Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau blinks, postpones censorship provisions of C-63 — what happens next？

00:00:00.260 Hello, my Rebels. Sort of a surprise announcement from the Liberal government.

00:00:03.540 They're going to split their censorship bill, C-63, into two parts.

00:00:08.300 I'll give you my thoughts on it. I'll show you a statement from the Justice Minister,

00:00:11.540 and we'll talk with the Democracy Fund's senior litigator.

00:00:15.680 Is it a substantial backing down of the Liberals, or is it a trick?

00:00:21.320 I'll give you my point of view, but first I want to invite you to subscribe to what we call Rebel News Plus.

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00:01:40.020 All right, here's today's podcast.

00:01:46.140 You're listening to a podcast. 0.75

00:01:57.360 Shame on you, you sensorious bug. 0.99

00:02:10.020 Breaking news.

00:02:13.580 The Trudeau liberals have blinked on their censorship law, Bill C-63.

00:02:18.220 Now, they haven't canceled it, but they've decided to split it into two parts.

00:02:22.800 They're proceeding quickly on the first part, which includes things like banning revenge porn and child pornography.

00:02:29.000 By the way, revenge porn was already banned by Stephen Harper 10 years ago, and of course, child pornography was banned decades ago.

00:02:36.440 Those were obviously added to the censorship bill as a distraction from the real purpose, stopping political criticism of the government.

00:02:43.780 But they say they're now going to split off the censorship provisions and go slower on those and faster on the pornography part, which is a win for freedom of speech and a win for the 75,267 Canadians who signed our petition at StopTheCensorship.ca.

00:03:03.900 Today, one of our largest petitions ever.

00:03:06.040 But as you can see in this video clip here, the liberals still say they are committed to bringing in those censorship provisions.

00:03:13.240 So this could be a trick to make us lower our guard.

00:03:16.360 What do you think?

00:03:17.420 Here's the justice minister whose title is also the minister of online harms.

00:03:22.700 Literally, the word censorship is built into his job description.

00:03:27.240 Take a look.

00:03:27.640 So I'm here to talk about Bill C-63, the online harms bill.

00:03:31.620 And what I'm saying to you and to Canadians is that we as a government are making the determination to divide this bill into two parts.

00:03:40.600 The first part of the bill will deal with the parts that target children and combating child sex predators and issues that relate to revenge porn.

00:03:50.640 That is parts one and parts four of the bill.

00:03:52.940 Parts one deals with the Digital Safety Commission.

00:03:55.860 Part four deals with how you prosecute child sex predators under new tools under the Mandatory Reporting Act.

00:04:03.480 Part two of the bill will be the Criminal Code Amendments and the Canadian Human Rights Act Amendments that deal with the important combat against hatred.

00:04:12.740 These bills will proceed on different tracks.

00:04:15.620 We are putting our emphasis and prioritization and our time and efforts on the first portion of the bill, which deals with child sex predators.

00:04:22.800 Yeah, if you heard him, he says he's going to go faster on the pornography provisions, but he still will go on the censorship provisions.

00:04:30.560 Now, I have personally heard C-63 referred to by several journalists as the kill rebel bill.

00:04:37.860 Of course it is, because we're one of the few news outlets in Canada that does not take money from Trudeau.

00:04:43.800 So we're one of the few news outlets in Canada that cannot be controlled by Trudeau.

00:04:48.460 If Trudeau can't use the carrot with us, he'll use the stick with us.

00:04:53.120 Censorship.

00:04:54.100 Even though he's hated by his own party, Trudeau has the votes to smash this bill through Parliament.

00:05:01.060 He supports this censorship and he has a deep personal hatred for rebel news.

00:05:06.760 Remember this?

00:05:08.540 Hey, this is assault.

00:05:10.120 I'm on a side.

00:05:11.360 What is this?

00:05:12.740 I'm on a sidewalk.

00:05:17.480 I'm on a sidewalk.

00:05:18.900 What is this?

00:05:20.020 You cannot push me.

00:05:21.540 No Russian word.

00:05:23.640 Hey.

00:05:25.500 Now you've seen Trudeau's bodyguards beat up our reporter, David Menzies,

00:05:31.460 and you've seen Chrystia Freeland's bodyguards beat up David Menzies, too.

00:05:35.820 If they'll commit an assault against our rebel news reporters breaking the law,

00:05:40.960 they'd obviously think nothing of changing the law to get us either.

00:05:45.100 And both Jagmeet Singh's NDP and the Separatist Bloc Québécois have said they support the censorship provisions of C-63, too.

00:05:54.360 That is enough to ram this through.

00:05:56.800 And then Trudeau's Senate will rubber stamp it. 0.74

00:05:59.020 I'm glad Trudeau blinked today a little bit, I think.

00:06:04.140 But it's nothing more than a blink.

00:06:05.900 If we're to take the liberals at their word, at face value, they still intend to pass the law, just under a different name.

00:06:15.040 C-63 will create three new censorship agencies in Canada.

00:06:19.300 It'll give the Canadian Human Rights Commission the power to investigate anyone in Canada for anything they post online

00:06:26.200 or have ever posted online in the past that could hurt feelings.

00:06:30.960 It would set up a $20,000 bounty for anyone to make a complaint about you, a complaint that's successful.

00:06:38.680 It would give the courts the power to make hate speech restraining orders,

00:06:42.900 to stop people from saying things even before they do, even putting them under house arrest.

00:06:47.900 It is the most draconian censorship bill ever seen in Canada, and Trudeau is obsessed with it.

00:06:55.740 The fact that Trudeau and his Justice Minister now say they're going to split the bill in two doesn't mean they're done with it.

00:07:02.560 Until this bill is actually dead, it is still alive.

00:07:07.020 Do not let your guard down.

00:07:09.200 We sure won't.

00:07:09.960 I promise you, the minute the censorship bill is law, Rebel News is going to challenge it in court.

00:07:16.160 We have to.

00:07:17.180 If we don't, the law will be used to silence us, and to silence you too.

00:07:23.080 The only reason that I'm allowed to ask you this question is because today the federal court ruled

00:07:28.660 that the government doesn't have the right to determine who is or is not a journalist.

00:07:33.480 This is the second election in a row that the court had to overturn your government.

00:07:38.000 Do you still insist on being able to make that decision, and why?

00:07:42.680 The reality is organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation

00:07:53.640 on the science around vaccines, around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic

00:08:01.160 and be there for each other and keep our kids safe is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger

00:08:09.860 and lack of understanding of basic science.

00:08:13.900 And quite frankly, your, I won't call it a media organization, your group of individuals

00:08:21.260 need to take accountability for some of the polarization that we're seeing in this country.

00:08:28.860 You know, we've sued Trudeau to stop this censorship more than any other news organization in Canada.

00:08:34.420 In fact, more than all other news organizations combined, we've hired free speech lawyers to

00:08:39.880 fight against censorship in the B.C. Supreme Court, in the Alberta Court of King's Bench,

00:08:44.500 in the federal court, in the federal court of appeal, at the Ontario Superior Court.

00:08:48.520 We are even seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada itself.

00:08:52.640 We have almost a dozen cases of what involving freedom of speech.

00:08:57.620 At Rebel News, we don't just use our free speech.

00:09:00.920 We fight to defend it for ourselves and to set the precedent that will benefit all Canadians too.

00:09:08.580 You know, our motto is telling the other side of the story.

00:09:11.680 But you can't do that if the government tells you that you can't even say something.

00:09:17.340 We constantly challenge government censorship, and we've had to spend more than half a million

00:09:23.700 dollars this year alone on free speech lawyers.

00:09:27.060 If you think this battle is important and you want to help us challenge C-63 the day it becomes law,

00:09:35.580 then please consider clicking on our website to help chip into our Legal Defense Fund.

00:09:40.680 Go to stopthecensorship.ca.

00:09:43.060 And if you haven't yet, you can also, on that same website, join the 75,267 other Canadians

00:09:51.100 who have signed our free speech petition.

00:09:54.460 Please do that if you haven't done it yet.

00:09:57.060 Again, that's stopthecensorship.ca.

00:10:00.280 We're not going to stop fighting until this bill is actually dead.

00:10:07.300 Trudeau says he's going to go slower on his censorship bill than before,

00:10:11.360 but he says he's still going to do it.

00:10:13.540 Now, until that censorship bill is dead, we've got to keep our guard up.

00:10:17.200 And I promise you at Rebel News, we will fight it in the courts.

00:10:20.280 To learn more and to help us out, go to stopthecensorship.ca.

00:10:23.720 Well, I have been alive to the threat of C-63 before the bill was even introduced in Parliament.

00:10:41.620 Before the last election, it was called the Online Harms Act, and they were, it hadn't been introduced yet,

00:10:48.280 but believe it or not, a preliminary version of the law was circulated to the public for commentary.

00:10:55.580 It was so shocking that Twitter, and I'm talking about pre-Elon Musk Twitter, pre-free speech Twitter,

00:11:01.920 they actually sent a memo, a confidential memo, to the government saying this was the most draconian internet censorship bill

00:11:08.020 they'd ever seen, with perhaps the exception of North Korea.

00:11:11.480 Yeah, so the government sort of did a test drive of these ideas before the 2021 election.

00:11:18.300 Of course, when there's an election, Parliament's prorogued and bills sort of evaporate.

00:11:23.000 Since 2021, they have introduced it, obviously.

00:11:26.840 So this has been on Trudeau's mind for a very long time.

00:11:30.960 And I think you've heard me say before that they passed a regulation in the Gazette,

00:11:35.760 which is the sort of official government publication of regulations,

00:11:40.660 that the justice minister's title is now the Minister of Justice, Attorney General, and Minister for Online Harms.

00:11:47.260 Like, this is so integral to the Liberal Party and the government,

00:11:51.580 that they actually gave the minister that special title, which I find astonishing.

00:11:56.480 As you've heard me say before, Trudeau has multiple bills about internet censorship.

00:12:01.000 C-11, which granted him domain over the internet.

00:12:04.260 C-18, which allowed him to ring out companies like Google for cash and pay his favorite media companies.

00:12:11.720 The QCJO News License, Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization License, which we were denied.

00:12:18.140 And now, Bill C-63.

00:12:20.640 Can you tell me a different subject that Justin Trudeau has introduced four bills on?

00:12:25.700 Something he cares so much about.

00:12:27.140 But I put it to you that other than marijuana legalization, there is nothing Justin Trudeau believes in more strongly than censorship.

00:12:34.180 And I also put it to you that there is no one he wishes to censor more than Rebel News.

00:12:39.720 And that's not my speculation or a solipsism, but rather, he keeps censoring us.

00:12:45.120 He tried to ban us from the leaders' debates.

00:12:47.200 He regularly marginalizes us when we fight back in court.

00:12:50.160 Now, we fight back on our own behalf.

00:12:51.740 But as you know, there's a new sheriff in town and the Democracy Fund, a registered CRA charity that we are happy to give publicity to and crowdfund for.

00:13:02.800 Well, they've done a major paper on C-63.

00:13:06.780 And joining me now to talk about the latest news is our friend from the Democracy Fund, Mark Joseph, Senior Litigation Counsel.

00:13:14.680 Mark, great to see you again.

00:13:15.660 Thanks for having me.

00:13:16.220 I want to play again for the viewers a brief video of Arif Varani, the Justice Minister, making an announcement that is somewhat cryptic.

00:13:27.360 He's basically saying he's going to split C-63 in half.

00:13:31.120 He's going to have the pornography version go forward.

00:13:34.360 And I always said that those pornography rules were a distraction from their main purpose.

00:13:38.900 Because, frankly, most of those things are already legislated.

00:13:42.480 But he's not abandoning the censorship part.

00:13:44.820 Let's just take a look at that video to refresh the viewer's memory before we talk about it.

00:13:49.640 Take a look.

00:13:50.200 So I'm here to talk about Bill C-63, the online harms bill.

00:13:54.080 And what I'm saying to you and to Canadians is that we as a government are making the determination to divide this bill into two parts.

00:14:02.760 The first part of the bill will deal with the parts that target children and combating child sex predators and issues that relate to revenge porn.

00:14:12.980 That is parts one and parts four of the bill.

00:14:15.480 Parts one deals with the Digital Safety Commission.

00:14:18.220 Part four deals with how you prosecute child sex predators under new tools under the Mandatory Reporting Act.

00:14:25.440 Part two of the bill will be the Criminal Code Amendments and the Canadian Human Rights Act Amendments that deal with the important combat against hatred.

00:14:35.100 These bills will proceed on different tracks.

00:14:37.980 We are putting our emphasis and prioritization and our time and efforts on the first portion of the bill, which deals with child sex predators.

00:14:45.340 So he's saying that he's emphasizing and prioritizing and resourcing the pornography aspects here.

00:14:52.520 And frankly, I read them and many of them, like I said, appear to be in law already.

00:14:57.060 Stephen Hopper banned revenge porn a decade ago.

00:15:00.920 I don't really think that's what this bill was about.

00:15:03.280 And frankly, I don't have a lot of objections to that part of the bill.

00:15:07.820 He's a little bit unclear what he's going to do with the censorship provisions.

00:15:11.360 He's not abandoning them.

00:15:12.640 He says they're on a separate track.

00:15:14.440 He's just saying they're not putting their main efforts into it now.

00:15:17.860 Is this even an announcement, Mark?

00:15:19.980 Well, I mean, it's good that he's recognized, as most civil libertarians do, that this bill always needed to be split.

00:15:29.440 Most civil libertarian groups, particularly TDF, had no problem with the child protection provisions under the bill.

00:15:36.440 But the problem is it's a Trojan horse because he's a bit cagey.

00:15:41.000 Part one includes seven types of harms, and four of those deal with child protection, non-consensual disclosure, intimate individuals, not problematic.

00:15:49.480 But three involve incitement to violence, incitement to violent extremism and terrorism, and content that foments harm, foments hatred, rather.

00:16:01.000 And those are still in part one.

00:16:02.960 Oh, really?

00:16:04.120 So maybe I'm wrong then when I say he split off the hate speech stuff.

00:16:10.300 You're saying it's actually going to continue on.

00:16:13.420 Like I said, he's being very cagey about it because those types of harms, the seven types, are in part one, the definition section.

00:16:21.060 So unless he's saying, in some reporting, I see that he's still proceeding with the harm that deals with hatred.

00:16:32.340 And that's so overbroad that it's going to capture a lot of online content, and there's no exemption for reporting or journalism, I might add.

00:16:41.160 So if you were doing an interview with someone who was saying some very harmful things, as a journalist, you want to report that, you might be caught under that type of harm that's in part one that he says he's proceeding forward with.

00:16:57.000 Well, then I may have already been tricked by him because I thought, okay, we've got a bit of a reprieve.

00:17:02.100 I'm guessing the Human Rights Commission stuff, that's part of the second track.

00:17:08.540 So give me an example.

00:17:10.280 One of the things I have talked about before, and it's in the bill, is you can go to a court to have a judge give sort of a preemptive restraining order against someone who you think is going to engage in a hate incident.

00:17:25.600 You could even get them under house arrest.

00:17:27.800 There's all sorts of things.

00:17:29.400 Is that part, do you know offhand, without checking the bill, is that going to be fast-tracked in Verani's new plan?

00:17:36.920 Well, that, I believe, is under the criminal code provisions.

00:17:39.560 That's dealing with peace bond and people who are talking about pre-crime.

00:17:43.140 So I believe that is included in the part two that he says he's severing from part one and part four with deal with child protection.

00:17:53.360 So ostensibly we're okay there.

00:17:56.900 He's going to debate that, he says, later on.

00:18:00.320 But I have to double check.

00:18:01.720 Got it.

00:18:02.000 And I don't mean to put you on the spot.

00:18:03.560 We're both reacting to this, and there's not a lot of meat here.

00:18:06.580 He just, you know, it was really a one-minute statement.

00:18:09.880 So when you say fomenting hate, and again, hate is a human emotion, to foment hate.

00:18:14.760 If you could stop hate by passing a bill, I always say we would just pass the Love Each Other Act of 2024, and we would be, you just can't compel people to be happy.

00:18:24.880 People have feelings of hate when they have a grievance that they feel is unmet and unsatisfied.

00:18:33.300 And there's two ways to deal with a grievance.

00:18:35.600 One is to deal with it.

00:18:36.860 The other is to tell people to shut up about it.

00:18:39.420 Typically telling people to shut up about a grievance only makes them feel it more because they feel persecuted now.

00:18:44.840 They feel a sense of unfairness.

00:18:46.980 So I'm going to study a little bit more what fomenting hate is, and this is my general beef with these censorship laws.

00:18:57.820 They're subjective.

00:18:59.180 There's no way to measure, well, did you really feel hate?

00:19:03.720 And even if you did, what's the damage there?

00:19:06.620 In centuries of law, you had to prove you had suffered some damage.

00:19:11.180 Show me the broken bone.

00:19:12.820 So many, you lost some money.

00:19:14.380 So many, you had a car accident.

00:19:16.320 You just don't have a feelings part of the law.

00:19:19.920 Right.

00:19:20.380 That's always been a problem for this type of legislation, as you rightly pointed out.

00:19:23.000 I think most people recognize that.

00:19:25.540 The Supreme Court, in a case called Watcott, tried to move away from what they thought was a subjective problem in the definition of hatred.

00:19:33.620 And they said, well, we have to look at the effect that that hatred will have on possible discrimination against the targeted group.

00:19:44.280 But that's a sociological analysis that relies on looking at the dynamic of how and why people discriminate.

00:19:54.320 So it's not just a unitary causal analysis that you can do.

00:19:59.580 I heard some hate speech, so I'm going to go discriminate against this group.

00:20:03.280 It pushes the problem back a little bit, I think, but it doesn't get rid of it.

00:20:07.920 You know, there is a concept of getting paid for pain and suffering if you're in a car accident, for example.

00:20:14.980 But you need a doctor's examination.

00:20:17.720 We don't just, like you could say, oh, I feel pain.

00:20:20.260 You can't just say that and get cash.

00:20:23.400 There is some sort of scientific test.

00:20:25.340 And over the years, you know, the amount you get for this injury or that injury is actually fairly settled law now.

00:20:33.920 I think the pure subjectivity of this is a danger.

00:20:38.460 And the fact that, obviously, it's like Lavrenti Beria, the Russian secret police chief, who said, show me the man, I'll find you the crime.

00:20:48.920 Really, we're all guilty of causing a hard feeling if you look long enough.

00:20:54.860 It's just a matter of who gets prosecuted.

00:20:57.280 And if the liberals are in power, it'll be the enemy of the liberals.

00:21:00.880 I hope that conservatives wouldn't support this bill.

00:21:04.880 Let me ask you about that.

00:21:06.320 The Democracy Fund is nonpartisan, so you would never support one party or another.

00:21:10.440 But have you heard where the conservative opposition is on this?

00:21:14.860 I know that the NDP and the bloc have said they support C63.

00:21:18.920 I have I myself haven't heard a very clear, strong statement by the opposition of you.

00:21:24.340 I I have not, Ezra, I'd like to.

00:21:26.820 I mean, I look at the news, obviously, to see if if there's been any comments by the conservatives.

00:21:33.120 You would think because they have a more conservative approach, the things they they're for small government, that they would not grant a government such a huge remit to govern speech.

00:21:43.840 Because the bill, as it's written, basically allows for full spectrums online surveillance.

00:21:50.740 And it unleashes an army of bureaucrats and and citizen informers to report speech to on mass to this Digital Safety Commission.

00:22:02.220 But you don't even need to do that.

00:22:03.560 You can set up a large language model.

00:22:05.360 You can set it set up an A.I. software and just auto report.

00:22:09.160 The government can certainly do this and bad actors could do this.

00:22:13.120 So it's just it's just a nightmare panopticon type situation that I would I would hope the conservatives would recognize and not support.

00:22:20.680 You know, I there's a lot of there's a lot of problems out there.

00:22:26.380 I should point out that there's this little town in western Ontario is really near the Manitoba border.

00:22:32.360 It's called Emo E-M-O.

00:22:34.580 It's a little town.

00:22:35.440 And they made the decision not to have a pride week and pride flags and pride crosswalks.

00:22:41.880 And the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal ruled that they have to and they'll be fined for choosing otherwise.

00:22:49.640 So basically, it's a case of compelled speech.

00:22:53.500 And you have I just feel like we are and that Human Rights Tribunal, it's a provincial body.

00:23:01.400 I think I've got the facts on that accurate.

00:23:04.440 I just think we need to roll back a lot of this.

00:23:07.060 And I don't see a really courageous stand in Canada by any party.

00:23:11.740 In some ways, I think we're going to be saved if we're saved by the United States.

00:23:16.240 Having a free speech absolutist like Elon Musk, so influential in the Trump cabinet, could have a knock on effect with us here.

00:23:26.200 I just get the feeling that if Trudeau tried to censor Twitter, Elon Musk would lash back and Trump might threaten a tariff.

00:23:33.940 Look, that's that's speculation.

00:23:35.660 You have a better sense of that than I do.

00:23:36.980 But definitely there is sort of a gravitational pull by having the U.S., I think, First Amendment right beside us.

00:23:43.840 And so the criticism of those officials might pull our officials their way.

00:23:52.820 Maybe. I don't know.

00:23:53.980 But certainly the U.S. obviously have more protections than we do.

00:23:56.840 Let me tell you a very quick story.

00:23:57.880 And I think I've mentioned this on the show before.

00:23:59.980 Way back when Stephen Harper was prime minister, I had been an activist for removing the hate speech provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act because I had been hit with that when I was a publisher.

00:24:10.760 I was hit under the Alberta version of that law.

00:24:13.260 So Harper, when he was PM, called me into his office.

00:24:17.260 He was worried that if he were to abolish the hate speech provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act, frankly, his worry was what would the Jewish community say?

00:24:25.700 Because it perversely, it was the Jewish community who had lobbied for that.

00:24:31.580 And I say it's perversely because now if you criticize radical Islam, you get hit with the hate speech charge.

00:24:38.420 So be careful of what you wish for in terms of censorship laws, because what you put in there today to get your enemies can be used against you in the future.

00:24:47.380 So I did my best to convince Prime Minister Harper that the only people who liked the censorship law were maybe some lawyers or some pundits, that regular members of the Jewish community were not into censorship.

00:25:02.800 And he sort of took a leap of faith, and the government supported that bill.

00:25:07.600 It was a private member's bill that the government got behind.

00:25:10.140 They repealed that section, and not a single person lamented its loss.

00:25:15.180 Like, there was no outrage by people saying, hey, bring back the censorship law.

00:25:19.520 It was just the grievance industry that lost one tool.

00:25:23.500 So I would hope that the conservatives show some cultural courage, like Stephen Harper did.

00:25:28.900 It was amazing to me that he was so nervous about it, but he did the right thing.

00:25:32.280 Hey, listen, I want to, while I've got you here, I want to talk to you about one other thing.

00:25:35.480 I appreciate you talking about C-63.

00:25:37.540 And to be honest, we don't have a lot to go on.

00:25:39.860 It was just that sort of blurting out there by a refrain.

00:25:42.860 But I want to talk to you about the case of the Amish.

00:25:46.720 We've done some stories about the Amish community that got hit with those huge fines because they didn't download the ArriveCat app on their smartphone.

00:25:55.220 These are people who do not use modern technology, so that was an impossible feat for them to accomplish.

00:26:01.080 How are those cases going?

00:26:02.260 I know TDF has taken a bunch of them.

00:26:04.580 Right.

00:26:04.820 So we have some good news and bad news.

00:26:06.500 So the good news is we've had some success in getting some of the tickets reopened.

00:26:11.360 Some of those tickets have liens pertaining to them.

00:26:14.780 But we just found out, I think, last week that the Welland Court denied a reopening application for four Amish individuals.

00:26:23.140 There are liens involved in pertaining to some of those tickets.

00:26:26.480 The reasons given varied, but it seemed to be the age of the tickets that were a problem for the court and that the Amish, the court suggested, had to take steps to apprise themselves of various court dates.

00:26:46.720 Now, we have some problems with that interpretation.

00:26:50.000 We think there are grounds to appeal that denial.

00:26:53.220 And so subject to instructions from our clients, we're going to look hard at that.

00:26:58.680 Yeah.

00:26:58.880 I mean, the Amish are a very special case.

00:27:01.300 They don't use email.

00:27:02.260 They don't use faxes.

00:27:03.100 They don't use phones other than in real emergencies.

00:27:05.740 They honestly didn't know what was going on.

00:27:07.980 When I met with the sort of head of the steering committee out there, he told me he thought that this had something to do with masks.

00:27:14.720 Like, it was so alien.

00:27:15.820 When you say to them, download the Arrive Can app, you might as well be speaking Chinese. 0.64

00:27:23.440 Because they do not, they genuinely do not know what those words mean.

00:27:28.740 And, you know, the law protects other people who are sort of childlike. 0.69

00:27:35.380 They call it capacity.

00:27:37.480 Children, obviously, themselves, but other people who may not be in a certain state.

00:27:41.460 And I'm not saying that Amish people are mentally limited.

00:27:44.840 I'm just saying culturally, they do not engage with smartphone apps.

00:27:49.380 And I don't know what kind of notice of a trial they received, but I think that the law, if you want to prosecute the Amish very, very bravely picking on the Amish, you should have to go the extra amount to make sure the Amish know what's happening. 1.00

00:28:06.120 Because I don't think they did.

00:28:08.020 And I think it's sort of gross that a justice of the peace wouldn't reopen some of these cases.

00:28:12.300 I hope you do appeal.

00:28:14.440 But you've had some success with others, right?

00:28:16.920 Yes, we have.

00:28:17.420 So we've actually, we've reviewed disclosure in some of our reopened tickets.

00:28:23.520 We are reaching out to the Crown.

00:28:26.580 I can't comment on the state of those conversations, but we hope that we will be able to either proceed to trial.

00:28:33.740 Well, we can't proceed to trial, but until then, we hope that we can have some productive conversation with the Crown.

00:28:39.920 So that's where we are in those batch.

00:28:42.080 But this last batch of tickets were denied, and that's causing us some consternation.

00:28:49.300 Yeah, you know, this really is a dictionary definition of bullying.

00:28:53.880 And these folks can't help them, you know what, because these folks can't or won't fight for themselves.

00:29:00.180 They're pacifists.

00:29:01.300 They will literally turn the other cheek.

00:29:03.560 They take that passage of the Bible so literally.

00:29:06.020 They submit to authority, and it would be like someone being punched and just not punching back.

00:29:13.720 And then they're punched again, and they're punched, and they will not punch back.

00:29:17.560 And I'm using a physical metaphor, but that's sort of what happened to them a hundred times with these Arrive Can fines.

00:29:24.620 And I just – it's such a bullying moment, and it's just a grave injustice, and I'm so glad the Democracy Fund is doing it.

00:29:32.880 Folks, you know we've done some stories on this.

00:29:36.600 I just want to tell you, if you want the latest, on the Rebel News side, we've set up a website called AmishReports.com.

00:29:45.460 I've been going out there.

00:29:46.480 David Menzies has been going out there.

00:29:48.120 We've been trying to report everything that moves on this.

00:29:50.520 And if you want to actually help the Amish themselves, there's a website called HelpTheAmish.com, which tells you what it's about.

00:29:59.880 And that money goes to the Democracy Fund.

00:30:02.860 You'll actually get a charitable tax receipt for it because there's a lot of clients.

00:30:08.060 Are you allowed to say how many clients you have, how many Amish have signed up for help?

00:30:12.440 Yeah, I think it's approaching 30, but new clients come in.

00:30:16.240 And then there's surrounding Amish communities as well that we anticipate reaching out to, and we suspect that there are more tickets.

00:30:24.200 So we just don't know how far this goes.

00:30:26.320 The government said they only handed out a few.

00:30:28.220 I tend to not believe that.

00:30:30.260 I don't know how extensive their records are, but people – more Amish clients keep coming in as we go along.

00:30:35.700 You know, and you've just got to imagine how hard that is because in the age of social media, a tweet can go viral, and a lot of people can see it, and they can all connect together.

00:30:46.220 But what if you're not on Twitter?

00:30:48.760 What if you're not on the phone?

00:30:49.920 What if you're not on email?

00:30:51.800 Word spreads slowly.

00:30:54.280 Mouth the ear, or handwritten letters, or every Sunday when they get together at church.

00:31:02.760 So it takes a while – and, of course, to contact us, there's a friendly neighbor named Grant who is not Amish, and he helps set things up.

00:31:13.820 It's very difficult logistically to do journalism about the Amish or to do lawyering for the Amish because they're just not built for the modern world. 0.97

00:31:23.040 And I really think that it's an important project because these folks have slipped through the cracks, and it drives me nuts that the government of Ontario – I think it's the government of Ontario or would it be the federal government?

00:31:38.360 I think it's the provincial government that's handling these tickets.

00:31:41.140 It's still digging in.

00:31:44.000 It bugs me that not a single bureaucrat or lawyer over the years said, guys, is this the right thing to do to prosecute the Amish because they didn't download an app on their phone? 0.96

00:31:55.640 Like, not a single person had enough humanity to say, you know, let's use some discretion here.

00:32:01.760 We can bend the rules because this is – like, no.

00:32:05.360 They just went full punitive.

00:32:07.980 That's a bully mentality, and that makes me furious.

00:32:13.480 And I have to be extra furious because the Amish themselves will not get furious. 1.00

00:32:19.180 They just – it's just their way not to get furious.

00:32:23.140 Do you get furious on these ones, or maybe that's not your way.

00:32:26.980 Maybe you just get, well, I'm just going to hunker down and do the lawyering.

00:32:30.100 Well, you try and stay objective about this.

00:32:33.420 That focuses you on the defenses that you can present.

00:32:38.300 But I will say, I mean, we've been – TDF has been doing this for several years now.

00:32:43.220 And so we see how much of a mess Arrive Can was.

00:32:46.900 So a lot of elderly people had a problem with Arrive Can.

00:32:50.560 Marginalized communities have a problem with Arrive Can.

00:32:53.200 And now, of course, the Amish have problems with Arrive Can.

00:32:56.020 So it was a mess from the beginning.

00:32:58.520 And, of course, they're a non-conflictual community.

00:33:02.360 They manifest their biblical principles in the way they live.

00:33:06.980 So that makes it doubly hard for them to fight this.

00:33:10.500 But, as you say, TDF is going to take on that fight.

00:33:12.980 You know that old saying, it's like taking candy from a baby.

00:33:17.220 That's how it feels.

00:33:18.400 Like these brave prosecutors, these brave border cops ticketing and prosecuting the Amish. 0.98

00:33:26.300 They must have thought, well, we're going to rack up some wins.

00:33:29.540 No, the reason we say the phrase taking candy from a baby is because the baby can't fight back.

00:33:35.600 And I'm not saying the Amish are babies.

00:33:37.460 But in the world of the law and the courts, they are like – in a way, they're like children.

00:33:46.080 And it makes me furious that they were abused this way.

00:33:48.780 Well, listen, Mark, I wish you good luck.

00:33:50.620 Again, those two websites, to find all our reports on the subject, go to AmishReports.com.

00:33:55.140 And if you want to actually help the fight back in courts, go to HelpTheAmish.com.

00:34:00.760 This is one of those cases where if we don't help them, no one will.

00:34:05.620 And the fact that they suffered in silence for so long just makes me extra mad.

00:34:09.960 Well, that's our show for today.

00:34:10.860 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,

00:34:16.100 good night and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - December 05, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau blinks, postpones censorship provisions of C-63 — what happens next？

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