Ezra Levant slams the CBC and CRTC’s January 29 push for outdated CanCon rules—like Netflix quotas and $1.5B+ in taxpayer funding—while mocking claims of cultural crisis, noting Canada’s top 30 shows (Jan 7–13) are all American. He ties this to tech censorship, citing YouTube’s abortion search manipulation and Facebook blocking Bolsonaro supporters, warning of election interference risks. Levant attacks Liberal ministers—Freeland’s $20M blunder, Monsef’s refugee controversy, McKenna’s activist past, Morneau’s inherited wealth—as unqualified, comparing Canada’s diplomatic naivety to China’s Sun Tzu-inspired strategy, and argues its global weakness stems from soft policies over hard power. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, the CBC and the CRTC regulator team up to kneecap their competitors, including us.
It's January 29th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Interesting column by Michael Geist today.
He's a professor who has an interesting niche.
Copyright law, digital media, that sort of thing.
I haven't seen him weigh in on the political censorship aspects of digital media yet, but on those other issues, I'd say he's the closest thing to an independent thinker in Canada on the subject.
Here's his latest story.
New CanCon tax proposals would stick Canadian consumers with the bill.
CanCon is such an 80s word.
It's so obsolete, it's so old-fashioned.
It's like the words VCR or VHS, remember those?
Of course, CanCon refers to the rule that Canadian TV and radio stations were forced to broadcast a minimum quota of Canadian-made shows or songs.
CanCon stands for Canadian content.
Even if nobody liked the songs, or if nobody liked them as much as they liked, say, British songs or American songs.
And they had really weird rules for determining if a song was Canadian enough to count.
Brian Adams, one of the most successful Canadian musicians of all time, but because he spends time in California and London, England, they said he wasn't Canadian enough to qualify as CanCon.
Which is weird because he was Canadian enough to receive the Order of Canada.
That whole debate seems weird, so out of it, so old-fashioned in the era of the internet.
Well, which buggy whip do you like on your horse and carriage, you know?
We're in the age of streaming music on your smartphone or Netflix or a million other ways to get what we want, no matter what some Ottawa regulator has to say about it.
I mean, just get a real job already.
There are still those authoritarian impulses in the internet for sure.
I mean, what YouTube or Facebook or Twitter suggests for you to watch and listen is increasingly political and what they hide from you too.
But still, the idea that a bureaucrat would force you to watch a lame Canadian music video before you got to watch what you really went online to watch is pretty laughable to today's generation.
For now.
Anyways, back to the olden days when they were just a handful of TV and radio stations and just a couple of newspapers, you really had to listen to these bureaucrats saying what was good for you.
Eat your spinach.
Their opinions counted for more than yours did.
They really got to tell you what to see and what to hear, which is just one step away from telling you how to think, don't you think?
Well, those same control freaks want back in.
Here, let me read from Michael Geist's article.
The battle over the future of Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications is quickly emerging as a hot-button policy issue with a government-mandated review of the law recently garnering thousands of public responses.
While recommendations from an expert panel are not expected for months, Canada's broadcast regulator, the CBC, and several high-profile cultural groups are lining up behind a view that Canadian culture is facing an existential crisis.
I love that line.
High-profile cultural groups.
Aren't we all part of the culture?
Our customs, our tastes, our choice in music and language and food and entertainment and lifestyle.
Isn't that what culture is?
And the books we read?
Is that for us to determine?
A cultural group.
Isn't that just a clean way of saying a lobby group of people who want to pretend they're better than just being a lobbyist?
So they're the keepers of the culture.
No, they're not.
I'll read more from the article.
He says, among the new ideas being proposed are new taxes on internet and wireless services, mandated CanCon requirements for Netflix, and the prioritization of Canadian content in search results from online services to enhance its discoverability.
All right, now we're getting down to it, aren't we?
It's about taxes.
That's the true Canadian culture at the end of the day, taxes and regulations.
Oh, and promoting friends and insiders and friends of insiders.
It's the little club.
It's the elite.
It's the fancy people who know better than you what you really want.
And they literally want to make search engines on the internet force feed you things you don't want, but they want you to want.
They want to do this even more than they're doing now.
Yeah, the 80s called and they want their cultural policy back.
Let me read some more.
There are unquestionably real communications policy issues in Canada for innovation, science, and economic minister Navdeep Baines and Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez to grapple with.
Some of the world's highest wireless prices hamper adoption and usage.
Privacy safeguards had failed to keep pace with online threats.
And public interest voices say they don't feel heard at the Canadian Radio, Television, and Telecommunications Commission under Chair Ian Scott.
Hey, there's a great point in there, isn't it?
It's like our zombie environment minister, Catherine McKenna.
She only and always talks about global warming, right?
Even on freezing days like today, which is actually a shame because there are some real environmental issues in Canada that could need some attending to, like the 100 Quebec cities and towns that literally dump raw sewage right into the river untreated.
Same thing with CRTC issues.
I would like someone, maybe the CRTC, to open up competition for cell phone prices in Canada, wouldn't you?
I mean, just how about bring in, let someone come in who's good at customer service.
I mean, that seems a bit more related to the real life of Canadians than telling us what movies we should watch on Netflix or YouTube.
And if every single Canadian paid $10 a month less in cable fees or cell phone fees, $10 a month.
That's real tax relief, especially for young people or poor people.
And these days, everyone needs a phone to be part of the modern culture.
How about that?
It's like a tax cut for people, but of course it's not a tax cut because the money doesn't come out of the public coffers, but rather the overfed cable and cell phone monopolies.
I'd be all for that, wouldn't you?
Don't you think that?
How about going to election with that?
I'm Justin Trudeau, and I'm going to bring in cell phone competition and cable competition.
I'm going to save you $10 a month.
Yeah, yeah.
No.
Let me read what's really going on here.
Snobby insiders can't convince you to watch their shows, so they want to force you to watch their shows and force you to pay for it.
Let me read some more.
At the same time, Canadian cultural groups are raising dystopian fears that if Canada maintains an open market for online video services, it could mean the end of Canadian content and bankruptcy for Canadian broadcasters.
Yeah, don't threaten me with a good time, people.
Here's some more.
These fears are not new.
For decades, the prospect of U.S. content flowing across the Canadian border has been viewed as a threat, leading to policies that amounted to creating a Canadian broadcast wall.
Canada adopted rules that permitted replacing U.S. television signals with Canadian ones, so-called simultaneous substitution.
The blocking of U.S. satellite television services and tight restrictions on foreign investment in the broadcasting sector.
Really, really.
So that's the big fear of Canadian broadcasters, that if they don't get big protection and big tax treatment from the government, we Canadians might watch U.S. content on TV?
Oh, by the way, here are the top shows on Canadian TV this month.
Do you see that?
Numerous, it's really the new Nielsen ratings.
January 7th to January 13th.
So for that week, what's the number one show in Canada?
It's called Young Sheldon.
That's an American show about a kid from Texas.
What's number two?
New Amsterdam.
That's an American show about a hospital in New York.
Next is the Big Bang Theory.
That's an American show.
Next is Blue Bloods.
That's an American show.
It's an American cop show.
I won't go through all 30 of the words, 30 of the shows, but all the way down, it is American shows.
All the way down, except for a couple of newscasts.
The only Canadian drama is Murdoch Mysteries, and Hockey Night in Canada is the very bottom.
Every other show in the top 30 is American.
Put it up just for one more time.
Show people one more time.
The 30 top shows in Canada, they are American shows.
The Connors, NCIS, The Rookie.
There's one newscast, Chicago Med, Hawaii 5-0, Criminal Minds, Chicago Fire, NCIS, Los Angeles, MacGyver, for God's sake, Chicago PD.
We got three Chicago shows in the top.
Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, Chicago shoe store, Chicago recycling bin.
We're obsessed with shit.
That's what we're watching now.
So yeah, these are the folks who want to block us from watching American content.
Yeah, I'm watching more Chicago show than if I lived in Chicago.
Canadian cable companies are the ones force-feeding us American content.
At least the private broadcasters have the excuse they're trying to make a buck.
And apparently Canadians love Chicago.
But the worst offender is the CBC, obviously, which is utterly obsessed with the United States.
In particular, they obsess over Donald Trump.
It's so weird.
It's so creepy.
They're just, it's like a stalker.
And what's their excuse?
They don't have to chase ad money.
They get a billion and a half dollars a year.
So yeah, these are the people who are going to save us from watching American content.
That's all they give us.
They don't really care about Canada or about being Canadian or about Canadian culture.
They care about cutting out competitors who are just better at making TV and music.
They are, especially all those folks in Chicago, I guess.
All right, I'm going to read some more from this article.
Many of those same arguments for protecting the domestic industry are today repackaged for the internet, with Netflix viewed as an unregulated behemoth that threatens to overwhelm the Canadian broadcasting sector and destroy some of the funding mechanisms that have been used to support Canadian film and television production.
I get Netflix.
Does Netflix really threaten Canada?
Do you feel threatened by it?
Does Netflix even have the power to threaten anybody?
Or is it actually the individual choice of 6.7 million Canadian families, a far larger number than voted for Justin Trudeau, I should remind you.
6.7 million Canadian families who would rather see what they want to see when they want to see it from a huge range of choices, including, by the way, Canadian content, if they want to choose it.
I know I'm just going through Michael Geist's article here, but I really liked it and I wanted to share it with you.
Let me read some more.
Yet the data indicate that there is no CanCon funding crisis, according to the most recent numbers from the Canadian Media Producers Association.
The total annual value of the Canadian film and television production sector exceeds $8 billion.
It's largest amount ever spending on Canadian content production has hit an all-time high of $3.3 billion.
In fact, the increase in foreign investment in production in Canada has been staggering.
Before Netflix began investing in original content in 2013, total foreign investment, including foreign location and service production, Canadian theatrical production, and Canadian television, was $2.2 billion.
That number has more than doubled in the past five years to $4.7 billion.
Now, of course, if you're like me, you're laughing.
I mean, the NG's pipeline was $15 billion.
The Northern Gateway pipeline was $12 billion.
And Trudeau just destroyed all that, and yet we're tying ourselves in knots over some change for some hucksters who want Hollywood North.
But what's really going on here?
Well, I'll tell you, if in fact there has never been more money spent on Canadian cultural products, why the demand for regulation?
Michael Geist just said there's more money going into the TV business than ever.
So why, why, why are they demanding more regs?
Well, because first of all, you can always ring out more money through more regulation for your friends.
The CBC, if you can believe it, even after a massive raise from Justin Trudeau, he took them up to $1.5 billion a year.
They're now asking for another $400 million a year.
So that would jack them up to nearly $2 billion a year.
So that's one reason.
That's one answer.
More is never enough for these people.
The second reason, which I think is what truly motivates a lot of these folks, is control.
They're controlling.
I think for a lot of these people, it's more important to control what you see and hear and think than just money.
More Is Never Enough00:03:05
They want to change your behavior.
They want to change your mind.
That's what that weird Gillette ad was all about.
It's not about selling razors.
It's about making you change how you think.
I'll skip to the end of Geist's column.
He says, in other words, rather than embracing the opportunities that come from unprecedented global demand for scripted television programming and competing for the attention of Canadian viewers, some prefer to place their bets on a digital wall consisting of new taxes and regulations, and Canadian consumers are going to pay for it.
I like Michael Geist because he's one of the only guys looking out for consumers, don't you think?
He hates high cell phone bills, hates high data costs, hates the idea that we're going to have to pay more to produce TV shows in Canada that no one really wants to watch.
You'll notice that an awful, unfunny Canadian show, have you ever heard, I even hate to say the name Shit's Creek, that's the funniest thing about the show, is the pun.
But once you've said, okay, you have your laugh, that's all the laugh.
There's no more laughing after you say the name.
You'll notice that that show, Shit's Creek, is not on the list of the top 30 shows in Canada.
They pour millions into that, and nobody watches it.
It's an awful show.
I want to like it.
Frankly, I hate the fact that my fond memories as a kid of Eugene Levy, when he used to be so funny on SCTV and some of his earlier movies.
I'm mad that my fond memories of Eugene Levy are being replaced by my new belief that he is desperately unfunny, but just taking work for the cash.
Well, here's how that works in a CanCon world.
Let me quote this article in a magazine called Vulture.
That's Eugene Levy's son.
Let me quote.
Just to tell you the show Shit's Creek, because I'm sure you've never seen it.
Eugene Levy's untalented son, Dan Levy.
Listen, it's tough to have a famous, successful dad.
I can imagine.
So Eugene Levy's untalented son, Dan Levy, is the co-star of the show, and he is sullen and unfunny, and he overacts.
And I don't think anyone's ever laughed.
They use the laugh track a lot on that show.
But look.
You've got to hire him.
And you've got to cast him and you've got to overpay him because his dad is CanCon royalty.
And you need that CanCon and now he's CanCon.
It's all in the family.
It's nepotism.
Let me quote this deliciousness from that vulture article.
This is the unfunny Dan Levy.
I was always very reluctant to lean on him, his dad, for anything, because I did feel like if I was going to explore the entertainment industry, I didn't want to feel like I hadn't done it on my own.
Okay, that's great.
That's what every son of a rich man says.
So that lasts about 30 seconds until he says this in the same interview.
He says, so he asked his dad to create a TV show with him.
Journalists as Activists?00:15:36
Got it.
Got it.
I would never ask my dad for any.
I want to make it on my own.
Oh, I don't have the talent.
Hey, dad, can you get me a show at CBC and make me a millionaire because I'm part of the CanCon family?
And obviously this, that sensibility came from my dad.
His comedy was always left of center.
Yeah, I could detect that because it was the CBC.
Look, that's what this is.
This is nepotistic jobs for insiders and their friends and families who can't make it on their own in Hollywood, on Netflix, on the internet.
This is free money for people who feel entitled to it.
This is people wanting you to watch their left of center comedy because you need to be worked on.
And don't you forget it for one second.
This will become about censoring, blocking, and deplatforming any competition, whether it's music, comedy shows, or Canadian news and opinion like ours.
Stay with us for more if you want to see some scary censorship.
Ellen Bukhari is next.
Your algorithms on YouTube, when you are searching for national action, will then promote the likes of Tommy Robinson and Britain First.
This is despite the fact that the Finsbury Park mosque, where somebody was killed, and that's recently been in the headlines, despite the fact that videos of Tommy Robinson were cited as part of the online radicalization of Darren Osborne in the Finsbury Park court case, YouTube continues to promote them videos.
What have you got to say about that?
We are working to make sure that videos that promote hate or promote violence, if they violate our policies, are removed from the platform.
If they walk right up to the line, we have also, at the encouragement of this committee, developed a new enforcement mechanism to limit the features that these have.
They should not be appearing in our recommendation engine.
If they are, I will take this back to our team and see what the problem is.
Okay, but they are.
I mean, they are appearing.
They are in my recommended timeline at the moment.
So because I've been searching on my iPad for national action videos, I, as a result, have the first two videos recommended to me by YouTube when I just click on, as I've just done this afternoon, I click onto YouTube, the first two recommendations are Tommy Robinson videos.
Well, that is an excerpt from the United Kingdom Parliamentary Committee grilling a senior Google executive in charge of anti-terrorism.
You might be thinking, why does Google have an anti-terrorism boss?
Well, to stop terrorists from using the system to recruit and propagandize.
He did not know who Tommy Robinson was because Tommy Robinson is not a terrorist.
He went there to talk about terrorism.
But Member of Parliament after member of parliament was furious that when they typed in show me populist British political leaders, Tommy Robinson came up in the search results and they want it gone.
Well, I'm pleased to say that Google didn't take the bait in that parliamentary committee, but they obviously did quietly later on when the cameras were not rolling.
And joining us now with the scoop on this is our friend Alan Bokari, the senior tech correspondent for Breitbart.com, who joins us via Skype from the United Kingdom.
Alan, great to see you.
Thanks for joining us today.
Great to be on, Ezra.
You know, it's quite something these MPs who despise Tommy Robinson.
And listen, it's not everyone's cup of tea.
But when you're searching for topics about Tommy Robinson and watch a Tommy Robinson video, and then YouTube suggests another one, that's based on your own declared interests.
It's like when people contact me and say, Ezra, why are dating sites showing up on Rebel ads?
Well, it's based on the cookies on your browser from what you've been looking at.
It's not us, it's you.
And that's what I would say to these MPs.
You're obsessing about Tommy Robinson and you're surprised that the internet is giving you what you want, but they just want to censor him.
Yeah, I mean, that sounds to me like YouTube search algorithm is working as intended.
It's giving you more of what you're searching for and the type of content that you're searching for.
What these MPs wanted to do is make sure that even if you're searching for content that would appeal to a Tommy Robinson plan, you wouldn't see Tommy Robinson videos.
That seems entirely contrary to the idea of organic search.
This idea that, you know, when you search for things, when you activate your cookies, then YouTube and other social platforms will give you content that's similar to that.
That's the whole point of recommended videos.
It's giving you content that's similar to the video that you just watched.
So what the MP was complaining about sounds totally reasonable to me.
Yeah.
You know, it's called a search engine.
I think they want a hide engine that actively hides things that are contrary to their points of view.
And the reason I show that video, and that video is not from this year.
In fact, I showed that last summer when Tommy was in prison.
But you have broken a story in Breitbart.
You've broken a series of stories.
One of them is called YouTube admits it, YouTube doubles down.
So let's start with this one.
YouTube admits it meddled with abortion search results, but calls down-ranked videos misinformation.
And show the next one.
I'll read both headlines.
YouTube doubles down will censor recommended videos to stop misinformation.
So tell us first about the abortion case.
How did that come to your attention that Google was hiding results from one side of that abortion debate?
And our viewers don't need to have ESP to guess which side they were hiding.
How did you learn about that?
So a while ago, at the end of December last year, a slate journalist got in touch with YouTube to complain about, well, I call her a journalist, basically a left-wing activist playing in journalism.
She contacted YouTube to complain about the prominence of pro-life videos in search results for the search term abortion.
And what happened was immediately after that, there was a significant change to the YouTube search results that the slate writer has noted that pushed content from mainstream news organizations and left-wing news organizations, pro-abortion content, from Vice and BuzzFeed and the BBC and the CBC and other mainstream sources up the search rank because that pushed all the pro-life content down the rankings.
And we were then contacted by sources within Google who gave us a list, a blacklist.
That's not my terminology, that's YouTube's terminology.
They call it a blacklist of so-called controversial search queries.
And what we were told based on the information we received was that shortly after that slate journalist contacted YouTube, they made an addition to that folder, to that file, rather, that added the terms abortion and abortions.
And what that did is it activated an algorithm that pushed mainstream sources up and pushed non-mainstream videos down.
And the result of that was virtually all pro-life content was knocked out of the top 10 search results for abortion, which is significant because many people don't really go beyond the top 10 search results in any search engine.
Yeah.
You know, there's so many things in what you've said there that are shocking.
Number one, your obvious point that most journalists, especially in BuzzFeed and Vice and Huffington Post, they're not really journalists.
They're activists calling with journalist credentials to shake down a YouTube saying, oh, I noticed that Tommy Robinson's on your website.
Oh, I noticed that this website is using PayPal.
I'm going to do a story on that unless you change it.
So these journalists aren't reporting the news.
They're trying to change the news by using their journalistic powers as a threat.
Of course, the YouTube's, Twitters, Facebooks of the world are only happy to comply.
It's always aiming one way.
It's always leftist censorship of right-wing ideas.
But what scares me is what else is being done that we don't know about?
What other search terms are being hidden that we don't know about?
Tell me what else was on this blacklist you received.
Well, we know that search terms related to the Irish abortion referendum were also on the blacklist.
So they were meddling with pro-life and pro- and pro-abortion debates even before this journalist got in touch with them.
There were a range of search terms related to terrorist attacks that were also on the blacklist.
There was a search term related to Maxine Waters, a Democratic congresswoman who was also on the blacklist.
So they're actually interfering with search results on behalf of Democratic politicians now.
And by the way, that's an interesting point you made about journalists behaving like activists.
It really seems at the moment that journalists are kind of calling the shots of these tech companies because the more recent change that YouTube announced that they're going to censor recommended searches happened just one day after a big BuzzFeed story on how recommended searches are supposedly leading to hyper-partisan content and misinformation.
You know, let's talk about that story because I'm just thinking of the idea that YouTube deciding what's misinformation.
I think the videos that come, when I think of YouTube misinformation, I think the crowning story that will for all time live as the worst example was the Benghazi terrorist attack on September 11th, 2012, the anniversary of 9-11, right before the U.S. presidential election, massacred four Americans at the consulate.
And this was a real problem for Barack Obama, who was being re-elected.
So he and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice and all the others cooked up a story that involved YouTube in two ways.
Number one, and forgive me just for scratching this itch for a second, Alan.
Number one, they said, oh, this wasn't a terrorist attack.
This was people upset over a YouTube video that criticized Islam.
So they were falsely blaming an odious YouTube video for the attack.
So they were inventing some outrage at a YouTube video that obviously no one in Benghazi had seen.
It was an American video.
But then they all went on TV for two months just to bluster their way, brazen their way through the election saying this was not a terrorist attack.
This was a grassroots opposition to a video.
So they all lied on YouTube.
So they lied about YouTube and then they lied on YouTube.
You'd think that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice would be banned for misinformation on YouTube.
But of course they won't be.
It's absurd to think that anyone could be the arbiter of the truth other than each one of us as citizens.
Yeah, this whole concept of misinformation is laughably vague and they totally don't apply their standards consistently.
I mean, look at the past two weeks.
We've had the bogus BuzzFeed story about Moscow Tower that was debunked by Robert Mueller himself.
That was a disaster of fake news.
Then we had the journalists smearing the Covington students who had the audacity to wear MAGA hats in front of far-left agitators in Washington, D.C.
And they were attacked as harassing simply because they wore MAGA hats and stood still and didn't bow down and apologize to these left-wing activists who were actually harassing them.
So we've had all sorts, and you can go back further.
You can go to like the Rolling Stone UBA case, another example of fake news.
There are so many examples of just total hysteria and inaccuracy on the mainstream media.
And YouTube has no way of policing that because all of the outlets that promote these false narratives are given a gray verifying check mark and are promoted in the algorithm.
So that when they make a change to their blacklist like they did with the abortion search results, all these videos from really dodgy mainstream outlets like BuzzFeed and Weiss and others will go straight up at the top of the search results.
You know, it's funny.
The other thing about misinformation, they called all the down-ranked abortion videos misinformation.
One of those videos was a personal video from someone who said she was pressured to have an abortion and regretted it.
That's not misinformation.
That's a personal story.
And yet YouTube kicked it off their top 10 search results.
It just shows you what a blunt instrument this method they have is.
It just arbitrarily promotes mainstream sources and arbitrarily downranks non-mainstream sources regardless of how accurate either one of those categories are.
Yeah.
You know, it's infuriating.
I mean, Alex Jones of InfoWars, I found him entertaining.
I found him over the top.
I think he had a persona that was as big as Texas.
And, you know, if you don't like it, don't watch it.
He was drummed out of the public square for being a conspiracy theorist.
I don't know what other word one would use for the two-year mainstream media mania about Russia, Russia, Russia.
And after two years of investigation, there is still no proof of it.
I mean, all these indictments that Mueller is bringing are for process offenses, for not answering a question candidly.
He has yet to uncover any collusion.
I would call that the largest conspiracy theory of the Trump age, but that's called great journalism in the New York Times.
I think that's what this shows, is that one man's truth-telling is another man's propaganda.
And the only way to resolve that is to let each of us decide, and they won't let us decide each of us.
That's what terrifies me.
The fact that you said Maxine Waters, that odious extremist Democrat who calls for citizens to get in the face of any Republicans they meet on the street, or the Irish referendum on abortion.
I am certain, Alam, that Justin Trudeau will be so favored in his re-election this year.
I'm certain that the rebel is disfavored in the same way.
We do not know what secret aid or hobbling and hindrances these tech companies are making to our elections.
I think that's almost a democratic emergency.
Interference and Investment00:02:27
Oh, it absolutely is.
And pivoting away from YouTube to Facebook for a second, Facebook has been pretty brazen about how it interferes in election, not just in the U.S., but around the world.
So before the November midterms, they suspended 800 alternative news sources on their platform, and those were anti-establishment pages from both the left and right.
Before the Brazilian elections, they mass suspended WhatsApp accounts that were supporting Bolsonaro.
Before the French election, they suspended thousands upon thousands of pages.
And they're doing it right before elections.
I mean, it's so obvious that they're trying to interfere with the outcome.
I mean, I don't see how anyone could deny it at this point.
Well, I'm genuinely scared by it.
And the thing, I mean, a dozen years ago, I was prosecuted by a government agency for republishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.
And right now, Alam, we are being prosecuted by an election finance enforcer in a jurisdiction in Canada, Alberta, it's called, who claims we're violating an election law through our journalism.
We're going to win.
I won the fight a dozen years ago.
We're going to win this one in Alberta.
Because when the government comes at you, Alam, at least there's some disclosure.
There's some process.
There's some appeal.
There's some paperwork.
But when Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter come for you, you don't even know what happened.
There's no accountability or progress whatsoever.
People have no recourse.
That's largely because we're all protected by Action 23, which gives them legal immunity, not just from lawsuits and user-generated content along their platform.
But it also gives an immunity for blocking and filtering content.
So you can't even sue them if they unfairly suspend your page, regardless of how many years or how much money you've invested into it.
So it's totally screwing over the consumers.
I mean, some of those pages that they have found before the November election, people had invested years and years of their line building this.
And now they're going to need confrontation.
Alan, I think we're losing our connection.
If I was a conspiracy theorist on the left, I'd say Russia was interfering.
I won't have a conspiracy theory.
I'll just say we're losing the internet.
Tell Missing, Failed Rest00:02:41
But it's great to talk with you.
Thank you so much.
Folks, I want to recommend these two articles.
Let's just put them back on the screen.
This is from Breitbart.com where Alam is their senior tech correspondent.
The first one is called YouTube Admits It Meddled with Abortion Search Results, but calls down-ranked videos misinformation.
And let's put the other one up just for one more time.
YouTube doubles down, will censor recommended videos to stop, quote, misinformation.
And you heard that misinformation is actually politics that YouTube disagrees with.
Alan, great to see you.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
And I continue to say that you are covering the most important beat in journalism right now.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you, everyone.
All right.
That's Alan Bokari of Breitbart.com.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue yesterday about Christy Freeland.
Derek writes, Great show tonight, Ezra on Christia Freeland.
You should go through other key cabinet ministers as well.
None of them have any real world experience.
At least Christia Freeland has real-world experience.
She wrecked something, burnt through 20 million bucks, and caused 150 laughs.
But at least she did something.
What did Maryam Monseff do other than be a false refugee who filed a false refugee application?
What did, yeah, what did Catherine McKenna do?
She was an activist social justice lawyer.
What does that even mean?
Okay, Bill Morneau inherited a company from his dad.
So, yeah, won the genetic lottery.
The best thing that ever happened to Bill Mourneau is that his dad was born first.
Is there anyone in the liberal government who's a self-made man or woman?
Anyone who's ever run a company?
Anyone who's ever, I was going to say, has a military background.
They put Seamus O'Regan in charge of veterans affairs and then they put Wilson Raybold from BC in that position.
No one has ever done anything.
At least Christia Freeland failed, which is more than the rest have.
They just did never do anything.
Tell me, tell me if I'm missing someone.
Tell me an accomplished young man or woman in this liberal government.
I can't think of one.
Alright, Canada is back.
Back in the dumpster.
Lies For The Motherland00:04:01
You know, there are some ancient rules that don't change.
The other day we were talking about Sun Tzu.
I mentioned that when I was talking to Lauren Gunter.
You ever read Sun Tzu, The Art of War?
It's little proverbs about the art of war.
And I think that book is popular even with non-soldiers because it talks about any conflict, any battle, how to size up your enemy and preparation.
China and Iran, which used to be called Persia, have been doing diplomacy for thousands of years.
When Europe wasn't, before London and Paris were even cities, before Columbus even came to the New World, China, the Chinese emperors, and the Persian emperors were doing diplomacy.
For us to think that we can have some pundit journalist and her millennial hipster squad walk in and run circles around these ancient strategists.
Why?
Because we're hipper on Twitter than them, because we got the latest look or something.
I mean, the hubris there.
And when I was reading how Christia Freeland wrecked Reuters' necks by not trusting anyone in the company, bringing in all her own friends, firing everyone who actually knew anything, and was surprised when it didn't work, I think that's exactly what she's doing in foreign affairs.
She's just going with her hip friends.
And that's not how China works.
And I tell you this because strength and respect, that's the currency of foreign affairs, not sucking up.
That's why they call Donald Trump Donald the Strong and Uncle Donald.
He's so rough with China.
Let's say it.
He's rude to China, but he's strong and his word, he backs it up.
That's why they give him the red carpet.
And that's why they give us the bums rush.
On my interview with Oren Gunner, Betty writes, apparently it was too much to ask that John McCallum remembered that he was representing Canada as the ambassador to China, that his role was diplomatic, and he shouldn't be handing out legal advice to the Chinese.
You know, I forget which British wag it was over 100 years ago said a British diplomat's job is to lie abroad for his country.
And that's a triple pun, to lie, as in to tell a lie abroad in foreign places for his country, to lie for your country.
But we don't use the word anymore, but to lie abroad is what they would do with old battleships.
They would turn the battleships sideways so all the guns would be facing and to fire.
So to lie abroad had that double entendre.
And then, of course, the plain meaning of the words, it's like a triple entendre.
Now, he was sacked because you're not supposed to say that.
You're not supposed to say a diplomat's job is to lie for their country, right?
You're not supposed to say that.
But in fact, that can be part of the journey.
You don't want to be known as liars.
You don't want to be known as people who are unreliable, who can't be trusted.
So it's very important not to be known as liars.
But at the end of the day, you do whatever you have to do for your country.
That is what a diplomat does.
He lies abroad for his country.
We have John McCallum managed by Christia Freeland who don't even believe that there is a national interest.
They believe in a global harmony and it would be too arrogant to assert a Canadian interest.
They won't even tell the truth abroad for their country, will they?
Well, there you have it.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.