Rebel News Podcast - The CBC thinks it knows why nobody trusts them!

00:00:00.000 Tonight, the CBC thinks it knows why nobody trusts them.

00:00:19.700 It's March 5th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:24.600 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:28.180 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:32.520 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.

00:00:43.020 The other day I took you through the Edelman Canada survey that showed that half of Canadians don't trust the media.

00:00:50.400 In fact, half think the media positively lies.

00:00:55.000 That's incredible.

00:00:55.780 It's one thing to say, I think the media is biased, or I think they only present one side of the story.

00:01:01.980 But to say, no, no, no, they actually positively lie.

00:01:05.660 They deceive us on purpose.

00:01:08.020 That's incredible, and half of Canadians think that.

00:01:11.620 I think it's true.

00:01:13.960 I mean, do you think the media tells the truth about Justin Trudeau?

00:01:16.900 We know they don't.

00:01:18.940 Here's one of a million examples.

00:01:20.720 Remember when Time magazine, which, as you know, is an American magazine.

00:01:25.560 Remember when they broke the news in the last Canadian election that Justin Trudeau had a longstanding fetish of dressing up in blackface?

00:01:34.480 Sounds like a pretty amazing scoop, right?

00:01:37.280 Weird that it came from an American magazine during the Canadian election, right?

00:01:41.760 But in fact, within hours after Time magazine published, other Canadian media released their own photos and even videos of Trudeau in blackface that they obviously didn't just search for from scratch that night.

00:01:57.560 They had been sitting on their own photos and videos of Trudeau in blackface for months, for years, who knows?

00:02:06.140 And they had no plans to publish them.

00:02:09.380 They were sitting on what were objectively, obviously, demonstrably news.

00:02:15.080 And they deceived the public, all of them together, by hiding them, by covering them up for their boy, Justin Trudeau.

00:02:21.980 In fact, even more telling was the hunt for the man, private citizen, who dared to leak the photos to Time magazine.

00:02:35.540 How dare he?

00:02:36.940 Who was he?

00:02:38.620 What's his angle?

00:02:40.680 Why did he break the pact of silence?

00:02:44.320 I'm serious.

00:02:44.940 The media assigned more reporters and did more digging on who he was than they did on Trudeau himself.

00:02:51.240 They had the Trudeau dirt.

00:02:52.460 They just refused to publish it.

00:02:53.760 So, yeah, people don't just think that the media is biased.

00:02:56.900 People think that the media are malicious, that they actively lie.

00:03:00.300 And they're right.

00:03:02.420 One reason, if you're looking for a reason, is that the people who the media are supposed to scrutinize, the government, well, they pay off the media.

00:03:09.640 It would be like coming up on a watchdog and giving him a nice steak.

00:03:13.660 Yeah, the dog's going to be your friend.

00:03:15.420 We don't call the media payoff a payoff.

00:03:18.380 We call it a bailout or financial support or an investment.

00:03:22.280 But it's obvious that the only media the government likes to give money to are those that the government describes as trustworthy.

00:03:32.280 Because, of course, I mean, they mean that the media that the government themselves can trust, trust to do things like hide Trudeau's blackface photos, trust to do things like hunt down the man who dared to leak those photos.

00:03:43.340 If you are the media that reports on the government and you take money from the government, like a watchdog taking a free steak from a burglar, it is reasonable that people will think you are compromised.

00:03:56.920 It would be like a hockey referee taking payments from a team he's reffing.

00:04:00.640 It's fair to believe that the ref is no longer independent and that if he makes a bad call, it's actually on purpose because he's being paid.

00:04:06.400 That's our journalist.

00:04:07.220 Pretty basic.

00:04:07.700 The fact that they're also all left-wing adds to it, that goes to bias, but the lying is quite something.

00:04:16.080 So what does the CBC say about this?

00:04:19.120 They who are the most compromised, they who are explicitly a state broadcaster who received $1.5 billion a year from Trudeau,

00:04:26.520 and they who are still actively suing the Conservative Party in Canada in court to this day.

00:04:32.080 I'm serious.

00:04:32.440 So here's a tweet from the CBC about all this.

00:04:36.940 Canadian trust in journalism is wavering.

00:04:39.060 Here's what CBC News is doing about it.

00:04:41.360 And if you click that link, here's what you get.

00:04:44.720 It's an editor's note from a guy named Rhodey Fenland.

00:04:49.120 Canadian trust in journalism is wavering.

00:04:52.060 Here's what CBC News is doing about it.

00:04:54.880 Recent survey found 49% of Canadians think journalists are purposely trying to mislead.

00:04:59.360 Okay, I'm curious, what is the CBC going to do about this?

00:05:03.940 Will they sever their financial ties to Trudeau?

00:05:07.320 Of course not.

00:05:09.100 Will they maybe change their political lineup, make it a little more balanced?

00:05:13.100 I mean, their flagship panel is called At Issue, and it's hosted by Rosemary Barton.

00:05:19.220 She was one of the original CBC journalists who sued the Conservative Party in the last election.

00:05:23.280 And then there's Chantal Hebert, who is a Trudeau Foundation scholar.

00:05:28.760 And then there's Althea Raj, who was Trudeau's official biographer.

00:05:31.920 And then there's Andrew Coyne, whose cousin Susan Coyne was Pierre Trudeau's mistress and had a daughter by him.

00:05:38.280 So yeah, this is probably a photo that could appear in a dictionary next to words like incestuous or nepotistic.

00:05:45.280 Nepotistic, forget about the fact that they're all from the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal triangle and that they haven't had a new idea in decades.

00:05:53.320 They are all in the tank for Trudeau, all on the Trudeau payroll in one way or another.

00:05:59.660 So yeah, are they going to fix that to get the trust back?

00:06:04.480 No, no, no, no, no.

00:06:05.840 You see, the problem isn't with them.

00:06:10.620 The problem's with you.

00:06:12.680 Now, I'm going to skip to the first part of this editor's note where he outlines the lack of trust as per the Edelman Report.

00:06:18.340 I already told you that the other day.

00:06:19.720 Let me skip to their proposed solutions, or rather, who they blame.

00:06:24.280 Who's to blame?

00:06:26.980 Are we looking at the gasping canary in the coal mine of Canadian democracy?

00:06:30.820 Plenty of blame has already been dished out for the growing distrust in news media.

00:06:34.980 Some point to the elimination of the U.S. Fairness Doctrine in the late 1980s and the rise of shock talk radio.

00:06:42.760 Then the splintering of audiences on cable TV.

00:06:45.560 Then the Internet and later social media and algorithmic filter bubbles that tend to reinforce one's own worldview.

00:06:52.320 Hang on, hang on.

00:06:53.180 It's 2021, I checked.

00:06:55.260 And the CBC thinks that one of the reasons people don't trust the CBC...

00:06:59.000 People in Canada, remember, this was a Canadian survey.

00:07:01.740 Anyway, the CBC thinks the reason Canadians don't trust it in 2021, when the CBC takes $1.5 billion from Trudeau and they have all Trudeau panels about Trudeau and they cover up his blackface and his groping scandals and the sexual assault of Rose Knight in Creston, B.C.

00:07:19.760 The reason for this distrust is because some radio stations in the United States in the 1980s had some shock jocks.

00:07:31.980 Yeah, denial isn't just a river in Egypt, I guess.

00:07:35.740 Say, by the way, does Canada even have a shock jock?

00:07:39.460 Like even one?

00:07:40.660 Or even just a conservative that's allowed to be on the radio anymore?

00:07:44.180 Can you name one?

00:07:44.900 And if you could, is that why people don't trust the CBC in 2021?

00:07:50.280 What a laugh.

00:07:52.680 And of course, there's Donald Trump.

00:07:54.280 I'm reading.

00:07:55.000 This is actually their next excuse.

00:07:57.820 There's Donald Trump, the former U.S.

00:07:59.660 I'm laughing.

00:08:00.680 They don't even know what they sound like.

00:08:03.140 The former U.S. president's persistent efforts to repeatedly delegitimize mainstream press as the enemy of the people and fake news shaped and hardened public attitudes.

00:08:12.760 Got it.

00:08:13.080 So people in Canada don't trust the CBC because of Donald Trump.

00:08:19.340 Now, that's an Escher drawing if ever there was one.

00:08:22.680 The CBC hates Donald Trump.

00:08:24.660 We know that.

00:08:25.480 Just like Trudeau does.

00:08:27.300 The CBC blames Trump for everything.

00:08:30.300 Now, he's been gone as president for over a month.

00:08:32.280 He lost the election in November.

00:08:33.900 But the CBC still can't stop grousing about him.

00:08:38.320 It's an example of their bias.

00:08:40.600 And in many cases, their misinformation.

00:08:42.400 They were huge promoters of the conspiracy theory that Trump was a Russian spy, completely debunked by the Mueller inquiry.

00:08:49.320 The CBC believes every anti-Trump conspiracy. 0.98

00:08:53.320 They say the Canadians don't trust them, the CBC, because of that bloody Donald Trump. 0.97

00:09:00.240 He's to blame for everything.

00:09:02.700 It's like in the book 1984.

00:09:04.240 Oh, Goldstein.

00:09:05.380 He did that again.

00:09:07.000 Oh, the reason why the wheat harvest is down.

00:09:09.560 It's that Goldstein. 0.76

00:09:11.480 They blame him for everything.

00:09:13.420 The fact that they are saying that shows that they have Trump derangement syndrome, which is one reason people don't trust them.

00:09:19.840 They still have TDS.

00:09:22.180 They don't even realize that their explanation for why people don't trust them is proof of why people can't trust them.

00:09:29.040 I wonder if they try that when they get pulled over for speeding.

00:09:32.180 Officer, I get it.

00:09:33.280 You say I was speeding, but it's that Donald Trump.

00:09:37.020 And get this.

00:09:37.880 I'll read some more.

00:09:39.620 As trust has eroded, journalists have found themselves increasingly targeted and harassed.

00:09:45.140 The growing perils of doing journalism in the U.S. were explored in this excellent panel discussion, hosted last week by the CBC's Adrian Arsenault, on behalf of the Canadian Journalist for Free Expression.

00:09:54.720 It's worth a watch.

00:09:55.840 And yes, we are seeing increased harassment of Canadian journalists in the field.

00:09:59.360 Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hang on.

00:10:03.260 Can you name a single Canadian journalist who has been harassed, assaulted, hit?

00:10:08.600 A single one in Canada?

00:10:11.420 I can.

00:10:13.020 Sheila Gunn-Reed.

00:10:13.840 David Menzies.

00:10:16.820 Kian Bexty.

00:10:18.460 A cameraman Mocha.

00:10:20.240 And Lincoln.

00:10:21.640 And Efren.

00:10:23.040 And others at the Rebel.

00:10:24.600 But I cannot name a single other journalist in Canada who has been attacked in a decade, in decades.

00:10:31.560 Can you?

00:10:33.460 The CBC doesn't have to hire bodyguards to go out there like we do.

00:10:37.540 The CBC isn't assaulted either by Antifa or the cops like we are.

00:10:41.120 How on earth could any of that explain why these people hate the CBC other than, look, they're lying even now.

00:10:49.380 Like with their other excuses, it actually, ironically, explains the reason people don't trust the CBC.

00:10:54.420 The ridiculousness of their explanations, that's the explanation itself.

00:11:00.460 The fact that they are so unaware of who they are and how crazy they sound to normal people, the fact that they are blaming Trump and U.S. talk radio and mythical people attacking CBC journalists that never happened, that actually does tell us quite a lot about why no one trusts them, doesn't it?

00:11:19.720 And how they will truly never fix the problem, because in their mind, the problem is you, or certainly anyone other than them.

00:11:28.600 Okay, so if they're not to blame for the fact that people hate them, if they're not to blame for the fact that people think they're liars, if everyone else is to blame, well, how do they propose to solve that problem?

00:11:40.760 Well, it starts by attacking their enemies list, which is basically a list of anyone that people trust more than they trust the CBC.

00:11:47.280 Because if you believe in the CBC's conspiracy theory, they are hated unfairly, they are the victim, everyone else is to blame, from 80s talk radio in America to Donald Trump.

00:12:00.980 So obviously their solutions to fix this problem would involve fixing other people, getting other people to change, not the CBC. 0.91

00:12:08.640 Are you crazy? 0.89

00:12:09.860 Let me read. 0.96

00:12:11.440 What CBC is doing to rebuild trust in journalism.

00:12:14.200 Oh, this is going to be good.

00:12:15.060 As Canada's public broadcaster, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:12:19.260 You're the state broadcaster, it's different, but let me get back.

00:12:22.920 As Canada's public broadcaster, the CBC has taken a very active role on the trusted journalism file.

00:12:30.560 Here's what we are doing to try to earn and keep your trust in these skeptical times, while also battling the growing scourge of disinformation.

00:12:37.060 All right, so they're going to battle disinformation and untrustworthy people, but only disinformation and untrustworthy people outside of the CBC.

00:12:47.780 They will not fix their own untrustworthiness.

00:12:50.980 But hang on, they acknowledge that half the country hates them.

00:12:54.760 And yet the only untrustworthiness they will tackle is found in others, and they think this will make people trust them more.

00:13:02.240 I'll read some more.

00:13:04.760 CBC News is a member of the Journalism Trust Initiative.

00:13:08.580 So you know it's good, because it's called the Journalism Trust Initiative.

00:13:13.540 An effort to establish globally recognized standards of trustworthiness in the news.

00:13:18.220 Okay, so you think you'll be trustworthy if you just work on changing the definition of trustworthy.

00:13:23.280 So you don't actually have to change what you do, other than just to try and change the definition of trustworthy, to bend it until you can say, yeah, that's us.

00:13:35.840 CBC Radio Canada has been a member of the Trusted News Initiative.

00:13:39.520 Oh, you got another one, Trusted News.

00:13:41.560 That sounds really trustworthy.

00:13:43.360 Since its inception in 2019, the TNI brings together global news organizations and tech platforms to combat disinformation.

00:13:51.820 It created a real-time early warning system to flag serious disinformation that may pose a threat to life or the integrity of the electoral process.

00:14:01.580 Okay, same thing.

00:14:04.140 You know that we see you, right?

00:14:05.440 You know that we see that so far you are not addressing any of your own problems.

00:14:10.860 You're talking now about the integrity of electoral processes or some weird thing about saving lives around the world.

00:14:19.660 I don't know, but what does it have to do with the fact that no one trusts you half, that people hate you, think you actively lie?

00:14:26.960 Why do you think anyone cares about what you have to think about global elections in some faraway place, other than maybe if you've got some weird Trump fetish again?

00:14:35.980 Seriously, have you seen anything yet on this list that would make you change your mind from these CBC boys are liars to, I was wrong, these CBC boys aren't liars?

00:14:45.340 In fact, are you sort of detecting the opposite?

00:14:48.780 They're trying to shift the blame and point fingers at literally anyone else for anything else?

00:14:54.340 I'll read some more.

00:14:56.340 CBC Radio Canada has joined with the BBC, that's another state broadcaster,

00:15:00.680 the New York Times, that's owned by Mexico's richest man,

00:15:04.340 and Microsoft, in support of an effort to develop Project Origin,

00:15:10.120 an open standard for confirming the authenticity of content from trusted sources to fight deep fake video news generated by artificial intelligence.

00:15:18.740 This is a new application of established technology to digitally verify the authenticity of our news content

00:15:23.940 when it appears on other online platforms.

00:15:28.280 Got it.

00:15:28.660 So again, they're going to scrutinize other people, other people, not themselves.

00:15:34.500 Now, we talked with Alan Bukhari about this the other day.

00:15:37.560 This is Microsoft's program to track down who wrote some political criticism, some tweets, some meme,

00:15:45.300 to track it down to the individual person.

00:15:49.480 It's about ending privacy for political critics and political dissidents.

00:15:53.740 They would love this in Hong Kong.

00:15:55.720 That's explicitly what this project is.

00:15:58.800 Again, there's nothing to do with the CBC lying to you or spinning you.

00:16:02.820 It has everything to do with the CBC attacking its competitors.

00:16:07.080 And by that, I mean any critic, anyone who mocks the CBC, anyone who disagrees with it.

00:16:12.500 And I note all the state broadcasters who really want to hunt down people who are doing unauthorized journalism.

00:16:18.740 Again, so far, have you seen anything about the CBC's own untrustworthiness yet?

00:16:25.100 I mean, we're pretty deep into this editor's note.

00:16:27.500 And so far, he really isn't talking about any of his own problems, is he?

00:16:32.620 They sure want to talk about how much everyone else is lying.

00:16:37.260 But boy, they're just perfect themselves.

00:16:40.640 I'll keep going.

00:16:42.440 CBC News is part of the Trust Project.

00:16:45.060 Well, that's got to be like the fourth organization with the word trust in it, so you know it's true.

00:16:50.900 An international partnership with tech and media companies to increase transparency and accuracy in online news.

00:16:57.300 CBC policies on transparent labels, corrections, bylines, and links to our JSP on our digital pages have become a model for other partners in the project.

00:17:08.060 Okay.

00:17:08.220 So they will label corrections and bylines on their own stories.

00:17:12.340 Okay.

00:17:14.140 I'm not quite sure that's enough to make people think you're not lying all the time.

00:17:17.780 Like, take this story.

00:17:19.620 Just to pull one out of the air.

00:17:21.980 PM, health officials warn Canadians against believing COVID-19 internment camps disinformation.

00:17:29.980 Disinformation campaign falsely suggests Canadians will be forcibly sent to quarantine sites.

00:17:36.880 Really?

00:17:37.320 Canadians will not be forced into COVID-19 internment or containment camps.

00:17:42.780 A spokesperson for Health Minister Patty Hyde, you said Thursday, taking aim at a disinformation campaign that has been circulating on social media for weeks.

00:17:51.620 Oh, that's the worst, those social media times.

00:17:54.360 The claim that the federal government is preparing to forcibly intern Canadians is patently false.

00:17:59.940 The spokesperson said, you're not allowed to know who the spokesperson is, but that's for us to know, not you.

00:18:05.500 I'm not going to read the whole thing, but as you now know, it's a lie.

00:18:10.160 Like, this is one of those wicked lies that people hate the CBC for.

00:18:13.220 Or, at the very least, they promoted the liberal government's lies credulously.

00:18:18.220 As we here at Rebel News have meticulously documented for months, from the Yukon to Winnipeg to all across the country, there have been government quarantine centers around the country.

00:18:31.120 And yes, they are forcing healthy, innocent people into them at great cost.

00:18:37.640 You arrive at the airport in Canada from a foreign country straight to the internment for you, even if you're a Canadian citizen, completely healthy and innocent of everything.

00:18:45.780 No trial, no hearing.

00:18:48.180 If that story by the CBC is not an outright lie, it's certainly propaganda and disinformation, and it's been proved false.

00:18:57.640 And yet, I checked, no corrections.

00:19:00.860 I thought they just said they're really good about their corrections.

00:19:02.900 So, yeah, they've got the byline of the CBC propagandists who wrote the original fake story, and they have a button you can click to report an error.

00:19:12.860 But to this day, I just checked.

00:19:14.880 That story has been up on their website since October.

00:19:18.220 The CBC is propagandizing lies on behalf of their government paymasters.

00:19:23.740 But sure, other media need to catch up to the CBC's trustworthiness.

00:19:28.860 Now, I'm not going to read the rest of the self-serving blather to you.

00:19:31.780 I promise you, it's more of the same.

00:19:34.320 Never do they grapple with the news peg here.

00:19:37.020 Half of Canadians think they're liars.

00:19:39.500 Nowhere do they even accept that they're the problem, let alone offer a solution.

00:19:43.980 Let me read how this ends.

00:19:46.940 These worthy initiatives, notwithstanding, the audience's trust will ultimately be won or lost on the day-to-day work of our journalists.

00:19:54.820 That begins with an approach to news coverage that is open-minded.

00:20:00.600 Fair.

00:20:01.120 And genuinely curious.

00:20:03.360 Oh, no one's more curious than the CBC reporter.

00:20:06.660 It means challenging our assumptions, testing every fact, avoiding errors, and admitting them quickly and transparently when they occur.

00:20:14.160 It means listening to understand.

00:20:16.840 Does every Canadian we serve believe we will give them and the stories they care about a fair shake?

00:20:22.100 Until the answer is yes, there's more work to be done.

00:20:24.860 As always, I trust you will let me know what else we can be doing to earn and keep your trust.

00:20:30.740 Hey, do you think the CBC's open-minded?

00:20:35.120 If you're Christian or pro-life or pro-Trump or pro-firearms or anti-Trudeau,

00:20:44.500 do you think the CBC respects you and listens to you and represents you and earns your trust?

00:20:50.960 If you're a lockdown skeptic, do you think they care about you?

00:20:55.120 Do you think they reported about the pastor in prison in Edmonton in the same way they would have done if it were, let's say, an imam from a Muslim mosque in prison?

00:21:06.780 Or, let's say, if it was Stephen Harper who put him in prison for some reason?

00:21:10.600 Do you think the CBC's coverage of liberal cry-bullies in parliament who get mean tweets from right-wingers, that's a staple of CBC journalism these days.

00:21:20.160 Do you think that's the same way they cover conservatives who were abused by leftists?

00:21:24.880 Does the CBC cover Antifa and Black Lives Matter violence in the same way they cover peaceful lockdown protests?

00:21:32.860 Do you think they cover Republicans as lovingly as Democrats?

00:21:36.900 Could they possibly be more in love with China?

00:21:41.180 None of this is even on the radar.

00:21:43.560 In fact, their response is more fuel to distrust them.

00:21:47.220 They live in an alternative reality.

00:21:50.500 I'd even say it's tantamount to a conspiracy theory, certainly disinformation, fake news.

00:21:55.180 The CBC mindset, as expressed in this editor's note, it's incredible.

00:21:59.800 It's really incredible to look at the world through their eyes.

00:22:03.000 They think, somehow, that their inherent leftist pro-Trudeau bias is not why people distrust them.

00:22:11.280 And they think that if anyone is lying, especially about those quarantine facilities, it's you.

00:22:17.760 They think the whole reason why people don't trust them and like them, they think it's unfair.

00:22:22.260 They think it was done to them by some cosmic evil forces like Trump and the late Rush Limbaugh in the 1980s.

00:22:30.580 They don't list a single thing they're doing wrong.

00:22:34.240 They don't have a single prescription to fix their own mess.

00:22:37.540 They're signing up for three or four clubs that have the word trust in them.

00:22:40.680 Yeah.

00:22:41.200 And here's the delusion.

00:22:43.800 I think they actually believe their own spin.

00:22:46.080 I think the CBC actually believes they're the honest ones, that they're the ones telling the truth, even about the quarantine detention facilities.

00:22:56.480 Yeah.

00:22:57.200 No surprise the CBC had a flagship radio show called Q, because they are the ones deep, deep, deep into their own bizarre cult, aren't they?

00:23:11.220 Stay with us for more.

00:23:16.080 We'll be right back.

00:23:46.080 12 noon Eastern, so that was 10 a.m. Mountain time.

00:23:48.780 We had John Carpe on right as that ruling was fresh issued from the court.

00:23:53.860 And so I interviewed him then.

00:23:55.680 I really want to show you the whole thing.

00:23:58.040 So this is about 20 minutes of my live conversation with John Carpe right when the news was out.

00:24:06.000 By the way, I know that 12 noon Eastern, 10 a.m. Mountain is sort of a strange time, especially for people who are busy working.

00:24:12.320 But if you are free any time during the weekdays at noon Eastern, I'd encourage you to tune in.

00:24:17.920 I cover the live stream Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

00:24:20.780 Sheila Gunn-Reed, David Menzies do it Tuesday, Thursday.

00:24:23.500 Sometimes we mix it up, have other staff there.

00:24:25.540 I really think it's a fun show.

00:24:27.060 And if you want to interact with us in real time, that's the way to do it through the chat function on YouTube.

00:24:33.580 Anyway, so that's where this clip is from.

00:24:35.540 And I really thought, well, it was a good interview.

00:24:37.900 Let me play it in full for you now.

00:24:39.940 So here's what I said, and here's what John Carpe said to me earlier today.

00:24:44.700 We have John Carpe, so I'm going to come back to the Super Chats later.

00:24:48.260 Hey, John, I see you crystal clear via Skype.

00:24:51.740 Thanks for joining us.

00:24:52.820 Appreciate that.

00:24:53.580 You're in Alberta right now.

00:24:55.340 We introduced you already, President of the Justice Center.

00:24:57.880 You're the lawyer.

00:24:59.120 You're a firm, your public interest law firm charity works for James Coates.

00:25:03.500 Can you give me an update?

00:25:05.360 We were just talking to Sheila, who was on the calls yesterday and today.

00:25:09.940 But is there any news you have for us today?

00:25:14.860 Well, Pastor Coates, sadly, is going to be staying in the Edmonton Remand Center for the next eight weeks.

00:25:21.360 We are contemplating an appeal to the Alberta Court of Appeal.

00:25:25.220 So there's still a possibility if we proceed with that and if we're successful, we would like to get him out of jail sooner.

00:25:34.520 So that's under consideration right now.

00:25:37.620 Otherwise, this is a pastor who's been in jail since February the 16th, already more than two weeks and now for another eight weeks in jail for not being willing to comply with unscientific and unconstitutional health orders,

00:25:57.340 in respect to which the Alberta government has put forward no evidence that the health orders are serving the interests of public safety.

00:26:06.280 This is an assumption that the judge was operating on this morning, and I'm not making the claim that he was incorrect in law.

00:26:18.680 But certainly very sad when you've got governments that are not providing science or evidence to back up these health orders, and they're engaging in fearmongering.

00:26:29.700 And then now we've got a pastor in jail for, you know, not being in full compliance with the unconstitutional health orders.

00:26:40.920 All right, I've got a few questions for you.

00:26:43.620 I'm going to try and run through them.

00:26:45.360 I know your time is limited.

00:26:46.640 You have a lot of things to do today.

00:26:49.320 He's still at the Edmonton Remand Center.

00:26:52.040 I think we have some visuals of that.

00:26:54.540 It's a maximum security facility typically used when violent criminals are arrested and they're held before bail.

00:27:02.980 It's also a longer-term facility, but the visuals I've seen of it.

00:27:07.520 I was in the old Remand Center as a lawyer once.

00:27:10.580 I haven't been in the new Remand Center, but it visually reminds me of another maximum security prison I was in.

00:27:16.820 It is a terrible place to be in.

00:27:20.960 You're with murderers, drug dealers, rapists. 0.65

00:27:24.280 Is it your understanding that Pastor Coates will remain in this horrible facility for the next eight weeks? 0.71

00:27:37.520 That's my understanding, yes.

00:27:40.280 In maximum security.

00:27:41.560 I've never heard of such a thing before.

00:27:43.720 Like, there's surely minimum security.

00:27:46.360 You know, heck, put them in one of these quarantine hotels that Trudeau has set up.

00:27:52.040 I've never heard of a nonviolent pastor eight weeks in maximum security with murderers.

00:27:59.420 I've never heard of that.

00:28:01.200 Well, this is the ideology of Jason Kenney's government right now in the UCP,

00:28:06.060 is that if you violate one of these unconstitutional health orders,

00:28:10.940 that you are just as much of a threat to society as a murderer or a rapist.

00:28:16.300 That is the ideology of the government right now. 0.91

00:28:19.280 And Pastor Coates is paying the price for that ideology.

00:28:25.720 The silver lining on the cloud is that we do have a trial date, May 3rd to May 5th.

00:28:29.980 And for the first time ever, the Alberta government,

00:28:33.140 after violating our charter rights and freedoms for, you know, almost 12 months now,

00:28:38.720 for the first time, the government's going to have to show the public some evidence.

00:28:44.300 They're going to have to prove before the court that COVID is an unusually deadly killer,

00:28:52.580 which is something they've been telling us.

00:28:54.040 But, I mean, Statistics Canada tells us that the death rates in Canada in 2020

00:28:58.140 were very much in line with the death rates in 2019, 2018, 2017.

00:29:02.760 The government's going to have to put forward evidence to support its theory that healthy,

00:29:10.780 asymptomatic people are significant spreaders of the virus.

00:29:14.600 They're going to have to show us the science.

00:29:16.840 They can't just claim that.

00:29:18.580 The government's going to have to show us the science on the PCR tests,

00:29:23.520 which are unreliable, which were never intended to diagnose COVID

00:29:28.100 and which have false positive rates as high as 90%,

00:29:31.260 the government's going to have to justify in court

00:29:33.840 why they are choosing to rely on these PCR tests.

00:29:39.160 The government's going to have to show in court

00:29:41.040 that the lockdowns have actually achieved some good.

00:29:45.200 Now, that's easy to claim.

00:29:46.400 You know, you hear politicians all the time telling us,

00:29:49.200 well, you know, if it wasn't for these lockdowns, way more people would have died.

00:29:52.400 Well, I'm sorry, that's speculation.

00:29:56.100 That's just an assertion.

00:29:57.420 They're going to have to back up that assertion in court.

00:29:59.580 The government's going to be having to answer for all of the lockdown harms in court.

00:30:05.820 All they're doing now is, you know, kind of making some cooing,

00:30:09.500 sympathetic noises about how hard this must be for people that have lost their jobs.

00:30:14.340 But the government's going to have to show in court

00:30:16.840 that the lockdowns are doing more good than harm.

00:30:19.820 So the silver lining on the cloud is that because of the suffering of Pastor Coates,

00:30:27.280 the government's going to be forced to show the public the science and the evidence

00:30:32.240 for the first time ever.

00:30:33.980 Because all we've had in the last 12 months is fear-mongering and speculation and assertions.

00:30:40.840 And the government doesn't have the evidence.

00:30:43.420 And they're going to have to scramble hard in the next two months to come up with it.

00:30:47.440 Yeah. You know, sometimes I wonder if I would have the toughness and the courage

00:30:55.320 to go to jail for something I believe in.

00:30:58.460 I mean, I've never done a criminal thing in my life.

00:31:00.060 I wouldn't go to jail.

00:31:01.000 As a criminal, I would go to jail for some political crime.

00:31:05.480 And, I mean, I've never been arrested at all.

00:31:07.860 But occasionally, I think, would I have the courage,

00:31:11.260 and would my family support me and my friends and my, I mean, would our business continue?

00:31:17.000 And in my mind, I've always thought, okay, I'm in jail overnight or something.

00:31:21.340 I can't imagine 10, 11 weeks in that place.

00:31:29.480 I just can't imagine that suffering.

00:31:33.140 Well, I mean, Pastor Coates, this is tremendous courage.

00:31:36.240 I ask myself the same question, you know, because I think it's highly unlikely that I would ever be in jail

00:31:42.660 for committing a criminal offense.

00:31:44.080 But I do sometimes ask myself the question, would I be willing to go to jail for exercising my charter freedoms

00:31:50.780 of speech and expression and religion and conscience and association and peaceful assembly?

00:31:56.820 I would hope that I would have the same courage that Pastor Coates is currently displaying

00:32:04.020 and that he's displaying every day.

00:32:06.020 He can get out of jail on a moment's notice if he's willing to violate his conscience

00:32:11.940 and comply with unscientific and unconstitutional health orders.

00:32:17.920 I would only hope that I would have the courage that he is displaying currently

00:32:24.660 if ever it came to that for myself.

00:32:26.820 I would only hope that I would have that level of courage.

00:32:29.320 Yeah.

00:32:29.820 You know, it's extremely rare.

00:32:34.040 And yet, it may be the thing that turns the tide for us.

00:32:40.200 Let me speed up with my questions.

00:32:41.820 And I know I'm asking you some philosophical questions and you're answering very thoughtfully.

00:32:47.460 Now, when I was talking to Sheila Gunn-Reed a moment ago, I put something to her and she agreed with me.

00:32:54.060 But I want to check with you because you're a lawyer closely working on this case.

00:32:58.460 It's my understanding that the charges or the offenses against this pastor are basically public health orders

00:33:07.280 for which the penalty could be a fine, but not a criminal conviction, certainly, and not jail time.

00:33:14.880 Now, correct me if I'm wrong, because the point I take from that is he's serving 10 weeks hard time

00:33:22.320 in a maximum security prison for an offense that's akin to a speeding ticket.

00:33:30.020 You're not going to go to jail for it even if you're convicted.

00:33:31.960 So we're holding a guy in prison until his trial.

00:33:35.920 And even if he loses his trial in the worst way possible, he wouldn't be going to prison then.

00:33:40.980 Am I right or have I mistaken the law there?

00:33:44.840 My understanding is that Pastor Coates would not go to prison unless he was found in contempt of court.

00:33:53.060 And so if the Alberta government sought a specific injunction against Grace Life Church in Edmonton and was successful,

00:34:04.300 if there was a specific court injunction against that church, and if Pastor Coates or other members of that church

00:34:10.480 then defied the injunction, they could be found to be in contempt of court.

00:34:14.620 But the actual health offense does not contemplate...

00:34:17.960 The actual health offense, my understanding is there's no jail time for that.

00:34:21.280 So he's doing 10 weeks in maximum security, being held for a trial,

00:34:26.920 that on the substance he couldn't be jailed for one day.

00:34:31.100 That seems to be the case.

00:34:32.740 Yeah, and if I hear otherwise, I'll get back to you.

00:34:35.040 Yeah, let me know.

00:34:35.740 That's my understanding is that there's no jail time as penalty for violating these unscientific

00:34:44.700 and unconstitutional public health orders.

00:34:47.480 Let me ask you about something that Sheila and I were talking about.

00:34:51.280 It's been a long time since I practiced law, but the law of bail is not that complicated.

00:35:02.180 Basically, there's two grounds.

00:35:03.600 I mean, you practice law every day.

00:35:06.380 The first is, are you a flight risk?

00:35:07.940 Are you going to show up for your trial?

00:35:09.320 Well, so a pastor with roots in the community, with a family, he's not flying off to Venezuela.

00:35:16.820 So there's no flight risk.

00:35:17.920 This guy's going to show up, obviously.

00:35:19.640 And he's fully committed.

00:35:20.920 He's fully committed to showing up for trial.

00:35:22.900 Yeah, it would be absurd to say otherwise.

00:35:24.380 The Crown is not even alleging that there's any chance that he's not going to show up for his trial.

00:35:29.640 So the second ground is danger to the community.

00:35:32.860 And that typically means danger of violence.

00:35:34.580 So that's why you would keep a terrorist or a murderer or a rapist in jail,

00:35:38.880 because you're actually worried that they'll do something violent.

00:35:42.240 Obviously, there's no violence from this man.

00:35:44.620 It would be a stretch to say that danger is, you know, public, because he's not infected himself.

00:35:51.060 He's not like Typhoid Mary.

00:35:53.240 And here's the kicker.

00:35:56.420 His church is opening without him.

00:35:58.620 In fact, his church is opening in solidarity with him.

00:36:01.380 We've had Sheila Gunn-Reed there the last couple of weekends documenting it.

00:36:04.780 Church is packed.

00:36:06.040 So whether he's released or not, that church is packed.

00:36:10.640 It's not correlated to whether or not he's released.

00:36:13.640 In fact, it might even be a reverse correlation there because he's in jail.

00:36:17.860 So what exactly is the danger?

00:36:20.020 So on the first grounds, flight risk.

00:36:22.860 There is none.

00:36:23.460 And you're saying the crown, Karen Thorsrud, doesn't even say there's a risk.

00:36:27.540 On the second grounds, danger.

00:36:29.380 Obviously, he's not a danger of violence.

00:36:31.360 The only danger I could possibly think of is they would say he would make a health danger by having the full church. 0.91

00:36:37.960 But that doesn't turn on whether or not he's released because they're open anyways.

00:36:42.740 How does that make sense?

00:36:44.780 No, Ezra, I cannot disagree with your reasoning.

00:36:50.580 I mean, if this was really – so we've got two things at play.

00:36:54.940 One is we've got the ideology of Jason Kenney as well as Rachel Motley.

00:36:59.660 I mean, the UCP and the NDP, they're both pro-lockdown parties.

00:37:05.180 So we've got an ideology here that says that a full church is as much of a threat to the public as murderers that are on the loose.

00:37:15.800 But then we also have what – and I don't want to tempt the powers that be – but you've got an inconsistent application of that ideology insofar as if Sheila Gunn-Reed has been at the church and the church is packed,

00:37:33.880 then logically, you know, the government should send in 1,000 police officers and just arrest everybody there.

00:37:43.840 And, you know, I don't know if Jason Kenney is willing to go that far.

00:37:49.300 But there's certainly an inconsistency here that, you know, I haven't been at the church.

00:37:54.380 I'm in Calgary, a three-hour drive away.

00:37:57.960 But, you know, if you tell me that Sheila Gunn-Reed has been there and it's packed, and I take that to be true,

00:38:03.100 then you've got, you know, supposedly this big public health risk that is continuing.

00:38:10.000 So it's just disgraceful.

00:38:14.120 This is the consequence of people blindly accepting whatever politicians tell them

00:38:19.660 and just blindly grasping for this illusion of safety when the hard data, the Alberta Health Services data, Statistics Canada data,

00:38:32.060 tells us that COVID is not an unusually deadly killer and it's not something that everybody should be afraid of.

00:38:39.440 And it would just make far more sense to protect the vulnerable, which is, you know,

00:38:44.100 if you're 82 years old and you're sick and you're elderly and you're in a nursing home and you already have, you know,

00:38:52.420 cancer, emphysema, heart disease, what have you, then those are the people that we should be protecting.

00:38:57.880 But to violate our human dignity and our human rights and our fundamental freedoms by, you know, 0.98

00:39:04.540 not being allowed to have your parents over for Christmas dinner, you know, it's just appalling.

00:39:12.440 And things will get worse as long as the public is complacent and continues to buy into this fear-mongering

00:39:19.740 that is just not grounded on facts.

00:39:22.040 Yeah.

00:39:22.740 I know you've got to go at the top of the hour, so we only have a, is that right?

00:39:26.160 You've got to go, you've got a hard exit.

00:39:27.800 I've got until 11, yeah.

00:39:29.240 Okay.

00:39:29.660 So we've got about five minutes and I'll be judicious with our time.

00:39:35.140 Sheila and I talked about the disgrace of Karen Thorsrud, the prosecutor,

00:39:38.940 trying to hide her name from the public yesterday, pretending that she's been under threat by these

00:39:45.460 little lambs at the church.

00:39:47.200 I think that's patently absurd on the face of it.

00:39:50.940 If it is in fact true, we'll then send those threats to the police.

00:39:54.440 They certainly seem to be eager to enforce them brutally.

00:39:57.260 Maybe Pastor Croats will have some roommates.

00:39:59.480 I don't believe it for a second.

00:40:01.140 I think that you have a prosecutor who realizes she's doing something contrary to the public

00:40:08.200 interest.

00:40:09.040 And as I said earlier, bringing the administration of justice into disrepute.

00:40:12.700 And so naturally she wants to hide her name and she also wants to play the victim because 1.00

00:40:16.900 the whole world sees that she's actually the persecutor.

00:40:20.060 So the fact that Karen Thorsrud wants to hide her name is contrary to our nature in law.

00:40:24.680 And I'm going to shout her name to the rafters.

00:40:26.780 But I also must note, John, that we do not have independent prosecutor, advocate, one man

00:40:35.900 shows.

00:40:36.520 Like some European jurisdictions have strange sort of independent roving prosecutors with

00:40:42.720 no checks and balances on them.

00:40:44.660 You could even say the American special prosecutor system allows that.

00:40:48.720 But Karen Thorsrud has a boss and her boss has a boss. 0.81

00:40:52.600 Casey Maddu, the justice minister.

00:40:54.340 Jason Kenney, the premier.

00:40:56.500 I believe that cabinet and caucus both discussed this matter.

00:41:00.760 At what point do they say, drop this?

00:41:06.040 Can they say, drop this?

00:41:07.760 Do they have the legal power to say, drop this?

00:41:09.800 This is contrary to law, contrary to the constitution.

00:41:15.440 How can we get what is clearly a political prosecution to be stopped?

00:41:20.680 You know, it's a good question.

00:41:24.600 And I dearly want to see Pastor Coates released from jail as soon as possible.

00:41:30.580 And he should never have been jailed in the first place.

00:41:33.080 It is a thorny and challenging question that you ask, because one of the aspects of the rule

00:41:38.800 of law is that politicians, politically elected people, do not interfere in prosecutions.

00:41:46.040 And we, the whole country was looking at this issue a year, year and a half ago with Prime Minister Trudeau

00:41:53.880 interfering with Jody Raymond Wilson.

00:42:00.180 I'm sorry if I've got a name wrong.

00:42:01.100 Yeah, Jody Wilson-Raybould.

00:42:01.820 Well, in the SNC-Lavalin matter, you bet Trudeau was trying to get his friends off the hook. 0.81

00:42:06.940 Clearly corrupt.

00:42:08.280 But he was doing it in a sneaky way.

00:42:10.880 This is the opposite.

00:42:11.760 This is a public interest.

00:42:13.580 And it would be a public explanation.

00:42:15.480 This wouldn't be, hey, psst, let my rich friends at SNC-Lavalin go from their corruption case.

00:42:20.840 This is a public statement.

00:42:22.940 Whoa, this is contrary to public interest.

00:42:24.940 Like, it's the same question of political interference, but that was interfering to let a genuine confessed criminal organization go.

00:42:34.600 I mean, SNC-Lavalin confessed to crimes.

00:42:38.120 The question was, do they get a plea bargain or not?

00:42:40.720 This is a man who has been charged with no crime and has been persecuted in a manner no one's ever heard of before.

00:42:46.500 I think it's the same issue, but opposite sides of the spectrum of right and wrong.

00:42:50.880 Well, you know, I'm totally sympathetic to what you're saying.

00:42:56.140 And like I said, I'd like to see him get out of jail.

00:42:58.640 But we do have to ask ourselves, do we want a country or a province, in this case, where the elected officials are, you know, interfering with who gets prosecuted, who does not get prosecuted, who gets put in jail, who does not get put in jail?

00:43:15.780 So it's kind of a scary territory.

00:43:18.860 I will say about Karen Thorsrud, though, that perhaps she believes in sincerely that she is doing the right thing.

00:43:26.620 I try to not, you know, go into people's hearts and minds.

00:43:30.320 And I assume that people are, they have good motives.

00:43:33.420 They're doing what they believe to be right.

00:43:35.480 But what I think is incredibly slimy is for her to pretend that somehow her safety is at risk.

00:43:42.120 And I would love it if she, you know, if that is the case, she should put an affidavit in the court and she should have, you know, transcripts of the death threats, if any.

00:43:53.900 Or she should have, you know, the threatening emails or notes or this or that.

00:43:59.920 Because Pastor Coates is 100% peaceful, 100% nonviolent.

00:44:04.860 The members of his congregation are peaceful and nonviolent.

00:44:07.860 His wife was interviewed last night by Danielle Smith.

00:44:11.540 And she said that, you know, she's very sad and heartbroken by being separated from her husband.

00:44:17.820 And, you know, at the same time, she accepts that this is reality.

00:44:21.180 So this is not a biker gang or, you know, some criminal operation.

00:44:27.800 And it's interesting because when you do get trials before the court where there's a prosecutor who's going after, you know, a biker gang or some criminal activity,

00:44:38.820 in those scenarios, the prosecutor wears it as a badge of honor that his or her name is publicly known.

00:44:46.700 So for Karen Thorsrud to, you know, to be wanting her name not mentioned on court documents, to me, it seems very slimy unless she did, in fact, get,

00:44:59.520 unless there is, in fact, a real threat to her danger and to her life or to her safety.

00:45:04.440 In which case, she should swear to an affidavit and follow the affidavit with the courts.

00:45:10.560 And she should, you know, report matters to police.

00:45:14.160 But just to insinuate, this is a slur against James Coates, which she did in court yesterday, I think.

00:45:23.500 Yeah. Well, I know you've got to go, but I have reviewed that version of that section of the criminal code that allows any justice system participant to be secret.

00:45:33.220 And you have to have a written application.

00:45:35.620 You have to, there's about 10 conditions.

00:45:37.820 The judge has to balance the public interest of society and other measures to protect.

00:45:44.600 What happened yesterday wasn't just slimy innately, but the process of it was clearly contrary to the law.

00:45:53.080 I think Karen Thorsrud knows deep down in size that what she is doing is contrary to the nature of Canada and Canadians.

00:46:01.880 And you know what? You're a public person prosecuting in the name of the Queen.

00:46:10.060 You own it. 0.78

00:46:11.280 And if you don't like it, quit and be rid of your disgraceful job.

00:46:16.700 No one's forcing her to put pastors in jail. 0.99

00:46:19.400 Anyways, John, it's great to have you.

00:46:21.180 Thank you for joining us.

00:46:22.020 I know you've got to go right now, so we'll say goodbye.

00:46:23.940 I want to give a shout out to your website, jccf.ca.

00:46:30.040 Stands for Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

00:46:33.420 jccf.ca.

00:46:35.360 Folks can chip in.

00:46:37.080 You actually get a charity tax credit because these guys are a registered civil liberties public interest law firm.

00:46:43.720 So feel free to chip in if you want to help John and his team fight for Pastor Coates.

00:46:50.380 That's what the website looks like.

00:46:51.880 There you get tax receipts.

00:46:53.000 It's the whole meal deal.

00:46:54.500 John, great to see you again.

00:46:55.660 Good luck out there.

00:46:56.440 Good to see you.

00:46:56.680 Good luck out there.

00:47:26.680 That's shocking to me.

00:47:29.020 But after I recorded that, I discovered something even crazier.

00:47:33.180 The Conservative Party has their own version of banhuawei.com.

00:47:37.320 That's our petition site.

00:47:38.600 The Conservative Party had their own website, their own petition to ban Huawei, and they just took it down.

00:47:46.880 Now, was that a direct order from this Mr. Enright, the Huawei VP?

00:47:53.460 I don't know.

00:47:54.040 But already their policy is changing.

00:47:56.680 I wouldn't trust Aaron O'Toole as far as I can throw him.

00:48:00.220 Clyde writes,

00:48:01.220 What happens when you reach a point when there is nobody you can trust to lead your country?

00:48:06.000 Yeah, you know, it really is choosing the lesser of two evils, isn't it?

00:48:10.140 Jay writes,

00:48:10.700 The pastor James in justice makes me feel like we are all frogs in the boiling pot of water.

00:48:14.960 Our rights and freedoms are slowly being boiled away.

00:48:17.320 That's a terrible analogy, but I know exactly what you mean by that.

00:48:20.600 We are gradually accepting things that if it would have happened all at once, would have been shocking.

00:48:25.420 Oh, just two weeks to flatten the curve.

00:48:27.300 Oh, just one more month.

00:48:29.140 Oh, just another one.

00:48:30.220 Oh, we'll let you out soon.

00:48:32.060 Yeah, we're coming up on a year now.

00:48:34.520 I think the idea to hold the pastor in prison for 10 weeks, as much as some truly violent criminals are,

00:48:42.960 I hope that makes people wake up.

00:48:46.560 We'll find out, won't we?

00:48:48.360 That's our show for today.

00:48:50.580 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:48:53.480 you at home, good night.

00:48:56.000 Keep fighting for freedom.

00:48:56.920 We'll be right back.

Rebel News Podcast - March 06, 2021

The CBC thinks it knows why nobody trusts them!

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