Justin Trudeau’s government now dictates 2019 federal election leaders’ debates, excluding Maxine Bernier by enforcing a rule requiring elected MPs at the call date while stacking moderators with five of ten slots from Quebec-based outlets despite its smaller population. Critics warn this could turn debates into a Liberal policy echo chamber, ignoring $77M LCBO losses from ignored shoplifting or fiscal issues like immigration and pipelines—mirroring Candy Crowley’s 2012 U.S. debate bias. The move risks shrinking public discourse to pre-approved themes, raising questions about media independence and partisan influence under Trudeau’s administration. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I talk about something that I haven't seen criticized anywhere in the media party.
It's a bizarre new decision that Justin Trudeau and his hand-picked staff will run the election debates in Canada this fall.
In the past it was a voluntary agreement between the media and the political parties.
Everyone was equal.
And they haggled over the rules and who was where and what the subjects would be.
No, no, not anymore.
Justin Trudeau has taken over that and has hand-picked his lefty journalists and they will set the rules whether you like it or not.
I think it's insane and I haven't seen a single criticism of it by the media party.
I'll show you all the details in a moment.
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All right, here's my podcast about just another way that Trudeau has his thumb on the scale of this upcoming election.
Tonight, is there anything in the upcoming federal election that is not being rigged by the Trudeau government?
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 to say is government about why I publish them is because it's my bloody right to do so.
We're less than 90 days away from the 2019 Canadian federal election, but it is summertime for another month, and most Canadians aren't really paying attention, I don't think.
But after Labor Day, it's going to be a quick sprint to October 21st.
One of the moments that sort of wakes everybody up to the fact that an election is imminent is the leaders' debates.
They usually don't contain any decisive moments these days, but there are a few.
Remember this one, Jack Layton skewering that American tourist named Michael Ignatieff, who very, very briefly visited Canada and became liberal leader.
You said before you have to walk the walk and you have to be a strong leader and respect Parliament.
I've got to ask you then, why do you have the worst attendance record in the House of Commons of any member of parliament?
If you want to be prime minister, you better learn how to be a member of parliament first.
You know, most Canadians, if they don't show up for work, they don't get a promotion.
Mr. Layton, I don't surrender to anybody in my respect for the institution of Parliament and my obligation to the people who put me there.
So don't give me lessons about respect for democracy.
Where were your lessons?
Where were you lessons?
I was there standing up to Mr. Denver and voting against his policies, and you weren't in the chamber.
You missed 70% of the votes.
I think you need to understand a little bit more about how our democracy works.
That's my only point.
I don't know.
Why Respect Matters00:13:14
Maybe it wasn't a killer moment, but I thought it was pretty good.
And that was a question put by one political party leader to another, not by a journalist.
But in the main, it's not the political candidates who control the debate.
It's the debate organizers.
Here's what I mean by that.
I like that exchange I just showed you, but what if the rules were a little bit different?
What if those candidates couldn't ask each other questions?
What if they weren't allowed to follow up with a supplemental question like Jack Layton was?
What if they just let the other candidate wriggle out of it?
What if that was the rules?
I don't think any journalist would have put that question to Ignatiov that way.
I'm glad Layton did.
How much time do the various candidates get?
Who will cut them off and how forcefully?
Even just the fact, just notice that there, the studio was all orange.
That's the NDP color.
Who's in charge of that?
Could it be Conservative Blue or Liberal Red instead?
Maybe Green Party Green.
All those things make a little difference.
But I think by far a more important decision about the formats of these debates are the roles played by the journalists who moderate them, because often those moderators are so political.
And 100% of the time, if they're political, they're on the left, by the way.
And they often just can't help themselves.
Can I show you an example from the American 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, and they were talking about the al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi just a month earlier.
Now take a look at this.
There weren't two debaters on the stage.
There were three.
Take a look.
Took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
Get the transcript.
He did, in fact, sir.
So let me call it an act of terror.
Can you say that a little louder?
He did call it an act of terror.
It did as well take, it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out.
You're correct about that.
The administration indicated that this was a reaction to a video and was a spontaneous reaction.
That was Candy Crowley, a CNN journalist, but she really, really wanted to be a debater, didn't she?
Mitt Romney had given an answer that happened to be right, actually.
Obama and his team had lied about the terrorist nature of that attack.
For weeks they lied.
Natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video.
There was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video.
We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with.
That is what we saw play out in the last two weeks.
It was a crude and disgusting video.
Sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.
So Romney was right.
But even if he wasn't right, it's up to Barack Obama to point that out, or to tens of millions of Americans at home, judging for themselves, not for a left-wing journalist in the moment to interfere with the debate, to say to the candidates whether their answer was or wasn't correct, in her opinion.
That's nuts.
And like I say, she was wrong factually, by the way.
Do you see my point?
So who's going to be the moderator of Canadian debates?
And what questions do they get to ask?
The Democrats in the United States right now are having their presidential nomination debates at the presidential primary.
And it's a hoot to watch.
But look at this question from Don Lemon, of course from CNN again.
He states as fact, not as opinion, but as a premise that we can all agree on that Donald Trump is a racist.
We want to turn now to the issue of race in America.
Congressman Arour, President Trump is pursuing a re-election strategy based in part on racial division.
How do you convince primary voters that you'd be the best nominee to take on President Trump and heal the racial divide in America?
Now they're all Democrats, so they all agree with that, I think.
And like I showed you from that Romney-Obama debate, CNN is pretty much partisan left-wing.
I'm not sure how many Republicans or independents were even watching, but who writes the questions?
Who chooses the themes?
Often debates are split up into different chunks, different sections, based on different topics.
You might have a section on foreign affairs.
You might have a different one on health care, just for example.
But who chooses?
I know one thing, Justin Trudeau would love a half hour in the debates about the climate crisis, climate emergency.
And you know that's what the media actually calls it these days, a crisis.
It's not a crisis.
There's no objective measurement by which it could possibly be called a crisis.
It is objectively true, by contrast, that we do have an immigration crisis in Canada, 50,000 illegal entries at that Wroxham Road ditch on the Quebec-New York border.
All of them fake refugees, by the way.
You cannot be a refugee from America.
That's not a thing.
There's now, what, a 10-year backlog for reviewing those bogus refugee claims?
We're at the point where we're warehousing refugees in urban refugee camps, including in entire hotels in Toronto.
Yeah, that is objectively a crisis, but what are the odds that there would be a 30-minute segment on the immigration crisis, the bogus refugee crisis, and that word crisis would be used there as opposed to a climate crisis?
Yeah, you know that just wouldn't happen.
Now, in the past, anyone could theoretically host an election leaders' debate.
Of course, all you have to do is convince the leaders to show up.
So you'd have to be able to produce it successfully.
You'd have to be reliable technically.
You'd have to be able to bring an audience.
You'd probably have to have some reputation for nonpartisanship.
So that limits it to probably a dozen different groups, including, I don't know, Facebook, for example, universities.
Remember last time there was one of the Monk debates at the University of Toronto.
But like I say, there would be a choice in the past.
And so the groups pitching the debates to the parties would have an incentive to be fair, I think, to make it palatable to all the party leaders if they wanted them to participate.
Or maybe they don't want all the leaders to participate.
Elizabeth May loves being in these leaders' debates.
Even though she has no chance of becoming prime minister, zero chance.
She just really uses it as a fundraising opportunity for her party, a PR opportunity, and to bash the Conservative candidate.
In the last election, she literally never once attacked the Liberal candidate.
She just didn't.
I watched all of her interventions.
All of her attacks were on Trudeau's opponents, especially the Conservative who was running Stephen Harbor.
That's not normal.
That's not natural.
That's a Candy-Crowley problem.
That's a two-on-one problem.
Elizabeth May historically has been the Liberal Party's wingman, Trudeau's little buddy.
So obviously the left want her in there to double the amount of bashing on Andrew Scheer this time.
But this time, given just how far Trudeau has collapsed in British Columbia because of his mistreatment of Jody Wilson-Raybole, I actually think the Green Party, if they do well, might steal maybe even a couple of seats out there and more importantly, split the Liberal NDP vote out there.
So paradoxically, having a wingman like Elizabeth May might actually help the Conservatives this time.
But my point today is: if there were freedom in who arranged these debates and how you could have some people offer to host a debate with her in it and see who comes, and someone would offer to host a debate without her in it and see who comes, and it would be whatever.
It would be free.
But, you know, I mean, for contrast, what do you think about Maxine Bernier?
The left-wing media love having Elizabeth May in these debates, but they despise Maxine Bernier.
Would they keep him out?
Well, yes, it's going to happen this time.
Look at this from the Liberal government press release announcing the rules for debates.
In the interest of time and as a starting point for the upcoming 2019 debates, the government has established clear criteria for participation by political party leaders.
In 2019, debates would include leaders of political parties that meet two of the following three criteria.
At the time of the general election in question is called, the party is represented in the House of Commons by a member of parliament who was elected as a member of that party.
That's one of the criteria there.
That's a rule written to address precisely one person, Maxine Bernier.
That's the rule now.
Now, there's two other criteria.
Do they have a certain number of candidates?
Are they at a certain level in the polls?
But all of a sudden, the government has just said there are official government rules written by Trudeau now that will determine who gets to debate him.
Trudeau says so.
It's the law now.
Even if the media wanted otherwise, even if all the party leaders wanted otherwise, that's what Trudeau wants.
And what he wants is what he gets.
In the past, these were all private decisions between the political parties and the media, but now they're not.
Now there's actually a government commission that makes the decisions for these debates appointed by Trudeau.
Why?
Why does the government matter?
Decided by people who work for Justin Trudeau and the establishment.
Since when does the government regulate that?
And extra gross, they've appointed former Governor General David Johnson to run it.
Why is he doing errands for Trudeau now?
And look at the news today.
Look at this.
Who will be shaping the reporters, shaping the questions, shaping the themes?
It's Trudeau's pets.
This is from a CBC story.
Here's the government's list of approved journalists for these debates.
Only these media are allowed to participate in the debates.
CBC News, Radio Canada, that's the French Quebec wing of CBC.
Global News, CTV News, the Toronto Star.
Huffington Post Canada, Huffington Post, Quebec.
They get two slots, I guess.
La Presse le d'Ivoire Intellectualité.
So the Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal establishment.
Nothing from the West, of course.
They're just reformers out there.
Five out of the 10 of the institutions are in Quebec.
That's weird.
Quebec has less than a quarter of Canada's population.
Two of them are state broadcasters.
The newspapers from the bailout media.
This is Trudeau's $600 million election bribe.
They're obviously there.
Toronto Star.
I saw this headline in Blacklocks, the great independent news outlet in Ottawa.
Bailout worth $115,000 a week to the Toronto Star.
Let me read a little bit.
The largest daily newspaper in Canada, the Toronto Star, yesterday, estimated its take of federal money, federal media bailout money, is worth the equivalent of $115,385 a week.
Payroll rebates will see publishers awarded up to $13,750 per newsroom employee.
That's called a bribe, folks.
Gee, do you think they're going to have a theme or a section of the debate about the carbon tax and its cost to business?
Or Trudeau's war against pipelines and industry?
Do you think they're going to talk about the foreign policy mess Trudeau's created with China, India, Saudi Arabia, everyone?
Or do you think Trudeau's hand-picked bailout media will talk about the climate crisis?
Hey, Andrew Scheer, let's talk about the climate crisis.
Look at this.
Look at page A3 in the star.
So this is page three of the Toronto Star.
It's a whole page called A Fight for the Future.
The Star asks the same two questions of the five Canadians who are making climate change a top priority.
I'm sorry, that is not news.
That's bought and paid for Liberal Party propaganda.
And I mean, listen, what they put on page three of their own newspapers, their business.
But these people are legally appointed to run the debates.
So Justin Trudeau says they're going to shape the debates.
Them, the state broadcaster, and the Huffington Post.
They make me laugh so hard.
I mean, I don't think I'm a snob.
I hope I'm not, but the Huffington Post is not a newspaper of record.
They are junk.
These are stories from the Huffington Post.
If they were printed on paper, they would be called the gutter press.
They would be called, well, they would be called worse, but they're loyal Trudeau boosters.
So of course they're going to run the debate.
I've said it before, under Justin Trudeau, there will only be two types of media soon.
Only two types of conversation at all in this country.
Conversations approved by the government and founded by the government.
And conversations banned by the government.
Nothing else.
Hey, how do you feel about that?
stay with us anyways the question arises how much money in terms of dollars is the LCBO losing on an annual basis We reached out to the LCBO.
They refused to give us these figures.
So we made an FOI request, and incredibly, our demand for a dollar figure was denied.
Now, what makes this concerning is that we're supposed to have a new government in place where there is transparency, especially when it comes to crown corporations.
Now, we reached out to the Ministry of Finance, and they basically told us that this is an LCBO internal matter.
My personal theory is that the dollar amount must be so massive.
LCBO's Hidden Shrinkage Problem00:07:14
Can you turn that off?
Actually, well, that would defeat the purpose of our visit.
They don't want to be on a camera.
They don't have to be on camera, okay?
Can you turn it?
You're not doing that.
We are on camera right now.
I understand that, but this is your own personal camera.
We do not want you to on your own personal camera.
Sir, your autofocus is not going to help you here.
Okay?
Turn off the switch there.
That's the autofocus.
I'm not a fool.
Get out the store, guys.
You have to get out.
If she hasn't given you the go ahead, you have to get out.
Well, there's the story in itself.
It's an incredible story.
And joining us in studio is our friend David Menzies.
David, that's incredible.
I want to make sure that I understood the premise of this right.
The LCBO, that's the government liquor stores in Ontario.
There's versions across the country.
Their policy here is if someone shoplifts liquor, not to stop them.
Correct.
So that's an official policy.
If you steal liquor, they will not stop you.
That is correct.
The person just walks right out the store, Ezra.
And I want to be clear about something.
This is not just destitute people, you know, hobos coming in for a hit.
There are now organized people that are stealing booze to resell it.
And I mean, Ezra, think of that business plan.
Your cost of inventory is zero.
And I mean, there's some cheap, you know, hooch that's a few bucks, but there are some kinds of liquors, you know, an old whiskey, a fancy champagne that are hundreds.
There's probably even some wine or liquor that's over $1,000, and they just let people walk out.
What's the justification for that?
Like, they obviously have a security guard.
We saw a security guard touching your camera, stopping you, getting all up in your grill, and maybe fair enough.
But you're saying they don't do that to people stealing liquor from them that they see.
As I understand that.
In fact, later in the video, Ezra, that man's partner, another security guard, my cameraman, Ephraim, and I were walking away, and I got that, you know, that spidey sense feeling someone's following me.
And sure enough, it was the other security guard.
Now, we walked an entire city block from Queens Key to Lakeshore Boulevard, and then we hung a right, which is we're walking further and further away from the LCBO, and this guy's following me.
So he's following you, so you can't film him, but they're going to creep behind you.
You're no longer, like, that is super, you're not even in their store anymore.
But they won't do that to someone who's stolen $50,000, $100, $500, $1,000 worth of liquor.
It's almost like they, yeah, go ahead.
How?
That's insane.
But what was the purpose for that?
And then I start to follow him.
Now, once he realizes he's being followed, he's hottailing it back to the LCBO.
And the question I said to him, Ezra, is that, why don't you follow the thieves out of the store?
Why don't you make a citizen's arrest?
You're entitled to do so.
What kind of a threat we are?
So shoplifting is allowed at the LCBO, but practicing journalism isn't?
You know, theft, shoplifting, theft at a restaurant, theft at any retail store, theft at a dollar store, theft at a Walmart, theft at a Safeway, a Sobeys, is one of the big issues for an entrepreneur.
A cash business where there's little things that can.
I mean you see this in drugstores where small, expensive things like those razor blade packages for like a Gillette they're so insanely expensive yes, that you actually have to like get them unlocked or something or ask for them from the cash, because you know shrinkage or whatever they would call.
It's such a problem.
It's why a cash business like a bar, you have got to be there every day or you'll just be eaten and drank out of business.
It's, it's a real burden for any retail person.
Yeah, and the LCBO has just sort of said nope, because the sucker taxpayer will cover it and we don't care.
And I don't even understand.
Is it because it's too hard?
Is it because some ideological reason?
Well, they must be really thirsty and they're.
But, as you point out, it's not like a poor person stealing bread.
I mean that that still should not be allowed.
But maybe there's a real problem there.
A poor person's hungry for bread.
They're stealing booze here.
And did you point out it's organized gangs.
I mean, I find this so perplexing.
Have you heard anything on the political side?
No sadly, Ezra.
We reach out to the Ministry OF Finance and they go.
Well, it's an internal LCBO thing.
By the way, when you do get people at the LCBO to talk to you, they play the role of, well, we are merely the puppets of our ministerial masters.
So they do this alphonse and gaston routine.
I've reached out.
Sadly, I must report.
Sadly, given how he ran on a campaign of transparency to Doug Ford's office and be met with radio silence.
But I want to pick up on what you said just a bit earlier.
You were mentioning other retailers like Costco and Walmart.
If they have a shrinkage problem, they have a shoplift problem.
You know what that's their business.
The difference here is that you and I and all the other millions of people that live in Ontario, we're the shareholders.
Yeah, we have skin in the game.
We can't allow this.
You know money to.
You know, just go out the door.
We filed an FOI that gave us five intangible, bizarre reasons why they were going to keep this confidential.
Have you appealed that freedom?
We have appealed it and, as I said, we're still waiting to hear back from the premier's office.
And it makes a mockery Ezra, of the justification of the monopoly of the LCBO and other provincial liquor bureaus as well, which is social responsibility.
You know we can't let the private sector handle trade and something potentially dangerous as alcohol.
I mean, there'll be kids drinking Colt 45 in the parking lot.
So we have a situation Ezra, where you have, if it's somebody that looks like they're not 19, they'll be challenged at the cash register and refused if they're paying for the booze.
But if that minor just steals a bottle of booze, oh can they get the door for you sir, I've never heard of anything so stupid in my life and of course it's going to be from a government and a unionized government bureaucracy that unbelievable.
I think the LCBO should stop oversampling their own goods when they make business decisions unbelievable.
Thanks, Dave.
And one last thing, you mentioned the union.
The union estimates this is information.
I just came across that the The amount of the problem is approximately $77 million per year.
Come on.
I don't know how they got to that figure.
That's well, that's more than a million a week.
That's $150,000 a day.
I don't think let's be open seven days a week.
Like every day, every liquor store is being robbed.
And this is as if Justin Trudeau's open borders immigration policy has been applied to liquor stores.
Everyone's welcome to take a bottle.
That's how stupid it is.
I can't believe that Doug Ford would allow this.
Believe Doug: LCBO Controversy00:01:25
Something's broken.
I agree.
You guys stay on the story.
All right, folks, stay with us.
More ahead.
I'm going to go get myself a thousand dollar bottle of whiskey.
Oh, my God.
Well, that's our show for today.
What do you think about the slow accretion of power over our political system by Justin Trudeau?
I mean, maybe you don't think it's a big deal who runs the election debates.
Well, will you think it's a big deal if the whole thing turns into a liberal policy platform replica?
Let's talk about global warming.
Let's talk about feminism.
Let's talk about, like, if it's all his shtick and it's all set up to bash the conservatives.
I'm sure the left would freak out if an official Stephen Harper appointed Election Debates Commission chose his favorite subjects for the entire leaders' debate.
Let's talk about fiscal responsibility.
You could see how outraged the media would be if Harper picked his favorite people to run the debates.
I haven't seen a peep against this from the bailout media.
Not a peep.
But this is just one of 100 things that's slowly constricting our national conversation.
Sorry, I said slowly constricting.
I don't think it's slow at all.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.