one-way street of communication.
00:12:39.180 Without that petition, you have no idea who's watching you.
00:12:42.460 That's right.
00:12:43.060 So I managed to collect tens of thousands of names of Sun News viewers.
00:12:47.800 So when the lights went out, I was able to email them and say, hey, Sun News is gone.
00:12:53.700 We're going to try something new.
00:12:55.120 I've asked eight of my colleagues from Sun News to come over to my living room.
00:12:59.700 We're going to hammer out a plan.
00:13:01.540 We spent hours searching for a good name.
00:13:05.380 The Rebel was the closest we could come up with.
00:13:09.060 But you know what?
00:13:09.860 I think the name fits.
00:13:11.080 We are rebellious.
00:13:12.140 We're rebelling against the dominant political narrative.
00:13:15.960 We're rebelling against the regulatory structure.
00:13:19.280 We didn't try and get a real TV station.
00:13:21.120 We went on the Internet because we didn't want to be killed just like the CRTC killed Sun News.
00:13:26.020 We were rebelling against the high-cost technology of a million-dollar studio, quarter-million-dollar
00:13:32.100 cameras.
00:13:32.620 We were replacing it with little cell phones.
00:13:34.880 And I used to have five people working in the control room of my show.
00:13:38.600 Now we have one.
00:13:40.380 It was very luxurious working at Sun News.
00:13:42.900 We had satellite feeds.
00:13:44.680 Well, why not use Skype instead?
00:13:46.320 These things sound obvious today.
00:13:48.080 But in 2015, they were not.
00:13:50.300 And I should tell you that when Rebel News launched in 2015, we launched so modestly.
00:13:54.820 You're right to say it was in my living room.
00:13:57.600 And the media party, as I call them, they were so thrilled that Sun News was euthanized.
00:14:02.920 You know, they were popping champagne corks.
00:14:04.280 Ha-ha, they're out of business.
00:14:05.620 So when I started Rebel News, they all sort of chuckled and said, isn't that cute?
00:14:10.520 Oh, he's got a little website on a YouTube channel.
00:14:13.320 Good boy.
00:14:14.220 And in fact, the coverage from the media party was friendly.
00:14:19.400 But it was friendly.
00:14:20.320 Like, ha-ha, he's giving it a shot.
00:14:21.980 Well, good for you, little one.
00:14:24.020 Yeah, it was a very patronizing friend.
00:14:25.200 Yeah, and...
00:14:26.020 You're right, though, just to jump in there for a moment, that the media was, I think,
00:14:30.920 very worried when Sun News came onto the scene because it was a disruptor.
00:14:34.900 And when Sun News, I'll say failed, and I don't mean that in a judgmental way, but when
00:14:39.620 Sun News, for all of the reasons you've mentioned, went off the air, they sort of breathed this
00:14:44.160 sigh of relief because they felt, okay, phew, our little oligopoly is safe.
00:14:50.420 Oh, exactly.
00:14:51.400 And so they thought, ha-ha, Rebel News Network, that's all you got?
00:14:56.000 And for about a year, they paid very little attention to us because they thought we were
00:15:01.300 nothing.
00:15:01.580 And then, I don't know if it was a mistake, but of course, when you're online, as we are,
00:15:06.840 you get a ton of analytics, a ton of statistics from YouTube, from your website, that you really
00:15:12.600 don't have the same statistics when you're in regular TV.
00:15:15.580 There's the ratings.
00:15:18.020 I forget what it was called, Nielsen's or NAD Bank or something.
00:15:21.240 There was some, I forget what it was called, but there was a ratings company.
00:15:24.840 Numeris in Canada now.
00:15:26.060 That's right.
00:15:26.560 Numeris.
00:15:26.940 Thank you for the reminder.
00:15:27.680 That they would estimate how many people watched your show at any given time, but it's a guess.
00:15:33.560 It's not exact.
00:15:35.340 That you don't have the demographics.
00:15:36.840 So when you have a YouTube channel, you get a tremendous amount of info.
00:15:41.820 And so about a year into it, I was looking at our stats of how many people watched our
00:15:47.780 stuff.
00:15:48.180 And I was comparing it with what traditional media called their rate card.
00:15:53.480 So for example, if you go to the Globe and Mail's website and find their rate card, and
00:15:57.580 that's where they are selling ads.
00:15:59.520 It's the rate you have to pay for the ads.
00:16:01.460 They give you what they promise is accurate viewership stats.
00:16:06.920 We have this many viewers.
00:16:08.340 They earn this much money.
00:16:09.600 This percent male, that percent female.
00:16:11.740 So every newspaper in Canada has a rate card that gives you their demographics.
00:16:16.980 And I saw that about a year into it, Little Rebel News, with no money and no big office and
00:16:25.960 no big anything, was larger than many of these legacy media.
00:16:32.760 And maybe it was a mistake to brag about it.
00:16:35.960 But I started posting those statistics, and suddenly the media party that sort of had
00:16:40.960 a, oh, isn't that cute, suddenly said, oh, my God, how did they do that?
00:16:46.620 Where did that come from?
00:16:47.900 While we were laughing at them, they assembled.
00:16:50.760 And I mean, we quickly became the number one news channel on YouTube in all of Canada.
00:16:58.720 That wasn't supposed to happen.
00:17:00.220 We're supposed to be these, you know, goofy extremists and not cool.
00:17:06.180 You're supposed to be the reject table of the Canadian media landscape.
00:17:09.340 We're actually not even part of the Canadian media landscape.
00:17:11.600 You're just like out in the parking lot while they're all in the cafeteria.
00:17:15.340 Yeah.
00:17:15.760 And then they decided, oh, my God, we've got to squash them.
00:17:19.580 And that coincided with Trump's election success in 2016, that all the tech companies said,
00:17:25.260 oh, my God, he did this through social media.
00:17:27.100 And thus came the deplatformings and the demonetizations.
00:17:31.100 We were on track to make a million dollars a year from our YouTube ads alone, the ones that
00:17:35.400 say skip now.
00:17:36.700 I mean, we could run our company just on YouTube ads.
00:17:40.100 Those were taken down to zero.
00:17:42.480 Now, luckily, we've survived.
00:17:43.820 Like I say, we have the names and addresses of an enormous number of our viewers.
00:17:48.900 But if we didn't, we would be dead, as many other conservative broadcasters were when
00:17:53.760 YouTube canceled conservatives en masse.
00:17:57.100 It put them out of business.
00:17:58.780 If I was a liberal, if I was progressive, I would have such a bigger company because I
00:18:06.220 would be probably making three million dollars a year just in Internet ads that I am banned
00:18:12.060 from taking.
00:18:12.620 And I'm not banned from taking them because we've engaged in obscenity or profanity or
00:18:17.400 anything like that.
00:18:18.440 It's literally because of our ideological point of view.
00:18:21.620 Can you elaborate?
00:18:22.540 Can you elaborate on that?
00:18:23.640 We have a strategic partner manager at YouTube who answers our questions, and she's quite
00:18:31.360 candid.
00:18:33.000 They discriminate against Rebel News because of what we say, not because of anything we
00:18:37.720 do.
00:18:38.740 So we survive based on crowdfunding.
00:18:43.240 And it's a model.
00:18:45.040 I know True North does some crowdfunding, too.
00:18:47.400 No one on the left in Canada has to do that.
00:18:49.900 If you look at where the money for the media comes from in Canada and the U.S., one big
00:18:54.980 answer is from oligarchs.
00:18:57.160 People forget that the Globe and Mail is owned by the Thompson family.
00:19:00.860 David Thompson's worth, I think, $23 billion.
00:19:03.880 It's his blog.
00:19:05.080 It's his lobby firm.
00:19:06.340 It's his way of tilting the political conversation in this country.
00:19:11.680 New York Times is owned by Mexico's richest man, Carlos Sleem.
00:19:15.280 Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos.
00:19:18.000 All these rich oligarchs buy media to throw their weight around.
00:19:22.260 So that's the Globe and Mail.
00:19:23.860 Well, we don't have an oligarch.
00:19:26.420 I guess we had an oligarch running Sun News, but we don't have an oligarch here at Rebel
00:19:30.400 News.
00:19:30.620 And in a way, that's good because you don't have a boss who can order you to do this or
00:19:35.080 that.
00:19:35.660 But of course, you don't get the money either.
00:19:37.780 OK, well, what's another way?
00:19:39.140 Well, you can sell ads.
00:19:41.160 Well, like I say, we were demonetized by social media companies that are run by liberals.
00:19:46.620 OK, well, then you can get government funding.
00:19:49.060 Well, again, we're not going to take government funding because then how can you possibly
00:19:54.060 be independent and objective?
00:19:56.340 And the fact that so many journalists take money from the government, do not disclose
00:20:01.980 it and pretend it doesn't affect their judgment, that only makes people more skeptical.
00:20:06.640 And then the new way is that the government is pressuring Facebook, Google, YouTube, Instagram
00:20:12.060 to put money in another fund to give to favored media outlets.
00:20:17.240 They're called QCJOs, Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations.
00:20:21.500 It's basically a government license for news.
00:20:24.080 If you have that license, you get a pot of money, if you want it, from Trudeau.
00:20:29.220 And now you'll get another pot of money from big tech.
00:20:32.600 Well, oh, my God, if you are a news source like the Globe and Mail, which is already owned
00:20:37.680 by a billionaire, and now a third of your money comes from Justin Trudeau and a third of
00:20:42.780 your money comes from big tech, what are you other than a stenographer for power?
00:20:47.460 So if you are, you know, just there to massage power and be an insider, this is the time of
00:20:53.640 your life.
00:20:54.020 But if you actually believe in independent journalism, curiosity, skepticism, telling both
00:20:59.340 sides of the story, this is the worst time for journalism in Canadian history.
00:21:02.960 I can count on one hand's fingers the number of independent news sources in this country
00:21:07.300 that are not on the government payroll.
00:21:08.620 And that maybe is why we have such a viewership.
00:21:12.120 You know, this last year, the month of February alone, Andrew, we had 400 million views and
00:21:20.260 impressions, 400 million.
00:21:22.940 That's as many as we had in the entire previous year.
00:21:26.240 By contrast, the CBC, their rate card says that on any given month, they get 320 million
00:21:32.140 impressions.
00:21:32.660 So for the month of February, we had as many impressions as the CBC claims they get on any
00:21:39.620 given month.
00:21:40.260 It was our trucker coverage.
00:21:42.440 And that was a time when our motto, telling the other side of the story, really meant something.
00:21:47.640 And citizen journalism, just go out there with a camera, point it at what's happening, and
00:21:52.060 just show people, whereas the media party were staying in their offices, I'm afraid to go
00:21:57.080 down.
00:21:57.500 It's an insurrection.
00:21:58.320 I'll be beat up by these racist, misogynist, you know, no, they're friendly people.
00:22:04.580 There's a hot tub.
00:22:05.280 There's a dance party.
00:22:06.200 And they refused to come down and see the truckers.
00:22:08.600 And so we were just there with cameras, just live streaming.
00:22:12.000 I mean, we had reporters, Alexa, Lavoie, Lincoln, Jay, literally walking the streets of Ottawa
00:22:17.280 with a bunch of battery packs, just streaming the whole time.
00:22:21.160 Those would get hundreds of thousands of views.
00:22:24.380 And around the world, not just conservative media like Fox News or things like that, but
00:22:29.840 Deutsche Welle, Sky News, would talk to our young citizen journalists because we were on
00:22:35.640 the street.
00:22:36.120 They didn't want to talk to CBC or CTV who were too scared to come down.
00:22:40.120 So 2022 was the year we proved the citizen journalism model, proved that the name rebel
00:22:47.060 was a fit.
00:22:47.940 We rebelled against the dominant ideology.
00:22:49.680 We rebelled against the system, the funding, the we rebelled against official journalists
00:22:56.120 in favor of citizen journalists.
00:22:58.380 And it was the best year in our company's existence, the best viewership year.
00:23:02.680 One thing I should say about rebel, you've actually like spawned another organization.
00:23:07.100 When you mentioned that activism that you've done of trying to get involved in some of these
00:23:11.100 stories and help people, this has actually birthed an entirely new project of yours.
00:23:15.860 Not that long ago.
00:23:17.300 And we started with one case, Pastor Arthur Pawlowski, he was our first client we crowdfunded
00:23:21.740 lawyers for.
00:23:22.740 And then another church came forward and said, we were bullied by police too.
00:23:26.680 And then another, and then we had 50, and then we had 100.
00:23:29.300 And we spun off a completely new charitable organization.
00:23:34.020 It's now completely separate from Rebel News.
00:23:36.720 It's called the Democracy Fund.
00:23:38.060 It has its own board, its own bank account, its own staff.
00:23:40.760 But basically, that whole crowdfund the Civil Liberties lawyers is now its own charity.
00:23:47.620 And it represents 2,100 people, 2,100 people, 1,300 of whom are in Ontario alone.
00:23:55.100 So that's that second part of what Rebel News does.
00:23:57.720 It's sort of the activism part.
00:23:59.640 So we do the journalism, but every now and then we step in and join the fight.
00:24:03.780 And that's happening through the Democracy Fund and some of our activism.
00:24:06.700 So the last year, Rebel News, and I know True North has as well, we've filled a lot of gaps
00:24:12.320 left by the establishment.
00:24:14.020 Let me just throw one more thing at you.
00:24:16.520 During the lockdowns, during the pandemic, the opposition parties did not oppose.
00:24:22.440 The media lost its curiosity and skepticism.
00:24:25.640 The law professors suddenly went silent.
00:24:28.260 The ones who were there to argue for Omar Khadr's charter rights suddenly didn't care about
00:24:33.340 the charter.
00:24:33.820 They went silent.
00:24:34.380 All the traditional Civil Liberties groups, like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association,
00:24:38.500 they went on a two-year vacation.
00:24:41.240 The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on any lockdown infringement.
00:24:45.020 So I guess they've been busy with other things.
00:24:47.340 The College of Physicians and Surgeons, rather than supporting a second opinion, suspended any
00:24:53.260 doctor with a second opinion.
00:24:55.800 All the institutions of civil society failed at once.
00:24:59.540 And so it fell to True North and Rebel News and others to fill that gap, not just journalistically,
00:25:05.020 but the Democracy Fund on the Civil Liberties side, the JCCF in Calgary did a great job.
00:25:11.380 But we had a systemic failure of all our democratic institutions.
00:25:14.520 So, of course, alternative counter-establishment channels like ours succeeded, partly because
00:25:22.900 we did a good job, but mainly because the rest of society completely failed.
00:25:27.400 We had a total system failure of our democratic checks and balances.
00:25:32.220 And we're so self-righteous and condescending.
00:25:34.840 Canada is the best democracy in the world, the best health care in the world, the best civil
00:25:38.440 liberties in the world, our charter is the best in the world.
00:25:40.200 Baloney, it all failed and people noticed.
00:25:45.380 One thing that I find fascinating, and you touched on the business model aspect there
00:25:50.720 and how Rebel came up with an adaptive business model.
00:25:53.460 And interestingly enough, it's funny seeing all of this like really snarky, these snarky
00:25:59.260 attacks on crowdfunding you get from a lot of the legacy media types.
00:26:02.980 They think crowdfunding is dirty or icky in some way, but it's like, how is it any morally,
00:26:08.780 I'd say it's, if anything, it's morally better than advertising because your money is coming
00:26:13.300 from the people that want to engage with your product.
00:26:15.420 But it's strange just how cliquey that mindset is in the media.
00:26:20.980 And Rebel wasn't just innovative on business model, but also on the adapting to how to tell
00:26:27.100 the stories.
00:26:27.920 And just a personal example on this, when Rebel started, I was, I had been appearing on Sun
00:26:32.880 somewhat regularly and I was doing my daily radio show in London, but you know, on the
00:26:37.780 side, you had asked if I wanted to be involved in Rebel.
00:26:40.580 So I started doing a podcast and it was good.
00:26:44.160 People enjoyed it.
00:26:44.900 People liked it.
00:26:45.600 But, but you had actually put, done something which I think is very risky.
00:26:49.140 You put a camera in front of me, which I don't think is generally speaking on the surface
00:26:53.200 a good idea.
00:26:53.840 But in doing so, you said, you know, I bet you're going to have, you know, multiple of the
00:26:58.660 audience for a fraction of the work.
00:27:01.340 And, and, you know, I started doing shorter three, four minute video reports and you were
00:27:05.460 very right.
00:27:06.080 People were engaging with those in a very different way because that's the way the internet
00:27:10.660 was structured.
00:27:11.580 And I think things have sort of come back around to podcasts, but video is still very
00:27:16.400 much king.
00:27:17.020 But that adaptability I think was so key to Rebel's success and to independent media in
00:27:22.700 general.
00:27:23.260 And even when COVID came along and you had all of these mainstream media organizations that
00:27:28.020 were locked out of their studios that are like, uh, how do we get people on zoom?
00:27:31.780 How do we put an iPad and a ring light up, which is stuff that you had been doing for
00:27:36.660 seven years by that point.
00:27:39.220 Well, when you're funded by crowdfunding and our average donation is $58.
00:27:44.920 And I mentioned that because you can imagine how many people need to chip in $58 for us to
00:27:50.320 operate a staff of more than 50.
00:27:53.120 So if we're not listening to our people, we're going to be out of business pretty quick.
00:27:58.800 There's also another benefit of having an average gift of $58, which is there's no one
00:28:04.060 person, no one oligarch like there is at other papers who could call me up and say, Ezra, you
00:28:09.200 fire that David Menzies.
00:28:10.560 He went too far this time.
00:28:11.920 Or Ezra, you stop talking about that.
00:28:13.800 Like, of course, there are people who I very much respect.
00:28:17.040 And I think I sent the one about Menzies.
00:28:18.820 So you can disregard it.
00:28:19.760 I mean, of course, I would listen to anyone's criticism on the merits.
00:28:22.760 But when you have that diffuse funding, it truly gives you independence.
00:28:29.160 It also means you have to really listen.
00:28:31.960 Whereas if you get a third of your money from Justin Trudeau, and now a third of your money
00:28:37.640 from Google and Facebook, as the mainstream media does, first of all, you're tailoring
00:28:43.120 your coverage to please them, obviously.
00:28:44.980 And second of all, you don't really care what people say, because you're not going to follow
00:28:50.300 the grassroots.
00:28:51.100 They're not important.
00:28:52.140 Really, in Canada, you have an audience of one man, Justin Trudeau.
00:28:55.720 If he's pleased with you, you'll do fine.
00:28:58.100 And so that's why most of the mainstream media missed the trucker story or came in as anti-trucker
00:29:05.340 activists themselves.
00:29:06.320 We understood that there are certain people in Canada who are not represented.
00:29:12.620 I watched recently a panel discussion at the Carleton School of Journalism.
00:29:18.840 Yes.
00:29:19.200 And it was all the big media, CTV, Global, CTV, and there were a few people sprinkled in for
00:29:28.720 diversity, but they were there for racial diversity, not for diversity of opinion.
00:29:35.640 And Marco Mendicino.
00:29:37.180 Yeah.
00:29:37.700 For some reason.
00:29:38.380 And that was the worst part of it.
00:29:39.740 They had a liberal cabinet minister fully embedded in this thing, because, of course, why wouldn't
00:29:48.000 you have a government minister there, given that the government is now the largest funder
00:29:53.580 of Canadian media?
00:29:54.720 So there was no recognition.
00:29:56.640 There wasn't even a flicker that maybe they were doing anything wrong, that maybe their model
00:30:01.660 is wrong.
00:30:02.480 In fact, it was all we...
00:30:03.780 The chief message emanating from that panel was we need more censorship of the peasants who
00:30:09.180 were clapping back to us on Twitter.
00:30:11.160 It was an entire panel about mean tweets and how we need more policing of that.
00:30:17.120 And Marco Mendicino, the public safety minister, was nodding along and saying, yes, we do.
00:30:20.840 The irony there is that there actually have been some journalists in Canada who have been
00:30:25.200 violently assaulted over the last five years.
00:30:27.300 I know because I employ all of them.
00:30:31.360 There has been no physical attack on a Canadian journalist in the past five years, other than our
00:30:38.840 Rebel News staff.
00:30:40.320 David Menzies beat up by Justin Trudeau's bodyguards.
00:30:43.280 Alexa Lavoie literally shot with a riot weapon in Ottawa.
00:30:48.380 Drea Humphrey manhandled by Trudeau's bodyguards.
00:30:51.840 Sheila Gunn-Reed punched in the face by an NDP activist.
00:30:55.580 The list goes on.
00:30:57.840 None of our journalists and their violence against them, much of which is perpetrated by the government,
00:31:02.720 has ever been taken up as a cause by the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists
00:31:09.300 for Free Expression, any journalism school, Penn Canada, Amnesty International, Canadian
00:31:14.180 Civil Liberties Association.
00:31:15.480 I've just listed six NGOs that claim to care about protecting the free press, and not a one
00:31:21.200 of them, even put out a tweet in support of our journalists who were beat up on camera.
00:31:27.020 These are not my allegations.
00:31:28.280 And not just that.
00:31:29.360 I wrote a book called The Libranos.
00:31:31.420 I was prosecuted by Elections Canada, claiming it was election propaganda.
00:31:36.980 There were 24 books published at the same time as mine about the 2019 election.
00:31:43.240 There were 24 books on Trudeau.
00:31:45.120 Mine was the only one that criticized.
00:31:47.140 And mine was the best seller.
00:31:48.040 Who dared to advertise it?
00:31:49.560 Like, that was the ridiculous part of that prosecution.
00:31:53.300 I've read the election finance law very carefully.
00:31:55.840 There's a specific exemption to books and the promotion of books.
00:32:00.000 So my book was convicted of being illegal.
00:32:03.380 And there were two senior former RCMP officers, veterans, who were assigned to investigate my
00:32:11.600 case.
00:32:12.380 And they asked me, why didn't you register with the government?
00:32:14.800 And I actually recorded that interaction with them, because I knew going into it, no one
00:32:20.320 would believe me.
00:32:21.440 No one would believe me.
00:32:23.560 And were it not for the video proof, these cops were asking me, why didn't you register
00:32:28.380 your book with the government?
00:32:29.960 They said that to me.
00:32:32.320 And that's the state of things now.
00:32:34.860 And I'm not, I suppose on one hand, I'm glad that the media party doesn't care about these
00:32:43.760 things, because that gives us, and True North, the market.
00:32:47.200 But it actually makes me very sad.
00:32:49.340 I wish that there was no need for rebel news, because I wish that the mainstream media had
00:32:54.200 within them a diversity of views.
00:32:56.240 I saw a panel discussion the other day on the CBC talking about Daniel Smith and the Alberta
00:33:00.900 Sovereignty Act.
00:33:01.600 There were five people on the panel, they were in Montreal, Ottawa, and their western
00:33:06.100 branch was in Toronto.
00:33:07.400 Like, they literally had no one further west than Toronto.
00:33:09.520 That's western Canada, anything west of Toronto.
00:33:11.880 Like, one in Ontario, I think, is western Canada on CBC.
00:33:15.380 I mean, it would be unthinkable that they would have a panel on Quebec nationalism without
00:33:19.980 having a Quebecer there.
00:33:21.120 But that's the media party.
00:33:22.300 I wish they had someone with a different point of view.
00:33:25.220 Yeah.
00:33:26.020 When you mention, you know, basically wanting rebels' obsolescence, you raise, I think,
00:33:31.560 an important point that I think is useful to end on here, which is that you and I and
00:33:35.820 our colleagues are in a very strange place, and that the worst things are for the country,
00:33:39.480 the more we have to talk about, the more we have to do.
00:33:42.260 And it's quite perverse in a way, because on one hand, it's like, I wish I didn't have
00:33:46.920 the last two years to report on.
00:33:48.520 And I wish there didn't need to be a convoy for me to write a book about, because the
00:33:52.100 mandates weren't there.
00:33:53.020 So, to put a bow on this to some extent, do you remain optimistic or pessimistic?
00:34:00.360 Well, the most optimistic thing I have seen in years is Elon Musk buying Twitter and declaring
00:34:10.040 he wants it to be a free speech platform.
00:34:13.020 And he's going about that so far.
00:34:16.040 And not just to allow different points of view, but to, for example, he has suggested
00:34:21.760 that creators like us could actually make some money on Twitter the way we used to be
00:34:26.720 able to do on YouTube.
00:34:28.000 And Elon Musk is a daring doer.
00:34:32.840 He gets it done, whether it's SpaceX or Tesla, or he's involved in so many things.
00:34:38.760 Don't underestimate him.
00:34:40.240 And a guy who musters $44 billion U.S. to buy it is motivated.
00:34:46.400 So, I find that very hopeful.
00:34:48.220 And I see others in the industry are starting to say, well, maybe free speech is not such
00:34:52.140 a bad idea.
00:34:52.660 I saw the head of Netflix come out with a very strong support.
00:34:56.960 And maybe we'll see Zuckerberg say, well, maybe, and maybe we'll see YouTube say, boy,
00:35:00.960 we'd better get back to our do no evil freedom point of view that they used to have a decade
00:35:05.880 ago, or else we're going to lose viewers and creators to Twitter.
00:35:09.800 So, that's the most hopeful thing I see.
00:35:12.140 Other than that, the Canadian, and by the way, you mentioned C-11 and the C-18, and there's
00:35:18.820 other related censorship and regulation bills.
00:35:21.580 I see no hope from within Canada to resist them.
00:35:24.280 But, strangely enough, the Canada-U.S. NAFTA, it has a new name now, a trade agreement, may
00:35:31.980 save us because these American big tech companies who are against Trudeau's censorship and regulation
00:35:38.580 plans, they may actually be able to save us because they're saying, whoa, your laws that
00:35:43.880 would regulate American companies in an unfair way, we're going to go to the trade, you know,
00:35:49.940 we're going to make this a trade battle.
00:35:51.320 I think that Canadian free speech will be saved by big tech in America fighting against
00:35:58.760 Trudeau's demand to control them.
00:36:01.020 It's odd, yeah, it's an odd reversal that these guys who were in many cases the ones on
00:36:06.580 the cutting edge of censorship for much of the last decade might now be the saviors against
00:36:12.120 it.
00:36:12.360 It's a weird, it's that old line about how politics makes for strange bedfellows.
00:36:17.000 And to YouTube, I mean, my hope would be at this point that Elon Musk works video sharing
00:36:22.000 and video hosting in a large degree into Twitter's interface and really make Twitter the all-in-one,
00:36:28.340 although I realize I'm committing them to a multi-year project in that respect.
00:36:33.220 Well, just two nights, sorry, a few weeks ago, rather, Elon Musk had a one-hour sort of rolling
00:36:40.680 press conference on Twitter, and he talked about getting that engineering solution.
00:36:46.440 Twitter, for about five years, has been a censorship organization.
00:36:51.240 The majority of their staff have been working on censorship.
00:36:55.200 They call it trust and safety, but of course they do.
00:36:58.000 He has basically purged them, and he is giving it back an engineering focus now.
00:37:03.240 And I really think that's his strength.
00:37:06.500 I think that he will build Twitter into an everything app.
00:37:10.700 And I don't want to, you know, the Bible says, put not your trust in princes.
00:37:14.180 You don't want to put all your hopes in one guy.
00:37:15.740 He's just flesh and bones.
00:37:17.360 Wise words.
00:37:19.180 But, you know, there is reason for hope.
00:37:22.000 And listen, the fact that so many Canadians support True North and Rebel News and Western
00:37:29.180 Standard, and there's other, you know, there are a handful of others, that's a sign that
00:37:35.620 things are out of balance with the media party.
00:37:39.020 And the fact that they must rely on bailouts from Trudeau and big tech shows you no one
00:37:44.700 wants what they're selling.
00:37:46.260 And the fact that Trudeau is forced to resort to censorship means they can't convince people
00:37:50.940 they're right.
00:37:51.620 They have to silence their opponents.
00:37:53.400 I am constantly impressed by the generosity and the love that we receive from the public.
00:38:01.300 And I know that government media do not have that.
00:38:04.640 You know, I get lots of slings and arrows shot at me online.
00:38:08.440 But it's water off a duck's back because when I go into the world, when I'm on the street,
00:38:12.840 there is nowhere I go where I don't bump into.
00:38:15.540 I was in Melbourne, Australia for one of our reporters who got married.
00:38:19.180 I flew down to Melbourne.
00:38:20.140 The first bar I went into just looking for directions, he said, are you Ezra Levant from
00:38:25.460 Canada?
00:38:25.960 I said, how do you know?
00:38:27.400 He said, well, I watch Rebel News.
00:38:29.000 In Melbourne, Australia, how did he know?
00:38:32.020 And around the world, we've had 2 billion views, 2 billion with a B.
00:38:38.200 When 2 billion people want what you're selling, that's a sign you're on the right track.
00:38:42.920 And I know you guys are in the same way.
00:38:45.560 And that, more than anything, gives me the energy to keep going.
00:38:49.020 We're going to turn 8 years old in a month or two.
00:38:52.600 We've got more than 50 staff.
00:38:54.500 We've made our share of mistakes, but we're still alive and kicking.
00:38:57.640 And I can't say that for all of our critics in the media party.
00:39:01.580 I feel like citizen journalism is a valuable thing.
00:39:05.660 And I know that because people want it.
00:39:07.680 Yeah, that Rebel effect is real, by the way.
00:39:11.080 I was recognized in Covent Garden in England by someone who saw me on your show around the
00:39:17.880 time of the Tawny Robinson trial.
00:39:19.700 So it is real and it is spectacular for Seinfeld fans.
00:39:23.760 Ezra Levant, congratulations.
00:39:25.580 We'll have to have you back on for the big birthday in a month or so.
00:39:29.420 But I do appreciate it and am so grateful because, you know, whatever people think of
00:39:33.280 Rebel, it's like Rebel has proved that there is a business model for independent media in
00:39:37.420 Canada, which I think is a tremendously important one.
00:39:40.260 And I know at True North, we're grateful for you forging that path.
00:39:43.440 So thank you very much and Happy New Year to you.
00:39:46.060 Thanks.
00:39:46.420 You too, my friend.
00:39:47.520 That does it for me.
00:39:49.180 A big thank you to all of you who tuned in to this program.
00:39:52.800 We will see you next year.
00:39:55.100 This is The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:39:56.400 So thank you, God bless and good day to you all.
00:39:58.900 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:40:01.120 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.