Juno News - December 05, 2025Trump signals MAJOR SHIFT in Canada–U.S. trade deal
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Summary
Could reading certain Bible passages in public soon be considered a criminal act? Well, advocates for religious freedom are sounding the alarm over changes to federal law supposedly aimed at combating hate. Bill C-9 would criminalize sections of the Bible, Quran, Torah, and other sacred texts. Conservatives will oppose this latest liberal assault on freedom of expression and religion.
Transcript
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The trade is on the agenda as Prime Minister Carney meets with U.S. President Trump in
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Washington, D.C. Trump says he will meet with both the leaders of Canada and Mexico today
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to talk about the stalled trade negotiations. Here they are standing side by side at the
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FIFA 2026 World Cup event. Carney's itinerary includes making a speech at the World Cup
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celebration in tree lighting ceremony. He will also meet with Mexican President
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Claudia Scheinbaum. Now Trump said this week he may allow the trilateral free trade
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agreement between the three countries to lapse in favor of separate deals with
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Canada and Mexico. Could reading certain Bible passages in public soon be
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considered a criminal act? Well advocates for religious freedom are sounding the
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alarm over changes to federal law supposedly aimed at combating hate. Now
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this post by conservative party leader Pierre Polyev on X. Liberal and block
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amendments to Bill C-9 will criminalize sections of the Bible, Quran, Torah and
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other sacred texts. Conservatives will oppose this latest liberal assault on
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freedom of expression and religion. Here is Mark Miller, Minister of Canadian
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Identity and Culture, talking about sections of the Bible he considers hateful.
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Mark Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture
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If someone were literally invoking a passage from, in this case, the Bible, but there are
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other religious texts that say the same thing, and somehow constantly say that this is
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good faith, I mean, clearly there are situations in these texts where these statements are hateful,
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they should not be used to invoke or be a defense, and there should perhaps be
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discretion for prosecutors to press charges. Now in her op-ed in the National
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Post, Christine Van Gein says changes to Bill C-9 aren't combating hate, they're
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criminalizing faith. She writes, we do not want the government parsing religious
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texts or religious speech, especially given that most of our political leaders are
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absolutely ignorant of religion, including, in some cases, their own religion.
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John Carpe, President of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, will be joining
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us a few minutes from now to talk about that story.
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Well, Industry Minister Melanie Jolie has formally served notice to Stellantis that it broke a
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I'm formally announcing that we're serving Stellantis with a notice of default under the contracts.
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When it comes to protecting auto jobs, we will not let these industries down.
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Well, the company announced last October its shifting production from Brampton to Illinois
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and cutting 3,000 jobs. This after the government committed billions of dollars in tax money to
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the company's manufacturing operation in Canada. Critics say the government has absolutely failed
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to secure any commitment to protect those jobs, allowing Stellantis to move its operations south.
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Speaking of jobs, Stats Canada is reporting that Canada created 54,000 jobs last month.
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Now, the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.5%, all good news, but a closer look at the numbers
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reveals most of the new jobs created were part-time. In fact, the country actually lost 9,400 full-time
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positions. I'm now joined by John Carpe, President of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.
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Glad to be with you, Mark, and with your viewers and listeners.
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Let's talk a little bit about Bill C-9. Why is it so dangerous according to those who want
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Well, it's a step towards becoming like the United Kingdom, where currently over 30 citizens
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are criminally charged every day for what they're posting on social media. Thousands
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of people in jail for expressing their opinions about immigration, transgender ideology, controversial
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topics. And so it's horrible. What used to be a free country is descending into all these
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speech prosecutions. So what Bill C-9 does, the worst aspect of it is it removes a current
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requirement that a hate speech prosecution has to be approved first by the attorney general
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or the justice minister of the province. And it's kind of a check so that it's not just
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the local police, local crown prosecutors who get to decide subjectively what they feel
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is hateful. And that's another huge problem is hate is an emotion and it's next to impossible
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to define. Bill C-9 tries to say that hate is worse than dislike and disdain. So dislike
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and disdain are okay. That's not hate. But detestation and vilification are hate. It's
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very, very challenging. So it leaves a lot of power with local police and local prosecutors
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if Bill C-9 goes through and they can prosecute. We're going to see all kinds of new hate speech
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prosecutions because there's no more review process in place by the justice minister.
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Yeah. It's alarming to hear people like Mark Miller, minister for Canadian identity and
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culture, talking about sections of the Bible he considers hateful. What did you make of
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So this is another, a new twist in Bill C-9 is that as of the past two or three days,
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the liberals who are, of course, in a minority situation, they have made a deal with the Bloc
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Quebecois to make Bill C-9 even worse by getting rid of one of the defenses that has been available
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for decades, that if in good faith you are making an argument based on belief in a religious
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text, there can be an exemption. Now, that's not a blank check to spew hatred at whoever you
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want and then say, oh, well, you know, that's just my religious text. If you're advocating for
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hatred, you can't camouflage that with religion. However, this particular defense, the belief in
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a religious text defense would and does protect pastors and priests and Orthodox rabbis, Muslim
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imams from hate speech prosecutions that are sure to come over what the Torah and the Quran and the
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Bible have to say about homosexuality and about sexual intimacy between two people of the same
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sex. This provision protects the religious leaders from getting prosecuted for hate speech
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for having taught what their religions teach about human sexuality.
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I mean, could the government use this as a pretext to censor parts of the Bible or even ban parts of
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The chilling effect is pretty obvious because even if you had a bunch of constitutional lawyers
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looking at the legislation carefully and saying, well, you know, technically you still could in
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your mosque, your church, your synagogue, your temple, you're still allowed to teach what your
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faith teaches about human sexuality without that being hate speech. Even if that's technically true,
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it is a chilling effect where people are going to do more of what so many people are already doing,
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which is self-censoring, which is very harmful.
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I mean, I can see where some of this might be used, say, to target certain imams who've suggested that
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murdering people, heathens, or people who do not follow their particular religion might be justifiable.
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But, I mean, considering the history of this government in terms of its views on Christianity,
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I mean, all you have to do is look at how little they've commented about the church burnings that we've seen.
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You know, a hundred last time I checked, they've said very little of it.
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Even people like Justin Trudeau, Gerald Butts have suggested that certain activities are justifiable or
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understandable, rather. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he said it was understandable.
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You know, you can't help but get the sense that Christianity will ultimately be the target here.
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I don't see too many Muslim imams getting prosecuted under any legislation.
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We already have a situation in Toronto where some Muslims were blocking, I think it was Young and Bloor,
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but major intersection to take over a street with prayer meeting.
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And to be clear, I strongly support the freedom of every person to pray in public.
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If you're standing on a public sidewalk and you want to pray with your eyes open or closed
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or whatever your faith might be, you know, that's fine.
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But that's not an entitlement to obstruct traffic.
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So Chris and Tamara, Chris Barber, Tamara Leach, and so many other peaceful protesters in Ottawa
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were charged criminally because it is a crime to obstruct streets.
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But here you see the law is not being applied equally when it comes to Muslims in Toronto
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blocking the street for a prayer meeting and nobody gets charged.
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And it is interesting, when Bill C-9 was introduced, the Justice Minister Sean Fraser said
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that this is a response to rising anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, full stop.
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Nothing said about the dozens of Christian churches that have been burned to the ground,
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completely destroyed by arson, and then dozens more that have been desecrated and violated.
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Nothing said about this obviously very serious problem.
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It's anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia.
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These weren't just off-the-cuff remarks from a minister made once.
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But the Government of Canada website on Bill C-9 references those four things
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and says nothing about churches being burned to the ground.
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We've seen attacks on Christians, certainly outside Canada.
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All you have to do is look at certain African nations where a form of genocide
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may very well be underway in certain countries, the Christian minority.
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And then in Canada, you have a guy like Mark Miller, who the minister has come out and said,
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As if that's somehow supposed to give him a pass.
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What did you think of the fact that he alluded to his own personal faith?
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It's somehow a way to cleanse himself of any alligators that he is targeting Christians.
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Oh, that's like this thing that's been around for decades.
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But some of my best friends are black or some of my best friends are lesbian
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I mean, look, I don't know what's inside the guy's mind or heart.
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If he wants to declare himself to be a devout Christian, he can go ahead and do that.
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But back to this problem with Bill C-9, you've got a federal cabinet minister saying
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that he thinks certain Bible passages are hate speech.
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Interestingly, it doesn't say anything about the Koran, but okay, whatever.
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So he says that, and then you've got Bill C-9 that says that a defense to a hate speech prosecution
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can be if in good faith you are making an argument or expressing an opinion based on belief in a religious text.
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That defense, by the way, is one of the reasons why the Supreme Court of Canada narrowly upheld the prohibition on hate speech
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as being a justified violation of free expression.
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So in other words, Jim Keegstra, Alberta public school teacher, challenged the hate speech laws,
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He almost won, but in a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court said, no, this restriction on hate speech
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And part of that reasoning is that you've got these defenses.
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If you say that there's higher rates of pedophilia amongst a particular group,
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you know, based on the group's religion or skin color or whatever, you know, grounds,
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if you can defend yourself against a hate speech prosecution by saying what I said was true,
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So because of these defenses, the Supreme Court upheld it.
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But now we see this Bill C-9 is going to get rid of one of these defenses.
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I mean, there's a criminal code provision in there that deals with hate.
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They naively and foolishly think that they will be in power forever
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So based on the current cultural climate and the current legal climate,
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the hate speech laws, and the same thing with the Online Harms Act,
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if they bring that back and give new powers to the Canadian Human Rights Commission
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to prosecute Canadians over discriminatory speech,
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look, the main targets are going to be conservatives, libertarians, Christians,
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social conservatives, and people with unorthodox views
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that are contrary to the mainstream narrative on climate,
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But what these people don't realize is that if you empower the state
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to go after your political enemies by silencing them,
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that very same power the state can use against you in five years or 15 years
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that same state power is going to be used to silence them.
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So really, they're not seeing the writing on the wall,
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but they are ultimately undermining their own freedom of expression as well.
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if you take away somebody else's freedom of expression,
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you're ultimately, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
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Well, maybe they think that by taking away freedom of expression
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from conservatives and all these people that you mentioned,
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Christians, gun owners, that they will be in power forever.
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You know, maybe this is ultimately a power grab,
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so that you can hold on to the reins of power forever.
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It might be, but thankfully, we've got independent media pushing back.
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We have, you know, Juno News, The Rebel, Epoch Times, Western Standard.
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I had lunch a few weeks ago with a donor to the Justice Center
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never listens to or watches the CBC or Global or CTV.
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He gets 100% of his information about what's going on in the world.
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He gets it from Instagram and X and social media and friends.
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And so these government-funded media are slowly dying a well-deserved death
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Yeah, and that's why younger people in many cases
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are gravitating towards more conservative views.
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It's because they're not the ones getting brainwashed
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It's the boomer generation that they're the ones voting for elbows up.
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You know, they're the ones who supported Mark Carney,
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And if you look at the basic people who, you know,
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listen to CBC programming and the legacy media, that's where they are.
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So it's the monolithic media pumping out that, you know,
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left-wing propaganda on behalf of the liberals.
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You know, that's really what has worked for the liberals up to this point.
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But, you know, there's generational change, to your point.
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And it was the cord-cutting generation that kind of began it all.
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You know, when people started to say, I can't afford cable, I don't even need it.
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And that's why you see the government pushing for internet censorship.
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Well, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms
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is a national organization, registered charity.
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taking on dozens of cases in defense of our freedoms
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of expression, association, conscience, religion, bodily autonomy, travel, and so on.
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So it's Justice Center Constitutional Freedoms, jccf.ca.
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you're not going to be drowning in daily emails.
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John Carpe, thank you so much for coming on the show.
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John is president of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.