Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Rebel News wins battle in lawsuit against Trudeau's Twitter blacklisting

00:00:00.000 tonight we're in toronto outside the federal court we're suing stephen gilbeau because he

00:00:20.760 thinks he can have an enemy's blacklist it's june 13th and this is the ezra levant show

00:00:26.060 shame on you you sensorious bug

00:00:32.400 behind me is the federal court building here in downtown toronto the federal court is an

00:00:46.580 interesting creature it's the court of choice when you want to sue national or federal institutions

00:00:52.080 for example we were in this very building back in 2019 when justin trudeau and his new election

00:00:59.020 debates commission run by the dishonorable david johnson banned rebel news and several other media

00:01:05.020 from attending the leaders debates we rushed to this court with an emergency application

00:01:10.220 asking the judges to order us to be certified to order trudeau to allow us in and in a miracle we

00:01:18.100 felt like a miracle we won the judge presiding back then was named justice zinn we were back at the

00:01:25.300 federal court in 2021 with our lawyer chad williamson fighting the same fight again david johnson again

00:01:31.640 blocking us on behalf of trudeau we won again in federal court in that case the judge was actually

00:01:38.780 sitting by remote on zoom i think it was from newfoundland that's the interesting thing about

00:01:44.940 the federal court is it's a national jurisdiction you never know where your judge is going to be

00:01:49.220 from well we were back in court today because we have been attacked in a manner of speaking

00:01:55.580 by the federal government again and the attack might seem small it might even seem petty to you but

00:02:01.420 i put it to you that it's actually a very important battle to fight stephen gilbeau who was the

00:02:07.700 heritage minister in charge of drafting all of trudeau's censorship provisions and is now the

00:02:12.800 environment minister he has blocked me on twitter and katherine mckenna who was a environment minister

00:02:19.960 sorry cabinet minister as well she blocked my colleague sheila gun reed now this lawsuit has 1.00

00:02:25.240 taken so year so long to move through the courts that we have dropped katherine mckenna from the lawsuit

00:02:30.040 because she's no longer in government but we were proceeding against stephen gilbeau because he is still a

00:02:35.940 government person and that's the important part here i don't care about stephen gilbeau's personal

00:02:42.940 twitter account or his family facebook account or anything like that the only thing i care about is

00:02:48.980 his official government account that has dozens of civil servants paid for by my tax dollars and yours

00:02:55.900 putting out official government pronouncements his twitter account is not his family photos or anything

00:03:03.020 personal it is all government business and yet he thinks he has the power to block me just because

00:03:09.500 he ideologically disagrees with me but that denies my rights to get government information it denies my

00:03:17.260 access to the same service that other canadians have and those services are actually quite relevant to

00:03:22.980 me as a journalist and especially when he was minister of heritage he was making announcement that

00:03:28.020 directly impacted rebel news but it's the precedent that scares me because if justin trudeau and his

00:03:35.740 cabinet can ban people they don't like from getting government services it might be something minor like

00:03:42.680 a twitter account today although that's not very minor when you think about the chart of rights and

00:03:47.540 its freedom of speech and the right to hear and to speak but what if they ban you from getting a

00:03:54.560 government business license that's actually what happened a couple of generations ago there was a

00:04:00.380 premier in quebec named maurice duplessy who banned jehovah's witness in support of the jehovah's

00:04:07.520 witnesses from getting a liquor license he did so because he hated the politics of that restaurant owner

00:04:13.320 that went all this way to the supreme court and they ruled against him what if trudeau started to apply

00:04:18.520 his enemies list to other things too we've already seen a little bit of that so we're in court today

00:04:24.920 and we've been fighting this fight for two years stephen gilbo has done his best not to participate in

00:04:31.940 fact he personally refuses to testify or give any information he sends junior staffers instead who don't

00:04:39.940 know anything the government has stonewalled and in fact there are no fewer than seven government lawyers

00:04:47.600 or articling students that's a junior lawyer on the case so you may not think this is an important

00:04:52.980 battle but the government certainly does they sent seven lawyers to fight us which is exactly how many

00:05:00.960 they sent last time in 2021 when we meet beat them in the election debates case so i'm outside the court

00:05:08.220 i'll have a report for you a little bit later if you want to learn more if you want to see our lawsuit

00:05:13.280 itself go to twitter lawsuit.ca

00:05:15.940 who are these immaculately dressed barristers this is our legal dream team who was just in the court

00:05:35.020 the federal court of canada i'm talking about chad williamson and his colleague scott nickel chad it

00:05:40.560 was uh an interesting battle today i would say it was a victory but the main war is still to come

00:05:46.560 why don't you tell us what happened this has been kind of peculiar and what's what's so funny about

00:05:51.580 this saga ezra is that it's not just this case it's almost every case in which we're up against

00:05:58.160 the government be it for the whistle stop for rebel for constitutional rights for charter rights

00:06:04.900 we're constantly finding that there's information that the government just wants to keep out of the

00:06:10.400 court and we've got to fight like crazy to try to get it admitted so what happened today is uh

00:06:16.900 we won we won a victory uh they sure fought hard against us there was uh seven uh folks from the

00:06:23.060 governments in the courtroom um and there's just scott and i who flew all the way out here from calgary

00:06:28.420 and wow what a beautiful uh beautiful city some good weather and some interesting uh court court

00:06:33.980 proceedings i suppose uh long and the short of it is we had been fighting this battle for about two

00:06:40.620 years to uh essentially try to uh have ezra unblocked on twitter by minister stephen gilbone of course

00:06:49.300 it's not just a matter of you know it's just twitter we're just trying to get somebody unblocked this goes

00:06:53.460 to the fundamental uh uh charter right of freedom of association and freedom of the press and can

00:07:01.620 government officials block members of their constituency uh from receiving government

00:07:08.280 information through social media this is kind of a new sphere uh there's not much jurisprudence in this

00:07:13.400 area so it's a tremendously interesting case we've been fighting the sucker for two years this morning

00:07:18.940 as scott and i are boarding the plane to come out here uh with a whole bunch of work ahead of us to

00:07:24.600 prepare for further submissions we're going to argue the the main trial today on a whim and i don't

00:07:30.620 know if this is like something coming down from above i check my phone and go to gilbo's uh twitter

00:07:37.260 account he's now an officially government verified account on twitter so again like it the lead in

00:07:46.480 leadership debates of 2021 and so many other proceedings scott and i had to basically fumble

00:07:53.060 and get some sort of a cogent app emergency application together uh to admit this new evidence

00:08:00.120 to the court and get this information uh before the court and it's cardinal to our case the this whole

00:08:05.760 time minister gilbo has been arguing that this isn't a government account it's his personal account which

00:08:11.420 is a little ridiculous i think that this is pretty obvious now that it's you know an ordained

00:08:17.140 gray check mark twitter account it's pretty obvious suffice to say the government wanted to keep it out

00:08:23.240 we made emergency submissions uh thanks to the uh the the incredible uh proficient work of scott

00:08:31.640 nickel and also folks back in calgary uh eric thompson really helped us out and that was absolutely

00:08:37.120 critical some more folks in scott's office we did this on a dime and uh we got a victory the affidavit

00:08:43.020 got admitted this is uh this is huge for putting this information before the court as it should have

00:08:48.460 been in the first place yeah and and that's the thing is stephen gilbo has refused to participate in

00:08:53.180 this trial he's refused to swear an affidavit to be cross-examined and the government has been

00:08:59.800 taking a we are above this we don't have to participate you found the nail in the coffin

00:09:05.640 what should be to their case and they had seven people there to fight it i estimate that based on

00:09:12.140 what we've spent and based on the fact that they have seven lawyers i estimate they've spent half a

00:09:18.080 million dollars fighting us so far so even if some viewers are saying what are you fighting about

00:09:23.140 being blocked on twitter who cares to the government it's obviously extremely important because if they

00:09:29.720 lose the power to blacklist their enemies they can't do this in other spheres conversely if they

00:09:36.380 have the power affirmed that they can blacklist their enemies imagine what they'll do with this

00:09:43.100 scott you're here particularly on the constitutional stuff what do you think the judge made particular

00:09:48.760 reference to the importance of this case because of the charter rights at stake didn't he well these are

00:09:53.800 very significant rights and the charter protects the ability for the citizens of canada and for the

00:09:59.180 media to be able to engage with politicians but really to be able to receive information from them

00:10:05.020 and to be able to make fair comments the same way anybody else in society might so it's fine that

00:10:10.960 minister gubeau might not like your tweets but you should still be able to get access to his

00:10:16.800 pronouncements his announcements his statements and be able to comment on them the same way anybody else

00:10:22.500 might and i find it really interesting that we are arguing this morning um we've got this new

00:10:28.280 check mark on gubeau's account saying that he's now a government uh related account an official

00:10:36.040 government uh associated account and they don't want this information and they don't want it before

00:10:41.660 the court the same way that anybody blocked by minister gubeau might say i guess they don't want me to

00:10:47.600 have the information that's being posted to twitter on a timely basis and the ability to interact

00:10:52.420 with it these are significant rights because they define the boundary of where government can and

00:10:58.140 cannot allow its citizens to interact on an equal basis or whether it's preferred based on some kind

00:11:04.240 of status the government to date has essentially said that minister gubeau should be able to block

00:11:11.040 whoever he wants without any any justification stating that it's a personal account we have a number

00:11:18.140 of pieces of evidence that say that that suggest this is not a personal account other than the obvious

00:11:23.820 um beyond simply the obvious uh element that any canadian might look at this account and see that

00:11:29.980 he's quite obviously minister gubeau and they they want to say that minister gubeau needs zero

00:11:36.300 justification or very little or any justification to block anybody that he doesn't even need to respond

00:11:41.600 because he should just be allowed to block whoever he wants from seeing and interacting well maybe

00:11:46.300 now that you put it that way i didn't think about that basically gubeau is saying we don't have to

00:11:51.680 answer to levant we don't have to engage with them this lawsuit is bs in a way that's what his seven

00:11:56.560 lawyers were arguing today about the judge the judge shouldn't be able to see this the judge shouldn't

00:12:01.420 be able to consider this he may think this is useful but we don't want him to see it and so the judge

00:12:07.500 took a 15 or 20 minute break he canvassed the leading case law and he came back and it was very

00:12:14.060 exciting it was a victory no doubt about it why don't you summarize what the judge said when he

00:12:19.520 came back in from his 20 minute break well the judge basically said that um yes uh the information

00:12:27.540 that we received came in late there was a reasonable excuse obviously for it coming in late now what's

00:12:34.400 really interesting about this and i don't want to derail this too much but from our investigations and

00:12:40.740 again they've been preliminary we just found out about this yesterday morning it looks all signs

00:12:45.580 point to the fact that in order to get this accreditation in the seal of a government account

00:12:50.460 you have to apply for it so it all signs point to either minister gubeau or someone in the government

00:12:56.680 of canada or somebody making this application for him now it hasn't been there that long but it's been

00:13:03.040 there longer than yes just yesterday morning so some somewhere somebody knew about this now i'd also point

00:13:08.400 out that minister gubeau used his twitter account i think even you know a couple hours before the

00:13:13.500 hearing so how could you not use that account or someone used it for him and not have seen that

00:13:18.600 check mark so the judge basically said hey look this is this has probative value it may may or may not

00:13:24.620 have probative value but i'm not here to say that it has no value whatsoever much to the chagrin of

00:13:30.120 the respondents lawyers um and basically said you know what you guys can put this in uh obviously it

00:13:36.440 throws two years of litigation up in complete turmoil we're gonna have to uh uh re-evaluate

00:13:41.300 briefs and probably maybe hash out more cross examinations we're actually interested to see

00:13:46.540 if minister gubeau is gonna put some meaningful evidence before the court and allow us to cross

00:13:51.420 examine some affiance uh and and i really look forward to that everyone knows uh that i cherish a

00:13:57.160 good cross examination so well and gubeau has done his best to avoid that scott last word to you

00:14:02.320 sounds like we all got to come back to this same courthouse in he suggested it might be september

00:14:07.820 you know the weather today is actually gorgeous in toronto so i'm glad this is when you guys came out

00:14:12.520 here september it's still lovely out here this is where the court is but i gotta say i like this judge

00:14:18.800 this is the same judge that ruled in favor of rebel news's freedom of the press in 2019 i wonder if he

00:14:24.980 remembers that he probably does here we are four years later and i think he's open-minded i feel like we have

00:14:30.380 the real chance of getting a fair hearing so i hope you guys don't mind coming back to toronto in a few

00:14:35.680 months to finish this thing out it sounds like it's gonna be a two-day trial also yeah the judge also

00:14:40.920 had some remarks of asking counsel whether it would really be limited to one day after he saw the

00:14:46.800 materials there are significant materials the the government of canada alone filed something like

00:14:51.900 2 500 pages of case materials it's a lot of things to go through it's a lot of things for the court to

00:14:57.840 go through for us to go through there's still a fight to have uh you know it's interesting you're

00:15:03.040 talking just a moment ago about who might run minister guilbeau's account so far they've not

00:15:08.820 wanted to answer that question whether the minister or government or say who's funded it obviously the

00:15:14.060 seven uh legal personnel that we're attending at court today are are funded by the public service

00:15:19.960 uh minister guilbeau's not paying out of pocket for this

00:15:24.040 uh but private citizens challenging and protecting their rights under the charter are

00:15:29.520 uh so we're looking forward to coming back there is still some fight to have

00:15:33.180 um and i'm looking forward to seeing you in september it was ezra just the amount of materials that i saw

00:15:38.340 on the desk of uh uh of the other side that i was almost making a joke that there's almost enough

00:15:44.600 there that if you were in combat you could have taken cover behind those documents to avoid incoming

00:15:50.140 fire which is basically what happened today well there you have it chad williamson and scott nickel

00:15:56.180 our lawyers they'll be back out here in september if you want to help me pay the bills for this fight

00:16:02.160 for freedom please do go to twitter lawsuit dot ca stay with us more ahead

00:16:07.460 i'm back on the street the hearing was not as long as i thought it would be we thought it would

00:16:23.880 take several hours maybe even the whole day today here's why we're done before noon

00:16:28.640 last night as our lawyers were coming to town from calgary they just by chance visited steve

00:16:37.260 ingelbeau's twitter site just i don't know why on a whim and they discovered something new it had

00:16:43.640 that little gray check mark on it that is twitter's new verification badge for government twitter accounts

00:16:51.640 see in the past there was only one kind of verification for twitter bear with me on this

00:16:56.420 even if you're not on twitter this is actually important so to distinguish celebrities or sports

00:17:01.920 stars or politicians from other people who might have the same name or who might be impersonators

00:17:06.780 twitter might give you a little blue check mark called a verified check mark and it really didn't verify

00:17:13.220 anything other than you were really this politician or that sports hero it didn't say anything about

00:17:21.400 if you were good or bad at that it just said you are who you say you are and that's useful in a

00:17:26.780 world where there's a lot of parody accounts or even some malicious hoaxters but recently under

00:17:33.800 elon musk there have been new verifications for different kinds of accounts there's a media badge

00:17:40.880 there's a government badge and some of these have to be applied for and you have to meet certain

00:17:45.980 standards in the past that blue verified check mark was rather whimsically given out sometimes you

00:17:52.020 didn't even ask for it sometimes if you asked for it it was denied now under elon musk you have to

00:17:57.440 apply for certain badges you have to even pay for them and you have to provide some proof that you are

00:18:03.540 say a government account so it was only in the last few weeks that stephen gilbo must have positively

00:18:10.200 applied for that twitter verification saying i am a government account well that goes straight to

00:18:17.780 the heart of this case because for two years stephen gilbo has said no this is not an official

00:18:23.240 government account sure it's run by government staff but it's my personal account well here we are

00:18:28.720 on the eve of trial literally the eve of trial and we discover that it's actually a verified government

00:18:35.400 account that gilbo must have applied to twitter to grant him so the very first thing our lawyers

00:18:41.600 chad williamson scott nichols said was your honor we have a new piece of evidence and we would like to

00:18:47.240 present it to the court as part of the trial the government's seven lawyers were apoplectic they said

00:18:54.660 you can't your honor we don't know what this great check mark means we don't know if minister gilbo

00:19:00.800 asked for it we don't know anything about it who knows what it means don't let it in the court

00:19:06.340 so the judge went back and forth and then he took a break and he consulted the law and he came back and

00:19:11.140 he said no i don't think that admitting this gray check mark unduly prejudices mr gilbo and i think it

00:19:19.680 could be quite useful in determining key matters here i'm going to allow it in and now you guys figure

00:19:26.660 out what to do with that so it was a victory today and i should tell you that the judge today

00:19:32.080 was actually the same judge we had back in 2019 justice zinn who gave us our accreditation in the

00:19:39.460 2019 leaders debate so i'm hopeful that he's open to arguments about freedom of speech and about not

00:19:45.860 letting the government ride roughshod over our charter rights so we had a victory in court today we were

00:19:51.700 allowed to admit that evidence in return the government now is given some weeks to respond

00:19:59.220 to it to try and explain it away we've been given some more time too it's likely that the full trial

00:20:06.780 of this matter won't be heard until september it has to be scheduled but i think we'll be in a much

00:20:13.600 stronger position then because we have this key piece of evidence now you might be laughing well of

00:20:18.120 course this was a government account it's all government pronouncements done by civil servants

00:20:22.860 well that's true and i thought we had a strong case anyways but the government fought like hell

00:20:27.980 to keep out this fact and i think they know that it flattens their arguments i'm a little bit hopeful

00:20:33.920 but i also know that it's a little bit sad that there are no other civil liberties groups here

00:20:39.760 penn canada amnesty international canadian journalist for free expression you name it

00:20:44.760 no one else is fighting against the liberals because they've been colonized

00:20:48.660 financially politically they simply don't criticize justin trudeau anymore let alone show up in court to

00:20:55.040 fight him i think that's an important part of rebel news we do journalism every day as you know our

00:21:00.640 motto is telling the other side of the story and i think that's probably 90 of what we do just

00:21:06.560 shining a light of scrutiny on things following the facts wherever they lead telling the other side

00:21:11.320 it's very important but every once in a while it's not enough just to talk about things you actually

00:21:18.160 have to step in and fight to make a difference that's what we're doing in court with our great

00:21:23.660 lawyers i think we've spent over a hundred thousand dollars on this battle so far and it'll probably be

00:21:28.700 another 50 grand before we're done if you're in a position to help us please go to twitter

00:21:33.320 lawsuit.ca you can see the lawsuit there for yourself and you can also chip in well that's our show for

00:21:39.940 today until tomorrow on behalf of all of us at rebel news to you at home goodbye and keep fighting for freedom

Rebel News Podcast - June 13, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Rebel News wins battle in lawsuit against Trudeau's Twitter blacklisting

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