Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ True North's Candice Malcolm on Trudeau's quest to censor independent journalists

00:00:00.000 You're fighting for freedom! 0.98

00:00:03.040 Shame on you, you censorious bug! 0.86

00:00:14.680 I've said before, and people thought I was being clever or cute, I was neither.

00:00:19.280 I've said before that soon there will only be two kinds of journalists left in Canada.

00:00:24.140 Those who are approved by, funded by, licensed by the government, and those that are banned by the government.

00:00:34.760 That sounded shocking when I first said it, but now it's hurtling towards reality.

00:00:40.120 Joining me to talk about this, about Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act,

00:00:46.260 and other ways that the government of Canada is throttling freedom of speech and a diversity of opinion,

00:00:51.220 is our friend Candice Malcolm, the founder of True North News.

00:00:55.960 Great to see you, Candice. Thanks for taking the time.

00:00:59.120 Oh, I always enjoy our conversations, Ezra. Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:02.200 Well, it's a pleasure having you on the show, and I have to tell you how grateful I am for True North to be here.

00:01:08.740 I remember when Rebel News started up nine years ago, it felt very lonely.

00:01:12.520 And with the advent of True North a few years after that, and the counter signal, and the new Western Standard,

00:01:20.760 I feel like there's a growing community of independent journalists, citizen journalists.

00:01:26.020 We're all small compared to the mighty legacy media, but I feel like there's a critical mass now, don't you think?

00:01:32.160 Well, Ezra, you deserve so much credit. You really paved the way, because back in the Sun News days,

00:01:38.160 I mean, you and I both worked together at Sun News Network.

00:01:40.600 You were a host, and I was a lowly researcher, but still, you know, we had this opportunity to have this big mainstream platform.

00:01:47.740 It didn't work out, and you landed on your feet, and you created something.

00:01:51.540 You had a vision for, you know, what YouTube was going to be, how the future of news was going to be,

00:01:57.540 which is really just a bunch of, like you say, citizen journalists getting out on the street with a microphone,

00:02:03.520 recording the news, reporting the news, using social media to disseminate that news, right?

00:02:08.260 You don't need the traditional channels and the traditional platforms like the CBC and the Globe and Mail anymore.

00:02:13.420 You can reach a heck of a lot more Canadians.

00:02:14.940 Just, you know, with your iPhone, chasing after a journalist or recording something that you're seeing on the streets in front of you.

00:02:22.820 And I think that, you know, with the rebel, you know, True North and these other organizations have really just been following in your path.

00:02:29.280 So I thank you for that and for the vision that you had for the future.

00:02:33.620 And I do think you're right that we are, we pose a huge threat to the liberal establishment, not just the prime minister.

00:02:40.300 We know that we pose a huge threat to him because he doesn't let us anywhere near him.

00:02:43.560 He was in Calgary last week and he wouldn't let independent reporters even scrum him on the way to the car.

00:02:50.300 Like, like they wouldn't even allow them to be in the parking lot waiting for him to leave an event,

00:02:54.040 let alone go to the press conference where they let all kinds of other left-wing activists and student newspaper reporters in. 0.95

00:03:00.840 But they wouldn't let even, you know, Rachel Emanuel, who's a reporter here at True North,

00:03:04.880 who went to a prestigious Canadian journalism scroll over at Carlson.

00:03:08.900 She interned at the Globe and Mail, for goodness sake.

00:03:11.200 But as soon as she steps into the independent world, they are afraid of her.

00:03:15.800 They don't want even a question from her, Ezra.

00:03:17.720 So they send their police thugs after her in the same way that they did to your David Menzies.

00:03:23.480 I think Canadians see through it.

00:03:24.780 Obviously, it's like, what do you have to hide?

00:03:26.780 What are you afraid of a journalist with a microphone?

00:03:29.700 I think it reflects really badly on the political class.

00:03:32.540 And also fellow establishment journalists, or I should say fellow journalists who are part of the establishment,

00:03:38.180 who never defend us, who, you know, they don't really believe in freedom of the press.

00:03:43.440 They believe in their own stature and their own protections.

00:03:47.460 And, you know, they know where their bread is buttered because they know that the Trudeau government is the reason

00:03:52.100 that many of these legacy jobs still exist.

00:03:54.460 So a long way of saying, you know, independent news, we really have our work cut out for us.

00:03:59.200 But I think that we're doing a good job in exposing the corruption that's happening in both media and government in this country.

00:04:05.640 First of all, thanks for your kind words about Rebel News.

00:04:07.640 But you're so right.

00:04:08.460 I think that so much of the Online Harms Act, which is the new censorship bill, C-63,

00:04:15.060 I just really feel like it's targeting independent journalists.

00:04:18.480 I think the liberals are trying to misdirect by saying, oh, no, it's actually about protecting kids from child pornography and stopping revenge porn.

00:04:26.860 But all those things are already in law, like Stephen Harper banned revenge porn, put it in the criminal code in 2014.

00:04:33.480 There's a five-year prison term for it.

00:04:36.340 I think that the liberals are trying to focus on those things that they're sort of reannouncing

00:04:41.360 to distract from what I think really is an attempt to squash critical voices.

00:04:47.720 Let me play a quick clip that you referred to when your reporter, Rachel Emanuel, and Kian Bextie, who's with the Counter Signal.

00:04:55.320 He's our alumnus, and he's got that scrappy style.

00:04:58.400 I just want to show our viewers two clips.

00:05:01.100 This is crazy.

00:05:02.320 Neither are a threat.

00:05:03.400 Everyone, I mean, you can see Kian Bextie.

00:05:05.600 You can see Rachel Emanuel.

00:05:06.740 Obviously, they're not physical threats.

00:05:09.040 Obviously, they're reporters.

00:05:11.240 And yet police are manhandling them, blocking them.

00:05:15.020 There is no good-faith person in the world who would say they are a threat.

00:05:20.080 They are here to assassinate.

00:05:22.080 It's pure censorship.

00:05:24.220 Take a look at this.

00:05:25.180 This is what Candace was talking about.

00:05:26.740 This is what the police do in Canada when you come here to ask Justin Trudeau questions.

00:05:31.200 No, don't get out of the frame.

00:05:32.120 You're following me.

00:05:32.720 You can stay in my camera frame.

00:05:34.040 Don't touch me.

00:05:34.740 Do not touch me.

00:05:35.520 Do not touch me.

00:05:36.260 Do not touch me.

00:05:38.600 Do not touch me.

00:05:39.580 Do not touch me.

00:05:42.260 Thank you.

00:05:43.260 We're here to ask Justin Trudeau some pretty basic questions, namely on the carbon tax.

00:05:46.640 As you might know, the avid viewer of the Counter Signal, seven premiers announced yesterday

00:05:52.880 that they are opposed to Justin Trudeau's hike of the carbon tax.

00:05:56.380 That includes local premier Danielle Smith.

00:05:59.200 This is really strange behavior of the police, as you see, they're following me here.

00:06:03.580 Seven premiers have said that they oppose Justin Trudeau's hike of the carbon tax on April 1st.

00:06:18.960 And we're here to ask him if he really thinks that that's a good idea.

00:06:21.960 Really basic questions.

00:06:23.380 We're not going to hurt the prime minister.

00:06:24.900 These people here are obviously afraid of something.

00:06:27.860 It's not the prime minister's safety.

00:06:29.320 It's his questions, questions that get thrown at him that are not approved.

00:06:32.800 That's what they're afraid of.

00:06:33.900 So we're going to be here waiting to ask questions that Canadians want to hear answers to.

00:06:38.120 You know, that is a milder version of when they actually roughed up David Menzies.

00:06:43.080 Thank God they didn't handcuff or smash your people.

00:06:47.060 But I think that your second point was actually the strongest, which is where the heck is the rest of the media?

00:06:53.900 There were other journalists who were let in, and not one of them had—I'm not even talking about solidarity.

00:06:59.660 I'm not looking for solidarity from the CBC or CTV.

00:07:02.700 I'm talking about defense of freedom of speech.

00:07:05.360 Why wouldn't they say, you know, I don't like that Key and Bexley.

00:07:07.660 I don't like that Rachel Emanuel.

00:07:09.520 But why are police blocking questions?

00:07:13.160 Not a single journalistic group has spoken out about Key and Bexley, Rachel Emanuel, or our own David Menzies.

00:07:19.460 He's not one, Candace.

00:07:22.820 It's just—it's so sad.

00:07:24.440 You know, it's interesting, Ezra, because with the new Conservative leader, Pierre Polyev, and his style, which is really to call out lying media.

00:07:31.820 Like, if a media member or journalist is asking him a question that's completely leading, completely biased, he's very good at just stopping them and pointing that out.

00:07:39.280 Right. And you see the legacy media up in arms and, like, you know, Pierre Polyev is a bully.

00:07:44.640 How dare he speak to a Canadian press reporter this way?

00:07:47.840 Like, Canadians are seeing his true colors.

00:07:49.300 It's like, guys, have you been to a press conference with the prime minister?

00:07:53.040 It's like, he actually has some physically roughshodding young reporters.

00:07:57.540 I mean, Rachel Emanuel, you know, she made a funny point.

00:08:00.160 She's like, I'm basically like a stay-at-home mom with a podcast, and I just want to ask the prime minister a question.

00:08:06.340 And I'm getting, like, threats from police officers and getting blocked from being close to my prime minister.

00:08:11.500 Like, that's a problem, right?

00:08:13.340 That shows Justin Trudeau's mindset and how he believes that he can fix problems by just basically being a bully and being tyrannical, frankly.

00:08:21.660 And, again, it's just such a bad look on both sides, both parts.

00:08:26.680 It's unfortunate for us because I would have loved for Kian or Rachel or David Menzies in other scenarios to have their questions answered.

00:08:33.140 They're good questions.

00:08:33.940 They're important questions that the media is also missing.

00:08:36.880 But you're right.

00:08:37.580 The bigger story is really just the treatment of the prime minister and then total radio silence from the journalists who, you know, care so much about freedom of the press,

00:08:45.900 except for when it happens to be from their rivals and from competitors in independent media.

00:08:50.620 You know, when I was at Sun News, I remember there was a wonderful time.

00:08:55.580 It was a wonderful initiative by Pierre-Carl Pelletot, which is even stranger.

00:08:59.880 He's a Quebec separatist.

00:09:01.620 He actually went on to become briefly the leader of the Parti Québécois.

00:09:05.100 For him to financially sponsor a pro-freedom, frankly, pro-Western Canadian network was such a wonderful anomaly.

00:09:13.860 It was a wonderful time.

00:09:14.880 And I coined a phrase there called the media party, which in a sense it was to describe how the media was in league with the Liberal Party.

00:09:25.020 But I actually meant in a bit of a different way that it was a party until itself.

00:09:28.440 It had sort of a party discipline.

00:09:31.660 It had like a party platform.

00:09:33.280 It defended itself.

00:09:34.440 It was a perpetuating machine that tried, that had campaigns.

00:09:39.020 The only thing is you couldn't vote it out.

00:09:40.500 That's what I meant by media party.

00:09:41.860 But I think the chief thing about it was the feeling of identity.

00:09:46.340 It's an in-group.

00:09:47.980 If you're part of the media party, even if you're a lowly intern at the CBC, you're part of the team.

00:09:54.060 And these independent journalists, this True North, this Counter Signal, this Western Standard, this Rebel News, they're an out-group.

00:10:01.820 They're in a different party.

00:10:03.560 They're the wild barbarians. 0.96

00:10:05.620 We are in it together on the inside, and we don't even have to be told to synchronize, like birds joining formation in a flock.

00:10:14.600 You know, it's amazing how birds fly in a V-shape.

00:10:17.460 I don't know how they do it.

00:10:18.380 They just do it.

00:10:19.420 I think journalists on the in-group are that same way.

00:10:22.440 And so I think they naturally feel a cohesion with Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May.

00:10:30.400 And they see Rachel Emanuel Key and Brexty, Rebel News, et cetera, as threats.

00:10:35.880 And so they would never speak out in defense of your reporters or mine.

00:10:41.120 Like, it's just, it's so clubby.

00:10:43.000 It really reminds me of high school.

00:10:44.840 I don't think in my entire life I've felt such a peer pressure-y thing other than the media party.

00:10:51.000 I don't know.

00:10:51.360 Maybe I'm overstating that, but I really think it's a social club.

00:10:54.960 It's a status thing.

00:10:56.740 It's an in-group, out-group thing.

00:10:59.280 It's really petty, but they're not defending our freedom of speech because they prefer to defend their club.

00:11:05.300 What do you think of that?

00:11:06.820 Well, I think you're right.

00:11:07.500 And that's the only reason I mentioned that Rachel Emanuel, you know, she went to a fancy journalism school and she interned at the Globe and Mail. 0.99

00:11:13.920 She worked at iPolitics before she came over to the dark side of independent media.

00:11:18.300 So it's like how quickly you can turn on your own.

00:11:20.940 You're right, Ezra.

00:11:22.120 It's kind of like she crossed the floor.

00:11:23.680 She went from one party to the other, although I don't think we're quite the same kind of a chummy club on the independent side.

00:11:30.800 But, you know, the broader point really is that there's a bunch of cultural elites that sit in Ottawa that think they're better than everyone else in the country.

00:11:38.340 They don't really care about the concerns of everyday Canadians.

00:11:40.900 They're more worried about spinning on behalf of Justin Trudeau.

00:11:43.760 There was an article in the CBC last week by Aaron Weary talking about how the real problem with the carbon tax was a communications issue.

00:11:50.320 They just weren't explaining it right, Ezra.

00:11:52.300 It has nothing to do with the, you know, huge cost of living increases, the affordability crisis, the fact that folks can't afford to fill up their gas tank.

00:11:59.560 That's not the problem with the carbon tax.

00:12:01.160 It's just a matter of, like, tweaking the language here and there.

00:12:04.700 And, again, really, the purpose of the legacy media is to defend the Liberal Party.

00:12:09.340 They need the Liberal Party in order to survive.

00:12:11.220 They need those cash bailouts. 0.97

00:12:12.600 They need government funding.

00:12:13.760 And they don't care about the concerns of everyday Canadians, which is why there's such a huge opportunity for us, you know, True North saw our audience double or triple during COVID because we wanted to tell the stories of the people who were getting fired for not getting vaccinated.

00:12:25.280 We wanted to tell the stories of people who perhaps had injuries because of policies that were forced upon them by the federal government.

00:12:32.200 We just wanted to tell different stories.

00:12:33.760 And it seemed very clear at that point that the legacy media was so disinterested in telling any stories other than the pre-approved narrative from the PMO.

00:12:42.120 It was really, you know, the thing that had been living under the surface for probably two decades in Canada was just out in the open, unapologetic about it.

00:12:51.620 These people do not care about Canadians.

00:12:53.340 They care about pushing a message, pushing an agenda.

00:12:55.460 And again, just creates a huge opportunity for us at True North, folks like you at the Rebel.

00:13:00.640 And, you know, it makes it fun, too, because we really have our work cut out for us.

00:13:04.420 But there's so many opportunities to tell great stories in this country.

00:13:06.840 One of the most surprising things I heard when I was watching the CBC president, Catherine Tate, answering questions in committee, I suppose I knew it, but it was just sort of shocking to hear it again, that since Catherine Tate was appointed the CEO there, their viewership has fallen in half.

00:13:25.680 I mean, I knew it was dwindling.

00:13:27.200 It's a little bit difficult to get precise numbers because the agencies that measure those things don't publish them regularly like they used to do.

00:13:37.500 But Canada's population has never been bigger.

00:13:40.020 It's over 40 million now.

00:13:42.180 So there's more eyeballs than ever.

00:13:43.760 People are more glued to their screens than ever, like everyone's addicted.

00:13:48.040 And in that environment, to lose half your viewership, I think that's people voting with their clickers, voting with their eyes.

00:13:57.320 I mean, just no one cares anymore.

00:13:59.960 When I was young, it wasn't rare to have a million people watching CBC's The National.

00:14:08.040 And even if you disagreed with it, you wanted to watch it because you wanted to know what everyone else was saying.

00:14:12.580 Now that there's a lot of choice out there, people are untrapped.

00:14:16.980 They're not forced to watch the government broadcaster, and very few choose to do it.

00:14:23.580 You're right.

00:14:24.320 And I think that's why Trudeau government is stepping in with all these different various censorship bans and banning outlets on social media and trying to ban, you know, weaponized words that they don't like and ill-defined ideas like hate speech.

00:14:37.420 It's like they're trying to get that glory days back.

00:14:41.460 It's interesting because I was covering a Radio Canada documentary that came out a couple weeks ago called Trans Express.

00:14:48.060 And it was interesting.

00:14:49.160 The French CBC dared to do something the CBC would never do, which is tell a countercultural story about how many of the people who are rushed into transitions as adolescents live to regret it.

00:14:59.320 So they followed four young women who had made this decision.

00:15:02.380 Three of the four regretted and are now working to get their lives back.

00:15:06.340 But anyway, Radio Canada still does have a bit of a presence.

00:15:10.300 The journalists who put that together went on a radio talk show or a television talk show, sorry, called La Toute de Monde en Parle, which Quebecers actually watch.

00:15:18.180 Like there's still a critical mass of people in Quebec that are watching these stations that will have an impact on the culture.

00:15:24.160 And I was trying to think if there was anything equivalent in Canada.

00:15:27.680 And it's like, you know, there's just so much diversity online.

00:15:31.120 There's so many different places where you can get your news from.

00:15:33.500 I think that Canadians of your generation and my generation might still be aware that the CBC has a show called The National.

00:15:38.920 I don't think anyone under 30 or under 25 is even aware that that exists or that that's an option.

00:15:44.200 They probably haven't had cable television in their house ever, perhaps.

00:15:47.960 And really, we're witnessing a changing landscape, which I think is a big reason why you have what Paulie have calls the gatekeepers, people like Justin Trudeau, people like Catherine Tate.

00:15:57.600 They're trying to tighten their reign and trying to maintain control, even though, you know, the ship that they're manning is sinking around them and there's nothing that they can do to stop these trends.

00:16:08.480 I sometimes think of a metaphor of a room with no windows and a hundred candles.

00:16:18.080 And if you snuff out one candle, so there's only nine to nine burning, it's really imperceptible, the difference.

00:16:25.960 If you snuff out 50 of a hundred candles, it's darker.

00:16:28.960 It's still bright, but you'll notice a difference.

00:16:32.400 Snuff out another 25. 0.86

00:16:33.800 Now, only 25 are left, and the room is significantly darker, but you can still see.

00:16:41.140 You're down to 10 candles now.

00:16:43.400 The room is dark.

00:16:44.860 And think about it.

00:16:45.860 Every candle you snuff out now makes a measurable difference.

00:16:50.360 It's darker.

00:16:51.440 And you're down to two candles left in the room.

00:16:54.180 And you snuff out one of them.

00:16:56.920 You've just cut out half the light that's left.

00:17:00.400 And there's one candle left flickering in the dark room.

00:17:04.740 And if you take out that candle, it's a greater change than any other change before because you go from one to zero.

00:17:12.360 Just one single candle is enough to put some light in the room.

00:17:17.220 And the reason I think about that metaphor in my mind is that there used to be a lot of independent journalists, including at some legacy media outlets.

00:17:27.720 And you can still find a few at the National Post and the Toronto Sun and even a few at the Globe and Mail.

00:17:31.860 I'm not saying they're all awful.

00:17:32.960 But as more and more of the media either turn out the lights themselves or are co-opted by taking government grants, the handful of candles that are flickering for freedom, and we've talked about the four, the, you know, Counter Signal, Rebel News, True North, Western Standard.

00:17:54.140 Justin Trudeau does not like – I think he's very thin-skinned.

00:17:58.400 I think he's very emotional when he's criticized.

00:18:00.700 He hates it.

00:18:01.320 He's used to people obeying him his entire life.

00:18:03.960 He grew up a charmed life, a silver spoon in his mouth, famous last name, famous dad.

00:18:10.680 He's handsome so he could sweet-talk his way through things.

00:18:13.400 I think his entire life he's used to people doing what he says and getting away with things.

00:18:19.740 And so those odd people that defy him, he rages against them.

00:18:23.860 And it's a very long interjection, forgive me.

00:18:27.240 But he's snuffed out most of the lights now, Candace.

00:18:31.840 There's just a few flickering candles left.

00:18:35.340 But he knows what you and I know, which is those last candles make more of a difference than the first few that went out.

00:18:42.040 The difference between one and zero is the greatest difference of all.

00:18:46.060 And so he controls most of the media through funding.

00:18:50.580 He controls the CBC, which is larger than the rest of the media combined, directly.

00:18:55.260 And yet he can't stop the criticism.

00:18:59.280 So he rages at the few who are independent.

00:19:01.920 You, me, social media.

00:19:03.640 That's why C63 was introduced in my estimation.

00:19:08.720 Because although he controlled so much, he doesn't control that last 1%.

00:19:12.640 Go ahead.

00:19:13.280 Sorry for I was talking for so long.

00:19:15.240 Yeah, no.

00:19:15.760 Well, it's a really interesting metaphor that you raised.

00:19:17.940 I hadn't thought of it that way.

00:19:19.160 I think that that room that you mentioned, the room with no lights and just candles, if that's the world of legacy media, then good.

00:19:26.920 Let's shut off the candles and let's move on to a different room, because I think that this may be the last election, whenever it does come, between Pierre Polyev and Dustin Trudeau, that the legacy media even has an impact, that it even sways the needle one way or another.

00:19:41.200 Ezra, you and I have lived through many elections where the media has dominated the outcome, and that the winner of the election is solely because of the media coverage.

00:19:49.680 Or if not, it's a lack of media, no lack of trying on behalf of the media to paint, for instance, Stephen Harper as an absolute monster who's going to Americanize the country or whatever they were accusing him of doing back then.

00:20:04.640 I think that the only reason that the legacy media has an ounce of relativeness in our society is because of all these bailouts, because of all the money that Trudeau has given them.

00:20:15.600 And hopefully, if Pierre Polyev is elected, he'll do away with that, and we'll see a reshaping of the landscape.

00:20:22.340 More players like us will have more opportunities to get in and shape the landscape.

00:20:27.280 You'll have independent journalists on both sides of the political aisle, and you won't have this sort of stale, very rehearsed teleprompter reading,

00:20:37.380 news stations that are totally out of touch and not covering things that are even the slightest bit relevant.

00:20:43.700 And I think your analysis on Justin Trudeau is really true.

00:20:47.360 I was reading a book the other day, The Psychology of Money, and he talks about a story of this sort of wealthy guy who had kids and was worried that his kids were going to grow up spoiled.

00:20:56.300 And so he asked, like, the groundskeeping staff at his property to go play sports with his son, like, go play soccer.

00:21:02.600 And then he watched later, and he was horrified because his, like, seven-year-old son was, like, winning, and he was dominating, and he was scoring on all these housekeepers.

00:21:11.260 And the dad was horrified because he was like, you know, none of the staff wanted to stop the privileged golden boy from playing soccer.

00:21:20.720 So this kid, you know, grows up thinking that he's an amazing soccer player because he's playing against adults and he's winning.

00:21:26.640 I kind of thought of Justin Trudeau when you talked about his growing up and how he's been surrounded by people who adore him,

00:21:34.060 and he's been part of this sort of tradition of liberal royalty in Canada and how distorted his self-perception is.

00:21:41.700 But look, I mean, he must look at the polls.

00:21:44.140 He knows how unpopular he is and how hated and despised he is.

00:21:48.020 He must know.

00:21:48.660 I mean, they can't keep it from him.

00:21:50.360 So I think you're right.

00:21:51.200 He's lashing out because this is the first time where he can't control his environment, and people actually don't like him.

00:21:57.520 They don't like his personality.

00:21:58.560 They don't like his policies.

00:21:59.460 They don't like his ideas.

00:22:00.300 They don't like the way he talks.

00:22:01.220 They don't like the way he looks.

00:22:02.440 He's not a popular prime minister at all.

00:22:04.300 That'll be his legacy, and there's nothing really he can do about it.

00:22:07.100 So you see someone, sadly, is just lashing out because it's all they have left, basically.

00:22:12.140 Yeah, it feels odd.

00:22:13.140 You know, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a journalist at a company that's getting a media bailout.

00:22:22.520 And my understanding is for newspapers, like the print newspapers, it works out to about $30,000 a year that the subsidy is at, and that's about to go up.

00:22:31.060 And every journalist knows that because it's not a secret, because 99% of media companies in Canada have signed up for these subsidies.

00:22:39.460 And even if it's just in the back of their mind, it is going to affect them, even subconsciously.

00:22:45.220 And it'll certainly affect what their publisher does.

00:22:48.060 Even if the local journalist feels sort of free, the big boss who has to get the millions a year from Trudeau to make his company work, it's absolutely on his mind.

00:22:57.660 And there is no way it could not alter the coverage of these companies.

00:23:02.680 And we know that from an advertising point of view.

00:23:04.720 We know the reason why we mark ads as ads and editorial as editorial is so that people can say, okay, this was paid for.

00:23:14.700 This here, this little box here was paid for.

00:23:17.580 And even then, companies can throw their weight around with the media.

00:23:20.460 But there's no disclosure on how the government has influenced the story or not, and we don't even know.

00:23:27.740 One of the things, as you know, and I think you guys are similar, you guys have a subscription model, and you also take donations.

00:23:33.380 I think I'm a monthly subscriber to you guys.

00:23:37.200 We get 78% of our money through crowdfunding, and the average gift to Rebel News is 58 bucks.

00:23:44.100 So there is no way – and by the way, of course, we don't tell our journalists who these donors are.

00:23:49.720 They don't know who gave 58 here or 100 there.

00:23:52.920 So it's my hope that it's impossible or extremely unlikely that our journalists would pull their punches for untoward reasons.

00:24:01.300 They – you know, we have an editorial philosophy that I want them to follow.

00:24:05.520 People have their own conscience, and we try and think of our viewers, but we try and keep out of it money questions.

00:24:12.740 And I think – that's why I think crowdfunding is actually the most ethical way to do journalism because it's diffuse help.

00:24:19.280 It's not one big oligarch.

00:24:21.120 I mentioned Sun News Network had one big oligarch, Pierre-Carl Pelletot, who dumped in tens of millions of dollars.

00:24:27.360 That was sort of awesome as long as you don't gore his ox and as long as he still loved the plaything.

00:24:35.280 But I think having a diffuse support means you're sort of immune to political pressure.

00:24:40.780 How is it for you?

00:24:41.580 You're the founder.

00:24:42.800 You started True North.

00:24:44.240 You guys have really grown.

00:24:45.540 I love to see it.

00:24:46.240 I love some of your stars, Andrew Lawton, one of my favorite guys.

00:24:50.140 And you're also recruiting young guys, Harrison Faulkner.

00:24:53.020 He's got a lot of pep in him.

00:24:54.820 We mentioned Rachel Emanuel.

00:24:56.020 I don't want to pry.

00:24:58.980 I would just like to give you an opportunity to talk about your experience as an independent journalism publisher, founder, entrepreneur, grower, because you're growing.

00:25:10.080 I mean, I've told my story to my viewers before a dozen times.

00:25:13.460 How are you guys doing?

00:25:14.780 You mentioned your success during the pandemic by being an alternative voice.

00:25:18.240 How are you guys doing now?

00:25:19.480 I mean, whatever you feel comfortable saying.

00:25:21.660 Oh, sure.

00:25:22.220 Yeah, I'm happy to talk, but I just want to go back to what you were talking about earlier first,

00:25:25.420 and then I'll get to the second question in a second.

00:25:27.160 You know, the idea that journalists and editors might be slightly influenced by Trudeau because he's giving the money.

00:25:32.700 I mean, the fact that we're even like that we even need to suggest that, like that's like basic journalism or investigations, like anything.

00:25:38.940 It's like follow the money, follow the money.

00:25:40.320 You want to find out why someone's doing something?

00:25:42.060 Follow the money.

00:25:42.400 Obviously, they're impacted by Trudeau.

00:25:44.860 They have to be because they know that that's where their bottom line comes from.

00:25:48.360 Like, it's not even just the bailouts.

00:25:50.080 They also rely on advertising from the government.

00:25:52.400 In some of these smaller publications, government ads take up like half of the ads.

00:25:56.420 And so it's like they can't criticize the government.

00:25:58.140 They can't be too critical.

00:25:59.140 They can't be too harsh.

00:26:00.280 They have to treat them with kid gloves because otherwise they won't get their money.

00:26:03.260 It's absolutely compromised.

00:26:04.880 The legacy media is state owned and they should they should own up to that.

00:26:09.420 They should have to in the same way as you said, you have to say this is an ad.

00:26:12.520 This is editorial.

00:26:13.720 I believe that all of these government all of these government funded newspapers, television stations, the CBC, it should all just say state funded or even more specific liberal party funded since the conservatives oppose it.

00:26:24.880 As far as the funding model, I agree.

00:26:27.080 You know, it's funny.

00:26:27.800 Sometimes people think it's kind of scandalous, you know, that True North accepts donations and that we receive money from tens of thousands.

00:26:35.640 We had over 10,000 unique donors last year in 2023.

00:26:40.040 So it's the exact same way.

00:26:41.660 Like we get small little donations from lots and lots of Canadians who like our journalism, who support our journalism.

00:26:48.160 You know, I think that that's the model that's going to be successful.

00:26:50.960 Like you can't deplatform us.

00:26:52.580 You can't you can't defund us because we are funded by so many different people that, you know, we're not beholden to anyone.

00:26:59.820 Sure.

00:27:00.020 We might put out a report that really bothers some of our donors and they may choose not to support us anymore.

00:27:06.140 They may choose to go support someone else.

00:27:07.540 And that's OK, because like we like you, we're following our conscience.

00:27:11.200 We're following our own editorial standards, our own philosophy of what we want Canada to look like.

00:27:16.460 And not everyone's going to agree with that.

00:27:18.160 That's fine.

00:27:18.680 That's why there's a huge ecosystem and there's room for lots and lots of different independent journalists and lots and lots of different media companies.

00:27:27.160 I think that what we've kind of stumbled upon is the future of journalism.

00:27:31.420 It's not going to be, you know, necessarily big corporate media that's beholden to one specific ideology or a government media, which is even worse.

00:27:39.820 But the idea that that people are interested in what's happening in their country, you know, we often hear about, oh, the the, you know, dying landscape of media and how it's so dangerous for democracy.

00:27:49.380 It's like, no, Canadians still really care about what's happening in their country, so much so that they're willing to reach into their own pockets and pay for it with their after-tax money to True North, to Grebel, to other independent outlets.

00:28:00.800 They just don't want to hear about it through the package that's being given to them, through the propaganda, through the spin, through the bias, the partisanship, you know, the authoritarian mindset.

00:28:11.500 Just all the bullying that happens to the legacy media, they're not interested in that anymore, so that might be dying.

00:28:18.320 But the idea that Canadians are no longer interested in what's happening in their country and the stories of fellow Canadians is not true.

00:28:24.380 And I think that we're living proof of that.

00:28:26.800 You're right.

00:28:27.380 And when the incumbents or the regime media or the legacy media, there's different ways to call them, when they lament the destruction of the industry, that's a solipsistic view.

00:28:39.200 They're the center of the world.

00:28:41.300 Hey, why aren't people reading my newspaper?

00:28:43.940 Why aren't people watching my – well, they're not not watching.

00:28:47.160 They're just watching other stuff, often from things that are shared on social networks.

00:28:52.700 That's why Bill C-63 was the inevitable – I mean, C-11 was a bill that gave Trudeau dominion over the Internet.

00:29:01.520 It was the gateway.

00:29:02.400 It was his standing.

00:29:05.080 Until C-11 was passed, Trudeau could regulate TV and radio stations, but the Internet was free.

00:29:11.640 C-11 put him in charge of the Internet.

00:29:14.000 It was terrifying.

00:29:15.460 C-18, the Online News Act, basically wrung out Google to bring another $100 million a year to purse out to journalist organizations,

00:29:26.400 the Trudeau's government licenses, the qualified Canadian journalism organizations.

00:29:32.080 We were rejected for our application.

00:29:34.380 So C-11 gave him dominion over the Internet.

00:29:37.000 C-18 gave $100 million to share with his favorite companies.

00:29:41.740 But C-63, that's the hammer. 0.64

00:29:44.500 By the way, look at that.

00:29:45.380 Three bills in a row.

00:29:46.620 Three bills in the course of a year.

00:29:48.320 He doesn't have three bills on the economy, three bills on inflation, three bills on housing.

00:29:52.480 He's obsessed with censorship.

00:29:54.020 It's what he cares about most.

00:29:55.180 This is the one that scares me, because there's new criminal law in here.

00:30:02.100 I don't think they're going to go after you or me with criminal law.

00:30:05.240 I don't think that either you or Rebel News does anything so insanely shocking that it would attract a criminal remedy.

00:30:13.080 But I think the poison pill or the secret weapon in C-63 is to allow anyone in the country, whether they're a citizen or not, by the way, 1.00

00:30:28.640 to file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal alleging that any social media post is likely to expose a person to detestation,

00:30:39.800 which is so vague, which is so vague, it's a feeling, it's an emotion, hate is a feeling, just like love is a feeling, an emotion.

00:30:47.880 And you can file this complaint for free, you can have your identity as a complaint kept secret, even from the person you're complaining about.

00:30:57.980 If you win your complaint, you get up to $20,000 from the target, plus they could have to pay $50,000 in fines.

00:31:07.700 And this is for every single incident, and the law specifically says it's for your historic work too if it's still online.

00:31:17.380 So my great fear is that every tweet, every Facebook post, every YouTube video, all of which are called social media,

00:31:27.560 could be the subject of a nuisance complaint, hundreds, thousands, literally every day.

00:31:34.580 It could be the same person complaining, it could be a professional activist funded by Trudeau who's complaining,

00:31:40.820 and most likely will be.

00:31:42.380 And even if theoretically you were to, quote, win a hundred of these, that's just taken up so much of your time and money and stress.

00:31:51.180 The process is the punishment.

00:31:52.760 I see C-63 as the rebel killer, as the true north killer, as the citizen journalist killer, because it doesn't even rely on a government prosecutor.

00:32:05.700 It basically deputizes every whiner, every woke person in the country who used to just grumble. 0.93

00:32:13.660 Now they've got a $20,000 incentive to file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal, and even if they lose, you know, skin off their news.

00:32:21.280 I think C-63 is the final chapter in this three-part play to come and kill independent journalism.

00:32:28.380 What do you think?

00:32:29.620 Well, you explained it a heck of a lot better than I could in those details.

00:32:33.280 It's truly terrifying, Ezra.

00:32:35.000 And I think that you're right.

00:32:36.800 If Justin Trudeau had his way, that is what they would do.

00:32:40.700 My only sliver of hope or silver lining, perhaps, is that I think that enough people at this point see through it.

00:32:46.980 You see civil liberties organizations on both sides.

00:32:49.700 You have the former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal come out and say that he thinks this is all deliberate and that really it's chilling.

00:32:57.600 I just don't think that they're going to be able to do it in the way that they want to.

00:33:01.140 I can't imagine that they're going to, you know, they're still in a minority situation.

00:33:04.320 They need support of the NDP.

00:33:06.240 I think that a lot of people have raised the opposite angle, which is that this can be gamed and manipulated by either side.

00:33:13.020 So you could very easily go against the Palestinian activists that we see making, you know, deranged, crazy genocidal statements online, and it could be weaponized against them.

00:33:22.660 I kind of hold out some hope that there's some sensible people who are going to stop this.

00:33:27.940 I'd love to hear your take, Ezra.

00:33:29.560 Do you think that this bill is going to actually pass and get implemented as it is currently being proposed and written?

00:33:37.180 You know, I respect your point of view, and I'm very glad to hear it, but I do disagree with you.

00:33:42.940 I note that Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau renewed their vows in their coalition right before this bill was introduced, and I don't know if that's a coincidence.

00:33:53.680 I think Jagmeet Singh and actually the Bloc Québécois have both stated their desire to renovate the Human Rights Act to have the hate speech provision.

00:34:02.540 You might recall Stephen Harper's government removed the hate speech provision a decade ago precisely because it was abused in this way.

00:34:12.500 So I'm afraid that – and I hear what you're saying.

00:34:16.220 You're saying, well, what happens if this is weaponized against the left?

00:34:20.020 I don't think it will be.

00:34:22.040 And even if it is, those will be dismissed because the people who operate the machinery of the censorship tribunals, they're woke activists too.

00:34:31.780 They say things like it's impossible to be racist against white males, for example.

00:34:38.000 So they would not accept – they would say in the Marxist dialect, they would say critical theory.

00:34:46.180 A Palestinian protester can never be wrong because they're the oppressed, and an oppressor can never be right.

00:34:55.180 So I just – I worry that you're using common sense that is absent in the human rights censorship industry.

00:35:04.060 I fear that Trudeau and the NDP and probably the Bloc will ram this through.

00:35:10.080 I fear that the Senate will approve it.

00:35:12.720 I fear that there might be a couple of holdouts there, but Trudeau has such a dominant majority.

00:35:17.660 I fear that this will become law.

00:35:21.080 I think that if it goes to law the way it is now – well, I'll tell you right now, Rebel News, I've already been talking with lawyers about as soon as it's legally possible, we intend to challenge it.

00:35:34.560 You can't challenge a law that's not on the books yet, and that hasn't been implemented yet.

00:35:39.160 But – so it may be a while before we can fight it.

00:35:43.540 But I really think this is an extinction-level event for independent journalists.

00:35:49.660 Why wouldn't hunter-killer groups like the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, which gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from Trudeau specifically to hunt and complain about conservatives,

00:36:00.520 why wouldn't they just say, oh, okay, good, let's file 10 complaints a day all year, that's 3,500 complaints a year, even if only 1% of them get through, that's 35 direct hits, that's $70,000 or $700,000 in damages against Rebel News or True North,

00:36:23.520 and we've burned up 1,000 hours of their time.

00:36:25.860 Like this is – if they do it – and why wouldn't they do it?

00:36:29.040 Why are they doing it in the first place?

00:36:30.520 They're not doing it because there's public demand for censorship.

00:36:33.700 They're not doing it because Canada is a typhoon of right-wing hate.

00:36:38.960 There's hate in Canada.

00:36:39.900 It's the Gaza hate marches.

00:36:41.780 But Trudeau's fine with that.

00:36:43.500 They are doing this to snuff out the last three candles in the room, Candace.

00:36:47.380 That's my view.

00:36:48.180 Well, I'll hopefully not be so pessimistic.

00:36:52.400 I can see what you're happening, and I can see that dystopian sort of end of free speech, end of media, end of Canada discussion there,

00:37:00.460 because I think you're right that this bill has the potential to do that.

00:37:03.560 But I'm just going to hold out hope that enough people will raise their very valid concerns,

00:37:08.180 that the reasonable people in the room, in the Liberal Party, in the media, you know, the few of them that are left,

00:37:14.040 are going to speak out loud enough and hopefully stop this.

00:37:17.800 And, you know, again, worst-case scenario, hopefully we're going to have an election soon, within the next year or year and a half.

00:37:23.340 And I would imagine that this would be one of the first things that an opposition government,

00:37:28.380 a conservative government opposition party would vow to eliminate.

00:37:32.400 So I hope it doesn't get to the points that you're pointing out.

00:37:37.060 I do think that that is possible.

00:37:38.520 It's probably exactly what Trudeau had in mind when he was drafting this piece of legislation.

00:37:43.020 They were so sneaky about it, right?

00:37:44.220 They came out and they basically only talked about protecting kids, how, like, the entire point was to protect kids.

00:37:49.540 All the people at the press conference, when the Justice Minister announced the bill,

00:37:52.660 were all just talking about these kids that had been exploited, sexploited online, and how terrible it was.

00:37:58.040 And I think most Canadians can agree with that.

00:38:00.120 Like, little kids shouldn't be viewing porn and accessing porn online.

00:38:03.460 And, you know, there's all kinds of things that are needed.

00:38:06.080 It's kind of laughable that we're supposed to believe that the Liberal Party are the ones that care about kids and protecting kids.

00:38:11.180 Well, out of the other side of their mouth, they're also promoting, you know, transing, mutilating, self-sterilizing procedures against little kids. 1.00

00:38:21.860 You have Paul Bernardo, who is a rapist and a murderer of young women and girls. 0.82

00:38:27.460 And he's, you know, in a medium-security prison playing ice hockey and playing tennis, you know, under the Liberal regime. 0.94

00:38:34.020 And we're supposed to think that they are the ones that care about kids.

00:38:36.920 This is obviously a Trojan horse.

00:38:38.280 They're trying to, like you say, really put a damper on free speech.

00:38:43.980 You know, the whole concept of hate speech is so murky.

00:38:45.880 I think there's so many problematic elements.

00:38:48.180 But, again, I'll try to just remain optimistic that a country like Canada won't let it happen and that there's enough safe gaps in place that we will stop this or we will overturn it very quickly after it gets implemented, I hope.

00:39:02.480 Well, I hope you're right.

00:39:03.800 And, of course, I do believe that if Pierre Paliyev were to become prime minister, this law would be repealed if it were passed.

00:39:10.580 I've seen – I've had high hopes before and they're often dashed.

00:39:16.480 I find it psychologically easier to be a pessimist because then the only surprises are good surprises.

00:39:23.280 And, I don't know, there's no worse feeling than – I remember as a kid people were like, I told you so.

00:39:30.080 Oh, those are sweet words to say.

00:39:31.680 I told you so.

00:39:32.360 Sweet words.

00:39:33.500 Those are the worst words to say.

00:39:35.000 I told you so means you were worried something bad would happen and it happened.

00:39:41.220 And, unfortunately, we've said I told you so all throughout Trudeau's regime.

00:39:46.740 But I'm glad that there are green shoots of hope out there and I think citizen journalism is part of that.

00:39:52.320 You've been very generous with your time today.

00:39:53.660 I just want to throw one last question to you because I know we've talked – you mentioned a little bit about transgenderism and we've talked a lot about free speech and just the problem of the regime media in general.

00:40:04.160 But one of the specialties of True North, one of the policy areas you've always been known for, is immigration.

00:40:11.220 And it looks like for the first time in a decade, the Conservative Party is very carefully talking about immigration and how it's broken.

00:40:21.560 Give me one minute on that before we sign off.

00:40:24.120 Well, you know, it's funny because you were just talking about the I told you so's.

00:40:27.340 You know, I wrote two books in the early part of Justin Trudeau's tenure, one called Losing True North and the other called No Border, talking about the concerns of Justin Trudeau's approach to immigration, making it really easy to become a Canadian citizen, massively increasing the number of people to come to Canada, which I believe was for cynical reasons, trying to, you know, pump up the Liberal voting base and trying to cover up the ruinous economic policies that Trudeau is implementing.

00:40:49.980 You know, I just put out a video and a couple of reports, Ezra, on the 2023 immigration numbers.

00:40:55.780 It's staggering, right?

00:40:56.940 You have half a million permanent residents and that's the number that the media always quotes.

00:41:00.400 But on top of that, you also have 900,000 international students coming to Canada each and every year.

00:41:05.440 You have about 650,000 temporary foreign workers.

00:41:08.720 And then last year, in 2023, we saw an absolute explosion in illegal immigration, barely gets covered.

00:41:14.740 Over 140,000 people illegally entered Canada and made an asylum claim, so they're trying to become refugees.

00:41:21.860 They get to take advantage of all kinds of special programs in the system.

00:41:25.020 Just for reference, 10 years ago in 2013, that number was 10,000.

00:41:29.620 So we went from 10,000 to 140,000 inside a decade.

00:41:33.800 I felt like I was warning about this back in the day when Trudeau was first elected.

00:41:38.820 And now look at, here we are.

00:41:40.940 We have a country that is struggling with an affordability crisis.

00:41:44.720 People can't find a place to live.

00:41:46.300 You have all kinds of cultural tensions falling out into the streets, these crazy hate rallies against Jews.

00:41:54.860 You have people lashing out at different cultures.

00:41:57.700 And the whole multiculturalism experiment, capital M, is clearly failing. 0.76

00:42:01.700 We're all viewing that day in and day out.

00:42:03.500 It's so sad to see the state of Canada and so many of, especially the big cities in the suburbs, it doesn't feel like Canada at all anymore.

00:42:11.580 And so, again, I do think immigration is one of those issues that kind of comes and goes.

00:42:16.060 And sometimes it's all anyone's talking about and other times no one wants to talk about it.

00:42:20.180 I think that Max and Bernier and the People's Party can be given a lot of credit for raising this issue and keeping it in the public debate as well.

00:42:27.860 And I think that maybe there's enough pressure on the political right and, you know, just obvious outcomes from Justin Trudeau's ruinous policies that will lead the Conservatives to take the right approach and to basically just crack down on the misuse of the system.

00:42:43.280 Even if you just say, hey, we're just going to go back to like Stephen Harper levels in 2014, 2015, that seemed to work a lot better than anything that Justin Trudeau has introduced.

00:42:53.620 I hope that they do that.

00:42:54.560 I hope they find that political courage because immigration can be a tough issue to talk about.

00:42:58.760 The Liberals love it when the Conservatives talk about immigration because they just use it to bash them over the head and call them racist and say that, you know, they're just being bigoted or whatever they've accused Conservatives of forever.

00:43:08.640 But I think, again, we're at a point now where enough Canadians can just kind of look around and see that things are broken and that it's safe to talk about and that we obviously need major changes because our immigration system is just massively, massively broken and is having huge impacts all across the country as well.

00:43:26.160 Yeah.

00:43:26.500 You know, there's a terrible Marxist-Leninist saying, the worse, the better.

00:43:31.200 And I do not believe in the worse, the better.

00:43:33.100 But what it means is when things fall apart, when things are so atrocious, people wake up to the crisis.

00:43:41.980 That's the Leninist meaning of the worse, the better.

00:43:44.760 And I think that's why immigration is slowly becoming normalized as a conversation because it is so absolutely horrible. 1.00

00:43:53.120 So maybe the worse, the better is actually allowing us to talk about it now.

00:43:58.660 But at such a great cost to everything from crime to, like you say, cultural conflicts to cost of housing and a hundred other things, hopefully.

00:44:10.840 Well, Ezra, I'll just say quickly, there was a very funny news report on Toronto News last week where the police were telling people,

00:44:16.440 hey, look, we know these guys want to steal your car.

00:44:19.220 They've got guns.

00:44:19.980 They're loaded. 1.00

00:44:20.460 They will shoot you. 0.87

00:44:21.600 Don't fight back.

00:44:22.580 Don't call the police.

00:44:23.660 Just leave your keys at the front door so that these people can steal your keys and go.

00:44:28.260 And that's, you know, that's where we are as a country.

00:44:31.040 Just leave your keys.

00:44:32.140 Let the criminals have their way.

00:44:33.900 Don't stop them.

00:44:34.640 Don't try to confront them because they will kill you.

00:44:37.120 This is Canada in 2024 under Justin Trudeau.

00:44:39.840 Yeah.

00:44:40.600 The worst, the worst, I guess.

00:44:42.420 Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you.

00:44:43.900 Thanks for being so generous with your time.

00:44:45.560 And congratulations on True North.

00:44:47.640 It's one of my favorite news outlets.

00:44:50.080 And it's great to have other friendly allies doing citizen journalists.

00:44:56.700 I love bumping into your lead reporter, Andrew Lawton.

00:45:00.060 I see him in unusual places, even at the World Economic Forum, where he's done great work over the years.

00:45:06.840 It's nice to have a friendly face there, too.

00:45:08.800 So thanks.

00:45:09.320 Keep up the great work and we'll keep in touch.

00:45:12.300 All right.

00:45:12.540 Thanks so much for the time, Ezra.

00:45:13.900 I always enjoy your show and I love your audience.

00:45:16.180 I love Rebel.

00:45:17.060 And I think you guys are just doing tremendous work over there.

00:45:19.740 So thank you so much and take care.

00:45:21.960 Right on, you too.

00:45:22.720 There you have it.

00:45:23.860 Our friend Candace Malcolm, the founder of True North.

00:45:27.440 You can visit their website at tnc.news.

00:45:31.960 That's our show for today.

00:45:33.880 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.

00:45:38.320 Keep fighting for freedom.

00:45:40.500 We'll be right back.

Rebel News Podcast - March 21, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ True North's Candice Malcolm on Trudeau's quest to censor independent journalists

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