Juno News - Justin Trudeau is determined to censor the internet (Feat. Ezra Levant)

00:00:00.000 Why is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau so determined to censor the internet?

00:00:04.440 Why is trampling on free speech such a high priority for this government?

00:00:07.920 I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:21.340 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the show.

00:00:23.880 So as you've probably seen, the Trudeau government is ramping up its efforts to

00:00:27.260 ban things that they don't like, namely things that are said online. So the dreadful policies

00:00:32.460 of the last Parliament Bill C-10 and C-36, thankfully those died when Justin Trudeau

00:00:37.480 selfishly called an election in the fall of 2021. He thought he was going to get a majority

00:00:41.460 government. He didn't get one. However, now he has a de facto majority because he is in alignment

00:00:46.760 with Jagmeet Singh and the NDP. And so these online censorship bills are back and they're worse than

00:00:53.400 they were before. So joining me today to discuss the government's insistence on censorship,

00:00:58.480 I'm pleased to be joined today by Ezra Levant. Ezra is the founder and CEO of Rebel News and the host

00:01:03.320 of The Ezra Levant Show. He's Canada's foremost free speech champion. He's often single-handedly

00:01:08.360 led the charge and fought back against overzealous government intrusions. Ezra,

00:01:13.100 thank you so much for joining us. It's great to have you.

00:01:15.620 Well, thanks very much. A pleasure to be here.

00:01:18.320 So can you help us understand where we are with the legislation? I know there's two new pieces of

00:01:26.660 legislation being put forth. They're called Bill C-11 and C-18. And then we also, we're still waiting

00:01:33.240 for the follow-up to Bill C-36. So what do you make of these bills? What's the worst part of them?

00:01:40.580 And do you think that something else worse is even yet to come?

00:01:45.020 Oh yeah, the worst is yet to come. And I know that sounds like a laughable tagline,

00:01:49.580 sort of like an anti-Disney world, the world's unhappiest place. But it's bizarre to me just how

00:01:55.700 much energy and effort the Trudeau government is putting into censorship of the media. I mean,

00:02:00.380 you would think just looking around the world, there are a hundred things that are more important to

00:02:06.060 the quality of life for Canadians, whether it's inflation, price of gas, the war in Ukraine,

00:02:10.760 you know, taxation, carbon tax. I can think of a hundred things more relevant and more demanded

00:02:18.300 by Canadian citizens. Censoring the internet, deciding for people what they can or can't see

00:02:24.840 wouldn't even be on the list. That's not a benefit at all. That's a cost, something that none of us want.

00:02:31.400 But it's what Trudeau wants, because he wants more and more control over the national discourse.

00:02:39.040 And he's gotten a lot of it through carrot. In a carrot and stick choice, he's used a carrot

00:02:43.900 using media subsidies and insider access. And, you know, basically he either owns through the CBC

00:02:52.420 or rents through his media subsidy more than 99% of the media in this country. And I know it's that

00:03:00.020 number because right before the last election, we got an access to information document showing

00:03:05.360 a secret $61 million payment from Trudeau to different media companies. So we made the request,

00:03:12.920 can we see the list of media companies? Over 1,500, I didn't know there were 1,500 news media

00:03:19.940 companies in Canada got a special grant from Trudeau on the eve of the election. None of those 1,500

00:03:26.000 companies reported that they got the grant. So when you own the CBC, which is larger than all other

00:03:31.600 news media combined, and when you rent the other 1,500, the handful of independent people left,

00:03:38.780 Rebel News, True North. I mean, you can almost count them on one hand's fingers.

00:03:43.580 You think, well, why is he so obsessed with smashing down those few, few dissonance? And it

00:03:49.300 makes me think of this, Candace. I don't know if you've ever heard of something called the

00:03:52.520 ASH Conformity Experiment, A-S-C-H. Have you heard of that? It was a test, a psychological test 0.85

00:04:00.480 done in the aftermath of the Second World War. It's often spoken of in association with the

00:04:08.040 Milgram Experiment. I bet you've heard of the Milgram Experiment. It's when someone in a white 1.00

00:04:13.320 lab coat says to someone, electrocute the guy in the other room because you got a question wrong.

00:04:19.220 Don't worry. I'm wearing a white lab coat. I'll take responsibility. That shocking experiment

00:04:25.020 called the Milgram Experiment showed that most people were willing to inflict pain on another

00:04:29.580 person if someone in authority told them it was the right thing to do and said they'd take

00:04:33.920 responsibility. Shocking test called the Milgram Experiment. There was another test in the same

00:04:39.760 vein called the ASH Conformity Test. And what it was, and just give me a minute on it because

00:04:46.520 you'll understand why I'm so focused on this test. I've been thinking about it nonstop through the

00:04:51.800 entire lockdown, by the way, because I see such conformity. I see people doing things that on

00:04:57.420 the face of it would be absurd. People wearing a mask by themselves in their car. I saw someone in

00:05:02.340 a canoe on Lake Louise by themselves, a canoe on Lake Louise wearing a mask. Why would people be such

00:05:07.880 conformists? Well, the ASH Conformity Test helps us understand. There were five people in a room and they

00:05:13.300 were shown a line and then a group of three lines of different length. And they were asked the child's

00:05:18.380 question, this line is the same length as which of these three? And most of the time, everyone gave

00:05:25.380 the right answer. But four of the five people in the crowd were in on it. So every once in a while,

00:05:31.480 they would all give the same wrong answer, Candace. They would all say this long line is the same

00:05:37.480 height as this short line. And four out of the five people were in on it. But the one naive

00:05:42.320 experimenter would say, huh? You guys are crazy. That's not the same length. But the ASH Conformity 1.00

00:05:48.940 Test found 37% of the time, the person who wasn't in on it would go along with the mob because he

00:05:58.500 didn't want to make a fuss. He didn't want to be an outlier. He didn't want to be a nonconformist.

00:06:02.400 37% of the time, people would deny what they saw with their eyes and repeat a lie just to go along

00:06:09.440 to get along. But here's the second part of the ASH Conformity Test. If that one naive person was

00:06:16.760 given a confederate, that is, when the group went crazy and said the short line was actually the

00:06:23.540 medium line, if one other person in the room said, no, no, no, it's that one that's the same length.

00:06:32.460 And they all had to sort of say their answer out loud one after the other. If a single other person

00:06:37.240 in the room was telling the truth, that meant that the naive test subject, he spoke the truth 95% of

00:06:46.380 the time. So his compliance, his conformity fell from 37% to 5% with a single other sane person in the

00:06:55.000 room. Sorry for taking up so much time. It's a wonderful experiment that teaches us so much

00:07:00.300 about conformity. And so I come back to your question at great length. I'm sorry.

00:07:07.500 Why is it necessary to stomp out little Rebel News, little True North, little Spencer Fernando,

00:07:14.620 little Western Standard Online, all these little groups? I mean, I love them all. I love you guys.

00:07:18.940 I love Rebel News. But even though we're growing, we're still a fraction of the size of the Toronto

00:07:24.080 Star, which has a million circulation every day, or the CBC, we're still a fraction of their size.

00:07:29.840 So why is he obsessed with smashing us? It is because if there is a single person telling the

00:07:34.780 truth, speaking truth to power, saying the other side of the story, being a dissident, and someone

00:07:39.720 sees that, they say, okay, good, I'm not crazy. I don't have to go along with it. I'm not mad.

00:07:45.220 And whether it's on the carbon tax, or open borders immigration, or lockdowns, or whatever it is,

00:07:52.300 if there's one truth teller, and I think you guys do a lot of truth telling in True North,

00:07:56.260 that inspires, gives courage to people. That's what the Ash Conformity Test taught us.

00:08:00.720 And that's why the last holdouts, those last 1% of journalists are the worst in the world to Trudeau,

00:08:08.620 because our very existent proves a lie to the rest of the pack. That's why he's obsessed.

00:08:15.020 Well, that's such an interesting and wonderful analogy. I'm glad that you brought it to my

00:08:18.540 attention, because I think that's probably part of the reason why people like me felt so much hope

00:08:23.060 from the trucker convoy. Because it was like, here is a group of people who are doing, like you said,

00:08:28.820 what that one, you know, the one person who was saying, no, that's the wrong length, that's the

00:08:32.220 wrong line. And then you knew 95% of the time, the people, the person in the room said the right

00:08:37.040 thing. To me, that was the moment in Canada. And I think I've heard from people all over the world

00:08:42.660 that talk about the truckers as sort of a tipping point to the end of the pandemic, that so many people

00:08:47.060 are now saying enough is enough. I still, I want to kind of go back though, Ezra, to Justin Trudeau

00:08:53.840 and his obsession, because even when he was in Europe, he was talking about how important it is

00:08:59.100 in Western liberal democracies to stamp out disinformation, misinformation. These are kind

00:09:04.840 of the latest, you know, words that the left loves to use to describe things that they basically stories

00:09:10.800 that they don't like things like the Hunter Biden laptop story, which they said has all the hallmarks

00:09:14.980 of Russian disinformation during the election, the US presidential election 2020. They basically

00:09:19.660 banned that story. And lo and behold, a year later, the New York Times is reporting that it is in fact

00:09:24.800 accurate. It's sort of like taking cancel culture and legislating it. And you kind of answered this

00:09:31.140 question in your last explanation. But Justin Trudeau is doing something truly extreme by trying to

00:09:37.260 regulate algorithms on websites like on apps and sites like YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and

00:09:43.380 doing things that really enter us into authoritarian anti free speech territory. Again, like, why isn't

00:09:50.280 there more pushback? Why isn't this the biggest story in the country? Why isn't? Why aren't there a few

00:09:54.460 people at least in the legacy media saying, Hey, guys, this isn't normal stuff for Western liberal

00:09:59.160 democracy. And to your point earlier, there's 100 other issues that are more important in Canada. And yet, this

00:10:04.860 is what we have a government that's obsessed with.

00:10:06.940 Yeah, you're right. You know, I mean, imagine if this were five years ago, and it was Stephen Harper,

00:10:11.220 or even a couple years ago, and this was Donald Trump saying, I'm going to commandeer YouTube,

00:10:15.980 Google, Facebook, Instagram, and I'm going to have them boost what I want and de boost what I don't

00:10:22.100 like. And Pablo Rodriguez, the new heritage minister last week announced that if there is fake news out

00:10:27.640 there, there's a $15 million penalty. Well, one man's fake news is the other man's contrarian take.

00:10:34.100 What's fake news other than news your side doesn't like. So imagine if Stephen Harper or Donald Trump

00:10:40.340 or some conservative has said, I'm going to commandeer the press, it would have been apoplexy.

00:10:44.640 But these are this is Trudeau, the, you know, the precious one. And you've had five years of

00:10:50.260 obedience conditioning in the media. I saw Pablo Rodriguez's press conference last week about this,

00:10:56.600 where he was rolling out this massive incursion into freedom, setting up these bizarre and intricate

00:11:03.460 panels and bodies and the QCJO qualified Canadian journalist organization, that he'll have a panel

00:11:12.560 that'll decide whether journalists are qualified to get government friendship or whatever. And the

00:11:19.460 journalists who were there, first of all, they were screened, only quote, accredited journalists were

00:11:23.720 even allowed to get close to the saint to administer. But their questions were not about, what are you

00:11:29.280 doing? This is immoral. This is contrary to the charter. This is a violation of the independence

00:11:33.000 of the media. It's a separation of, you know, none of the questions were like that. They were all sort

00:11:37.880 of technical questions, as if, as if they were getting a new employee manual and asking technical

00:11:43.940 questions like, okay, so how much vacation time do I have now? Or, or what, you know, like their

00:11:49.760 questions were technocratic questions. They have completely bought in to the mentality that they're sort of

00:11:55.600 stenographers. They're part of this system. In fact, one of the questions, I don't know if you saw this,

00:11:59.940 is one of the media parties said, will Rebel News be allowed to get this qualified Canadian journalist

00:12:05.680 organization accreditation? Like they're obsessed again with the holdouts who aren't in on it. And

00:12:11.740 that's another thing. It's, I'll use another analogy. It's, it's a group of people who are codependent or

00:12:16.260 who are bad influences on each other, whether it's drugs or alcohol. And if one of them pulls out and

00:12:21.320 says, guys, I'm getting out of this and I'm going to go straight, I'm going to go sober, I'm not going

00:12:26.540 to hang out with you guys. I got to change my friends because you guys are bad influence on me

00:12:30.820 and I don't want to live that life. That guy who breaks out and leaves, everyone hates him

00:12:35.000 because it's proof that you could break out and leave. And so why does the media party hate True

00:12:40.960 North? They hate True North. They're really mean to you, by the way. I mean, they despise me. Why?

00:12:46.200 Because we prove you can do it without being an obedient, submissive stenographer. And our very

00:12:51.900 fact that we broke away and we refused to take the dough is, is shines back at them like a mirror

00:12:58.480 showing them that they did not have to take the money. And it's, I don't know, I find it deeply

00:13:04.500 depressing. Justin Trudeau has spent his whole life protected in bubble wrap. He had his dad's lawyers

00:13:13.920 and accountants manage a trust fund for him. I think until he was 40, like he never paid a bill

00:13:18.920 and he was not in charge of his own. I think Pierre Trudeau made Justin wait till I think he was 35

00:13:24.200 or 40 before he gave him his inheritance. So there was this retinue of financial servants and lawyers

00:13:29.240 always getting True out of a pickle. I want to tell you, and his name and his handsome looks and his

00:13:35.760 connections got him out of everything. Can I tell you a quick anecdote? I know I'm taking up all your time.

00:13:39.520 I'm going to tell you this story about the time I very first met Justin Trudeau. And this was,

00:13:44.380 I don't know, 20 years ago. And I was in a very schmancy restaurant in Toronto called Sassafras

00:13:50.640 with Andrew Coyne. We were buddies back then. And we were in this fanciest place in,

00:13:55.740 in Yorkville. And we looked down and there's a booth there and who is smiles and drinking and just

00:14:03.600 chatting with the ladies on his phone. But Justin Trudeau and Andrew Coyne and him are related by

00:14:07.960 marriage or whatever. So we get up and go and say hello. And Andrew Coyne, the skeptical, cynical,

00:14:14.500 hard-bitten commentator, I've never seen him be so fawning and obsequious in my life. And Justin

00:14:22.880 Trudeau, it was almost like Kiss My Ring. And I just, I'd never met Justin Trudeau before, but that was his

00:14:29.500 life. His life was, you know, chatting with the ladies, gorgeous meals paid for by someone else,

00:14:38.500 everyone coming to bend the knee to the prince. His entire life has been surrounded by people who will

00:14:45.420 never say no to him. Jody Wilson-Raybould was the first one who made the error of saying no to him

00:14:50.160 and was sacked. And so I tell you that he cannot handle criticisms because he's never had it.

00:14:58.760 Everyone always says yes to him. And so the fact that some grubby, unqualified journalist would

00:15:04.880 dare to say, and the fact that those European Parliament, remember those MEPs in Europe who

00:15:09.500 stood up and scorched him, more scorchy than anything our Canadian MPs would do? He was stunned by that

00:15:15.680 because that never has been able to penetrate into his inner sanctum. He does not have any

00:15:22.340 internal dissidence. You know, Lincoln said a team of rivals, you know, have a rollicking internal

00:15:29.460 debate, allow people to criticize you and then finally make a decision. Trudeau does not have

00:15:33.860 a rollicking internal debate. There is no dissidence allowed. And he does very poorly with criticism,

00:15:42.260 which is another reason he tries to ban journalists from his press conferences.

00:15:45.680 I think Justin Trudeau meant it when he said communist China was his, the country he most

00:15:51.760 admires. He meant it when he gave the eulogy to Fidel Castro that was so shocking. Half of the

00:15:59.300 American Senate was appalled by it. I think Pierre Trudeau meant it when he said communist Siberia was the

00:16:06.480 land of the future. I think it's time to believe Justin Trudeau when he says he admires dictatorships.

00:16:11.040 Well, he certainly does have thin skin. And that anecdote doesn't surprise me at all. Just

00:16:17.700 my observations of Trudeau and the way that he's treated by the media. One of the things,

00:16:23.540 oh, and just to your point earlier that you made that the idea of fake news is completely

00:16:27.660 subjective. At one point, Ezra, I wrote a column for the Toronto Sun with my perspective on carbon

00:16:34.560 taxes. And Catherine McKenna, who was at the time the environment minister, tweeted that it was fake

00:16:40.040 news. She said, don't read this, it's fake news. And so even the language that they use, maybe she

00:16:44.680 was just saying that tongue-in-cheek or in jest because she disagreed with my analysis in an opinion

00:16:50.280 column. But the idea that they just throw that term around to news that they don't want, and now

00:16:55.560 they have legislation to follow up, it really, really doesn't go hand in hand with a free society.

00:17:01.560 I want to ask you specifically about this new bill, Bill C-18, an online news act that ensures

00:17:08.220 that news media and journalists receive fair compensation, what they call fair compensation

00:17:11.800 for their work. And so essentially they are ensuring that all of the tech companies who have

00:17:17.980 basically eaten the lunch of the journalism companies, the media companies, Facebook and

00:17:22.560 Google would now have to start paying legacy media outlets in Canada. You know, right now we have a

00:17:29.400 situation where the government is subsidizing. In the future, we'll have a situation where the

00:17:33.520 government, it's not just government subsidies, but it's government forcing the world's

00:17:36.980 largest tech companies to also pay these journalism companies. It's like, how are independent companies

00:17:43.860 like ours supposed to compete against a double stack deck? And, you know, what do you think of

00:17:49.440 this? It seems to be a pretty clear quid pro quo for the government is going out and doing the

00:17:54.320 lobbying and the dirty work of these media companies by forcing a private tech company to pay them.

00:17:59.900 Oh, you're exactly right. But I should tell you, Facebook, Google and others are already

00:18:04.960 paying and subsidizing journalists around the world. I don't think they're quite at the level

00:18:11.960 of how Trudeau is subsidizing them, but I'd say that probably a quarter of the journalists in Canada

00:18:17.020 already are subsidized by Facebook and Google. And those are not selfless companies. Just the same way

00:18:23.320 that you don't bite the hand that feeds you when it's Trudeau giving you a grant.

00:18:26.800 Who is more powerful in Canada? Is it Justin Trudeau? Or is it Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin? Or

00:18:33.880 the new CEO of Twitter, Parag Agarwal? I put it to you that Google, Facebook, YouTube,

00:18:41.040 these are as powerful as countries and in fact, in some cases, possibly even topple a country. So when

00:18:48.440 they're paying hundreds of millions of dollars to journalists, it's corrupting them to to be less

00:18:54.800 interested in privacy and less interested in bias in Facebook's algorithms. Yes, it's outrageous that

00:19:01.060 Trudeau is robbing these tech companies to pay off journals. Of course, that's outrageous. It's

00:19:06.720 outrageous that Trudeau alone will decide which journalists get the dough and don't. Again,

00:19:12.060 that's that qualified Canadian journalist organization thing that they're talking about.

00:19:16.940 They get to decide. The government is deciding who's a journalist and who isn't. This is a form

00:19:22.160 of media accreditation. Let me back up for a second. There's never been regulation of journalists in

00:19:28.420 Canada. It's not like doctors or lawyers who are regulated by a profession. If you do journalism,

00:19:33.900 you're a journalist. It's an activity. It's like if you cook, you know, if you cook something,

00:19:38.260 you're a cook, you don't need a credential. The government brought in this QCJO, Qualified

00:19:44.300 Canadian Journalism Organization credential a few years ago to start their government programs to

00:19:51.560 give tax credits to some subscribers, things like that. But it's morphing into an actual government

00:19:58.080 media license because without the QCJO, for example, you can't get any of this shakedown money

00:20:05.600 from Facebook and Google. And it's becoming a license. Without the QCJO, I'm sure you won't be

00:20:11.900 allowed to get into the leaders' debates to report. We've been kept out two elections in a row.

00:20:16.140 The government is making a license. And by the way, when they're telling Facebook that there's a

00:20:24.840 $15 million fine for censorship, they know that Facebook will be extremely harsh because they don't

00:20:31.480 want to risk that penalty. Harsher than if the government itself regulated fake news because the

00:20:37.100 government would be subject to a charter challenge or scrutiny. Contracting out censorship to mega tech

00:20:45.180 companies is actually worse than if the government itself censored you. I've been censored by the

00:20:50.200 government many times, but at least I can go to court and I can demand their documents and they're

00:20:55.120 held to the charter of rights. When I'm censored by YouTube or Facebook, they don't even tell me what

00:20:59.880 happened or why. There's no court I can go to and the charter doesn't apply. So if you're Trudeau,

00:21:05.440 you want your dirty work done by Facebook and Google. And I think we're getting into a dark place

00:21:12.260 here. I think the government's to blame. Facebook and Google are no saints either. They're big censors.

00:21:17.000 This will make them worse. But the number one culprit here are the other journalists who were bought off,

00:21:23.760 Candace. It's such an interesting debate. I know conservatives have sort of been dithering over

00:21:29.300 this idea. Well, Facebook and Twitter and Google, they're private companies. So in the U.S., you know,

00:21:34.160 the First Amendment doesn't apply to them. And rather than seeing it for the threat that it is,

00:21:38.920 which is really what you describe, this idea that we live in a social credit system already,

00:21:43.720 where if you have the wrong opinions, you get excommunicated and banished and you no longer

00:21:48.740 can participate. I really don't know which is worse, Ezra, the sort of coercive powers of big tech

00:21:56.600 or the fact that Trudeau is now trying to team up with them. There was a little bit of a little

00:22:02.600 little small bright, small light, small flicker of good news in the big tech world. We learned that

00:22:10.720 Elon Musk is now the, I think, the largest shareholder in Twitter. He bought 9.2 percent worth

00:22:16.020 about $3 billion. So he now owns more of the company than the founder, Jack Dorsey.

00:22:21.180 Do you see this as a positive development? How do you think Elon Musk will be able to

00:22:25.680 effectuate change? Will he bring back people who have been banished? We know that he has really

00:22:29.880 strong views on free speech and he hates big tech censorship as well. And he's the richest man in

00:22:35.040 the world. So he has the ability to fight back. Do you see this as a glimmer of hope?

00:22:39.740 I see it as huge news. Finally, someone with some clout and some dollars can get in and be a

00:22:45.120 counterweight to what's called the ESG movement, environmental social governance. But here's the

00:22:50.480 thing. Elon Musk is for sure the largest shareholder in Twitter, but the other shareholders making up

00:22:56.960 about, I mean, if you look at the other shareholders, there's lots of individual people

00:23:00.840 with this big, big investment funds, hedge funds. Some of them have trillions of dollars in assets,

00:23:07.840 and they're deep into this ESG sort of woke capitalism. And so on his own, Elon Musk is the

00:23:16.420 biggest dog at Twitter now. But of the other 90% of shareholders, I'd say half of them have bought

00:23:22.500 into the wokeism that Elon Musk is against. That said, he's got a quarter trillion dollars himself

00:23:27.460 and he can muck around a lot. I think he's a true believer in freedom. It's interesting to see a lot of

00:23:32.800 the staff at Twitter squawking in public about how much they hate his free speech ideology shows how

00:23:38.460 far Twitter has fallen. It's interesting, Jack Dorsey himself, the founder of Twitter, went on

00:23:42.860 last weekend or two weekends ago, said that he longed for the days of internet freedom,

00:23:49.080 and he accepted some of the blame for the centralization and censorship of the internet.

00:23:55.060 It was touching. I'm not sure if I forgive the man for what he did, but I think he realizes he

00:24:00.180 created a Frankenstein monster of control, not of liberty. Elon Musk is one man. There's Peter Thiel,

00:24:08.460 another freedom-oriented tech person. It's more than nothing, but not much more. I'm worried when

00:24:16.000 it's all synced together. You talked about the China-style social credit. We're talking about

00:24:20.000 the algorithms. We're talking about censorship takedowns. And add in Justin Trudeau's unique

00:24:25.680 creation, seizing bank accounts. He seized the bank accounts of his political opponents,

00:24:32.280 these truckers, peaceful truckers, not a single charge of violence, not a single weapon found.

00:24:37.000 The most peaceful protest you write, it inspired the whole world. And what did Trudeau do? He put

00:24:41.120 our country under a form of martial law, and he went without legal process, and he seized bank accounts.

00:24:47.240 That's what they do in Venezuela and Cuba. That's what Putin does to democracy activists. And

00:24:53.420 there was some discussion about it, but where was the shocked outrage? There was very little of it

00:25:01.420 from all the establishment because they've been conditioned over time to accept this infringement

00:25:06.840 on our civil liberties. We are less free now than we have been, I suppose you could say,

00:25:13.460 since before women were given the right to vote. I think we are less free as a country now than we 0.98

00:25:18.700 have been in a century. And just because some of the mask bylaws are being lifted, I think we're

00:25:23.940 still deeply unfree. And I think Trudeau's coming to squash that strategic freedom. The late Alan

00:25:29.940 Borovoy, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said, freedom of speech is the strategic freedom.

00:25:36.000 Take away all my others, but leave me free speech. And with it, I can reclaim my others.

00:25:41.360 If you stop people from being able to talk, you've lost every other battle. And I think that's what

00:25:47.880 was so chilling about the bank account seizure. It was a lawless expropriation, politically directed,

00:25:55.080 smashing Trudeau's opponents. And they only seized 200 bank accounts, but they terrified 20 million

00:26:03.060 Canadians. And they chilled the speech. And that is a tyrannical move.

00:26:08.040 Well, you say only 200 bank accounts. I should know that that was more bank accounts than the

00:26:12.780 U.S. government seized after 9-11 when they were pushing back against Al-Qaeda. And so it was a

00:26:18.320 larger reaction than the worst attack in North America in our history. It's truly, even when you

00:26:27.120 just think about the psychology of Justin Trudeau, he used to wrap himself in the charter and he used to

00:26:33.160 be so proud of being the liberal. He's a liberal, small liberal, big liberal. He believes in freedom

00:26:38.020 and to look at the way that he's chipping away at those freedoms in Canada, frankly, for self

00:26:43.760 preservation reasons. And I think Elon Musk, it's a great sign. Jack Dorsey once said that Twitter was

00:26:50.900 the free speech wing of the free speech party. And it was meant as a libertarian bastion of free speech

00:26:58.100 thought. And I hope that Elon is able to steer it back, at least in that direction. We also see

00:27:04.720 more and more companies pushing back against the wokeism. Coinbase put out, which is an interchange,

00:27:11.420 put out a statement basically saying, leave your politics at home. If you bring them to work,

00:27:14.740 don't work here anymore. And about 5% of the company left and everyone else is happier. So maybe

00:27:19.480 maybe, you know, these little glimmers of hope will provide a road path for people wanting to push

00:27:25.580 back. Ezra, I wanted to spend a couple of minutes with you talking about an exciting upcoming event

00:27:30.720 that we have planned. So we're excited to announce that True North is pairing up with The Rebel alongside

00:27:34.880 the Independent Press Gallery and the Democracy Fund to host the first ever student journalism conference

00:27:40.400 in Bolton, Ontario, just outside Toronto in early May. So why don't you tell us a little bit about

00:27:45.520 that conference? Yeah, I'm very excited about it. The Democracy Fund is a registered Canadian charity

00:27:50.660 whose mission is to advance constitutional freedoms and journalism. So a conference of 25 young

00:28:00.160 journalists who will be brought to Toronto. I mean, even if you're far away, we'll bring you in. Now,

00:28:06.320 if you can't fly because of the vaccine rules, we'll Zoom you in, we'll Skype you in. And it's a weekend

00:28:11.480 of learning the craft of journalism. And journalism today, of course, is very different than a

00:28:17.400 generation ago. So for example, we've got amazing speakers, Dave Rubin, the very popular YouTuber,

00:28:23.840 ally of Jordan Peterson, founder of Locals, like a great success story. For example, he'll be

00:28:30.580 leading a session on how to make it as a YouTuber. That's amazing. So very practical. How do you do it?

00:28:37.960 How do I be successful? That's half of it. The other half is okay, well, let's, let's talk about

00:28:43.740 substance a bit. Let's remember civil liberties. Let's remember the journalistic tradition of covering

00:28:48.860 civil liberties. So it's a weekend event. You don't have to be in journalism school, you don't actually

00:28:54.080 have to be a student, just a young person interested in making journalism your career. And my theory here

00:29:00.220 is that if 25 students come to this event, let's say only a couple of them actually make journalism

00:29:06.540 their permanent job. Well, if this conference is on every year, over 10 years, you put 250 students

00:29:12.680 through this. By the end of that, you've sort of built up a cadre of freedom-oriented journalists

00:29:17.740 in this country to counterbalance the woke journalism kids being pumped out of Ryerson and Carleton.

00:29:25.320 And this is free to apply. And in fact, you paid, your costs are paid. So I want to encourage everyone

00:29:32.880 who's a young journalist, or who knows a young journalist, or a would-be journalist, or aspiring

00:29:37.860 journalist, or an amateur journalist, or a citizen journalist, you don't have to be credentialed.

00:29:42.820 Go to thedemocracyfund.ca and click on the application form and ask you a few questions.

00:29:49.340 And as co-sponsored, as you mentioned, Rebel News, True North, Independent Press Gallery,

00:29:53.340 and the Democracy Fund, I think it's going to be great. And I, I'm going to be speaking there myself,

00:29:58.120 and I know you will be too. What an amazing group of young people this is going to be. I could hardly

00:30:02.820 wait to meet the students. Well, it's, it kind of brings us back full circle in this interview,

00:30:07.340 Ezra, because, you know, having, uh, peers that are like-minded, if, if you're a young journalist

00:30:11.440 starting out there and, you know, you, you look out at, at your competition and the potential places

00:30:17.000 that could hire you, if, if you're conservative or liberty-minded, you know, you, you don't have a lot

00:30:21.880 of friends and allies out there. And so going to these kinds of conferences can be a great way,

00:30:25.660 uh, just to sort of reconnect with, with, with your ideas and, and what's important

00:30:29.500 and, and carve your own path. And so I think it's a great initiative. I'm really pleased,

00:30:34.340 uh, for True North to be involved. So where, where can, can you remind me,

00:30:37.880 where can people go to apply for that? Yeah, it's, it's a page of the Democracy Fund's website. So

00:30:43.320 thedemocracyfund.ca. You can, uh, very quickly find the link to the student journalism conference

00:30:50.160 application form there. You can also see other things that the Democracy Fund is up to.

00:30:53.600 And I think it's going to be wonderful. And really there's so many, it's again, you got these

00:30:59.360 massive corporate journalism schools that churn out woke activists and they have hundreds of

00:31:05.680 millions of dollars amongst them and all the advantages of the legacy media. This little

00:31:12.220 student journalism conference, I bet pound per pound will produce better journalists and more

00:31:16.340 effective journalists, even though it's a little grassroots idea. So I think it's very important.

00:31:19.860 It's a, it's just like 99% of journalists are on Trudeau's take and 1% are independent.

00:31:26.060 99% of student journalists in this country are going through brainwashing at journalism schools.

00:31:30.640 1% will go to the student journalism conference and I'm betting on those 1%.

00:31:34.800 That's great. Yeah. We have a couple of young journalists on our staff here at True North and

00:31:39.340 some of the stories they tell us about, you know, Ryerson and these journalism schools are so woke.

00:31:43.420 They're so, they're not even focused on telling the story, telling the other side story, focus on truth.

00:31:47.640 No, instead they're focused on things like equity, things like social justice and their parties are

00:31:52.500 just so off what the schools are teaching. But, but fortunately you know, there are a few

00:31:57.360 independent minded people out there that, that, that choose to come work at places like the Rebel

00:32:01.620 and True North. Well, Ezra, thank you so much for all your insight. And I'm really excited about this

00:32:05.520 conference, this student journalism conference in May. Looking forward to seeing you there.

00:32:08.900 Thank you so much for joining us. Right on. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

00:32:13.080 All right. That's Ezra Levant. I'm Candace Malcolm. And this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - April 13, 2022

Justin Trudeau is determined to censor the internet (Feat. Ezra Levant)

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