It s become a signature move of the Mark Carney Liberals, censorship in one or many ways. Unfortunately, they ve revived one of the worst censorship bills from the Trudeau era to make it their own. I ll go through it with Andrew Lawton, a conservative critic who s been fighting for free speech. And I ll also show you what happened today when the regulator of the Federal Debates Commission appeared before Parliament to answer questions.
00:01:48.420I think there's a theme to today's show, and it's freedom of speech.
00:01:58.100Later on in the program, we're going to talk to our old friend, Andrew Lawton.
00:02:01.740We got to know him as a journalist and an activist, and he was one of the few journalists
00:02:05.640who would go to Davos, Switzerland, with Juneau News, and we were there with Rebel News,
00:02:11.380and we were allies in scrumming the VVIPs who go there to be unaccountable as they become the
00:02:19.300masters of the universe and issue proclamations about the way the rest of us should live. Andrew
00:02:24.260was great to work with as a journalist now that he's an MP in the Conservative Party representing
00:02:29.780a London, Ontario area district. I'm pleased to say he's kept that same free speech spirit alive.
00:02:37.560In fact, I should just tell you that in 2019, Andrew and True North, as it was then known, and us at Rebel News went to court together to fight against the federal government's Leadership Debate Commission attempt to ban independent journalists.
00:02:55.820Andrew was banned and Rebel News was banned.
00:02:59.000We were in court together as the underdogs, and it really felt like a miracle.
00:03:02.980I've had some amazing days in my life.
00:03:04.940But to go into federal court in Toronto and to try and get a judge to overturn the Trudeau regime's ban on us,
00:03:13.440I just thought that was such an uphill battle.
00:03:15.660I remember our lawyers saying, you're not going to win.
00:03:25.120And I don't know, maybe you don't want too many hopeful things because it's just going to set you up for a letdown.
00:03:29.600But actually, the hope was well placed.
00:03:31.460And we went there. And then in 2021, the debates commission banned us again. But this time they had spent two years sort of reverse engineering how to ban us by studying that first court ruling. You've probably heard me say this before. The first court ruling said they didn't ban us legally because they didn't give us proper reasons. They didn't have proper rules. The wrong person banned us, etc.
00:03:55.460So they had two years to study that and reverse engineer a way to ban us that complied with
00:04:00.480those standards, an 11-page detailed explanation of why we were banned, lots of rules, an official
00:04:07.620So all the little objections made by that first judge, they fixed them.
00:04:12.680So by the time we were banned in 2021, well, our lawyer said, Ezra, just so you know, it's
00:04:19.200hopeless, happy to do it for you, but really want your expectations to be at zero.
00:04:24.460And they sort of were, and then it truly was a miracle when the second time around the court says, no, you guys can get in.
00:04:30.620I tell you all this because we have been fighting for freedom of speech since we were born 11 years ago.
00:04:36.120And we love working with civil liberties groups.
00:04:38.960Of course, we helped create the Democracy Fund by getting our Rebel News viewers to donate to it.
00:04:45.860We admire other civil liberties groups like my friend John Carpe at the Justice Center.
00:04:50.760But Rebel News itself has taken on a big burden of fighting for freedom of speech.
00:04:55.000And yes, we are often the party involved, the plaintiff involved, but that's because we're on the front line of the freedom battle.
00:05:00.580I mean, there's a reason why Rebel News is fighting to be accredited and more bland regime vanilla journalists aren't, because they're not being banned, because they're not pushing the envelope.
00:05:13.700When we went after cabinet ministers banning conservatives from following them on Twitter,
00:05:39.780So today, in addition to an interview with my friend Andrew Lawton about Bill C-9, a censorship bill, and we'll get into that discussion with him, I want to show you an extract from our live stream that we had today when the head of the Debates Commission, Michelle Cormier is his name, testified before a committee in Parliament.
00:06:00.520And I'm not going to show you all of it because it was too long and a lot of it was boring and frankly, I think uninteresting to our viewers. But I want to show you some clips that were very interesting. There's some great questions put to him by one particular conservative MP who sort of blasted Cormier in a diplomatic way for having opinions on which questions from the media were allowed or not.
00:06:24.220There were some questions that were, what was the phrase he used, that they were, you'll see the exact phrase that Michel Cormier used, that they were basically irrelevant or outside the mainstream.
00:07:06.640It was a lot of weirdness, but the weirdest part of all was what everyone seemed to accept, which was that the government is in charge of these debates.
00:07:14.180And by the way, they get paid millions to do it.
00:07:16.020Anyway, without further ado, here are some extracts from the live stream from Parliament
00:07:22.020where I was sort of giving a bit of a running commentary.
00:18:45.020Well, we haven't given a lot of thought to that because, you know, in 2015, I was organizing the debates for Radio Canada when there was no English debate, national English debate.
00:18:55.820They were small debates and, you know, there was it was very, very unstable in terms of environment.
00:19:02.560That's why the commission was created to stabilize the environment.
00:20:00.340I think we've improved on what is the best format for debates,
00:20:05.240which is not a panel of journalists, which was a tradition here.
00:20:08.840It ends up being leaders grilled by journalists as to what we prefer is one moderator that actually encourages debates among the leaders, which is the nature of a political debate in the first place.
00:20:26.360So I think that is very important. And they provide, you know, in this world of misinformation, of manipulation of AI, it's one of the few, if not the only occasion that people have to see their leaders live in an unedited fashion where they can actually believe what they see on the screen and they see them interact.
00:20:51.600He's been told to mention AI just to seem hip, but he's not an AI man.
00:20:56.580There's really nothing AI about any of this.
00:20:58.580Now that this structure is in place and these best practices are in place,
00:21:03.660could this all be transitioned to a group of networks and done at no cost to the taxpayers?
00:21:12.340Of course, that's how it was for the last hundred years.
00:21:14.240I don't think it would be done in this format.
00:21:17.400I mean, you know, as you well know, media organizations have very severe financial problems, given the new environment of, you know, advertising.
00:21:30.020So, and even in Quebec last time, TVA, that organizes a separate French debate, did not manage to put one on, mainly, according to them, for financial reasons.
00:21:40.940So I don't think that, I'm not sure that the financial environment is conducive to such a transfer that you're talking about.
00:21:53.420I think, you know, but like I say, maybe it's a question for Parliament to decide.
00:22:02.260Well, very disappointing in so many ways.
00:22:04.740I think some of the most interesting parts were Michel Cormier admitting that the reason they have banned the after debate scrum with the candidates is because they can't control the questions that are asked.
00:22:17.680He called the questions asked by independent media like Rebel News, and there were more independent media there this year, last year, called those questions peripheral.
00:22:27.400So you see the government is choosing what the topics are that you're allowed to think about or not.
00:22:32.460um it was interesting that he said some regime journalists have as many as 20 different journalists
00:22:39.620accredited for this event when there was all sorts of squawking about the fact that rebel news had
00:22:43.820five journalists accredited which is a fraction of what the large i mean the cbc probably had
00:22:49.360100 people there let's be honest um the questioning by almost all the mps was useless i was embarrassed
00:26:46.980Rebel news in particular, traffics in misinformation, facts, lack of facts, as you heard in that question, which was woven with some truth and some things that weren't true.
00:26:58.800Yes, there have been burnings of Christian Catholic churches.
00:27:03.100Yes, there have been remains of indigenous children found in various places around the country, which she misrepresented.
00:27:10.040We'll see if Mr. Paulyev gets any questions from right wing organizations.
00:27:13.920Well, first of all, I personally asked a question to Pierre, sorry, Sheila Gunn-Reed did. So Rosemary Barton is a foolish liar. But second of all, she got it wrong. And she actually had to, the CBC had to post a correction. Drea Humphrey had her facts right. That Rosemary Barton was a wicked liar.
00:27:29.520but what's so incredible to me is you can see like 365 days a year the regime media have access
00:27:35.620to the regime that's why they're called the regime media the cbc is literally the state
00:27:40.080broadcaster so 365 days a year they lob softballs at the liberals and they get sort of their talking
00:27:46.640points from the liberals the one day every four years where other journalists can ask a question
00:27:52.220they just can't stand it they can't stand and by the way jagmeet singh took the question and he
00:27:58.660answered it in whatever way he wanted to I think Jagmeet Singh looked stupid which he sort of is I
00:28:03.440think um but that wasn't good enough Rose McBarton had to come in a white night for him and and save
00:28:09.360him from the misinformation it's so gross but I think Dre did a great job and um they see we went
00:28:17.940to court in 2009 and we won when they refused to accredit us so they changed how they did it and we
00:28:24.700went and they refused to accredit us again in 2020 2019 was the first time they banned us we
00:28:31.080won in court 2021 they tried to ban us again we went to court and won again so twice in a row the
00:28:36.800federal court of canada said you can't keep rebel news out just because you don't like them and they
00:28:42.140couldn't find a way to keep rebel out but not others we're too political yeah what do you think
00:28:47.660the cbc and the toronto star are um we have too many reporters there no you just heard there's 20
00:28:53.780for the CTV. We had five. So they really, well, what else could they possibly say? We're Canadian,
00:29:01.220we cover the news, we have a large and growing viewership. They couldn't find a principle,
00:29:08.040a rationale, a role, a rule to keep us out that also wouldn't keep the regime out. So
00:29:13.840twice in a row, the federal court says, no, you got to let Rebel News in. So in 2025,
00:29:18.560last year in the last election we applied and that michelle cormier who we were showing earlier
00:29:25.020he correctly knew that if we had to take him to court a third time that they would lose and by
00:29:34.080the way if judge number one says you're wrong you're violating their their constitutional rights
00:29:39.880and judge number two says you're wrong you're violating their constitutional rights and you do
00:29:44.480it a third time you know i i have an imagination but i cannot imagine what a third judge would do
00:29:53.340if a government agency twice broke the law and came back a third time and had to be hauled into
00:30:00.820court i you know hell hath no fury like a federal court that has been spurned three times i can so
00:30:08.560michelle cormier very wisely said okay we're going to let rebel news in without having to go to court
00:30:13.060and so they thought well how can we do this how can we stop rebel news from asking peripheral
00:30:19.420questions without stopping everyone how how how how and they came up with only one idea which was
00:30:26.080just shut down all the questions hey let me show you on the screen right now a weird thing happened
00:30:33.300i was there and then i walked in and all the other journalists were so excited that it turned into a
00:30:38.500little scrum can you play that can you uh go back in time 60 seconds and and play this with the
00:30:43.920sound up i remember there was a funny moment i gave a bit of a speech because everyone started
00:31:35.960You mean third party advertisers, Ezra?
00:31:36.960Can you talk about the $180,000 you're spending to do advertising voter contact, both through
00:31:42.960Poor Canada and into Rebel News Network Limited?
00:31:45.480I see you're wrong on that. And that's what concerns me, is that Fort Canada is a different group. It was registered.
00:31:53.620It paid $170,000 to Rebel News Network Limited. Is that not true?
00:31:57.960You're getting your facts wrong, Justin. I want to make sure you're careful.
00:32:02.220That guy, he was heckling me. I just forgot his name, but he was the same guy who was heckling Greya, literally trying to shout her down. It was really gross.
00:32:10.620We're not leaving. The CBC were outraged that Mr. Cormier let us in.
00:37:07.140Andrew, what I like about you is you come from a journalistic background, and when you
00:37:11.200were a journalist you were very sensitive to matters of censorship and you brought that
00:37:16.260ethical concern with you to parliament so first of all thank you tell me the latest on bill c9
00:37:24.120are there's so many numbers because the bills are changed and there's new ones maybe tell us what
00:37:30.800the short you know english name of the bill is and give us a bit of a summary and then dive right
00:37:37.040into it? Well, the Liberals call it the Combating Hate Act. Now, at committee yesterday, I tried to
00:37:43.260amend the title to the Combating Freedom of Expression Act, but sadly, the Liberals did not
00:37:47.820accept my proposed alternative, which would have been a heck of a lot more accurate. Now, look,
00:37:53.000you and I know very well, Ezra, that over the last two and a half years, there's been a tremendous
00:37:57.100unleashing of brazen, violent, anti-Semitic hate on streets. We've also seen hate and attacks against
00:38:05.000Christian houses of worship, 123 churches burned or vandalized in the last five years. But no
00:38:11.820community is going to be protected from hate by legislation that actually takes aim at their
00:38:17.280fundamental religious freedoms and all free expression rights for Canadians. And that's
00:38:21.840what Bill C-9 does. As presented by the Liberals, it changes the definition of hate, replacing the
00:38:26.980one the Supreme Court has always held to with a definition that has a much lower bar and a lot
00:38:32.780or ambiguity behind it the liberals tried to remove a critical safeguard against laying a
00:38:38.140hate speech prosecution which was the requirement that the attorney general consent to a charge
00:38:43.060we've also seen a bill that adds a new standalone hate offense right that can be tacked on to any
00:38:49.420other federal law in canada is that c9 or is that a different bill this is bill c9 oh my it adds a
00:38:56.060standalone hate offense that can be tacked on to any other federal law including non-criminal laws
00:39:02.500like the Canadian Human Rights Act, which means you could have a criminal penalty attached to a
00:39:07.480civil infraction. So these were some of the concerns. We were able to mitigate some of
00:39:12.640these things through the committee process. Attorney General consent is still going to be
00:39:16.640required. We were able to get an amendment passed yesterday that restores the definition of hate.
00:39:21.560But a lot of the key concerns with the bill went unaddressed by the Liberals,
00:39:25.280including the most egregious, which was the Liberal Block Amendment to remove longstanding
00:39:30.700religious speech protections often called the religious defense from the criminal code this is
00:39:36.240basically to go back to what mark miller has said on record the government wants the ability to
00:39:42.020criminally charge you for quoting certain verses of scripture whether it's the bible or the torah
00:39:47.200if the government views it as hateful and this is why so many people of faith across the country
00:39:52.740rose up and the liberals didn't want to hear from them they didn't want to hear what they had to say
00:39:57.240So they censored debate on the censorship bill this week, used parliamentary tricks to force this bill through the committee, which happened yesterday.
00:40:05.300And it will be coming back to the House of Commons for a very abbreviated, quote unquote, debate that will last just a couple of days before the bill gets pushed through to the Senate.
00:40:15.160And isn't that interesting? Because Justin Trudeau, I'm not going to say he slow walked the bills. Maybe he was just personally lazy. Maybe his government moved more slowly. But Trudeau was in office for about 10 years and he didn't manage to get out his, I think he called it C63, the online harms bill, which had some of the elements here.
00:40:36.080It looks like Mark Carney is moving faster and using parliamentary tactics to hustle things along.
00:41:39.460The Liberals have said that the Online Harms Act, which was C63 in the previous parliament, is going to be coming back.
00:41:46.580We don't know in what form it will take.
00:41:48.360We don't know if it's just going to be a cut and paste of what they tried before.
00:41:51.920Or if they're going to acknowledge some of the freedom of speech concerns there. And that's an incredibly harmful piece of legislation as well. And you're right, the NDP previously was in lockstep with the liberals on.
00:42:02.600Hmm. You know, I see in Toronto, there's been several synagogues that have been shot up in the last week. The U.S. consulate shot up a couple days later. I think it looks like it's more than a coincidence. It wouldn't surprise me that these are connected. There have been Jewish schools and other places that have been shot and vandalized and etc.
00:42:23.940And the liberals seem to keep on saying, our answer is senile.
00:42:30.400Our answer is to criminalize the feeling of hate, as opposed to going after the expression of hate through crime.
00:42:39.020Like there's been an anti-Semitic crime wave.
00:42:41.120And I'm not talking about feelings or that.
00:42:43.520I'm talking about assault and trespass and harassment and vandalism and shooting and stalking of synagogues.
00:42:52.440All these things are already on the books.
00:42:54.940It seems to me that the liberals don't want to actually stop the actions of crime.
00:43:59.260Well, I think that we already have, as you've indicated there, issues with selective enforcement of existing laws.
00:44:06.080So if existing laws are not being enforced fairly or effectively, then new laws are not going to solve this underlying problem.
00:44:14.620And it was quite despicable for the Liberals to get up in the House of Commons and try to use these synagogue shootings this week as justification to pass Bill C-9.
00:44:24.260Not a single Liberal, or anyone else for that matter, could point to a single line in Bill C-9 that if it were part of law now, would do anything about these acts and these brazen attacks.
00:44:37.280And moreover, the people who are calling for violence, the people who are threatening violence, the people who are inciting and calling for genocide, already subject to criminal code prohibitions and not saved by the religious defense.
00:44:52.240The religious defense only applies to hate speech. None of the sections dealing with violence. But the liberals are trying to hide behind their own inaction and failure to lead and failure to unite the country in the midst of this hate. And they're using that as justification to go after lawful and what should be free expression.
00:45:11.100Yeah, I find it very troublesome. And I think that their answer is, here's a few million dollars more for a bulletproof glass. I think that signals that they're not doing anything proactively. They're just saying, oh, you got to brace yourselves. You will be shot in the future. Hopefully this will just stop the glass from shattering. It's not proactive. It's certainly not deporting foreign national agents provocateurs like the 700 terrorists I mentioned earlier.
00:45:39.300I'm very worried about this. Let me ask you, do we have any allies? Are there any civil liberties groups?
00:45:46.260Sometimes the left-leaning civil liberties groups actually do speak up on these things. Are there any other sources of political power?
00:45:53.660Is there anyone in the Senate that cares? The Senate is generally a creature of the carny liberals, but not always.
00:46:00.780Is there anyone fighting against this, Andrew, besides you?
00:46:03.720Well, look, I think I've obviously been, and the Conservative Party has been the most vocal critic of it, but I've actually been quite heartened by how much opposition to Bill C-9 there has been from left and right.
00:46:15.460It's been denounced by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and among faith communities.
00:46:22.620Pretty much every denomination and every religion in Canada is represented in the list of those who have, at least in whole or in part, condemned Bill C-9.
00:46:31.600And that includes, you know, Christian organizations from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to the United Church, which has been more aligned on the progressive side.
00:46:40.260It's the Rabbinical Council of Toronto, the Orthodox Jewish community.
00:46:43.900And then you also had 350 Muslim organizations this week come out against Bill C-9.
00:46:50.200And there have even been a couple of liberal MPs that have been feeling a lot of pressure from their Muslim constituents and their Christian constituents alike.
00:46:58.060Whether they'll be allowed to vote freely, I don't know.
00:47:00.860A couple of them broke ranks with their party on a bill this week to do with an arms exports to the U.S. because of their Israel concern.
00:47:09.920So I don't know if Mark Carney will allow them to vote freely on Bill C-9.
00:47:13.440But as I said, every single party was against Bill C-9 until the Liberals made this deal to remove longstanding religious freedom protections.
00:47:22.000And I think for some in their caucus, it might have been for political expediency.
00:47:25.160But when you hear the comments from Mark Miller back in October, a lot of liberals fundamentally believe that you should be arrested and charged if you dare to vote verses of scripture they disagree with.
00:47:36.180I appreciate you spending so much time with us. My last question is, how about the media? I think by nature, independent journalists are more free speech oriented.
00:47:44.700um but the big slow-moving ancient battleships like uh the globe and mail comes to mind
00:47:52.040they typically support mark carney in fact they're a little bit radical i think in that
00:47:56.300but every once in a while they do the right thing it's funny as i mean just to to give a long answer
00:48:03.140for a moment i remember back in the uh the trenches of the fight against section 13 of
00:48:08.040the canadian human rights act which which you would know all too well you were personally at
00:48:11.460the forefront of that. And that was repealed, I think it was in 2013. So 13 years ago. And at the
00:48:17.820time, there was I remember a great deal of support from people in the mainstream media, there was a
00:48:23.240principled liberal, small L liberal voices, even some big L liberal voices. I remember notably the
00:48:28.580Senator Jerry Grafstein, as well as some others that stood up for free speech, because free speech
00:48:33.100was not a conservative value or right wing value. It was a Canadian value. And my goodness, in the
00:48:39.700Ten years between that and the Online Harms Act, it was so discouraging to see how many of those people withered away.
00:48:47.880These principled voices that even would be in the pages of the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, on CBC defending freedom of expression from the left were gone.
00:48:56.800The chorus of Liberal members of Parliament that at one point would have stood up for freedom of expression but no longer are there.
00:49:02.940This is, I think, incredibly concerning.
00:49:04.780Free speech is something that should be a value that all Canadians hold to, but that sadly isn't the case. There might be a couple of outliers here and there, but they are in the minority. So I think it is important. I will continue. I said in my maiden speech that I came to Ottawa and I came to politics because I wanted to make Canada a freer place. And Bill C-9 has been obviously an example of the Liberals trying to call my bluff on that pledge.
00:49:27.480But we are going to continue to stand up for religious freedom and I will seek allies from wherever I can get on there.
00:49:33.980So as far as senators are concerned, you know, I think there may be some that have some objections to C9 from the left.
00:49:39.840I hope they are able to use their independence in the Senate that we often hear of and actually hold the government to account on this.
00:49:47.640Give me just 30 more seconds. Do you see in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the CBC or other traditionally liberal media?
00:49:55.180has there been a pundit a commentator someone who says i love mark carney but this is wrong
00:50:00.760like are there any liberal libertarians left in the media you know there's been some reporting
00:50:07.580the national post has done a little bit to its credit so as cbc as far as columnists go though
00:50:13.320i just haven't seen it i haven't seen this rise to the level i haven't seen the pundit class
00:50:18.180weighing in on this uh and and i'm not expecting it at this point but i think independent media