00:02:40.480I really felt like I was in high school and they were pulling the fire alarm or something.
00:02:44.260But the more gross part, I mean, politicians are going to be politicians,
00:02:48.240but the other journalists who were there were from the official regime media in fact the main
00:02:53.920journalistic union who was there was called the canadian media guild you know the word guild it's
00:02:59.040like a medieval society as as if there's some secret knowledge that these journalists have
00:03:05.320that the rest of us don't have as if they're craftsmen or something i mean like a fine
00:03:10.400stonemason who apprenticed for decades with a grandmaster no you're just a propagandist anyways
00:03:16.840they wanted two things as you know more money and more censorship well look what was revealed
00:03:22.280today and i just say all that just to put you in the mind of what it means to be an independent
00:03:25.400journalist and how proud i am of sheila gunreed and i hope you're proud of her too but look at
00:03:31.040what was revealed by a conservative mp's question now this was written up by black locks one of the
00:03:36.460few independent media companies in this country black locks tweet is actually more succinct as
00:03:41.380tweets tend to be Vancouver climate news site national observer is the heaviest user of federal
00:03:49.060media grants covering the equivalent of 23 employees 1.37 million for wage subsidies
00:03:57.080640 000 from the periodical fund 435 000 for sole source federal subscriptions so apparently they've
00:04:08.120about 23 staff we have 34 at rebel news they were given millions i think the craziest part frankly
00:04:16.460are the nearly half a million dollars in forced subscriptions by bureaucrats that was that last
00:04:22.060line item there they basically say to bureaucrats pay government money to get a premium subscription
00:04:30.140from the national observer that's just so nuts who are the national observer either a far left
00:04:37.320website based in vancouver that used to be called the vancouver observer they were started by a u.s
00:04:42.780propaganda group called the tides foundation the same folks who bankroll basically all the anti-oil
00:04:48.640anti-forestry anti-tanker uh propaganda um you know i i like the fact that holly doan of black
00:04:56.760locks calls them a climate website because that's really what they are that was what they were
00:05:00.820started to be other anti-conservative of course anti-alberta of course they're conspiracy theorists
00:05:06.080about foreign interference i mean they they thought i was involved with russia or something
00:05:11.840i played a practical joke on them uh in response that i'll have to tell you that another day
00:05:15.760but they in fact are the foreign interference they're a canadian branch plant of san francisco
00:05:21.940leftists and in fact their boss um is is an american communist radical who basically was
00:05:27.780dispatched to canada so here let's read from black locks a little bit let me read a little
00:05:32.000bit from the extended story eco news site number one in grants a vancouver climate news site the
00:05:40.200national observer is the nation's heaviest user of department of canadian heritage grants newly
00:05:44.720disclosed records show the quote independent news site received more than 1.3 million dollars
00:05:49.540in taxpayers aid to cover the equivalent of 23 employees salaries while its ceo served on the
00:05:55.240volunteer board responsible for approving grants. That's crazy. The National Observer Record speaks
00:06:04.440for itself regarding our independence from any government of the day, said Jimmy Thompson,
00:06:08.300editor-in-chief. The company in a mission statement claimed to be a profitable independent
00:06:13.200news organization reading 4.5 million readers annually. But here's the gross part. This was
00:06:19.340a secret. I mean, really, it meets the definition of a conspiracy. Payouts under the local journalism
00:06:26.360initiative had been concealed by News Media Canada, a publisher's lobby group that processes
00:06:32.380grants applications. National Observer CEO Linda Solomon Wood, that's the U.S. communist,
00:06:39.100was a member of the judging panel that, quote, reviews applications, selects recipients,
00:06:43.260and decides funding allocations according to the lobby. Editor Thompson did not dispute the
00:06:48.560figures disclosed in an inquiry of ministry tabled in the commons at the request of conservative
00:06:53.760mp arpen canna mp canna had asked with regard to the government's local journalism initiative
00:07:00.260what was the breakdown of final funding each media outlet received now of course the whole
00:07:05.060thing's rigged let me read the next part of the story the journalism initiative pays 100 of the
00:07:11.440cost of selected employees salaries up to 60 000 annually let me just stop here and just i mean
00:07:18.540I don't want the money. It's poison. But if someone were to pay all our staff up to $60,000,
00:07:26.320first of all, some of our staff don't make $60,000. But could you imagine how free and light
00:07:33.180we would feel? I mean, they are not a business. They are a grift. They are a project of the
00:07:41.100liberals. And they actually have the audacity to call themselves independent, even though basically
00:07:46.440they work for the liberals let me read a little more records show the national observer in five
00:07:51.780years successfully applied for grants 23 times while ceo solomon wood was on the judging panel
00:07:58.220editor thompson said the ceo played no role in winning grants for the website quote miss
00:08:04.600solomon wood recused herself from any discussion of national observer applications he said they're
00:08:10.320all friends i mean they're all in it together they all get government money and apportion it
00:08:16.120And do you think for a second, if they work together and laugh together and hand out government money together, when it's the National Observer's turn to get paid, and so their editor says, I'm going to step out of the room for a minute, wink, wink, the rest of them know exactly what to do.
00:08:34.440I can only imagine how this would warp my brain if Rebel News got millions of dollars from Carney and we began to rely on it like an addict.
00:08:44.960I mean, I suppose if you won the lottery once, it would sort of wobble you, but hopefully you would pay down some debts and get on with regular life.
00:08:53.620But imagine if every year you got hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mark Carney, the most political man in the country, that would warp you and you would become addicted to it because you'd be reliant on it and you would be obsessed with it.
00:09:08.920you wouldn't be talking to your viewers you would be talking to one viewer you would pull your
00:09:14.520punches you would use more gentle language you would ignore certain stories and our staff would
00:09:21.020know that as well so they would do the same everyone would know we would be like a kept
00:09:26.420mistress but trying to keep it secret from our viewers really but here's the fact and this is
00:09:33.340right in their the statement of the money they have to force people to subscribe to them the
00:09:38.220government has to order bureaucrats to subscribe hundreds of thousands of dollars in subscriptions
00:09:43.120and these bureaucrats use tax money to pay for it they would die in two weeks without these subsidies
00:09:49.520they would run out of money for payroll now they say you saw me read it earlier they say they have
00:09:55.640four and a half million viewers i don't know exactly that what that means um i mean i don't
00:10:01.260know if i should believe them they're they're a propaganda website but they claim more than four
00:10:07.960million views a year that's nice i mean if you take your their word for it that's a little over
00:10:12.820300 000 visitors a month it's a little more than 10 000 a day okay that's nice good team effort
00:10:23.780um there's no proof of that they just say it and i'll take them at the word i don't know if you
00:10:31.020saw but in december i did a post uh and i published the raw information from an app called
00:10:36.260hoot suite that's the name of an app that runs our social media and i just published the full
00:10:42.220report no edits it's all out there showing that last year we had 430 million views and impressions
00:10:51.020so they had 4.5 million we had 430 million so we're we're almost a hundred times bigger
00:18:22.340it was an evening thing it was a it's this is a high school by the way so these are these are not
00:18:26.960small children and she gave warning she told her daughter to tell the teacher that she would be
00:18:32.760doing this that she would she would briefly heckle the land acknowledgement then she would sit quietly
00:18:36.960for the rest of the performance and that's exactly what she did and she yelled out something like0.99
00:18:41.420save us your race baiting stop this political bull you know something like that and and then
00:18:47.140she sat quietly for the rest of the performance. Nobody asked her to leave. Nothing happened. The
00:18:52.540show went on. And then afterward, the drama teacher actually sort of outed her daughter1.00
00:18:59.540to the rest of the students and said, this is whose parents were heckling. And then the kids
00:19:07.620started bullying this daughter. And not only that, but the principal called in a counselor to assess
00:19:13.680whether she should even be released to her home whether she was suicidal or or any concerns like
00:19:18.160that which which was completely preposterous in the circumstances so eventually they let the
00:19:21.900daughter go home but then the principal called children's aid or whatever the bc equivalent is
00:19:26.880and so a social worker came out to the house to assess whether this family was safe for these0.98
00:19:31.640children which was just again outrageous that is straight or well that you are mentally ill for0.97
00:19:38.180having these views we must cure you of your uh anti-social behavior if you don't support a land0.98
00:19:45.340acknowledgement you must be ill and you must be dangerous exactly so there's more two more things
00:19:51.960one is that the principal immediately called in counselors for the whole school to help them cope
00:19:59.320with having heard a contrary opinion if you can believe that she sent a notice home to parents
00:20:04.400And again, these are high school students. But in her submissions, because we had an internal appeal, and I'll get to that. But in her submission, she talked about how she had pulled in all these councillors who were actually away on a retreat, brought them in on an emergency basis. And still, seven weeks after this incident, some people were still needing help to cope with having heard a contrary opinion.
00:20:24.900so the next day Lara received something called a section 177 order which is a direction basically
00:20:32.880not to attend on school property it's like a trespass notice and the the legislation makes it
00:20:39.920to me at least reasonably clear that this is supposed to be done to maintain or establish
00:20:45.320order in the moment and of course it wasn't necessary she was quiet she's after her her
00:20:51.000brief outburst she sat still and quiet and wasn't a problem so it wasn't needed it was being used
00:20:57.000the next day as a form of punishment now you're banned you cannot come on your daughter's proper
00:21:01.840school property for two months and then there was going to be some condition that she'd have to kind
00:21:07.020of establish that she was prepared to behave before she'd be allowed back on and of course1.00
00:21:10.960you know she hasn't conceded anything and so she's still banned and she's kept her kids home
00:21:16.260because frankly, she's worried about the kind of environment where her kids are, you know,
00:21:23.260the family's being called, having children's egg called on them. So she's not feeling very secure
00:21:28.220sending her kids alone into that environment. I guess. Well, that's crazy. Now, you're not Laura,
00:21:35.740so you may not have this information, but have any other parents expressed solidarity with her
00:21:42.100or agreement. I can tell you the peer pressure to go along with these things is enormous.
00:21:47.940First of all, no one wants to be called racist. Second of all, everyone likes to conform.
00:21:52.820I mean, we saw that during COVID. Everyone wants to move with the pack
00:21:56.980because if you're a dissident, you're weird. In this case, they'll send a social worker
00:22:01.860and consider basically kidnapping your kids. Has anyone else at least privately said to Laura,
00:22:08.020were with you do you know the answer you may not know it i don't know i don't i haven't heard of
00:22:12.900any um so it's a small town and you're right i'm sure people would feel uncomfortable taking a
00:22:18.980position on that but um so what what we were able to do is first of all file an internal appeal to
00:22:26.500the superintendent that was allowed to us under the under the regulations and then that was denied
00:22:33.220um and we tried to appeal it to the school board we were denied the opportunity to do that and so
00:22:38.940now we're proceeding to a judicial review judicial review so the standards of judicial review i have
00:22:44.720learned through many failed attempts they really defer to the local decision maker quite often
00:22:51.000like for a court to set aside a ruling by a school by any other sort of petty government body
00:22:57.680they're they're reluctant to do so because at least in my experience and in some case law
00:23:04.280the courts say look we want to defer to people closest to the issue with the most experience in
00:23:09.920the issue we want to give them some wiggle room we want to give them the right to be wrong
00:23:13.780it's only if they're patently unreasonable they're just absolutely incorrect are we going to overturn
00:23:21.080them um if they're reasonable enough we'll let it go what's the standard for review because i'm
00:23:28.360worried a court will say yeah we're not going to crack this open well that's been my experience
00:23:34.080too they are very difficult uh to to take these things forward um one thing we are seeking
00:23:39.780though yeah well there's we're seeking a declaration that her charter rights were
00:23:44.320infringed uh because it is a public school and you know she has she does have a right to speak
00:23:50.180she was she was counter protesting essentially like this was a form of protest and i think it's
00:23:57.500fair to say that and in fact the emergencies act decision uh verified that sometimes protests are
00:24:04.100disruptive i mean that's the whole nature of a protest and so you can imagine that there'd be
00:24:08.320a double standard here if this was a protest in on some other matter it's unlikely she would
00:24:12.840have been banished um but one of the other things we're seeking is is um or that i'm i'm contemplating
00:24:19.780seeking is an order quashing the um the the orders that allow these indigenous land acknowledgements
00:24:28.240in the first place there's an interesting provision in the school act it says uh this is
00:24:32.680section 76 it says all schools and provincial schools must be conducted on a strictly secular
00:24:37.860and non-sectarian principles so as you were saying at the outset you know these have taken on a
00:24:43.360quasi-religious tenor yeah they're certainly if you take the position that sectarian is not just
00:24:49.080a religious concept but but refers to you know very strong controversial topics that uh that
00:24:55.680people might reasonably disagree on for a public school to take a position on something like that
00:25:01.160is in my view or at least it's arguable that that's contrary to the intent of this
00:25:06.560of this section of the act which you know the public schools that have to um have to educate
00:25:12.400children from all backgrounds all political perspectives they shouldn't be taking a side
00:25:16.600on controversial issues and they need to stop so if this is one way to help stop that i'm i'm
00:25:21.500inclined to take it forward yeah i know in alberta the provincial government is looking at
00:25:25.860depoliticizing schools and i think that could be the single most important legacy of premier smith
00:25:31.640i mean schools are the training grounds the ideological factories for left-wing activists i
00:25:38.240mean the jesuits said it but but other uh others have to give me a child um at the age of eight
00:25:45.100and i'll have him forever um i mean when you are teaching children of tender years about land
00:25:52.460acknowledgements you were telling them in a very impressionable you were setting in them concrete
00:25:57.300that will harden for the rest of their life and that that i think is the weaponization of children
00:26:03.160and the teachers unions are the worst at it um what's interesting i'm thinking about your case
00:26:07.740is that the mom was the so-called offender but the child was the one who was punished and yeah and
00:26:14.220and perhaps the courts won't allow that i mean even if there is some remedy that must hit the mom
00:26:20.380why should the child be uh subjected to it and sicking social workers on the mom is the craziest
00:26:27.220part of all right yes we're hoping that we were trying to get an apology so that we could have
00:26:34.680the daughter returned to school and they kept saying to us in correspondence look we we want
00:26:38.520your children this only applies to you but then they put all these unreasonable barriers in front
00:26:43.460of mom and and refuse to apologize for their own actions and so so far we've it's been an impasse
00:26:49.240on that front so she's she's got the kids at home and and is homeschooling i got one last question
00:26:53.960for you um i don't know if you'll get this information through the litigation process or
00:26:58.700you'll have to do a freedom of information request but i think it would be fascinating
00:27:02.240to see how the land acknowledgement came about in internal records and how this child and the mom
00:27:11.600have been handled since i mean there may be some litigation privilege that the school applies to
00:27:17.100we're not going to give these records up but i don't think that that would count unless it's
00:27:22.080chatting with counsel i bet based on my experience in life that the woke teachers said outrageous
00:27:31.380things in emails and whatever teachers chat boards they have and i think that you have a chance to
00:27:39.700win this thing on the merits but you may also have some ticking time bombs that they left by speaking
00:27:45.820intemperately it sounds like they really hate the mom and through her hate the daughter i mean
00:27:51.920you've got to hate someone pretty bad to send child and welfare services to the home to take
00:27:56.300the kids away i would bet you a dollar that they have said outrageous things that they would not
00:28:03.240want to see the light of day anyhow it's just an idea from from someone who's used to quarreling
00:28:09.360what do you think oh well we'll certainly try to get our hands on whatever we can
00:28:15.620and and i wouldn't be surprised you know this is the other thing that these land acknowledgements
00:28:20.960also impose a burden on teachers because if you happen to be a teacher not only do you have to
00:28:25.620listen to it like all the parents and students, but you may be compelled to say it too. And I
00:28:30.620think, honestly, pushing something like this forward, whether it's politically or if we're
00:28:34.480fortunate to get a good decision in the courts, would be a relief to a lot of teachers who
00:28:38.980quietly endure this and have to say these words they don't agree with. And anyway, it's time to
00:28:44.120stop. And so whatever we can do to help that, we'll do. Well, I'm glad to hear it. Your organization
00:28:49.320is the free speech union of canada fsu canada.ca i am a gold member of the free speech union the
00:28:56.580original one in the uk and i'm delighted that you're heading up the canadian branch give me
00:29:01.740just 30 more seconds about what the fsu canada does in general yes well we're a new sister chapter
00:29:09.000of the one in the uk that you're a member of and we've been around just over a year we have it's a
00:29:14.160member-based organization so people can join and participate in activities like salons we just had
00:29:19.320one in Vancouver last week with Eric Kaufman leading that one in Hamilton a couple weeks ago
00:29:24.340with Bruce Party so nice opportunities to get together with people who care about free speech
00:29:28.600and and figure out ways forward and we also have a few legal cases which we send out to outside
00:29:34.020counsel which mostly is me at the moment until we get better funding I'd like to have a stable of
00:29:39.160lawyers to take these cases, for sure. We have campaigns that we run, including one to abolish
00:29:44.280human rights tribunals, which have become enforcers of ideology rather than actually,
00:29:48.620you know, sort of caring about universal human rights. And we also collaborate with our
00:29:55.320international partners. And so we have a new FSU that just started in Brazil. And so it's
00:30:00.420interesting to see how similar things are in all of our countries. It just seems like all of these
00:30:06.180restrictions on free speech and censorship and attempts to surveil and curtail is happening in
00:30:12.240lockstep around the world well i didn't know you guys were active in brazil you know i went there
00:30:16.460for a day they had a big march when some crusading judge shut down the entire app twitter for the
00:30:25.080whole country because they refused to censor a few accounts so this judge moreish is his name
00:30:31.260Alexander Marais, if I'm saying that right, shut down the whole thing. And so 200,000 people
00:30:38.100protested the shutdown. I heard it was large. I wanted to see with my own eyes. I had never seen
00:30:45.300that many people care so explicitly about freedom of speech before. It actually was incredibly
00:30:50.580inspiring because I don't know if you could even get 20,000, if you could even get 2,000