The Candice Malcolm Show - December 29, 2023


Biggest HOAX of 2023


Episode Stats

Length

26 minutes

Words per Minute

182.35199

Word Count

4,886

Sentence Count

318

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

In this episode, Candice and Harrison discuss the biggest fake news hoaxes of the year, and how they were uncovered by debunking the legacy media narratives that have been peddling them throughout the past decade. They also talk about the Canadian Anti-Hate Network and the Freedom Convoy, the group that uncovered the truth about a group called Diagalon.


Transcript

00:00:00.140 Does climate change really cause wildfires? Did Danielle Smith's office really try to meddle in a criminal investigation in Alberta?
00:00:07.700 Does anything the legacy media tell you ever turn out to be true?
00:00:11.100 Well, it is Fake News Friday, and today we are going to announce the biggest fake news hoaxes of 2023.
00:00:16.300 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
00:00:18.160 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.
00:00:30.640 Don't forget to like this video. Subscribe to the Trin Earth channel if you're not already.
00:00:33.980 Leave us a five-star review if you enjoy this podcast.
00:00:36.700 Head on over to our website, tnc.news, to sign up for our newsletter.
00:00:39.820 And if you want to support our journalism, please consider hitting that donate button.
00:00:43.340 Okay, so today on Fake News Friday, we are going to announce the winners of our Fake News Friday 2023 awards for the biggest fake news hoaxes of the year.
00:00:53.580 And once again, I am joined by Trin Earth journalist and host of Ratioed Harrison Faulkner.
00:00:58.460 Hey, Harrison. Thanks for joining us.
00:01:00.320 Of course. Happy to do this, Candace.
00:01:02.260 Okay, so we have each chosen our top fake news story of the year.
00:01:06.220 But before we get to that, we have a couple of honorable mentions.
00:01:09.300 So both of the stories that we're going to talk about first are about debunking an earlier narrative.
00:01:15.300 And so if I think of this decade so far, the 2020s, and I think of probably the most damaging, the most egregious narratives that legacy media have been peddled.
00:01:25.160 I think of two right off the top.
00:01:27.140 Number one, the unmarked grave story, the idea that Canada committed genocide at the residential schools.
00:01:32.560 And the second, I mean, there's so much to do with COVID.
00:01:34.600 There are so many fake news narratives to do with COVID.
00:01:36.740 But when you finally saw a group of citizens stand up and fight against the COVID totalitarianism, the legacy media smeared them as being far right, radical, extremists, racists, and even Nazis.
00:01:49.900 So, of course, here at True North, we've known from day one that both these narratives were wrong.
00:01:54.040 But unfortunately, many Canadians, most Canadians probably, believe them to be true.
00:01:58.180 Well, I think 2023 was another year of vindication, another year where we uncovered facts to further discredit and destroy these two fake news narratives.
00:02:07.480 So, Harrison, why don't we start with you?
00:02:08.840 Why don't you start and tell us about how that narrative of the trucker convoy being a hate group sort of really fell apart in 2023?
00:02:17.320 Absolutely.
00:02:17.940 Well, there was a major story that broke a few months ago from a journalist whose name is Karima Saad.
00:02:23.320 Now, she wrote a story called Hategate, a big investigation into this organization, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, a group that I know our audience knows very well, unfortunately all too well.
00:02:35.340 You see, the reason for this is that the Anti-Hate Network has been pumping out fake news, propaganda, targeting a group called Diagalon.
00:02:43.980 Again, if you've been paying any attention to news over the past few years, you've heard of this group, Diagalon.
00:02:48.780 Diagalon is essentially a fan club for Canadian podcaster Jeremy McKenzie.
00:02:54.320 But for whatever reason, the Anti-Hate Network has been focusing in on this group, labeling them as a violent, dangerous, militant, even going so far as to describe it as a neo-Nazi organization.
00:03:07.200 Well, sure enough, Candice, during the Freedom Convoy, the federal government were relying on Anti-Hate Network stories,
00:03:15.060 which turned out to be fake, by the way, which turned out to be single-source, open-sourced intelligence,
00:03:20.760 describing this group as a dangerous, violent, extremist organization.
00:03:24.840 Through access to information, Karima Saad was able to uncover that during the Freedom Convoy,
00:03:31.280 the day that the Emergencies Act was invoked,
00:03:34.740 officials inside of Justin Trudeau's office were scrambling to try and find any intelligence they could get their hands on
00:03:41.540 that would make the case that, in fact, there were violent, dangerous groups inside Ottawa during the Freedom Convoy.
00:03:48.460 Sure enough, they had nothing except for a bunch of legacy media articles which sourced one source,
00:03:56.640 a source from the Anti-Hate Network, describing this group as a dangerous, violent, militant organization.
00:04:02.620 It's absurd that the legacy media would rely on the Anti-Hate Network, but it's even worse, Candice,
00:04:09.400 that the federal government relied on those legacy media reports to justify the single worst attack on our freedoms
00:04:16.480 ever since, well, Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act.
00:04:20.320 This is where we're at right now.
00:04:21.480 We're at where an obviously biased, partisan group that targets conservatives,
00:04:26.940 that uses open source intelligence, ends up being the source that the government relies on
00:04:32.460 to invoke the Emergencies Act.
00:04:34.420 And the legacy media was there all along the way, holding the government's hand
00:04:39.000 so that they could use these fake stories to justify this egregious decision.
00:04:44.420 Unbelievable.
00:04:45.240 It is one of those major fake news stories I hope we never forget.
00:04:48.720 What a clown show.
00:04:50.060 I mean, it just shows you how amateur and pathetic these people are.
00:04:54.020 It's like, you know, this liberal-funded group, let's not forget that the Anti-Hate Network
00:04:57.780 is funded in part, in large part, by the Trudeau government.
00:05:01.740 Trudeau government's funding this organization, giving stuff to the media, giving it back to the government.
00:05:05.860 It's all just, you know, insular.
00:05:08.040 And, of course, it's all disgustingly exaggerated.
00:05:11.560 And I think Canadians also learned this year, Harrison, that the Anti-Hate Network is a total fraud
00:05:16.400 because its founder, Bernie Farber, let the cat out of the bag during the Israel, you know,
00:05:21.400 the pro-Hamas rallies that we're seeing all over Canada.
00:05:23.940 It's like, hey, how come the Anti-Hate Network is not commenting on any of this hate towards Jews?
00:05:28.220 And then in a response on X, he just writes, oh, well, I wish we could, but we only have a mandate
00:05:33.460 to cover right-wing groups.
00:05:34.600 It's like, what?
00:05:35.760 Since when?
00:05:36.440 No one in the media ever said that.
00:05:37.560 The media constantly cover this group, constantly source this group for their news stories.
00:05:42.920 And never once did we ever hear, not on their website, not in the federal funding for this group,
00:05:46.840 does it ever say that they're only supposed to look at one side and only supposed to look at conservatives?
00:05:50.180 So from my perspective, the entire organization is completely discredited.
00:05:54.840 Any media outlet that have quoted them is completely discredited.
00:05:57.560 And the fact that the government was relying on that on top of it, I mean, what an absolute farce
00:06:02.340 and a joke, Harrison.
00:06:03.740 Yeah, no, and it gets even worse, Candace.
00:06:05.880 So this access to information, these access to information documents that the journalists
00:06:11.100 who wrote this piece were able to get their hands on show that the actual intelligence
00:06:15.800 to justify labeling this group, Diagilon, as some sort of violent, fascist, neo-Nazi organization
00:06:23.160 was never there.
00:06:24.320 In fact, the internal communications show that not only did this Diagilon group not even technically
00:06:29.820 meet the definition of a group, but there was nothing that they had to make the case that
00:06:34.940 these were actually dangerous people.
00:06:37.180 But that, of course, didn't benefit the government.
00:06:39.220 That wasn't what the government was looking for.
00:06:40.960 They had to get anything they could.
00:06:42.800 So they ended up relying on fake news published by the legacy media to do this.
00:06:47.840 It is astonishing that that is what happened just last year.
00:06:53.240 It's important not to forget this is not some faraway story.
00:06:56.140 This was what happened last year.
00:06:57.520 The federal government and the legacy media teamed up to push a narrative that was not
00:07:03.720 true from the beginning.
00:07:04.860 It's unbelievable.
00:07:06.560 Right.
00:07:06.680 Well, yeah, 2022 is the year of the trucker convoy and 2023 is the year that we learned
00:07:10.720 that everything that the Trudeau government said was completely untrue.
00:07:14.060 I mean, Diagilon, like it's a joke.
00:07:16.680 It's an online joke.
00:07:17.600 It's not a real thing.
00:07:18.700 And the fact that they pretend that it is and treat it seriously is just so pathetic.
00:07:22.580 Okay, Harris, I want to move on to the next one, which is we learned more about the unmarked
00:07:26.340 graves story.
00:07:26.920 I mean, this has been an incredibly devastating narrative for Canadians.
00:07:31.940 I mean, so many Canadians now believe just the absolute worst about our country.
00:07:34.700 So I think it's important to go through and remind Canadians that so much of the story
00:07:38.720 has never been verified.
00:07:40.260 And the things, so many of the claims just turned out to be completely false.
00:07:43.780 So I'll just quickly mention the CBC story that came out in January, trying to, again,
00:07:48.980 demonize the Catholic Church, make them look terrible.
00:07:50.860 There's this headline that came out said, the Catholic Church backed out of a $30 million
00:07:53.940 fundraiser for residential school survivors.
00:07:56.120 So you think, wow, add insult to injury.
00:07:58.520 First, you know, the Catholic Church is involved in killing all these kids, and now they won't
00:08:01.500 even participate in a fundraiser.
00:08:03.240 Well, of course, it's not true.
00:08:04.900 None of it's true.
00:08:05.860 And the CBC didn't even bother to, you know, do the right thing and issue attraction.
00:08:09.580 They just did like a stealth edit, and they changed the story because it wasn't true at
00:08:13.320 all.
00:08:13.520 The Catholic Church didn't back out of a $30 million fundraiser.
00:08:16.580 They were actually, had already started the fundraiser, and the fundraiser continues.
00:08:20.360 So it was just completely untrue.
00:08:23.600 And then to hit the further, you know, the further damaging part of the narrative, this
00:08:28.860 idea that all these children were murdered at residential schools.
00:08:31.760 Of course, the reality is that there's never been any proof.
00:08:35.580 There's never been any evidence that this happened.
00:08:37.300 It was all based on ground-penetrating radar reports from pretty amateur professors.
00:08:42.900 And it's all speculation.
00:08:44.940 When it comes to actually finding human remains and excavations, nothing has ever turned out
00:08:50.880 to actually verify the stories and to show the truth.
00:08:54.020 So one of those stories came out.
00:08:55.460 There have been several teams of excavators and researchers that have tried to discover
00:09:00.300 human remains, and at this point, they haven't.
00:09:02.420 So earlier this year, we learned of an excavation at a church in Pine Creek, Manitoba.
00:09:07.820 This was one of the ones that was really drummed up, and the media were really hoping that they
00:09:11.140 were going to find some evidence here.
00:09:13.040 Well, there was a residential school that operated from 1890 to 1969.
00:09:16.820 But when the report came out, no human remains were found.
00:09:20.980 And of course, this isn't the only residential school that had been excavated.
00:09:23.880 There were several others in 2021 that were done.
00:09:26.120 Look, I'm sure at some point, if they continue to do excavations, they will eventually find
00:09:30.080 human remains inside, on the grounds of a school or a church, just simply because these
00:09:34.660 schools operated for 150 years, including during, you know, huge global plagues like the
00:09:40.120 Black Plague, where people did die.
00:09:42.220 But the main story that somehow there were, like, nuns and priests and teachers and participating
00:09:51.140 in, like, mass slaughter, mass murder, systematic murder, and then burying these kids under the
00:09:55.260 schools, there's just absolutely no evidence that that happened.
00:09:59.420 And I think 2023 was a year where we learned more about just how untrue that was.
00:10:04.300 I'm so grateful that Tom Flanagan, Dr. Tom Flanagan, a retired professor over at the University
00:10:08.700 of Calgary, put out a book this year called Grave Error, going through the actual history
00:10:13.600 of the residential schools and talking about the media narrative and how damaging it was.
00:10:18.300 So I'm pleased that True North had a hand in publishing that.
00:10:20.800 I encourage everyone to give that book a read.
00:10:23.520 And if you have read it, review it on Amazon, because it's just so important that we bust this
00:10:28.640 myth and that we tell the truth to Canadians.
00:10:32.340 Where do you even begin with this story, Candice?
00:10:34.460 It's actually really sad to see what's been going on here.
00:10:39.480 The fact that all the evidence that we have points to the opposite of what we're being
00:10:44.720 told by the legacy media.
00:10:46.460 Every time that a First Nation actually goes on a dig, goes to excavate what they claim
00:10:51.940 to be the remains of children, they end up finding nothing.
00:10:55.200 And it just reinforces this idea that this country is evil, that this country is illegitimate,
00:11:00.740 that it's built on genocide.
00:11:02.160 You can't just say that about a country with zero evidence to back it up.
00:11:07.140 The worst part about this, of course, is that at the same time, and I don't know if this
00:11:11.280 is a coincidence, at the same time that First Nations began to try to excavate what they
00:11:19.480 claimed were the remains of children and found nothing, the federal government released a
00:11:24.320 report in which their appointee recommends to make denying what happened at residential
00:11:33.260 schools a crime, to make the denial of the genocide at residential schools a crime.
00:11:39.580 It's absurd that we're now having the truth come up, which is the opposite of what we're
00:11:45.020 being told, but yet we're also now contemplating making it a criminal offense to deny what are
00:11:51.320 what are obviously lies.
00:11:53.020 It's absurd, Candace.
00:11:54.540 It's just unbelievable.
00:11:55.780 This has clearly got to be one of the biggest fake news stories ever, probably the largest
00:12:01.360 hoax in Canadian history.
00:12:03.240 I mean, it's got to be up there.
00:12:05.080 Yeah, and it's scary.
00:12:05.920 You're right.
00:12:06.200 It's not just absurd and silly.
00:12:08.040 It's actually terrifying when you think of the fact that these people actually want to
00:12:10.760 wield power and make it a crime to have the conversation that we're having.
00:12:14.240 I just want to add one note that I found really amusing because the main story that hit this
00:12:17.880 all off was that there was 215 graves found in Kamloops.
00:12:23.000 And Dr. Flanagan, when I interviewed him about his book, he told me that the likely cause of
00:12:27.120 those ground disturbances, so the reason that they got that number 215 was because of ground
00:12:31.400 penetrating radar and because of ground disturbances.
00:12:33.920 Well, Dr. Flanagan told me in his research, he learned that they had actually created a septic
00:12:38.560 system, so a septic pool had been dug, and that that was likely the cause of those ground
00:12:44.300 disturbances.
00:12:45.040 So I thought that was a great metaphor for the entire story, that it was all just a septic
00:12:49.460 system.
00:12:50.180 Okay, Harrison, let's move on to our top, the winners or the losers.
00:12:53.840 I don't know whichever way you look at it, but why don't you tell us about what your top
00:12:57.980 fake news story of 2023 was?
00:13:00.200 So the story that I've come to decide as the top fake news story of the year is the climate
00:13:06.760 hysteria over the wildfires that we saw over this summer.
00:13:10.800 If you recall, take yourself back a few months, back into really June, we had a series of wildfires,
00:13:17.780 devastating wildfires really, in Alberta, in Quebec, in Ontario, and there was a lot
00:13:23.780 of bad smoke in Ottawa, and in Toronto you could see it, which was quite abnormal.
00:13:29.180 But of course, Candice, everybody jumped to climate change.
00:13:32.620 It was instantly blamed as being the result of climate change.
00:13:36.560 Of course, because nothing else could possibly be to blame for these wildfires.
00:13:41.780 Now, the problem was, despite this, there were routine articles that would come out from
00:13:47.500 whether they were in Nova Scotia, to Quebec, to Alberta.
00:13:51.840 Well, people were being investigated for arson.
00:13:53.960 The police in Quebec, for example, said that they were investigating arson as the main cause
00:13:58.620 for the wildfires.
00:13:59.840 There was no discussion from the Liberal government that this could possibly be the result of humans.
00:14:06.220 Not just arson, but human behavior.
00:14:09.140 Lighting matches in the forest.
00:14:11.500 Dropping cigarette butts in the forest.
00:14:13.860 No discussion about that, because it doesn't really fit with their narrative, does it?
00:14:17.560 They need to push the fear of climate change onto Canadians in order to justify their carbon taxes,
00:14:23.420 in order to justify all of their emissions reduction schemes.
00:14:28.300 And so, they ratcheted up the fear, Candice, to 10.
00:14:33.800 They went from 0 to 10 with this fear.
00:14:36.260 Look at this montage that I was able to put together of politicians, cabinet ministers,
00:14:41.380 all, of course, blaming climate change.
00:14:44.500 Year after year, with climate change, we're seeing more and more intense wildfires.
00:14:50.380 And with the accelerating impact of climate change, we very much will continue to do so moving forward.
00:14:56.680 Part of this is because of climate change.
00:14:59.580 And that we collectively, certainly in Canada and around the world, need to do more
00:15:05.180 and accelerate the fight against climate change.
00:15:07.660 It's clear that the government has not taken the climate crisis seriously.
00:15:10.680 Their actions show that very clearly.
00:15:13.720 Our country is literally on fire, and this Liberal government thinks that business as usual is fine.
00:15:19.400 This is Disruptors.
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00:15:40.680 Here's the problem, Candice.
00:15:44.200 The data never backed up their theory.
00:15:46.600 Not once.
00:15:47.700 The National Wildfire Database showed that actually wildfires have been decreasing since 1995.
00:15:56.140 Strange how climate change can be the cause of such a decrease in wildfires.
00:16:00.520 Also, take another look at this National Wildfires Database.
00:16:05.920 Notice that there was a steep decrease in wildfires in 2020.
00:16:10.520 It falls off the graph, basically.
00:16:13.400 There were basically no wildfires compared to other years in 2020.
00:16:16.780 What happened in 2020, Candice?
00:16:18.760 Nobody left their house.
00:16:20.120 We were in lockdown.
00:16:21.160 Strange how that works.
00:16:22.180 Climate change must have just paused for 2020.
00:16:24.440 And furthermore, the Alberta Wildfire Database says that more than half of the wildfires this year were the cause of humans.
00:16:34.540 It's just ridiculous that they tried to ratchet up the fear this way.
00:16:38.220 But again, the legacy media didn't do any journalism.
00:16:40.660 They discredited reporters like myself who called into question the possibility that this was arson.
00:16:46.040 And they just kept going on and on about how, of course, it has to be climate change.
00:16:50.780 Well, Harrison, I want to commend you for your reporting on this topic because basically, you know, you put out these great reports just pointing out the truth, pointing out the facts.
00:16:59.340 And all of a sudden, the legacy media started attacking you, which you always know you've done something right.
00:17:04.840 But they were really bothered by the fact that you were pointing this out and they were trying to debunk you.
00:17:08.820 But then it turned out that they were wrong.
00:17:11.020 And, you know, as soon as because you're out there telling the truth and you've got a big audience and people are watching and it's like you're threatening the monopoly that legacy media have to just spread lies to fit their propaganda because they support liberals.
00:17:24.760 Liberals support carbon taxes. Carbon taxes are justified over this complete fear mongering and, you know, almost conspiracies about climate change.
00:17:33.640 We talked about conspiracy theories in the last show on Fake News Friday.
00:17:36.960 This is kind of like a left wing conspiracy, isn't it?
00:17:39.400 And you had the temerity to point it out.
00:17:42.600 And so they came after you, which was pretty amusing.
00:17:45.660 Yeah, it was astonishing.
00:17:46.600 I remember doing the research for that show and realizing, like, I was sort of half interested in it.
00:17:52.180 And I thought maybe there's something here.
00:17:54.160 And I just kept looking at the data from the federal government, from the provincial government, seeing these stories of the police investigating arson.
00:18:00.900 And I thought, this is ridiculous here.
00:18:03.740 So the police are looking into arson.
00:18:07.100 In Alberta, they were looking into arson.
00:18:09.300 They even charged people for starting off these wildfires.
00:18:12.660 And yet, we have people like Elizabeth May in the House of Commons saying her eyes were burning in the House of Commons.
00:18:20.160 Therefore, clearly, we must stop oil and gas production.
00:18:25.080 Right?
00:18:25.260 She goes on this rant about how her eyes are burning.
00:18:28.120 We must stop the pipelines because of the wildfires.
00:18:31.940 It's ridiculous.
00:18:33.380 It's absurd.
00:18:33.960 This is an example, like you said, Candace, of the left fully embracing conspiracy theories.
00:18:39.080 And we never get to have that conversation.
00:18:41.200 It's time that we call out the left for their conspiracy theories because this is crazy.
00:18:47.060 It really was.
00:18:48.020 It really was.
00:18:48.580 And it was an excuse for, you know, the nanny state to come back out and tell us all to wear our masks again and, you know, wag the finger, try to bring that thing back.
00:18:58.340 Well, that wasn't going to happen.
00:18:59.900 All right, Harrison, I want to announce what I thought was the top fake news story of the year.
00:19:03.620 The winner came courtesy of our friends over at the CBC.
00:19:07.240 So let me walk you through this story.
00:19:08.580 In the middle of the 2023 Alberta election campaign, in the middle of the campaign, the CBC drops a bombshell of a news story with an incredible accusation against the sitting Premier Danielle Smith.
00:19:20.400 So the CBC, citing anonymous sources, of course, claimed that Danielle Smith and her office were personally trying to meddle and interfere in a police investigation.
00:19:31.640 The accusation was that some members of the Premier staff had sent emails directly to the Crown prosecutors, ordering them to let up on COVID rule breakers, specifically the investigation into the border blockade during the Contraker convoy in Coutts, Alberta.
00:19:48.960 So huge, huge accusation, almost reminiscent, Harrison, of what Justin Trudeau did to his Attorney General trying to pressure his Attorney General at the time to drop charges against SNC-Lavillon, which happened to be a big liberal donor.
00:20:04.020 So they were kind of taking this story of what Trudeau had done a couple of years ago and accusing Danielle Smith of doing the same thing.
00:20:11.780 Well, this reading from the National Post here, they say this accusation, the story, it created a nasty suspicion that the Premier's office was interfering directly in individual criminal prosecutions.
00:20:22.020 And it rightly led to an investigation by the province's ethics commissioner.
00:20:26.800 And in the meantime, the CBC stood stubbornly by its story.
00:20:29.520 So Danielle Smith, to her credit right off the bat, said, no, this didn't happen.
00:20:33.120 She ordered that the bureaucracy have a full review of all the emails that were sent between her office and the Crown prosecutor.
00:20:41.420 She took it seriously.
00:20:42.660 But she said that she didn't have any recognition.
00:20:45.140 The government did that.
00:20:46.000 They did this review and they found nothing.
00:20:48.340 Right.
00:20:48.560 And so it went to this independent investigator.
00:20:50.480 So it escalated just because of the CBC report, again, not really quoting anyone.
00:20:55.060 And meanwhile, you know, the CBC is adamantly saying this is true.
00:20:57.520 No, we're standing by our story.
00:20:58.480 We stand by our story.
00:20:59.780 They went to an investigation.
00:21:02.100 And then eventually the investigation came back once again with no evidence, no evidence of alleged emails being sent, no evidence of Danielle Smith or anyone from her office doing what the CBC alleged to do.
00:21:14.360 Well, it didn't matter despite their best efforts.
00:21:16.840 Danielle Smith still won the election.
00:21:18.240 So CBC tried to smear her, tried to tell Albertans this person can't be trusted because she's, you know, whatever, a threat to democracy or interfering or whatever.
00:21:26.320 Well, of course, Danielle Smith was vindicated.
00:21:29.180 Danielle Smith was right.
00:21:30.560 Finally, after months and months, the CBC were insisting her story was true and refusing to retract it, retract it.
00:21:38.580 Finally, almost six months later in July.
00:21:40.860 So they waited for the middle of summer.
00:21:42.600 And finally, the CBC retracted their story.
00:21:46.120 So here it is here.
00:21:48.380 CBC is retracting report alleging someone in Premier Smith's office emailed Crown prosecutors to question and challenging the handle of cases involving COVID-19.
00:21:56.620 CBC made an announcement Wednesday in an unsigned editor's note atop an amended online version of the January 19th story.
00:22:04.700 They said, our sources have insisted that Crown prosecutors felt political pressure regarding the Coutts, Alberta cases, but they are not able to confirm that the emails they originally described were sent directly from the Premier's office to the Crown.
00:22:19.400 So, I mean, Harrison, this is so ridiculous.
00:22:21.840 The CBC didn't even see the emails, right?
00:22:23.740 They put out this bombshell in the middle of election.
00:22:26.400 Like, what kind of controls do they have over at the CBC that they would put out this story without even seeing it?
00:22:32.220 They were just relying on someone else who was telling them that these emails existed.
00:22:36.800 But you would think, like, you know, I've been in this business for a while.
00:22:40.060 You went to journalism school.
00:22:41.600 You've interviewed a lot of people.
00:22:42.800 If you're going to put out a bombshell, if you're going to put out a story with unnamed sources, you better have at least seen, personally seen those emails.
00:22:49.960 One of your reporters should have seen those emails to verify that they are true.
00:22:53.500 Instead of taking someone's word for it, someone with a vendetta, obviously, I mean, the CBC just lost.
00:22:58.600 This is seriously one of the worst examples of a news organization losing credibility.
00:23:03.880 They really risked their credibility with going after the Premier during an election.
00:23:08.780 And they were wrong.
00:23:10.320 They were wrong.
00:23:11.360 The story was not true.
00:23:12.860 It was false.
00:23:13.920 Danielle Smith was vindicated.
00:23:15.440 I don't know how anyone can ever trust the CBC.
00:23:18.360 This story alone is a reason why the CBC should be defunded.
00:23:21.820 And no one in Alberta, no one in the Alberta government should ever do an interview with this outlet again because it has just completely burnt any shred of credibility that they ever had in Alberta.
00:23:32.020 Absolutely.
00:23:32.720 And the reality is, Candace, the CBC would never write that story about Rachel Notley.
00:23:37.240 They would never write that story without their sources being absolutely perfect against Justin Trudeau, for example.
00:23:43.720 But let's be honest, even if they did have the sources, they wouldn't run the story.
00:23:46.800 They'd give it to somebody else because they're not in the business of holding left-wing politicians to account.
00:23:52.160 They're clearly in the business of trying to dunk on conservatives and Danielle Smith in the middle of an election.
00:23:58.160 The CBC gets a lot of things wrong.
00:24:00.280 They publish a lot of fake stories.
00:24:02.280 They rarely have to issue a full retraction.
00:24:04.460 And to do it in the middle of an election, obviously, and we also talked about this too, to do it in the middle of an election without having the sources spot on is clearly interfering, in my opinion, in the election.
00:24:15.660 In my opinion, Candace, this is clear election interference.
00:24:18.740 If you're going to publish a story like that in the middle of an election and not have it absolutely on the money, that is interfering in the election.
00:24:25.760 Furthermore, once a story is published, it is accepted by the public.
00:24:31.380 Even if you retract it months later, which they obviously did, it doesn't have any impact because the news cycle is gone.
00:24:37.120 So the CBC knows what they're doing.
00:24:39.000 Publishing it in the first place was clearly wrong.
00:24:41.160 And the reality is they would never do it if it was Rachel Notley.
00:24:43.940 They would never do that if it was Justin Trudeau.
00:24:45.880 They do it because it's a conservative politician.
00:24:48.200 They are clearly against conservative politicians.
00:24:50.740 It's obvious.
00:24:51.780 And it doesn't matter once they retract it.
00:24:53.520 They know that the story was out there, the story did its damage, and thank God that the election went the way it did.
00:24:59.380 Because if it had gone the other way, this story could have seriously impacted the election result, which would have been a disaster.
00:25:06.040 You're right.
00:25:06.620 No, it is election interference, clearly.
00:25:08.640 And it's from the top levels.
00:25:10.140 It's a government-funded election interference.
00:25:12.300 I mean, it's so bad.
00:25:13.520 Honestly, Harrison, you're completely right that this wouldn't happen against a left-wing professor, a left-wing politician.
00:25:19.660 But just, you know, the CBC just doesn't have any credibility.
00:25:22.300 Like, I don't understand how anyone can take them seriously after this entire back-and-forth.
00:25:27.800 They clearly have a political axe to grind against Daniel Smith because she's an independent thinker, because she's not going to be controlled by, you know, the forces that the CBC is behind.
00:25:38.000 And so they try to smear her.
00:25:39.200 And they failed.
00:25:40.220 They dug their heels in, only to be proven wrong.
00:25:44.020 Really, really, you know, whenever, I hope, whenever Pierre Polyev gets elected and defunds this despicable organization, no one will miss it.
00:25:52.780 It is because of stories like this and actions like this that they deserve to lose every cent of government funding that they have.
00:25:59.800 We should leave it at that, Harrison.
00:26:01.540 So those are our top fake news stories of 2023.
00:26:04.300 Thank you so much to the audience for tuning in with us and following along for all these shenanigans that happen in the Canadian media.
00:26:11.280 Happy New Year.
00:26:11.880 Happy 2024.
00:26:13.300 And we'll be back next year with more.
00:26:14.880 This is Fake News Friday.
00:26:15.760 I'm Candice Malcolm.
00:26:16.460 And this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:26:17.680 Thank you.