Keean Bexte, a Rebel reporter, details his "rebel journalism" in Alberta’s 2019 election, including confronting convicted terrorist Omar Cotter—who smirked while evading accountability—despite $10.5M in taxpayer funding allegedly excluding victim Tabitha Spear’s input. He criticizes mainstream media for whitewashing Cotter and highlights David Egan’s push to defund Christian schools, raising costs by 30% per student while indoctrinating youth with socialist policies. Bexte plans street interviews and FOI requests to expose NDP failures, like Deborah Driver’s controversies, contrasting their coverage with media that hires government-aligned reporters. The Rebel aims to challenge narratives by revealing true public sentiment, from truck rallies to misrepresented protests like France’s yellow vests, where mainstream outlets ignore grassroots concerns while amplifying divisive groups. Their mission: uncovering unfiltered truths in Alberta’s political landscape. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, my newest on-air colleague joins me to talk about what it's like to be a rebel reporter and what two election cycles in 2019 means for us here at The Rebel.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
We've got a provincial election coming up in just a few short months, hopefully before the end of May 2019.
And then before the end of the year 2019, we will also see Justin Trudeau face his first federal election as prime minister.
And that means all hands on deck here at The Rebel.
Now, over the last nearly four years here, you've seen us break stories that you won't see anywhere in the mainstream media.
And you've seen us ask questions the mainstream media just refuses to ask newsmakers.
Like when my guest tonight confronted convicted terrorist and murderer Omar Cotter at the Edmonton Law Courts building.
That was something we had never seen before in Canadian media.
A journalist asking Omar Cotter hard questions about his crime, the murder of U.S. Army medic Sergeant Christopher Speer.
Before Carter was confronted like that, he had consistently been treated like a victim by the mainstream media here in Canada.
It was shocking and refreshing to see him face scrutiny.
Now, joining me tonight is that scrappy rookie reporter who took on the war criminal when everybody else was treating him with kid gloves.
My guest tonight in an interview we actually recorded New Year's Day is my rebel colleague here in Alberta, Kian Bexi.
And we're talking about what it's like to be a rebel reporter, some of Kian's favorite stories, who Kian thinks is the worst cabinet minister here in Alberta, and what we both plan to do during the 2019 election campaigns, both here in Alberta and at the federal level.
So joining me now is our newest rebel here with the company, but also my fellow traveler in fighting the left in Alberta and bringing you the other side of the story.
So joining me now from Calgary is Kian Bexey.
Hey Kian, happy new year and Merry Christmas.
We both had a little bit of time off.
Hopefully you have your conservative batteries recharged because I think we have a big fight up against us here in 2019.
And that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on today is you and I, I think we're going to play instrumental roles in the election that the rest of the mainstream media isn't going to do.
But I wanted to talk to you first about what it's been like for you to be a rebel and join the company.
Kian Bexey Joins The Fight00:05:32
Like what's your experience been like and has it been like unexpectedly hard for you?
Because I feel like you sort of hit the ground running.
Well, thanks.
I appreciate that.
It hasn't been unexpectedly hard.
It's always fun to do work that matters, that people care about.
And when I get feedback from people saying that they like what I'm doing and they appreciate it, it means a lot.
So it's really easy to do.
Yeah, like it's hard when you're in the fire all the time.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a different story.
The Twitter barrage, and you know, sometimes my family gets attacked for talking with me online in a public setting, and it's just kind of awful, but that's the left for you, right?
So, yeah, that really is the left.
I mean, it's a bit of a learning curve.
You know, like for myself, I keep my personal Facebook page locked up tighter than Fort Knox because I'm always very careful of how the left will come after our families.
Because I think you and I are sort of pretty resilient to the blast furnace of the internet.
You know, you put one foot into the internet, and there's like a thousand crazy cat ladies trying to yell at you, and no offense to cat ladies, but the crazy ones are the worst.
But I don't think it's something that our families really bargain for.
And I think we saw this with Sam Oosterhoff.
I was just going to say, yeah.
Yeah, go ahead.
Well, yeah, with Sam Oosterhoff, his parents were doxxed by an SJW activist.
And I think it's one of the most reprehensible things to do is to drag innocent people into a fight that they don't want to be in.
And they had no reason to be involved in in the first place.
It's sad, really.
It's, you know, and the guy who did it, he's just so inconsequential.
He's a failed city council candidate where Sam's from.
But he actually directed people to go to Sam's, like, not just to, you know, attack Sam, but go to his parents' house on Christmas and then protest him.
Like, what did they do except raise a high-achieving young man?
They're Christian.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just, it's real, but that's sort of the how the left operates.
We saw what they did to Tucker Carlson.
Yeah, same thing.
Yeah.
I wanted to ask you, what has been your favorite thing or story that you've done here at the Rebel?
It has, without a doubt, it was confronting Omar Cotter.
I mean, coming face to face with the terrorists, sure, he didn't answer our questions, but I think we got our point across.
Just the fact that he was so unwilling to talk and answer real questions shows a few things.
First off, that the media has absolutely no ability to hold him to account.
He has 10.5 million taxpayers' dollars in his pocket, keep in mind.
But also that he has no remorse himself, right?
We asked him if he regretted killing Christopher Spear, and he just said nothing.
And then when we went into the courthouse and stood in an elevator with this convicted terrorist, he did nothing but smirk at me, knowing that I couldn't film him.
And that was the true Omar Cotter that we saw there, I think.
But you don't get those kind of opportunities to confront real-life terrorists unless you're with the Rebel.
It was an eye-opening experience for me, that's for sure.
Yeah, I think you did something that no other journalist has ever thought to do.
And not only is that a credit to you and your bravery, really, but a real indictment of the mainstream media in Canada that nobody has ever asked him if he regretted killing an army medic, Christopher Speer.
I was able to confront him too.
And it was strange because I didn't even realize, like, it didn't sink into me that I had confronted a war criminal and an al-Qaeda terrorist until I was in the truck on the way home.
But I also asked him about Christopher Spear's children, these kids that grew up without their hero father because of Omar Cotter's actions.
And, you know, he's never really been remorseful.
And, you know, he's actually structured his payout from the Canadian government in such a way that the widow Tabitha Spear will probably never see any of it.
You know, we talk about Christopher Spear and his children so much, and it's such a shame what happened to them.
But what people need to know is that Omar Cotter, he hasn't just killed Christopher Spear and blinded another American military personnel in Afghanistan.
He was creating IEDs.
Who knows how many people this person has killed or has had a hand in killing?
But nobody's asking the questions.
That's the problem, right?
And he's certainly not willing to answer.
I sure wouldn't divide $10.5 million in an offshore bank account if that's in fact where it is.
But we just don't know.
We just don't know where his money is.
And like you say, nobody's asking the questions.
When I confronted Omar Cotter, all the other journalists looked at me like I was crazy because I confronted this newsworthy person with an entirely valid question that Canadians want to know about, but they just treat him as though he's the child victim in all of this instead of the fatherless children of his true victim.
NDP's Election Strategy00:14:58
Now, I wanted to ask you, this is, I was thinking about this question myself because we're going into hopefully Rachel Notley's last five or so months in office, God willing.
Who do you think the worst cabinet minister is?
David Egan, without a, without, I don't even have to think twice about it.
David Egan, 100%.
He is single-handedly shaping the future generation, like the next generation of Albertans.
And it's terrifying what he's doing.
He's manipulating them with his curriculum.
He's revoking funding from Catholics, from Christian schools just because they don't agree with his political doctrine.
I mean, it's insane.
You know, Joe Cece, he can spend billions and billions of dollars, but Albertans are hard workers and will overcome that debt and we'll get back to balance like we did with Ralph Klein.
But the problem is that we're disabled when we have a generation of socialists growing up.
And he knows that and that's what he wants, right?
So.
Yeah, you know what?
I would agree with you.
I think he's doing, it's, you know, Joe Cece, yeah, he's spending us into oblivion.
He thinks that craft beer is going to save the economy.
Shannon Phillips with her carbon tax, but that's something that can be repealed with her, you know, changing how Albertans use our public lands.
That's something that can be repealed with, you know, a vote and a new law.
But what David Egan is doing is he's changing the culture of Alberta in such an irreparable way that, as you so wisely pointed out, we won't have this sort of skilled workforce who understands work and the oil patch and to be able to work ourselves out of this debt.
If we don't have a workforce that is competitive with the likes of the Americans or the Chinese or the Japanese, we are not able to get out of this hole.
And that's why I was so proud of you to see your campaign against David Egan, your Fire Egan campaign in that big, beautiful billboard on the side of Ireland, too.
It is abusive.
How many people are seeing that thing every day?
It's over 1 million impressions every month is the information we have.
So that's over 250,000 people seeing it a week, which I think is crazy.
I mean, thank goodness we were able to crowdfund crowdfund for that because it was 100% paid for by rebel viewers.
And it's such a great message to send to the NDP.
Every time Rachel Notley and David Egen and any of her cabinet ministers, her MLAs, or the staffers, or even people who support her, when they're driving from Calgary to Edmonton, they're seeing a big sign on the side of the road calling them out for what they've done.
And if you go to www.fireeagan.ca, you can see all the coverage we've done on David Egan and the people involved with him from Progress Alberta to Press Progress and folks who, well, actually, one video that I want to talk about specifically was the left-wing trifecta video that we did.
It was one of the first few ones that I did, actually.
We went to Weber Academy and talked to the headmaster there, Dr. Weber, and he was sharing his story about how he was called on Twitter, a supporter of residential schools through a series of steps from the Eggin ministry to Progress Alberta releasing statements.
It eventually ended up, Progress Alberta had to release an apology.
Duncan Kinney had to release a public statement of apology, which he did on Christmas Eve, I think it was, so that nobody would see it.
But that was part of our Fire Egan campaign.
So there's a whole bunch of stuff that we've done, and it's a lot of good work.
So I'd recommend people go check that website out.
Yeah, I normally don't like to talk about Progress Alberta because it feels like we're punching down.
You know what I mean?
We take on cabinet ministers, we take on Trudeau, we take on the United Nations, you know, and we very frequently win those battles or at least severely damage the people we are up against and make them look like totalitarian wackadoodles.
So I don't like to punch down because they're just while Progress Alberta is very well funded and very well connected, I think they're just low-level no-nothings most of the time.
And they're just, you know, like the undeclared press secretaries of the NDP.
But what they tried to do to Weber Academy was really reprehensible, but it goes back to this attack on private schooling that you see from the left all the time.
Yeah.
It's harder to indoctrinate kids when they're in a private school, I suppose.
I think you said it well a few months ago.
You said the public education factories is what you called them, the public schools.
And that's a great way to put it because that's what they are.
And that's what they, well, maybe that's not what they are, but that's what the NDP view them as is just a factory to push kids through and form their ideologies early on.
Well, and they attack a private schooling because they think that only rich people send their kids to private school, but that's just not the case.
I've seen some studies, I think it was from the Fraser Institute, where when you take out like the elite level academies, I guess like Weber Academy and some of the, you know, really expensive elite level academies,
when you take them out of the equation and you compare the incomes of people who send their kids to private school versus the people who send their kids to public school, the people who send their kids to public school are actually quite often earning more money than those who send their kids to private school.
So it's not a place where the elite send their kids so that they don't have to mix with people like me, I guess.
It's where people who are making sacrifices to pay that extra bit of tuition because they want to send their kids to someplace different for a whole host of reasons.
It doesn't have to be for even the education.
Sometimes it's for sports.
Sometimes it's for religious reasons.
Sometimes it's because of class sizes.
But when the NDP attack these private educational institutions, Really, what they're doing is they want to dump a bunch of kids into what seems to be an already failing public system.
And you actually accurately pointed that out in your Fire Egan campaign.
Yeah, it's sure is a shame when they attack those private schools because what they're doing is they're attacking the parents and the children who have made a joint decision to go to that school.
No one forced them to.
They decided this is in their best interests and that's what they want to do.
And for some reason, Progress Alberta and David Egen and his ministry think that it's okay to disparage them and act like they're the worst people ever, but really they're just looking for a good education or have made that decision for those whole hosts of reasons.
Like you said, sports, location, maybe they're avoiding a problem at an old school with a bully or something like that.
You know, you never know what causes these children to go to private schools.
And I think it's just, it's a shame that Progress Alberta thinks that it's okay to attack them like that.
Well, and we know that private education actually saves the public system money because in Alberta, we only fund our children who are attending private schools.
I think it's at 70%.
So 30% savings per student is being dumped back into the public system.
It's not like the government is saving that money and just putting it away for a rainy day.
They're dumping it into the public system.
So, you know, to eliminate private education in Alberta would rise the cost of education by 30%.
It is outrageous and it is very short-sighted, but heaven forbid some kids escape those indoctrination factories.
Well, you know, as well as I, the NDP aren't concerned with rising costs at all, right?
They're happy to spend as much as they as much as they need.
So I pointed out earlier, we're headed into an election year, both federally and provincially.
Provincially, we should hopefully see an election sort of by the end of May.
I think it'll be earlier than that.
You think it'll be earlier?
Yeah.
Why?
I think they're going to hang on for all it's worth.
I'm looking at their expenses and they're spending a lot of money on fancy clothes.
Fair enough.
It's just a hunch.
But if I was a betting man, which I suppose I am, but I would say early March.
That's when I'll put my money on it.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
The thing is, I think they would have called an early election if they thought they could catch the UCP flat-footed.
But clearly, the UCP has been running their nominations for well over a year now.
They've got most of their candidates in place.
Although, you know what?
I might agree with you.
If there was some sort of like a serious bozo interruption, they would from the UCP.
I think the NDP might try to strike while the iron was hot.
But I think they're going to hang on for all it's worth.
What are they going to do?
Like, what are they going to do?
They're going to go back to Starbucks.
They're going to go back to their mom's house.
I don't know.
Their mom's basement.
Yeah.
Well, here's my reasoning.
I think, well, if you look at there's a few ridings that are that are certainly in contention.
I think Calgary Varsity, I think pretty much all of Lethbridge, these university areas where there's a high concentration of left-wing voters.
I think that if they get them before finals and before they all go home for go home for the summer, I think that'll help them a lot.
So I think that's going to play a part in them in when they're going to call the election because I seriously think that these people don't know, can't see the writing on the wall.
I think that they really think that they can win and maybe they can.
Who knows?
Polls are polls.
Yeah.
No, I know that you're sort of looking forward to doing some stories about cataloging what the NDP, like their failures over the last three and a half years.
I know I'm sort of looking forward to that because I feel as though it's sort of like the job losses in Alberta.
Every one of them is terrible, but we, you get barraged with them and you sort of become desensitized to how bad it is until you dig back down into, you know, the people and the catastrophe that it's causing.
And I think the NDP have just been so bad that I think people are used to how bad they've been and they've sort of forgotten.
And I know between now and whenever the election is, I'm going to be working on cataloging some of their catastrophe.
What about you?
Well, it's numbing.
You're right, is probably a good way to put it because if you recall back to just it was a week after the election when the Deborah Driver stuff came out, this woman who was posing with marijuana memorabilia and posed in a heavy metal album cover in a way that made it look like she was being sexually assaulted.
It was, you know, and she said quite a few nasty things online as well.
And that was the first one.
And I think people were stunned when they saw it.
They realized what they did.
And ever since then, it's just been a buildup of bozo eruptions from the NDP.
And people just expect it now.
But we'll have to see, I guess, whether or not that's going to play a part in the everyday Albertans decision come to ballot box.
When we do the catalog, that's exactly what we're going to do.
I'm going to try to focus on Calgary MLAs to start with through this series of videos.
And I'm going to, it depends on which one it is, depends on who it is, but I'm hopefully going to go meet them and actually ask them questions in person.
I think that would be entertaining because you never know how these people are going to act when they have a microphone on them and you can ask them questions that the CBC is not asking them.
But I don't want to just go through them and outline the stupid thing, the stupid things they've done.
I want to actually ask them what their justification is for doing the things that they've done.
So you'll have to watch out for that, I suppose.
And I'll be chatting with you as we go through it because I imagine you're probably going to want to focus on Edmonton folks so you can do the same.
Yeah, I think if you do that, I think you're going to catch these people.
It's like wildlife photography.
You're going to catch them in their natural environment and you are going to catch them off guard because I think for a lot of these MLAs, they're used to a very sycophantic media.
A media that is quite frankly contracting and it feels like every story they do is a cover letter for their job with the government.
I think it's almost a, it's over a dozen, if I recall correctly, mainstream media reporters who've gone on to work for the NDP government in some form or another.
So, you know, when you're reading their coverage, of course, but, you know, I don't know if the public really knows that or if they keep that in mind, that that's the filter through which these people write.
So, but that's also the filter through which they ask questions of the MLA.
So I think you are going to get some very interesting, very natural reactions from the NDP that I don't think we've ever seen before.
So I'm very excited to see that.
What else are you going to be up to in 2019, though?
Well, in 2019, we're going to continue on with our fire egging campaign, I imagine.
He just keeps handing us stuff, handing us content to talk about because there's disaster after disaster.
But what I really want to focus on, and this is from feedback that I've gotten from viewers, is I want to focus on videos that involve the public in some way where I'm actually going out and asking questions because people want to hear some monologue sometimes, but they really want to hear what the everyday Albertan has to say about what's going on.
Talking to the Yellow Vests00:05:06
So it completely depends on what's going on in the media and current events in some way, shape, or form, so that I can go chat with people and see and get their opinions about what's going on.
You know, I think that's one of the things that we really do well here at the Rebel is we talk to the normal people in a way that normal people understand.
We don't use like when you go to these climate change conferences and you hear stuff like increasing ambition to fight climate change.
What does that even mean?
Nobody does, like no normal person talks like that.
I've been to three of these conferences.
I still don't even know what that phrase means because it is so vague and ridiculous.
And I think you are becoming one of the best sort of man on the street reporters with what we call in the business streeters.
You're asking normal people normal questions that people ask around the dinner table and you're getting some incredible responses.
And it's something that nobody else in the media really does.
Run out and gauge the public on an issue.
Yeah, no, it's nice when the weather's nice, but I just find a close C train station and wait for people to get off the train and ask them questions.
And, you know, they want to talk.
They want to share their thoughts.
So it's always a fun experience to do.
Yeah, and it's, I've been covering these ongoing truck rallies.
And when you're on the internet every day, it's like I called it earlier, a blast furnace of hate.
Just get on there.
It's people yelling at you and you get back off.
But when you go to these rallies, you remember, wait, yeah, there's people cheering for us and they're happy to see us.
They're high-fiving you.
They're hugging you.
They want to talk to you.
They have a story to tell.
And it reminds you that the internet is not real life.
And it is the best thing ever.
So when I get a chance to get out of my little cubby hole studio that I work in, I jump at it.
And I'm glad.
I'm glad to see you doing it because we're giving voice to people that normally are the forgotten people or the people that the mainstream media just glosses over.
They don't care about those people.
They are our bread and butter.
Yeah, no, I don't see the CBC going to these yellow vest protesters and actually trying to get their opinions on what's going on, right?
And actually hear their story.
Sometimes they do show up and film the protest and say, this is what's happening.
These people are protesting.
There's about however many people there.
They usually drastically underestimate how many people actually showed up, but they never actually talk to the people, right?
And hearing their story and sharing that online is a huge help to them.
But also, everyday Albertans want to know why there was 600 protesters outside of City Hall two weeks ago when the CBC certainly isn't going to tell them.
Yeah, I mean, I guess we serve as a counterbalance to that because not only does the CBC not tell them in certain instances or the CBC totally makes up the reason those people are there.
Like they won't say, oh, these people are like explicitly anti-Trudeau.
They're anti-carbon tax.
They're anti-Rachel Notley.
They'll just say, oh, there's some anti-immigration sentiments within the yellow vest protesters who seem to also support oil and gas or something stupid like that.
But when you go to talk to the yellow vest protesters, like over the weekend, I talked to somebody who is a first-generation Canadian, and he's like, I just want all the immigrants who are coming to the country to go through the same process that my parents had to.
And I'm like, oh, that's pretty fair.
But according to the CBC, that guy's some sort of xenophobic crazy person.
Yeah, no, the CBC has a very explicit way they want to characterize people.
If they're wearing a yellow vest or it's not even just a yellow vest, they're in a yellow vest, they're in a truck, or they have an anti-True Doe sign.
They're always, you know, disgruntled Albertans or some sort of upset but discredited.
They characterize them in some upset persona that they just discredit after that.
Whereas if it's, oh, I don't know, some Antifa protest, then there's legitimate concerns that they talk about.
They interview them and they share what their issue is with the public.
Right, right.
They'll go to the Antifa protest and paint them as though they're out there fighting actual Nazis instead of just people with whom they disagree.
As though there are actual Nazis out there, by the way, there's like 10 LARPers.
That's it.
Well, Kian, I think I've taken up enough of your time because we are recording this on New Year's Day and you and I both had to do our hair.
Yes, I just shared and get to your hair.
It was a real shame.
It's a shame my hair deserved the break.
But yeah, I want to thank you so much for jumping on with me today and sort of sharing your experience as a new rebel.
Accessing The Truth00:01:25
And I look forward, so forward, to all the things that you're going to get up to in 2019 because boy, you are scrappy.
So Kian, thanks for coming on this show.
My pleasure.
Thank you so much.
thanks again in 2019 at the rebel we will continue to do what we've always done here and that is bring you the other side of the story
We will continue to file access to information requests with the federal government and freedom of information requests with the Alberta government and other provincial governments to get you the answers to questions that normal people are asking around their dinner tables.
Questions like, how much did that really bad idea just cost us and whose dumb idea was it in the first place?
And as long as the mainstream media tailors their coverage of liberal and left-leaning politicians as though their coverage were a resume for a job with the government, Kian and I will always have a big job to do at the Rebel.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Happy New Year and all the best to you and yours in 2019.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.