A leaked Liberal memo from CBC reveals Ontario MPs prioritize immigration (despite 6% Angus Reid support in August) over climate policies like the carbon tax, despite Trudeau’s Paris meeting with Macron and Ardern to expand internet censorship targeting "right-wingers." True North rejects government subsidies, warning of bias after PMO-planted op-eds and CBC’s Air Transat error, while Trudeau called Globe’s SNC-Lavalin investigation "fake news"—later proven accurate. Rebel Media’s Jessica faces $2K in travel costs plus security against Antifa threats in Robinson’s EU campaign, mirroring Canada’s growing risks to press freedom as the election nears. [Automatically generated summary]
Thank you for listening to the podcast from my friends when I was away.
I'm talking about a memo that the Liberal Party, some of the Liberals, leaked to the CBC, which shows that Liberal MPs from Ontario do not want to talk about global warming.
They do not want to talk about the carbon tax in the next federal campaign.
And they say that the number one issue that they are asked about by voters is open borders, immigration, and refugees.
And now the CBC doesn't know if that means that people love it or hate it.
What do you think?
Anyways, I go through the memo and I show some other weirdnesses, including some censorship plans by Trudeau, even today in Paris.
That's what he's up to.
And I play a few vids from Catherine McKay.
I hope you enjoy the podcast today.
So before I let you get to it, can you do me a favor and consider becoming a premium subscriber to The Rebel?
It's $8 a month or $80 for the full year, and you can sign up at the Rebel.media slash shows.
And when you do that, not only do you get the video version of my podcast, but you also get access to Sheila Gunread's podcast, sorry, a show, and same with David Menzies.
And you get the satisfaction of knowing that you're helping to pay the bills here at The Rebel.
So please zip over to the Rebel.media slash shows and chip in eight bucks a month or 80 bucks for the whole year and be a premium subscriber.
And I'd be most grateful if you would.
Okay, without further ado, here's today's show.
You're listening to a Rebel Media Podcast.
Tonight, an internal memo shows Justin Trudeau's MPs are starting to panic.
It's May 16th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have is a government.
But why publish them?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Hello, and thank you for accepting my absence for the past three days, and thanks to my teammates for covering for me.
As you know, I was over there in the UK covering the latest chapter in a very long book.
We're coming up on 10 court appearances now for Tommy Robinson, all as a result of him being a citizen journalist outside a court case a year ago in Leeds.
Incredibly, even though they improperly convicted Tommy last year and he wrongly served 10 weeks in solitary confinement, the Attorney General is actually taking another run at him.
They want to put him in prison again.
He'll be back in court on July 4th, actually, and I think I'll be back over there to cover it.
I wonder if it'll ever end.
I think they will harass him until something terrible happens.
I'm sorry to even say it, but I think they want him to be killed in prison or killed on the streets while police or prison guards look the other way.
I'm sorry.
I think that's what they want to happen to him.
I won't get into that now.
You can see all of our reports at realreporters.uk if you want more on that.
But that's what I was doing.
I'm interested in Tommy Robinson because I'm friends with him and he used to work for us.
So I have that personal connection.
But as I said in my videos from London, I believe that my travels there are like a dystopian time machine where I can see five years into our future here in Canada, what things will be like here, how police could become politicized here, how the courts will be used to deperson political people that the establishment doesn't like, how the media will cease reporting the news and simply be a mob for demonizing enemies of the state.
Just for one more second, I should tell you the craziest moment of the Tommy trial was when a mainstream media journalist in court with me literally interrupted the trial, literally passed a note to the clerks who passed it to the judges in the middle of the trial.
We're all watching the trial and some journalist passes a piece of paper like she's tattling in school or he's I don't know who it was exactly some mainstream media journalists actually stopped the trial.
I didn't see which one it was.
I just saw the note going from the the clerk to the judge.
Stop the trial to complain to the judge that I was saying things about the case on Twitter.
The entire court stopped for five or ten minutes.
The judges retreated to their chambers to review this note from a journalist.
They came back and confirmed what I knew that it was perfectly acceptable for me to live tweet the proceedings.
I knew this because I had done so before after meticulously confirming it was acceptable with everyone at the court from the clerks to security to the judges themselves.
But just think about that.
I think our own media in Canada is about five years away from that kind of insanity, don't you think?
Judge, stop this journalist from saying things I disagree with.
Stop the trial!
That guy's saying things on Twitter.
That's what happens.
All right, back to Canadian insanity.
Thank you for letting me give you that Tommy Robinson update.
I know not everyone in Canada cares about Tommy Robinson, but in my mind, he's a canary in the coal mine.
And I think it's always good to know what the future might hold for us.
I know that sounds paranoid, but perhaps it's worth thinking through now, just in case.
You know, on the seven-hour flight back from London to Canada, I was bored.
So I just was flipping through what they had to watch on Air Canada.
And there were some old episodes of that fantasy show on HBO called Game of Thrones.
And I saw this clip, and I was just sort of half asleep.
And I watched this clip, and it stuck with me.
It was so dramatic.
And, you know, it's a fantasy show, but it was well written.
It was a line spoken by a very conniving political survivor named Littlefinger, I think, giving his advice to a young leader that he loved.
It's a bit creepy.
It's definitely amoral.
But I thought it was a great piece of writing.
And it made me think, maybe we should be gaming out every scenario all the time.
Maybe it helps you become a better survivor.
And we are in a desperate place right now when it comes to the survival of freedom of speech and being a political dissident.
I think those things are in peril, not by dragons or swords like in that show Game of Thrones, but by politicians here.
Can I show you just like 30 seconds?
I was watching this on the plane home, and it made me think, you've got to be this kind of paranoid to survive.
This is the advice of a, just let me show you this.
Take a look.
Fight every battle, everywhere, always.
In your mind.
Everyone is your enemy.
Everyone is your friend.
Every possible series of events is happening all at once.
Live that way and nothing will surprise you.
Everything that happens will be something that you've seen before.
I disagree with that fantastical character.
I think there is right and wrong, and we must choose to be on the side of right and choose to be against wrong.
But I appreciate his way of thinking, which is imagine any scenario as possible.
Game out any scenario and you will never be surprised by things.
That's one of the takeaways there.
Catherine McKenna's Angry Leak00:08:15
Okay, back to reality.
No more Games of Thrones.
No more games of Tommy Robinson versus the police.
Let's talk about Canada.
So you know about how politicians often leak fake secrets to the media, right?
I mean, they leak something deliberately marked confidential to a journalist with the deliberate intention of having the journalist report the story because although there might be a few minor things in it that are trivially embarrassing, there's a larger positive message a politician wants to get out and marking it confidential might ensure that as opposed to doing a press release, it wouldn't.
I've seen it done a million times.
most obviously, campaigns leak internal opinion polls that are favorable to them, but also campaign memos that pretend to be secret, but they really can convey the campaign's essential message.
My point is, when a journalist says, we've obtained a memo from a political party, they were probably just handed it.
Especially if it's the CBC state broadcaster and the campaign memo in question is from the Liberal Party.
I mean, really, that's like a person handing a memo from his right hand to his left hand, right?
All right.
But maybe not in this case.
Because I think it's 100% embarrassing to the Liberal government.
I think, you tell me.
I read this when I was over in London too.
I saw this pop up on my Twitter feed.
Ontario Liberal MPs want to run on economy rather than environment in October.
And then underneath, you can see it says, CBC News has obtained the ranked list of priorities for provincial caucus members ahead of the federal vote.
So we're talking about federal Liberal MPs, but just the ones from Ontario.
So obviously, the CBC obtained this from a Liberal, whether it was really a secret or if the Liberals really wanted to give it to the CBC, I don't know.
But let me read a little bit from this CBC story.
Ontario Liberal MPs would rather spend time talking about Canadians' economic anxieties instead of environmental issues during the fall federal election campaign, according to a caucus document obtained by CBC News.
A ranked list of Ontario Liberal caucus priorities for the 2019 platform places personal financial security issues first, with environmental concerns relegated to seventh place.
Now, it could be that this was an on-purpose leak to brag about how strong the Canadian economy is.
I don't know.
Or maybe even to put Catherine McKenna in her place a bit.
You know, the environment ministry who's obsessed with the carbon tax.
Maybe this was the normal faction of the Liberal Party trying to embarrass the global warming cult faction of the Liberal Party.
I don't know.
But given that Justin Trudeau is definitely part of the Global Warming Cult faction of the Liberals, I think this is actually a real leak, not one of those strategic placements of official news pretending to be a leak.
Long story short, Liberal MPs in the most important political province of Ontario, where the Liberals have 76 of their seats, those MPs hate talking about global warming.
They hate talking about the carbon tax.
They know that Doug Ford won as Premier provincially because he promised to scrap the tax.
They know Jason Kenney of Alberta won on the same point.
But of course they only care about Ontario.
They know they're going to get slaughtered if it's shouty Catherine McKenna ranting again like she did.
Remember this big rally right after the SNC Lavline where they tried to change the channel?
Remember this one?
So let's talk about climate change for a second.
Who believes it's real?
Who believes in science?
We got a report last year that said we have 12 years to take serious climate action.
We are all in this together.
We need to act.
Whenever I see that, just the look and feel of that is awful.
It's like you looked up in the dictionary the word nagging.
People don't want to be nagged.
They don't want to be hectored, berated, especially when you're nagging them in order to make them feel happy about paying your foolish carbon tax to change the weather, which everyone knows is nuts.
But no one seems to have told the global warming cult leaders, it's nuts.
But I don't think Catherine McKenna has stopped with the crazy.
She's sounding angry and shouty.
My friend Sheila Gunn Reed has taken a call at Catherine McKenna, old yeller.
It's so funny.
Yeah, she's proud to be mad.
Look at that.
Oh, yes, I am mad.
I'm mad.
I'm mad.
She's saying it.
She's bragging about being angry.
Angry at you, angry at me, and yet angry at anyone who doesn't like paying her BS carbon tax.
Look at the video that she tweeted.
She thought this looked great.
Take a look.
Speaker, if you're like the party opposite, you're worried about you're worried about costs.
You should be worried about the cost that we are passing on to our kids, the cost of climate change.
We have got an emergency here, and the party opposite is not telling the truth to Canadians.
We are paying!
We've gone from $400 billion a year to over $2 billion to $400 million to $2 billion because of the cost of climate change.
Why don't they step up?
Why don't they step up for climate action?
Why don't step up to the economy of the future and stop misleading Canadians?
You know, watch that with the sound off.
Just someone shouting at you and going like that.
Holy cow is that off-putting.
Unless you're like Kool-Aid-level cult member, the global warming cult faction is obviously still in control of the party messaging because she's still going full tilt.
Old yeller, she's fuller tilt than normal, angrier than normal.
She proudly posted this.
Get this.
Katherine McKenna posted this video of a U.S. entertainer named Bill Nye.
He's not a scientist.
He's a TV celebrity.
And he's so mad.
He's angry.
He's swearing about global warming.
Can I play it for you?
It has swears in it, but take a listen.
Bill Nye, the science guy, here.
I'm going to explain the complicated logic behind carbon pricing.
But first, safety glasses on.
When something costs more, people buy less of it.
Safety glasses off.
That's it.
Safety glasses on.
When we release carbon, say by burning coal or driving an SUV, all of us pay for that in the form of things like fires, floods, and crop failures.
Putting a fee on carbon creates incentives to emit less carbon.
And more importantly, it also incentivizes the development of low-carbon technology, which is huge because that's vital to reducing emissions globally.
And because for some reason, John, you're a 42-year-old man who needs his attention sustained with tricks.
Here's some Mentos and a bottle of Diet Coke.
Happy now?
Here, I've got an experiment for you.
Safety glasses on.
By the end of this century, if emissions keep rising, the average temperature on Earth could go up another four to eight degrees.
What I'm saying is the planet's on fing fire.
There are a lot of things we could do to put it out.
Are any of them free?
No, of course not.
Nothing's free, you idiots.
Grow the f ⁇ up.
You're not children anymore.
I didn't mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12, but you're adults now, and this is an actual crisis.
Got it?
Safety glasses off, motherfuckers.
Yeah.
So Catherine McKenna tweeted that video, and that entertainer, who is usually talking to kids, he calls himself Bill Nye the science guy.
And Catherine McKenna posted that video.
And just because you give yourself the nickname, the science guy, doesn't mean you're a science guy.
You probably know he's playing a character.
And he's obviously going where the big money is global warming cult money.
I'm not sure if torching globes and swearing and saying if you pay this tax, it'll stop bad things happening in the weather.
I'm not sure if that's persuasive.
I'm not sure if American entertainers are persuasive, but it shows that that whole friendly sunny ways campaign of 2015, that's gone.
Liberal MPs and Refugee Concerns00:08:14
Okay, back to the CBC story.
The 45-page document sheds light on how the federal liberals might campaign in one of the toughest electoral battlegrounds in the country.
While it might be surprising to see the environment rank so low on a liberal election proposal, given how much time and political capital Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invested in defending his decision to introduce a carbon tax, the issue may not be connecting with Ontario voters, unquote.
You don't say.
Hmm.
Kathleen Wynn and the entire mainstream media versus Doug Ford in the last election and his promise to fight the carbon tax.
Kathleen Wynne's party got cut down from 55 seats to seven from government to third place.
Carbon tax the center issue of the campaign.
And a year later, the CBC thinks maybe the carbon tax, maybe it's not connecting with voters in Ontario.
Oh boy, you guys are good.
Well actually, I think it is connecting with voters extremely well.
They understand it perfectly and they are voting on the issue.
You bet.
What's perplexing to the state broadcaster is that they're voting against Oldie Eller and Bill Nye, the science guy, and his blowtorch.
The CBC can't understand that because that's so persuasive.
But maybe Ontario Liberal MPs who are actually listen and get an earful about this every weekend when they're home in their writings, maybe they're a little bit more in touch with Canadians than the state broadcaster and some American entertainer.
Just a guess.
Now there's lots of boring blather in the memo and the CBC story, but look at this little jam I found.
Let me read a few sentences.
It has become clear, based on public feedback and opposition rhetoric, that immigration and the processing of refugees will be an election issue in the 2019 election, reads an issue summary in the caucus document written by Toronto MP Julie Zerowitz.
Oh, you don't say, you don't say.
Let me read some more.
As per feedback provided during meetings of the National Caucus on Immigration and Refugees, immigration is the number one topic that MPs hear about, hear from constituents about at the door.
The document does not say what kind of feedback Liberal MPs are getting from constituents on the refugee issue.
Yeah.
Say, I wonder the mighty CBC with all their resources, all their employees, all their connections, all their budgets, all their opinion polls, all their own news reporters, the CBC doesn't know, and it's too timid to take a guess, if when Canadians say immigration is their number one issue, are they, is it the number one issue because they're thrilled about our immigration and refugee system and that's why it's the number one issue?
MPs are asked about it?
Or is it because Canadians hate it?
The CBC doesn't know which it is.
They know it's the number one issue that people raise with MPs.
I don't know, maybe people are phoning their MPs, visiting their MPs, emailing their MPs, talking to their MPs at town hall meetings because they're delighted.
They're delighted with open borders immigration.
The CBC thinks it might be that.
They're not sure.
They don't want to jump to conclusions, you know.
This story was on the CBC the very same day.
By the way, this story, same day.
Asylum seekers sentenced for sexually assaulting patient in Montreal's psych ward.
Quebec court judge Dennis Galiatzatos called Owolabi Adejojo's behavior despicable.
Can I read just a couple sentences from this?
This was on the same day as that other memo story.
A man from Nigeria who was claiming asylum in Canada has been sentenced to 52 months in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in a psychiatric ward in a Montreal hospital.
Quebec court judge Dennis Galiatzatos sentenced 40-year-old Owolabi Adejojo in March, calling his behavior despicable.
The assaults took place in February 2018, one month after Ada Jojo entered Canada from the U.S. and filed a refugee claim.
So he was one of those fake refugees who just walked up here from the U.S., just walked across the border, and the RCMP said, here, can we carry your luggage for you?
And somehow he went into a hospital and raped someone.
So he's one of Trudeau's fake refugees.
From Trudeau's foolish everyone's welcome tweets.
I wonder if when the number one issue that constituents raise with their liberal MPs is about refugees, I wonder if they love what's going on or hate it.
I don't know.
The CBC doesn't know.
What do you think?
I mean, either or right.
Flip a coin.
Could be either way.
Yeah, no need to wonder, actually.
Here's an Angus Reed poll.
I've shown it to you before from last August, that 6% of Canadians want a higher level of immigration, just 6%.
And Trudeau went ahead and raised the numbers to more.
So yeah, 94% of people want the same numbers or less, and Trudeau gave more.
You know what this is, this whole memo story?
It's a reality check.
It's proof that you, my dear viewers, are not mad.
And neither am I. Just because 95% of the media party supports the carbon tax and makes it seem like everybody does, nobody does.
Not even environmentalists.
They're just saying it because it sounds socially progressive.
No one likes taxes.
No one likes paying more, especially stupid taxes that are shouted at you by someone who jet sets off every week telling you somewhere else to go tell you to make better carbon choices for you.
But she's jetting around everywhere.
I think Trudeau's vacuous.
I think he's a hollow man.
I think he was filled up by Gerald Butz, his lifelong ventriloquist, who was a paid environmental lobbyist for years, by the way.
Trudeau doesn't know what to say with Gerald Butts gone.
No one likes a carbon tax.
No one likes mass immigration.
No one likes bogus refugees.
No one likes admitting criminals from the U.S. posing as refugees.
No one from the U.S. can be a refugee.
They're in the United States.
He'd be a refugee from the United States.
So where is Trudeau today?
He's hiding.
He's hiding from reporters who might ask him about his role in trying to falsely convict and imprison the Vice Admiral of the Canadian forces, Mark Norman, hiding from all of his messes, his messes with China, his new mess with the Philippines.
Did you know that the Philippines just withdrew their ambassador and all of their consuls general?
They're in a diplomatic war with Trudeau since he shipped Canadian garbage there and won't take it back despite agreeing to do so.
What a metaphor.
Oh my God.
He's hiding.
But I see from his Twitter account, he's in Paris today on a luxury junket.
He's meeting with Emmanuel Macron and Jacinda Arder and the New Zealand prime minister.
They're all announcing, they're all excited about all sorts of new censorship rules for the internet.
On the pretext of fighting terrorism, but of course they mean right-wingers, not Islamic terrorism that's actually the chief terrorism in the world today.
As in, they seek to use the internet to censor people who don't like mass immigration, people who don't like the carbon tax, you know, terrorists like that.
And look at their announcement.
This is the website of their meeting.
And look at all their partners.
It's a private deal between the President of France, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and all these big tech companies.
They all made a deal together.
It's a merger, really, a merger of big business and big government to control big media.
That's what Trudeau's busy doing today.
That's why he's out of town today.
He still plans to have his environment minister shout at you and maybe swear at you.
And you'll be silenced if you talk back, you terrorist.
I think those backbench liberal MPs from Ontario are right to be worried about their political future under Trudeau and his carezi campaign.
Tommy Robinson Hearing Controversy00:06:12
But you and I, I think we're right to be worried about our country's future.
Don't you think?
Stay with us for more with Andrew Lawton.
Welcome back.
Well, I don't want to spend too much more time on Tommy because if you're a Tommy aficionado like me, you can see all of our videos at realreporters.uk.
And we also have links to some of the other reporters that we crowdfunded to join with us in London.
So I'm not going to take too much time on that.
But my next guest, and we're going to talk about media censorship in Canada.
But since he was with me in London and Luton the past few days, he's back in Canada now.
We should at least take a couple minutes on that.
I'm talking about our friend Andrew Lawton, who's a fellow with TNC.news.
That's the true North.
Our friend Candace Malcolm also is part of TNC.news.
Andrew, great to see you.
Now you're back in London, Ontario, after having been with me in London, UK.
Yeah, that's like the most confusing flight itinerary as well, because you have no idea whether you're talking about going there or coming back when you say you're going from London to London.
But it was a lot of fun.
I made it back.
I'm still on UK time, but it was good to see you across the pond, as they say.
Well, we're just so glad that you came.
We admire TNC.news and we love you and Candace.
We think you're great.
And you were one of the real reporters.
We helped crowdfund to pay your travel to get over there.
I want to talk with you about what's going on in Canada.
I have a story here in Blacklock's Reporter.
That's another great news outlet, one of the few independent news outlets.
Let me just show you the headline in that one.
We're going to come back to this in a minute, Andrew.
But first, I just want a moment from you on Tommy.
So what we're going to come back to is this headline, feds to list approved media.
So in Canada, we're going to have an official list of government-approved media.
That's shocking.
And you and I are going to talk about that.
But first, give me a minute on your thoughts of the Tommy Robinson hearing in London, because our viewers have heard a lot from me.
But let's get a different perspective.
Tell us what you thought of it.
Look, I think that the most chilling element of this, and a lot of the case, as you've noted on Twitter, as I noted, was about procedure and referencing of cases in the UK that I just don't have the reference on when it's going on in court.
And I've looked up some of that after the fact.
But to go into the more narrative aspects of this, it was really chilling that the Attorney General of the United Kingdom's lawyer was really basing his entire advocacy of prosecution on two key points.
One of which that Tommy had basically influenced the jury or could have influenced the jury, which we know is debunked.
And the other that I think is the worst is that it was in the public interest to prosecute Tommy Robinson.
Anytime you talk about the public interest in a case like this, you're actually talking about political interference.
And this is what the Attorney General, who's a political figure, has done in this case.
They've decided to prosecute Tommy and they're saying that it is in the public interest.
But, you know, I met a lot of members of the public there and I've followed a lot of what's going on there.
And I'm not quite clear on who's benefiting from Tommy going through the ring or except for the British elites.
And that was one of, I think, the darkest aspects of a great, great country in the United Kingdom that it's now going to going after journalistic freedom and journalistic inquiry under the guise of public interest.
Yeah.
There was one point.
You make some good points.
Let me share one more and then we'll get back to our Canadian news.
It's just great to debrief with you since we were both there in the court together.
As you point out, Tommy did not disrupt the trial outside of which he was reporting from.
A year ago in Leeds, he didn't.
The trial went off flawlessly.
The men were convicted.
One of them appealed, saying, oh, Tommy Robinson being outside after the jury had finished deliberating that interfered.
And a high court judge slapped that down and said, no, no.
So it's not just our matter of opinion.
It is a legal finding of fact that Tommy Robinson did not interfere with that case.
So what the Attorney General said on Tuesday in London was what they're going after him for now, and they went on this in some length, is that when some of these rapists were going into trial and they had what's called their prison bags, because if they were convicted, which they were, they would be going straight to prison.
So they had their toothbrush and some underwear and stuff.
So they were going into court with their prison bads, these accused rapists.
It's incredible to me they were out on bail anyways.
Tommy was asking them, was grilling them just as they were walking in.
30 seconds he was bantering with them.
The Attorney General was saying that caused these rapists.
And remember, these are serial child rapists.
These aren't just, I mean, every rapist is horrible, but these are people who raped girls hundreds of times, girls, not even women.
Because Tommy Robinson stressed them out and was mean to them.
That's apparently contempt of court.
That's what the Attorney General is hanging his case on because they can't claim he disrupted that trial in Leeds.
I find that stunning.
And to say that's in the public interest of the UK shows us that the people deciding what the public interest are are way off course.
Last word on Tommy to you, Andrew, before we pull it back to Canada.
It wasn't just, as you note, about stressing out the defendants, but the Attorney General's lawyer has been trying to drive a wedge between Tommy's case and every other contempt of court case that's existed in the UK, of which you know there have been few, and of the few that are there, the punishment applied to Tommy is already disproportionately higher than anything else that anyone has ever been sentenced with.
But the Attorney General's barrister in court said that pointing out the ethnicities of people, which was a statement of fact, I mean, we're talking about gangs where there was a common cultural identity, that pointing out that was what makes this so egregious.
Government Control of Media00:09:05
And I think that that was a very transparent moment about the British government's agenda in this.
Yeah, well, that just shows his pure censorship.
All right, well, thanks for digesting some of what we observed in the UK a bit with me.
I appreciate that.
And it was really nice to have a fellow Canadian out there just to see things with me.
I'm glad you came.
But let's get back to Canada.
I showed you that headline from Blacklock's Reporter.
I'll just read, I'm just going to read the headline in the first sentence again, and then I'd like your thoughts on this, Andrew.
So this is, the story is called Feds to List Approved Media.
Federal agencies will publish an A-list.
Sorry, I'm laughing as I'm saying it.
Publish an A-list of newspapers and websites deemed reliable under a multi-million dollar subsidy program.
The Department of Finance yesterday told the Senate Finance Committee.
Subsidies to federally approved news media invite government meddling in a free press, cautioned one senator.
So the government of Canada is making a list of who they think is reliable, and they will get rewarded.
And obviously, if you're unreliable, well, you're fake news, and you will have to be punished in some way.
That's how I read it.
What do you read it as?
You know, this is actually 1984 language.
And I don't use that analogy lightly to say that the government is going to determine if it's unreliable or reliable.
I mean, these are these types of words that are going to have a very darkening effect on free speech in the future.
Now, I will say, I think it was a tremendous story from Black Locks.
Not a surprising one, because when we heard that the government was going to be putting $595 million into a journalism bailout fund in the first place, we knew it was inevitable.
They were going to have to draw a line and say that anyone on this side of the line is okay to receive the money and anyone on that side of the line isn't.
But why this is so, again, I mean, I share with you wanting to chuckle at it, but I also want to scream at it because why this is so baffling is that there's no way that this won't reveal a significant either bias or incompetence in the government.
Now, look, I'm representing a startup news outlet, True North.
I know that we're not going to be getting government money.
Frankly, I don't want government money.
I speak for myself, but I don't want to be a government journalist.
And I know you don't as well.
But, you know, let's say that I were to apply.
You know, we represent a news outlet that is a charitable organization.
We raise money.
We do a lot of this, you know, shoe leather reporting that a lot of mainstream media outlets aren't.
I'd say we would be an entirely suitable candidate because we are growing journalism, as is Rebel, as our other startup outlets, apart from the big ones like Post Media and the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.
I mean, startup independent groups are the ones that I think are the way of the future for journalists.
But I know that our message is not going to be deemed reliable to the government.
And it's a matter of how far they're prepared to push that because we know that the PMO has been planting op-eds.
So, you know, what happens if they try to plant an op-ed in, say, the National Post and the National Post says no?
Can it still be a reliable media outlet?
Is it a great point?
Reliable in what way?
Who can rely on them?
Can the government rely on them?
So I suppose they're being extremely honest.
They're just using the word in a different sense.
Normally, the media holds the government to account.
No, That's opposite land today.
The government will hold the media to account.
And if you are reliable, means can Trudeau rely on you?
I should just, and I think I interrupted you there, sorry.
But I remember.
No, I. Go ahead.
I just wanted to give a great example from this morning.
So you may have seen the news.
I got a push notification on my phone at 8.22 in the morning from CBC News, and I'm reading it now: Air Canada to purchase Air Transat.
And then at 9:18, an hour later, I got another push notification from CBC that says, correction, Air Canada in talks to purchase Air Transat.
A previous push alert said Air Canada to purchase Air Transat.
So here we have an example from the state broadcaster making a critical error on a major national story.
Does that mean CBC is unreliable?
Well, that's a great point.
And listen, every journalistic organization, because you're built for speed, you're trying to get the news, not the olds, you're going to make some mistakes sometimes.
Sometimes it's sloppiness.
Sometimes it's just you didn't have all the information, but you had to pull the trigger on it.
Everyone makes mistakes.
But who's to determine if they're grievous mistakes, if they're important mistakes, if they're forgivable mistakes, if they're enjoyable mistakes?
Who knows?
Let me give you an example.
The Globe and Mail, which I have my differences with, they had a blockbuster story in February that's still ricocheting around.
I'm talking about Jody Wilson-Raybold, SNC Lavland, three of their top reporters, Bob Feife, Steve Chase, Sean Fine, meticulously reported.
Do you remember what Justin Trudeau said the very first time he was asked about it?
He said the story was false.
He called it fake news.
In fact, it was damn true.
Sorry, I'm swearing again.
I got to get rid of the swears.
But it was extremely true.
And he called it fake news.
So Trudeau couldn't rely on that story, but we could.
Isn't that funny?
Yeah, and I don't want to get into this progressive vision here that truth is relative, because truth is black and white.
But as Justin Trudeau himself has said, you may interpret something to be different than it actually is in the moment.
And I don't say that as a slight at him in this case, but there is going to be a judgment call.
You can't black and white determine reliability when it comes to media outlets.
And I fear that this is going to subvert journalism because outlets that will come to rely on the subsidy.
And we know that once you're getting government money, you never want to get off of it.
So outlets that rely on this will be not catering to their readers anymore, but they'll be catering to this A-list.
Yeah.
You know, you're so right.
I sort of cringe when people say, share your truth.
Now, people say, share your story, share what you've seen, share your experiences.
I like that.
But there's one truth.
The trouble is, and I think you're zeroing in on it, there's one thing that's true, and then you could have 100 people with a different opinion on it.
And what's happening is Trudeau and other censors like that are saying, well, your opinion is wrong, so you're unreliable.
So it's fake news.
I look at some of these goofy fact checks of Donald Trump.
95% of them aren't even facts.
They're just disputing the meaning of things or disagreeing with his opinion on things.
You can't call a media outlet false or unreliable just because you disagree with it.
Well, I mean, you can, but at the end of the day, it's every citizen who gets to decide.
This is Justin Trudeau trying to decide.
That makes me scared.
Last word to you.
We're about six months away, a little bit less than that, I think, from the federal election.
Literally today, Justin Trudeau is in Paris with New Zealand's out-of-control prime minister and Emmanuel Macron, deeply despised in his own country.
And all three of them believe heavily in censorship.
They're meeting on a censorship protocol for the internet, using the shooting in New Zealand as a pretext.
I am deeply worried, Andrew, that between the carrot for the reliable media, 595 million bucks, and the stick for the unreliable media, I think we're moving down the road towards government control of the media in Canada.
What do you think?
Well, look, Christia Freeland, the foreign affairs minister, is in Cuba today, a bastion of freedom.
And she's going to be in two months' time co-hosting a press freedom summit in the United Kingdom.
Canada and the United Kingdom are co-hosting a press freedom summit.
Now, I want to put this in context for people and bring it around full circle to how we started this.
This summit is going to be one week after Tommy Robinson's trial for journalism, basically, for covering a case that the mainstream media wasn't in England.
This press freedom summit is going to be two months after we learn that the federal government is going to create a master list of government-approved media outlets.
So I'd argue Canada and the UK are in no position to be lecturing the world or bragging about their own protection of press freedom.
And the story you noted about Trudeau budding it up with Mefron and with Prime Minister Ardern, I think a great example of that.
Look, I'm not comparing Canada to Somalia or Sudan or genuine dictatorships.
But I will say that we're in no position to pretend that we can export the way that our government today is viewing media freedom and free speech.
Yeah, well, I didn't know she was in Cuba.
Now you've got me scared.
Maybe she's going to take notes there on hand.
Yeah, maybe that's going to be the next press freedom summit in Cuba.
Who knows?
Well, listen, Andrew, it's great to see you again.
Thank you again for going, spending such a long time.
I mean, seven hours from Toronto, you had to get from London, Ontario to Toronto.
You had to lay over Toronto to London, England.
You traveled more than most to get there.
I'm glad you did.
And I thank our rebel viewers who crowdfunded your ticket and your hotel.
And I know I saw the receipts today.
You flew very, very cheap airfare, very, very economical hotels.
Thank you for respecting our donors and having such a light touch on the expenses.
Well, thank you to the donors as well.
I mean, as I said, we're with a startup.
These things are very difficult to do.
So I appreciate your and their generosity on this.
It was an important one to be at.
Well, right on, and thank you for your great work.
Okay, we'll let you go, my friend.
You keep it up.
Thank you.
All right, there you have it.
Andrew Lawton, one of the good guys, that's for sure.
He's with TNC.news.
You also know our friend Candace Malcolm is with that organization.
I think they're doing a great job.
And it was such a, I found it really enjoyable to observe this in the UK with Andrew there.
Obviously, we've got to be watchdogs here in Canada, too, because this is our home.
Stay with us.
My final thoughts next.
Hey, folks, I thank you for your patience while I was away.
I thank my friends for filling in for me.
I hope you find the Tommy Robinson stories as interesting as I do.
And I sense it you do, because when we do videos about them, they are well watched.
And when we do crowdfunds, like to bring Andrew and others to the UK, those crowdfunding campaigns are subscribed.
So I take it that you believe in it.
And I wonder if you are rooting for Tommy himself or are you just riveted by the fact that he is a prototype for how big tech and big government and big business and big policing and big media likes to censor someone who's raising the alarm on things.
I find it very upsetting to go over there, but I know we have to do it.
And so I will go back out there in July.
If you want to watch Tommy's campaign for the next week or so, as you know, he's running for the member of the European Parliament for Northwest England.
Our young student reporter, Jessica, is there for the rest of the campaign.
She's staying for another 10 days or so.
And we've set up a special Tommy website.
I think it's called TommyReports.com.
TommyReports.com.
Just one place where you can see all of her reports from the campaign trail.
So we crowdfunded her flight and an Airbnb in Manchester.
And the cost of those is about $2,000.
But believe it or not, we had to hire a security guard for her every single day because Antifa is so thuggish.
They're attacking anyone physically near Tommy.
And I thought there's just no way we're going to send a young lady from Toronto into that without like a big bodyguard.
So I'm not going to tell you how much we're spending on security, but we have a full-time security guard escorting her around.
And hopefully nothing will happen.
And 10 days from now, we'll all say, oh, that was a waste of money.
But of course, it wasn't a waste of money because you never know what would happen.
And just the presence of the security guard might save her.
I would much rather hire a security guard where one is not needed than make the alternative error, which is not hire a security guard where one is needed.
As you know, our rebel journalists have been physically assaulted even here in Canada.
So it's not a risk I want to take.
Anyway, if you believe in that journalism, go to TommyReports.com.
And if you feel motivated to help chip in to cover the cost of the security guard for Jessica, you can do it so on that page.
Okay, enough Tommy talk, but you'll understand why I think it's an important story.
I'll see you tomorrow.
On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.