Chrystia Freeland’s Defend Media Freedom Conference exposed glaring hypocrisy: while Canada and the UK claimed to champion free speech, Tommy Robinson faced a 9-month sentence for live-streaming outside a rape trial—despite no impact—and 23,000 unrestricted jihadis in the UK. Grant-dependent journalists dominated panels, ignoring domestic crackdowns like Canada’s revived Section 13 or Freeland’s silence on homegrown speech restrictions. Andrew Lawton’s clash with Pakistan’s foreign minister over Twitter censorship highlighted the event’s focus on foreign threats rather than self-criticism, culminating in a rare but fleeting moment of solidarity when journalists demanded equal access to Freeland’s press conference. The conference’s selective outrage underscored how Western governments preach media freedom while suppressing dissent at home. [Automatically generated summary]
At 9.30 in the morning, Tommy Robinson is sent to prison.
At 10.30, the British government boasts about free speech.
It's July 12th, 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 publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Well, it was a busy week.
I was here for the Defend Media Freedom Conference.
Of course, you can't have a government conference on defending media freedom.
That's like having a vegetarian conference at McDonald's.
I know that's a dumb joke, but that's the closest thing I can think of.
But I was also here because yesterday, at 9.30 in the morning, Tommy Robinson was in court yet again.
I've been here probably 10 times now for his various trials.
He was sentenced by the court at the Old Bailey, by the head of the Queen's Bench Division, no less, Dame Victoria Sharp, to nine months in prison.
Nine months in prison for live streaming his political commentary outside a rape trial 14 months ago.
The trial did not impact the, sorry, his comments did not impact the rape trial.
It was concluded successfully.
All the men were convicted.
None of their appeals were upheld.
He didn't refer to any confidential matters from the court.
He only talked in general terms.
But for that, he was sentenced to nine months in prison.
Now, because of time served, as you know, he served 10 weeks in solitary confinement improperly, because of various formulas and mathematical calculations, because of that time served, the nine-month sentence, six months was for the new sentence and three months was for the suspended sentence, Tommy Robinson will actually serve 66 days in prison.
So almost two and a half months.
He'll be in prison for the rest of the summer and while his kids start school.
He's got three beautiful young kids.
They'll spend the rest of the summer without their dad and they'll start school without their dad.
And Tommy Robinson is in prison while 23,000 known jihadis walk the streets of the United Kingdom.
Isn't that funny?
As I remarked the other day, in the United Kingdom, they spent 1 million pounds prosecuting Tommy Robinson.
They spent 1 million pounds on policing for his trial instead of going after the rape gangs.
It's quite incredible.
Now, that's an injustice in its own right, and I have a lot to say about that, and you know that.
But the added layer of hypocrisy that that was happening right when, right when the Defend Media Freedom Conference was being held by the British government in concert with Canada, that's just too much to process.
Defend Media Freedom Crisis00:15:51
And it struck me by the utter silence of everyone in this conference, the utter incuriosity, that no one there was motivated by freedom of speech like me and chief reporter Sheila Gunread and Andrew Lawton, our friend from the TNC.news.
This was not actually a conference packed with free speech advocates.
It was actually a conference packed with, to be honest, grant-seeking journalists who were looking for some sort of a handout or a bailout.
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the conference was actually sponsored by some left-wing media tycoon called Pierre Omidiar.
And he selected many of the panels.
And many of the reporters here were selected by him too.
They're all here to get their grant from him.
He's like a mini George Soros.
So this was not a free speech conference.
I was on a panel, another youth panel, and I was very vigorous for free speech.
I said, we have to have the right to offend.
We have to have the right to say things that are not popular.
And they looked at me like I was a leper.
And I was confused by this.
And I said to a critic afterwards, surely a free speech conference should have a free speech enthusiast.
Now, there was a professor I met at one of the sessions who sounded pretty free speechy.
And to my surprise, he was from Canada, from Halifax in particular.
I had actually never heard of him or met him before, which tells me that maybe he hasn't been that voluble about freedom of speech at all.
But I did manage to catch up with him, and I asked him a few questions, and he was a nice enough man, and I think he was generally for free speech, so I don't think I grilled him as hard as I might have or should have.
But take a look at my conversation with this guy.
Well, although the conference is co-sponsored by Canada, there's not a ton of Canadians here, but what a pleasure to meet a Canadian expert who I think's got a bit of a free speech bench.
I'm talking about Toby Mandel.
And you're with the Center for Law and Democracy.
I just want to get that right, based in Halifax.
That's right.
Well, it's nice to see you.
Tell me a little bit about freedom of the press.
Is it under attack?
Is it in retreat?
That's an interesting question.
I mean, people keep saying that.
And I think if you look at a lot of free speech organizations, they have been saying for the last 20 years that that was the case.
If that were true, and they could actually measure that, we would have to be a long way down now from where we were 20 years ago, 20 years of decline.
So I think it's just an easy thing to say.
I think we need to be a little bit more rigorous about when we say that, what we actually mean.
Do we mean it globally?
I mean, you know, there's certainly some places where it's under attack.
Well, let me tell you what I mean.
Five years ago, the internet was about the freest place you can imagine.
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook were really the house of unbridled debate.
But since 2017, there's been a crackdown from my point of view.
The terms of service have narrowed.
Hate speech, community standards, you see deplatforming.
I think that's new.
Am I wrong or am I right?
No, you're right about that.
But I think what happened is, I mean, you know, as free speech activists, 10 years ago, this was the mecca of free speech.
Anyone could...
So we can get it back?
Let's try and get it back.
But I think what we've seen is the emergence of sort of some negative challenges on the internet, challenges even to our elections and the fairness of our elections.
So those are also attacks on free speech.
So we've started to see a little bit of the two-sided, two-headed monster, if you will.
So we need to kind of manage that.
Now, it's incredibly difficult to manage that in ways that are compliant with guarantees of free speech.
And I don't think we really have clear solutions.
Something needs to be done if this is not going to undermine our elections.
And without our elections, our democracies don't work.
I think that's a paper tiger.
I think that's a puffed up threat because, you know, there's no evidence of any meddling in the Canadian elections.
The whole Russia collusion meme, I think, was largely discredited by the Mueller inquiry, which was exhaustive.
I think censoring the internet because of some speculative future threat to an election that's not even being explained, I think that's just an excuse.
Well, I mean, first of all, I absolutely agree that censoring the internet is not what we need to do.
But I don't agree with you that it's just a puffed up threat.
You're right about the Canadian election, but the Canadian government is very concerned at the moment.
Now, we don't have that evidence.
But the Mueller report, I'd have to disagree with you on that.
The Mueller report, although it absolved the president of wrongdoing, or at least said there wasn't enough evidence to criminally charge him, but it certainly did not say that the Russians did not meddle.
And on the contrary.
There was no clue.
Okay.
Now in the past six months, I have observed, let's talk about Canada because that's where you're based.
And I'm delighted that you're based there.
And Halifax is such a wonderful city with a bit of a free speech history.
Of course, Joseph Howe.
I think he's the Canadian hero.
Here's my question for you, and I know you got to go, sorry, I just sort of grabbed you because I saw you walking by.
Here's what I've observed.
In the last six months or so, the Liberals are bringing back Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the censorship provision.
We see them throwing tens of millions of dollars behind their anti-Islamophobia campaign.
We see the public safety ministry naming speech as a risk.
We see a five-man panel to oversee the internet.
Michael Wernick was going to be on it, the clerk of the Privy Council.
A five-person election monitoring social media.
Like we're seeing again and again all these restrictions.
And finally, Justin Trudeau himself told Cheryl Sandberg of Facebook that if she didn't regulate Facebook for political content, he would.
I see all these things working in tandem, and I'm nervous.
What do you think?
Yeah, no, I agree.
I mean, I think the problem is, so, you know, people like myself that have been for 20 years hardcore free speech advocates, we see all of those problems that you're talking about.
We see when governments start to step in the risks and the challenges.
On the other hand, where we might disagree a little bit, we also see some threats even to free speech itself on the internet.
And we don't really, I mean, we're still struggling to find a balance, the appropriate balance here.
We don't want censorship.
We don't want government control, absolutely not.
Five-man panels regulating.
But on the other hand, we do see the emergence of threats on the internet, even threats to free speech on the internet, and how to find the balance.
And I think that if you look at the joint declaration that I work with on the four special rapporteurs, which I launched yesterday with them, you can see within that a certain ambiguity.
There are some problems.
We don't want regulation, but we do want to solve the problems.
And I think we really need some out-of-the-box thinking.
And governments are not good at that.
When governments step in, they usually do the wrong thing.
So how to kind of, but I think now the obligation is with us as the free speech community to come up with reasonable solutions to some of the problems that we are seeing starting to emerge, which I think do include threats to democracy and threats to elections, but threats that, solutions that don't undermine free speech.
So I think that this is the challenge that really faces us.
Last question.
This conference was co-hosted by the UK and Canadian governments, and Chrystia Freeland certainly enjoyed her time in the sun with Amal Clooney.
But I just think that Christia Freeland has been silent on free speech at home.
And she hasn't spoken out against these trends I've mentioned.
I believe that having a government conference on freedom is a contradiction in terms.
And I think this is a fig leaf for her to get free speech credentials to cover up the fact that those several trends I mentioned are going on the wrong path.
But I'm a skeptic of this Liberal government.
I'm a harsh critic.
I think you're more neutral than me.
What do you think?
So I think that it's very, very important that governments from democracies do engage on this issue.
We need their support to combat threats to free speech.
I mean, the threats you've talked about in Canada, I think they're very interesting, but the threats that we're seeing in Russia, in China, in wherever, those are vastly more serious.
Those are countries where people don't enjoy free speech at all.
And if we're going to push back on those countries, we in the free world, if you will, really need to get together and do that.
So we do need the support of governments.
I do agree that Canada's kind of jumping in on this issue.
It's not been an issue that Canada has heavily engaged in on the past.
Hopefully, through this process, they will do more of that.
We need funding to come for governments for the work that we do.
We need their support in diplomatic terms and in political pressure terms and sometimes even in sanctions terms.
So, I mean, I think they're a very important part of the system.
But I would have liked to have seen, for example, more NGO people and journalists on the panels and less officials.
So I think that we're still struggling a little bit with the balance.
All right.
Well, Toby, Mendel, it's a pleasure to talk with you.
Thank you for that.
I think I'm more of a free speech purist than you, but if I only talked to people as free speechy as me, I wouldn't be talking to a lot of people.
It's nice to meet you in person, and thanks for your time.
No, my pleasure.
Cheers.
Thanks.
You know, a nice enough guy, friendly enough to have a conversation with me.
But did you hear what he said?
He's worried about the internet being used against free speech.
We have to censor it to protect free speech.
He's worried that the election's going to be hacked or something.
What is he talking about?
There is zero evidence whatsoever that the Canadian election is in any jeopardy.
That's just a pretext for censorship.
And it seems like he'd drunk the Kool-Aid on that issue.
Maybe I didn't want to ask him if he was on the payroll.
I suspect, since he was an official delegate, that he received a handsome honorarium from that billionaire Pierre O'Midier to be here.
But if that's the most free speechy guy you're going to find, someone who says, well, there hasn't been that many free speech problems.
It's not as bad as some third world dictatorships.
And yeah, we've got to watch out because the internet is going to be hijacked, so we should hijack it first.
If that's the best free speech dick we have in Canada, I think we're in some trouble.
Well, I mentioned Andrew Lawton, who was here with TNC News, and I caught up with him at the end.
It's always nice to see that guy.
I've accompanied him in the past to Tommy Robinson's trial.
So, of course, he's been a guest on my show many times.
And so I just talked to him a little bit about what he thought about the whole goings-on.
And here's my interview with him.
Well, as you know, my friend Sheila Gunreed is here at the Media Freedom Conference with me.
But we also have another Canadian ally, a fan favorite of the show, my friend Andrew Lawton.
Great to see you.
Likewise, great to be here covering this in conjunction with your team.
You know what?
You've been in the UK with us before covering the Tommy Robinson case.
How ironic that literally today he was sent off to prison, a nine-month total jail term, he'll wind up serving about two and a half of that while the government of the UK and the government of Canada talk about how much they love media freedom.
So ironic.
Yeah, and it's interesting.
When I decided months ago that I wanted to cover this conference, it was because I really hoped it would be an introspective look at free speech all around the world, and certainly in the host countries, Canada and the UK.
And the one thing that I find interesting here is that we're coming up on the end of day two, and I don't think I've seen a single example of any introspection from Canada or the UK on this.
Lots of talk about things that are happening elsewhere in the world and very awful things.
I mean, journalists in Venezuela and Ghana that are being persecuted, killed, jailed, and I think it's important to stand up against that.
But there's nothing controversial about Christia Freeland saying we're against journalists getting killed.
There's nothing controversial about Jeremy Hunt saying we don't want journalists to be in prison.
The real hard work is in talking about the shortcomings of your own countries, and there's been none of that.
You're exactly right.
But it's worse than that.
And you wrote an excellent article at TNC.news, which I would recommend to all our viewers.
Tell us about an honored guest.
Now, this morning I was at the Tommy trial, so you were holding the fort here with Sheila.
Tell me about this, well, your scoop about this Malaysian honored guest.
You know, one of the big themes in all of the speakers here, supposedly, is that they have an ironclad commitment to free speech and free expression.
And when I saw that one of the speakers, not just on some panel in conference room Z4, but the plenary session opening the day, really the official closing of the conference on stage with Jeremy Hunt and Christia Freeland, the foreign minister of Britain in the UK, is the communications and multimedia minister for Malaysia.
Now, when I saw Malaysia, I was very surprised, pleasantly so, because this is a country that I don't often associate with free speech.
And I decided to look a little bit into not just the country's policies, but the policies of the speaker himself, a man who, again, has had this post and in his time as the Minister of Communications and Multimedia has actually called for censorship and called for the prosecution of publishers.
And one notable example of this was that he wanted a publisher of an outlet called Malaysia Today, which is actually published from England, prosecuted.
And he said that he wanted, in his words, extraterritorial powers of hate speech legislation so that Malaysia could enforce its censorship around the world.
This sounds like the worst kind of guy, and he's on the stage on the main session as an honored guest.
I really hoped there would be questions taken in that session for one reason alone, and that was that Jeremy Hunt held up this man as a pioneer.
That's a foreign secretary of the UK.
Yes, and he held up this man, this minister, as really the hero of someone on the front lines of free speech when this man wanted to prosecute one of Jeremy Hunt's citizens just in September.
And it goes further than that.
He also in March had pushed for a law that would force news outlets to be liable if someone goes and comments on a story in a way that's inflammatory.
And, you know, I put this question to Christia Freeland in a scrum, which is a different story entirely.
I know Sheila Gunread will tell it.
And her response was, this isn't a conference of angels.
Well, you know, it's...
I agree with her, by the way.
It's not, but whether it should be is a different question.
Well, you know, I want to show you a very quick clip.
I just sat down at some session.
I didn't even know who was there.
And then I heard this guy talking about Pakistan.
I know a little bit about Pakistan.
Our friend Tarek Fatah talks a lot about it.
We all know the story of Asia Bibi.
That's a Christian woman who was sentenced first to death and then to prison for blasphemy.
And I thought, this guy, this spokesman for Pakistan, well, it turns out he was a foreign minister.
And Pakistan censored me in Canada.
Let me show you a very quick clip.
I got to tell you, Andrew, I let her rip.
Maybe I was a little too hard, but I'll let our viewers decide.
Here, take a quick look at this.
Thanks.
Actually, I'm not going to be directed by you.
I'm going to ask a question to the Pakistani gentleman.
Now you're not.
Yes, I am.
I'm at the Media Freedom Conference, and you're not going to shut down questions about a censor.
You censored me, sir.
I have a Twitter account in Canada, and because I wrote something that traduced some Pakistani blasphemy law, you complained to Twitter, which took down my tweet in Canada.
So can you explain why your Islamic supremacy in Pakistan is silencing my personal and journalistic freedom in Canada?
And I know it happens in the United States, too.
And frankly, you sure should be embarrassed to invite a censor like this.
But back to the thug.
Who the hell are you to censor me in Canada?
I know you don't because you don't like free speech.
You don't like free speech.
Okay.
Would you like to answer that free speech?
I just respond to you, sir.
Censorious Thug Censors00:04:07
First of all, you want your sentiments to be respected.
Just remove the door and the diagram of adopted.
Is that the correct way?
You have a right to ask questions.
Well, then why did you censor me?
Did I say that?
You shut down my Twitter talk.
I did not.
Don't lie.
How can I?
How am I responsible for that?
Because the government of Pakistan did.
The government of Pakistan.
I did not come to you.
No, you were not.
You censored me.
I did not come to you.
Don't lie.
All right.
Why would I lie?
Because that's what you do.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Shame on you and shame on you.
Shame on you and shame on you for inviting me.
Shame on you.
You censorious thug.
I'm a censorious thug.
What you want to freedom with a time when you are projecting certain sectorals at your door.
Andrew, I don't know if that was my finest moment, but I don't think that foreign minister of Pakistan has ever been spoken to critically, skeptically, let alone forcefully, by a journalist ever, because you don't do that in Pakistan.
You wind up in prison.
Yeah, I actually think you've been denied accreditation for the Pakistan Press Freedom Conference, which is just as well, because there's no one there.
They've imprisoned them all.
But it's baffling.
They're trying to do the thing that Malaysia's trying to do, which is this extraterritorial.
Yeah, they censored me in Canada through Twitter.
Yeah, but what you raised there is the biggest problem in this, which is that big tech is serving as an agent of the government.
And this has been another area.
There's been a little bit of discussion from some NGOs, and I was actually quite pleasantly surprised that David Kay, the UN special rapporteur, was talking about the big tech alliance.
But again, the challenge here is that no one in government is prepared to end that.
And in fact, in Canada, it's the contrary, where you have government now trying to regulate social media companies through revived Section 13.
And none of these issues have been discussed.
And not only that, there have been no opportunities to put these concerns to the Canadian or English delegations.
That's a very good point, the Section 13.
I know you've got to go to this another session.
And I'm actually, I've been invited to be on some kids' panel or something, so I've got to go do that now.
It's great to see you.
I'm glad that you're here.
And there were a couple other Canadians here who didn't do a bad job.
We can talk about that another time.
Keep up the fight.
You know what, TNC News?
I'm glad you guys are around.
I feel less lonely knowing there's another freedom fighter around.
Cheers, mate.
Thanks very much.
Please say here.
Cheers, me.
All right, Andrew.
Thanks.
Well, that's it from here in London.
And I know I've been away a lot.
Tommy Robinson's conviction last week, his sentencing this week, and now this free speech conference.
Oh my God, I hope my traveling is done for a while.
I'm just pooped from flying back and forth, and I'd like to be in the studio and to talk about other things.
But I think this was a Canadian story, even though I'm in the UK, because it showed that Canada is part of a global movement by the left to censor media in the guise of cracking down on fake news and disinformation and Russian collusion or whatever.
And it's depressing to see that for the most part, they're getting away with it, these governments.
There was that one impressive moment when the other mainstream media journalists stood by the Rebel and wouldn't go to Christia Freeland's press conference unless we were let in too.
There was that one flicker of free speech, but for the rest of it, the whole thing was a camouflage.
It's like that old song goes that I mentioned the other day.
They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum and charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see them.
You know that old song?
Well, I think that's Joni Mischel.
I think I said that was Janice Joplin the other day.
That's what's happened here.
They took the free speech and they put it in a free speech museum.
And once a year they'll talk about it at a conference, but they won't practice it.
They won't practice it.
It's not being practiced in the United Kingdom.
They sent Tommy Robinson to prison.
It's not being practiced in Canada.
They're bringing in censorship as soon as they can.
The whole thing was a whitewash for Christia Freeland.
That's why this is interesting to Canadians.
All right, folks, I'll be back in Canada over the weekend on Monday.
I'll see you bright and early.
Until then, on behalf of all of us here at the Rebel around the world, to you at home.