00:00:00.000In a society obsessed with diversity and inclusion, there is now a new category of people who are apparently open season for harassment, intimidation, hatred, and even incitement of violence.
00:00:11.520I'm talking about Russians. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:25.480Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:00:28.060Now, as you know, over the years, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used to talk a good game about protecting our charter of rights and freedoms.
00:00:35.720He would say he would protect it at all costs, even when it's unpopular.
00:00:39.660Well, that all went out the window, as you know, during COVID, when Trudeau would regularly suspend our charter rights due to public health emergencies or public safety emergencies or any other emergency that he could think up.
00:00:51.140He also began to regularly scapegoat and demonize the unvaccinated.
00:00:55.220They don't deserve charter rights. They're racist, he told us.
00:00:58.060Well, Trudeau used to also insist that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, even if that Canadian happened to be a foreign-born jihadist terrorist who joined a foreign military and picked up arms against Canada.
00:01:10.200It didn't matter, Trudeau said. He's still a Canadian, and he's still deserving of your respect.
00:01:15.120At the height of ISIS's reign of terror in the Middle East and Europe, Trudeau would regularly scold Canadians and accuse them of Islamophobia.
00:01:23.520During the height of COVID, when we learned that the communist Chinese government hid the extent of the virus,
00:01:29.100we also learned that the virus likely leaked from a virology lab in Wuhan.
00:01:33.580Well, Trudeau government once again accused Canadians, scolded Canadians, and told us that we were stoking anti-Chinese bigotry.
00:01:41.760Well, the latest conflict in Ukraine has seen something totally different from Justin Trudeau.
00:01:47.040We haven't heard any of that from our prime minister.
00:01:50.260Instead, we've heard him blame Russians, and he's made no attempt whatsoever to separate the Putin regime from the peaceful and good-hearted people of Russia.
00:03:54.880And because of the simple fact that he's Russian.
00:04:00.040And, you know, what makes this extraordinary is that the pianist had actually come out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
00:04:10.480And so when a media organization reached out to the Orchestra to get their views on this,
00:04:19.580the spokesperson said that it would be inappropriate for Malefeeve to perform at this time.
00:04:27.860And what I want to say is that this is just, you know, a spate of cancellations that we've seen recently since the conflict broke out.
00:04:36.200We've seen Russian artists, conductors, I've seen, this has been especially bad in the cultural, in the arts sector, more than anywhere else.
00:04:47.640I mean, you've seen countries sanction Russia, they've weaponized finance, they have, countries have suspended their operations in Russia, you've seen that.
00:04:58.520But for some reason, it seems to be especially bad in the arts and cultural, classical music world, whether it's museums or orchestras around the world, especially in Europe and the US and Canada.
00:05:14.260And so what's going on here is that it's basically open season on anyone who's seen as not sufficiently critical of Russia or the invasion,
00:05:28.340or if you choose to stay neutral or you don't want to weigh in on this, you just don't want to be political, you just want to remain as apolitical as possible.
00:05:36.900And there are lots of people like that. There are people who don't want to see an escalation of the conflict.
00:05:41.800You know, they'd rather not take sides. And those people are being punished.
00:05:45.980And it's gotten so ridiculous that there's this one egregious example here in Ottawa of a restaurant called the Moscow Tea Room, I believe it's on Sussex Drive.
00:05:58.000It's very prominent establishment. And the owner is Lebanese Canadian.
00:06:02.620He came, he came to this country, escaping the war in Lebanon.
00:06:06.780He came as a refugee and he's been receiving a spate of hate mails and threatened death threats because they think he's Russian or that he has some kind of a Russian connection by way of this restaurant.
00:06:21.800So it's quite, it's quite stunning what's been happening, but what I'm taken aback by is the fact that our political class has largely remained silent or looked the other way when it's, you know, when, when, when these things have been reported.
00:06:38.500Now, they're usually very quick to condemn this kind of thing and you gave, you, you, you, you, you know, you gave several examples early on.
00:06:47.500You know, when it came to not calling this the Chinese virus, because, you know, that would be seen as offensive to, to, to, to the Chinese people or people of Chinese origin.
00:07:02.500And there are many such examples, but it seems we were almost witnessing a moment in, in, in history right now, a moment right now where it's okay to actually hate on the Russians.
00:07:16.500It's okay to, you know, say anything you want against them.
00:07:20.500And certainly Facebook and Instagram coming out with this, with this policy as, as exposed by Reuters that, that it's, that it should be, it's, it's no longer, it wouldn't violate their terms of conditions to, to inside violence against Russians or Russian soldiers.
00:07:43.500Now, what's interesting is that when the headline first came out, it said Russians in the headline, and then they modified it to Russian soldiers, but the text of the story still says Russians and Russian soldiers.
00:07:54.500And they've, they've, they've kind of, you know, said since that, no, it's not, you know, we, it's Russians, you know, we're, we're still not going to allow hate speech against Russians.
00:08:06.500It's Russians, but you know, the language is pretty vague and the cat is out of the bag at this point. And, and, and, and, and, you know, what's more is that we've also normalized the Azov battalion, which is another extraordinary part of this.
00:08:19.500We've normalized neo-Nazis we've normalized neo-Nazis we like. And, and now these, these, these guys are menacing. They're by all accounts, you know, far right and anti-Semitic, and this has all been well-documented.
00:08:38.500The Canadian military has in fact trained the Azov battalion. The Azov battalion is not some French group. They're part of the Ukrainian National Guard and a very significant part of the Ukrainian National Guard.
00:08:51.500But any, you know, if you, if you were to point to the Azov battalion and, and, and the problems they pose, you know, I, one receives a lot of pushback saying, well, you know, it's just a small fringe and they don't really represent, you know,
00:09:08.500anything much beyond the fact that they're just a small far right fringe group, but that's not correct. They're, they're very prominent on the, on Ukrainian streets, any, any.
00:09:20.500And, you know, it was thanks to the mainstream media that we know of the Azov battalion and they were reporting on the Azov battalion before the conflict broke out.
00:09:31.500You know, it was, they were, they were rightly reporting on them and, and, and, and rightly exposing them for what they, what they are.
00:09:38.500But what we're seeing right now is an attempt to basically whitewash them.
00:09:43.500You, you, you, you know, and, and that's quite troubling and, and scary because we've now reached a point where we were basically normalizing these things because, because they're on our side essentially.
00:10:01.500Well, it's, it's really wild. The extent of it. I know this is sort of a rabbit hole to go down, but it was the legacy media at one point that was ringing the alarm bell about the rise of the far right in Eastern Europe.
00:10:12.500I didn't pay much attention to it, to be honest at the time, because we hear the legacy media cry wolf so frequently about the far right in North America.
00:10:21.500And it's usually just a bunch of nothing, right?
00:10:24.500They accuse Jewish journalist Ezra Levant of being a far right.
00:10:29.500Um, and, and that's sort of laughable given that again, he, he's Jewish and he's, he's been a long time free speech crusader.
00:10:36.500Um, however, I, I have started to look down this, uh, documented by the legacy media picked up a lot by left wing media outlets and left wing groups.
00:10:45.500There was a long piece in, uh, a weekly magazine called the nation, um, which happens to be the U S's longest running, uh, weekly newsletter.
00:10:54.500It was, uh, started in 1865 by a group of abolitionists who were opposed to slavery.
00:10:59.500Um, anyway, they're, they're a progressive outlet and they, they wrote about an individual called Andre Paraby.
00:11:04.500I had a piece about him in true north this morning.
00:11:07.500And, uh, basically this guy was a neo-Nazi in the 1990s.
00:11:12.500He was, uh, created a far right political party, a racist ultra nationalist party, uh, limited to, uh, white Ukrainians only.
00:11:21.500So, so we're talking about real far right Nazi like racism.
00:11:25.500He, he styled the party after Hitler's Nazi party.
00:11:28.500He even called it the, uh, social nationalist party, a sort of take on the national socialist party,
00:11:33.500which creates, uh, which was a formation of the Nazi party in Nazi Germany.
00:11:38.500Anyways, uh, this guy was a part of the mainstream Ukrainian government.
00:11:41.500He was a speaker of the legislative house.
00:11:43.500He met frequently with Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland.
00:11:46.500Chrystia Freeland, uh, you know, posted pictures of herself with this guy on her Facebook page, on the embassy website.
00:11:53.500Uh, all you have to do is just Google this guy to find pictures of him wearing Nazi style uniforms.
00:11:59.500Um, you know, talking about racial nationalism.
00:12:02.500Um, founding this party that remains the ultra right party in Ukraine.
00:12:07.500And it's all kind of hidden in plain sight, uh, Rupa.
00:12:10.500And, and yet no one's really holding our politicians accountable.
00:12:16.500The fact that, uh, Chrystia Freeland was seen holding a Nazi banner and the media just sort of, uh, whitewashed it and said it was, it was, it wasn't really blood and soil.
00:12:25.500It meant something different and, and coming up with a bizarre explanation.
00:12:29.500Um, so, uh, you know, let's, let's pivot and talk a little bit about Chrystia Freeland.
00:12:34.500Uh, you know, why is it that the media and the Canadian government is so dead set on whitewashing Ukraine, telling us that they are a, uh, you know, pristine Western liberal democracy.
00:12:46.500And that they are, uh, you know, worthy of us perhaps getting involved in, in a, in a catastrophic war on the other side of the world.
00:12:55.500Uh, you w what do you think is behind all of this?
00:13:01.500I, um, do think that this, the stakes are very high here for the West, right?
00:13:06.500They see, and, and it is very high for Russia.
00:13:08.500Um, the conflict, I think a lot of people don't really understand what this conflict really is about.
00:13:14.500They've, uh, bought the narrative that it is a good versus evil.
00:13:18.500Uh, um, um, you know, it's been set up as a good versus evil thing, us versus them.
00:13:24.500Um, and that's mainly, um, um, a narrative that has come out from the West.
00:13:29.500And a lot of people just have bought into it, but I, I bet, you know, if you stop the average person on the street and ask them, well, what do you think this conflict really is about?
00:13:37.500Why do you think Russia's doing what it's doing?
00:13:39.500Why, why is the West responding the way it's responding?
00:13:42.500I don't think anybody really understands what NATO is about or what NATO's relevance was after the Cold War ended.
00:13:49.500Um, and, and spheres of influence, ask anybody, what does fear, a sphere of influence mean to you?
00:13:56.500Um, and, uh, and would the U U S be comfortable if there were nukes pointing at it from Mexico or Canada?
00:14:02.500Um, or, and that's, that's basically what Russia has been see, uh, saying for, uh, for, for about a decade or more.
00:14:11.500Um, since about 2005, I think when Vladimir Putin at that famous Munich security conference, uh, made it very clear that, uh, you know, Ukraine was Russia's fear of influence.
00:14:22.500Uh, these are details that the average person just doesn't understand.
00:14:26.500So we've seen what we're seeing is a replay of, um, of, uh, very much in place during the, um, um, uh, shortly after 9 11.
00:14:39.500Uh, we didn't have social media at that time.
00:14:41.500Uh, but a lot of the media coverage was about good versus evil, uh, us versus them, uh, with us or against us, as George Bush famously said.
00:14:50.500And, and that's exactly what is going on right now.
00:14:54.500Uh, but what is extraordinary about this is that it's happening in the era of social media.
00:14:58.500Um, and, uh, and you would think that, you know, there, there are people who are questioning this narrative, but by and large, the mainstream media's, um, bought into this us versus them.
00:15:10.500They, they, they, you know, you're seeing, uh, them towing the government line, uh, looking at government press, uh, pointing to government press.
00:15:19.500Uh, to say, Hey, you know, uh, you're, you know, this is a fact check using a government press release and a fact check saying, well, that's why this, this story is wrong because the government said so.
00:15:31.500Now, when was the last time you, you know, you accepted everything a government said with, you know, and, and, and, you know, didn't question it or challenge it, challenge it enough.
00:15:40.500And that's, what's going on right now.
00:15:42.500So for, for our politicians, I think, you know, the, the, they have a particular interest here to ensure that we're going on.
00:15:48.500We're going to have a particular interest here to ensure that this narrative continues, um, that, that this narrative, there isn't pushback against this narrative.
00:15:56.500And I think that's what we're seeing with the likes of, um, uh, Christian Freeland or Justin Trudeau.
00:16:02.500Uh, they're trying to normalize this, you know, good versus evil battle.
00:16:06.500Um, and, and so anything, um, that was bad about Ukraine, which, which in fact, the legacy media, the mainstream media exposed all of these things.
00:16:14.500Uh, Zelensky was, uh, he shows up in the Panama papers.
00:16:18.500For example, Zelensky shut down the Kiev post, uh, because the Kiev post was going after Zelensky.
00:16:25.500Uh, and this happened just less than a year ago, last fall, back in November, the Kiev posts were shut down.
00:16:31.500And the editor of the Kiev post said, um, we've gone through all kinds of presidents, all kinds of ruling dispensations, but we've never had, we've never had to shut down.
00:17:08.500Uh, Canada gave, um, I think, uh, two or three.
00:17:11.500Um, I think, uh, $200,000 back in December and was again reported in the mainstream media.
00:17:17.500It was reported by the globe and mail.
00:17:19.500Uh, we're not, so, you know, so when we, when we, uh, accept what is coming out of Kiev independent, um, and, and a lot of people are, they're just, they just retweet these new, uh, these tweets, uh, you know, without challenging it in the tiniest bit, you have to wonder what, you know, what, what that is about.
00:17:40.500Um, uh, if the Russians are capable of propaganda, uh, the Ukrainians are also capable of propaganda.
00:17:48.500Um, and so we're seeing, uh, you know, a normalization of these very, um, uh, unsavory aspects, uh, whitewashing of, uh, Ukraine's past whitewashing of this conflict.
00:18:01.500Uh, you know, no one's actually, um, actually thinking clearly through these issues.
00:18:07.500We're just because I think it's easier for the brain to process this as binaries, uh, moral binaries.
00:18:12.500And, and that's where we're at right now.
00:18:15.500Well, there isn't a journalist in the world that Dustin Trudeau won't buy out and won't pay apparently because he's willing to pay off the Canadian media.
00:18:22.500And apparently he's willing to fund Ukrainian, uh, media as well.
00:18:26.500It seems like we're making so many of the same mistakes Rupa that we did after 9-11 that led us to incredibly, uh, horrific bloodshed in, in the Middle East.
00:18:35.500And, and, uh, you know, usually you would want to be skeptical and hold both sides accountable.
00:18:41.500Uh, we, we saw last week, uh, the Ukrainians, uh, uh, pulling out a, a prisoner of war, uh, allegedly.
00:18:49.500And, and, and, you know, having him answer questions from the media and sort of repeat these, uh, confessions saying I was wrong and, and now I've seen the light.
00:18:57.500Um, this is specifically banned in the Geneva Convention.
00:19:01.500You're not supposed to use prisoners of war for propaganda purposes.
00:19:05.500And yet we had the media in Canada and all over the world gleefully, uh, sharing this video of this soldier.
00:19:11.500Um, I, I, I, I pointed out as many did that these were, this contravenes the Geneva Convention, uh, on the treatment of war prisoners.
00:19:20.500And, uh, you know, David Akin, the, uh, the, uh, uh, you know, seasoned journalist and a bureau chief for Global News, uh, accused me of pearl clutching.
00:19:29.500So apparently, uh, the Geneva Convention, anyone who cares about the Geneva Convention is, is simply, uh,
00:19:36.500There's a broader issue here though, Rupa, which is that we're not properly holding our politicians to account.
00:19:42.500The media just isn't doing the job that it's supposed to.
00:19:45.500Uh, one of the other pieces, uh, that you wrote is really interesting.
00:19:47.500I know this is a year old, but people keep sending it to me.
00:19:50.500And there's a lot of public interest around the World Economic Forum and Chrysia Freeland's role with it.
00:19:56.500Because, you know, she's the finance minister of Canada.
00:19:59.500So first of all, she's supposed to be holding a domestic portfolio, which would,
00:20:03.500which would mean that she should be in Canada focused on keeping Canada's, uh, budget balanced or keeping our finances in order.
00:20:10.500For some reason, she's in Europe sort of taking the lead as if she was still the foreign affairs minister, which she is not.
00:20:16.500Uh, but, but also the fact that she sits on the board of this wonky organization that calls for all kinds of crazy leftist schemes.
00:20:24.500Now, I know that there's a lot of conspiracy theories around the World Economic Forum.
00:20:28.500Uh, you have a great line in the piece where you say there's no need to invent conspiracy theories.
00:20:31.500The attempt to, the attempt by global elites to subvert local democracy is fully on and in plain view.
00:20:38.500Sometimes I wonder, I've done a lot of research on Chrysia Freeland lately, uh, learning about her past, learning about the involvement, uh, in Ukraine that she's had over the years.
00:21:05.500Her mother helped draft that country's constitution after it, uh, became independent from the USSR in the nineties.
00:21:11.500So she's deeply involved in, in, in Ukraine as is her, her whole family.
00:21:16.500That's where she immigrated from or her, her, her ancestors immigrated from.
00:21:19.500Uh, tell us a little bit about the World Economic Forum and Chrysia Freeland's role there, why that concerns you.
00:21:24.500And, and, and let's talk a little bit about, uh, whether or not there's a conflict of interest and why there isn't more scrutiny of Chrysia Freeland, who's the deputy prime minister of the finance minister, the most important female politician, probably the most powerful woman in all of Canada.
00:21:38.500And yet the media can't be bothered, um, to, you know, scrutinize her or try to hold her accountable in any way, shape or form.
00:21:45.500Well, so the World Economic Forum is this glitzy, um, um, uh, gathering of, uh, of, uh, the who's who of the, you know, the world of finance politics, uh, you name it.
00:21:59.500Um, and you know, they've been meeting at this Swiss ski resort of, uh, of Davos since, I think, since 1971.
00:22:08.500And it's, it was created by the, the German academic, uh, uh, and entrepreneur Klaus Schwab.
00:22:14.500Um, and what, what, um, what is interesting about Chrysia Freeland's connection to the World Economic Forum is that Chrysia Freeland used to be a big critic of the World Economic Forum.
00:22:26.500In fact, she wrote a book about the World Economic Forum, um, um, um, or she wrote a book about the rise of the new global super rich, um, and, and the fall of everyone else.
00:22:37.500That's what it was called, um, plutocrats.
00:22:39.500Um, and, and she said that, um, that, you know, an invitation to Davos, um, quoting from her book, marks an aspiring plutocrat's arrival on the international scene.
00:22:51.500When she wrote this book and she wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian, uh, uh, Chrysia Freeland joked that, you know, after her book was published, um, she was disinvited to all of the dinner parties at Davos.
00:23:06.500From that, that was back in 2015, we now have Chrysia Freeland sitting on the advisory board of the World Economic Forum.
00:23:13.500Um, she also used to sit on the board of the Aspen-Kiev Institute, uh, in Ukraine.
00:23:20.500Um, and, uh, and I believe she resigned from that post, uh, May 2021.
00:23:26.500Um, but, uh, but she was, she was certainly a part of their board, uh, till then.
00:23:31.500Um, and, and what is, what, what I, what I find interesting about this is that, now think about, think about this example, hypothetically.
00:23:41.500Suppose you have the Minister of Health, um, sitting on the board of a big pharma company or a lobby group, um, or, uh, or, or, you know, on behalf of the tobacco company.
00:23:49.500Um, I think at a bare minimum, that would be bad optics, right?
00:23:54.500I, I, I don't think I'd be alone in, um, uh, alone in saying that.
00:23:58.500Um, but for some reason, um, we seem to think that, uh, NGOs are, should be treated differently.
00:24:06.500Um, you know, politicians can't sit on corporate boards while in office, but why should they be allowed to sit, um, on the boards of NGOs?
00:24:14.500Um, and the world economic forum is not just some innocuous non-governmental organization.
00:24:20.500It is built around a very, um, specific and radical ideology, um, and now called the great reset.
00:24:27.500You know, they advocate, uh, for all kinds of things like, uh, massive reductions in fossil fuel use, uh, prioritizing climate change.
00:24:37.500Um, how climate change should be, should become a core, uh, component of central banking.
00:24:43.500Uh, you know, in a position that our former governor here, Mark Carney, uh, potential, uh, future, uh, prime minister, uh, also believes in this very strongly.
00:24:56.500And I, I believe he's also on the board of the world economic forum.
00:24:59.500Um, um, and, and these, these policy positions, um, you know, have implications, uh, uh, you know, for a resource rich country like Canada, uh, the, these are going to have major consequences.
00:25:12.500Um, so what it's bad optics, um, to be on the board of these private organizations.
00:25:20.500Um, but, uh, she resigned, Freeland resigned from one, but she still remains on the other.
00:25:26.500Um, and, and given that she was a vociferous critic of the world economic forum, uh, she went from that to being an insider herself.
00:25:36.500Plutocrats was a, was a critique of these, of these people, and now she's rubbing shoulders with them and wants to be part of it.
00:25:41.500There's a really infamous, uh, image that the world economic forum put out.
00:25:45.500This has become a meme on the internet because it's so absurd, but it has a picture of a guy smiling and it says, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
00:25:53.500Which, uh, you know, it perfectly sums up, first of all, what these people are after.
00:25:58.500You know, they don't, they want everyone to do ride sharing.
00:26:42.500Um, where he talks about how he's infiltrated cabinets, including the Canadian cabinet.
00:26:47.500But, um, what we are very proud of now is the young generation, like, uh, Prime Minister Trudeau, um, President of, of, uh, Argentina and so on.
00:27:03.500So, yesterday I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau.
00:27:09.500And I know that half of this cabinet, or even more half of, uh, half of this cabinet are for our, actually, young global leaders of the world.
00:27:23.500So, a couple of weeks ago, we had a conservative MP, Colin Carey, ask about this.
00:27:29.500And it was, this question was ruled out on a port of order.
00:27:32.500An NDP MP accused him of disinformation and, and pushing conspiracy theories.
00:27:38.500So, why is it that, again, in our political class, in our media class, we're not even allowed to ask questions of the most powerful people in the world who are actively trying to push an agenda onto us.
00:27:49.500We can't ask questions about it because we're dismissed as disinformation and conspiracy theories.
00:27:53.500Everything is being dismissed as disinformation, uh, and conspiracy theory these days.
00:27:58.500And it is basically, um, it puts an end to the conversation, right?
00:28:03.500Um, and, uh, it's a very, um, very insidious, um, uh, um, attempt at, uh, basically try to silence, um, um, you know, it has a chilling effect on free speech.
00:28:15.500Uh, and, uh, and then that's what's going on here.
00:28:22.500I mean, there are conspiracy theories about Klaus Schwab.
00:28:24.500I don't, I don't buy into those conspiracy conspiracy theories.
00:28:28.500My problem is that, um, you know, when you look at the advisory board of the world economic forum, there's only one politician on there.
00:28:35.500And that's Christian Freeland, uh, where, where the, um, uh, you know, where, where the Brits were, where the Americans, um, I'm talking about the advisory board.
00:28:45.500I'm not talking about, uh, previous fellows who became members and, you know, and maybe that page hasn't been updated yet.
00:28:52.500Um, and, and, you know, and those, some of those folks are now serving, uh, uh, uh, you know, they're politicians now.
00:28:59.500So I'm not talking about those people.
00:29:00.500I'm talking about the advisory board, which is a very powerful body.
00:29:03.500And, um, and, and I think at the very least, I think, uh, you know, we, uh, an explanation is in order.
00:29:13.500Why does the finance minister of Canada sit on this, um, powerful, uh, advisory board of the world economic forum?
00:29:40.500Um, and these are legitimate questions.
00:29:42.500And I think, I think, and these are uncomfortable questions.
00:29:46.500Perhaps that's why they're, uh, I find that when people can't answer these questions and it makes them uncomfortable, it, you know, and they don't want to go down this rabbit hole.
00:29:55.500Um, they're, they're, uh, you know, they just, um, um, silence you and they try to silence you and they call, uh, call you, um, and they, they accuse you of spreading disinformation, but it's not disinformation.
00:30:06.500These are very important questions and we need to continue asking them.
00:30:10.500Uh, the fact of the matter, um, um, uh, Candace is that, um, you know, I happened to find this accidentally.
00:30:18.500I was actually going to be writing a bland piece about Davos and what they were going to be, uh, saying and, you know, in the context of COVID and I was just, just routinely just going through the advisory board.
00:30:29.500And I was shocked, you know, to see the finance minister of Canada on their list on the advisory board.
00:30:35.500The media had, you know, she's been on the advisory board for, I think since 2018, the media had all of that time.
00:30:44.500To point this out, uh, or for the fact that she was on the Kiev, uh, Aspen, uh, uh, uh, Institute in Kiev.
00:30:52.500Um, you know, they, they had ample time to point this out, but, you know, I, I believe nobody did until I wrote this piece.
00:30:58.500And, um, and I was actually quite taken aback by the reaction to it because a lot of people hadn't, they weren't aware of it simply.
00:31:07.500And also the fact that she resigned from the Aspen Institute, that should have also been, uh, newsworthy.
00:31:12.500I think, I think it should have been pointed out.
00:31:14.500Why was the finance minister, someone who has close personal ties to Ukraine, extremely close personal ties to Ukraine.
00:31:22.500Um, you know, why, why was she on this board until recently?
00:31:26.500Uh, and these are questions that we're not raising because we, um, are, I think large sections of the media, the political class, um, uh, really don't want to go, go here for some reason.
00:31:39.500Um, because it might, I, maybe it's lazy.
00:31:44.500You know, I don't want to, I don't want to assume that everybody here, uh, you know, is sinister and, you know, and I, you know, I don't want to think that the whole, that everything is a conspiracy theory.
00:31:53.500I think part of this is actually laziness.
00:31:55.500I think a lot of people just don't want to, um, pursue these topics.
00:31:59.500You know, they're just happy with, you know, just recording just verbatim government press releases and, uh, you know, and, and, and, and pointing to those as facts, uh, without actually questioning any of that.
00:32:12.500Um, so part of it is laziness and I think part of it is also that some people have just bought into this narrative, uh, and they would, uh, and, and, and, and so asking these questions would actually challenge that narrative.
00:32:24.500Well, and we also know that, uh, Chrystia Freeland's office particularly is very active in calling newsrooms and demanding corrections and changing stories.
00:32:33.500Because we, we, we saw that come out of iPolitics when, uh, one of their young reporters Rachel Emmanuel, who we had on the program yesterday, uh, she talked about how she wrote a critical piece of Freeland.
00:32:42.500Freeland's office called, yelled at her editor to the point where the editor unilaterally went and changed the story completely without getting her approval.
00:32:49.500Um, that's the kind of sway that Freeland and her team have in Ottawa, that they can just call a newsroom, yell at them.
00:32:56.500And the story will magically change into a pro Chrystia Freeland, uh, piece.
00:33:01.500You know, when you have someone like Schwab openly saying that he has infiltrated the government, that that's very, um, strong language to use.
00:33:08.500And I think that journalists, it's, it's probably a combination of, of the things you talked about, laziness, um, complicity, a little bit of political interference.
00:33:17.500Um, but really the outcome is that we have a media in Canada that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
00:33:22.500It doesn't hold powerful people like Chrystia Freeland to account.
00:33:26.500Well, Rupa, we're so grateful that you have your voice in the National Post and that you, uh, are doing your bit to, uh, keep the legacy media honest.
00:33:34.500Uh, we appreciate hearing from you and thank you so much.