Rebel News Podcast - I’ve found Canada’s only free speech professor. And he’s written a book!

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. I'll give you a brief update about the case of Anna Slats, our reporter who

00:00:05.260 was arrested in New York City. She's free. That's the spoiler alert. And then I have an in-depth

00:00:10.340 interview with a, I think he's the only one in the country, a free speech professor in Canada.

00:00:16.620 Yeah, I found him. I called him a unicorn. I'll let you hear what he thinks of that.

00:00:21.060 So that's the form of a podcast, but it's also, of course, a video that's our primary medium.

00:00:26.280 And to get the video, just become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. It's eight bucks a month or 80 bucks

00:00:33.680 for the full year. And you get all the videos for these podcasts and you get a couple of other shows

00:00:37.380 too. So you can get all that at rebelnews.com. All right, here's the podcast.

00:00:56.280 Tonight, I think I found Canada's only free speech professor and he's written a book. It's June

00:01:02.680 4th and this is the Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon

00:01:09.240 consumer? I know. There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I

00:01:15.040 have to say to the government is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:25.020 Hello, my friends. The happy news is that our newest reporter, Anna Slats, was released today from

00:01:30.620 jail in New York City where she had been falsely arrested for reporting on the street protests

00:01:36.140 in that city. She had been kept in custody for more than 36 hours and we had lawyered up lots of

00:01:41.660 lawyers and even got the Canadian consulate in New York to help us out. But so bizarrely, instead of

00:01:47.500 sending her to the hearing where our lawyer had indicated that he would defend her, registered as

00:01:54.540 her lawyer, the jail sent Anna to another hearing where she had no lawyer. They didn't tell us about it

00:02:00.500 and then they just let her out the jail but out a back door so she didn't see our staffer Yankee and 0.99

00:02:06.140 our lawyer Michael who had been waiting at the front door of the code. It was so weird. In one sense

00:02:11.680 that means all our efforts were for nothing. Our lawyers didn't lawyer. But it was, you know, it's like

00:02:17.720 we did nothing, we accomplished nothing. But on the other hand, I spoke to Anna after she got out and

00:02:23.340 she indicated there was a lot of trickery in the jail that day and she gave me some examples. And then she was

00:02:28.980 just grateful that we went to such lengths for her and she actually said she wanted to go right back

00:02:33.060 out and do more reporting. So that's good news. But today I want to focus on Canada. And my guest

00:02:39.380 for a feature-length interview is a thoughtful proponent of free speech and the free speech

00:02:44.620 culture. Something we used to have in Canada but I think we've lost it. That interview is next.

00:02:58.980 How many free speech organizations are there in Canada? Well there's a lot that call themselves

00:03:07.120 free speech and free press. If you look at their names, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association,

00:03:12.780 Civil Liberties are their middle name. There's something called Canadian Journalists for Free

00:03:16.800 Expression. There's the Canadian Association of Journalists. There's Penn International, Reporters

00:03:23.880 Without Borders. There are almost more free press organizations than there are writers. But where

00:03:31.000 are they in the recent pandemic where civil liberties were squashed along with leveling the curve? I didn't

00:03:38.820 see the civil liberties fight for anyone who was slapped with a thousand dollar fine for going to the park.

00:03:44.220 And as Justin Trudeau and other layers of government slowly shrink the bandwidth for free speech,

00:03:51.620 I don't see the journalists for free expression or other groups fighting against that. Maybe it's

00:03:58.740 because they're now on the dole themselves. A media bailout here, an appointment to the Senate there.

00:04:05.240 So it is exceedingly rare to find someone, especially someone from the establishment, a former dean of law

00:04:13.060 law at a first-rate law school, a 20-year Bay Street practitioner of the law, a professor at McGill,

00:04:20.500 an author. It's very rare to find someone to come out with a full-throated defense

00:04:26.180 of free speech. But I am delighted to say we have found the unicorn. And he joins us in studio now.

00:04:33.180 His name is Philip Slayton. He's an author and a lawyer. And he has written a new book called

00:04:36.540 Nothing Left to Lose, An Impolite Report on the State of Freedom in Canada. It's so nice to have

00:04:41.500 you here. Thank you, Ezra. I've never been called a unicorn before. I've been called many things,

00:04:45.340 but never a unicorn. Well, because a unicorn is so rare, one wonders if it even exists.

00:04:50.460 Well, I exist, certainly. Well, I'm glad of it. Now, I had the pleasure of reading an early

00:04:54.820 manuscript, a confidential review copy sent to me by your publisher, Ken White. And I have to disclose

00:05:00.960 that I even play a cameo role in your book. You mentioned twice. Oh, I know. Well, thank you

00:05:06.000 for that. Favorably both times. I read it. Some of my battles against free speech. Free speech

00:05:11.660 battles are fought in many different forums, whether it's a law society telling a lawyer he can't speak

00:05:17.340 out or a human rights commission saying you can't use this or that offensive word. That's quite true. 1.00

00:05:22.400 I mean, I think part of the problem, Ezra, and I discuss this, as you know, of course, in the book,

00:05:26.440 is this ingrained habit of deference to authority that Canadians have. I mean, we defer to authority

00:05:33.280 if somebody has a big title or wears a fancy uniform or somehow is, you know, is president

00:05:39.880 of a bank. We naturally and instinctively defer to them. They must know something we don't know.

00:05:45.600 They must understand something we don't understand. Therefore, we should essentially do what they

00:05:49.860 say. And that's reinforced, I think, by the often praised Canadian predilection for politeness

00:05:55.480 and civility. You know, it's not a good thing to speak out. It's not a good thing to be critical.

00:06:00.880 Just kind of keep quiet. Get on with your life.

00:06:04.020 I think we saw a lot of that during the pandemic.

00:06:06.800 I agree.

00:06:07.100 There's a lot of experts who were trotted out who we had never heard of before,

00:06:11.100 but they called themselves expert. Maybe they called themselves doctor.

00:06:14.720 And everyone did exactly what they said. And then they flipped their position. And we did exactly

00:06:19.600 what they said again. Wear a mask. Don't wear a mask. Go outside. Don't go outside.

00:06:24.100 And the deference to anyone who wore like a high priest's wizard hat was shocking to me.

00:06:32.160 Well, I agree with that. And I think there's an added problem in this particular case, the

00:06:35.900 case of the pandemic. And that is it's so complicated. The science is so uncertain.

00:06:41.680 The statistics are so suspect. The real causes of death are often seems to be misstated.

00:06:47.060 I mean, if somebody who's 85 or 90 years old with underlying conditions, heart disease,

00:06:53.200 diabetes, whatever, gets COVID-19 and dies, that's a death from COVID-19. So the whole

00:06:58.780 question of causality is fudged, I think. So there's all kinds of complicated reasons why

00:07:03.360 in the case of a pandemic, the Canadians' instinctive deference, Canadians' instinctive respect for

00:07:11.000 experts may not have served them very well. But how about on matters that no one is really an

00:07:16.600 expert on? Like, for example, political ideas. We can each have a legitimate idea. And just because

00:07:23.040 someone's a PhD in this or that doesn't mean they're a better thinker. In fact, it might mean

00:07:27.300 they're worse. For example, the mania that's sweeping even Canada on race relations. I think Canada is one 0.51

00:07:34.380 of the most harmonious countries in the world, especially when you compare to any other one.

00:07:39.160 And yet the kind of rigid groupthink and the narrowing of opinions allowed, that's not because,

00:07:47.700 I mean, you could say it's because the issues are complex, but I don't think it's about experts or

00:07:53.260 complexity or risk. I think it's just we've lost the reverence for individuality, the odd eccentricity,

00:08:04.380 I mean, there used to be a time where we appreciated someone being a bit quirky, a bit funny,

00:08:08.700 a bit odd. That was sort of a character. And now we hate anyone who is out of step with the mainstream.

00:08:18.160 Well, I mean, I think essentially I agree with you. I mean, you've had more personal experience

00:08:22.700 of this than I have. But I think essentially I agree with you. And of course, it has a chilling

00:08:27.560 effect, this attitude. People become afraid to speak out. People become afraid to say, you know,

00:08:32.540 that's what everybody says, but I don't agree for these reasons, because they may be

00:08:36.740 tarred as, you know, racist. They may be tarred of something else that's unacceptable. And then

00:08:41.940 it's all part of the political correctness movement as well, which unfortunately has been stoked and

00:08:47.480 fostered by universities, for example, which it never used to be. Universities used to be places

00:08:51.460 for independent, critical thought. Universities used to be places where students were taught,

00:08:56.820 as I like to say, how to know a good argument from a bad argument. Now, in my opinion,

00:09:01.360 they're not so much. Now there are places where, you know, by and large, the party line is offered

00:09:06.580 and the party line is bought. So all this goes to deprive the general population of a kind

00:09:12.340 of an independent, inquiring, critical mind. And as I say in the book, sometimes it's not

00:09:17.600 a bad thing to be impolite. Sometimes it's not a bad thing to be critical. Sometimes it's

00:09:22.640 not a bad thing to take a line that is not the popular approved line, even though it may

00:09:26.640 cost you to do so. There's lots of examples of that. But my fear for our country, for Canada,

00:09:31.860 is for a whole bunch of reasons, the much-wanted liberty, freedom of expression is part of it,

00:09:37.900 but there are other things too, the much-wanted liberty that we like to sort of congratulate

00:09:42.340 ourselves for is to some extent a shimmerer, and it's something that's rapidly evaporating.

00:09:48.660 You know, you're saying we used to learn a good argument from a bad argument. I mean,

00:09:54.340 they used to teach, and I'm talking a generation or two ago, what they call logical fallacies,

00:10:00.060 the appeal to authority. I'm an expert, so believe me. That's not logic. Or ad hominem.

00:10:05.800 Or there's so many, there's a list of these little logical flaws that if you learn what they are,

00:10:10.940 you can have an eye peeled for them, and you can point out, well, that's not an argument,

00:10:13.920 that's not an argument. But these days, if I had to sum up the number one argument being taught

00:10:19.200 by the left to the left, I see it everywhere. The number one argument that's taught is,

00:10:25.960 as a fill-in-the-blank of your grievance group, I believe. It's a pure, it's not even argument by

00:10:32.260 authority, it's argument, it's an appeal to the authority of my racial, as a black man, as a Jewish

00:10:38.420 woman, as a left-handed person, as a frontline nurse. So you're not even saying, listen to my

00:10:46.140 arguments. It's, I'm going to tell you what I believe in based on who I am.

00:10:50.880 Here's my credential, and you cannot argue with me.

00:10:52.980 Well, and if you disagree with my argument, which is likely poorly thought out because I'm

00:10:56.640 hanging in on my identity, I won't take it as a refutation of my ideas. I will take it as an insult

00:11:02.480 against the, as such and so. I just said, I'm saying this as a black man. I just said, 0.98

00:11:08.420 I'm saying this as a Jewish woman. And you're disagreeing with me? So you are negating my

00:11:14.060 blackness, my Jewishness, my woman-ness. So it's a trick, it's a trap, it's an unfairness,

00:11:19.820 and it's a baiting. And it's, if you dare disagree with me, I'm telling you in advance,

00:11:24.260 if you dare disagree with me, you're negating my lived experience as a left-handed...

00:11:28.920 Well, I think, actually, Ezra, it even goes beyond that. He goes to the point where,

00:11:33.420 for example, you cannot question or disagree with, or even really comment on, let's say,

00:11:39.860 a black person talking about the black experience, or an indigenous person in this country talking

00:11:45.240 about the indigenous experience, or whatever, the Jewish woman talking about the Jewish

00:11:49.380 female experience. Because if you're not one of those, and if you're not one of those, 1.00

00:11:54.620 you cannot understand, so the argument goes. You cannot understand how they feel,

00:11:59.620 how they think, and you're not qualified to offer an opinion. A very good example of that,

00:12:06.680 I think, is a whole cultural appropriation argument that raged in the very small world

00:12:12.060 of Canalit for a while, which said things like, if you are not an indigenous person,

00:12:16.840 you cannot write about indigenous people. If you are not whatever, you cannot write 1.00

00:12:23.120 about the experience of those people, which, to my way of thinking, negates the whole kind

00:12:27.440 of intellectual integrity and history of writing.

00:12:30.960 Well, of writing of any sort of act of imagination.

00:12:34.720 Yes.

00:12:35.320 Of all fiction itself. Oh, how can you write about Star Wars? You're not actually living

00:12:41.560 on this planet. It's so absurd.

00:12:43.300 Or suppose a farmer in Saskatchewan, who never left Saskatchewan, wrote a brilliant novel

00:12:47.600 novel about the Holocaust. And people would say, it doesn't matter that it's a brilliant novel. 0.82

00:12:52.580 It doesn't matter that it shows an extraordinary understanding and sensitivity.

00:12:55.700 This man did not experience the Holocaust. Therefore, he is unqualified to write about it. 0.61

00:13:00.360 So, I mean, the whole, that whole movement in Canada, Joseph Boyden was, to some extent,

00:13:05.500 for example, a victim of that. He wrote novels like Black Spruce about the indigenous experience,

00:13:12.580 and then somebody said, well, wait a minute. Is he really an indigenous person? He claims

00:13:16.540 to be. Let's look into his background and see.

00:13:19.220 Can you imagine that, doing a genetic test on whether or not your book was good?

00:13:22.920 So it pervades, I think, many aspects of Canadian life. And it's, to me, worrying. And that's

00:13:27.880 why I sat down and wrote this book about that and many other things, which in various ways

00:13:31.960 erode our liberties in this country, our freedom in this country, if we properly understand

00:13:38.240 what freedom means.

00:13:39.520 You know, I remember growing up as a kid in college, I was in political clubs, and there

00:13:45.100 was a real custom of having debates. And it was just expected that every political party

00:13:52.560 would attend the debate. And there was even sort of a speaker's corner when I went to school,

00:13:57.000 University of Calgary. And there were large assemblies where students would have debates.

00:14:01.940 And if you refused to attend, it was not even so much that you were a chicken, it's that

00:14:06.800 you weren't serious about being in the public debates. It was, it was, you were expected

00:14:10.600 to participate. And it was an honour to be asked. And if you declined, it was sort of

00:14:15.700 a surrender. These days, I don't think there are debates like that anymore. Because de-platforming

00:14:23.720 is the response, and I think it's mainly a leftist response. I have never seen a Conservative,

00:14:30.940 and let's just go specifically, I've never seen a member of the Conservative Party, I've never

00:14:35.640 seen a pro-life group, I've never seen a right-of-centre speaker try and de-platform

00:14:42.580 a leftist. Maybe I've missed it, but it feels like a one-sided thing. If it's a two-sided

00:14:47.840 thing, correct me. But I know lots of Conservatives who want to debate. I'm one of them. But de-platforming

00:14:53.840 has ended the concept of a debate.

00:14:56.600 Well, I think, from what I know, what I understand is mostly a phenomenon of the left, but not

00:15:01.540 exclusively a phenomenon of the left.

00:15:03.540 If you have a counter-example, I want to hear it.

00:15:05.540 I can't bring one readily to mind, but I think there's one or two that I mentioned in the

00:15:10.480 book. But beyond that, the underlying phenomenon is, you cannot speak. I will not listen to

00:15:16.480 your ideas because of who you are. Not because of the validity of your ideas, but because

00:15:21.480 of who you are.

00:15:22.480 Well, let me give you an example. Global warming. The theory of man-made global warming.

00:15:24.480 Yes.

00:15:25.480 It's a scientific theory.

00:15:26.480 Well, I think it's more than a theory, by the way.

00:15:28.480 It's not a theory, by the way.

00:15:29.480 Okay. I mean, you could say the theory of gravity is more than a theory, but...

00:15:34.480 I hope it's a fact, because if not, we're going to float away.

00:15:37.720 That's right. There are, you know, the BBC, the CBC, just to give two state-run broadcasters

00:15:46.540 as an example, they have explicit editorial policies never to interview skeptics.

00:15:53.060 Well, that's clearly wrong.

00:15:54.420 But I'm saying it's not based on the personal identity of the spokesman. For example, Dr.

00:16:00.420 Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, amazing credentials, wonderful man, big heart.

00:16:06.420 So, he's personally inoffensive in every way, but it's because of his ideas that they will

00:16:11.020 never give him a platform. So, it's not just...

00:16:13.420 Yeah. When I say because of who they are, I don't mean tall, short, white, black. I mean

00:16:18.420 the whole makeup of the person, including their ideas and commitment to a particular principle.

00:16:22.520 But I think it's clearly wrong. I mean, I personally believe in global warming, and I think it's,

00:16:26.880 despite all the other trouble we've had recently, it's the great challenge, difficulty, fear

00:16:31.660 of our age. But that doesn't mean that people who, for whatever reason, have a qualified

00:16:37.800 view of it, maybe even deny it, and there are people I know who do deny the whole phenomenon,

00:16:42.520 shouldn't be given an opportunity to speak. I mean, the best response to a bad argument

00:16:48.380 or a bad theory is a critical analysis offering a good argument and a good theory, not shutting

00:16:53.520 them down. As you put it, deplatforming them. Hear them out and say, here's why I don't agree

00:16:58.460 with you, and here's why I think you're wrong. And let the audience, Canadians, who are on the

00:17:03.800 whole sensible, reasonably well-educated people, make a judgment.

00:17:07.520 You know, and I mentioned Dr. Moore, he was invited to be one of about 30 speakers at

00:17:12.660 a City of Regina conference. But he was the one who was a skeptic of the theory of man-made

00:17:19.020 global warming, so they deplatformed him. One voice out of 30 was too much for this conference.

00:17:24.600 Well, I mean, I'm not familiar with that particular incident, but I think if it happened as you

00:17:28.640 described it, it's clearly a mistake. I mean, if somebody has a bad theory, a bad argument,

00:17:34.100 don't take the platform away from them. Put them on the platform, let them speak, let them

00:17:39.680 say what they have to say, and judge them as you wish.

00:17:41.960 But I know how it works, because I've seen it, and it's come for me more than once.

00:17:45.700 The mob. The mob comes to your house. It's a lovely little house, but it's quite flammable.

00:17:51.280 And they've all got their pitchforks and their torches, and they say, hey, we're going through

00:17:55.620 the neighbourhood, finding out if you're on our side or the demon's side. So you've got about

00:18:01.200 30 seconds to tell me, will you pick up your torch and come for the enemy with us, or should

00:18:06.120 we torch your house too? So it's a domino effect of them going through and saying, are you with

00:18:11.240 this guy? Tell me now, because if so, we're going to make you an enemy. And so every, like in the

00:18:16.240 city of Regina, everyone said, oh, the mayor, the aldermen, the conference, oh, geez, don't

00:18:21.400 come for me. Yeah, go after Dr. White. I'm just giving you an example of how it works. Please don't

00:18:26.200 come for me. I'll join with you and kick the tar out of this bad guy. 0.99

00:18:29.740 Well, I think in a way what you're talking about or what I hear is social media. I mean, 0.96

00:18:34.200 so for example, somebody can be overnight on social media, tried, convicted and hanged without

00:18:43.560 any opportunity to present their own case, to defend themselves appropriately. Often this

00:18:49.080 trying, convicting is hanging is done by people who don't even really understand the facts,

00:18:53.820 don't understand what happened. Sometimes if an opportunity is subsequently given to have

00:18:58.280 a real trial with real evidence and real legal protection, it turns out they were wrong.

00:19:02.500 But lives are ruined. Lives are ruined. People are destroyed by Twitter mobs, the kind of mob

00:19:08.700 you talked about, but in this case on Twitter or other forms of social media. That's deeply

00:19:13.060 concerning. It happens on social media, but I think it happens in real life too. I mean,

00:19:16.840 I think journalists often are the worst. They call up an institution, a debate, a platform

00:19:24.980 and they say, oh, I noticed that your conference has this odious person. Hmm. My deadline's 5 PM. You

00:19:34.040 tell me which side. Oh, I mean, journalists call up Facebook and Twitter all the time as little

00:19:39.080 tattletales, little hall monitors and say, I'm writing a story on why you're allowing a Nazi 0.99

00:19:45.240 that I've just, uh, judged to be an, or why you're lying, uh, allowing a global warming denier at your

00:19:52.920 conference. My deadline's at 5 PM. Um, Hey Facebook, let me know if you're going to de-platform him. So

00:19:59.580 it's a, it's not even journalism. It's, it's, it's not scolding. It's tattling. It's a form of

00:20:06.400 activism posing as journalism. That I think is a form of censorship out there because these companies,

00:20:13.480 even Tik Tok, the Chinese company is now terrified of being called unwoke. They, they recently banned

00:20:20.000 Tommy Robinson from a Chinese company, you know, the, the country of Tiananmen square. Oh, Tommy 0.78

00:20:26.540 Robinson, he's too spicy for us. Well, I mean, I do think in general, as you're suggesting, as you're

00:20:32.140 describing the climate for people who have views that are in, let's say a distinct minority,

00:20:38.220 who have views that may be somewhat eccentric, have views that are not favored by those who run

00:20:44.740 our society and run our government. The climate for those people is very bad. It's a combination

00:20:48.140 of all kinds of things. Social media, I think, is important in this, but it's very bad. And it takes

00:20:52.880 someone of considerable courage to say something that they know is going to be unpopular, that they

00:20:58.540 know is going to expose themselves to criticism, even physical danger. That takes a lot of courage.

00:21:03.640 Once people with views that are unpopular, once people with views that are in a distinct minority,

00:21:09.800 whatever those views may be, once they shut up because they're scared, then we are in serious

00:21:15.280 trouble. That's when our democracy dies. That's when we live in a state which is essentially

00:21:20.280 authoritarian. And it's extremely dangerous. And I think there's been a failure across the board in

00:21:25.880 Canadian institutions and Canadian life when it comes to protecting those people and those ideas.

00:21:32.420 In all kinds of respect. I won't go through the whole long list. It's all in the book. But

00:21:36.580 it's a bad thing. You look at young people, my grandchildren, for example. They don't really,

00:21:43.160 I mean, it's inculcated in them. They know they've got to be careful what they say. They know,

00:21:48.000 for example, my eldest grandson is just about to go to university. When I went to university,

00:21:51.460 it was like an opening up of a whole new life where you could speak your mind, where you were

00:21:57.060 respected for what you had to say, when people wanted to engage in discussion and debate.

00:22:01.380 That's not the way it is now.

00:22:03.260 Yeah, you have to be careful. There's traps everywhere.

00:22:04.400 You have to be careful, very careful. And the traps can be sprung very quickly.

00:22:07.960 You know, you can go home one evening and overnight the Twitter storm can erupt, a Twitter mob can

00:22:13.320 erupt, and you can wake up in the morning having lost your job, lost your respect, and being in

00:22:18.200 physical danger. It's happened many times and continues to happen.

00:22:21.400 Well, tell me some of the chapters in the book. I mean, I did skim through the copy that Ken sent me,

00:22:26.240 your publisher. What are the other things that you cover in the book?

00:22:28.840 Well, there's a variety of things. I mean, the first major chapter deals with what you and I've

00:22:34.040 discussed already, which is the Canadian habit of deference to authority. I give a number of

00:22:38.300 examples in that respect. I mean, give me one instance. I talk about how the Canadian Supreme Court,

00:22:45.660 the Supreme Court of Canada, is to some extent revered, certainly not questioned. And the judges

00:22:51.420 who are, by the way, appointed, they're not elected, as you well know, they're appointed and decide

00:22:56.680 fundamental questions of social policy, public policy in this country. Really, the big questions,

00:23:03.420 if you look at the history of the court and the judiciary journey since the Charter of Rights

00:23:07.240 was enacted. But that court, our court, the Canadian Supreme Court, the judges on that court,

00:23:12.500 are treated with extraordinary deference and respect, seldom questioned even by the legal

00:23:17.160 profession. Whereas in the United States, for all its flaws and all of the criticism you can level

00:23:21.840 at it, the U.S. Supreme Court and its judges is very much kind of a vibrant, almost participatory

00:23:27.360 body, where, and part of the mainstream, the judges go on television, they give lectures,

00:23:33.060 they write books. They're part of an evolving, dynamic environment. But in Canada, we have this

00:23:39.960 habit of deference. That's one example. I talk about how universities, as again, we touched on this

00:23:44.740 earlier. How universities no longer see as their mission, giving people the intellectual tools

00:23:50.620 that you need to lead a life as a responsible, concerned, inquiring, participating citizen.

00:23:56.620 They no longer teach you how to know a good argument from a bad argument. God knows there's

00:24:01.760 a lot of bad arguments out there. They no longer teach you how to say, well, wait a minute,

00:24:05.300 you say that, but I'm not sure I can see why you say that. I'm not sure I see the premises

00:24:10.020 behind the argument. I'm not sure I see the evidence behind it. The universities don't

00:24:13.840 do that. There's already, there's been a failure to some extent of the candlelit world, particularly

00:24:18.760 in the cultural appropriation area. The police, I talk about the police. Human rights commissions,

00:24:24.020 a particular favorite of yours, I know, who tend to see a breach of human right around every

00:24:29.680 corner and tend to characterize as human rights things that may be important, but they're not

00:24:35.360 human rights and so on and so on and so on. You know, by the way, one other thing I'll mention

00:24:41.340 too, and that is the increasing power, because it's come to the fore in the pandemic, the increasing

00:24:47.480 power of the executive branch, which in our country means essentially the prime minister

00:24:52.100 and the premiers of process to do what they want to do to ignore the legislature. I mean, when was the

00:24:59.880 last time the Parliament of Canada met in any serious fashion? Yeah. So there's a whole bunch

00:25:05.040 of things happening, and the cumulative effect of which is, to me, very disturbing. And I think

00:25:10.960 the point of the book is to blow a whistle to say, watch out. You know, don't be too, don't be too

00:25:17.760 complacent, Canadians. You know, there are real dangers we face. I think it was 15 years ago that the

00:25:24.400 Danish cartoons of Mohammed were published. Yes. That's a long time ago. And I remember when my

00:25:29.640 little magazine at the time, the Western Standard, republished them with commentary. I remember that.

00:25:33.940 There was a bit of a kerfuffle, but there was a pollster named Compass, and they surveyed dozens

00:25:39.860 of working journalists. So it wasn't a random public opinion poll of strangers. It was actually

00:25:45.800 calling up working journalists directly. It was a survey of them. So it didn't purport to say,

00:25:53.460 this is what all Canadians think. It was, we talked to 150 working journalists, and here's

00:25:57.660 what they said. So it was like a pulse of the industry. And I only remember one statistic from

00:26:03.040 15 years ago. 70% of working journalists back then thought that not only should I have published

00:26:10.540 the cartoons, but that every media outlet should have too. So it was overwhelming. The journalists

00:26:17.480 said, no, not only was Levant right to do so, but we should have done so too. And we didn't,

00:26:22.340 and we're sort of shy about it. Fast forward 15 years. I am certain that if you were to survey

00:26:29.080 100 plus working journalists with a similar question, it would be flipped. It would be at

00:26:34.920 most 30% would say, oh yeah, we should. The rest would say it would be Islamophobic. It would be

00:26:42.740 dangerous. I'd be hauled before a human rights commission. I'd be Twitter mobbed. Like Rex Murphy

00:26:49.100 has been over the last couple of days for his article, claiming that Canada is not racist.

00:26:54.280 Everyone's outraged by that statement apparently. I think that not only have journalists lost the

00:27:02.320 flame in the last 15 years, but in a way they've been encouraged to because so many journalists now

00:27:07.540 have in some ways merged with government. There's very few media that aren't reliant on a government

00:27:16.820 bailout of sort. Newspapers just took the $600 million payment. I think that's made them more

00:27:21.760 timid. The largest employer of news journalists, more than all of this combined actually, is the CBC.

00:27:29.700 So I think that you've actually corrupted the independence out of Canadian journalists. What do you think of

00:27:35.700 that? Well, I do think that the whole story behind journalism in this country over the last

00:27:42.180 30 or 40 years is a very sorry story. I've got to have, needless to say, a chapter on this in the book.

00:27:48.500 Sometimes I think I have a chapter on everything. And I talk about how journalists, independent journalists,

00:27:55.700 for a long time were in the central and vital part of really the, not the government structure,

00:28:00.820 but the way we governed ourselves, the way the country ran. The fourth estate, right? The fourth,

00:28:05.060 the famous fourth estate. And they had an essential role to play. Their role was to keep everybody

00:28:10.100 honest. Their role was to be the cop on the beat. Their role was to blow the whistle when they saw

00:28:15.380 something that shouldn't happen. There was a famous journalist in the United Kingdom who was asked why

00:28:20.500 so many British journalists went to the United States and were successful, and he said it's because

00:28:26.900 of the attitude that British, back a while, the attitude that British journalists had when they

00:28:31.460 interviewed a politician. They went into the room and their basic attitude was, why is this guy going

00:28:37.140 to lie to me? What's he going to lie about? Deep skepticism, a deep attitude of show me,

00:28:44.660 tell me why you say that, prove it. And that has served, that served us all very well when you had a

00:28:50.340 cadre of journalists doing that. Those people have largely gone up for various complicated reasons,

00:28:55.860 and they've been replaced by the Twitter blog, the social media blog. Which is the opposite about

00:29:00.340 Speaking Truth, Parry. It's about being a bully of the moment. Being the bully of the moment, exactly

00:29:04.580 right, where you can say things without any real argument, without any real evidence. And before you know it,

00:29:10.020 it'll be retreated thousands of times, so you've got something going. Yeah. You know, Boris Johnson,

00:29:15.380 now the Prime Minister of the UK, he's been a writer for a long time. And I remember a wonderful piece

00:29:19.620 he wrote. He said, we need a gutter press to keep the gutters clean. And I thought, you know what,

00:29:26.580 that's so true. And he was making a defense for the most extreme form of snoopy, gossipy, tabloidy journalism.

00:29:35.380 But there's some truth there. And I don't think we have much of that spirit left in Canada. Very

00:29:42.260 little. Except some pockets on the internet, but those are stamped out rather quickly. I mean,

00:29:48.020 the other thing about the traditional newspaper back in the old days was there was some kind of

00:29:52.420 serious quality control. I mean, you had an editorial process. You had an editor who would look at

00:29:56.660 something and say, you know what, you haven't convinced me on this. You've got to take it back,

00:30:00.180 rethink it, make some more phone calls, and so on. So there was some substance to the process. There

00:30:05.380 was some credibility to the process, which certainly doesn't exist on social media. I mean,

00:30:11.460 it's essentially a catastrophe. How does the average citizen figure out what the hell is going on?

00:30:16.740 Where does the average citizen get his information? Where does he get opinions that are credible,

00:30:21.060 that could be relied upon? Where does he hear good arguments? Where do they come from? How do you know?

00:30:25.700 How do you know, Ezra, what's really happening? Who do you believe? Well, that's a question that we

00:30:30.980 can apply to our entire lives and every aspect of it. And for me, the answer is we have to think for

00:30:37.140 ourselves and be the judge of that. I remember there was an epiphany I had probably in my early 20s,

00:30:43.460 and it was any story in the newspaper that I actually knew firsthand about, I could spot all the factual

00:30:51.140 errors. Every story I knew about, they got something wrong. So imagine all the ones I don't know about,

00:30:57.940 and I learned to look at the byline who wrote it. So I learned to be a skeptic at an early age.

00:31:03.460 I think the internet forces us to take that skeptical approach to everything. And by the way,

00:31:08.260 I don't think that the CBC, for example, or the Toronto Star fare too much better than an accomplished

00:31:14.980 blogger, Twitterer, YouTuber, who has built up a following because of his quality. I think that

00:31:22.500 things sort themselves out in the market of ideas fairly quickly.

00:31:26.660 Well, I mean, another thing that I've certainly noticed over the last while is increasingly the

00:31:31.060 media, certainly the traditional media, and also to some extent social media, no longer really provide

00:31:38.100 us with factual stories. They no longer present facts. They're full of opinions. I mean, you pick up

00:31:42.980 one of Canada's major newspapers. I won't mention anyone by name. And what you find is a compendium

00:31:49.540 of opinions. Everybody's got an opinion on something. We've all got opinions. I've got opinions.

00:31:54.100 And you find a collection of these opinions. But where do you find the facts? Where do you find the

00:31:58.500 dispassionate objective reporting on facts so you know what happened and you can then formulate your own

00:32:04.260 opinion and not buy into somebody else's or reject somebody else's, but formulate your own opinion?

00:32:09.540 Yeah. Well, I think that's one reason why people are rejecting these papers is

00:32:13.140 because people say, well, my opinion is just as good as that opinion. And I don't have to pay

00:32:17.140 $1.50 for that opinion. Well, Philip, it's been a pleasure to get to know you a little bit. And

00:32:22.100 I'm always interested in books published by your publisher, Ken White. He was an early writer and

00:32:28.020 editor of Alberta Report way back in the day. McLean's Magazine in its heyday, Saturday night,

00:32:33.380 and the National Post, all of those magazines and newspapers at their peak. So he really was one of the

00:32:39.140 greats. And I'm delighted he's in the book publishing business. And when he sent me the review copy of

00:32:43.940 your book, I thought, this is amazing. This is so great. And I would like to encourage our viewers

00:32:50.820 not only to read it for its own sake. That's obviously why you read a book.

00:32:53.620 But I think we've got to support the unicorn and his equally rare publisher. If there is a publisher,

00:33:01.460 and if there's a former dean of law who is willing to make the case for freedom of the press and freedom

00:33:05.620 of speech, not only should we read it to learn from it, but we should read it to support the project.

00:33:11.780 So I personally, even though I have a review copy, I'm going to personally buy a copy online.

00:33:17.300 Good man. Well, my pleasure. And we're going to have a link under this video. And buy it because

00:33:22.900 you'll like it. I read it. But also buy it because for God's sakes, there's enough books on the other

00:33:28.100 side, don't you think? We ought to support the one guy who's doing the books on our side. All right,

00:33:32.260 there you have it. Well, Philip Slayton, what a pleasure to have you in today. Thank you,

00:33:34.580 sir. It's been a pleasure. Right on. Stay with us.

00:33:41.780 Well, it was a big day for me because we had been working so hard to get Anna Slats out of jail.

00:33:50.900 And we were so prepared and we lawyered up and we were working on this and that. And then we just

00:33:55.140 learned that she was released from jail through a back door and she went through a hearing we weren't

00:33:59.700 even told about. Extremely frustrating. I was so disappointed. And I felt like we really let Anna

00:34:04.980 down. But I spoke to her and she says she knew she was fighting hard. We were fighting hard for her

00:34:09.780 and that she's just ready to get back out there and keep fighting, keep reporting. So

00:34:14.100 I guess all's well that ends well. Thank you for your support, those of you who supported us. Anna's

00:34:18.660 so new. I've only had her on my show once as a guest and she's only done a few videos for us, 0.67

00:34:23.940 but I hope over time she becomes a great journalist. She certainly has the courage for it. Well,

00:34:28.500 that's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:34:32.660 see you at home. Good night. Keep fighting for free.

Rebel News Podcast - June 05, 2020

I’ve found Canada’s only free speech professor. And he’s written a book!

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