00:02:58.700And I know it's that number, because right before the last election, we got an access to
00:03:03.500information document showing a secret $61 million payment from Trudeau to different media companies.
00:03:11.420So we made the request, can we see the list of media companies?
00:03:14.320Over 1,500, I didn't know there were 1,500 news media companies in Canada, got a special grant from Trudeau on the eve of the election.
00:03:24.520None of those 1,500 companies reported that they got the grant.
00:03:28.000So when you own the CBC, which is larger than all other news media combined, and when you rent the other 1,500, the handful of independent people left, Rebel News, True North, I mean, you can almost count them on one hand's fingers.
00:03:42.700You think, well, why is he so obsessed with smashing down those few, few dissonance?
00:03:49.160And it makes me think of this, Candice.
00:03:50.340I don't know if you've ever heard of something called the Ash Conformity Experiment, A-S-C-H.
00:04:23.180That shocking experiment called the Milgram Experiment showed that most people were willing to inflict pain on another person if someone in authority told them it was the right thing to do and said they'd take responsibility.
00:04:34.780Shocking test called the Milgram Experiment.
00:04:36.740There was another test in the same vein called the Ash Conformity Test.
00:04:44.060And what it was, and just give me a minute on it because you'll understand why I'm so focused on this test.
00:04:49.520I've been thinking about it nonstop through the entire lockdown, by the way, because I see such conformity.
00:04:55.320I see people doing things that on the face of it would be absurd, people wearing a mask by themselves in their car.
00:05:01.640I saw someone in a canoe on Lake Louise by themselves, a canoe on Lake Louise wearing a mask.
00:05:47.460But the Ash Conformity Test found 37% of the time, the person who wasn't in on it would go along with the mob because he didn't want to make a fuss.
00:07:06.060Why is it necessary to stomp out Little Rebel News, Little True North, Little Spencer Fernando, Little Western Standard Online, all these little groups?
00:07:20.200But even though we're growing, we're still a fraction of the size of the Toronto Star, which has a million circulation every day, or the CBC.
00:07:29.820So why is he obsessed with smashing us?
00:07:32.020It is because if there is a single person telling the truth, speaking truth to power, saying the other side of the story, being a dissident, and someone sees that, they say, okay, good.
00:07:45.040And whether it's on the carbon tax or open borders immigration or lockdowns or whatever it is, if there's one truth teller, and I think you guys do a lot of truth telling at True North, that inspires, gives courage to people.
00:07:58.440That's what the Ash Conformity Test taught us.
00:08:00.300And that's why the last holdouts, those last 1% of journalists are the worst in the world to Trudeau because our very existent proves a lie to the rest of the pack.
00:08:14.220Well, that's such an interesting and wonderful analogy.
00:08:17.320I'm glad that you brought it to my attention because I think that's probably part of the reason why people like me felt so much hope from the trucker convoy because it was like, here is a group of people who are doing, like you said, what that one, you know, the one person who was saying, no, that's the wrong line, that's the wrong line.
00:08:32.660And then, you know, 95% of the time, the person in the room said the right thing.
00:08:40.720And I think I've heard from people all over the world that talk about the truckers as sort of a tipping point to the end of the pandemic that so many people are now saying enough is enough.
00:08:49.240I still, I want to kind of go back though, Ezra, to Justin Trudeau and his obsession because even when he was in Europe, he was talking about how important it is in Western liberal democracies to stamp out disinformation, misinformation.
00:09:04.520These are kind of the latest, you know, words that the left loves to use to describe things that they basically stories that they don't like.
00:09:11.420Things like the Hunter Biden laptop story, which they said has all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation during the election, the U.S. presidential election 2020, they basically banned that story.
00:09:21.200And lo and behold, a year later, the New York Times is reporting that it is, in fact, accurate.
00:09:25.460It's sort of like taking cancel culture and legislating it.
00:09:29.720And you kind of answered this question in your last explanation.
00:09:33.120But Justin Trudeau is doing something truly extreme by trying to regulate algorithms on websites like on apps and sites like YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and doing things that really enter us into authoritarian anti-free speech territory.
00:09:48.620Again, like, why isn't there more pushback?
00:09:51.120Why isn't this the biggest story in the country?
00:09:52.820Why isn't, why aren't there a few people, at least in legacy media, saying, hey, guys, this isn't normal stuff for a Western liberal democracy.
00:09:59.660And to your point earlier, there's a hundred other issues that are more important in Canada.
00:10:04.140And yet this is what we have a government that's obsessed with.
00:10:08.240You know, I mean, imagine if this were five years ago and it was Stephen Harper or even a couple of years ago and it was Donald Trump saying, I'm going to commandeer YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram.
00:10:17.540And I'm going to have them boost what I want and de-boost what I don't like.
00:10:22.380And Pablo Rodriguez, the new heritage minister, last week announced that if there is fake news out there, there's a 15 million dollar penalty.
00:10:30.780Well, one man's fake news is the other man's contrarian take.
00:10:34.220What's fake news other than news your side doesn't like?
00:10:37.500So imagine if Stephen Harper or Donald Trump or some conservative has said, I'm going to commandeer the press.
00:10:44.120But these are this is Trudeau, the you know, the precious one.
00:10:48.520And you've had five years of obedience conditioning in the media.
00:10:52.520I saw Pablo Rodriguez's press conference last week about this, where he was rolling out this massive incursion into freedom, setting up these bizarre and intricate panels and bodies.
00:11:05.320And the QCJO qualified Canadian journalist organization that he'll have a panel that'll decide whether journalists are qualified to get government friendship or whatever.
00:11:18.260And the journalists who were there, first of all, they were screened.
00:11:21.820Only, quote, accredited journalists were even allowed to get close to the sainted minister.
00:11:26.540But their questions were not about what are you doing?
00:11:31.280This is a violation of the independence of the media, the separation of, you know, none of the questions were like that.
00:11:37.460They were all sort of technical questions as if as if they were getting a new employee manual and asking technical questions like, OK, so how much vacation time do I have now?
00:11:46.800Or what, you know, like their questions were technocratic questions.
00:11:51.960They have completely bought in to the mentality that they're sort of stenographers.
00:11:57.440In fact, one of the questions, I don't know if you saw this, is one of the media parties said, will Rebel News be allowed to get this qualified Canadian journalist organization accreditation?
00:12:07.880Like they're obsessed again with the holdouts who aren't in on it.
00:12:46.940Because we prove you can do it without being an obedient, submissive stenographer.
00:12:51.340And our very fact that we broke away and we refused to take the dough is is shines back at them like a mirror showing them that they did not have to take the money.
00:15:01.100And so the fact that some grubby, unqualified journalist would dare to say, and the fact that those European parliamentarians, remember those MEPs in Europe who stood up and scorched him?
00:15:11.120More scorchy than anything our Canadian MPs would do.
00:15:14.100He was stunned by that because that never has been able to penetrate into his inner sanctum.
00:15:20.720He does not have any internal dissidence.
00:15:24.320You know, Lincoln said a team of rivals, you know, have a rollicking internal debate.
00:16:42.260And so even the language that they use, you know, maybe she was just saying that tongue in cheek or in jest,
00:16:46.340but because she disagreed with my, you know, analysis in an opinion column.
00:16:50.820But the idea that they just throw that term around to news that they don't want and now they have legislation to follow up,
00:16:57.860it really, really doesn't go hand in hand with a free society.
00:17:02.020I want to ask you specifically about this new bill, Bill C-18, an online news act that ensures that news media and journalists receive fair compensation,
00:17:10.880what they call fair compensation for their work.
00:17:12.640And so essentially they are ensuring that all of the tech companies who have basically eaten the lunch of the journalism companies,
00:17:20.820the media companies, Facebook and Google, would now have to start paying legacy media outlets in Canada.
00:17:28.200You know, right now we have a situation where the government is subsidizing.
00:17:31.640In the future we'll have a situation where the government, it's not just government subsidies,
00:17:35.340but it's government forcing the world's largest tech companies to also pay these journalism companies.
00:17:41.380It's like, how are independent companies like ours supposed to compete against a double stack deck?
00:17:48.060And, you know, what do you think of this?
00:17:49.720It seems to be a pretty clear quid pro quo for the government is going out and doing the lobbying and the dirty work of these media companies
00:17:56.220by forcing a private tech company to pay them.
00:18:28.800Is it Justin Trudeau or is it Mark Zuckerberg or Sergei Brin or the new CEO of Twitter, Parag Agarwal?
00:18:37.280I put it to you that Google, Facebook, YouTube, these are as powerful as countries.
00:18:43.560And in fact, in some cases, possibly even topple a country.
00:18:47.740So when they're paying hundreds of millions of dollars to journalists, it's corrupting them, too, to be less interested in privacy and less interested in bias in Facebook's algorithms.
00:18:59.820Yes, it's outrageous that Trudeau is robbing these tech companies to pay off journals.
00:20:19.640And by the way, when they're telling Facebook that there's a $15 million fine for censorship,
00:20:27.220they know that Facebook will be extremely harsh because they don't want to risk that penalty.
00:20:33.220Harsher than if the government itself regulated fake news because the government would be subject to a charter challenge or scrutiny.
00:20:41.780Contracting out censorship to mega tech companies is actually worse than if the government itself censored you.
00:20:49.120I've been censored by the government many times, but at least I can go to court and I can demand their documents and they're held to the Charter of Rights.
00:20:56.460When I'm censored by YouTube or Facebook, they don't even tell me what happened or why.
00:21:00.940There's no court I can go to and the Charter doesn't apply.
00:21:03.740So if you're Trudeau, you want your dirty work done by Facebook and Google.
00:21:09.480And I think we're getting into a dark place here.
00:21:27.300I know conservatives have sort of been dithering over this idea.
00:21:30.000Well, Facebook and Twitter and Google, they're private companies.
00:21:32.940So in the U.S., you know, the First Amendment doesn't apply to them.
00:21:36.300And rather than seeing it for the threat that it is, which is really what you describe,
00:21:41.220this idea that we live in a social credit system already,
00:21:43.580where if you have the wrong opinions, you get excommunicated and banished and you no longer can participate.
00:21:49.820I really don't know which is worse, Ezra, the sort of coercive powers of big tech or the fact that Trudeau is now trying to team up with them.
00:21:59.860And there was a little bit of a little small light, small flicker of good news in the big tech world.
00:22:10.100We learned that Elon Musk is now the, I think, the largest shareholder in Twitter.
00:22:14.180He bought 9.2% worth about $3 billion.
00:22:17.040So he now owns more of the company than the founder, Jack Dorsey.
00:22:21.220Do you see this as a positive development?
00:22:23.440How do you think Elon Musk will be able to effectuate change?
00:22:26.840Will he bring back people who have been banished?
00:22:28.780We know that he has really strong views on free speech and he hates big tech censorship as well.
00:22:34.220And he's the richest man in the world.
00:22:41.840Finally, someone with some clout and some dollars can get in and be a counterweight to what's called the ESG movement, environmental social governance.
00:22:49.440But here's the thing, Elon Musk is for sure the largest shareholder in Twitter, but the other shareholders making up about, I mean, if you look at the other shareholders, there's lots of individual people with this big, big investment funds, hedge funds.
00:23:05.820Some of them have trillions of dollars in assets and they're deep into this ESG sort of woke capitalism.
00:23:11.700And so on his own, Elon Musk is the biggest dog at Twitter now, but of the other 90% of shareholders, I'd say half of them have bought into the wokeism that Elon Musk is against.
00:23:24.940That said, he's got a quarter trillion dollars himself and he can muck around a lot.
00:23:29.080I think he's a true believer in freedom.
00:23:31.420It's interesting to see a lot of the staff at Twitter squawking in public about how much they hate his free speech ideology shows how far Twitter has fallen.
00:23:39.520It's interesting, Jack Dorsey himself, the founder of Twitter went on last weekend or two weekends ago, said that he longed for the days of Internet freedom and he accepted some of the blame for the centralization and censorship of the Internet.
00:23:56.220I'm not sure if I forgive the man for what he did, but I think he realizes he created a Frankenstein monster of of control, not of liberty.
00:24:28.840He sees the bank accounts of his political opponents, these truckers, peaceful truckers, not a single charge of violence, not a single weapon found the most peaceful protest.
00:24:54.820And there was some discussion about it, but where was the shocked outrage?
00:24:59.440There was very little of it from all the establishment because they've been conditioned over time to accept this infringement on our civil liberties.
00:25:07.680We are less free now than we have been.
00:25:12.320I suppose you could say since before women were given the right to vote.
00:25:15.980I think we are less free as a country now than we have been in a century.
00:25:20.020And just because some of the mask bylaws are being lifted, I think we're still deeply unfree.
00:25:26.240And I think Trudeau's coming to squash that strategic freedom.
00:25:29.400The late Alan Borovoy, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said.
00:25:33.320Freedom of speech is the strategic freedom.
00:25:36.120Take away all my others, but leave me free speech.
00:26:10.780I should know that that was more bank accounts than the U.S. government seized after 9-11 when they were pushing back against Al-Qaeda.
00:26:17.780And so it was a larger reaction than the worst attack in North America in our history.
00:26:23.440It's truly, you know, even when you just think about the psychology of Justin Trudeau, like, you know, he used to wrap himself in the charter and he used to, you know, be so proud of being the liberal.
00:26:35.100He's a liberal, small liberal, big illiberal.
00:26:38.060And to look at the way that he's chipping away at those freedoms in Canada, frankly, for self-preservation reasons.
00:26:45.720And, you know, I think I think Elon Musk, it's a great sign.
00:26:49.160Jack Dorsey once said that Twitter was the free speech wing of the free speech party and it was meant as a libertarian bastion of free speech and free thought.
00:26:58.880And I hope that Elon is able to steer it back, at least in that direction.
00:27:03.900We also see more and more companies pushing back against the wokeism.
00:27:08.000Coinbase put out, which is an interchange, put out a statement basically saying, leave your politics at home.
00:27:13.760If you bring them to work, don't work here anymore.
00:27:16.140And about five percent of the company left and everyone else is happier.
00:27:19.120So maybe maybe, you know, these little glimmers of hope will provide a road path for people wanting to push back.
00:27:26.380Ezra, I want to spend a couple of minutes with you talking about an exciting upcoming event that we have planned.
00:27:31.720So we're excited to announce that True North is pairing up with the Rebel alongside the Independent Press Gallery and the Democracy Fund to host the first ever student journalism conference in Bolton, Ontario, just outside Toronto in early May.
00:27:43.600So why don't you tell us a little bit about that conference?
00:27:48.020The Democracy Fund is a registered Canadian charity whose mission is to advance constitutional freedoms and journalism.
00:27:56.300So a conference of 25 young journalists who will be brought to Toronto.
00:28:03.280I mean, even if you're far away, we'll bring you in.
00:28:06.260Now, if you can't fly because of the vaccine rules, we'll Zoom you in, we'll Skype you in.
00:28:10.660And it's a weekend of learning the craft of journalism.
00:28:14.760And journalism today, of course, is very different than a generation ago.
00:28:18.060So, for example, we've got amazing speakers, Dave Rubin, the very popular YouTuber, ally of Jordan Peterson, founder of Locals, like a great success story.
00:28:29.760For example, he'll be leading a session on how to make it as a YouTuber.
00:28:51.360You don't have to be in journalism school.
00:28:53.660You don't actually have to be a student, just a young person interested in making journalism your career.
00:28:58.820And my theory here is that if 25 students come to this event, let's say only a couple of them actually make journalism their permanent job.
00:29:08.560Well, if this conference is on every year, over 10 years, you put 250 students through this.
00:29:13.660By the end of that, you've sort of built up a cadre of freedom-oriented journalists in this country to counterbalance the woke journalism kids being pumped out of Ryerson and Carleton.
00:29:31.880So I want to encourage everyone who's a young journalist or who knows a young journalist or a would-be journalist or aspiring journalist or an amateur journalist or a citizen journalist.
00:29:42.760Go to thedemocracyfund.ca and click on the application form and ask you a few questions.
00:29:49.100And as co-sponsored, as you mentioned, Rebel News, True North, Independent Press Gallery, and the Democracy Fund, I think it's going to be great.
00:29:56.320And I'm going to be speaking there myself, and I know you will be too.
00:29:59.720What an amazing group of young people this is going to be.
00:30:02.560I can hardly wait to meet the students.
00:30:03.720Well, it kind of brings us back full circle in this interview, Ezra, because, you know, having peers that are like-minded, if you're a young journalist starting out there and, you know, you look out at your competition and the potential places that could hire you, if you're conservative or liberty-minded, you know, you don't have a lot of friends and allies out there.
00:30:23.180And so going to these kind of conferences can be a great way just to sort of reconnect with your ideas and what's important and carve your own path.
00:30:31.880And so I think it's a great initiative.
00:30:33.540I'm really pleased for True North to be involved.
00:30:36.340So can you remind me where can people go to apply for that?
00:30:40.400Yeah, it's a page of the Democracy Fund's website, so thedemocracyfund.ca.
00:30:46.580You can very quickly find the link to the Student Journalism Conference application form there.
00:30:51.120You can also see other things that the Democracy Fund is up to.
00:30:54.200And I think it's going to be wonderful.
00:30:58.440It's, again, you've got these massive corporate journalism schools that churn out woke activists, and they have hundreds of millions of dollars amongst them and all the advantages of the legacy media.
00:31:11.400This little student journalism conference, I bet, pound per pound, will produce better journalists and more effective journalists, even though it's a little grassroots idea.
00:31:36.300Yeah, we have a couple of young journalists on our staff here at True North, and some of the stories they tell us about, you know, Bryerson and these journalism schools are so woke.
00:31:43.460They're not even focused on telling the story, telling the other side of the story, focused on truth.
00:31:47.660No, instead, they're focused on things like equity, things like social justice, and their parties are just so off what the schools are teaching.
00:31:55.120But fortunately, you know, there are a few independent-minded people out there that choose to come work at places like the Rebel and True North.
00:32:02.040Well, Ezra, thank you so much for all your insight, and I'm really excited about this conference, this Student Journalism Conference in May.