Juno News - April 13, 2022


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


Episode Stats

Length

32 minutes

Words per Minute

180.8838

Word Count

5,837

Sentence Count

356

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

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
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
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
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
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.