EZRA LEVANT ｜ Candice Malcolm on the rise of independent media and the collapse of legacy trust
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Summary
When Rebel News started 10 years ago, there wasn't a lot of independent journalism in Canada. In fact, I could count on one hand's fingers the outlets that were trying to be independent citizen journalists. Now, on the one hand, we no longer have a monopoly like Rebel News used to on the independent journalism side, but on the other, we're no longer lonely. We have allies. And I believe the market is so large that there's so much room for people who want to challenge the regime media, as I call it, that I have adopted the approach of Rebel News to be friends even with our nominal competitors.
Transcript
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Tonight, a feature interview with Candace Malcolm, the founder of True North and Juno News.
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When Rebel News started 10 years ago, there really wasn't a lot of independent journalism
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in Canada. In fact, there really wasn't a lot in the West or in the world. I could count on one
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hand's fingers the outlets that were trying to be independent citizen journalists. Believe it or
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not, one of the inspirations for us was a left-wing channel called The Young Turks out of LA. And then
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it was Glenn Beck's The Blaze. And that's about it. Well, I'm delighted to say that not only in Canada,
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but in places like the UK, independent journalism, citizen journalism is thriving. Now, on the one
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hand, we no longer have a monopoly like Rebel News used to on the independent journalism side. But
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on the other hand, we're no longer lonely. We have allies. And I believe the market is so large
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that there is so much room for people who want to challenge the regime media, as I call it,
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that I have adopted the approach of Rebel News to be friends, even with our nominal competitors.
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And one of my favorite sources of independent journalism in Canada that is not Rebel News
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are the good folks at True North and Juneau News. And what a delight to have with us for
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the entirety of today's show, my friend Candice Malcolm, the founder of True North and co-founder
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of Juneau News. Candice, great to see you and congratulations on your successes.
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Well, thank you so much, Ezra, and for that introduction, you know, I worked at the Rebel
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at the very beginning and I've always been a huge admirer of what you do. I really feel like
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you have been a mentor. You're the godfather of independent journalism in Canada and free speech
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in Canada. So many of us are sort of following in your footsteps and able to do what we do
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because of you. So I've always felt that we work together. We kind of do different things
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in the media journalism space. But I think that it's stronger than ever. And even, you know,
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to see from my perspective, younger, I think they call themselves influencers now, but the
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young conservative influencers who are really have big followings on X and on YouTube and they're
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kind of continuing this new stage of independent journalism, they don't even care what the legacy
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media says, right? Like we're out here fighting the CBC and the Globe and Mail and trying to correct
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the record on things that they're saying. And you people in their 20s, they don't even, it's not
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even on their radar what's happening on the CBC because they don't care and it's not relevant
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because the CBC has just lost the plot and they're so, you know, out in the woods just wandering
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around talking to themselves, navel gazing, and not actually reporting on the important things that
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Canadians care about. So I think we've created a whole new world, a whole new ecosystem. And it's
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a great time to be an independent journalist. You're so right. And first of all, thanks for
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your kind words. But you're right. When Rebel News started, I think I had a bit of an inferiority
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complex about the raising media. I said, oh, we're not as reputable. We're not as large. And so it's
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always been in the back of my mind. We got to show them. But you're right. This whole new generation
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of influencers, they barely know what the CBC is. Of course, they don't read the Globe and Mail.
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It's sort of awesome. Nowhere have I seen that change more than in London. I used to go and
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cover Tommy Robinson's cases and I would be the only journalist outside court. Last couple of times
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I went there, literally 20, 20 different citizen journalists from very rough folks with an old
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phone to very sophisticated rigs and systems and staff. And I think the need is, it's a response to
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a demand. People just don't believe the BBC, the CBC, the Globe. So I don't know. It's an exciting
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trend to see. And you're right. 10 years ago, you had to convince people, well, you can trust us and
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here's if you want to chip in, here's this new way. But now people are used to chipping in a
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subscription here or there. That's an important part of it, the funding, isn't it? Because we don't
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take government money. So the fact that people are used to chipping in five bucks or 10 bucks a month
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for streaming things, they're now used to paying for independent journalism too.
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Well, you're right. Because I think at the very beginning, it was a credibility issue, right? It's
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like, well, you need to read the legacy media to know what's true. And then if you want a different
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opinion, you can tune into Ezra or Candace and you can get the opinion side. Whereas I think that it
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was really during COVID that the legacy media lied so much and it was so obvious they couldn't keep
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the story straight. They couldn't tell us the truth and they just lost so much trust. And the
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political situation has shifted too, right? Like in the UK, you're talking about, I remember I went
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over to London to report on Tommy Robinson. And at the time, I think people thought that he was sort
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of a fringe character. I have friends in the UK, friends from London who have kind of come around
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on Tommy and he's become a more mainstream person who's just speaking the truth about the very obvious
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problems with mass immigration, unchecked migration, bringing in people from the third world that don't
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have any cultural fit in our country, in the UK or in Canada. And again, those opinions are now very
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mainstream at the time. There were only a few people saying it. And now I think it's just obvious to
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absolutely everybody that open border mass immigration has been a total failure.
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Yeah. I want to talk a lot more about those things. You've talked about freedom of speech.
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You've talked about, you know, mass immigration. Let's come back to that. But just give us one minute.
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Um, I think I understand the difference between True North and Juno and our friend Keen Bexley,
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who was with Canada Signal. He's also a Rebel alumnus. Help me understand what you guys are
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building just because I know some of our viewers might also be trying to understand what's the
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difference between True North and Juno. Yeah, I totally get this. And, and, you know,
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it's a complicated structure just because we're operating in the Canadian system. And so True North
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is a charity and they do written journalism. So they are journalists. This is still the same
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team that we had before. Uh, they're out there writing the news. We have journalists all over
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the country, uh, doing straight news. So not opinion journalism, but, you know, we do have
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investigative journalists doing kind of deep dive. We have a crime reporter. We have our day-to-day
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sort of political reporters. And so they do the written news.
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So who would be some of the staff there? Is Melanie Bennett one of them?
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She's great. I've interviewed before. Oh, she's doing great stuff.
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She's very good. Uh, Cosmin Georgia, who was familiar. Alex Zoltan's a crime reporter. There's,
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there's a, there's about a dozen of these, uh, young journalists. They're all, you know,
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very talented, hungry, um, great team over there. And so, so, so that exists. And then Juno News was
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a project that I launched with our friend, our mutual friend, Kian Bexty, who was the founder of
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The Counter Signal. And so this is a platform, like a podcasting platform, news platform. Uh, we,
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we carry True North's journalism. So, so True North is a wire service and we publish the news.
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We're the publishers of that news. And then on top of that, you get podcasts to, uh, familiar
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people like, uh, Mark Petrone and Chris Sims. Um, Alexander Brown has a podcast with us, myself,
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Kian Bexty. Uh, there's sort of a host of, of, of different characters that you can find
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on YouTube or on our website, JunoNews.com. And so it's a subscription service. Uh, people pay
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to have access to everything and you get the written journalism from True North, but then you
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also get, uh, the opinion side and a podcast side, uh, for myself and the team of others.
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Well, that's great. I, I mean, it's, it's a pretty large operation.
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Yeah. Yeah. We're growing. And I think, I think that was sort of the idea of it behind
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Kian and I coming together. We wanted to join forces and create something that was bigger
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than just the two, just True North and Counter Signal. And I think we really have, we've reached
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a new audience. Uh, we have big staff. We have, uh, you know, a lot of things. We have a documentary
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coming out in a couple, couple months and yeah, we're just able to sort of do more with, with more
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resources and we're having a lot of fun. Well, that's great. I mean, uh, when, when you talk
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about True North being a kind of newswire, I don't think ordinary people understand the power that
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newswires have because one journalist with Reuters or Canadian press can be in hundreds, even thousands
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of news outlets. And so if that one newswire reporter has a certain bias or makes an error,
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it is so wide. And, and I think that historically newswires have been left of center. They've all
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had a particular ideology. Certainly Canadian press is extremely leftist activist. And I bet most people
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don't even know that they're reading it because they're picking up the Calgary Sun. They're picking
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up the national post. They're picking up the global mail and they're reading a wire story and they
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don't even know. People don't check the name of who wrote it. And like, so I think that people are
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consuming this group think vanilla leftism and they don't even realize it. Well, that's exactly
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right. Like most people don't realize that almost all the news stories in the legacy media, whether
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you're reading it on CTV's website or the Globe and Mail or even the Toronto Sun or the sort of
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traditionally conservative papers. And it's written by the same handful of hacks. And the way that they
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write stories, the lens through which they interpret the world is the same as the CBC. It is,
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like you said, it's groupthink. It's lazy. It's unoriginal. And it's basically just, you know,
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Canadians bad, refugees good, right? Like that's basically in a nutshell what it is. And so the
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idea was, no, we need journalists, reporters out there doing the research, doing the investigations,
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telling the truth, telling the stories, not through this lens. So it is a competitor to the Canadian
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press. I hope that, you know, eventually maybe newspapers, maybe even mainstream media will pick up
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our stories rather than the Canadian press or in addition to it, just so that Canadians get a better
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sense of what's actually happening in the country, not just what, you know, the establishment elite
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So if True North is like the newswire service and Juno is like the particular publication and it's more
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podcast oriented, are you accepting other customers for True North wire service or not yet?
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Not yet, but we will. We will. We're getting to that point.
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Something Rebel News might consider. I love the journalists you listed. I mean, I know Zoltan,
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Georgia and Bennett. I think they're brave. I think they're not afraid to be,
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to challenge the status quo. So when you guys are ready to take on customers,
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we do subscribe to the Canadian press wire service photos. And my theory there is you can't,
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you can sort of lie with a photo, but we need photos to populate our stories. But I'd love to
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Well, I'll wait for you to let me know that that's the thing. But I mean, part of the power of the wire
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service is that the stories go in lots of places. I've seen, I've seen competitive efforts,
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Yeah, we're talking about the Daily Caller, right? The idea is that they have this nonprofit
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media outlet, because I think, you know, the Trudeau government did a lot of things wrong.
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One of the things they did, though, was that they created a charitable status for journalism
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outlets. I think that you and I as well, both of us, were kind of leading that charge and that
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people are willing to pay for journalism that they like and that they enjoy and that they
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appreciate. And actually, it's not just that they're paying for the service of being able to
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read it. They think it's a social good. And they believe in it so much, they're willing
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to reach into their own pockets and donate money to make sure that other Canadians see
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it. So in a lot of ways, you know, they don't want us to put it behind a paywall. They want
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everyone to be able to read it. They want everyone to be able to see it. And they're willing to pay
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even more because, you know, the people who are in the comfortable position where they're
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retired or maybe they're close to retirement and they have a bit of extra cash, you know, that's
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something that they believe in and they want to put their money towards it. And so with this new
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status that we are hopefully going to be able to get soon, it will mean that anyone can donate
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and it will go towards journalism that will allow more Canadians to read the truth and be aware of
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some of the problems that, you know, the CBC and legacy media just would prefer that we not talk
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about, not even know about. And so they deliberately don't cover the kinds of stories that we do.
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Let me ask you a question. You mentioned the UK and how some of the battles there, you know,
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I call it like dystopian time machine. I go to the UK and I think, oh my God,
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that's going to be us in five years. I mean, I really do think I get a sneak peek at our future
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there. And I try and cover it from over here. I fly over there probably once a month.
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How do you guys approach international stories? Do you sort of let that be to others? Or I'm just
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curious, do you think it's important? Like the United States is such a big influence on all our
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politics and there's so many more conservative and freedom oriented people there. What's your approach
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being towards the U.S.? Do you sort of just focus on Canada for now?
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I would say that we like, you know, what's happening in the U.S. is usually very interesting,
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right? I follow it very closely. I'm kind of like a news junkie. So I like to know what's going on
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all over the place. You know, sometimes there's big stories, big tragedies, like what happened in
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Bondi Beach or what happened to Charlie Kirk that just, you know, they affect the entire world and
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certainly the conservative world or, you know, in the case of the massacre. I mean,
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anybody like the Jewish community, but also Christians and also people worried about mass
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migration and radicalism and everything like that. So, you know, for me personally, I'm aware
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of it all and I might talk about it here and there on my show, but the focus of the show always has to
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be Canada, right? And same with True North. We have reporters all over the country and there's so many
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interesting things happening in Canada. Sometimes our politics is actually more interesting than what's
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happening in the States. But, you know, we really want to get into the communities, into the local
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level and tell the stories that are just not being told. So I feel like there's enough things for us
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to talk about here in Canada that we don't always need to focus as much on international stories. But
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obviously, you're right that things that happen elsewhere, in some ways they're foreshadowing what
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might happen in Canada. Sometimes that's already happened in Canada and now it's happening in the
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United States or now it's happening in Australia and they're following us and we're the kind of
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cautionary tale of, you know, what you don't want, for instance, when it comes to a national
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euthanasia policy or, you know, many other social issues that Canada has gone so wrong. And so again,
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our focus is always Canada. Back in 2019, True North and Rebel News were kept out of the national
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leaders debate in the election. And both True North and Rebel News went to court and it was sort of a
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miracle. We won. And the government was ordered to accredit Andrew Lawton, who at the time was a
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journalist with True North. And I can't remember, I think it was Kian Beckstein, someone else.
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If I recall. And we've had that battle with him again in 2021 and then they just sort of surrendered
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this year. How are you guys treated by gatekeeping politicians? We had great access to Alberta's
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Premier Daniels, but maybe that's because I knew her from college or something. I don't know. I think
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she's generally more free speechy. She's not afraid. But to this day, we remain blocked by the
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Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa. And Mark Carney and his staff wouldn't let us within a million
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miles. Is that how they treat you also or is that sort of a rebel thing?
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No, I think that's how they treat anybody who's not part of the official government press or the
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regime media, as you call them. I think that certainly the liberals, anyone in Ottawa, it's tough,
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right? I was able to interview Pierre Polyev last year, well, I guess earlier this year before the
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election. And that was great. And I was able to do that, I think partially just because I knew Pierre
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from before and he's a friend with my husband. And so I was able to just text him and I got an
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interview with him. But it is a bit harder with any Ottawa politician. I think that the thing that's
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changed, though, is that the independent media, we have a big audience, right? And so a lot of
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conservative MPs are willing to talk to us just because that's where their voters are getting
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their news from. Alberta, I think I feel like we're mainstream in Alberta. It's not even like
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we're independent. It's like we are the kind of more establishment mainstream media there. And it's
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the legacy media that's a bit more fringe. And so I think I think Western Canada kind of gets it a bit
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more. Still a bit of a challenge in Ottawa, but it's never easy. And I think that's the reason behind
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the independent press gallery and why we have that, because it's like, you know, just because we don't
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work for one of these legacy organizations that literally gets funded by the Kearney government
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doesn't mean that we're any less of journalists or any less right to tell our stories. And I think
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that's a pretty compelling point. Yeah. That goes to my earlier point. And maybe this is too much of a
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psychological confession on my part. For years, I was focused on we were small, they were big, we
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didn't have a reputation, they did. And now, I mean, I stopped counting when our combined views and
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impressions hit two billion. I mean, I could add, I could go and add it up. But I don't even care
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anymore. I just know that some of our videos in one day, we'll get as much as the CBC, the national,
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and we're just a little YouTube channel, really. So I'm not as shy about it anymore. How has the CBC,
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the Global Mail, the Toronto Star reacted to independent media? Because at first, they sort of said,
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oh, isn't that cute? You kids at the kids' table, they're good on you. Like, that's how they treated
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Rebel when we were born. They thought we were completely harmless. They thought it was cute.
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Then they thought, oh, my God, they're growing like crazy. Must destroy. Now, how would you say
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they regard Juno, True North, Rebel News, any independents now? And I'm curious, because
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on the one hand, they don't want to give us any credit. On the other hand, they want to undo us
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when they can. What's your opinion? No, they'll never give us any credit. The only time they pay
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any attention to us, Ezra, is when they're so outraged about something that we would dare to
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report, right? Like, I think of Andrew Coyne, like, clutching his fists and his pearls over our
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former journalist, Harrison Faulkner, reporting about arson and forest fires. Because, of course,
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the Trudeau government wanted everyone to believe that it was just climate change causing all of these
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forest fires. And then when you look at the reports and statistics, and you find that, like, 95% of
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them are actually arson and man-caused. And so it was very outrageous that we would report that.
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Myself, during the election, right before the election, I put out a report, and two of my
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reporters did really good work looking into Mark Carney's daughter, Sasha Carney, who's actually...
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Who is actually, yeah, not... She doesn't identify as a daughter anymore because she has tranced. And so
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the idea that our prime minister allowed his own daughter to be tranced as a teenager,
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she went to the discredited Tavistock Clinic. She wrote about it, right? This wasn't like...
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She's a public activist. That's why it's a legit story, because she made it public.
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Right. Like, the legacy media treated it like we went in and stole her diary or something and
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published her secret writing. She's an activist. She's writing essays about it and talking about a
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double mastectomy and all this kind of stuff, right? And so it's like, you know what?
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Right. Like, the prime minister allowed his own daughter to do that. And I think that's
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in the public interest. I think Canadians deserve to know. I stand by that story. I stand by the
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report. It's important. And, you know, yes, it's personal. Maybe I would have, you know,
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going back, maybe I would have changed the headline or the way that we presented the story. But still,
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I think it's a public interest to know that our prime minister went down that rabbit hole and allowed
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his own family member to do something like that. And I think it's unfortunate that the conservatives
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sort of felt the need to denounce me for that report. But the thing, just to go back to your
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question, you know, when I put out that report, the legacy media really paid attention and they
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did it to totally discredit me. Like, how dare you? In Canada, we never talk about politicians,
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families and all this kind of stuff, which, you know, maybe that's a fair point, except for that
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that's not true. They go after Anna Polly, I care Polly's wife all the time. They used to go after
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Stephen Harper for the way that he treated his children member when he gave his son Ben a handshake
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on the way to school. And that was, you know, the top news story in the country. Of course they go
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after politicians, families. But when I did it, it was totally off, you know, unacceptable and out
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of bounds. And they condemned me from the highest rooftop for that. And so that's when they pay
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attention to us, when they're outraged over something that we report. Yeah. There's a real
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clubbiness to it. I mean, there's something on CBC called the At Issue Panel. And it's normally
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Rosemary Barton in Ottawa, Andrew Korn in Toronto, Althea Raj, who was Trudeau's authorized biographer
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in Ottawa, and another lady whose name I... Chantal Ebert. Chantal Ebert from Montreal. It's been that
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same, and they're starting to resemble each other. It's like old married couples that start to look
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like each other. I think these three or four of them are starting, in my mind, they're all blending
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together. And they haven't... It's like a pond that hasn't had fresh water coming into it in 20
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years. And just geographically, it's just like nothing west of Toronto, but of course, the entire
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ideological spectrum from A to B. Like, it's just... I mean, I don't know how many people watch that,
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but my theory is they only care about one person watching it, the prime minister. And if it's okay
00:20:50.200
by him, it's okay by CBC. I don't know. I just... Like, surely there's someone younger, someone
00:20:56.520
newer, someone represented. Like, I don't know. I just... You have Trudeau's literal biographer
00:21:03.440
on the panel, but the closest thing you get to a conservative is Andrew Korn, who rages against
00:21:09.240
Pierre Polyev every week. Well, and calls me far right. It calls you far right. I mean,
00:21:13.780
to him, you know, he's so far to the left that anyone to his right is far right. So it's so absurd.
00:21:19.640
I don't know. It's just... I feel like they're stuck in amber. You know what I mean? Like a bug that was
00:21:24.300
caught in the sap, and it was metrified, and that nothing's changed over there. And nothing will
00:21:29.380
change as long as they can convince Mark Carney, like they convinced Trudeau, that they will be worth
00:21:35.700
their weight politically. I mean, when you think about CTV is the same way. I read Bell Canada's
00:21:39.900
annual report. That's a huge company. And the annual report was, I don't know, I'm going to
00:21:45.500
guess 50 pages long. They didn't even have one page about CTV News. They had like a paragraph.
00:21:51.760
It's not important to them as a business, as a mission. They're all about the internet and cell
00:21:57.220
phones. It's clear to me that the only reason Bell Canada subsidizes CTV News is as a political tool
00:22:04.400
to do favors for the regime because they're such a regulated company. I don't know. I look at all
00:22:10.120
the regulated TV. I look at all the subsidized newspapers, and I think they're not actually
00:22:15.860
about selling eyeballs to advertisers or selling news to consumers. They're about selling political
00:22:23.900
massaging of the truth to Justin Trudeau or now Mark Carney. Like, it's not what you think. What you
00:22:30.940
think is for sale is not what's for sale. It's like Facebook. You are for sale. I think that's
00:22:37.100
the modern mainstream media. You are being politicized year round. I don't know. I'm
00:22:42.840
rambling on a little bit, but I think that's the only reason these panels make sense.
00:22:47.780
Yeah. I think you've got, you kind of hit the nail on the head there, right? It's like,
00:22:51.480
it exists just to make them feel important that they have access to the prime minister and that
00:22:55.520
they can have him on the show and that the prime minister then feels important because he gets
00:22:58.780
invited on the show and they get to promote the ministers and it's all just one big, you know.
00:23:03.740
And they have lobbyists on. They call them strategists. They're lobbyists and they don't
00:23:07.660
disclose who they're lobbying for. That's crazy.
00:23:09.900
Right. No, this is like, this is kind of like the problem of Canada in a nutshell, right? It's like,
00:23:13.600
it's like there's these few kind of powerful families and powerful people that kind of control
00:23:17.640
everything and everyone just kind of does as they're told and the, you know, elite class isn't very
00:23:23.140
elite. They're not very creative or imaginative or smart. They just kind of, you know, do what they've
00:23:27.780
always done without the need to change. And I, you know, I think that this is a major problem in the
00:23:32.520
Canadian economy as well is that they just don't want to innovate. They don't want to change. They
00:23:35.520
don't want to move forward. You know, you can talk about pipelines, you can talk about resource
00:23:40.060
development, you can talk about the future of the country and just sort of lack of productivity.
00:23:44.520
You know, the idea that we have to have mass immigration just to grow the economy. Canadians don't
00:23:49.380
want to have kids, so they have to have like important third world in here to replace them all.
00:23:53.640
Yeah, there's just, there's so many problems and you look at the ruling class, you think,
00:23:57.120
you know, these people, they don't really have what it takes to get us out of this. And I think
00:24:01.060
that's why, again, why what we do is so important because we shine a light on it all and help people
00:24:05.220
make sense of it, that it doesn't have to be that way, that, you know, you can have startups and you
00:24:10.200
can have competition, you can have other voices and other people out there doing this thing. We
00:24:14.880
could probably actually do it better than they can.
00:24:17.320
True North started as a public policy think tank focusing on immigration.
00:24:21.120
Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on immigration
00:24:23.160
in 2026 because I think it's so unsustainable. And I think that there is a sourness in the
00:24:29.860
public mood. Canada used to be friendly towards immigration. I think that the, and now the head
00:24:36.680
of the so-called Century Initiative, which wanted to triple Canada's population, he's been appointed a
00:24:42.760
handpicked appointee by Carney. I think he's the new ambassador to the States. Like there is still a
00:24:49.120
runaway train there. What are your thoughts? Yeah, it's kind of scary actually because it's
00:24:53.160
like, you know, I think for the liberals, the solution is just always more immigration. Any
00:24:56.960
problem, any issue, it's like, well, we just need more people. Just get more bodies in. And as long
00:25:01.140
as people are willing to come to Canada, we will pay for them. We'll literally give them everything
00:25:04.380
they need. We'll pay, we'll buy their bedsheets, we'll buy their apartment, we'll buy their car,
00:25:07.820
we'll put them, everything. And it's indiscriminate. But they're bringing in, I mean, I'm not saying
00:25:12.260
they're bringing in. No, they don't care. They don't care where you're from. They don't care anything.
00:25:14.800
Just come on in. They don't need interviews anymore. It's just all click a few buttons on
00:25:19.140
a website, you're done. It's, there's no actual, years ago they gave up interviewing people. They
00:25:24.240
just don't do it. They don't do it. And, and, and they don't even ask anything of you, right? It's
00:25:27.900
literally like, just come, don't worry, we'll pay for you. You'll, you'll, you'll have a nice life.
00:25:32.160
We'll take care of you. And free health, they advertise, there was a tweet by Immigration Canada
00:25:37.360
mentioning come to Canada for free health care. They're like, they're, they're, they're not even hiding it.
00:25:43.980
And that's just the beginning. I mean, you can go through reports of just all the things that they
00:25:48.220
get. No, it's, I was thinking about this the other day, Ezra, because I remember I was on your show
00:25:51.760
probably 10 years ago talking about the Syrian refugee strategy. And at the time, Kelly Leach had
00:25:56.540
this controversial idea that we should screen newcomers for their values. And I said, of course
00:26:01.440
they should. Of course that should be the bare minimum. You know, you should have to have, like,
00:26:04.880
what is Canada other than a shared set of values and ideas, right? We're not an ethnic race of
00:26:10.300
people, right? We're not a nation in the true sense. We've always sort of been a mix of different
00:26:14.520
people, but we have a shared worldview and a shared ideology. And so 10 years ago, it was like,
00:26:18.980
I think that you have to share that worldview in order to come to Canada. And in the last 10 years,
00:26:22.960
we've just seen the absolute consequences of complete open door immigration, wide open,
00:26:28.940
indiscriminate, as you said. And I think there's a much deeper problem that requires a much bigger
00:26:33.380
solution, right? Like I was actually talking to, not to get too personal, but my, my brother,
00:26:39.000
his family live in a suburb of Vancouver. My other brother and his family live in a suburb of
00:26:42.540
Toronto. And my nephew in Vancouver is the only white child in his class, the only white boy.
00:26:48.120
And I was talking to my sister-in-law and she said that one of her daughters is also the only
00:26:52.400
white girl in her class. They're in an entire school where there's no Canadians, basically.
00:26:58.280
Everyone is an immigrant. Everyone's from the world. Look, I think it's fine. I think it's great to
00:27:01.840
have, you know, a Chinese family and an Indian family. And it's interesting and fun, but that's not,
00:27:06.840
that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about everybody from a different culture,
00:27:10.420
everybody from a different place. And Canadians are, I don't know, I guess they're moving to the
00:27:14.500
exurbs and they're, they're getting further and further away from these cities. I think it has a
00:27:18.140
real problem. And I think it's very obvious to everybody that we don't really have any shared
00:27:22.880
values anymore. We don't really have anything holding us together. It's going to be a huge,
00:27:27.220
we're going to need a huge issue. There's going to be backlash. It's already here. It's already
00:27:30.020
coming. I think most Canadians opposed to, I think we do need an immigration moratorium.
00:27:33.460
I think that we should consider offering people money to go back to their country. I think that
00:27:38.380
the remigration is something that we should consider because even just the cost of living
00:27:42.240
in Canada, like we shouldn't be paying people to come here. We shouldn't be. If you want to come
00:27:46.020
to Canada, you have to make a sacrifice and work really, really hard and earn up enough money so
00:27:51.220
that you can live here. That, that, that should be what immigration is all about. Not, we're going to
00:27:55.060
bribe you to come here and don't worry if you can't afford it. We'll just keep paying you forever
00:27:58.440
and ever. That's just so backwards and so wrong, Ezra.
00:28:00.840
You know, in my trips to the UK, I've watched Nigel Farage who first became famous for leading
00:28:06.460
the UKIP party that led the Brexit referendum. And then now he's the head of something called
00:28:12.020
Reform UK. And over month after month, I see him getting bolder and bolder. Now he's talking
00:28:18.460
about remigration. Now he's talking about mass deportations. It's taken him a while to work
00:28:23.140
up to it because he's very careful. Like he's such a careful, pragmatic guy. Every single poll
00:28:29.360
for the last year puts him in first place. If they were in election now, he would win
00:28:33.100
a majority. And it's because, I mean, now he's in a by-election. He had, you know, deep
00:28:37.580
labor stronghold, stop the ships, you know, freeze immigration, stop the ships. And he's
00:28:42.960
gone beyond freeze immigration. He's talking about deportations. He is the number one for,
00:28:47.980
for a year now, the number one in the polls. Do you think Pierre Polyev could or should do that?
00:28:56.140
My theory is, be controversial, be radical. The media is going to have a controversy or a scandal
00:29:05.720
Make it on immigration because so many people quietly agree.
00:29:11.760
Right. And I think that there's a way to do it, right? I think Pierre is a careful person. And I
00:29:15.420
think that he was too careful in the election. I think that he should have been bolder. He should
00:29:19.480
have come out when, you know, obviously it was a difficult issue to navigate with President Trump
00:29:23.740
saying what he was saying about 51st Day. It wasn't easy. But Pierre was just kind of caught flat
00:29:27.460
foot, didn't know what to say, eventually just kind of copied the liberals and did what they did. So I think
00:29:31.100
he needs to be bolder. And I wish that immigration was one of those issues that he would take on. Maybe
00:29:36.080
he doesn't need to go as far as I do with re-migration. But I do think that people who came
00:29:40.560
here as students, I mean, that program is a total failure. They need to leave. They need to go home.
00:29:44.760
And the temporary foreign workers for positions that are not necessary.
00:29:50.620
Exactly. So really, it's not even a matter of whether it's the right thing to do. I think all
00:29:56.340
conservatives know that it is, and more and more Canadians. I think Pierre does need to
00:30:04.560
Exactly. Yeah. And you know what? He just needs to get over that.
00:30:09.360
Yeah. And they do. And they'll call him extreme and a populist and far right,
00:30:12.840
even though he's the furthest from that. So yes, I think that if Pierre really wants to
00:30:17.480
carve out a place for himself, it's tough, right? Because I think, you know,
00:30:21.360
Mark Carney doing what he's doing, making these deals, it looks like he's going to
00:30:24.540
somehow be able to pull a majority out of a minority. And he's going to govern,
00:30:28.480
you know, in a way that Canadians might see as stable. Pierre has to do something. Otherwise,
00:30:33.680
I don't see him staying on as leader. And I think that could be disastrous for the Conservative
00:30:37.060
Party. So I hope he's listening. I hope he will take immigration as an issue and really carve out
00:30:42.980
a position that's very different from the Liberals. And this is something that I think
00:30:46.540
he can get Canadians on his side. Forget about the media. Forget about what they're going to say
00:30:49.400
about you. And just do the right thing. It ties to so many of the things that Pierre talks
00:30:53.480
about the cost of living. And, you know, Pierre's always been very strong, anti-radical, you know,
00:30:58.880
against the crazy Hamasniks celebrating and all those people have to go out. We were talking a bit
00:31:03.980
about free speech absolutist because you've always been a free speech absolutist. I think free speech
00:31:08.620
is so important. But at the same time, there has to be consequences to that speech, right?
00:31:12.120
But if you're a foreign national, if you're here as a student or a temporary worker,
00:31:15.680
and instead of coming in on those conditions, every Saturday you go scream at Jews, get out.
00:31:20.500
I mean, that's what Trump's doing. He's not kicking out citizens. If you're here as a special
00:31:28.140
guest and you decide instead to go on a political war against America or some Americans, get out.
00:31:34.400
I think that would calm and cool off our whole country because I'm worried about a terrorist
00:31:39.340
attack. I mean, I just am. We don't have, none of the Jewish schools or synagogues have armed guards.
00:31:44.920
It's like, I'm just, I, I, I think we're sleepwalking towards a crisis. Do you think
00:31:52.420
I don't think so. I think, I think that the liberals, you know, it's, it's, it's, this is
00:31:56.800
just something that like, you never hate the elite as much, right? Like, like you think you hate them,
00:32:01.220
but you need to hate them much, much more, right? The fact that Mark Carney just came in,
00:32:04.400
he was confident from day one. He knew he was going to win the election, even though he was way
00:32:07.860
behind in the polls. He inherited Justin Trudeau's disastrous legacy and party. But he was like,
00:32:12.600
you know what? He wouldn't have come in if he didn't know, right? He knew that the legacy media
00:32:16.300
was on his side. He knew that the CBC was there. They were going to work into overtime and that
00:32:20.080
Canadians were going to fall for this narrative and this scheme and that propaganda works.
00:32:23.740
Propaganda is a hell of a drug and it works. And we saw it work on the Canadian public. The elbows
00:32:28.160
up crowd. I've never seen anything like that. A group of people just so hood up. And you know.
00:32:32.180
It's boomers. So young people are, I mean, I saw the latest poll from David Colletto of Abacus.
00:32:36.420
Young people are still solidly conservative. It's the boomers who have their house, who don't like
00:32:43.380
Trump's style and think Pierre Polyev is a little bit of a brat or something. It's the boomers.
00:32:48.580
Yeah. And so it's like watching those people operate, right? Like the, you know, the guy in
00:32:52.580
the election, the meme of the old man with the middle finger, that was just like perfectly
00:32:56.700
encapsulated. Like what's wrong with the Canadian, that class? Not all boomers because there's a lot
00:33:01.280
of really, you know, it used to be boomers that were more conservative and that they were the ones
00:33:06.040
that were voting for Stephen Harper as well. So anyway, I think that Mark Carney is a smooth
00:33:11.880
operator. You know, he's going to do what he has to do. Maybe he'll make some sacrifices to his
00:33:16.360
liberal base. And I hope we get some pipelines built, the memorandum of understanding. You know,
00:33:21.320
Danielle Smith seems to be pretty optimistic about it and I'll take her cues. And I just, I don't
00:33:25.840
think that they're going to have an election. I think that Mark Carney is going to govern for four
00:33:28.760
years as if he had a majority and that, you know, Pierre will have one last chance. Pierre
00:33:33.160
Polyev will have one more chance to win. I hope, hopefully by then the country won't have completely
00:33:38.040
destroyed itself and will be kind of hopefully going in a better direction. People have that
00:33:43.240
opportunity. But no, I think that, that this is, this is where the liberals are, are just, you know,
00:33:47.780
they're, they're, they're so clever. They're too clever for their own good. They're used to getting
00:33:52.360
their own way. They operate behind the scenes in shadowy ways and they will make sure that they
00:33:56.600
maintain control and power probably until either Mark Carney can get reelected or I don't know,
00:34:02.140
I've heard that he only wants to do one term and that he's going to leave after that and maybe
00:34:05.860
he'll bring in a new candidate. But I think, I do think that, that he will govern for four years.
00:34:10.380
Yeah. Well, he's a real operator. That's for sure. Great to see you. Thanks for visiting. Good luck
00:34:15.600
with True North. Good luck with Juneau. Keep us posted on how those things go. We love what you're
00:34:21.100
doing. And I, for one, I'm glad that it's not lonely as it was 10 years ago when we were the
00:34:26.800
only conservative or independent media in the country. And I wish you guys good luck.
00:34:30.360
Well, thank you so much, Ezra. Thanks for inviting me to the studio. Happy Hanukkah and
00:34:33.400
Merry Christmas to the audience. And always look forward to continuing to work with you and the,
00:34:37.940
and the great work that you do over at the Rebel. Well, thanks to the feeling of speech. Well,
00:34:41.440
there you have it, our show for the day. Until next time, on behalf of all of us at Rebel
00:34:45.400
World Headquarters to you at home. Good night. And keep fighting for freedom.