Rebel News Podcast - TAMARA UGOLINI ｜ Trudeau's Liberals continue to push disturbing censorship agenda

00:00:00.000 Tonight, the Justin Trudeau Liberals bury opposition around their sweeping censorship

00:00:20.120 plans. Plus, a Canadian lawyer will discuss the administrative state tiptoe and the role

00:00:26.140 it will play in censorship from the government that once campaigned on honest, transparent

00:00:32.200 and accountable governance. It's Tuesday, April the 18th, and I'm Tamara Ugolini,

00:00:38.300 guest hosting tonight on The Ezra Levant Show.

00:00:56.140 With the Justin Trudeau Liberals moving forward on their massive legislative program to censor

00:01:02.300 the content that Canadians access online, it should come as no surprise that they are burying

00:01:07.600 and suppressing opposition to it. Ezra has previously warned you of the incremental pieces

00:01:13.920 of legislation that will work as a domino effect on free expression in Canada. The Liberals sweeping

00:01:20.640 online censorship and regulation plans will both relegate and delegate the free flow of

00:01:26.900 information on the World Wide Web into the hands of a few. The first of which is Bill C-11,

00:01:34.200 an act to amend the Broadcasting Act which essentially declares social media users as individual

00:01:40.400 broadcasters and subjects them to the whims of the Canadian Radio Television Broadcasting Corporation,

00:01:46.860 otherwise known as the CRTC.

00:01:50.640 C-11 is a piece of legislation so ambiguously worded with such sweeping power that even Liberal

00:01:57.560 appointed Senator David Richards drew the chilling comparison between Bill C-11 and Nazi Germany's

00:02:04.580 Ministry of Enlightenment or, better yet, George Orwell's fictitious depiction of the Ministry

00:02:10.800 of Truth in the dystopian writing of his authoritarian state in the novel 1984.

00:02:16.680 I'm wondering if anyone on the staff of our Minister of Heritage understands this. In Germany it was

00:02:23.180 called the Ministry of National Enlightenment and every radio was run by Joseph Goebbels. Complete

00:02:29.400 ideological manipulation in the name of national purity. No decree by the CRTC could in any way tell us what

00:02:37.600 Canadian content should or should not be or who should be allowed to bob their heads up out of the new murkiness we have created. 1.00

00:02:46.520 Like Orwell's proclamation, the very bill suggests a platform that decrees all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

00:02:56.040 The bill allows for further government tampering of algorithms to prop up or suppress whatever content they do or do not want you to access.

00:03:09.040 And for Canada's Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who oversees much of this regulation under the guise of stopping mis- and disinformation, he believes without a doubt that the government will win because Canadians must be better digital citizens.

00:03:26.040 But if we don't address this disinformation problem, well they win. And we will let that happen. Now, more than ever, Canadians need reliable and credible information. We need the tools and knowledge to recognize and fight back against online disinformation. There is an urgency to act. And we're acting.

00:03:53.040 We all have a responsibility to help in the solution and be better digital citizens. We need to remember that democracy just doesn't happen like this. We have to fight for it. We have to fight to keep it.

00:04:11.720 He says that journalists are on the front lines of fighting disinformation, but only those state-approved journalists will be tolerated under these censorship plans.

00:04:23.220 So I also want to recognize the incredible work that you guys, the journalists, have done in Canada over the past two years, from keeping Canadians up to date on the pandemic, to providing on-the-ground coverage of the war in Ukraine, even keeping Canadians in formats going on at their local city hall, which is fundamental for our communities, for different regions.

00:04:48.300 So all of this is essential. And you are at the front line of fighting disinformation. We need you. The society, not the government, the society needs you.

00:04:58.300 Under pieces of legislation like C-11, the government will ensure that you see content exactly like that which is featured in this woke montage that came out of the 2023 Canadian Screen Awards that took place last week in Toronto.

00:05:15.100 And I should fair warn you, it's pretty gross.

00:05:17.720 To all the trans and non-binary people in the room tonight, I love you.

00:05:47.280 I'm so glad that you exist.

00:05:48.820 Nothing bad or wrong can come from when we open ourselves up and let more people in.

00:05:55.360 I just wanted to dedicate this award to all the Indigenous children who were stolen from our families. 1.00

00:06:04.160 The advocacy, the activism, the pursuit of justice and equity is part of the job for all of us Indigenous creators every single day.

00:06:12.280 Seriously, those Canada's drag race people can party. 1.00

00:06:15.580 Woo! 0.99

00:06:16.000 Change-making comes in many forms. It can be having the tough conversations that make people uncomfortable on air.

00:06:23.800 It can be putting folks on camera who don't usually have their voices heard.

00:06:28.380 And the Canadian Screen Award goes to...

00:06:32.000 Canada's drag race, Brooklyn Heights, Brad Goreski, Tracy Melshor!

00:06:37.140 Right now we need the magic of drag more than ever.

00:06:40.940 We won!

00:06:44.940 Congratulations!

00:06:46.220 Well, this is embarrassing.

00:06:49.320 What did we win for this time?

00:06:51.360 Tom Power.

00:06:52.640 Not only did we have BIPOC representation in front and behind the camera, we had senior producers that were BIPOC.

00:07:03.440 We had queer people that were BIPOC. 0.98

00:07:06.320 We have the right to be seen in her and representation matters. When we see ourselves, we literally can change the world.

00:07:11.620 Incredible.

00:07:12.400 You're the first female to direct a Pixar movie. 1.00

00:07:14.480 The first Muslim superhero.

00:07:15.480 The first project with all Indigenous creatives at the helm.

00:07:19.480 Being the first lead Asian superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I think, is a sign that, you know, we are making progress as a society.

00:07:28.400 We are taking steps to give each and every person and every community a chance to feel represented and seen.

00:07:37.540 It's important to be recognized for your work, particularly if you belong to a community that is historically underrepresented.

00:07:43.660 It's important to have representation in film because then it gives a voice to people who are used to not being heard.

00:07:50.860 It's using their voice to call out systemic racism, to amplify those actively engaged in anti-racist work, and to challenge the structural inequality at the core of media organizations in Canada.

00:08:02.620 We all have to take responsibility for moving forward in a way that is inclusive, and you can be marginalized and still have privilege.

00:08:10.780 When I say my work, I mean sort of lifting marginalized communities.

00:08:13.780 Tracy, what have you learned about yourself through this process of becoming a very public version of the activist you always were?

00:08:22.780 It's been a journey.

00:08:23.780 Let's just keep on telling stories that are inclusive, are about representation.

00:08:30.780 Representation matters.

00:08:31.780 It really, truly does because I couldn't see myself on screen for the longest time.

00:08:35.780 This marks the first time the Golden Screen Award has been won for a film directed and written by women.

00:08:42.780 I hope that black and brown kids from Scarborough can watch this film and see themselves.

00:08:49.780 I am really excited about the new wave of Canadian comedy and the way it's opening up in terms of inclusion and representation.

00:08:57.780 I think the future of Canadian comedy is going to be extremely diverse.

00:09:02.780 It's the first time we've seen black Canadian history represented in this way.

00:09:07.780 Did you watch the E.T. Canada's Queen Elizabeth tribute?

00:09:10.780 I was? Sorry.

00:09:11.780 I mean, I'm super psyched to renew Monarch though, right?

00:09:14.780 Oh, sorry, just catching up with my unquestionably Canadian friends.

00:09:18.780 Then there's Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which will create digital intermediaries that force search engines and social media companies to pay news organizations that they link to.

00:09:31.780 But of course, they will only pay Trudeau-approved registered journalists who hold government news licenses.

00:09:39.780 The rest of us little guys, well, no cash for you.

00:09:43.780 And of course, there's another ambiguously worded sweeping piece of legislation by, yet again, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez.

00:09:52.780 It's a bill that is expected to be tabled in the coming weeks called the Online Harms Bill, or perhaps the preferred doublespeak name, the Online Safety Bill.

00:10:02.780 This Online Harms or Online Safety Bill, whatever it ends up being named, will create an entirely new bureaucracy known as the Digital Safety Commission, which the government itself says will have a broad mandate.

00:10:17.780 These new regulators would operationalize, oversee, and enforce the new regime.

00:10:24.780 That's literally what they call it, a regime.

00:10:27.780 The bill was first published as a legislative and regulatory proposal in the summer of 2021 as part of the government's attempt to confront harmful content online.

00:10:39.780 Minister Rodriguez believes that Canadians are hurt by whatever the government deems as unacceptable, hateful content, including, of course, myths and disinformation.

00:10:51.780 So I also want to recognize the incredible work that you guys, the journalists, have done in Canada over the past two years, from keeping Canadians up to date on the pandemic, to providing underground coverage of the war in Ukraine,

00:11:07.780 even keeping Canadian formats going down at their local city hall, which is fundamental for our communities, for different regions.

00:11:15.780 So all of this is essential. And you are the front line of fighting disinformation. We need you. The society, not the government, the society needs you.

00:11:25.780 Through the government's commitment to address online safety, the government claims that online platforms threaten and intimidate Canadians and put safety at risk and undermine Canada's social cohesion or democracy.

00:11:40.780 And yet they are so out of touch that they don't recognize that media in Canada is in crisis because they refuse to report facts or partake in actual news gathering, but rather continue to resort to propaganda and narrative clinging.

00:11:56.780 As you guys know, the news sector in Canada is in crisis.

00:12:01.780 And this contributes to the heightened public mistrust and the rise of harmful disinformation in our society.

00:12:09.780 Just think for a moment that between 2008 and 2015, and today, 451 news outlets closed their doors in Canada.

00:12:25.780 In the last two years, 64 of them closed their doors.

00:12:32.780 It's as though Trudeau's wedge issue of campaigning on COVID-19 vaccination status in the fall of 2021's SNAP election was not at the behest of unprecedented social division in this country.

00:12:46.780 Do you remember the hateful segregationist rhetoric spread by this supposedly democratic leader that claims to care about hurt feelings and harmful, hateful content?

00:12:59.780 I have a question from Tamara Ugolini from Rebel News.

00:13:06.780 Mr. Trudeau, the only reason that I'm allowed to ask you this question is because today the federal court ruled that the government doesn't have the right to determine who is or is not a journalist.

00:13:16.780 This is the second election in a row that the court had to overturn your government.

00:13:22.780 Do you still insist on being able to make that decision and why?

00:13:27.780 First of all, questions around accreditation were handled by the press gallery and the consortium of networks who have strong perspectives on quality journalism and the important information that is shared with Canadians.

00:13:43.780 The reality is organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines, around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic and be there for each other and keep our kids safe is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger.

00:14:11.780 Anger and lack of understanding of basic science.

00:14:16.780 You deserve a government that's going to continue to say get vaccinated.

00:14:19.780 And you know what? If you don't want to get vaccinated, that's your choice.

00:14:24.780 But don't think you can get on a plane or a train beside vaccinated people. 1.00

00:14:29.780 And now is the time for people who are still resistant to getting vaccinated to realize that that choice, which has consequences on putting our kids at risk, which has consequences at having us risk more lockdowns because they haven't chosen to get vaccinated yet.

00:14:54.780 That there will be consequences for those people in not being able to go to a gym or a restaurant, not being able to go to a movie theater, not being able to get on a train or a plane.

00:15:07.780 We're still making sure that people who've done their part and gotten vaccinated are able to get through and get back to as much of a normal life as possible on planes or trains without worrying that their kids are going to be sitting across the aisle from someone who's unvaccinated and putting them at risk.

00:15:25.780 I'm here to protect the freedoms of those who did the right thing and who want to get back to school, to restaurants, to traveling, to vacations.

00:15:40.780 I want to stand up for those who are there for their neighbors, not those who are risking us all going into further lockdowns, of slowing our economic recovery.

00:15:54.780 Trying to bring people together is not always compatible with science, with respect for human rights, with the best way to move things forward.

00:16:08.780 I mean, when Aaron O'Toole talks about, oh yes, we need to unite people, we need to bring people together, he's talking about defending the rights of people who are anti-vax.

00:16:19.780 No more than just being wrong, because everyone's entitled to their opinions, they are putting at risk their own kids, and they're putting at risk our kids as well.

00:16:32.780 That's why we've been unequivocal. If you want to get on a plane or a train in the coming months, you're going to have to be fully vaccinated, so families with their kids don't have to worry that someone is going to put them in danger in the seat next to them or across the aisle.

00:16:50.780 And yes, we can all say to a certain extent that it is unfortunate that people who chose not to get vaccinated are now the ones clogging up our ICU systems and our hospital beds that should be available for people who did their work and did get vaccinated.

00:17:14.780 Making sure workplaces can keep themselves and their employees safe. Making sure that businesses that choose to move forward with vaccination requirements aren't subject to unnecessary or unjustified lawsuits.

00:17:30.780 To endanger my kids and endanger us all of future lockdowns and risk all of us having a slower recovery.

00:17:37.780 If you make a choice, a personal choice, to not get vaccinated, then I will have no sympathy for you when you come to me and say,

00:17:47.780 Oh, but I can't go out to a restaurant with my friends, or I'm not being allowed to go to the gym, or my employer is telling me I have to continue to work from home.

00:17:56.780 You don't have a right to endanger others.

00:18:01.780 And those people are putting us all at risk.

00:18:10.780 Showing his inability to self-reflect, Trudeau knows he must censor everything from vaccine misinformation to extremism.

00:18:18.780 As though his own government, with their safe and effective big pharma marketing campaign slogan, haven't been the purveyors of pharma profiteering extremism and blatant scientific misinformation throughout the COVID narrative.

00:18:33.780 Canada plays a leading role to make our world a better place during this time of crisis on fighting harmful content online.

00:18:40.780 Through the sharing of information and best practices, we must identify and develop common standards.

00:18:48.780 There is no doubt that digital space has incredible power for good.

00:18:53.780 But from disinformation on vaccines to online extremism, we've also seen the threat it composed to our democratic values, systems, and our citizens.

00:19:04.780 This is a moment to stand for democracy against disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, and to stay true to these values that have led to respect and prosperity around the world.

00:19:19.780 See, while always ensuring and defending free speech, we must make it clear that it cannot be okay to bully and attack people online.

00:19:30.780 Governments, and especially big technology companies, need to safeguard people's data and privacy and address online harassment and violence to ensure trust in technology.

00:19:46.780 We can't allow the benefits of the digital space to come at the expense of people's rights or safety.

00:19:53.780 That means taking real action to protect our societies against polarization and radicalization while defending the rights of citizens online.

00:20:03.780 Nonetheless, through this new bureaucracy called the Digital Safety Commission, the Government of Canada claims to be committed to putting in place a transparent and accountable regulatory framework

00:20:15.780 for online safety for online safety in Canada.

00:20:18.780 But they have already started off on the wrong foot.

00:20:21.780 See, University of Ottawa law professor and research chair in internet and e-commerce law, Michael Geist, writes in a recent blog post about the subject for which he has filed an access to information request to find out just what kind of feedback the government was getting on their chillingly dystopian online censorship plans.

00:20:42.780 He details the launching of consultations on this bill beginning in 2021 under then-Heritage Minister Stephen Gilbeau when the government initially refused to release the actual submissions garnered from the consultations and instead posted a fluffy what-we-heard report that downplayed public concerns and failed to mention fundamental criticisms.

00:21:05.780 He says that the government only released the submissions after they were legally obligated to do so under the Access to Information Act for which he filed this request under.

00:21:16.780 The response to his ATIP details the public consultation preliminary overview of submissions and clearly states this.

00:21:25.780 90% of respondents are unsupportive of the proposal.

00:21:29.780 Concerns most cited are those around censorship slash freedom of expression, the 24-hour removal provision, the role of law enforcement and fears around surveillance and the definition of hate speech.

00:21:42.780 A lack of definitional detail, insufficient protections for marginalized groups, and linkages to law enforcement exacerbating existing social inequalities were also concerns that were raised.

00:21:55.780 A mere 5.4% of individual respondents are supportive of the proposal, while 4.6% of responses were mixed, neutral, or otherwise unclear.

00:22:08.780 Yet in the What We Heard Report, the Ministry says in the Key Takeaways and Executive Summary that there was support from a majority of respondents for a legislative and regulatory framework led by the federal government to confront harmful content online.

00:22:26.500 This blatant misleading of Canadians is what undermines democracy, contributes to distrust in institutions, and is obviously not the marker of open, honest, or transparent governance.

00:22:39.720 And remember when the same ministry said that they want to put a transparent and accountable regulatory framework in place for online safety, at the same time that they are failing to fully inform you on policies, their development, and their consultation?

00:22:57.360 If this bill comes to fruition, it will be the icing on the liberal-baked censorious cake that will further criminalize and penalize media that is not government-funded or state-approved.

00:23:09.240 Exactly like Stalin's Pravda or Hitler's book-burning. 0.76

00:23:14.360 And the dissenter, the contrarians, and those still speaking truth to power will be crushed by the iron fist of authoritarian dystopian censorship.

00:23:25.840 Stay tuned next as we're joined by a legal expert to discuss the repercussions of this kind of ambiguously worded legislation being put into the hands of administrators to enforce.

00:23:39.240 And now joining me in studio at Rebel News headquarters to discuss the implications of the administrative state is legal academic Bruce Party,

00:23:58.120 who is currently serving as the executive director of Rights Probe, a leading public policy and governance think tank.

00:24:05.960 Now, Bruce, you have done a lot of work critiquing, you know, sort of legal progressivism, social justice, the ambiguous administrative state.

00:24:14.960 Can you explain what you mean when you talk about the Holy Trinity of the state,

00:24:20.700 and then also broken down further in terms of the Trinity of the administrative state?

00:24:26.160 Right. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

00:24:29.000 So let me just start with this idea, which I've spoken about before, which is that the most powerful ideas are the ones we don't know we have.

00:24:37.480 And one of those ideas is, I think, the main problem or one of the main problems that we have right now.

00:24:43.180 So the Trinity of the state, the traditional way of looking at the state, you've got three branches of government, legislature, executive branch or administration, and the courts.

00:24:54.140 And one of our traditional ideas is that those three branches of government are supposed to be separate.

00:25:01.360 They do different jobs. And one of the reasons for that is to keep us safe from their tyranny.

00:25:06.980 If they're all doing separate jobs and not colluding together, they are checks and balances on each other.

00:25:11.800 The Holy Trinity of the administrative state is occurring because this separation is starting to disappear and they're starting to work together.

00:25:24.280 So when legislatures pass legislation, which is the thing they're supposed to do, they're supposed to, in theory, pass statutes with the rules in them.

00:25:36.160 The executive branch is supposed to take those rules and then execute them, which is why it's called the executive branch.

00:25:42.220 And the courts are supposed to take those rules and apply them to particular cases.

00:25:45.840 What's happening now, not every time, not across the board, but it's the trend, that legislatures pass statutes not with the rules in them,

00:25:58.140 but with the authority passed over to the executive branch to pass the rules themselves.

00:26:05.900 It's a delegation of authority.

00:26:07.500 And then the courts, instead of watching over this relationship and making sure that the executive branch sticks to its knitting

00:26:14.420 and doesn't do anything it's not allowed to do in a statute, is inclined now, the courts generally are inclined to defer to the authority of the executive branch.

00:26:24.240 And the result of the delegation and the deference is that the executive branch, the administration, more and more has the discretion to decide what the public interest is

00:26:39.240 and how individual autonomy should be overridden to achieve it.

00:26:42.740 So that's what I mean by the holy trinity of the administrative state, delegation, deference, and then discretion.

00:26:50.660 And once it has that discretion, it runs away with it, which is exactly what happened during COVID.

00:26:56.180 Well, how do we bring back those other two parts, then, deference and discretion?

00:27:01.780 Because it sounds like they've been disregarded for the third point.

00:27:06.880 Well, yes.

00:27:07.760 And so it's very difficult because this idea both of delegation and of deference, delegation by the legislature

00:27:19.660 and deference by the courts, these are the ideas that are now deeply embedded in our legal system.

00:27:26.180 It is a fundamental belief in the validity, indeed the necessity, of having an administrative managerial state.

00:27:35.280 In other words, the idea is society can't function unless we have experts and officials

00:27:42.540 with the authority and the discretion to tell us all how to behave.

00:27:49.640 That's the premise, if you like.

00:27:52.040 And until we challenge that premise effectively, this is the system we're going to have.

00:27:59.360 And that's a very tall order because it's a very deeply accepted idea now in our institutions.

00:28:05.840 Well, and as they move forward to quash the ideas that we don't even know that we've had

00:28:11.420 because the public arena, as we see, will be censored, basically, by the ambiguously worded

00:28:19.740 pieces of legislation that I covered as the first part of this monologue.

00:28:24.360 Right.

00:28:24.440 And so when you don't even bring those ideas that we don't know we have into the public

00:28:29.020 arena and debate them and have robust discussion and further refine the ideas and arguably also

00:28:37.160 refine the rules around legislation, then where does that lead us legally?

00:28:44.740 Right.

00:28:45.000 Well, see, it's a self-enforcing problem, right?

00:28:47.300 So you identify this problem and then what is happening, including in the statutes that

00:28:52.940 you were referring to, is that the job of policing what is spoken about and what is seen

00:28:59.720 online and so on are delegated to government agencies to basically make up the rules on the

00:29:08.340 go so as to defeat the idea that we should defeat the idea.

00:29:14.040 So it's a self-reinforcing thing.

00:29:16.620 The longer we are on this path, the more difficult it will be to turn around.

00:29:22.560 As I said, it's very, very deeply entrenched and it's difficult to address incrementally

00:29:31.220 to sort of say, well, let's try and curb this step by step by step by step, because that

00:29:39.280 the incremental approach is what got us here.

00:29:42.040 The administrative state and the premise of it have been around for a long, long time.

00:29:46.620 Decades.

00:29:47.900 But not in such a full-blown way as we have now.

00:29:52.000 The administrative state as it presently exists has grown up over a long period of time and

00:30:00.560 it now is such a machine that it controls basically everything in society.

00:30:07.220 And it thinks that its job is to manage society.

00:30:12.880 That's the problem.

00:30:14.020 That's the idea.

00:30:15.200 If we had a critical mass of people who basically came to the conclusion that the job of government

00:30:24.080 should not be to manage society, that that in fact is the problem itself.

00:30:31.740 That's the place to start.

00:30:34.140 And I want to come back to that.

00:30:35.860 But first, this enmeshing of the administrative state within the courts themselves, how do you

00:30:42.600 regain that impartiality between those two prongs of the trinity of the state?

00:30:48.560 Yes.

00:30:49.200 Well, the courts would not view this as a lack of impartiality.

00:30:54.320 There's a category of law called administrative law.

00:30:58.220 And that would make sense, right?

00:30:59.420 Because it's the portion of the law that deals with the judicial review of administrative

00:31:05.840 action.

00:31:06.440 That is, when people come to challenge what a government agency has done, they go to a

00:31:13.100 court and say, would you please see what they've done and see if it's consistent with

00:31:16.560 their statutory mandate?

00:31:18.460 Now, that's the moment where there's a tendency on the part of the courts to defer to the agency.

00:31:24.380 That doesn't mean it's carte blanche.

00:31:25.560 It doesn't mean that they never say it's wrong.

00:31:27.520 Not at all.

00:31:28.580 But on balance, that's the inclination.

00:31:31.600 As opposed to what could have been the opposite view, and some would argue, and I would be

00:31:40.100 inclined to agree with them, that we had an opposite view at some point in the past.

00:31:44.020 The opposite view would be this, that administrative agencies actually should not be allowed to do

00:31:51.720 anything unless they have explicit instructions and mandate within a statute from the legislature.

00:32:01.960 So instead of that default position, more and more we're getting to the other default position

00:32:05.940 is, well, as long as it's sort of within their basic mandate, and as long as they have been

00:32:10.260 reasonable in interpreting that mandate, and they've shown sort of why they're justified,

00:32:15.860 well, then it's going to be okay.

00:32:17.620 That idea is going to be difficult to shift, but I think it needs to be.

00:32:23.080 And that is only, like you stated, coming from a public groundswell of enough people

00:32:29.560 demanding a change in that regard?

00:32:33.380 Yes.

00:32:33.700 So one of the realities of the law is that it's a product of the culture.

00:32:42.040 One of the reasons that people have had faith in the law that has been dashed during COVID

00:32:49.400 is that they thought the law would save them, and it didn't.

00:32:52.880 It didn't.

00:32:53.500 But the law is a product of the culture.

00:32:55.060 So if the culture goes a certain way, the law is likely to follow.

00:32:58.020 And so there's no direct relationship between what the public thinks and what happens in

00:33:03.060 a particular case, because that wouldn't be proper.

00:33:05.360 But in terms of the large trends in the culture itself, those do have an effect.

00:33:12.840 So if you had a culture that got to the point of saying, this system of government is not

00:33:18.040 working, it's wrong, we don't believe it anymore, then you would see probably slowly an evolution

00:33:24.340 of the law, both in statutory terms and in terms of what the courts did, towards that resolution.

00:33:31.120 But we're nowhere near that right now.

00:33:33.440 No, I was going to say, arguably, we are starting to approach that sort of teetering of looking

00:33:38.680 at the governance that we've had in place for the last eight years, primarily, and all

00:33:43.400 throughout COVID and saying, you know, this isn't working for us any longer, and there's

00:33:48.000 no accountability.

00:33:49.720 But I wanted to kind of come back to what you said that the role of government is, and

00:33:54.460 that is, as it seems right now, they believe that their role is to delegate and relegate

00:34:00.040 rules onto society.

00:34:01.520 In your opinion, what is then, if that's not it, what's the role of government?

00:34:05.720 Yes, well, it is the role of government in some sense.

00:34:07.800 So let's go back to that original division of power, separation of powers that I spoke

00:34:16.580 about, the original trinity of the state, legislature, executive, and courts.

00:34:21.780 So the way classically government would work is that you'd have legislatures passing statutes

00:34:31.000 with the general abstract rules in them that governed us all.

00:34:35.400 So, for example, you even, and this still exists today, if you go to the criminal code,

00:34:39.440 for example, you will see in the criminal code the various offenses, and they describe, they

00:34:45.640 define what the offenses are.

00:34:46.940 And in that definition, you can discern, you know, what the requirements of each offense

00:34:52.580 are.

00:34:52.740 So you open up the code, and you see murder.

00:34:55.760 Okay, well, what are the requirements, what acts, what mens rea do you require in order

00:35:00.820 for the prosecution to succeed in a court for murder?

00:35:06.000 That's the way it should work.

00:35:07.360 You should be able to go to the statute, open the book, or go online, and see what the rules

00:35:12.100 are.

00:35:12.500 Okay, more and more, that's not the case.

00:35:16.340 It's still the case in some situations, in some statutes, but also the statutes now tend

00:35:21.600 to include provisions that say, oh, and the cabinet can make regulations about, you know,

00:35:27.040 these things, and this agency can make guidelines about these, and this commission can make policies

00:35:33.220 about that.

00:35:33.960 And so if you look in the statute, you can't actually see what the rules are, because the

00:35:38.900 actual rules, as applied to us day to day, are not in the statute.

00:35:43.280 They're over there in the policies, or the regulations, or the guidelines, or in the particular

00:35:47.520 orders, or in the recommendations of the public health officer, and sometimes you can't tell

00:35:51.980 what they are at all, because they're being made on a case-by-case basis.

00:35:55.280 Frederick Hayek said that one of the elements of the rule of law is having rules that are

00:36:04.520 fixed and announced beforehand.

00:36:07.840 In other words, as citizens, we should be entitled to know what the law is.

00:36:12.940 If we want to go and find it and look for it, we should be able to see what it is so that

00:36:17.380 we can govern ourselves accordingly.

00:36:18.560 And right now, we're in a system where, in many situations, that is not possible to do,

00:36:26.700 because all of these bits of the administrative state are essentially making up the rules as

00:36:34.960 they go.

00:36:36.400 And so, obviously, there's legal implications there, and the courts are deferring back now

00:36:40.660 to the administrative state to determine, I guess, even case law in some instances.

00:36:46.640 Well, sure.

00:36:49.740 I mean, the courts, by definition, have to decide cases one at a time, because that's

00:36:56.500 what comes before them.

00:36:57.640 But there's also supposed to be a consistency between the results in each case, because they

00:37:02.900 have to follow precedent.

00:37:04.340 Now, that principle is still in existence in our system, but one might make the case that

00:37:11.420 the consistency between decisions is not maybe what it always ought to be.

00:37:17.140 But my main concern is the inconsistency and the incoherence and the plethora of rules about

00:37:25.180 everything that is generated by the executive branch in particular, without real, meaningful,

00:37:33.100 specific supervision a lot of the time.

00:37:36.420 And it is very possible, much more possible, to have inconsistent decisions made by the

00:37:42.200 various elements inside the managerial state than it would be in a court, because at least

00:37:46.560 in a court, you can see what the decision is, and you can see what the reasons are.

00:37:49.260 You can go and look it up and read it for yourself and see whether or not it makes sense.

00:37:53.180 That's good.

00:37:54.780 That's fair.

00:37:55.800 That is often just not possible to do inside the workings of this big, huge managerial estate

00:38:02.340 apparatus.

00:38:03.400 Especially when the legislation is so ambiguously worded, open to interpretation, and broad.

00:38:08.820 And so that's what we're seeing being proposed with things like the online harms bill.

00:38:13.440 And so in your legal opinion, what are some of the repercussions having such loosely worded

00:38:19.620 pieces of legislation being deflected onto someone like a public safety commissioner to enforce?

00:38:26.440 Right.

00:38:26.840 Well, this encapsulates this whole problem.

00:38:29.600 It's a good illustration in the specific sense of the larger phenomena, right?

00:38:34.920 So if you have a statute that contains, sometimes you could say they contain a general idea or

00:38:41.880 even an idea that looks like a rule, but it's not.

00:38:47.700 It's essentially a vague platitude, and then transfers over the responsibility of fleshing

00:38:53.620 out what it really means to a committee or a commission or, as the case may be, as may

00:39:00.040 be the case with this online harms bill.

00:39:01.800 We haven't seen it yet, but that's what the word on the street is.

00:39:05.860 Then the legislature has not actually made the hard call about what the rule is.

00:39:14.380 So part of their role traditionally, and this is sort of my opinion, not only me, but we would say

00:39:21.540 that the job of the legislature is to make the hard policy call in this sense.

00:39:27.660 Your job, you're elected, you're sitting in the legislature, your job is to tell us

00:39:32.860 where the line is, the line that you are drawing between lawful and unlawful.

00:39:39.600 Tell us, tell us what it is.

00:39:41.100 You've been elected.

00:39:42.140 You have legitimacy in the democratic sense.

00:39:44.180 Tell us what it is.

00:39:45.160 Instead of pushing off that job, ducking it to some committee or commission or agency or

00:39:52.460 ministry or somebody else to make the hard calls and decide things case by case.

00:39:57.860 So nobody knows what the rule is.

00:40:00.740 I wish they would do their job.

00:40:02.540 Well, it's very reminiscent of running around like a chicken with your head cut off.

00:40:06.340 And I like the point that you make there about elected officials who are supposed to make,

00:40:12.220 who are supposed to legislate.

00:40:13.160 That's their job.

00:40:13.980 That's what they're elected to do.

00:40:16.360 But in this case, they're deflecting that responsibility and that rule onto unelected

00:40:22.140 bureaucrats.

00:40:22.720 And really, they're bloating the bureaucracy with things like an online safety commissioner

00:40:26.580 and creating a whole new bureaucracy to oversee a mandate that they themselves say is very

00:40:33.120 broad and potentially far-reaching.

00:40:35.720 Aside from the sort of legal implications of something like this, can you speak on the

00:40:40.880 morals or the ethical implications of it?

00:40:45.020 Censoring online content specifically.

00:40:47.320 Well, centering online content, that means we're getting right into the heart of free

00:40:52.100 speech, right, in this situation.

00:40:55.440 And so in a free country, my take on speech, I mean, if you're actually living in an actually

00:41:04.160 free country, then this doesn't happen, right?

00:41:10.740 It's not like in a free country, free speech is absolute, because that wouldn't be true.

00:41:16.420 Because sometimes speech crosses the line into violence, for example.

00:41:21.940 Your speech should be curbed.

00:41:23.520 Here's what I think the general rule should be.

00:41:25.720 Your speech should be curbed, can be curbed when that speech is violating somebody else's

00:41:31.020 right.

00:41:31.900 So you have a right to be free from violence.

00:41:34.940 So if I come up to you in the street and say, you know, you give me your purse or I'm

00:41:39.440 going to hit you.

00:41:40.300 Okay, well, that's speech, but it's also now an assault, because it's a threat. 0.91

00:41:44.140 It's a threat of imminent violence.

00:41:45.800 And there are other examples.

00:41:47.320 You have the right not to be defamed.

00:41:48.900 If I defame you, therefore, you can sue me for my speech.

00:41:52.000 Defamation is speech.

00:41:53.220 Okay?

00:41:53.480 So there are exceptions along the way.

00:41:55.780 But one of those exceptions ought not to be, in my opinion, the idea that, well, what you're

00:42:02.600 saying is not in the public interest.

00:42:06.580 Because that means I'm not violating anybody's right in particular.

00:42:10.540 It just means that the government thinks they don't want to hear what I have to say.

00:42:14.640 Okay?

00:42:14.980 Now, that is crossing the line from having a regime of free speech, with exceptions, if that

00:42:21.900 makes sense, into, well, your speech is not free anymore.

00:42:27.440 Now, basically, you have to get our approval.

00:42:30.200 And this is where these two things come together, right?

00:42:35.240 The idea of encroaching upon free speech, and then the role of the administrative state.

00:42:43.040 Because the administrative state, going back to the theme, has the discretion to decide what's

00:42:48.400 in the public interest, and allows for the violation of individual autonomy for that purpose.

00:42:54.880 That's the problem.

00:42:56.260 And they have really upheld that public interest in what's for the greater good,

00:43:00.120 rather than tried to leave it up to the individual to decide what is right and just.

00:43:06.560 That's exactly right.

00:43:07.420 And this is one of the problems that we've had during COVID.

00:43:11.180 I mean, a lot of people, quite rightly, quite rightly, and quite understandably,

00:43:14.400 during COVID, have focused on the efficacy of all the policies.

00:43:20.260 You know, did lockdowns hurt or harm?

00:43:22.840 You know, does wearing a mask do anything?

00:43:26.620 What about the vaccines?

00:43:28.420 Were they tested properly?

00:43:30.140 Do they actually provide any protection?

00:43:32.420 Or don't they pose a greater threat than they do benefit?

00:43:36.100 I mean, all those are good questions.

00:43:38.500 But the problem is that those questions are dealing with what is in the public interest.

00:43:43.960 Are those policies in the public interest?

00:43:46.680 Okay.

00:43:47.100 Now, that's all very well to ask, but that's missing the problem.

00:43:51.780 And the problem is these officials have the discretion to decide the public interest.

00:43:58.120 The problem is not the public interest.

00:43:59.940 The problem is they have the discretion to decide that.

00:44:03.700 So you're just arguing on the margins.

00:44:06.240 We have to challenge the idea that they have the discretion to decide the public interest so as to put aside individual autonomy.

00:44:14.760 And just in closing, because we could go on, I'm sure, for hours, but how do you challenge that?

00:44:21.000 How do you set that precedence that they don't have the discretion to make such a decision?

00:44:26.100 Well, you can't challenge that very easily through a legal action.

00:44:36.680 You can't go to a court and say, well, they shouldn't have the discretion to decide that, because they do.

00:44:40.780 I mean, that's the way the law is working right now.

00:44:43.240 So it's a deeper thing.

00:44:45.520 It's almost a cultural thing.

00:44:46.820 We have lived with a managerial state for so long.

00:44:51.280 People have grown up knowing nothing else.

00:44:54.040 And they think that's what government does.

00:44:57.660 They think that's what it's for.

00:44:59.760 And to come along and suggest that the government shouldn't be managing society, that's like heresy.

00:45:06.180 People won't understand what you're talking about.

00:45:08.060 It's like anarchy.

00:45:08.740 It's like anarchy.

00:45:09.520 What else do you want it to do?

00:45:11.540 How else are we going to live?

00:45:13.000 Because people think it's an essential part of civilization.

00:45:18.220 And in order to change this, you sort of have to reimagine what you mean by civilization so that people get their lives back without being managed by this nanny state from cradle to grave and every single aspect of their lives.

00:45:35.340 And arguably, they won't be able to do so if sweeping online regulation proceeds.

00:45:42.160 Exactly right.

00:45:43.200 Well, thank you, Bruce, for joining me.

00:45:44.540 Always a pleasure to chat with you.

00:45:46.020 And hopefully, we can stay in touch for the future.

00:45:48.020 My pleasure.

00:45:48.500 Thanks for having me.

00:46:00.400 Welcome back to tonight's Ezra Levant show.

00:46:02.580 Now, let's go through some of the comments from today's live stream.

00:46:06.620 Milo McDonald says, I'm 69% less depressed about the state of Canada today.

00:46:13.640 I think that's in reference to Elon Musk's recent titling of the CBC as 69% government funded.

00:46:22.500 And I definitely feel safer on Twitter now that CBC has taken a little bit of a break.

00:46:28.080 So we'll see how long that lasts.

00:46:29.960 Queen Marifa says, the first time I saw the picture of that flag, I thought it was weird.

00:46:36.040 There was no other or no pictures of protesters approaching this person who would have been offensive to many.

00:46:43.720 Immediately, I thought it was a setup by Trudeau or his cronies.

00:46:47.780 Great work, Alexa.

00:46:49.500 And so that comments in reference to Rodney Palmer's testimony at the National Citizens Inquiry, where he correctly highlights that Alexa has done more investigative journalism over the past few years than anyone I've seen from the mainstream media.

00:47:05.380 And specifically, when it came to debunking where those hate-filled flags, as per the Justin Trudeau liberals, came from at the Freedom Convoy, so the Nazi flag, and then the trucker-modified Confederate flag.

00:47:20.220 And for anyone who's not sure what I'm referring to, you can find Alexa's full report.

00:47:24.960 Maybe we will link to it in the written component of the live stream.

00:47:28.800 That was David Menzies with his one-color-away-from-the-trans flag tie.

00:47:40.240 Can anyone tell me what happened with that comment that Brendan Miller said to Freeland about the questionable flags being planted by the Liberal government?

00:47:50.080 I guess they are actually taxpayer-funded media.

00:47:53.160 The government does not fund anything.

00:47:55.360 Well, arguably, we give our taxes to the government, who then delegates where the money will go.

00:48:01.700 So I think it is an accurate description to say that they're government-funded.

00:48:05.220 And I can't recall exactly what the response was to lawyer Brendan Miller in the Public Order Emergency Commission when he questioned the government about those flags in particular.

00:48:15.620 But the fact that they were never seen again, and the fact that Alexa rightfully pointed out the certain angles and certain areas where these flags were seen only one time, I think that speaks for itself.

00:48:28.560 And that is a wrap on tonight's Ezra Levant show.

00:48:32.040 Until tomorrow night, same time and place.

00:48:34.560 From all of us here at Rebel News Headquarters to you, our appreciated viewers at home, good night and keep sharing the information that the censors don't want you to have.

00:48:45.560 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - April 18, 2023

TAMARA UGOLINI ｜ Trudeau's Liberals continue to push disturbing censorship agenda

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