Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Canada's media party feels threatened by the independent press

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Great show today. You know, Candace Malcolm is a brave person. I know this

00:00:05.140 because she has chosen the same career path as me. She's the boss of an independent, non-government

00:00:11.860 funded journalism organization called Juno News. She actually found a true north before that.

00:00:17.700 We'll have a great conversation today to figure out how to be a free journalist in a authoritarian

00:00:24.080 country like Canada. But first, let me invite you to become what we call Rebel News Plus

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00:01:37.180 That's Rocklink with a C, info at rocklink.com. All right, here's today's show.

00:01:42.300 Tonight, a sit down with our friend and competitor, Candace Malcolm from the new Juno News. It's

00:02:02.900 February 27th and this is the Ezra LeVant Show. Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:02:20.340 You know, I'm not complaining because I love doing it, but it is hard to be an independent 0.66

00:02:24.080 journalist in Canada. It's hard in a number of ways. I mean, all your competitors are subsidized.

00:02:29.460 Imagine that. How on earth could you possibly compete against the CBC State Broadcaster a

00:02:35.140 billion and a half dollars a year every year, let alone all their assets, their offices, their

00:02:41.260 huge staff? How can you do it? And it's not just them. It's the so-called private media too.

00:02:47.400 So there's the financial discombobulation, but there is also a clubbiness to it. For years,

00:02:54.820 I've used the phrase the media party because they're a club, a clique. They're like-minded.

00:02:59.200 They have a similar party line. They share the same views and ideology and they enforce it like

00:03:06.720 a political party enforces discipline on its members. So too does the media party. If anyone

00:03:12.680 asks questions that are too prickly, they find themselves on the outs. There's not a lot of

00:03:18.200 people who are too prickly. I think of Holly Doan and her company called Blacklocks, but they have been 1.00

00:03:25.880 shunned and shoved out by other people in the Ottawa Press Gallery. So you got to respect someone

00:03:33.520 who's willing to say, yeah, that's for me. And I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about

00:03:38.720 the fact that over the last 10 years, Rebel News was born in 2015. We just turned 10. Over the last 10

00:03:44.740 years, there have been other hearty and hearty souls who've said, long odds, long hours, no respect from

00:03:54.580 our peers, sign me up. And one of those people is our friend Candace Malcolm, who created True North

00:04:01.140 and now a new project called Juno News. And I hand it to her for braving the hurricane of opprobrium

00:04:10.400 from the Mean Girls in the Raging Media Candace. Malcolm joins us now. How are you doing?

00:04:15.960 I'm great, Ezra. Thank you so much for having me.

00:04:17.960 Oh, you're welcome. You know, there is, it's tough fighting against competitors who are subsidized.

00:04:23.240 But I think sometimes there is a bit of psychic pain from being disparaged and dismissed from people

00:04:30.280 because you dare ask different questions. And I mean, I don't have an inferiority complex towards

00:04:37.200 the CBC or the Toronto Star. But it sort of bugs me that they claim to be the tastemakers,

00:04:42.980 trend senators, arbiters of what's good journalism or not. It pains me not because I crave their

00:04:50.140 approval, but because they're wrong. And it's an outrage to me that they get to set the standards

00:04:54.560 still in so many places. How do you feel about being a bit of a media tycoon yourself?

00:05:01.980 Do you feel that way at all? Are you impervious to the hurt feelings?

00:05:05.220 No, I don't get hurt feelings. I think I'm way beyond that now, Ezra. And, you know,

00:05:10.640 I used to work in the legacy media, so I know what it's like on the other side.

00:05:14.480 And, you know, one of the criticisms, you know, we have the criticisms. I used to say the three Bs,

00:05:19.100 right? They're biased because they are all left wing. They're bought and paid for because they

00:05:24.440 all get subsidized by the Trudeau liberals. But I think their worst sin is that they're boring,

00:05:29.580 that they all have the same opinions, and that they're very milquetoast, and that they don't want

00:05:34.200 to ruffle any feathers. And so when they, you know, interact with people like myself, and

00:05:39.560 probably even more so with you, they get sort of like overwhelmed, and they don't like the fact

00:05:44.800 that we add a little bit of color and a little bit of flair to our political analysis. And really,

00:05:50.420 I mean, to me, it's the only thing I find disheartening, Ezra, is the fact that anybody

00:05:54.800 still watches. I know the CBC's views are way down, that they're going to get subsidized no matter what,

00:05:59.840 as long as there's a liberal in office. But I think that it's down to like single digit percentage

00:06:04.520 of Canadians that actually tune into the CBC at all. And I think that the newspapers, the big ones,

00:06:10.960 would be bankrupt. We know this. We can see their financial data because they're public.

00:06:15.260 The Post Media and Toronto Star, they don't make money. They're not good businesses. And so they need

00:06:20.720 the bailouts. They need the bailouts. I think the reason is just because they haven't figured out a way

00:06:24.940 to communicate to Canadians in a way that they like. Nobody under 40 watches any of the legacy

00:06:29.760 media at all. Everybody gets their news online. And it's interesting to see, I think there's been

00:06:35.920 a proliferation of independent media because, you know, you really paved the way after the death

00:06:40.940 of Sun News Network, a place where I worked as well. And, you know, I had a lot of fun working

00:06:46.040 at the Sun News Network. And I was sad when Sun failed. But then I was really excited to see what you

00:06:51.060 had built. And you proved the business model. You proved this idea that Canadians are very willing

00:06:55.400 to pay for news. It's not, you know, this idea that they need government funding because otherwise

00:07:00.600 who will pay for local journalism. It's just not true. And there have been a lot of people following

00:07:06.340 in your footsteps as well to create things like the Western Standard, like True North, even post-millennial.

00:07:12.760 And even now, you know, in the last five years, it's not just companies, right? You see independent

00:07:17.480 creators. You see these really creative people on TikTok and YouTube reacting and telling the story

00:07:23.640 to their audience, mostly like young men in their teens and 20s, I would say, propping up these big,

00:07:30.300 big YouTube accounts and TikTok accounts where they are being informed. They are being told the story,

00:07:34.860 but just not from the perspective of the Globe and Mail and the CBC. And I think that that makes

00:07:39.620 the reporters and the bosses at those companies, at the Globe and Mail and at the CBC and many others,

00:07:45.540 it makes them angry. It makes them frustrated. They lash out. They use derogatory terms to describe

00:07:50.580 us. They try to marginalize us. And it's just not working, right? They've used the same slurs

00:07:56.700 against people like us for so long that it just doesn't mean anything anymore. Like Andrew Coyne

00:08:01.360 called my organization far right in his column the other day. And, you know, to me, it was just kind

00:08:07.780 of like pathetic and sad. It's like, you know, if you consider me far right, I'm pretty much like 0.91

00:08:12.880 as mainstream as it gets in conservative circles. I moderated the 2022 debate, the conservative

00:08:18.340 debate. I was a moderator. I interviewed Pierre Polyev just last week on my show, right? We had

00:08:23.480 a long form sit down interview where I asked him all the questions that conservatives want to know,

00:08:28.260 right? So if you believe that someone like me can be called far right, it's like, well, then the whole

00:08:33.360 party, then half the country is far right. That word doesn't mean anything. And again, it just goes to

00:08:38.080 show how kind of deranged they are not just about Trump, you know, they're deranged about Trump, but

00:08:43.060 they're deranged about the whole new world that we live in. You know, I think about Andrew Coyne

00:08:47.160 sometimes because 20 years ago, we were buddies. I looked up to him. He's a few years older than me.

00:08:53.580 And fast forward to today, and he has gone completely nuts on Twitter. And I think part of the reason

00:09:00.700 is, 20 years ago, the established media had such a monopoly. So if you wanted to be a pontificator,

00:09:09.920 a pundit, a guy with quippy hot takes, you had to somehow get through those barriers to entry and work

00:09:17.420 your way up to the top of really a handful of media companies, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, maybe

00:09:23.000 there's a daily newspaper in some cities. And then there was such a small group of you. And so

00:09:30.920 because of that, you had all the attention. But now, Andrew Coyne isn't particularly thoughtful,

00:09:36.580 smart, funny, creative, independent. Like he does, he has such a standard boring view. I think part of

00:09:43.720 his rage, and he's gone totally nuts, is that he has to compete against all these TikTokers and 1.00

00:09:50.980 Instagrammers. And he doesn't have the luxury of having them barred from the guild. Like they

00:09:59.740 used to be, they actually used to call themselves the craft, or the guild, G-U-I-L-D. Like they were 1.00

00:10:04.820 some medieval society who knew the secret ways. I think there's a rage there because, you know,

00:10:11.580 you don't have to listen to Andrew Coyne. You can be your own pundit. And you're right. TikTok has

00:10:16.140 actually made it so you can earn a living off that kind of thing. I don't, I mean, go ahead.

00:10:22.180 Well, I was going to say that there used to be a criticism of the right, maybe 10 years ago,

00:10:26.520 that we didn't do a good job policing our own in terms of some radical voices found their way

00:10:30.720 into our myths. And that, you know, there was a, there was a criticism that you couldn't really tell

00:10:34.500 the difference between who was on the far side of the right and who was more of a center-right person.

00:10:38.720 I feel that way about the legacy media and the left, right? Like I get the deranged

00:10:43.100 criticism from fringe people like Rachel Gilmore or Press Progress, you know, they, they really hate

00:10:49.760 us. And it's like, they're kind of creepy and obsessed with us, right? Like they'll do,

00:10:54.060 they'll do like, they'll do long form podcasts about me and my family. And like, like Rachel

00:10:59.740 Gilmore will put up multiple TikTok stories all about me. And, and, you know, it's, it's twisted,

00:11:05.500 right? And it's like, okay, you know, I guess she has her audience and that's what she does.

00:11:09.540 But then I see and hear the same criticisms from people in the Toronto Star, people like

00:11:15.520 Chantal Libert and Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. And it's like,

00:11:20.040 they're, they're all saying the same thing. And you can't really distinguish between the fringe

00:11:24.720 far left and the sort of mainstream Globe and Mail in 2025. It's, it's kind of wild.

00:11:30.860 You know, it's true. Over the course of time, I've sort of stopped caring about what they say.

00:11:35.140 And one of the reasons for that is, I know that on any given day, we could have a million views on

00:11:42.300 a particular video. And when I look at some of the efforts from the regime media, it's a fraction

00:11:49.340 of that. I'm not saying every day we beat them. I just, but I don't even check anymore. To me,

00:11:54.800 my fondest month, and I tell our team this all the time, was February 2022, the trucker convoy in

00:12:01.540 Ottawa, because on all platforms, we had 400 million views and impressions that month, which

00:12:07.980 is more than what the CBC claims to get on any given month from their digital assets. And just to

00:12:14.160 know that on the one month that counted, because we were on the ground, we beat the state broadcaster.

00:12:19.680 After that, I sort of stopped checking because it was like achievement unlocked. And I mean,

00:12:26.120 I check out the CBC just if I need to get mad or something. But I really, I don't think they're

00:12:32.980 trendsetters and tastemakers other than they claim to be. So when I talked about, you know,

00:12:37.520 the pain of being shunned by, like, for example, our reporter David Menzies is quite a character,

00:12:44.860 I grant you that. But he was arrested five times in 2024, on every occasion for doing journalism,

00:12:49.840 not for assault, not for trespass, doing journalism. And I think where's a Canadian journalist for free

00:12:56.420 expression? Where's a Canadian Association of Journalists? Where's Amnesty International?

00:13:00.120 Where's Penn Canada? Never did they speak out. So I think they're fakes and phonies. All right,

00:13:06.540 I'm ranting. I want to talk to you actually about your new thing, Juno, J-U-N-O. I saw your

00:13:15.340 announcement with our alumnus, Kian Bexty, that you're starting a new project. And I was signed

00:13:20.800 up to both Counter Signal, which is Kian's shop, and True North. So now I'm getting emails from Juno.

00:13:28.340 And I bet a lot of our viewers subscribe to you or Kian also. So they're probably wondering,

00:13:35.860 what I'm wondering, which is, what is Juno? What's the difference between it and True North?

00:13:41.920 And what do you hope to do? And I'm getting a lot of emails, which is great, but help me understand

00:13:47.400 what your plans are. Yeah, sure. Okay. So I'll just go back. I started True North in my living

00:13:53.520 room all the way back in 2016. Ezra, I came on your show and announced it. And back then it was

00:13:58.680 a think tank. And my whole idea was that I was going to write reports on immigration, try to

00:14:02.320 encourage the government to clean up their immigration policies. It kind of merged and pivoted

00:14:08.080 over the years and became a media company. And one of the things that I always heard from our

00:14:12.640 supporters and from our fans was that they just wanted more journalism. You know, the opinion

00:14:16.680 stuff was great. I was an opinion columnist in the Toronto Sun for many years. And they liked that.

00:14:21.680 They liked the podcast, but they really liked the written news, the written reports. And I saw that

00:14:25.980 even among all of the independent media outlets in Canada and the more conservative ones, we didn't have

00:14:31.380 a great news source. So I wanted to turn True North into basically the equivalent of the Canadian

00:14:37.500 press, a wire service that produces straight news that doesn't do podcasting or opinions, but just

00:14:43.640 writes the news, informs Canadians, gives them the facts, but tells the stories that you're not going

00:14:49.340 to see in the Canadian press, that you're not going to read about in the Edmonton Journal or the

00:14:53.680 National Post. And so that is still the idea for True North. And we're in the process right now of

00:14:59.220 trying to apply for a very specific government program, not to get funding, but just to have

00:15:04.760 the correct certification. It's called an RJO, a Registered Journalism Organization. And it would

00:15:11.060 allow us to be a charity that does news. So True North is a charity and part of what we do is news.

00:15:16.320 But if we got this RJO status, we could devote the entire resources of True North towards journalism.

00:15:22.460 We wouldn't have to worry about the CRA. And so we are in the process of that. And so while that is

00:15:27.180 happening, the best thing for True North is for me to step aside and not be part of it, because I

00:15:32.360 don't want my opinions, my controversial, sometimes, you know, outwardly conservative, social

00:15:37.600 conservative views to muddy that process and to affect it in any way. So I decided that I was going

00:15:43.060 to take my podcast and my opinion journalism and do it separately. And that is when I came across

00:15:48.500 Kian Bexty and we said, hey, you know, why don't we, why don't we join forces? Why don't we,

00:15:52.900 you know, he's, he's in Alberta. I'm in Ontario. Why don't we merge together, use our resources

00:15:57.800 and create something bigger, especially coming up to the election. So we decided to join together

00:16:03.120 to launch Juno News as a subscription-based news service so that it can be full of all the opinion

00:16:10.280 that we want. We don't have to worry at all about the charity rules and anything about that,

00:16:14.020 that we used to at True North. So basically, Juno is the publisher. Juno is the platform.

00:16:19.840 And True North continues to exist as a news service. So basically, the idea is, it's kind

00:16:26.520 of like the Canadian press, an independent alternative Canadian press. And then you can

00:16:31.360 get that news through Juno. So if you subscribe to Juno, you'll get all the news from True North,

00:16:35.820 you'll get my Candace Malcolm Show podcast, and you'll get everything from Kian Bexty and

00:16:40.000 The Counter Signal all on one platform. You just have to subscribe once and you get absolutely

00:16:44.920 everything. So I get this a bit confusing. I think part of it is because of the Trudeau government,

00:16:48.900 the way that they've changed the rules, and we have to jump through all these hoops and

00:16:51.180 everything like that. But basically, the bottom line is, JunoNews.com is where you can get all

00:16:56.140 of the information that you've always trusted from True North, plus all of the sort of edgier,

00:17:01.320 more fearless brand of journalism from Kian Bexty.

00:17:04.200 Got it. And I don't want to ask a dumb question, but I just, I'm not sure if I got it. So will

00:17:09.680 Counter Signal still stay as its own website?

00:17:12.840 No. So it's going to be kind of folded into Juno. We're still working on that. But if you go to

00:17:20.300 JunoNews, you'll see there's a tab for the Counter Signal. And in the next coming weeks,

00:17:24.820 months, it will all be kind of merged together onto one.

00:17:27.760 Sure. I mean, I know I'm going to find out in real time because I'm getting emails from the

00:17:31.600 both of you. I just, listen, I wish you luck. It sounds exciting. I love the name Juno. Of course,

00:17:37.560 the beach in Normandy, where the Canadians helped liberate the, and of course, it's also the name

00:17:42.720 of our music awards, our National Music Awards. Okay. Well, I think I understand that. And I wish

00:17:48.660 you good luck. And the government does have so many rules and processes and bureaucracies

00:17:54.640 to regulate journalism, not just the RJO. And we applied for the QCJO and we were denied.

00:18:03.340 Imagine the government saying who is or isn't a journalist. That's sort of gross. But it's not

00:18:08.760 just that. I mean, I don't know if you remember, but in 2019, I wrote a book called The Libranos.

00:18:14.400 And the government said I had to register that with Elections Canada. There were 24 books in that

00:18:20.120 election campaign about Trudeau. Mine was the only one that was investigated. And they fined me,

00:18:25.480 I think it was $3,000, because I didn't register with the government. So I think there's too much

00:18:30.080 regulation. The idea that a government can tell a book author or a journalist what they're doing is

00:18:37.680 or isn't legal journalism feels very Soviet to me. I agree. Well, I had Pierre Polyev in a sit-down 0.94

00:18:44.900 interview, and I asked him about this topic. I said, are you going to defund the CBC? Are you going

00:18:51.040 to pull out the $600 million media bailout? He didn't answer the second question, which was

00:18:56.200 interesting, because I think in the past he had said that he was going to defund it. Now he said that

00:18:59.900 he wants to depoliticize the process. And to me, it's obvious why, because I'm living through it,

00:19:05.980 I'm going through it. There are these panels that determine whether or not you're a journalist.

00:19:10.200 I mean, you've gone through it as well, trying to get that qualification to be the qualified

00:19:14.540 Canadian journalism outlet. I mean, it is all sort of Orwellian. Anyway, Polyev said that he was going

00:19:21.660 to depoliticize it. And interestingly enough, the left interpreted that, Ezra, as somehow Pierre

00:19:27.980 pledging that he was going to fund Juno and the rebel, which is not what he said at all.

00:19:33.280 But in the twisted minds of those journalists, any change to that system that could somehow benefit

00:19:40.800 groups like ours is so offensive and wrong that they were basically lighting their hair on fire

00:19:46.560 over it. It's not what he said at all. But the point still remains that it's a very convoluted,

00:19:51.500 complicated system that we have to adhere by, right? It's the rules of how our organizations are

00:19:56.680 structured. And it has been deeply politicized by the Trudeau government.

00:20:00.720 Here's that clip from your sit down with Pierre Polyev.

00:20:03.520 You've been outspoken. You said that you were going to defund the CBC. I believe that you said

00:20:07.320 you're going to remove the $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau created to fund the legacy newspapers

00:20:13.320 as well. Does that concern you that the media is just not going to give you a fair shake?

00:20:17.460 Well, the traditional mainstream media has always been totally liberal. I mean, there's a few

00:20:23.580 exceptions, but by and large, they will just regurgitate whatever the Carney Trudeau liberals

00:20:29.520 say. And in all of the last six or seven elections, they have campaigned almost openly for the

00:20:39.040 liberals. So I would not expect it to be any different this time.

00:20:42.340 And so just to clarify, would you get rid of that $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau gave

00:20:47.520 to newspapers?

00:20:48.720 We are going to be cutting back on that. You'll have to wait for our platform to get the details.

00:20:52.440 We have to depoliticize news media finance because right now what happens is that there

00:21:00.220 are subsidies that go to favored media outlets that CRA designates, and then there's not funding

00:21:08.720 for others. And then, of course, the worst example is CBC, which gets this enormous subsidy

00:21:14.000 to do largely what Canadians can get elsewhere. Canadians can get digital media, videographical

00:21:21.500 media anywhere else. And yet they're paying a billion plus dollars for CBC to do that. So I think

00:21:29.380 those are examples of where we need to cut and we need to defund the CBC and have an independent

00:21:36.540 self-supporting media that can keep Canadians informed.

00:21:40.280 You know what's funny is whenever there's some new government agency to regulate the media,

00:21:47.140 like this decision if you get these statuses or not. And it's packed with liberal friends

00:21:54.920 of Trudeau. Some wise people on, I see it on Twitter, say, beware of, you know, and the media

00:22:03.300 cheers. And people say, beware of this when the government changes. Because if you have a media czar

00:22:09.240 right now who is left-wing and shoveling money to all their left-wing friends, get ready for when a

00:22:15.380 conservative government takes over and fills that position. And I always joke that I'm ready to

00:22:21.680 serve if called. And I mean, I should tell you, Candace, you know, I don't know if I would leave

00:22:29.460 Rebel News for anything, because it's sort of my home and we built it up. But if I was called upon

00:22:34.460 by my prime minister to serve my country by being the chair of the CBC, I would think long and hard

00:22:41.800 about it. I just might do it. And I would regulate and lead that CBC in a way that maybe the liberals

00:22:51.920 would want it defunded and privatized. I'm just daydreaming in real time here. I guess what I'm

00:22:57.320 saying is the thing about censorship and funding, which you mentioned the left-wing group squawking

00:23:02.540 about, they're really giving away the game. They want funding and subsidies for politics,

00:23:08.020 just only their politics. Right. And I think that they are deeply concerned because, you know, we

00:23:14.140 have a principal position that we don't believe that journalists should take money from the

00:23:18.980 government. I mean, that used to be universally held across the board. But what if we didn't hold

00:23:23.660 that position, Ezra? What if we didn't? What if we said, OK, all's fair in love and war. If Pierre

00:23:29.600 Polyev wants to defund the CBC and fund Rebel and Juno instead, well, I'm here for it. Go ahead. I'll

00:23:36.380 take the billion dollars. Why not? Right. The left is counting on us not doing that. But what if we

00:23:42.280 just flipped the switch and said, no, OK, well, let's give us 10 years to shape the culture and

00:23:47.340 give us all the money. I think that that would truly terrify them. I would love to see you as

00:23:52.120 CBC president. I don't know if you'd burn the place down. I don't know if you'd burn the place

00:23:57.020 down or if you would just fire everybody and bring in normal, real Canadians and have the opinions of 0.82

00:24:03.440 the people watching right now shared for once rather than the high produced, high production

00:24:09.600 value, multimillion dollar slur campaigns, basically trying to paint the truckers as terrorists

00:24:15.840 or trying to paint any number of causes as nefarious, which is what the CBC sort of does

00:24:23.820 professionally. And I think it would be really interesting if conservatives started playing

00:24:29.540 by the same rules that the Liberals play by and hold themselves to.

00:24:32.980 Yeah. You know, Pascale Saint-Ange, who's the new heritage minister, said she wants to

00:24:38.660 practically double the CBC's budget and not for journalistic reasons. She says it's for

00:24:44.900 fighting fake news and disinformation. So she's acknowledging it's a weapon. It's a campaign

00:24:50.900 organization.

00:24:52.380 Enshrined in law, the role that CBC Radio Canada plays in the fight against disinformation

00:24:59.100 to support the public, especially in the current context. And this refers directly to some of the

00:25:04.300 recommendations that were made by the Foreign Interference Commission, which repeated how important

00:25:12.380 it is that Canadians can rely on Canadian sources of information to be more resilient and to understand

00:25:18.220 the patterns that the other countries used to disseminate propaganda or disinformation to

00:25:25.020 influence how we live together in our political context. And this is why I propose to anchor in

00:25:32.460 CBC Radio Canada's mandate its role in helping the Canadian population fight against disinformation

00:25:41.180 and understand fact-based information.

00:25:44.140 Every year when the CBC comes out with its new annual report, it astonishes me that their

00:25:50.220 viewership is falling. How do you fall when the population of the country grows so fast,

00:25:55.500 when you've got so much assets and resources and everything is moving? Like, I just don't know how

00:26:02.300 CBC's viewership can be lower today, especially on their flagship shows. It used to be 20 years ago that

00:26:11.020 you would regularly get a million views of the National and the Journal and Rick Mercer's show.

00:26:17.260 Now, I don't know, they're lucky to get a quarter million. In fact, they hide their viewership.

00:26:22.380 I don't know how you can be that bad, but I think it goes to what you said, biased, bought, and boring.

00:26:28.700 And I think people just, we started talking about, you know, the CBC, and I just, early in our conversation,

00:26:38.140 I just think, no one's watching. It's so, it really feels like a state broadcaster.

00:26:45.820 Hey, let me ask you what you think about Pierre Polyev's commitment, because you said his language

00:26:56.060 sort of changed a little bit about media funding. I think the CBC defunding promise, other than its

00:27:04.140 carbon tax promise, is his number one promise. It's like Donald Trump saying, build the wall.

00:27:09.820 He says that at every speech, at least until recently, I don't know. It's the biggest applause

00:27:14.940 line. And he sort of lives it. Like he, he, he pushes back on the CBC all the time. I love it.

00:27:22.300 But I'm afraid that he might not carry through with that if he takes office. And to me, that's

00:27:28.300 a real litmus test of if he can, if everything else he says, he's going to carry through on.

00:27:33.580 It's also a suicide, like a survival issue. Stephen Harper did not take care of the CBC,

00:27:40.380 and so it took care of him. Are you worried that Pierre Polyev's going wobbly on this stuff?

00:27:47.180 No, I'm not, Ezra. I think that the conservatives have learned a lesson, right? Aaron O'Toole ran for

00:27:51.980 leader of that party, and he was supposedly the true blue option. And one of the things that he said

00:27:57.100 was that he was going to eliminate the carbon tax. And then during the election, Aaron O'Toole changed

00:28:02.860 his position, adopted a more liberal position, and said that he was going to keep the carbon tax.

00:28:07.980 It was just going to change a little bit. And I think that conservatives stayed home. You know,

00:28:12.780 real conservatives, people who believed that Aaron O'Toole was going to do what he said,

00:28:17.260 they stayed home. And that might have been the difference in that election because Trudeau

00:28:20.620 barely won in 2021. He didn't, he didn't win the popular vote. And I think that the conservatives

00:28:25.740 learned a real lesson from that moment, which is that what you say to the base, what you say during the

00:28:31.500 leadership race, the primaries, basically, you have to follow through with that. And I think

00:28:36.540 you're right. It's not a matter of tweaking the CBC. It's not a matter of reducing its budget.

00:28:41.740 You have to defund it. You have to cut it off completely because otherwise it will find a way

00:28:46.860 to survive. I think on the matter of the newspaper bailouts, I think that the conservatives sort of

00:28:52.540 have like a free market approach to a lot of things that maybe they like the idea of like tax receipts

00:28:58.220 being able to be issued and allowing journalism agencies to kind of act a little bit like

00:29:03.100 charities. I'm, I'm a believer of that as well. That's why I, when I started True North, you know,

00:29:07.260 we, we became a charity because I think the journalism can be a public good. And that, that,

00:29:11.900 that, that is, you know, if, if Canadians, like imagine you got your tax tax form and while you were

00:29:18.220 filling it out, you got to select which media companies you funded. So, you know, right now,

00:29:23.340 I think it's $33 from every Canadian goes to the CBC, Pascal saying, oh, she says she wanted to

00:29:27.660 double it to $60. Imagine if you had $60 and you got to put a check mark beside like which

00:29:34.540 media companies you wanted to fund. And imagine if the rebel and Juneau news and True North were all

00:29:38.780 on there and Canadians got to choose where their money would go. You know, that's, that's sort of

00:29:43.100 like a free market approach that like everybody should fund the media. We'll do it through your

00:29:46.620 taxes, but you actually get to direct them almost like a school voucher program. I could, I could see

00:29:51.020 conservatives getting excited about that. Now, I'm not saying that that's Pierre Polyev's perspective,

00:29:56.060 but I think that those are the kind of ideas that are in the works within the conservative party from

00:30:00.300 conversations that I've had. And I think, I think that that could be kind of like a win-win for everybody.

00:30:05.900 You know, I, of course the, the libertarian argument would be why should, I mean, if, or you,

00:30:12.140 as long as there's a checkbox of no thanks, I don't want to spend the $33, I'll spend that on my own

00:30:19.500 family. I mean, I, to, to compel people to give, but to give them a choice is, I suppose, better

00:30:26.780 than compelling them to give to the CBC. But I would, I, I wouldn't feel like I'm like rebel news

00:30:32.700 is morally superior than a restaurant or than a, you know, than a, than a gymnasium. I, you must support

00:30:41.420 one of these 10 restaurants. You must support one of the, I mean, I, with these 10 barber shops,

00:30:45.900 I would just, I, it's, it's tricky, but I think that both True North and Rebel News and Counter-Signal

00:30:51.660 and Western Standard are, and are proof that you can make a go of it without compelling taxpayers to

00:31:00.700 pay. Hey, I got two quick questions for you and then I'll let you, I know you're, you're busy and

00:31:04.140 thank you for jamming us in. I'm riveted every day by seeing Elon Musk take a blowtorch to spending,

00:31:11.260 eliminating entire agencies like USAID, going through social security and finding people who

00:31:19.500 were allegedly 200 years old, but still collect, like, it's just crazy. He's doing it with such

00:31:25.820 vigor and enthusiasm. They're saving tens of billions. Maybe, maybe they're past a hundred

00:31:31.460 billion dollars now. Do you think we could ever get something like that in Canada? Well, I think we need

00:31:36.520 to. I don't think it's a matter of whether we can, Ezra. I think that Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland

00:31:40.980 have put us on an unbelievably unsustainable fiscal path, right? They've doubled the debt

00:31:46.080 in this country. The absolute ballooning of spending during COVID was completely unprecedented

00:31:51.520 and unsustainable. And it wasn't just the fact that they were sending out CERB checks, which I think,

00:31:57.300 to me, hearing, you know, hearing in the liberal leadership debate the other night, the idea of

00:32:01.860 universal basic income and that they still believe in it. I mean, we tried that during COVID and it was an

00:32:06.100 abject failure. And the idea that the liberals haven't learned from that is maddening, Ezra.

00:32:11.160 But anyways, it wasn't just the checks that they were sending out to Canadians to stay at home.

00:32:16.120 It was the growth in government, the number of bureaucrats that they hired, the number of

00:32:20.200 consultants that they hired. They're spending millions and millions of dollars on consulting

00:32:24.400 firms to help the bureaucrats, even though they've, I think there's been a 40% increase in the number of

00:32:29.860 bureaucrats working in the federal government since Justin Trudeau came along. So, like, Canada doesn't have a

00:32:35.020 choice. We are on a completely unsustainable path. Look at the loony, the strength of the dollar. I

00:32:39.460 mean, it's recovered a little bit in the last few weeks, but it was down to 68 cents for the American

00:32:45.060 dollar. I mean, I think the Canadian economy is in real, real trouble. Basically, the government

00:32:50.100 propped up our GDP through growth in government and through immigration, hoping that that would sort

00:32:57.020 of cover from the fact that the private sector is just not growing at all. So, I don't think it's a

00:33:01.900 matter of like, hey, should we do what the Americans are doing? Because it would be a big

00:33:06.940 win for conservatives to get rid of some of this wasting government. Like, I think whoever is the

00:33:11.560 next prime minister, I mean, it will be Mark Carney, but whoever forms the next government, whether it

00:33:15.940 is some kind of a coalition between liberals and NDP, whether we go to the polls and conservatives win,

00:33:20.280 or heck, maybe even Mark Carney will win. Whoever, I think it's going to be like the 1990s all over again,

00:33:25.600 where they basically almost defaulted on their debt and they had to massively restructure federal

00:33:30.980 spending because it's just not sustainable. Like, Canada will be a failed state if we don't fix

00:33:35.440 things. I think that Elon Musk and President Trump are giving us some great ideas on how we can do it

00:33:40.620 and how we can cut. And I hope Polyev is watching. I will note, Ezra, that I did ask Pierre Polyev

00:33:45.440 about this in my interview. I said, is there anything that you're seeing from the Trump administration,

00:33:49.680 from his executive orders, that you feel inspired by? He basically just said, no, we've got our own

00:33:55.160 ideas. And I don't think he wanted to be seen complimenting Donald Trump in any way,

00:33:59.580 shape or form, which I understand. But they were defunding USAID. And a couple of days later,

00:34:06.720 Pierre Polyev came out and said, we were going to defund foreign aid as well. So I think the ideas

00:34:11.420 are out there. They're popular. Seeing the left try to defend these ridiculous programs, it's not a good

00:34:20.120 look. The thing that they're protesting is protecting their own corruption, basically, as opposed to 0.92

00:34:24.980 actually doing what's best for the taxpayer. And I hope that the Conservatives win so that they can do

00:34:29.500 something like that. But I think even if it's Mark Carney, Ezra, he's going to have to do something

00:34:33.540 because otherwise Canada is going to go bankrupt.

00:34:35.880 Yeah. Well, last question for you. And it goes to your area of expertise. You mentioned True North

00:34:40.580 started with an immigration focus. Trudeau has gone absolutely nuts. I understand that until very

00:34:49.080 recently, there were 4.9 million people in Canada on a temporary visa that was set to expire by the end

00:34:56.260 of 2025. Now, I understand that some of them have been granted extensions. That is more than 10% of

00:35:03.140 our population has to vamoose at the end of the year. They're fake in many ways, fake students who

00:35:09.180 never showed up to the school, fake refugees taking advantage of our soft touch, fake temporary foreign 1.00

00:35:15.960 workers in the sense that there was no need for them to be brought in to do the particular jobs that

00:35:21.700 they are. I think immigration is by far the number one issue in Canada. I think it exacerbates every

00:35:27.660 other issue from traffic to school crowding to healthcare emergency wait times. And we've seen a

00:35:36.080 lot of cultural problems too, whether it's Hamas, hate marches. I think that is, to me, that's more

00:35:43.380 important than every other issue combined. Does Pierre Polyev have the courage to stand up against

00:35:51.520 that hurricane? Because he'll be called racist. He'll be called an enemy to different ethnic

00:35:57.380 communities. You'll see big business say, no, no, we need our cheap labor at Tim Hortons. God forbid we 0.75

00:36:05.020 spend an extra dollar an hour on staff. You're going to have every entrenched interest saying,

00:36:11.860 do not cut immigration. Will he? Well, he told me again in our interview that he will, that he 0.96

00:36:18.580 thought that the Stephen Harper levels were better than today, which I think we should take as a

00:36:24.700 victory because obviously what Justin Trudeau has done over the last 10 years has been an unmitigated

00:36:30.100 disaster. And it was predictable from the very beginning. I think that one of the things that I

00:36:35.920 wouldn't have predicted, Ezra, I mean, I knew that there was a problem. And I would have said that this

00:36:40.020 is one of those issues that people don't pay attention to until all of a sudden it exists

00:36:44.620 like every day. It's front and center in every aspect. And you really have seen a cultural shift

00:36:49.980 where it's not even seen as rude to criticize the immigration system. People are being pushed their

00:36:56.140 wit's end. And whether it's the crime, the rampant, unbelievable crime, I mean, I still can't get over

00:37:01.680 the fact that there are home invasions and carjackings almost every day in the GTA. I mean,

00:37:06.180 it's terrifying. It's terrifying. And there's a whole thing of crime tourism, people from Eastern 1.00

00:37:13.060 Europe and Latin America and Africa coming here basically on vacation to rob Canadians. I mean, 1.00

00:37:18.780 we're sitting ducks and nobody is paying close enough attention. One of the things that Pierre

00:37:22.900 Polyev is very strong on is crime, is this idea that we have to deport people who commit crimes,

00:37:29.480 that we have to put back in mandatory minimums, that we have to get rid of the failed bail program

00:37:34.620 and have reform on that. Because otherwise, you just have the same people committing crimes over

00:37:39.760 and over and over again. And no one is taking it seriously. So I do have faith that Polyev will be

00:37:46.520 strong when it comes to crime. The conservatives are usually very good on that issue. And that,

00:37:50.760 to me, is the most important aspect of the immigration. I don't think that Pierre Polyev is a

00:37:55.600 culture warrior. I don't think he's going to go out there and try to make some kind of a case

00:38:00.480 for Canadian values. Although you did see it in the Canada First rally a little bit,

00:38:06.000 but I don't see him as taking a lead on that cultural side. But I do think sort of like from

00:38:12.300 an economic perspective and from a crime perspective, I think that the conservatives are

00:38:15.680 very strong on that issue. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you feel that way. And

00:38:19.840 it's not just stopping new immigration, it's deporting and saying goodbye. I mean, that's what's

00:38:26.880 so interesting about Trump's approach. It's great to spend so much time with you. Congratulations

00:38:31.780 on Juno News. We're going to keep watching that and following and hopefully you'll grow and be strong.

00:38:38.920 And I am optimistic and I'd even say confident that Pierre Polyev is going to win this year.

00:38:46.360 It's going to be a disastrous interregnum when Carney and Jagmeet Singh do their atrocious deal,

00:38:52.520 as they will. But I think we're going to end the year on a good foot. That's my thought. Last word

00:38:58.820 to you. Well, I hope you're right. I just had you on my show. We were talking about the polls and the

00:39:03.300 terrifying gain by the liberals. I don't know if it's true or not, but Ipsos poll has them supposedly

00:39:09.160 up 26 points over the last six weeks. So a two point lead now over the conservatives. It's way too

00:39:15.240 close for comfort. And I think that a large part of that bump comes from the media drumming up this

00:39:20.720 narrative that Trump is the enemy, that the Americans are going to invade, that only a liberal

00:39:24.740 can protect us against Trump and that anti-American sentiment that lives in the hearts of so many

00:39:30.340 central Canadians. I don't think it really exists the same way in Western Canada, but in central

00:39:34.940 Canada, there really is a deep level suspicion and some level hatred for the Americans. And so

00:39:41.480 the media is amplifying that. The media is doing everything they can. Ezra, we know that they will.

00:39:45.540 We know that they'll continue to do that. Everything they can to prop up the liberals,

00:39:48.480 to prop up Mark Carney, to whitewash him, to cover up his crimes, his lies, his total lack of clarity,

00:39:55.560 you know, whether it comes to his business dealings or even basic facts about his life and where he

00:40:01.240 lives. So, you know, I think that's the job of the independent media. I think that our work is cut

00:40:05.500 out for us, but we have to make sure that Canadians see the full picture as why independent media is

00:40:10.620 just so important. Great to catch up with you. Good luck with Juno News. Keep up the fight.

00:40:15.400 All right. Thanks, Ezra. All right. There you have it. Candace Malcolm, the boss 1.00

00:40:19.280 of Juno News. That's our show for today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel

00:40:26.080 World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:40:29.720 уже great. Let's get started. Thank you.

00:40:32.480 We'll be right back.

00:40:32.660 We'll be right back.

00:40:35.280 We'll be right back.

00:40:40.840 Bye.

00:40:41.020 Bye.

00:40:46.400 Bye.

00:40:46.520 Bye.

00:40:48.400 Bye.

00:40:48.920 Bye.

00:40:56.880 Bye.

Rebel News Podcast - February 28, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Canada's media party feels threatened by the independent press

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