Rebel News Podcast - Jagmeet Singh wants government to fix “fake news” — and he's not alone

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. Hello, my rebellious ones. You're listening to a free audio only recording

00:00:05.380 of my show. It's called The Ezra LeVant Show. Today, I just look at a really weird campaign,

00:00:11.040 really. The Taiyi, Jagmeet Singh, the CBC. They're super mad that Jagmeet Singh was part of like 1.00

00:00:18.340 some celebrity clickbait online. And it's just such a joke. But they want to use that joke as

00:00:24.840 a pretext to have Elections Canada monitor the internet for defamation. Yeah, no, you just want

00:00:32.080 to censor things. I get into that pretty deep. I hope you enjoy this show. If you like listening

00:00:36.420 to this podcast, I hope you do. You really should watch it, you know. I mean, I show you stuff.

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00:01:16.420 rebel.media slash shows. And if you want to leave a five-star rating on this podcast, that'd be great

00:01:21.520 too. Until then, let me leave you with this great, if I may say so. Oh, it's just so great.

00:01:29.240 This monologue. Take a listen. Tonight, Jagdeep Singh sees something untrue on the internet,

00:01:34.400 and he thinks the government is the way to fix it. It's February 8th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.

00:01:39.400 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:45.320 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:49.380 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:02:00.620 Take a look at this cartoon. It's really old, but I think it actually gets funnier every year.

00:02:05.840 Are you coming to bed? I can't. This is important. What? Someone is wrong on the internet.

00:02:17.200 Yeah, he's going to be a while, I guess. I mean, I don't think it's possible to know with any precision,

00:02:21.880 but the best estimates I can find is there are more than 5 billion pages on the internet.

00:02:28.220 And by the way, when I say page, as you know, on the internet, you can scroll down for a while.

00:02:34.540 They're so much bigger than an 8 1⁄2 by 11 page paper, so you're probably looking at 100 billion pages worth.

00:02:42.180 And of course, it doesn't even touch all the images, the videos, the audio.

00:02:46.640 It's changing constantly, expanding. It's like the universe. It's like the universe.

00:02:52.540 This is all obvious and getting more obvious every day, which is why that cartoon gets funnier every day.

00:02:57.860 If you're trying to correct people who are wrong on the internet, you will never be done.

00:03:03.320 Especially now that it's so easy for each of us to be a publisher and a commenter on our own Facebook page,

00:03:08.120 our own Twitter account, our own cell phone video.

00:03:10.420 So what's my point? Well, look at this story on the CBC State Broadcaster, of course.

00:03:15.280 My first thought was, when I saw that, I mean, as a publisher, I know a bit about slander.

00:03:29.500 It's a very technical area of the law. I'm a former lawyer myself, as you know.

00:03:33.320 I actually used to practice a little bit of defamation law.

00:03:35.420 There are a lot of defenses in defamation law, you know.

00:03:39.120 Truth, obviously.

00:03:40.440 But also fair comment.

00:03:43.680 And if the slanderer was malicious or not matters. 0.97

00:03:46.360 And of course it matters if there were any actual damages, were you actually hurt by it.

00:03:50.240 There's a lot of detailed questions. It's technical.

00:03:53.520 And defamation lawsuits, and I've been through a few, they can take years to proceed through the courts.

00:03:59.800 Both sides get to review the other side's records, for example.

00:04:03.180 You can even have a jury trial. Did you know that?

00:04:05.100 So my first thought when I saw that headline was, how on earth could an elections watchdog handle a technical, specialist, legal matter, like a defamation lawsuit, that is really only handled in the proper courts?

00:04:21.480 And what does any of that have to do with running an election?

00:04:24.040 An election watchdog, that's sort of a funny phrase.

00:04:27.000 I mean, in Canada, you don't even need to show ID to vote anymore.

00:04:31.320 Or, don't tell me, some watchdog.

00:04:34.480 Their job is to make sure the ballots are counted on time and accurately.

00:04:37.280 Their job is to make sure only citizens can vote.

00:04:39.560 They're failing on that job.

00:04:40.600 There could be some finance-related matters, too.

00:04:43.200 That's all fair game for a government regulator, I suppose.

00:04:45.920 But whether or not an ad lowered someone's reputation unfairly, that's the definition of defamation.

00:04:53.300 How on earth is that election Canada's business?

00:04:57.360 They don't have the tools to answer that.

00:04:59.200 And really, isn't that the business of every individual voter?

00:05:04.400 I mean, technically, defamation means something that would lower your reputation in the eyes of the public, which is about 85% of all political messaging.

00:05:13.660 I mean, sure, candidates sometimes talk about how great they are, and they release a policy platform, but mainly they talk about how their opponent is not great.

00:05:22.360 By definition, political candidates try to lower their opponent's reputation, and we generally don't sue each other for that.

00:05:30.720 And the law, like I say, it allows you to defame someone.

00:05:34.340 It allows you to lower their reputation if you're telling the truth, if you're making a fair comment, an honestly held opinion about someone based on true facts, for example.

00:05:42.520 You could say that an election campaign is a massive 35-day defamation trial where every single voter is on the jury and all the politicians defame each other and we get to judge.

00:05:55.640 At the end of the trial, at the end of the campaign, we get to decide who we think is telling the truth.

00:06:01.260 We get to decide if someone was too rough and too defamatory, if we didn't like how they campaigned, if it was too mean.

00:06:07.240 Frankly, I think citizens sometimes don't mind rough-and-tumble campaigning because people generally dislike politicians, and it's sort of nice to see them bashed around a bit.

00:06:18.560 And if you can't take the heat, we'll stay out of the kitchen.

00:06:20.740 And if you can't handle a mean brochure from your opponent or a mean TV ad, even if it's not completely true, well, you're probably not up for the job of, say, negotiating a trade deal with Donald Trump or getting our hostages back from communist China.

00:06:34.700 I mean, don't enter the arena if you don't want to take a punch.

00:06:37.600 If you can't handle a bit of defamation in a campaign, then you're not ready to handle Vladimir Putin.

00:06:43.620 So I thought it was weird right from the first headline, this story, don't you think?

00:06:49.860 But it gets weirder.

00:06:50.780 What exactly was the defamation that they were talking about here?

00:06:54.040 Why was Jagmeet Singh running to some government bureaucrat here?

00:06:57.500 Well, I'll read you some more.

00:07:00.160 Ads claim NDP leader owns a multimillion-dollar mansion.

00:07:04.880 Do you see that sub-headline there?

00:07:07.580 Is that really defamation, that he lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion?

00:07:11.020 Well, first of all, how is that even defamatory?

00:07:13.620 He's so rich.

00:07:17.040 Oh, you've ruined my reputation, mate, by saying I'm a success in life.

00:07:22.180 Jagmeet Singh is running in a by-election right now in Burnaby, British Columbia.

00:07:25.600 It's a suburb of Vancouver.

00:07:26.900 It's part of the greater Vancouver area.

00:07:29.080 You know what the average price for detached houses in the greater Vancouver area is?

00:07:33.300 Now, it's plunging.

00:07:34.840 Here's a headline a couple months ago, Vancouver housing sales fall to six-year low.

00:07:39.640 So it's actually a little bit better now than before.

00:07:42.880 Let me quote.

00:07:44.160 The market for detached houses declined to an average price last month of $1,630,323.

00:07:58.260 And that's down 9.6% from a year earlier.

00:08:00.920 The average house in Vegas.

00:08:04.220 Average!

00:08:04.960 I said average!

00:08:07.080 For every house cheaper, there's one more expense.

00:08:09.220 $1.6 million.

00:08:11.820 How do they live?

00:08:13.440 That's the average price.

00:08:14.520 And that's down 10%.

00:08:15.640 So I'm sorry, how's it defamatory to say that Jagmeet Singh, he's running in the greater

00:08:22.820 area?

00:08:23.280 Oh, he lives in a million-dollar house.

00:08:25.180 Yes, so does the paper boy, I guess.

00:08:28.120 Now, I should tell you, and you probably know this already, it's probably the only thing

00:08:33.400 you know about Jagmeet Singh, that he cultivates an image of wealth and luxury.

00:08:39.500 He does glamour-style photo shoots featuring his handsome self around Canada and around the

00:08:46.760 world, wearing bespoke luxury suits, traveling like a jet setter.

00:08:52.560 He's a hell of a socialist, this guy, isn't he?

00:08:56.140 That's probably a $20,000 outfit.

00:08:59.360 Hey guys, someone on the internet says I live in a million-dollar house.

00:09:03.020 I totally need the internet police to police the internet. 0.88

00:09:06.960 Oh, hey, by the way, did I show you this picture of me shopping at Hoke Couture stores

00:09:10.780 in Italy, and I'm just showing off my purchases?

00:09:14.300 Yeah, this whole thing is weird before we even get into it.

00:09:18.760 But let's get into it.

00:09:19.800 Let me read some.

00:09:20.780 The NDP is asking Canada's election watchdog to immediately launch an investigation after

00:09:27.360 a series of ads claiming leader Jagmeet Singh lives in a multi-million dollar mansion popped

00:09:32.500 up online in the lead-up to Burnaby South by-election later this month.

00:09:38.760 Okay, that seems like a bit of a weird attack ad.

00:09:42.640 I mean, I can understand why a socialist candidate doesn't want to look like a millionaire, I guess.

00:09:46.420 But that ship has sailed a long time ago, especially in Vancouver.

00:09:50.000 Everyone's a millionaire on paper, I guess, if they just own a home out there.

00:09:53.620 But more to the point, the NDP has not been the party of the working class in at least a generation.

00:09:58.620 Now it's the party of professors, academia.

00:10:02.680 I mean, Jack Layton was a PhD.

00:10:04.460 Grievance activists, identity groups.

00:10:06.900 It's the party of David Suzuki, who has five homes.

00:10:09.620 It's the party of Bernie Sanders in America, the socialist in America, who challenged Hillary

00:10:15.280 Clinton for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. 0.95

00:10:17.300 He famously has three homes.

00:10:20.840 All your big anti-Oil Sands, anti-pipeline activists are millionaires, or billionaires even,

00:10:24.500 like Tom Steyer out of San Francisco, or Al Gore is almost a billionaire.

00:10:28.080 It's a bad look in my mind, but it's being normalized.

00:10:31.020 The left doesn't seem to have a problem reconciling the contradiction of being millionaire socialists.

00:10:35.580 But let me keep reading more from this fake story.

00:10:40.540 As the Taiyi first reported, an ad claiming Singh owns a $5.5 million mansion ran below a story

00:10:47.320 in the Vancouver Courier, a community paper.

00:10:50.000 That link took readers to an article titled,

00:10:52.600 13 Super Luxurious Celebrity Houses They Surely Know How to Spend Their Fortune,

00:10:57.420 on the website Attorney Cocktail.

00:11:00.640 Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

00:11:03.020 This wasn't a political ad.

00:11:04.640 This wasn't an ad by the liberals or the Tories.

00:11:09.480 This isn't a political ad at all.

00:11:10.940 It's just some clickbait.

00:11:12.740 It's some celebrity ad that was probably made by a machine.

00:11:16.060 They probably saw that Jagmeet Singh's name is maybe ticking up in internet searches

00:11:20.220 and that he is an interesting and photogenic face.

00:11:23.020 So they probably just put his name and face on his sexy mansion

00:11:26.000 so people could look at a pretty house.

00:11:27.560 That's what people do online.

00:11:29.860 It wasn't a political ad.

00:11:30.820 It wasn't political at all.

00:11:31.720 It wasn't an attack ad.

00:11:32.800 In fact, it was a flattering ad.

00:11:34.400 He was listed amongst other celebrities.

00:11:36.700 I mean, it's probably all fake.

00:11:39.780 But it's not meant for deep research.

00:11:42.360 The website Attorney Cocktail, that's not a real thing.

00:11:46.980 You know, it's got those words up.

00:11:48.480 There's lawyer-y words up there.

00:11:50.160 But it's just a clickbait.

00:11:52.720 It pretends to be, I don't know, just really a bunch of clickable, goofy photo montages

00:11:56.820 with stock imagery there.

00:11:59.820 It couldn't be less political.

00:12:01.880 It's just there to make ads at a tenth of a cent a click.

00:12:04.680 This is not a real story.

00:12:07.000 The tie-ee that was just quoted by the CBC,

00:12:09.580 it's a left-wing website in Vancouver funded by the Tides Foundation, if you can believe it.

00:12:13.880 They went into a full panic about this.

00:12:17.460 But I don't think they actually succeeded in making it look like political interference.

00:12:21.780 They sort of debunk it.

00:12:22.640 You see this picture at the bottom here, Blake Shelton?

00:12:25.700 They're showing that the same house that was allegedly Jagmeet Singh's house

00:12:30.340 has also been matched up with other Hollywood celebrities for similar clickbait stories.

00:12:36.260 It's not political at all.

00:12:37.400 They're just trying to get people to look at cool people next to cool houses.

00:12:42.220 I'm not saying it's true.

00:12:43.600 I'm not saying it's ethical.

00:12:45.140 I'm just saying it's the Internet.

00:12:46.840 It's not political at all.

00:12:48.180 And by the way, I don't think it damages Jagmeet Singh.

00:12:50.720 I think what damages him is he really is a jet-setter multimillionaire.

00:12:54.640 But more than that, he's a know-nothing. 0.84

00:12:56.660 He's a millionaire, socialist, know-nothing. 0.69

00:12:58.460 And yeah, you're arguing with someone who's wrong on the Internet.

00:13:03.300 Hey, I found this obscure website called Attorney Cocktail,

00:13:05.960 and it's got this full...

00:13:07.380 Yeah, okay, dude, you're totally right.

00:13:10.740 You're right, and that one in a billion websites you found,

00:13:14.880 a website that was totally wrong.

00:13:17.960 Yeah, you nailed it.

00:13:19.340 And you want the government to put aside everything less important

00:13:23.560 and have an immediate investigation into this.

00:13:27.180 Grow up.

00:13:29.000 Grow up. 0.99

00:13:29.740 Okay, back to this ridiculous CBC story. 0.94

00:13:32.360 It's not the first recent attempt at spreading false claims about Singh.

00:13:35.960 Late last year, another story, which has been shared more than 5,700 times on Facebook,

00:13:41.780 accused Singh of having links to Sikh militants.

00:13:45.680 Yeah, that's not actually fake news, though.

00:13:47.880 He does have links to Sikh militants.

00:13:50.020 Here is a Globe and Mail article from last year saying just that.

00:13:54.000 NDP leader Jagmeet Singh took part in a separatist Sikh homelad rally in San Francisco in June of 2015

00:14:00.340 that venerated a violent Sikh religious leader who was killed in the Indian army assault on the Golden Temple in 1984.

00:14:08.160 Mr. Singh, then an NDP member of the Ontario legislature,

00:14:10.820 was invited to speak at a sovereignty rally where speakers denounced India

00:14:14.240 and called for an independent Sikh state known as Kalistan.

00:14:16.940 Yeah, that ain't fake news.

00:14:20.340 Here, this is the CBC.

00:14:22.500 Maybe they might remember this interview.

00:14:24.300 Take a look at this.

00:14:25.480 Do you think that some Canadian Sikhs go too far

00:14:28.940 when they honor Talvinder Singh Parma as a martyr of the Sikh nation,

00:14:34.840 when they put up posters of him as a Shaheed, a martyr,

00:14:38.600 when he was the architect of the Air India bombing?

00:14:41.000 Do you think that's appropriate?

00:14:42.260 Well, I think it's so important that we really clarify a misconception that exists.

00:14:47.920 There has been a lot of work and seems to be creating a conflict that's between Hindus and Sikhs.

00:14:54.940 And for me, that's something that really offended me.

00:14:56.960 I grew up with a lot of close friends and dear family friends that were from the Hindu faith

00:15:01.460 that told me stories of how they actually put themselves at risk to save their Sikh neighbors.

00:15:06.980 And so for me, one of my goals was to erase this false narrative of a Hindu-Sikh conflict.

00:15:12.240 And what I really believe in...

00:15:13.200 Forgive me, but you could do that right now by saying,

00:15:16.280 no, it isn't appropriate to put up posters of Canada's worst ever mass murderer as a martyr.

00:15:21.240 Let me make sure we...

00:15:22.080 Do you think that's appropriate?

00:15:23.140 Well, let me just clarify your point here.

00:15:24.580 It's so important that we rid this notion that there's ever been a conflict between Hindus and Sikhs.

00:15:28.900 It's never been the case.

00:15:30.520 We've been living in existence as neighbors.

00:15:33.780 Third time of asking.

00:15:34.800 It's not a hard question.

00:15:35.900 Third time of asking.

00:15:37.140 Is it appropriate to put up posters...

00:15:38.360 Sorry, I'm just going to finish my sentence.

00:15:40.060 So the community has lived together, coexisted in peace and harmony, and we need to celebrate that.

00:15:47.000 I'm not going to inflict any more of that on you.

00:15:48.820 It went on for quite some time.

00:15:49.880 But like I say, I'm not sure if it's fake news that Jagmeet Singh is chummy with Sikh extremists.

00:15:56.100 I think he himself might even be a Sikh extremist.

00:15:59.620 And by the way, so is Trudeau.

00:16:01.380 No, Justin Trudeau literally brought that man on the right there.

00:16:06.200 He's a convicted Sikh terrorist named Jaspal Atwal.

00:16:10.140 Trudeau invited him on his scandal-ridden trip to India last year.

00:16:14.840 So I'm not picking on Jagmeet Singh because he's Sikh.

00:16:17.840 I think Trudeau is just as bad on that issue.

00:16:21.060 But why on earth should a bureaucrat at Elections Canada be the judge of whether or not that's defamatory or fake or whatever?

00:16:28.740 How about let the voters be the judge of that?

00:16:30.900 And if Jagmeet Singh really thinks he's being defamed legally, let him sue in court.

00:16:35.260 I'll just read a little bit more from the CBC story.

00:16:40.100 The NDP sent CBC News screen capture images that show the ad that appeared in The Courier

00:16:45.720 also appeared on the History Channel website and the UK-based site for the Independent newspaper.

00:16:51.460 Clicking on the link brings the reader to a photo gallery of more than 145 celebrities with mansions,

00:16:56.440 including Alex Rodriguez, the Obamas, and Rihanna.

00:16:58.260 Yeah, it's like you're complaining, you know, about the National Enquirer saying that Bill Clinton lives on Mars

00:17:05.360 or Hillary Clinton is really Elvis Presley.

00:17:08.380 Those are entertainments.

00:17:09.860 We had them before the era of the Internet at the grocery store.

00:17:13.400 Alien stories.

00:17:15.700 Quadruplet stories. 0.64

00:17:18.280 You don't sue the tabs unless you have more money than brains.

00:17:22.100 You don't get to government to censor them.

00:17:24.700 Grow up.

00:17:26.080 This wasn't a campaign ad.

00:17:27.360 It wasn't defamatory to begin with.

00:17:29.680 And, okay, it's false.

00:17:31.180 So the picture of the mansion wasn't his mansion.

00:17:34.360 So what?

00:17:36.360 You want the government to get involved? 0.99

00:17:39.100 Now, this is obviously a really dumb story. 0.98

00:17:42.660 But that's the point. 0.98

00:17:43.700 They're using a really dumb complaint to ask for a really powerful remedy.

00:17:50.400 Government regulation of the Internet in the name of election fairness. 0.69

00:17:54.520 It's not just Jagmeet Singh.

00:17:55.900 Obviously, it's the TIE, that's the TIDES-backed propaganda website.

00:18:01.900 And the CBC, the Trudeau-backed propaganda website.

00:18:05.820 In fact, Trudeau's candidate in Burnaby at a candidate's debate for the by-election,

00:18:11.760 that's where Jagmeet Singh is running to,

00:18:13.660 Trudeau's candidate, just this week, called for the United Nations?

00:18:18.900 Not even in Elections Canada.

00:18:20.740 He wants the United Nations to regulate the Internet.

00:18:24.500 Seriously, listen for yourself.

00:18:25.700 But right now, Internet is into everybody's home.

00:18:30.780 And with something like this, it's the power of a computer.

00:18:37.340 In the 70s, it's the whole university.

00:18:41.080 I mean, the memories is like this.

00:18:42.360 You get one in your hand right now.

00:18:44.140 So I think the power of Internet and storage, we are into a new era.

00:18:49.320 And I think the United Nations should have a body to regulate those activities.

00:18:58.200 Yeah.

00:18:59.720 I think...

00:19:01.140 That's why you like China daily. 0.75

00:19:03.280 I'm sorry.

00:19:03.900 The idea is that...

00:19:05.280 It's regulation.

00:19:06.520 It's regulation, yeah.

00:19:07.300 It's regulation.

00:19:09.420 I think my time is up, yeah.

00:19:12.680 He actually got booed.

00:19:14.760 It was a left-wing event.

00:19:15.920 It was sponsored by a left-wing lobby group in a left-wing city.

00:19:19.020 But even there, people were grossed up by his idea that he had a UN censor the Internet.

00:19:24.120 The fancy people want to regulate the Internet. 0.77

00:19:27.420 And they will.

00:19:28.160 And they are.

00:19:29.420 Soon, those boos you heard, they'll be eliminated by the algorithm, however. 0.99

00:19:35.140 Now, everyone knows this is stupid, but it's all a pretext, an excuse, like the Reichstag fire. 0.92

00:19:41.540 A false alarm, but an alarm, nonetheless, that will be used by the CBC, by the Tides Foundation's TIE, 0.97

00:19:47.020 by the Liberals, to regulate what you and I can say and can hear in the upcoming election.

00:19:53.980 Over the past month, I've told you about how the government of Alberta under Rachel Notley

00:19:56.960 is trying to regulate what we can and can't say in Alberta during the upcoming election.

00:20:02.280 They try to claim that we're not journalists, but rather we have to be like a political party

00:20:08.940 and register and be regulated.

00:20:10.760 Obviously, that's not true.

00:20:11.860 That's unconstitutional.

00:20:12.660 That's not going to happen.

00:20:13.620 That's going to fail.

00:20:14.440 But that's the provincial government of Alberta, which does not have the same power to regulate

00:20:18.300 the Internet as does the federal government.

00:20:21.000 Justin Trudeau does have a constitutional authority over telecommunications.

00:20:24.280 Telecommunications.

00:20:26.500 Trudeau's CRTC has already said it wants the authority to review online news videos in Canada.

00:20:34.180 That means us.

00:20:35.600 And the other day, Harjeet Sajan, the defense minister, was part of an announcement of $7 million

00:20:40.860 worth of media monitors in the election.

00:20:44.220 The defense minister himself was part of this announcement monitoring Canadian media.

00:20:50.840 And the defense minister's there.

00:20:52.380 They actually said they're going to have national awareness session.

00:20:56.620 Hey, I'll see the awareness session.

00:20:58.460 Okay, comrade.

00:21:00.240 To teach Canadians what we should or shouldn't believe.

00:21:04.180 So I guess we were smart enough as citizens to be able to vote in the last election when Trudeau

00:21:09.480 won with 39% of the vote.

00:21:11.700 So that countered.

00:21:12.600 That was fair.

00:21:13.540 We were smart enough to separate the defamation from the truth then when we voted for Trudeau.

00:21:18.500 But we can't be trusted to think for ourselves this year when we might throw the bum out. 1.00

00:21:24.700 And it's pretty much unanimous that we need to be censored and regulated.

00:21:27.460 The political establishment agrees.

00:21:28.800 The bailout media agrees.

00:21:30.320 We have to stop people from saying mean things on the internet.

00:21:33.880 Or even not even mean things but weird things like Jagmeet Singh lives in a mansion in LA or whatever.

00:21:39.580 The only thing they haven't decided on is whether it'll be run, this censorship, out of Ottawa.

00:21:46.500 Or as Trudeau's candidate suggested, run out of the United Nations.

00:21:51.180 Stay with us for more.

00:21:51.880 The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false.

00:22:09.800 Neither the current nor the previous Attorney General was ever directed by me or by anyone in my office

00:22:17.400 to take a decision in this matter.

00:22:21.460 The allegations reported in the story are false.

00:22:25.420 At no time did I or my office direct the current or previous Attorney General

00:22:32.540 to make any particular decision in this matter.

00:22:36.320 But not necessarily direct, Prime Minister.

00:22:38.400 Was there any sort of influence whatsoever?

00:22:40.880 As I've said, at no time did we direct the Attorney General, current or previous,

00:22:48.640 to take any decision whatsoever in this matter.

00:22:51.960 Yeah, you don't need to be a trial lawyer to know he's lying.

00:22:54.900 And by lying, I mean he's speaking the technical truth by saying no one, quote,

00:23:01.340 directed Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former Justice Minister, to take a particular decision.

00:23:07.960 But as we discussed at some length yesterday, saying, oh, make this go away, Jody.

00:23:13.080 Or you know what to do.

00:23:15.380 Or I know you'll do the right thing.

00:23:17.960 You don't have to actually direct someone to take a particular decision to put pressure on them.

00:23:23.620 And as you know, more than 50 meetings that were declared to the lobbyist commissioner.

00:23:30.500 That's a lot of pressure.

00:23:31.500 I can't imagine any cabinet minister being able to resist 50 lobbyist meetings.

00:23:40.500 Well, is this going to have any legs?

00:23:42.880 This would be the end of anyone else, Stephen Harper.

00:23:45.920 They almost did Stephen Harper in for, I don't know, Bev owed a $16 orange juice

00:23:50.440 or for having his chief of staff pay back money to the government under Mike Duffy.

00:23:55.240 But this, joining us now via Skype from London, Ontario, is our friend Andrew Lawton,

00:24:00.620 who is a fellow with True North and the boss of AndrewLawton.ca.

00:24:04.380 Andrew, great to see you again.

00:24:06.140 Likewise.

00:24:06.880 I think this would doom any conservative, obviously.

00:24:11.840 There's a lot of journalists, including traditional liberals, who are being good journalists here,

00:24:17.980 who are asking real questions.

00:24:19.140 We just saw one such real question.

00:24:21.160 But I'm pretty sure, and I'd like your thoughts on this,

00:24:24.440 I'm pretty sure Trudeau's just going to bluff his way through, brazen his way through,

00:24:28.400 and the media will get sick of this in about a week.

00:24:31.780 I remember at the height of the Rob Ford scandal,

00:24:34.420 where we saw probably the most overzealous media we've ever seen in Canada,

00:24:39.460 they had a helicopter following him on his drive home.

00:24:42.740 I mean, this is the extent to which the media will go when a conservative is involved in something.

00:24:47.660 And we're talking about something monumentally worse than anything Stephen Harper did,

00:24:51.740 Rob Ford did, any provincial premier.

00:24:53.840 We're talking about something that, at the very least, is political corruption.

00:24:58.360 At the very worst, is criminal corruption.

00:25:00.920 And I'm glad you pointed out that use of the word directed, Ezra,

00:25:04.900 because this is a very specific and narrow term.

00:25:08.440 And when he repeats, or any politician repeats the same thing over and over,

00:25:11.960 you have to wonder what it is that they're avoiding saying.

00:25:14.660 And the thing that I find interesting here is that such clarity, or lack thereof,

00:25:20.680 may impact how things are viewed in a technical sense in a court of law.

00:25:24.680 But to Canadians, the nuance is irrelevant.

00:25:27.720 When Trudeau says, no, my office didn't direct this, Canadians here know nothing happened.

00:25:33.120 And if anything comes out that proves opposite, Trudeau is done.

00:25:36.920 But in order for that to happen, we need people that are going to be on this,

00:25:40.140 and we need people that are going to blow the whistle.

00:25:41.960 Whether that's Jody Wilson-Raybould, whether it's someone in her office, someone in the PMO,

00:25:46.620 we need someone to ultimately reveal specifically what was said.

00:25:50.800 Yeah.

00:25:51.120 Let me give you an example in how journalists cover things on the left versus things on the right.

00:25:56.300 If there is a conservative politician in any jurisdiction, the United States or Canada,

00:26:02.320 if there's a conservative who does something embarrassing,

00:26:05.180 the media immediately shops it around to every other conservative and say,

00:26:09.020 do you reject him? Will you renounce him and disavow him, for example?

00:26:13.740 Like they just immediately flood the zone on the story.

00:26:19.340 Let me give you an example of how that is not happening here.

00:26:22.780 And I'd like your thoughts on this.

00:26:23.820 Let me just throw this at you.

00:26:24.580 As you know, SNC-Lavalin had dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of high-level lobbying meetings in Ottawa

00:26:33.840 specifically to get dropped from this criminal prosecution.

00:26:38.540 In fact, we've shown some of those meetings.

00:26:42.000 They were happening several times a week.

00:26:43.740 And some of them were, as you can see here, senior advisor to the PM, chief of staff to Bill Morneau,

00:26:51.260 director of policy, and so much, even the ambassador, McNaughton, weirdly was lobbied again and again.

00:26:59.000 So if this shoe were on the other foot, Andrew, and I'm almost done my preamble, thank you for your patience.

00:27:03.560 The media would be calling each and every one of these people who were lobbied and would say,

00:27:10.800 what did they say and what did you do?

00:27:13.920 And did you just ignore him or did you press Jody Wilson-Raybould?

00:27:20.420 Like, for example, Bill Morneau.

00:27:22.160 They met with his chief of staff.

00:27:23.480 They met with Morneau himself.

00:27:24.880 The ambassador met with him several times.

00:27:27.320 Well, that's obviously suggesting a follow-up, right?

00:27:29.760 If you meet with someone and then you meet with them again, you're checking on their progress.

00:27:34.520 I have not seen any journalists follow up with these 50, now maybe the staff won't return calls,

00:27:40.840 but don't tell me that a cabinet minister, Bill Morneau, or Chrystia Freeland, whose office was called here,

00:27:47.740 did Chrystia Freeland twist the arm of Jody Wilson-Raybould?

00:27:51.580 Otherwise, why would they have bothered lobbying her office?

00:27:55.160 Did Bill Morneau twist the arm of Jody Wilson-Raybould?

00:27:58.300 Otherwise, why would they bother meeting with Bill Morneau so many times?

00:28:02.120 So what do you take of that angle and the fact that it's not being covered by our mainstream media?

00:28:07.600 Well, frankly, as far as definitive proof goes that something's happened,

00:28:11.580 the lobbying registry is really the smoking gun here.

00:28:15.280 And there are a couple of reasons for this.

00:28:17.080 If this company, which does massive construction contracts in Canada and abroad,

00:28:22.340 were lobbying the public works minister, the environment minister, the minister of infrastructure,

00:28:29.400 I'd say these are fairly standard things for a company of this business to be doing.

00:28:35.460 For this organization to be lobbying on justice and law enforcement,

00:28:39.780 when I've looked through the SNC-Lavalin website, there is no justice or law enforcement mandate.

00:28:44.720 This can only be one thing, and that is due to the company's legal trials.

00:28:49.940 And what I find fascinating here, Ezra, this is not one of these conjectured examples of a company

00:28:54.440 that might have some murky ties if you really dig deep.

00:28:57.540 We're talking about a company that has been demonstrally proven to be corrupt and to be complicit

00:29:03.800 and directly active in bribing.

00:29:06.280 We know they've bribed Libyan officials, including $160 million to Muammar Gaddafi's son,

00:29:12.740 Saadi Gaddafi.

00:29:13.840 We know that a former vice president was convicted.

00:29:17.100 He pleaded guilty to illegally funneling $110,000 of donations to the liberals over a period of several years.

00:29:24.220 We know that the former CEO was just convicted for the super hospital scam in Montreal,

00:29:30.920 where, again, bribing public officials.

00:29:33.120 It was about five and a half years ago that the World Bank, a nonpartisan group,

00:29:38.200 found that Canada led the world when it came to corporate corruption

00:29:43.260 because we had 117 companies on the list of 250 that were supposed to be corrupt.

00:29:50.900 But of those 117, 115 of them, so almost all, were affiliates of SNC-Lavalin or SNC-Lavalin corporate itself.

00:30:00.160 Well, so the reason I say that, Ezra, is because this company should not have had an audience

00:30:05.180 with anyone in the government for optics reasons alone.

00:30:08.760 You had NDP Member of Parliament Charlie Angus before the story of the PMO broke

00:30:13.960 saying that this company should be barred from having any federal government contracts

00:30:18.320 because of its track record.

00:30:19.520 Charlie Angus and I disagree with each other on a lot of things, but I happen to agree.

00:30:25.260 A company that is demonstrably corrupt should not be allowed to bid on federal government contracts.

00:30:31.480 And by extension, the Prime Minister should not be giving these organizations an audience in general.

00:30:37.540 When you add into it the fact that there is an ongoing prosecution that involves the government,

00:30:42.040 if for optics reasons alone, this should not have happened,

00:30:46.540 let alone the potential for what we're hearing about in the Globe this week happening.

00:30:50.560 You know, the excuses this company is offering up, well, it would hurt our reputation,

00:30:55.000 some people might lose their work.

00:30:57.140 Yeah, I guess Enron could have said that.

00:30:59.720 I guess Bree-X could have said that. 0.59

00:31:01.920 Don't prosecute us.

00:31:02.780 Yeah, Bernie Madoff, I think he lost.

00:31:04.340 Yeah, Bernie Madoff.

00:31:05.240 I mean, yeah, that's what happens to you when you break the law.

00:31:09.680 And it's incredible.

00:31:12.400 I mean, the World Bank, they do some business in the nastiest places.

00:31:17.720 I mean, theoretically, the World Bank is the kind of place that will help finance a project

00:31:22.200 in the third world, like build a power plant in the Congo or something.

00:31:25.940 So they are dealing in some of the most corrupt places in the world.

00:31:28.580 If SNC-Lavalin is too corrupt for the World Bank, Andrew,

00:31:35.380 and yet the government of Canada still refuses to write them off, that's super gross.

00:31:41.320 I mean, the World Bank is in the nastiest reaches.

00:31:45.160 And if they say, oh, we're not going to deal with SNC-Lavalin.

00:31:48.520 We'll work in the Congo. 0.98

00:31:49.940 We'll work in the worst places, but not with SNC-Lavalin.

00:31:54.000 That's embarrassing for Canada.

00:31:55.720 But that is all Justin Trudeau.

00:31:58.580 Yeah, you know, he prides himself that Canada's back.

00:32:01.020 I mean, this isn't the ranking we want to be on the top of here, but you are very much correct.

00:32:05.820 And when you look at the number of executives, and I'm not talking about some low-level janitor

00:32:10.400 at SNC's offshoot company, but CEOs, vice presidents, former CEOs and former vice presidents

00:32:16.440 that have been convicted of corruption, there is a huge question mark as to why there was

00:32:21.920 any lobbying on justice.

00:32:23.460 And this is something that, when we go back to Trudeau's use of the word directed, whether

00:32:29.500 it was directed, implied, requested, doesn't matter.

00:32:33.000 If we're talking about interference and we are seeing a proven track record of private meetings,

00:32:39.300 look, I've been trying to get an interview with Justin Trudeau since he became prime minister,

00:32:42.820 and I haven't been able to get anywhere on it.

00:32:45.180 Yet somehow, this company that has a great many convicts among its former ranks is able

00:32:50.800 to get there every month.

00:32:52.500 Well, yeah, I mean, Trudeau seems to meet with the strangest people.

00:32:55.220 He gave $10.5 million to Omer Cotter.

00:32:57.340 He's had at least two meetings with Joshua Boyle, Cotter's former brother-in-law, who

00:33:02.560 went to join the Taliban.

00:33:04.220 So I guess you just have the wrong ideology, Andrew.

00:33:07.780 Here's a question that hit me immediately when I saw this headline yesterday.

00:33:11.320 It was the first thing I thought.

00:33:13.880 Jody Wilson-Raybould, who I didn't really have much time for, I'll be honest, I have a new

00:33:18.200 respect for her because to stand up to the man who appointed you and to lose your high

00:33:22.720 position as justice minister over a point of principle and to bear that quietly, that's

00:33:30.640 quite a sign of character.

00:33:32.680 I didn't see it coming.

00:33:34.600 And I salute her now and I have a respect for her I did not have before.

00:33:38.280 By the way, her dad, I mean, she's not saying anything.

00:33:41.280 She says she's bound by solicitor-client privilege.

00:33:43.760 Her father made a Facebook post yesterday, which basically said, now we know why my daughter

00:33:50.040 was fired.

00:33:50.920 And I think it's a good proxy for what she herself would say.

00:33:55.400 But my first thought, Andrew, was if Gerald Butts and Katie Telford and Justin Trudeau and

00:34:03.120 half the cabinet and all their advisors were part of this big swarm.

00:34:10.760 Swarm, like 50 people were swarming Jody Wilson-Raybould here.

00:34:15.780 And she resisted them.

00:34:17.260 Was this really the first time they went to bat for a corporate friend of Trudeau?

00:34:23.660 I mean, do they do the same thing with Bombardier, another company that has criminal prosecutions

00:34:29.200 around the world for corruption?

00:34:30.700 Do they do the thing for Huawei, which, as we know, was a huge donor to the Trudeau think

00:34:36.760 tank called Canada 2020?

00:34:38.480 So it immediately got me thinking, Andrew, we found out about this because of some luck

00:34:44.860 and some good reporting by the Globe and Mail.

00:34:47.360 Give them credit.

00:34:48.920 What else is there six-sevenths of the iceberg that remains underwater and unseen?

00:34:56.460 Well, that's a big question.

00:34:58.200 And as is true of this case, we don't know until we know.

00:35:01.380 But I do think that it's relevant to look at what happened with John McCallum in China

00:35:05.900 and Huawei just a few short weeks ago as an illustration that a lot of the times these

00:35:11.460 things are hidden in plain sight.

00:35:14.180 And we know that John McCallum was ultimately fired.

00:35:16.760 The big question mark still is whether he was fired for what he said or because there

00:35:21.300 needed to be a scapegoat once he got caught.

00:35:23.660 And I know that case has been covered in a fair bit of detail now.

00:35:26.960 But it stands to reason that you don't expect a senior cabinet minister or a senior ambassador

00:35:32.720 who's been in cabinet to go rogue and to speak in such specifics without having direction.

00:35:38.560 And again, I don't want to implicate someone in a conspiracy that might not exist because

00:35:43.560 I am not the conspiratorial type, contrary to popular belief.

00:35:47.220 But you have to look at the evidence.

00:35:48.740 And in the last month, we have now two big examples of a high-ranking figure being linked

00:35:55.000 to a company that has a lot questionable going on in it.

00:35:58.720 Yeah, I tell you, it's the Libranos, as we used to call them during the ad scam days. 0.97

00:36:04.640 Well, it's great to see you again, Andrew.

00:36:06.040 Thanks so much for your point of view.

00:36:07.840 I look forward to watching this in the days ahead.

00:36:11.740 I hope it doesn't peter out.

00:36:14.160 But the fact that some of the follow-up journalism I just talked about 10 minutes ago,

00:36:18.060 about asking those other ministers, asking those other people,

00:36:20.880 well, what was your role?

00:36:21.880 What did you do?

00:36:22.480 What did you talk about?

00:36:23.300 The fact that that journalism, from what I can tell, hasn't happened yet,

00:36:26.500 tells me the mainstream media is just about done here.

00:36:29.560 And they did their annual prove we're independent business.

00:36:32.760 And tomorrow, they're going to get right back to applying for their $595 million bailout fund.

00:36:38.120 That's my fear.

00:36:38.980 Last word to you, Andrew.

00:36:40.800 Look, I think that we are right to be skeptical of the mainstream media.

00:36:45.780 But ultimately, there are a lot of journalists that I know

00:36:47.780 would absolutely love to have a piece of this story.

00:36:50.320 So I want to hope that if it's there, they'll follow it.

00:36:53.420 And we have to hope that there is someone that has, either within the government or within

00:36:57.740 SNC-Lavalin, a willingness to play ball and bring some transparency here.

00:37:03.160 Because certainly, sunlight is needed.

00:37:05.240 And I think Justin Trudeau's absence from question period yesterday,

00:37:08.540 where he would have been caught very handily just giving that same scripted answer over again,

00:37:13.560 speaks volumes.

00:37:14.180 Yeah, he's probably off to that billionaire's island in the Bahamas right now.

00:37:18.500 Great to see you again, Andrew.

00:37:19.360 Thanks for your time.

00:37:20.540 Thank you.

00:37:21.020 All right.

00:37:21.420 There you have it.

00:37:21.880 Andrew Lawton, a fellow with True North.

00:37:25.180 Stay with us.

00:37:26.340 More ahead on The Rebel.

00:37:27.200 Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about Trudeau pressuring the Justice Minister

00:37:42.380 to stop prosecuting SNC-Lavalin.

00:37:44.880 Peter writes, 0.88

00:37:46.300 I am not surprised that Justin Trudeau and his liberals are more corrupt than

00:37:49.220 Chrétien's liberals or his father's liberals.

00:37:51.400 I won't be surprised when liberals vote for him in Quebec, regardless or because of the corruption.

00:37:56.180 Well, look, obviously there are great people in Quebec, and we want to treat each other as individuals

00:38:01.200 and judge us based on our own character and merits.

00:38:04.500 But I think it is safe to say the political culture in Quebec is more in tune with the continental European culture

00:38:12.200 as opposed to the Anglo-American culture.

00:38:16.400 You know, the Squaresville accountants, the Scots. 1.00

00:38:20.300 That's the Scots-Irish. 0.81

00:38:21.700 That's the Anglo-American way of thinking.

00:38:24.040 It's not the kickback, bribery, corruption.

00:38:29.360 Of course, that's how we work, way of operating, as they do in, I'm sorry to say, in Latin America, in Europe, in Quebec.

00:38:36.660 When you vote for a political mafia, not a mafia mafia.

00:38:42.620 When you vote for a political mafia from Montreal, don't be surprised.

00:38:46.100 That's what you get.

00:38:48.320 Ron writes,

00:38:48.980 Didn't Pierre Trudeau have one of his son's criminal records for drug possession removed?

00:38:52.800 The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

00:38:55.360 You know, it does ring a bell.

00:38:57.620 I'll have to do a little bit more research on that.

00:38:59.720 I know that I think he intervened to even stop a charge.

00:39:05.680 Let me look into that, because I don't want to go from memory.

00:39:10.640 Stephen writes,

00:39:11.840 Eight more months to go, and Trudeau is hammering a nail in his own coffin every month.

00:39:15.640 Looks like he is a four-year prime minister.

00:39:17.460 Well, I'll believe it when I see it.

00:39:20.420 I'll believe it when I see it, because not only do you have the Liberal Party campaigning,

00:39:24.440 you're going to have a hundred of these so-called third-party campaign groups.

00:39:28.520 You're going to have the entire media, both the state broadcaster and the $595 million bailout media,

00:39:35.140 and all the institutional power of the liberals.

00:39:38.840 And up against that is Andrew Scheer, who looks always to me like a little lamb in the headlights.

00:39:45.360 Who knows? Could happen.

00:39:46.360 On my interview with Joel Pollack, Liza writes,

00:39:50.580 I wish Americans would get updated on Canada's immigration policies.

00:39:53.980 We do not have an orderly or skills-based immigration system anymore.

00:39:56.920 It is a shambles here.

00:39:58.200 Yeah, and I didn't want to spend too much time on the show sort of correcting Joel on that,

00:40:03.260 because there are some things about Canada's immigration policy on paper that aren't bad,

00:40:08.860 and that's probably the result of almost 10 years of Stephen Harper in government,

00:40:12.740 but that's being undone, and I should probably send Joel a private note

00:40:15.540 just for his own info, just for his own work at Breitbart.com,

00:40:19.340 so he doesn't praise Canada as a great system to be emulated.

00:40:23.160 Well, that is our show for the week, and I hope you enjoyed watching it.

00:40:26.760 We've got so much going on here at The Rebel all the time,

00:40:29.960 and we've got new talent coming aboard.

00:40:32.720 I think I've mentioned some of those new people to you.

00:40:34.560 Make sure you check the rest of our website.

00:40:38.360 I'm sort of excited.

00:40:39.000 I feel like we've got to...

00:40:39.860 Oh, you know what?

00:40:40.700 I didn't mention this.

00:40:41.680 You know, in seven days, did you know it's our fourth anniversary?

00:40:46.060 If memory serves, we were born on February 15, 2015.

00:40:51.040 I think.

00:40:52.780 I think I don't have the date right on that.

00:40:54.380 I can't believe it.

00:40:55.380 Four years, and we're still alive.

00:40:57.760 I don't even think you'd call a four-year-old a toddler anymore.

00:41:00.520 A toddler is like two or three.

00:41:02.720 Four years old is a young person almost in kindergarten.

00:41:05.740 We are kindergartners, and it shows.

00:41:08.640 Thanks for your help keeping us alive.

00:41:10.160 We depend on you for crowdfunding.

00:41:11.540 No money from the government never will.

00:41:13.780 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:41:16.380 see you at home.

00:41:17.480 Good night.

00:41:18.200 Keep fighting for freedom.

00:41:21.040 We'll be right back.

Rebel News Podcast - February 09, 2019

Jagmeet Singh wants government to fix “fake news” — and he's not alone

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