Trudeau Replaced Debates with Gov’t-Run System That Tried to Ban Independent Media
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with Ezra Levant to talk about the debate debates and how the government is trying to ban independent media in Canada. We talk about what happened when the government tried to ban the debates, how the courts stepped in, and why we won.
Transcript
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Folks that don't really understand, like, okay, so this is what happened. Prior to Justin Trudeau
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being prime minister, these debates during the election used to be organized by the private
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media companies themselves, right? So CTV might do one, Global might do one, McLean's might do one.
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And basically every media company kind of like offers to organize them and then they see which
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leaders agree to show up to them. Justin Trudeau, as he did for so many other issues, decided that
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the government needed to be in charge of this, that even though the free market was doing a
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perfectly fine job doing it, he wanted the government to take over. So the government
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took over and they use that to try to ban independent media and so interestingly before
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you and I actually worked together we teamed up because in 2019 they banned True Norse Andrew
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Lawton and then you were working at the rebel that time and they banned you as well and so
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we decided to sue Ezra heard that we were suing called me up say we're going to sue too the courts
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decided to hear our two cases together and so we went to Toronto we had our case heard before a
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federal judge the day of the debates, right? And it was happening on a Monday. We were in court that
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day. And the judge, a federal judge, ruled in our favor and said, the government cannot prevent
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citizen journalists from asking questions of their leader. So we got that court order. We used that
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to get Andrew Lawton into the debate, to get you into the debate. In 2021, they actually let True
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North in, so we didn't have to sue. Rebel was not allowed in. They sued again. They got in. And so
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this time around the Debates Commission just didn't even bother trying to block
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us they knew they saw the writing on the wall that the courts the judges as much
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as I often disagree with what happens in courts in Canada this time they got the
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right they got it right they made the right decision saying in a free society
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Canada still free society is still a democracy we do have freedom the press