Keanu College’s free speech pledge, modeled after the University of Chicago’s 2014 principles, sparks backlash from Alberta journalists like Edmonton Journal critics, despite its aim to prevent censorship of conservative or pro-life student groups. Ezra Levant and Lauren Gunter argue Trudeau’s government outsources dissent suppression—citing Michael Wernick’s alleged pressure on Jody Wilson-Raybould and Karina Gould’s defense of Macron leak censorship—as "interference laundering," undermining diplomacy by prioritizing virtue signaling over hostage negotiations. Cases like Tommy Robinson’s UK sentencing and a Toronto reverend’s arrest reveal double standards, where extremist speech often escapes consequences while dissenters face legal threats, exposing selective free speech enforcement that risks eroding justice in both nations. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey Rebels, did you ever notice how the media uses the word controversial as sort of a dumb code word for things they just don't like, but they can't really marshal an argument against?
The latest is the Edmonton Journal calling a free speech code at Keanu College.
And by that, I'm not speaking Orwellian and ironically.
It really is a code strengthening free speech.
The Edmonton Journal calls that controversial.
Yeah, mate, I don't think that's controversial.
I think the opposite is controversial.
I'll take you through it today.
But before I do, can I encourage you to become a premium subscriber of The Rebel?
Just go to the rebel.media slash shows.
And it's $8 a month or $80 for the year.
Type in podcast as a coupon code.
You get a discount.
You also get Sheila's, Sheila Gunn Reed shows and David Mency shows.
And what's fun about it is you get the video version of this podcast, which I like to think is better in every way other than you have to gaze upon me.
All right, without further ado, here's the show.
You're listening to a Rebel Media Podcast.
Tonight, the first Alberta University officially implements a free speech pledge, and the province's journalists complain.
It's July 30th, and this is the Answer 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 is governments about why I publish them.
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
University Free Speech Pledge00:16:00
There's something wrong with the media when journalists are against free speech.
I mean, you probably think I'm joking or using a dramatic metaphor, but no, these days, journalists are the most active censors out there.
There's a whole genre of journalism around being a tattletale.
By that, I mean not actually reporting the news, not shoe leather reporting, get up from your desk, go out in the world and find out what's going on.
I mean, a kind of journalism that involves snitching on people you don't like, doxing people, as it's called.
That's when you publish private details about your political opponents, like their home address, their bosses, name, that sort of thing.
It's not journalism, really.
It's anti-journalism.
It's trying to stop people, shut them up, maybe even hurt them in some ways for having a different point of view.
That's not journalism.
Here's an example of that.
Our friend Pamela Geller, who we've had on the show, well, a left-wing activist site that calls itself BuzzFeed News, so they claim to be news reporters, they thought it newsworthy to dig up the private details of Pamela Geller's daughters to embarrass them and get them both fired because BuzzFeed hates their mom.
Mission accomplished, I get.
BuzzFeed is trash journalism, though I think they revel in it, but CNN actually calls itself the most trusted name in news.
Here they are going to a private citizen's home about a year and a half ago.
A senior citizen, a little Jewish grandma in Florida, who posted a Facebook message about Donald Trump.
That's literally all she did.
And CNN went to her home, cameras rolling, named and shamed her on international TV and said she was colluding with the Russians.
Will you admit it?
But you guys were involved with being patriotic, right?
Very, very patriotic, but not.
Being patriotic was the group that contacted and helped organize some of these activities that you posted on your own Facebook account.
Those were legitimate.
Those were Russians.
They were not Russians.
I don't go with the Russians.
That group was Russians.
I have nothing to do with the Russians.
Well, apparently you did.
Is that journalism?
Going to some grandma's house and saying we saw you post something on Facebook?
No, I don't think that's journalism.
Sorry, that's not going to win you apologize.
Well, actually, these days maybe, well, that's embarrassing and punishing a Trump supporter, a Florida grandma who just dared to put something on Facebook.
Something trumpy for her friends.
CNN is a Democrat vengeance machine.
I'm sorry, that was not journalism, folks.
You're not going to, you know, that's not the new Watergate grandma post something on Facebook that's not quite right.
The shocking footage that will bring down that Florida bubby and Zady.
One last example.
I was showing you this before.
It's from a group ironically called Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
Talk about false advertising in their name.
Last year, you recall, they literally started a petition.
to ban, to censor Donald Trump from speaking at the G7 conference held in Quebec.
It was so insane that even the left-wing Toronto Star condemned them.
I mean, just slow down for a second.
Canadian journalists for free expression literally wanted to ban Donald Trump from speaking, including speaking to journalists.
By the way, that's clown world.
That's journalism today.
Oh, one more thing about Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
I hate saying that lie.
When Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he wanted more freedom of expression on campus, more diversity of views, more open debate, fewer leftist safe spaces and trigger warnings and censorship, Canadian journalists for free expression attacked him.
I'm not kidding.
They oppose it.
They deplore it.
Those are the words they use.
Look at that headline on their press release.
Free expression groups oppose Ontario government plan for universities and colleges.
Oh my God, it sounds like Doug Ford was coming to censor them.
They actually don't mention in the headline that it was a plan to increase free speech.
They're so dishonest.
They know they ought to be ashamed of themselves, but they're not.
Unbelievable, which brings me back to the news of the day.
Jason Kenney's new government in Alberta is following Doug Ford's lead in Ontario and bringing in similar rules to enhance free speech in Alberta.
Now, what does it mean?
A rule to ban free speech.
Isn't free speech sort of the opposite, a lack of rules?
Well, that's the thing about a government institution.
They need to be reined in, constrained, put a straitjacket on them.
They need to be limited in what they can do, or else over time, like a weed, they'll just grow bigger and bigger and take over.
In a university situation, that could mean, for example, banning student clubs, stopping them from registering, or stopping them from getting office space in the student union building, or renting rooms for events.
That happens to pro-life clubs in Canadian campuses all the time, by the way.
It could mean the trick that they did on Lindsay Shepard when she wanted to speak on campus.
They said, sure, you can, but you have to pay more than $10,000 in security fees.
Of course, students already pay millions of dollars in fees for campus security.
And then, of course, there's the regular police.
It's the university's duty to keep it a safe space.
And I don't mean safe from hurt feelings, but actually safe from physical violence.
So when you say to a speaker, sure, you can come out, absolutely, you just need to pay $10,000 in security fees.
No, no, no, that's not really a security fee.
It's just a way of banning a speaker from your campus without having to be honest enough to say they're banned, which is why universities need rules.
They need to be limited because in every university, both in the students' union level and the administration itself, there lurk plenty of would-be censors, and they probably don't even think of themselves that way.
So that's what Doug Ford's doing in Ontario.
He's telling campuses that if they censor their own students, they risk having Doug Ford take their money away.
So Doug Ford obviously knows.
What we all know is that universities care more about money than about principles of open debate in 2019.
So that's where he gets them.
He gets them by paying attention, by threatening their cash.
It's smart.
He's not lying about it being a security fee.
He's telling the truth.
If they don't believe in the free exchange of ideas, he really doesn't see the point in funding them because that's the point of universities.
I agree.
And so does Jason Kenney.
And now, the first Alberta university to sign on with the free speech pledge is a great little college in Fort McMurray called Keanu College.
I had the pleasure of giving a pro-Oil Sands speech there once.
The kids are great.
And maybe it's not surprising that they're the first callers to sign on in Alberta.
In a real city like Fort McMurray, hardworking town, pro-industry town, a town hurt by leftist politics, you probably have fewer social justice censors than you do, say, in the lefty paradise of Edmonton.
So they're the first.
Here's a story in the Edmonton Journal about it.
Keanu College becomes first Alberta institution to publicly roll out Chicago principles.
And I'm not sure if you remember, but the Chicago Principles, that's the name given to a statement written by a number of scholars at the University of Chicago who were doing their best to outline a practical but principled free speech policy.
It's a really thoughtful document.
It's so good, it's so well done that it's been adopted widely by other universities too because they just did such a good job.
Here's what it looks like.
It's very simple.
It's just a three-page document and like half of one page is just people who signed it.
I think I took you through most of this a few months ago, but let me just read to you one more time a key paragraph that I think just nails it.
So here's from the Chicago statement.
Of course, the ideas of different members of the university community will often and quite naturally conflict.
But it is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.
Although the university greatly values civility, and although all members of the university community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.
You know, how can you disagree with that?
I recommend you read the whole thing.
I'll see if we can put a link to the Chicago Principles on the website under this video.
You can see why so many leaders around North America say, hey, just copy what they did in Chicago.
So Keanu College is in, but the Edmonton Journal, they seem sort of mad about it.
Let me read a little more.
A Northern Alberta College has become the first post-secondary institution to officially adopt controversial freedom of speech rules ahead of an approaching deadline set out by the provincial government.
Hang on, hang on.
Controversial?
Says who?
Is it controversial to support free speech on a university campus?
That's controversial?
Not that censorship has become the norm.
I love that word controversial.
It really means nothing, does it?
Other than a supporter, a reporter is trying to be negative but can't really make the case.
Ooh, controversial.
It's like a generic warning, but the kind of warning that says, I can't really articulate the problem, but just trust us.
It's controversial.
Now, once upon a time, you could actually trust the Edmonton Journal.
About 80 years ago, they won a Pulitzer Prize for standing up.
It's right there in their lobby, by the way.
It's amazing.
Standing up to Bill Eberhardt, the Premier of Alberta, who passed a series of laws.
Can you believe it?
That allowed the government to force newspapers to print government propaganda on their editorial page.
See, if Eberhardt had been smart about it, he wouldn't have used the stick to force them to write his editorials.
He'd have used a carrot like Justin Trudeau.
He'd have offered the Edmonton Journal its cut of a $600 million bailout or whatever the equivalent would have been in 1938 dollars.
And they would have censored themselves willingly for them.
Anyways, that was then.
This is now.
Let me read from the journal today.
Student groups had voiced concerns that schools weren't prepared.
In May, the United Conservative Party announced its intention to follow in Ontario's footsteps by introducing the principles developed by the University of Chicago in 2014.
They allow speakers on campuses to share their views no matter how unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive they may be.
They have been criticized by academics as benefiting more extreme and conservative speakers.
So did you see that first part there?
Schools aren't prepared for free speech.
What does that even mean?
I think that means they need free speech good and hard then.
If they're not prepared for it, they need it good and hard.
What about the part about benefiting extreme and conservative speakers?
Well, you know, on that last point, I suppose they're right.
Since the majority of banned groups these days are conservative, I mentioned the pro-life clubs earlier, but if you read the Chicago Principles, which I doubt the Edmonton Journal has, even though it's only two and a half pages, the first example, the Chicago Principles site, is actually a communist, a leftist.
Let me read.
A student organization invited William Z. Foster, the Communist Party's candidate for president, to lecture on campus.
This triggered a storm of protests from critics both on and off campus.
To those who condemned the university for allowing the event, President Robert M. Hutchins responded that, quote, our students should have freedom to discuss any problem that presents itself.
He insisted that the cure for ideas we oppose lies through open discussion rather than through inhibition.
On a later occasion, Hutchins added that free inquiry is indispensable to the good life.
That universities exist for the sake of such inquiry and that without it they cease to be universities.
So yeah, I guess to most academics and most journalists, when a leftist is barred from campus, that's censorship.
But when a conservative is banned, that's just good hygiene.
Let me quote you from the Keanu College statement itself.
It's in point form.
There's a little bit of wiggle room in it.
We'll see how it's implemented.
But I like these parts.
Here, let me read a few.
Community members have the right to criticize and question other views expressed on campus, but cannot obstruct or interfere with others' freedom of speech.
And institutions should not attempt to shield students from ideas or opinions they disagree with or find offensive.
Mutual respect and civility are valued, but do not constitute sufficient justification to limit free speech.
I like it.
I like it.
I can hear the echoes of the Chicago principles in there, and I can see why leftists, antifa thugs, and tattletale hollow monitors, snitch-style journalists like BuzzFeed News would hate it.
I mean, the whole point of doxing people is to shut them down, deplatform, to ban them.
And Keanu College is saying in advance that they're not going to accept that kind of behavior.
You know, I made an observation to a friend the other day.
Let me tell you a personal story.
When I was at the Sun News Network, you probably know I was sued or threatened with lawsuits every few months, frankly.
Now, Sun News stood by me.
They knew that if they surrendered even once, there would be a tidal wave of nuisance suits.
So they held firm.
And we never lost one lawsuit, although I should tell you, a couple of those lawsuits continue even to this day, nearly five years after the sun shut down.
But we've been here at the Rebel for almost five years.
And I checked, and we've produced more than 12,500 videos so far.
That's a lot.
And we've only been sued twice.
Once in Canada and once in Australia.
How could that be?
I mean, we're just as editorially tough as we were back at Sun News.
We're much smaller commercially than the mighty Quebec or the multi-billion dollar company that owns Sun News.
So why aren't the bullies using lawfare against us more like they did back in the sun?
Now, I don't want them to, but I was just curious, why aren't they?
Well, here's one theory.
Most of the lawsuits against Sun News, they weren't real at all.
They probably didn't even expect to win.
They probably didn't expect to go to trial.
Like I say, there still are two going on, but more than a dozen lawsuits and complaints to the CRTC and just endless threats.
They simply went nowhere.
So why did people do them?
I think the whole point of them was to harass not me actually, but my bosses there, to stress the relationship between Sun and me, to cause stress there, to make it a headache and a cost and a time waster for everyone there, just to train them, to condition them into being less politically conservative, less pugilistic.
It was a psychological operation, a psyops.
Partly targeting me, but mainly targeting the bosses there, the corporate bosses, to make them associate, what's that word, controversy with me, controversial commentator, Ezra Levant, controversial network Sun News.
It was to harass Quebecor in the hope that they'd cut us loose.
Now they didn't.
It took Stephen Harbor's CRTC to kill Sun News.
But here the Rebel, there's no boss to hassle or stress.
I mean, I guess I'm the boss, but really, I see our viewers as the boss.
You're the ones who fund us.
So the strategy of threatening us with lawsuits doesn't work as well.
I suppose a lawsuit could kill us if it really hits home and we lose.
But the process itself, us being the target of a nuisance suit, I don't think it demoralizes our people because we expect it and we know it's unfair.
I think in some ways it revs our people up because it proves our point about leftists wanting to silence us instead of debate us.
I mean, that thuggish elections commissioner in Alberta who's going after Sheila Gunread for her book, I mean, that might scare a big corporation that's risk averse, but here to us, it just enrages me.
And I think all of Sheila's fans makes me want to fight harder.
I think it makes our viewers want to fight harder.
We're going to beat them, by the way.
My point is what Keanu College, here's why I mentioned all that, is that what Keanu College is doing is removing the incentive, the process, removing the stress, removing the tactic, removing the strategy from the censorship left.
Disrupting conservative speakers won't work anymore at Keanu College.
Complaining to the media about Keanu College having a speaker won't work anymore.
I mean, the media will have a tantrum, but they won't be able to pressure university administrators into blocking or deplatforming an event like they could.
Global Affairs Gambits00:16:24
It'll actually change the economy of the harassment left.
It takes the ability for them to censor away.
It actually makes the left engage and debate if they care about something, or more likely, just go back to their dorm rooms and smoke pot if they don't care about something, which most of the time they don't.
I like Keanu College's new rules.
And unlike the Edmonton Journal and the rest of the snitch journalists out there, I don't see it as controversial.
I see those fake news journalists who think going to a grandma's home to grill her about a Facebook post, I see them as controversial.
And based on the plummeting viewership of CNN and the plummeting readership of the Edmonton Journal, I think a lot of other people think the same way I do too.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, shocking news.
I don't know if you saw it.
Justin Trudeau has had non-partisan senior civil servants, so I'm not talking about political appointees, but rather permanent bureaucrats, pick up the phone and call independent pundits, commentators, former ambassadors to tell them to stop saying things about the fact that China still holds two Canadian hostages, or at least to stop saying things that might get in the way of Justin Trudeau's re-election.
Joining us now to talk about this is our friend Lauren Gunter, a senior columnist with the Edmonton Sun, who recently wrote a great article about this.
It's in the Sun.
The headline is, The Latest Liberal Affront to Free Speech.
Lauren, great to see you.
Good to see you.
You know what?
I understand why liberal partisans would want the liberals to be re-elected.
That's their job.
And I could even understand why maybe a campaign manager might call around to pundits and say, hey, help us out.
That'd be a weird request.
But I find it concerning, as I know you do too, that non-partisan civil servants would be phoning professors and pundits and saying, hey, come on, you're saying the wrong thing.
It's going to be hard for Trudeau to get reelected.
That doesn't sound like the Canadian way.
No.
I would call this interference laundering.
The government is trying to interfere in people's freedom of expression, but they don't want it to appear as though Trudeau or one of his direct minions is doing it themselves.
They want it to appear as though Global Affairs Canada, the old Foreign Affairs Department, is doing it.
So they have an assistant deputy minister in global affairs phone or David Mulroney, who is no relation to Brian Mulroney, David Mulroney, who's our former ambassador to China, and Guy Saint-Jacques, who is another former ambassador to China, and say, you know, given the, these are direct quotes, election environment, we would be happier if you wouldn't say anything negative,
that would come back negatively on the government.
Well, there's so many things wrong with this.
First of all, both men are academics now, so you're sort of meddling with academic independence.
They're both private citizens now.
They're no longer federal civil servants, and they don't take an oath that lasts for a lifetime.
If you are in the intelligence services, there are things you cannot ever talk about, period.
It doesn't matter how many years you've been out, how many years you've been retired.
There are certain things you simply can't talk about.
These guys aren't covered by any of that.
They were bureaucrats and diplomats.
They weren't spies.
So they're not covered by that.
So that's wrong as well.
The other thing that's wrong about this, and you may probably remember vividly, right after Trudeau was sworn in, I think it was two days after he was sworn in in 2015, he went to the Pearson Block, which is the home of Canada's Foreign Affairs Department, now called Global Affairs.
And there was a rock star reception for him.
There's an atrium in the middle of the building, and people lined the outside of the balconies all the way up to the top of the building to cheer and yell.
And, oh, it's Justin Trudeau here.
Oh, the bad Stephen Harper days are gone.
And I think ever since that time, a large chunk of people in global affairs, not by any means all of the people in global affairs, but a large chunk of them have been quite happy to be the diplomatic arm of the Liberal Party of Canada, not of the government of Canada.
And you'll remember too that David, that John McCallum, the minister that the Liberals had to lean on to leave, they had to pressure him to leave, even though I don't think they really wanted him to leave.
He was advising the Chinese government on things it could do to help the Liberals get re-elected in Canada.
So it's very incestuous.
It's a snake pit of counter-influences and influences and meddling.
And that's just the latest of the liberal efforts to limit free speech.
You know, and it's the worst when it comes to China.
Of course, Jean Cretchen, whose son-in-law is the head of the Demare companies, huge investors in China.
Jean-Krechen went to work in China with the Chinese government just a few weeks after stepping down from parliament.
Like a few weeks, not months or years.
I find it implausible that he wouldn't have been preparing for that while he was still PM.
You mentioned John McCallum giving advice to the Chinese government.
Just a few months ago, he was supposed to be our ambassador, giving advice to our government.
These guys are playing both sides of the table.
Now, what I like, you mentioned David Mulroney, and when people hear Mulroney, they think Brian Mulroney, but as you point out, no relations.
I enjoy following him on Twitter.
He's very much seized with the Chinese challenge right now.
He seems very thoughtful.
I don't know him in any other context.
He points out how Canada is not having either a principled or a pragmatic approach.
Like, I really find him a source of wisdom.
He reminds me of our old friend Charles Burton, who also loves the hope of China, but he's not blinded by xenophilia or something.
Yeah.
Not like John McCallum.
I mean, John McCallum boasted about the fact that he has a Chinese wife and that he was given a Chinese name.
And he referred to himself sometimes by his Chinese name.
And he was given that name by Chinese officials.
So what we're looking at here, and this kind of gets off the free speech topic, but what we're looking here at global affairs now is that the people who are running things who are liberal sycophants are also amateurs at this.
David Mulroney didn't always give Stephen Harper the advice Harper wanted to hear.
He didn't work to try and get the conservatives re-elected.
He understood that we are a small fish.
We're a real underdog when you're taking on China.
But there are things you can do that the Chinese don't like that make them think twice about leaning on you.
And there is a pragmatic debate to be had within the federal government, in the Justice Department, global affairs, prime minister's office about what we do with the Huawei executive that we are keeping under house arrest in Vancouver until she gets an extradition here into the United States.
What do we do with that?
How do we handle that?
Could we lean on the Germans, for instance, to lean on the Chinese to back off on our two people?
I don't know those answers, but they know those answers.
There's lots of people who are very, very smart who work at foreign affairs in Ottawa who have dealt with this problem that we have, being a country of 36 million up against giant economies and giant countries.
And how do we deal with that?
They know that.
But Trudeau and Christia Freeland, their belief is that they just virtue signal.
They tweet, and that's going to make everything go away.
And it's funny because they cringe when you compare them to Donald Trump.
But they conduct an awful lot of foreign policy with no more forethought nor any more depth of awareness and PR than Trump does.
Well, and just look at the effectiveness.
I mean, generally in foreign affairs, Trump gets what Trump wants, whether it's getting NATO countries to spend more on the military or, I mean, we don't know how the story is going to end with North Korea, but he certainly made more progress than Obama has.
I don't know.
I think the test of good intentions is good results.
And I don't even see, I can't name a single country in the world whose relations with Canada are better now than they were before.
No.
And not even Cuba or Iran, by the way.
Because it's not their fault, our fault.
We've annoyed the Saudis.
We've annoyed the Russians.
We've annoyed the India.
Big time we annoyed India.
I mean, Brazil.
Okay, so you say, well, you know, who cares?
So what about it?
The Saudis are now being run by a man who looks to the West like he might be more westernized and more liberal, but clearly is not.
So why not poke them in the eye?
Well, because you have to deal with countries on a long-term basis, not a gotcha basis, not a, ha, ha, ha, see what we did to you.
And I just think we're dealing now with people who are so smug, who have such high impressions of themselves, such high opinions of themselves, that they think the world is waiting.
Not just Canada is waiting, but the world sits breathless at the hem of Justin Trudeau to hear what the great man has to say next.
And that's just not happening.
You know, I'm glad you mentioned Brazil.
Their president, Yair Bolsonaro, very interesting guy, powerful, very Trumpy, very pro-Trump.
It reminds me a little bit of that Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini.
Bolsonaro, you can like him or not, but he won a majority of the votes in Brazil, and he's making things happen.
When he was elected, the press release by the Canadian government was so snippy, it didn't even mention him by name, let alone congratulate him.
It was so passive-aggressive.
And then remember when Trudeau was sitting between the Chinese president and the Brazilian president, and Trudeau was so desperate to he reached over to shake Bolsonaro's head.
Bolsonaro has no idea who Trudeau was, but if he bothered to know, he would see, oh, there's this snippy guy.
There's this.
He knew enough to turn his back on him.
He knew who it was.
And that's the point.
Because for the purpose of one snippy press release, if we would have showed some professional restraint, then maybe we could have had Bolsonaro's help getting our Canadian hostages back, but we just couldn't restrain ourselves.
Or we'd have smoothed over some of our other trade problems that we're having with Brazil right now.
I think the only people who can probably help us get our hostages out of China are the Americans.
And I'm not convinced that they're fully behind us.
And they should be because we did the arrest that they requested of us for the extradition of Meng.
So they should be behind us.
But, you know, there have been two or three or four times where Trudeau or Christia Freeland have been rude in public about Trump, dismissive, sneering, sny.
And he's saying probably to his justice and state to people, just ignore the Canadians.
We don't really need them.
They need us more than we need them.
And just let it go.
And that doesn't have to happen.
I mean, Harper didn't get dismissed by Obama, even though the two of them were miles apart on policy, because they dealt with each other professionally.
They dealt with each other courteously and intelligently.
This group in the liberal government does not do that.
It doesn't think through the response it would have if it was on the receiving end of the same virtue signaling that it seems to think the rest of the world needs.
Let me come back to one last thing, and I appreciate you being so generous with your time.
We've been talking, I mean, there's so much to talk about here, and I'm really enjoying it.
I want to come back to the headline of your piece, the latest liberal affront to free speech.
Let me zero in on one thing, and you mentioned it in passing, but I'd like to go back there again.
You mentioned that the senior civil servant, the assistant deputy minister, so that's pretty high up the food chain.
Again, this is a civil servant.
This is the permanent bureaucracy.
The politicians come and go, and their political staff come and go, but these guys are supposed to stick around, conservative, liberal, whatever.
They do their job honestly.
But this guy was making errand was running an errand for Trudeau, and he wasn't saying, hey, don't say this in public because it could jeopardize the lives of the hostages.
You could dispute that.
But that could be a legitimate reason for an assistant deputy minister to call someone up and say, look, we have information that what you've done has put them in jeopardy.
Please don't.
Okay, I mean, I might be irritated by that, but that's your objective.
But when you say it's for, as you point out in your article, quote, election environment, you have transformed the permanent bureaucracy of this country into an election team mate.
That's nothing new for these guys.
Take a look at Michael Wernick, the retired former clerk of the Privy Council, who was spearheading a lot of the pressure being put on Jody Wilson-Raybould last fall to cut SNC Laval in a deal.
That's not the role of the clerk of the Privy Council.
I worked with two clerks when I was in Ottawa in the 80s.
Both of them would have said to the Prime Minister, if the Prime Minister had said, look, I want you to phone the justice minister and put pressure on her to make this deal.
Both of them would have said, Mr. Prime Minister, she's your minister, not mine.
I will deal with the deputies if that's what needs to be done.
But ministers are the responsibility of the prime minister.
And second, sir, there is a law in the country that prevents us from making, putting this kind of pressure on the attorney general when it comes to an independent prosecution.
And I would recommend strongly, sir, that you not put pressure on her either.
But not Wernick.
Wernick was right out there.
And then the Liberals want to appoint him as one of the five guardians of our election when it comes to looking for interference from foreign countries.
They just have no concept of what freedom of expression means or what independence of thought means.
Can I leave you with one anecdote?
And I did a little show on this a few months ago.
I was watching Karina Gould, the Democratic Institutions Minister, in parliamentary committee answering some questions about this five-man internet censorship panel that Michael Wernick was going to chair, which is terrifying.
And she was asked several times for examples of when they would weigh in.
I thought that's a good question.
And she gave an answer two or three times, the same answer.
She said, the Macron leaks situation in France.
And Macron, of course, is the new president over there.
And just a couple weeks before their election, all of his campaign emails were hacked or leaked or something.
They were all published.
And there was a lot of very embarrassing information, deals, payoffs, private conversations that were insulting.
None of it was fake.
Macron's Leak Silence00:04:55
It was just leaked.
And it absolutely was news in the same way Hillary Clinton's emails were news or WikiLeaks' news.
It just was embarrassing for Emmanuel Macron.
So the French government ordered French media not to report on it and they didn't.
But it was truthful and it was relevant to voters.
The French government just said, no, no, no, we're going to protect our chosen one.
That was the specific example given by Trudeau's cabinet minister of when they would intervene.
Of a good intervention.
Yeah, oh, yes.
Yes.
She was saying if there was some embarrassing leak that was truthful, relevant to the public interest, important to the election, they would step in to protect Trudeau.
She said this.
She said this, Lorne.
And by the way, the conservatives just sort of shrugged and said, oh, okay.
Oh, yeah.
I don't know.
But you know what's going to happen if this sort of thing gets some traction, regulating social media or having election watchdogs.
Someone's going to say, look, I don't believe much in the positive side of multiculturalism.
Or I think that illegal immigration is leading to all sorts of problems in Canada.
Or I'm skeptical about the science behind climate change alarmism.
I mean, there are all sorts of issues about which the progressives feel so strongly that their side is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
And they will try and eliminate those messages from the public square.
That's what frightens me ultimately about all of it.
Well, it frightens me because I think they'll come from me first, and they'll come for you second, my friend.
Well, listen, thanks for spending so much time with us.
We covered a wide range of subjects, but you're always such a fan favorite.
It's always nice to have you, Lauren.
Okay, you bet.
All right, thanks, my friend.
Bye-bye.
All right, there you have it.
By the way, I recommend Lawrence Columbs all the time in the sun, but it's great when we have a chance to talk with him about it.
All right, stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologues yesterday about a burka-clad woman shouting shame at a pride parade in the UK.
Susanna writes, London is the canary in a coal mine when it comes to the implementation of Sharia law.
I would call it the boiling frog phenomenon.
By the time Londoners realize it's too hot, it'll be too late.
Well, Susanna, I'm going to disagree with you only in one regard, and that is London's like the 20th canary in the coal mine.
I would put Paris ahead of that.
I'd put Rotterdam in Holland ahead of that.
I would put Malmo, Sweden, far, far, far ahead of that.
And of course, why just focus on the last generation?
I mean, as I point out from time to time, Egypt was a Christian country once.
Now, maybe 10% of the people left there are Coptic Christians.
Constantinople was once the largest city in the world, the wealthiest city in the world.
It was the seat of an empire.
Now it's called Istanbul, and the Hajj of Sophia was turned into a mosque and now a museum.
Yeah.
So London is maybe the latest canary in the coal mine, but it's certainly not the first.
James writes, if this was a Christian, they would already be in jail.
Well, yeah, exactly.
I mean, I think about our friend Tommy Robinson, simply for asking rapists as they go into court on judgment day, how do you feel about your verdict today?
Not shouting, not swearing, not blocking.
How do you feel about your verdict today?
Well, that's a nine-month prison term.
Now, they claimed it was impeding and prejudicing the trial.
That's not true.
The trial's over.
Prison for him.
There's a guy named James Goddard in the UK called a lefty politician a Nazi.
That's all he said, called her a Nazi.
It's not true.
It's mean.
He just got a criminal conviction.
This Burqa-clad Muslim woman crying shame.
The police apparently detained her yesterday.
I don't believe she'll be charged.
And if she's charged, I don't believe she'll be prosecuted.
I just don't see it.
I just don't see.
We'll see.
We'll see.
But I don't think justice in the UK is blind anymore.
Connie writes, in June 2019, a Toronto man was arrested and held in jail overnight for preaching on the street in a gay village.
This in a country that supposedly values free speech.
A month or so later, a Muslim woman is in London and is screaming at gay people on the street, calling them shameful, and nothing at all will happen to her.
I think you're talking about Reverend David Lynn at the Gay Pride Parade.
And I saw that he wears a body cam.
We helped David Lynn about four or five years ago when he was arrested for, they called it busking.
Hateful Preaching Pickle00:00:43
He was preaching at Young and Dundas Square.
I haven't talked to him in a few years, but I see he's in the pickle again.
And he was just, I saw the videotape, and he was not being abusive or rude.
I mean, he was having a message of love, like he's, yeah, I mean, he's Christian, but he wasn't abusive.
He was actually arrested.
The better comparison I would have was when David accosted that Muslim extremist at the Al-Qudsday protest who said, I want Sharia law in Canada, and under Sharia law, Gays will be executed.
He just said, he wasn't even saying it in a hateful, threatening way.
He just said, oh, yeah, that's going to be what we do here.