Western Standard - The importance of protecting free media

00:00:00.840 Elise Mills, a strategist and council for global public affairs, a consultant, and just kind of

00:00:05.940 have your hands in everything. So thanks for joining the show today, Elise.

00:00:09.160 Thanks so much for having me, Corey. It's a real pleasure. I was looking forward to it all weekend.

00:00:16.100 So, I mean, yeah, we've got quite the subject to chew on, you know, when it first dropped last

00:00:21.280 week, it was hard to tell. It sounded almost like they were going to come after every podcaster and

00:00:25.320 get them to register or possibly shut them down. But no, they're being a little more nuanced.

00:00:29.360 They're going after the hosts. I mean, it'll have the same effect in a way, but it's going to take

00:00:35.680 a little longer. But this is a really, really dangerous turn of events going on with our

00:00:39.900 government right now. I know people on social media thought I was being completely extreme when I was

00:00:45.920 saying this, but it reminds me of the stories that my parents would tell me. I have journalists in my

00:00:53.260 family that work in the UK and the United States and had worked in Canada at one point.

00:00:59.360 for what was then Southern Press, which you might remember, Corey. And one thing that was really

00:01:05.960 concerning to me was that it has echoes of McCarthyism in it. It's guised as the great

00:01:12.900 savior of, you know, journalism. But what it really is, is a cultural redefining or a shift. It's meant to

00:01:21.780 follow into what they were looking for way back five years ago when they appointed the media czar.

00:01:27.740 I think what we need to remember is that this has been a piecemeal approach. So your viewers and

00:01:32.760 listeners and readers will probably not remember that in 2017, 2018, right around the election of Trump

00:01:43.000 came Canada's response, which was guised as, we are very concerned about certain voices. So we're going

00:01:51.600 to start regulating what you can say and what you cannot say on social media. So we're going to

00:01:56.380 appoint a czar. At that point, it's now, it was Melanie Joly, who's now Minister of Foreign Affairs.

00:02:06.200 And she was our czar of social media. Then you started to hear the rumblings of what they were

00:02:11.880 thinking about and how to control the media, which was, you know, it's a three-pronged approach,

00:02:16.080 Corey, really the ultimate goal is to keep the CBC as basically right now what it is, is an outsourced

00:02:22.800 PR firm for the Trudeau government. And I've never seen the CBC quite like this before. As you know,

00:02:32.500 I spent over a decade as a permanent fixture on the CBC as a conservative. So it's about protecting,

00:02:40.080 so some of that legislation was about protecting the CBC. But it was also about quietly, or what I

00:02:47.480 would call the creep of government, melding our minds into what Trudeau saw the country as being.

00:02:54.960 And that's, we really begin with the social media czar, we ramp up to C-11, we ramp up to some other

00:03:01.860 pieces of legislation that people have forgotten about, that are really pertain to the CBC,

00:03:07.920 pertain to how, what the CBC is allowed to do and what it's, what it's not allowed to do.

00:03:14.980 The CBC has only lost once in the court at the old CRTC, which was really about what they were

00:03:23.840 trying to produce, which was, which was almost like a digital print sheet, right? The TORSTAR and

00:03:31.080 National Post and many others won that, you know, thank goodness. But this, what we're seeing now

00:03:37.200 is what I call phase three. And what bothers me most about this is not, is it, well, several things,

00:03:45.840 Corey, and I, and I ranted at you, called you on a Friday night and said, we've got to get on top of

00:03:51.380 this. This is insane. Is that now this is guised to something that's supposed to help us to sort of

00:04:01.040 shut out what they don't want us to hear, which are these negative voices that have political

00:04:05.520 overturns or undercurrents, or, you know, overtones to it. The reality is, I don't, I want to be in a

00:04:13.360 country where I disagree with people. I do not want to be in a country where we're all saying, yes, that,

00:04:17.900 that, that is absolutely fantastic. I absolutely agree with this mushy middle sort of woke,

00:04:24.320 uh, Trudeauism, uh, that I think is separate to what the traditional liberal party is. The other

00:04:30.440 part about it is it has a registry and it reminds me of the McCarthy inquest, right? Where journalists

00:04:37.700 were brought forward for different reasons. Um, but it's similar. It was about you jump on my bandwagon,

00:04:44.300 you believe in what I believe in, um, otherwise you're a communist. Well, what Trudeau has said many

00:04:50.080 times, whether it's vaccines or the way he's come about this and it would come towards media and,

00:04:55.260 and public conversations and public debates and freedom of thought in this country, Corey is,

00:05:00.840 are you a conservative? And if you are, you're a misogynist, you're an anti-vaxxer, you're,

00:05:07.300 you know, so on and so on and so on. And I mean, he's compared people that have questioned his policies

00:05:12.780 to being Nazis, to being homophobic, to being misogynist, to being people that are racist. 0.77

00:05:19.160 This is all part of the plan. That's what I inherently believe, Corey, and no one's going

00:05:24.860 to tell me much different. I am really turned up about this. I think this is a, this is not only

00:05:31.640 overreach, this is an abuse of what's supposed to be an independent institution in this country,

00:05:37.060 which is the CRTC, which is to help us navigate the ever-changing media landscape. Uh, and that

00:05:44.440 includes the digital space and that includes podcasts. And quite frankly, all you're doing

00:05:49.820 is pushing people out. You're not embracing more diverse opinions. So it's government creep.

00:05:56.260 It is a hidden agenda. Absolutely. I've heard many conservatives talk about hidden agendas before.

00:06:02.400 This is really one of the first that I'll say, yep, this is it. This is a hidden agenda. Absolutely.

00:06:07.520 And he's going to leave a legacy and he's going to bare knuckle this, white knuckle this all the way

00:06:13.380 to him getting kicked out of office. And it's going to take, uh, the conservatives years to untie

00:06:18.860 or untangle us from the, from the precedents that this legislation or the legislations that we've seen

00:06:25.720 pass forward, um, and the regulatory changes that have been made. It's going to take us years because

00:06:30.860 as you know, Corey, once you take that giant leap forward, it's really hard to put the genie back in the

00:06:36.100 bottom. Well, that's it. And Canadians have voted with their eyes and their ears on media. The world

00:06:41.780 is changing. The CBC is a dinosaur sitting there taking over a billion a year plus dipping into the

00:06:47.000 advertising market. Yet their ratings are terrible. There's not many people actually consuming their

00:06:52.740 content, but rather than change their content, what the government wants to do is take away the

00:06:57.700 alternatives. And that's the competition gets odious. Yes. And I get frustrated. I've seen you on

00:07:03.820 X, you know, Twitter talking about it. People say, Oh, it's just the ones that make 10 million a year

00:07:08.080 or more. No, no, no, no, no. That's where they start. And then those are the hosts that those are

00:07:13.180 the platforms that host all these different voices. It's not about Joe Rogan. Okay. I mean,

00:07:21.080 and I, and for example, that's a great example of what I can and cannot get behind or why I'm doing

00:07:26.300 this. Joe Rogan speaks. And most of the time I'm sort of cringing because you know, me, Corey,

00:07:32.460 I live at the intersection of the law, legislation, precedent of parliament, all that sort of good

00:07:37.860 stuff. And then, you know, I mix it all in with what I think we need as not only Western Canadians,

00:07:44.160 but what we need is a change for this country. So when I listened to Joe Rogan, especially his

00:07:48.780 advice on what you should be taking during COVID, I just wanted to pull my hair out. But would I ever

00:07:55.420 get behind anything that makes it difficult for him to have his voice heard in this country?

00:08:01.140 No, the same can be said about many of the far left groups that I have to listen to,

00:08:07.820 or even the, or even the hosts that I listened to on the mainstream media that have significantly

00:08:13.500 changed in the last few weeks, especially out here in Western Canada. I can't even believe what I'm

00:08:18.640 listening to sometimes, but it's important to scream at your radio. It's important to have,

00:08:25.180 you know, to fight, to get up and feel that feeling that you want to hear, have your voice heard.

00:08:30.320 You want to be able to match it. You want to be able to duel with people on it, and you want to

00:08:34.800 be able to debate the issues that are at hand. Here's what the Trudeau liberals will tell you.

00:08:40.300 This is a bunch of conservatives that want to prop up the right-wing agenda. No, what this is,

00:08:47.180 is this conservative, and I'm sure you as well, Corey, I know you as well. Many of the people we know,

00:08:54.040 many of the people we've worked with, everybody's going to stand arm and arm with NDPers, liberals.

00:08:59.320 It doesn't matter. The point is, you will not, on my watch, have your rights reduced. You will not

00:09:07.480 lose your right to freedom of expression. I will not say freedom of speech, because that's not a

00:09:12.460 Canadian term, but freedom of expression is. You will not lose constitutional rights. Government

00:09:17.880 creep under Trudeau has become a significant crisis of democracy against a democracy in this country,

00:09:25.140 country. And I'm not afraid to say it anymore. Yeah, well, and this is a solution looking for a

00:09:30.640 problem. Like, it's the people pointing, oh, we've got to stop misinformation or hate. Well, hang on.

00:09:34.440 We've already got legislation. If I was spreading hate, or inciting violence, or hatred, or slandering

00:09:41.480 somebody, there's all sorts of legal recourse that I'll be subjected to, that I'm going to pay some

00:09:46.900 consequences for acting like that. Warren Kinsella, the pundit, is a prime example of the king of the

00:09:55.160 watchdogs on, you know, be careful what you say. Nobody has lost their ability to sue somebody or to

00:10:02.380 contact the police. You even look at Twitter now. The reality is, this is simply Trudeau-isms. This is a

00:10:09.600 Trudeau policy. He's trying to change the culture of the country. And I think at a time where Canadians

00:10:17.600 are stopping dead in their tracks saying, wait a second, there's lots of things going on where this

00:10:23.240 country is being pulled in several directions. Parents have their own concerns. You know, the rights

00:10:32.840 of a few have outnumbered the rights of the whole. And I don't understand what the end game is into

00:10:39.880 attacking media the way that he has. I mean, the way that things have gone from Bill C-11, they have

00:10:47.760 been absolutely a gigantic, enormous failure. We've had failures on the foreign policy stage. Canada

00:10:55.080 tripped, fell on its face, and the whole country tried not, or the whole world tried not to laugh.

00:10:59.580 The other part to this is, he talks about freedom of expression and everybody having a right to an

00:11:07.280 opinion, everybody having the right to say what they want to say. But in fact, Trudeau has worked

00:11:14.200 very hard at limiting the avenues for you, for people like yourself, Corey, or anyone else to be

00:11:20.680 able to express that opinion. And, you know, the legislation, C-11 and its sister and companion

00:11:27.780 legislation have but crippled and killed the Canadian media industry. The only group that's

00:11:34.220 surviving is the CBC. I recommend your viewers and those who follow you on Twitter and your readers

00:11:42.740 go and check out the release of the CBC's O'Budsman's annual report about the CBC and their rebuttal.

00:11:49.440 You'll see the losses in there. You'll see the complaints in there. If that's our, if that's

00:11:55.080 our, you know, our media of record in this country, we are up the creek without a paddle, Corey.

00:12:01.500 Yeah, and the CBC has just gotten terrible. I mean, they've always had a leftward lean. That's nothing

00:12:07.040 new. That was around since the 80s when I grew up. But it's tilted in this last 10 years to a point

00:12:13.680 that it truly has become a government organ. And I know the reporters chafe every time I call them

00:12:18.180 people working for the state broadcaster. But until they can start demonstrating otherwise,

00:12:22.720 I, this is no longer even slightly an independent news outlet any longer. And it's costing us a

00:12:28.240 fortune. I think everybody has a dog in this fight. If you're mad at the CBC, this is a great way to

00:12:34.300 jump in and raise your voice again. But what I'm really here to say is that forget about the little

00:12:40.560 schoolyard scraps that you've had maybe with, you know, you don't like Trudeau, the trucker, you know,

00:12:47.240 the trucker's convoy wasn't a schoolyard scrap. It's sort of part hand in glove with some of this

00:12:52.520 stuff. But, you know, this is the real, this is the big kahuna. This is the one piece of regulation,

00:13:00.860 which should have come through legislation, because there's a piece of the Constitution

00:13:05.880 that requires if he's going to search for more money through taxation, whatever that requires

00:13:10.600 him to go through Parliament, and then have it passed obviously through the Senate. He hasn't

00:13:15.460 done that. What he's done is he's manipulated and interfered with what is supposed to be an

00:13:19.720 independent regulatory body in Canada. I'm not surprised nothing stops him. But this is an absolute

00:13:28.020 overreach and creep into your fundamental rights for freedom of expression and your and and your basic

00:13:35.060 civil liberties. You can do this country. Don't look at what the CRTC released. Look at what they've

00:13:43.480 said in the last six months. And there's been many good writers that have come out and written on this

00:13:49.920 today. There's a gentleman by the name of Peter Menzies, who I know, you know, Corey, he's a former

00:13:55.000 vice here at the CRTC. He had a brilliant step by step on it today. I call it sort of the cheat sheet

00:14:03.960 of why this is problematic. This is, as it sits today, this isn't going to be the end of it. This

00:14:11.380 is just one piece to it. And the hearings start in November, which is a really short shift for most

00:14:17.140 regulatory hearings. I mean, you know, Corey, it's normally 12 to anywhere to a year, you know,

00:14:24.260 scheduling of that. This time, it's only four weeks before the hearings start. And so it'll be

00:14:29.760 interesting to see how that plays out and whether or not that's broadcasted for all of us to see.

00:14:35.260 But to make no mistake, this is just the beginning. And, or maybe it's the middle, Corey, I'm not so

00:14:42.460 sure, but it's definitely not the end. And this is not about a fight with the CBC. You can have that.

00:14:48.720 I'm right there with you. This is not about disliking Trudeau. This is about your rights being

00:14:54.980 infringed upon. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, it's a good note to leave off on. And I'm sure

00:14:59.740 we'll have to discuss this further. And again, as it develops, as we see the hearings and things like

00:15:03.520 that, it's definitely the beginning of a new phase of control. And it's a very dangerous one. I mean,

00:15:09.380 at this point, we can oppose and speak up and push back however we can, but we kind of got to wait now

00:15:14.080 to see how it's going to unfold. So I appreciate you coming on to talk to us today. Because I don't think

00:15:19.800 enough people understand just how serious this really is, and how bad this could really get.

00:15:26.400 So if I could just, if I could just make a quick note, Corey, I am I have joined an organization that

00:15:32.380 we will go public shortly, where we will be fighting and exposing the concerns and the issues and the

00:15:41.800 legal issues around this type of regulation. And I'm very proud. I'm jumping the gun a bit here. But I

00:15:47.820 want your viewers to know that, that this is something that I believe in so wholeheartedly,

00:15:54.980 as a Canadian, that we I am now going to devote my time to this group. It's a it's a very early

00:16:02.400 stages, but it will be people that you know, who are going to join forces, no matter who they vote for

00:16:08.460 what partisan world they live in, what they do for a living, the people that I've spoken to, and the

00:16:15.120 people that will be that have joined the group are very concerned about this encroachment of our

00:16:20.040 rights. And it's and this particular piece that has come out with the CRTC was not the beginning,

00:16:25.940 it was the final straw for so many. So hopefully, Corey, we can keep you updated. I know we're here to

00:16:33.100 we're here to support you too. You're one of the hardest working guys in media. And I just really

00:16:38.300 appreciate you giving me the opportunity today to express how how problematic this is and how serious

00:16:44.120 this is. Well, I appreciate that. And I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys put together

00:16:48.720 because we need that opposition. So quickly before I let you go, where can people find you on I guess,

00:16:53.140 x or you know, formerly Twitter and other areas to keep track when things do start unfolding from

00:16:58.500 you? They might remember me as formerly Gracie style. Unfortunately, as I left Twitter, I lost that

00:17:05.460 somebody else has that so don't follow it. I'm Millsy Elise, not the greatest name. You can also find me on

00:17:12.680 LinkedIn. All of my socials are open for anyone to follow and to join or to request. And I will

00:17:20.520 be putting forward on Twitter, the website of what this group will be. We're still trying to give it

00:17:28.740 a name. It's a little bit of a ragtag group right now. But we're hoping that we'll be able to

00:17:34.100 really get in there and influence public opinion in the sense of why you need to pay attention to this.

00:17:41.460 So yeah, come and follow me on Twitter and enjoy the ride. It's getting feisty in there. And as

00:17:47.680 Corey knows, I'm watching Corey's account and always ready to back you and jump in at a moment's

00:17:53.380 notice, but you rarely need it. That's my favorite playground. All right. Well, again, I appreciate

00:18:00.920 the work you're doing and you're coming on today, Elise. I'm sure we'll talk again about this soon. And

00:18:04.880 I look forward to what's coming up. Thank you so much, Corey. You take care. Great. Thank you.

00:18:09.500 You can become a Western Standard member for just $10 a month or $99 a year for unlimited access.

Western Standard - October 10, 2023

The importance of protecting free media

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