Rebel News Podcast - July 23, 2019


The Liberals, CTV blame #TrudeauMustGo hashtag on “bots” — but here's the truth


Episode Stats


Length

41 minutes

Words per minute

161.04823

Word count

6,717

Sentence count

479

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A story about Justin Trudeau's socks is taking on a trend. But isn t it funny that this CTV story discrediting a grassroots Trudeau must go hashtag came one day after Trudeau met the owner of CTV? Listen to my podcast to find out why.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, Rebels, today's podcast is about this weird CTV story taking on a Twitter trend.
00:00:07.880 I mean, that's several degrees of meta, isn't it?
00:00:11.020 But isn't it funny that this CTV story discrediting a grassroots Trudeau must go hashtag came
00:00:19.140 one day after Trudeau met the owner of CTV?
00:00:22.880 It's not a coincidence.
00:00:25.980 Listen to my podcast.
00:00:27.380 You'll see why.
00:00:28.200 Anyway, before I get to that, can you please consider getting a premium subscription to
00:00:32.680 The Rebel?
00:00:32.880 Go to therebel.media slash shows.
00:00:36.220 And you can sign up.
00:00:37.320 It's $8 a month, $80 for the whole year.
00:00:39.440 And you even get a discount that's deeper if you type in podcast as your coupon code.
00:00:44.060 You get the video version of the show.
00:00:45.860 That's the main thing.
00:00:47.580 And you also get David Manzi's show and Sheila Gunn-Reed's show.
00:00:51.400 And you get the satisfaction of knowing that you helped cover our costs.
00:00:54.220 So that's at therebel.media slash shows.
00:00:56.700 All right.
00:00:57.440 Here's the podcast.
00:00:58.200 You're listening to The Rebel Media Podcast.
00:01:02.680 Tonight, Justin Trudeau has a personal meeting with CTV's president.
00:01:06.960 And CTV returns the favor.
00:01:09.120 It's July 22nd, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:11.760 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:17.580 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:21.660 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody
00:01:26.520 right to do so.
00:01:27.520 In some way, CTV is worse than the CBC because the CBC is basically a government department.
00:01:38.640 So they're sort of set for life.
00:01:40.400 They've come to terms with being government journalists at the state broadcaster.
00:01:45.260 They've made the grand bargain, give up any semblance of independence or self-respect, become glorified
00:01:52.980 press secretaries for Trudeau, like this cringeworthy story all about Trudeau's socks.
00:02:00.020 I'm not even kidding.
00:02:00.880 And in return, you get to be overpaid and essentially have a job for life in an industry
00:02:07.860 that's laying off real journalists.
00:02:10.380 I mean, the CBC didn't even fire Xi'an Gomeshi, even after they had heard all the allegations
00:02:15.200 against him.
00:02:15.980 It wasn't until Gomeshi panicked and wrote a huge confession of his sexual assaults on
00:02:21.820 Facebook that they let him go.
00:02:23.440 So if you're willing to be a Trudeau shill, you're basically unfireable at the CBC.
00:02:29.160 Here's a clip of Gomeshi and Trudeau on the CBC, just to show you how intimate the whole
00:02:34.240 thing is.
00:02:35.780 Because you're very handsome.
00:02:37.120 Thank you, Justin.
00:02:38.780 Kiss him.
00:02:40.940 I think because...
00:02:43.940 Yeah, it's creepy.
00:02:45.500 I mean, it's not the creepiest that that CBC show gets.
00:02:49.720 That show, Toulamand on Parle, literally threw a party with a disco ball and dance music and
00:02:55.600 champagne for a terrorist war criminal from Al-Qaeda named Omar Khadar.
00:03:00.940 Omar Khadar.
00:03:01.800 They gave a murderer a standing ovation.
00:03:20.680 So that's the CBC.
00:03:22.640 But look, they're in.
00:03:23.560 They're fully committed to the government.
00:03:25.140 They're a state broadcaster, just like Qatar's Al Jazeera or Vladimir Putin's Russia Today.
00:03:29.760 But CTV, that's a trickier proposition.
00:03:32.660 See, nominally, they're a private sector company.
00:03:35.340 But they depend completely on the permission of Canada's various federal government regulators
00:03:40.160 for their survival.
00:03:41.260 Mainly the CRTC.
00:03:42.820 That's the broadcast regulator.
00:03:44.420 But remember that CTV is owned by Bell, the cable and cell phone giant.
00:03:48.300 Those are much bigger businesses than the dying television part of their work.
00:03:53.400 And really nothing other than an airline or a bank or a cigarette company is more regulated
00:03:58.500 than those.
00:03:59.100 With one flick of his tail, Justin Trudeau and his partisan fixers could destroy CTV's Bell
00:04:04.900 Media by issuing an order or a ruling devastating their cell phone or cable businesses.
00:04:10.820 And just as capriciously, in one move, Trudeau could add literally billions to their bottom
00:04:16.680 line.
00:04:17.780 And he is, by the way, and they are, by the way.
00:04:20.120 The Canadian cell phone and data bills in this country are as much as double or triple the
00:04:26.260 price of cell phone bills in other countries.
00:04:28.340 Did you know that?
00:04:28.840 If you own a cell phone company in Canada and a TV station and Trudeau's regulator let you
00:04:37.080 gouge Canadian cell phone users to charge them literally triple what other countries' cell phone
00:04:43.200 companies can get away with, and then Trudeau came to visit you on the eve of an election
00:04:46.860 campaign, would you do exactly, literally what he told you to do?
00:04:52.820 Why, yes, you would.
00:04:53.960 Because you like making billions of dollars a year, more than you care about journalistic
00:04:58.600 ethics.
00:04:58.980 I mean, you've got shareholders to appease in a way that CTV's more susceptible.
00:05:04.120 Because unlike the CBC that has formally married Trudeau for life and has bound up with him as
00:05:10.360 fellow government employees, CTV knows it could all be taken away from them in a moment.
00:05:14.040 And sometimes it just comes down, well, to a bribe.
00:05:18.240 Look at this in the last budget.
00:05:19.660 $1.7 billion, a handout from Trudeau to the phone companies, because I guess Bell is still
00:05:26.460 too poor, so they need money from you to build the internet.
00:05:30.620 I guess they wouldn't be able to do so without Trudeau's advice and help and guidance and
00:05:34.720 cash.
00:05:35.000 So a $1.7 billion gift.
00:05:37.800 Bell Media wronged $23 billion out of Canadians last year directly, but Trudeau gave them
00:05:42.780 a $1.7 billion top up.
00:05:44.880 And on the eve of the election, well, look at this, a tweet from Trudeau.
00:05:48.420 Trudeau stopped by to remind Bell Media who their boss is.
00:05:53.300 Today, I met with Bell CEO George Cope about the work they were doing to connect more rural
00:05:58.860 communities to broadband and lower wireless costs for Canadians.
00:06:02.240 Thanks for the meeting, George.
00:06:04.720 Well, to be honest, if Trudeau met with me and gave me a slice of $1.7 billion, there's
00:06:11.100 no telling what I would do.
00:06:12.860 But here's what CTV did.
00:06:16.400 They went straight to work as Trudeau's personal war room, defending his honor against the peasants, 0.76
00:06:22.120 otherwise known as Bell customers who might dare to think for themselves.
00:06:25.580 Seriously, Trudeau met with CTV's boss on July 17th.
00:06:29.360 I don't know if you saw that on the tweet.
00:06:30.700 And look at this.
00:06:31.940 July 18th, this story.
00:06:35.180 Fake Twitter accounts.
00:06:36.260 Push hashtag Trudeau must go, says report.
00:06:38.560 Now, before I read the story, look at the byline there.
00:06:42.000 Do you know what a byline is?
00:06:42.960 That's who wrote the story, the journalist.
00:06:45.160 Most people, to be honest, don't look at bylines when they read news stories unless they're
00:06:48.860 reading a personal commentary by a well-known pundit, let's say, Christy Bladsford or something.
00:06:54.700 But bylines are a form of recognition and pride that ordinary journalists get.
00:06:59.060 Their name on a front page story.
00:07:00.840 You're proud of the work you do.
00:07:03.360 So who wrote this story?
00:07:04.760 CTV News staff.
00:07:08.480 Oh, that's funny.
00:07:10.100 Most of the time, CTV News staff love to have their personal name in lights.
00:07:14.700 It's a perk of being a journalist.
00:07:16.580 Why wouldn't they want their name on this piece of journalism?
00:07:19.900 Frankly, by news staff, what does that mean?
00:07:23.840 Are they actually real journalists at CTV?
00:07:25.880 Or was this written by someone else?
00:07:27.180 I don't know.
00:07:27.900 Maybe by George at Bell Media.
00:07:30.340 I mean, when Justin Trudeau is on a first-name basis with George, the owner of CTV,
00:07:34.320 maybe George had someone in Bell Media, some intern, write up something and just give it
00:07:39.560 to CTV.
00:07:40.260 Who knows?
00:07:40.580 Maybe the Liberal War Room sent over some talking points to George and George told CTV just to
00:07:45.820 publish it verbatim.
00:07:46.700 We don't know.
00:07:48.180 I'm curious, though, if it were written by a CTV journalist, why don't they say who wrote
00:07:53.360 it as they normally do?
00:07:55.660 Okay, back to the propaganda.
00:07:56.920 A handful of Twitter bots, that's short for robots, created earlier this week, tweeted
00:08:03.480 hundreds of times a day to help make the hashtag Trudeau Must Go a national trending topic in
00:08:08.420 Canada, deepening concerns about how online discourse can be manipulated ahead of the federal
00:08:13.340 election.
00:08:14.900 Do you see what's going on here?
00:08:15.700 It's like that story I showed you the other day of Elections Canada spending millions of
00:08:19.560 dollars trying to track down who used this attractive picture of Jagmeet Singh to have
00:08:23.640 some clickbait traffic to a website called Attorney Cocktail.
00:08:27.340 I mean, the whole thing was a joke.
00:08:28.420 It was probably only seen by a few dozen people in the whole world, and it was gone in a puff.
00:08:32.340 But Elections Canada had a multi-million dollar, multi-jurisdictional investigation of it.
00:08:36.780 Why?
00:08:38.320 Well, of course, why?
00:08:39.160 To create a pretext to regulate the internet.
00:08:41.660 By the way, CTV is completely fine with the regulated internet.
00:08:45.120 The more regulation, the better for them, actually.
00:08:47.080 Keep out those evil foreigners. 1.00
00:08:49.100 No, no, no, no, no.
00:08:50.020 Not foreigners like the Russians or this website that says Jagmeet Singh lives a rich lifestyle
00:08:56.320 because, in fact, Jagmeet Singh does live a rich lifestyle, and he boasts about it.
00:09:01.100 I'm talking about the evil foreigners. 1.00
00:09:03.360 I don't mean the Russians.
00:09:04.200 I mean companies that would give Canadians cheaper cell phone and internet service.
00:09:08.840 Yeah, the more regulated, the better for Bell Media.
00:09:11.980 I mean, the CBC will do fine no matter what, right?
00:09:13.860 They're full-on welfare cases.
00:09:15.460 But CTV needs regulation to keep up their competitors, to fatten up prices, and, of course,
00:09:20.420 to get their slice of $1.7 billion in handout money to build the internet.
00:09:25.240 But back to the CTV story.
00:09:27.620 They picked up a propaganda piece by the National Observer, which is not only funded by the Ties
00:09:32.940 Foundation, it's actually run by Linda Solomon Wood, the sister of Joel Solomon, the man
00:09:38.180 who ran the Ties Foundation.
00:09:39.200 So the National Observer is pure propaganda, bought and paid for, not with cell phone money,
00:09:44.600 but with left-wing activist money.
00:09:46.340 Anyways, back to the CTV story.
00:09:47.720 I just wanted to tell you what the National Observer was.
00:09:49.960 Here's a CTV story.
00:09:50.780 The discovery, first reported Thursday by the National Observer, was made after analysis
00:09:55.380 of 31,600 tweets containing the hashtag on Tuesday and Wednesday, raised serious suspicions.
00:10:01.460 The National Observer found several telltale signs of inauthentic activity in the tweets.
00:10:06.560 Many accounts tweeted more than 100 times a day and indicated that the posts were likely
00:10:10.740 automated.
00:10:11.820 The news organization also found that more than two dozen of the accounts were created
00:10:15.040 in the past two days and immediately began flooding Twitter with Trudeau must go tweets.
00:10:19.840 Some of those accounts have since been suspended.
00:10:23.100 Look, there are hundreds of millions of accounts on Twitter, 2 billion people on Facebook.
00:10:27.740 Some are real, some are fake.
00:10:29.620 Most fake accounts have only a few followers.
00:10:32.040 No one follows fake accounts, especially if they're just a couple of days old.
00:10:36.280 I don't even know what the point is, really.
00:10:37.800 If you only have a couple of followers and your followers are fake too, literally no one
00:10:42.380 is reading your fake tweets.
00:10:44.060 I have about 180,000 followers on Twitter.
00:10:46.560 And according to the website Twitter Audit, 92% of them are real.
00:10:51.700 By contrast, only 67% of Justin Trudeau's followers are real.
00:10:56.860 And oh my God, the CBC News, just 66% of their people are real.
00:11:04.620 CBC News is slightly better at 74%, which is still pretty weak.
00:11:08.400 So these guys are talking about fake news when they're fake.
00:11:11.100 But what's my point?
00:11:12.600 Why am I following this minutia?
00:11:15.100 Because the whole point is this story, first concocted by the Tides Foundation front group,
00:11:19.180 then promoted by Trudeau's friend George.
00:11:22.080 The whole point is to do two things.
00:11:23.600 First of all, it's to activate the Liberal Party's auxiliary war rooms across the media.
00:11:28.260 They've got the $600 million newspaper bailout.
00:11:30.720 They've got the $1.5 billion CBC annual bailout.
00:11:33.820 They've got the $1.7 billion internet company bailout.
00:11:37.940 OK, so now earn it, you guys.
00:11:39.200 Be Liberal Party shills again for the next 90 days.
00:11:41.960 Get the shiny pony across the finish line, however you have to do it.
00:11:44.580 We've got to get our guy to win.
00:11:45.660 So obviously, it's pro-liberal propaganda.
00:11:47.760 Expect a lot more of that in the next 90 days.
00:11:49.460 But this tactic of demonizing internet opponents, or in this case, making up opponents where
00:11:54.920 there are none, engaging in conspiracy theories to discredit opposing views, CTV even found
00:12:00.800 a foreign expert to tell them what they wanted to hear.
00:12:03.240 Dave Salisbury, a cybersecurity expert with the University of Dayton, said some of the
00:12:08.040 accounts do appear a bit vautish.
00:12:10.220 I mean, it is possible that someone could knock out 20 tweets an hour for 12 hours a day.
00:12:14.740 Yeah, but I would hope you've got something better to do with your time, he told CTV News
00:12:18.800 Channel on Thursday.
00:12:19.800 I'd like CTV, which has nothing better to do with their time than write about it.
00:12:23.100 OK, so that's the best they got, eh?
00:12:26.440 Well, when $1.7 billion of free money is at stake, they'll do what it takes.
00:12:30.880 Except, of course, Canadians do believe that Trudeau should go.
00:12:35.940 That's this whole thing here.
00:12:37.160 It's not a conspiracy.
00:12:38.100 It's not foreigners. 1.00
00:12:38.900 It's not fake robots.
00:12:39.780 Canadians want Trudeau to go.
00:12:45.260 Poll after poll shows that Trudeau is not just disliked, but he's despised.
00:12:50.340 Look at this.
00:12:50.740 Check this out.
00:12:51.480 This very interesting Angusry poll shows that phenomenon.
00:12:54.460 Once you've fallen out of love with Trudeau and you see him as a fake, a phony, a fraud,
00:12:57.920 you can't unsee that anymore.
00:12:59.460 You hate him.
00:13:00.060 Look at that.
00:13:01.140 Almost three times as many people hate Trudeau as moderately disapprove of him.
00:13:05.620 So, yeah, that Twitter trend, Trudeau must go, it ain't fake.
00:13:10.220 What's fake is trying to write off that grassroots opposition as phony.
00:13:14.400 That's fake.
00:13:15.020 This CTV story is fake.
00:13:16.980 Here's a real guy, a conservative activist from Ontario.
00:13:20.260 He's a medical doctor, David Jacobs, who got the whole thing trending.
00:13:25.280 And here's what he wrote in response to this CTV story.
00:13:27.780 He said,
00:13:28.080 I like that, not a bot.
00:13:46.760 That's for robot. 0.94
00:13:48.380 And here, here's another one.
00:13:50.740 Definitely not a bot.
00:13:52.320 Don't downplay how many Canadians believe Trudeau must go.
00:13:55.260 And that, of course, was a conservative senator, Denise Batters. 0.98
00:13:58.080 Say, I've got a question for CTV.
00:13:59.920 Do you think by discrediting and slandering Canadians who oppose Trudeau, do you think that will make your company, Bell Media, more or less despised than it already is?
00:14:13.640 Do you think it'll make you more or less trusted as a news source?
00:14:17.400 I think they don't have the answer, but they just looked at that pile of money from Trudeau and they say what they say to cell phone customers literally every day.
00:14:27.560 Screw them.
00:14:29.820 Stay with us for more.
00:14:30.760 Well, Gerald Butz is Justin Trudeau's longest standing friend.
00:14:50.640 Here's a picture of them at McGill, both wearing their sandals together.
00:14:55.840 They've been buddies forever.
00:14:57.340 And so when Justin Trudeau needed a guru, a Rasputin figure to shape his political career, obviously Gerald Butz was the guy.
00:15:06.780 It was a good pairing.
00:15:08.220 Justin Trudeau had the famous last name, the good looks and the charisma.
00:15:14.140 Gerald Butz, none of those things, but he had the brains.
00:15:17.640 They were a winning team.
00:15:19.660 And then it started to fall apart.
00:15:21.980 Jody Wilson-Raybould claimed that the prime minister's office, and Gerald Butz in particular, had tried to interfere with the prosecution of corruption with a Quebec-based engineering firm called SNC-Lavalin.
00:15:35.000 And shortly thereafter, it came out that similar interference, also traced back to Gerald Butz, was behind the malicious prosecution of Vice Admiral Mark Norman, who was later acquitted.
00:15:47.820 The charges were dropped against him, again orchestrated by the PMO.
00:15:52.180 Gerald Butz was up to his eyeballs in all this, and he resigned.
00:15:55.680 But now he's back, leaking the story to the CBC, which had a very gentle welcome back for him.
00:16:03.380 What should we make about Trudeau's best friend, who was implicated in two incredibly important corruption scandals, being welcomed back to run Trudeau's re-election campaign?
00:16:13.940 Joining us now to talk about all those things is our friend Manny Montenegrino, the CEO of ThinkSharp.
00:16:19.940 Manny, great to see you again.
00:16:21.660 Great to see you, Ezra.
00:16:23.120 What a topic today.
00:16:25.800 What a topic.
00:16:27.000 You know, every politician has their most trusted and loyal friend, and that's fine.
00:16:32.380 And we can disagree with Gerald Butz on ideology and politics.
00:16:35.580 That's to be expected.
00:16:36.680 He's a liberal, and you and I are conservatives.
00:16:39.280 But what about the corruption?
00:16:41.200 What about the fact that Jody Wilson-Raybould fingered him as the mastermind behind the attempt to get SNC-Lavalin off the hook,
00:16:49.120 and the incredible revelations of the Mark Norman scandal?
00:16:52.120 How is he allowed back in the face of all that?
00:16:55.640 Well, it starts well before that, Ezra.
00:16:59.540 It started on his first day of the job.
00:17:02.760 On his first day of the job, he submitted expense accounts upwards up to $200,000, he and the chief of staff, for moving from Toronto to Ottawa.
00:17:14.880 That was reported, and he was found to have at least breach some reasonable expense, and he was required to pay back that expense.
00:17:27.200 So at his very first day of the job, he did something improper, illegal, and paid it back.
00:17:33.260 Now, we haven't seen evidence of that, but that is in and of itself what the media spent nine months on the Senator Duffy matter.
00:17:45.220 And he actually was acting improperly.
00:17:50.060 Senator Duffy was acting properly, according to a judge.
00:17:53.860 So here you have, just on one act alone, then you add to that, Ezra, the SNC-Lavalin affair.
00:18:02.840 You have ten months, four months, ten people for the PMO orchestrated and architected by Gerald Butz.
00:18:11.120 A continued pressure and a continued obstruction of justice.
00:18:16.400 Then you, as you, you know, yeah, and then, as you know, there's all the other, the other obstruction of justice, and that is with Admiral Norman.
00:18:25.940 So there's two obstructions of justice and a false expense, but that's not it.
00:18:30.480 Go ahead, Ezra.
00:18:31.260 You know, I'm so glad you brought up that moving expense.
00:18:33.980 I mean, to move down Highway 401 from Toronto to Ottawa and to charge six figures for that is shocking.
00:18:39.940 And, of course, then the obstruction to that, trying to stop that information from being released through access to information, demonizing those, and then only finally admitting it was wrong and allegedly paying it back.
00:18:53.300 You're right, we have no proof he paid it back.
00:18:55.280 The reason that's important is because the entire party, the entire government, the entire civil service looks to the top for an example.
00:19:04.420 When Stephen Harper was prime minister, Nigel Wright, his chief of staff, didn't even take a paycheck.
00:19:11.280 He never expensed anything.
00:19:13.340 He was independently wealthy.
00:19:14.280 He just said, I'm not going to take any money.
00:19:16.040 That was the example.
00:19:17.300 Stephen Harper was such a penny pincher.
00:19:19.700 He didn't bill anything extravagantly.
00:19:21.920 And they actually fired Bev Oda for a cabinet for a $16 orange juice.
00:19:26.440 That was the culture.
00:19:27.500 Here you've got Trudeau, two personal nannies on the payroll, luxury jets with thousands of dollars in food and wine, flying all his friends to India, including in India.
00:19:39.540 So, Trudeau's lavish lifestyle, Gerald Butts' lavish lifestyle.
00:19:44.520 Is it any wonder that the entire government says, well, look, if the boss is getting away with it, why can't I?
00:19:49.780 Yeah, but there's more on the Gerald Butts.
00:19:52.140 We talked about his moving expense, which was improper, in the order of magnitude of Senator Duffy, which was proven to be proper expenses by a senator.
00:20:02.880 This was not proper because it was paid back.
00:20:05.420 We talked about the obstruction of justice.
00:20:07.360 But Gerald Butts had something more to do that it should be offensive to Canadians, and that is he corrupted the Privy Council.
00:20:13.560 He actually brought the Privy Council so close to the PMO that Michael Wernick had to resign.
00:20:21.500 That didn't happen under any other government where the chief of the Privy Council had to resign because he was biased and acted in favor, if you will, for the liberals.
00:20:37.120 Now, Gerald Butts had a hand to that.
00:20:39.220 And as you said, now, you mentioned Nigel Wright.
00:20:43.400 That's a great – now, I know Nigel Wright, and as you say, he was just a wonderful man.
00:20:48.060 What he did in order to get rid of the Senator Duffy matter, he actually paid $90,000 of his own money back to the taxpayers.
00:21:01.380 That prompted an RCMP investigation.
00:21:05.940 He was investigated.
00:21:07.560 There were, of course, no charges laid.
00:21:09.400 I mean, you don't get charged for giving money back to the taxpayer, but he was fully investigated by the RCMP for giving money back.
00:21:18.760 We have Mr. Butts who took money, who had to pay it back, who obstructed justice once or twice, who actually corrupted the Privy Council so as to he had to quit and no RCMP investigation.
00:21:34.400 Now, Ezra, it even gets worse than this, and you talked about it at the beginning of this segment, and that is about nepotism.
00:21:42.400 And, you know, we know what the media has done, and they've done a wonderful job on scouring through the Doug Fords and his chief of staff and a few little nepotism hires.
00:21:57.320 At some son of some person, at some rugby club, oh, let's get that person.
00:22:04.200 And they're out, and they've been fired.
00:22:06.340 Here's a situation where you have the Prime Minister not only doing nepotism in your face, hiring his best friend, but after his best friend has proven to take money that didn't belong to him from the taxpayer,
00:22:20.160 after his best friend has been proven to obstruct justice, after his best friend has been proven to politicize the public servant, the clerk of the Privy Council has to resign.
00:22:34.800 He resigns.
00:22:36.440 He gets paid a severance pay, and then he hires back his best friend.
00:22:44.160 I mean, this is nepotism in your face.
00:22:47.760 This is, you know, I can't think of a worse charge where you have a person that has done wronged the taxpayer, wronged the justice system, wronged the bureaucracy, quits, takes a big severance package, and then gets hired by.
00:23:06.060 It just astounds me.
00:23:07.960 Yeah, I mean, listen, you're a very accomplished lawyer.
00:23:11.280 You ran, you were the managing partner in a senior law firm for a long time.
00:23:16.620 Your understanding of employment law, if someone quits, generally they don't get severance for quitting, but I understand he may have received severance.
00:23:25.240 And if someone then comes back, does he have to pay back that severance?
00:23:29.200 What's the rules on that kind of stuff?
00:23:31.560 Well, I mean, first of all, we don't know because the media is not investigating it.
00:23:35.420 I mean, did he pay back the expense allowance?
00:23:38.180 When it comes to quitting, of course you don't get severance.
00:23:41.420 And if you do get hired back, you know, there's a whole principle of mitigating damages.
00:23:47.140 I mean, of course you have to put that money to the taxpayer.
00:23:51.240 But this is a government that doesn't care about the taxpayer.
00:23:54.020 This is a government that pays $100,000 for a moving expense from Toronto to Ottawa.
00:23:59.000 We don't know what he got paid.
00:24:02.080 It amazes me that during the Duffy trial, we actually got a copy of the check, $90,000 check payable to the taxpayers for the Duffy, but we don't know what was paid back on this.
00:24:15.760 We don't know what the severance is.
00:24:17.360 We don't know anything.
00:24:18.840 And Ezra, I tell you, this can only happen.
00:24:22.600 I mean, it is absurd that this nepotism in your face, hiring a person who was responsible for a lot of bad things in Canada, hiring them back, can only happen because the media lets it happen.
00:24:36.300 You know, and it's as simple as that, and I'll recall your viewers to the time that Nigel Wright, and he used to jog at four or five in the morning, a complete athlete, and the media interrupted him and got him on a four o'clock jog to ask him questions.
00:24:56.200 We are not going to get – so the media did – was way over the top with Nigel Wright because he gave money back to the taxpayers.
00:25:04.200 You will not see the media going to a four o'clock jog.
00:25:09.320 You will not see the media even ask the questions or get copies of the checks paid back.
00:25:13.720 I remember that pre-dawn jog.
00:25:16.280 I mean, just what it says about the stamina and discipline of Nigel Wright getting up that early to go jogging is incredible.
00:25:23.100 But the length the journalist went to ask him questions, complete incuriosity about jail.
00:25:29.860 But so I've got to tell you, the money side here is concerning, but to me it's the least of the problems.
00:25:36.080 The biggest problem is here's a guy who was credibly accused by the Attorney General of corruption.
00:25:44.100 The Mark Norman case, let me quote from the judge who threw out the case.
00:25:51.260 This is Judge Heather Perkins McVeigh.
00:25:56.040 Right.
00:25:56.860 By all appearances, this is a more direct influencing in the prosecution.
00:26:00.700 The Attorney General has entirely bypassed the Prime Minister's office.
00:26:04.020 Why its right arm, the PCO, is dealing directly with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.
00:26:08.300 And the Prosecution Service is allowing this to happen, so much for the independence of the PPSC.
00:26:14.200 That's a damning statement about the independence of the press, of the prosecution.
00:26:21.160 That is actually of greater concern to me than the fact that he's filling his pockets with goodies from the taxpayers' pantry.
00:26:29.320 And yeah, yeah.
00:26:30.380 I raise that because filling his pockets was enough for the media to hound Duffy for years,
00:26:37.660 to hound the Prime Minister Harper for years, and to have him removed.
00:26:43.180 And, you know, and Prime Minister Duffy lost a year of his salary.
00:26:46.580 A lot happened just for that moving expense.
00:26:49.860 Here we have moving expense.
00:26:52.120 We have improper, I think, improper severance pay.
00:26:55.840 But we also have, as you put it, you have the Attorney General of Canada saying that Butts' testimony was not truthful.
00:27:04.720 He did obstruct justice.
00:27:06.420 You have a judge, a sitting judge, and not a political person, Judge Heather McVeigh,
00:27:13.200 sitting there saying in open court that there was obstruction of justice in the Norman case by the PMO,
00:27:19.940 and the PMO is run by Gerald Butts.
00:27:22.720 I mean, you can't get any worse factual situation to say that this person should be nowhere near government,
00:27:30.660 nowhere near political party.
00:27:32.200 He should be nowhere near, but he's invited back.
00:27:37.260 There's a little story in the CBC.
00:27:39.120 And what inferred me in that story was when the CBC referred to, like, getting the gang together, the back gang.
00:27:46.500 Right.
00:27:46.800 They were so excited.
00:27:48.420 It was almost like the Beatles' return.
00:27:50.480 You know, isn't this great?
00:27:51.800 Gee, you know, it's great.
00:27:53.200 They're back.
00:27:53.700 And how can you do that?
00:27:55.300 How can you write a story like that?
00:27:56.860 Well, that's the same CBC that did a story on Justin Trudeau's socks, so I'm not sure they're that surprising.
00:28:03.640 When Butts resigned, you don't resign if you did nothing wrong.
00:28:09.760 So he resigned when things were going tough.
00:28:11.800 But look, Mark Norman is gagged.
00:28:14.440 The trial was dropped, so all the bad news is not going to come out.
00:28:17.780 He was given a huge payment.
00:28:19.580 I wouldn't surprise me if it was in the order of $10 million with a non-disclosure agreement, so he can't talk.
00:28:25.680 So that problem is solved with more taxpayer money.
00:28:27.920 You've got Jody Wilson-Raybould, who has not yet been released from her confidentiality and other privilege requirements.
00:28:37.000 So it's using government money.
00:28:39.740 Trudeau and Butts have shut up all the people who would finger them.
00:28:42.960 Michael Wernick is gone.
00:28:44.020 So now Butts is back.
00:28:45.980 I think he thinks he can get away with this because, as you pointed out, the media so far has been very gentle.
00:28:52.160 I think they're just going to brazen it out.
00:28:53.880 Many, they're used to a docile media, now adding $600 million in media bailout money.
00:29:00.540 I think Butts is going to get away with this. 1.00
00:29:02.880 Oh, he would definitely get away with it.
00:29:04.540 And think of if you were Jane Filippot or if you were Jody Wilson-Raybould and you read this news and you see you gave up your minister job, you gave up everything,
00:29:15.300 because you wanted an ethical government, and you pointed at Gerald Butts as being the architect of this unethical act.
00:29:24.640 And you sit there and you do everything.
00:29:26.460 These two strong women did what they had to do.
00:29:29.620 They resigned from cabinet.
00:29:31.520 They were booted out of the Liberal Party.
00:29:33.560 And now they're out there hustling away as independents trying to say we have to help and change Canada. 0.61
00:29:40.080 And they look and see this and see the media complicit in the silence.
00:29:44.680 I will say the silence and the cheerleading of having Butts back.
00:29:48.240 It is a slam to women who are in politics. 0.98
00:29:53.360 It is a slam to powerful women. 1.00
00:29:55.780 And it is a great win for the Boys Club, the elite Laurentian Boys Club, that seems to always win its day.
00:30:03.640 And it's headed by Justin Trudeau.
00:30:05.240 You know, I remember you and I were talking the other day, all those attorneys general, former attorneys general of various parties, provincially, federally,
00:30:17.820 wrote to the government requesting, wrote to the RCMP, I believe it was, requesting an investigation.
00:30:25.220 There is so much evidence here, including Jody Wilson-Raybould herself, who was right in the thick of it.
00:30:30.360 Right.
00:30:30.640 I'm worried that our police are becoming political.
00:30:36.560 And I'm worried about that not only because I want justice, but also because I want our police to remain above partisan politics.
00:30:43.840 I don't want them to be brought into disrepute.
00:30:46.360 I don't want police choosing our elections.
00:30:48.840 I don't want police meddling.
00:30:50.620 But it's not meddling when there's so much prima facie evidence of wrongdoing.
00:30:54.600 In the Mark Norman case, in the SNC-Lavalin case, what we heard from Jody Wilson-Raybould's own testimony,
00:31:01.200 I do not want police putting their thumb on the scale in an election.
00:31:04.980 But that's not what's going on here.
00:31:06.820 They've been silent for six months.
00:31:09.140 What can we do about that, Manny?
00:31:11.520 Well, exactly.
00:31:12.580 I mean, they should have acted quickly.
00:31:14.240 We have not even received a press release.
00:31:17.980 Not even one word saying we received and we will investigate.
00:31:21.660 Not even, not that I have seen.
00:31:24.660 I mean, you have five attorney generals.
00:31:27.100 Don't forget the ex-attorney general, Michael O'Brien from Ontario, who also demanded.
00:31:33.320 A liberal, a strong liberal who also demanded an investigation, who also, in his opinion, concluded was obstruction of justice.
00:31:40.280 So you have at least six attorney generals.
00:31:42.380 You have the leader of the opposition.
00:31:44.800 You have millions of Canadians on Twitter and otherwise saying, please investigate.
00:31:49.140 You have the attorney.
00:31:50.440 And then before all that happened, the attorney general was fearful that she would lose her job.
00:31:55.720 And she did lose her job.
00:31:57.280 So there's so much evidence.
00:31:59.240 But so when you ask about I'm worried about the corruption of our law enforcement, RSMP,
00:32:08.220 well, I, too, very much worry, Ezra.
00:32:11.040 But I don't like what I have seen.
00:32:13.460 I have seen the private prosecutor being corrupted by this government.
00:32:18.920 I have seen our military and if there are in this this this episode, our talk can't talk about what happened with with with with the Admiral Norman and the higher up and what happened there.
00:32:32.200 It appears to be a politicization of our military as well.
00:32:36.080 I've seen we have seen without without any doubt the politicization of our Privy Council, our independent bureaucracy because Michael Wernick quit because he said that he is he is seen to be biased.
00:32:48.280 So when I when I see our prosecutors, our military and our bureaucracy all in the cloud and doubt of of of some form of corruption by this government.
00:33:00.160 I mean, is it is it and I'll also add I forget when they when this government attacked the Supreme Court justice from Manitoba, you had an attack.
00:33:10.940 You had an attack on the Jewish judiciary.
00:33:13.660 So let me add it all up here.
00:33:15.380 You have an attack on the independent prosecutor.
00:33:17.740 You have an attack on the judiciary.
00:33:20.120 You have an attack on the clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick.
00:33:23.840 And then you have an attack on our our military in its in its independence and its function.
00:33:30.600 That's for is there a possibility the RSNP is also under that cloud?
00:33:36.440 I would do everything possible if I were the RSNP to make sure not one Canadian thinks that they are an arm of the liberal government.
00:33:45.980 And I can tell you, Twitter is a bad, bad place in the bad world where people post a lot of nasty things.
00:33:52.660 But there are a lot of comments.
00:33:54.520 And I certainly don't like seeing them about making a connection to to to that concern by Canadians that the RSNP are are are are in the pocket of the truth of government because of his latest appointment.
00:34:08.720 Can I ask you one last question?
00:34:10.300 You mentioned the the public prosecution service of Canada.
00:34:15.340 That's what the judge in the Mark Norman case said was corrupted.
00:34:18.360 It's a bit of a legal question here.
00:34:19.980 Help me out.
00:34:20.460 I know that there's a way for a private citizen to go to court and say, Your Honor, the prosecutors won't take this case.
00:34:29.720 But I want to sue.
00:34:31.480 I want to make a private prosecution as in we don't have to wait for the attorney general.
00:34:37.260 We don't have to wait for the RSNP.
00:34:38.760 We don't have to wait for, you know, David Lamenti to sue his own government.
00:34:43.740 Someone can go to court, hire a lawyer themselves, prepare the case themselves and say, I'd like to sue under the law as a private prosecution to get things going.
00:34:54.580 Is that too much?
00:34:55.720 It's a it's an unusual process because normally the prosecutors do the right thing.
00:35:01.260 And normally people don't have that kind of money or interest.
00:35:05.460 Is there a possibility that a group of citizens could raise some funds to file a private prosecution for corruption?
00:35:12.660 Is that even a thing, Manny?
00:35:14.640 Yeah, absolutely.
00:35:15.800 It is.
00:35:16.000 And it's obviously permitted under our legislation.
00:35:19.520 I do believe it did happen twice.
00:35:21.920 If I'm not mistaken, Mayor Ford was subject to that by a rich person in Toronto.
00:35:30.560 I forget his name.
00:35:31.400 But either in the furrier business or somebody that brought on the claim of Ford using stationary illegally, that was put forward by a private citizen.
00:35:43.480 So it does and it can happen.
00:35:45.420 And, you know, it's very expensive.
00:35:48.160 It's very difficult because you're talking about an individual that has to front up the money.
00:35:54.780 These things will cost millions of dollars to prosecute.
00:35:57.820 And it'd be very hard when you can't have the power that the police have in order to investigate.
00:36:03.660 But, I mean, it's pretty sad that you have a state where where you're even asking that question is, can the citizens take the prosecutorial challenge in their own hands?
00:36:18.260 Because because our our our police force has has not.
00:36:22.880 And it's very sad that that question is being asked, particularly when we had only a few years ago, the RCMP, you know, you know, basically charging into the prime minister's office and investigating the prime minister and investigating the chief of staff for giving $90,000 to the government.
00:36:44.080 If only that were the worst scandal.
00:36:45.740 Well, the liberals, imagine, imagine the glory days were giving money to the government was the worst scandal.
00:36:51.300 Yeah.
00:36:51.940 But the test there is, is, is, yeah.
00:36:56.280 The test is, how did the RCMP even create a case?
00:37:01.860 And as you know, the judge in the Duffy case saying, what is this case doing here?
00:37:05.960 These are no rules on expense.
00:37:07.500 But the RCMP found a way to charge Senator Duffy 33 times, found a way to pressure the chief of staff on almost charging him for giving money back to the taxpayer.
00:37:21.720 If the RCMP was that noble, was that righteous, was that perfect in its application of the law, what the hell are they doing in this case here?
00:37:33.820 Why are they not using the same standard they used a few years ago to what is clearly, clearly a very egregious series of events that led to the resignment or to the firing of the attorney general?
00:37:48.960 That's never happened.
00:37:50.320 I don't, I think Richard Nixon may have got rid of his attorney general or wanted to, but it's never happened in Canada.
00:37:57.520 And we don't even have a one-line text or a one-line note from the RCMP saying that we have taken this matter under advisement or we are looking at it.
00:38:08.700 Yeah, very frustrating.
00:38:10.380 Well, Manny, thank you, as always, for your expert guidance and your wisdom, both legal and political.
00:38:15.260 It's always great to talk to you.
00:38:16.760 Great. Thank you, Ezra.
00:38:17.820 Thanks, my friend.
00:38:18.600 There you have it, Manny Montanagrino, former legal counsel to Stephen Harper, the prime minister and the CEO of ThinkSharp.
00:38:25.820 Stay with us.
00:38:26.480 More ahead on the wrap.
00:38:27.520 Hey, welcome back.
00:38:39.120 On my monologue from Friday, Liza writes,
00:38:42.380 Regarding the elections commissioner, I think Elections Canada needs to be investigated.
00:38:46.020 It is feeling less and less nonpartisan by the minute.
00:38:49.200 Yeah, when they paid $50,000 to those influencers and we found out those influencers were all liberals, that's crazy.
00:38:57.120 And the fact they paid the money and aren't asking for it back, that's crazy.
00:39:02.340 I think they're out of control.
00:39:04.640 On my interview with John Carpe about the trans woman suing salons for not waxing his male genitals,
00:39:11.680 Paul writes, these human rights commissions are horrible scams.
00:39:15.720 They don't defend human rights, they destroy human lives. 0.72
00:39:18.320 The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms is doing much needed work.
00:39:21.120 Donation made.
00:39:22.020 Yeah, those are good guys.
00:39:22.960 I tell you, if it weren't for John Carpe, a lot more of those women would be driven out of business. 1.00
00:39:28.140 And he really, I think he was the reason why the publication ban was taken.
00:39:32.380 It's outrageous that this Jonathan Yaniv got to smear these women in secrecy.
00:39:36.660 On Tommy Robinson, Bell writes, our free speech is being eroded and I fear the onset of Stasi-style tactics by the state.
00:39:45.600 It's so obvious that Tommy is being made an example of and he's very brave.
00:39:48.640 It amazes me that even if a person doesn't particularly like Tommy or his views,
00:39:52.960 they cannot see that what has happened is an absolute mockery and is not aware that such a charade could happen to anyone.
00:39:58.580 Well, that's the thing, don't you know?
00:40:00.380 No, the whole basis of our law is precedent.
00:40:05.120 Another way of saying that is what comes around goes around.
00:40:07.760 So if you hate Tommy so much that you change the rules to throw someone in prison for those reasons,
00:40:14.000 well, now you've set the precedent.
00:40:15.180 Don't you know it will come around and bite you?
00:40:17.580 By the way, I will have a show tomorrow, but I will also be scooching over to the UK as fast as I can doing a night flight
00:40:26.880 because I've got a visit with Tommy in Belmarsh Prison.
00:40:33.420 And the reason I'm doing that is I want to know how he's being treated and I want to see with my own eyes.
00:40:38.800 I want to ask him questions directly.
00:40:40.400 I want to see how he's doing.
00:40:42.080 And I want to take as much time to find out what's going on as possible.
00:40:44.800 And I want to report that and I want to have the prison warden know that I'm going to report that.
00:40:50.980 So if you want to see that, I'll probably have some of it on my show on Wednesday.
00:40:55.240 You can go to prisonreports.com.
00:40:58.020 That's plural, prisonreports.com, because I expect I'll be going back perhaps several times before he's out.
00:41:04.840 All right, that's our show for today.
00:41:06.320 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.
00:41:11.340 And keep fighting for freedom.
00:41:12.500 We'll be right back.