The Critical Compass Podcast - September 26, 2026


CBC Filmed an Empty Room. Independents Got 20 Million Views. ｜ Jason Lavigne

Mentioned
Rodney Palmer Dean Allison Detective Helen Groose Thomas Lukasik John Johnston Helen Groose Proverbs Bigfoot Carney
Stablecoins, CBDCs & Alberta’s New Economy ｜ Fergus Hodgson, Brett Oland & Paz Gomez The ONLY Way a Constitution Keeps You Free ｜ Bruce Pardy - Capitalism & Morality 2026

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

139.39

Word count

1,860

Sentence count

140

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 We're not supposed to predetermine anything.
00:00:03 And that's why I'm really disappointed in the media.
00:00:05 You don't have to agree with what the Canadians have to say.
00:00:08 You don't have to agree with the topic.
00:00:10 You don't even have to support the topic.
00:00:11 But it's still newsworthy.
00:00:13 We don't have public broadcasting.
00:00:15 We have state broadcasting.
00:00:17 The organizations he used to work for, SWITCH,
00:00:21 and he gave us a definition of public broadcaster,
00:00:24 which is you do what the public's looking for,
00:00:27 a little local story. Maybe it's popular there. It gets to the national level. It gets some more
00:00:32 attention. Public broadcasting. State broadcasting. Very different. They don't do that. They bring you
00:00:41 the narrative. This is when media is now telling you, don't believe your trusted sources.
00:00:48 Turn against even your own father if they don't agree with what the CBC is telling you.
00:00:57 How many people here learned about this event on X?
00:01:05 Just a couple hands. Facebook, CBC.
00:01:12 You laugh, but this goes into the talk.
00:01:15 How many people heard about the Allison Inquiry?
00:01:19 Okay, so it's about a third of you, maybe a quarter of you.
00:01:23 The rest of you didn't hear about it because it wasn't carried on mainstream.
00:01:27 This was a four-day event, 50 plus witnesses, Canadians from across the country, even a few
00:01:33 Americans. Senator John Johnston was there, which is the first time a sitting U.S. Senator
00:01:40 was under oath on Parliament Hill at a committee meeting to testify. How many people knew about
00:01:46 that? That's newsworthy. But where was the news? Well, I can tell you where they were. CBC's head
00:01:54 office is 20 yards across the street. And they weren't there. Now I'm going to be very clear
00:02:02 about this because I want to be an honest journalist. They actually were there. For the
00:02:07 first five minutes, 30 minutes before the event started, they filmed an empty room and left.
00:02:13 CPAC is like a permanent fixture. We pay taxpayer funding to have CPAC there to bring the parliament
00:02:21 to Canada, to bring lawmakers to Canada, to bring committee meetings to Canada.
00:02:27 They were there at the beginning, similar to CBC, but they never went in the chamber.
00:02:31 They just were in the hallway filming a few people coming in, and then they left.
00:02:36 When we inquired, why isn't CPAC of all, CPAC not here broadcasting this? Because it wasn't,
00:02:44 in their eyes, an official event. I'm not sure when their mandate was official events.
00:02:51 it was parliament, it was a chamber, it was led by MP Dean Allison, and it was Canadian speaking.
00:02:59 What was one of the top news stories for CBC during this? Carney talking to Thomas Lukasik
00:03:06 in Banff. 50 witnesses from across Canada was there to testify and share their stories,
00:03:13 but the media wasn't. When you went online to check out what was the media talking about,
00:03:18 Were they talking about this event?
00:03:21 Their top story was, there's no media coverage at this event.
00:03:27 It's very circular.
00:03:30 They're the ones not doing the media coverage,
00:03:32 and the only thing they talk about is there's no media coverage.
00:03:37 But independent journalists like myself were there.
00:03:40 And we got a shout out by Dean Allison at the end,
00:03:44 because we calculated the numbers and took a look.
00:03:46 without mainstream media there.
00:03:49 This inquiry outside of Canada
00:03:52 was the number one or number seven worldwide topic,
00:03:56 had over 20 million views,
00:03:58 and it was only brought in by independent media.
00:04:06 So I would encourage all of you to go to the Levine Show.
00:04:10 We had it all there.
00:04:11 It's about eight hours a day.
00:04:12 It's all there to be streamed.
00:04:14 one of the people that's in this room was there. She was one of the witnesses.
00:04:22 Detective Helen Groose from Audible Police Services.
00:04:30 And one of the reasons why I'm bringing her up during my speech about citizen journalism
00:04:34 is because part of what we do is investigate. We're not supposed to predetermine anything.
00:04:41 And that's why I'm really disappointed in the media.
00:04:43 You don't have to agree with what the Canadians have to say.
00:04:46 You don't have to agree with the topic.
00:04:47 You don't even have to support the topic.
00:04:49 But it's still newsworthy, and you should at least come and see it
00:04:53 and share it with Canadians so they can make up their own mind.
00:04:56 But Detective Helen Gruse, when she started to investigate, 0.92
00:04:59 look into, ask a question or two, she got persecuted.
00:05:04 Her testimony as a police officer, detective,
00:05:07 in Sexual Assault Child Abuse Department looking into the sudden death of several babies
00:05:15 shortly after the rollout, spent over four years, hundreds of thousands of dollars defending
00:05:22 yourself, was convicted, sentenced, two-year demotion, and now in Ontario, as he testified,
00:05:30 there's a new law there. Police officers are no longer allowed to start an investigation
00:05:37 on their own without permission from supervisors.
00:05:41 Some countries that do this, North Korea, China,
00:05:47 all of the ones that have dictators,
00:05:51 their police need permission before they can go ahead
00:05:54 and look into crimes, investigations, and start one. 0.99
00:05:57 Sure, she can pull over a speeder,
00:05:58 but if she wants to look into a lot more details
00:06:01 about what's going on around her in her community,
00:06:03 if people bring complaints or people are dying,
00:06:06 She needs permission now in Ontario.
00:06:09 When it comes to media, when I first started doing this,
00:06:12 I thought a citizen journalist was me, the citizen,
00:06:16 doing the act of journalism.
00:06:18 And I thought, wait a minute, I'm a nerd.
00:06:21 I write software, but I'm not learning the truth out there.
00:06:26 And it started in 2021, really strong,
00:06:28 but going back even further to 2012 is when I shut off CNN
00:06:32 because all they were talking about was a Mayan calendar and the end of the world.
00:06:37 Like, huh, this feels like a narrative and propaganda, so I shut them off.
00:06:41 But the convoy here in Ottawa and Canada is when I realized,
00:06:46 oh, we have this here too.
00:06:49 They're not telling us the truth.
00:06:52 Now, one of the other testimonies was Rodney Palmer, CTV, CBC, former,
00:06:58 so don't hold it against him, but during the good days, he testified.
00:07:02 and he shared how he watched the organizations he used to work for switch. And he gave us a
00:07:09 definition of public broadcaster, which is you do what the public's looking for, a little local
00:07:15 story, maybe it's popular there, it gets to the national level, it gets some more attention.
00:07:20 Public broadcasting, state broadcasting, very different. They don't do that. They bring you
00:07:28 the narrative. So he played an example of CBC during early COVID days for the vaccine where
00:07:35 they were saying the Wuhan lab is not the source. And what he pointed out is how would
00:07:41 they know? It was so early. It could be the source, maybe it's not. But how was it so
00:07:48 definitive? And then he pointed out the second half of the story, which was, don't believe
00:07:53 your crazy dad. This is when media is now telling you, don't believe your trusted sources.
00:08:02 Turn against even your own father if they don't agree with what the CBC is telling you.
00:08:08 He played another segment. It was a fantastic, so you guys should check this out.
00:08:13 CBC for kids, or children, were being told the vaccine is safe, it was tested on thousands of
00:08:22 people and nobody got hurt. Well, we know now it wasn't safe. It was never tested on thousands of
00:08:29 people and people got hurt because what he also pulled up was Health Canada stats that day 119
00:08:38 Canadians died from the vaccine. So the same day they're telling your children nobody's hurt,
00:08:45 Health Canada says 119 deaths.
00:08:49 That's when he knew we don't have public broadcasting.
00:08:53 We have state broadcasting.
00:08:55 Because they're there to program you and tell you what's going on from their narrative
00:09:00 and disconnect you from your traditional trusted sources like your dad or your family
00:09:05 or the other ones that you used to do.
00:09:08 When we were there covering this, we were being attacked online by a so-called journalist.
00:09:15 They're making fun of us.
00:09:16 They're like, huh, this room should be full of Bigfoot if it's real.
00:09:20 Something along those lines.
00:09:23 And I push back to them.
00:09:24 I'm like, listen, you're not supposed to predetermine truth.
00:09:28 You're supposed to come out and see what's going on and share it
00:09:31 so we can decide what we believe.
00:09:35 Not for them to decide beforehand and push it out.
00:09:39 It's been gross.
00:09:40 but i am very pleased that we were able to get the message out number seven globally
00:09:47 on this messaging and now a lot more people now see what's going on how many people here still
00:09:54 watch cbc 1.6 billion dollars of your money goes there and this is why i like a lot of the
00:10:05 conversations that we're having here because this is capitalism and morality. Because we need a free
00:10:11 market because the market doesn't trust them, so the government props them up. And why don't we
00:10:17 trust them? Because they have no morality left. They lie to us all the time. They don't know
00:10:22 what's good or bad. They provide what Rodney talked about, which is a trusted news initiative
00:10:27 narrative and provide it down to even our children. A gentleman shared a piece of the
00:10:37 Bible with you, some scripture with you. So I will share Proverbs 31, 8 and 9. This is
00:10:44 the King James Version. Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed 1.00
00:10:53 to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy."
00:11:02 That means we're supposed to tell the truth. We're supposed to be journalists. We're supposed
00:11:08 to get out there and plead the cause of the poor and the needy. And when you had 50 people sitting
00:11:15 on Parliament Hill sharing how 15 minutes after they got their injection, they felt tremors,
00:11:21 felt like they were being electrocuted, can't feel their legs anymore, lost sons.
00:11:30 And the only media there is independent citizen journalism.
00:11:36 Citizen journalism isn't me the citizen who's a journalist.
00:11:41 It's a journalist for citizens, because that's all we have left.
00:11:48 We don't have real journalists anymore.
00:11:51 so we don't have the big bank accounts we don't have the supporters the sponsors
00:12:01 we don't have any of that because quite frankly i was talking at the table during that breakout
00:12:06 session how do we support ourselves the truth is folks most of us don't we're just getting by
00:12:14 god provides but we need to kind of change the attitude because if you guys really want truth
00:12:20 not their truth or your truth, but the truth, you need to support the up and coming independent
00:12:28 journalists out there. So I'd like to thank you all very much for being here today. We're going
00:12:34 to do some panels and have some more conversations, but Fergus, thank you so much for what you're
00:12:39 doing here today. And more people like this need to do this. Thank you.
00:12:50 Thank you.