Ezra Levant and Kian Becksty, barred by Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s "cartel" despite White House, British Parliament, and Israeli Knesset credentials, entered a Pompeo-Freeland press conference as part of a U.S. delegation. Levant’s question about waiving tariffs on Chinese steel—while China held two Canadians—was adopted but softened by other reporters; Freeland dodged with no follow-up allowed. Freeland’s staff, including Adam Austin, allegedly blocked access to journalists like Sheila Gunreed while granting it to state-run Xinhua. Levant mocks Freeland’s "millennial know-nothing" team, citing diplomatic blunders in Saudi Arabia, China, India, and U.S. NAFTA talks, and notes her communications director’s unprofessional attire. Despite exclusion, TheRebel.media’s 100M+ annual views prove their influence, exposing Canada’s censorship and undermining its global credibility. [Automatically generated summary]
In today's show I give you a behind-the-scenes story of how Kian Becksty and I managed to attend a press conference hosted by Canada's foreign minister Christia Freeland.
Normally we're banned from these events but this time we were sneaked in, smuggled in by no one other than Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, the former director of the CIA.
It's quite a story.
It's really a story of censorship.
It's not a happy story.
Before I let you hear that, can I invite you to go to the rebel.media slash shows and become a premium subscriber.
It's $8 a month or $80 for the year.
You get the video version of this show.
You also get access to Sheila Gunreed's show and David Menzie's show.
And of course, we use the $8 a month here at The Rebel to produce our good works.
All right, without further ado, here is today's podcast.
Tonight is Freedom of Speech Alive in our nation's capital.
It's August 26th, 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.
For the rebel.media, I'm Ezra Levant on a glorious sunny day here in Ottawa.
Behind me, the National War Memorial, a most somber place.
You can see the honor guard.
We saw earlier, the changing of the guard.
And you might see there's a wreath laid earlier today by the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who's in town for a bilateral visit with his Canadian counterpart, Christia Freeland, our foreign minister.
Of course, I don't need to remind you that this very site was where an honor guard a few years ago named Corporal Nathan Cirrillo was murdered in cold blood by an ISIS terrorist before he burst into the parliament in a hail of gunfire.
Miraculously, no one inside was killed but himself, but a very sober place here and fitting for Mike Pompeo, himself a military veteran, to lay a wreath.
Now, we're in town because we want to attend that press conference between Pompeo and Freeland.
And of course, we cover American news and Canadian news.
And so when they come together, we love to cover it.
We are accredited to cover news around the world.
We've been everywhere from the White House to the British Parliament, even to the Israeli Knesset and everywhere in between.
You might even recall I went to Iraq once.
I'll never go back, I hope.
But here in Canada, Christy Freeland blacklists us and doesn't let us go to events.
It's outrageous, it's censorious, and even more strange, the Parliamentary Press Gallery, which is the cartel, the guild that manages access to these events run by our competitors and rivals, they're happy to do the censorship for her.
So we were rejected to attend a press conference, rejected.
But I know that the United States believes in this little thing they call the First Amendment.
So since we're accredited at the White House, I reached out to the United States and said, we're Canadian, but can we come into this press conference as part of your American media delegation?
Can we, in effect, be smuggled in with the Americans and the Canadians, well, it'll be too late to stop us.
Well, we're about to find out.
Let's see if we're allowed to get in because of our Americans and their love for freedom of speech, even freedom of speech for us Canadians.
Well, here I am inside the National Arts Center.
We were allowed in, but we got in, as I mentioned before, through the office of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The Americans brought us in as part of the American delegation.
The Canadians had blackballed us.
Not just Christia Freeland and her staff, but Canada's parliamentary press gallery.
They were sort of shocked when I walked in and Kian Bexte came in with me.
We had our press passes as handed out by the Americans.
We were smuggled in.
I like to say, oh boy, Christia Freeland's own communications director, Adam Austin.
I think he was startled.
Who let him in?
It was very funny, but they didn't make a scene as I feared they might.
In fact, I sat right at the front row and I didn't wink at Christy Freeland, but I sort of smiled and nodded and she smiled and nodded back.
I guess she didn't know what to do.
I was, for a minute there, I was worried that she was going to try and kick me out and Kian Out too.
Do you remember?
They literally tried to do that to Sheila Gunread at the London Free Speech Conference.
Here's just a clip of the watch Christia Freeland's staff try and blackball Sheila Gunread.
This was in July.
So, Love and Mill, Global, CTV, Alzheimer, CT, and the National Economic Evil.
What about the rest of us?
The rest of us?
The rest of us have to see that.
No, I know.
We all know that.
That's nonsense.
No, Let me just take us to the room and we can see if we can.
No, we're not going for your media freedom conference.
Yeah, this is ridiculous.
Please don't do that.
Yeah, you're not going that.
Well, they didn't try and do that to us now because we were with Mike Pompeo and Christia Freeland didn't want to get offside with him.
I honestly didn't learn a lot from being here.
First of all, I could have watched the remarks of these two politicians on TV.
Probably would have had just as clear a time hearing them.
I was sitting in the front row, so that was fine, but other than the personal satisfaction of being right there, I didn't glean a lot.
The questions that were asked were asked generally in a bland way.
The answers completely predictable.
I want to tell you about that.
There was an American delegation, as you know, I was smuggled in with them, and there was a Canadian delegation.
I didn't know the Americans, so I naturally went over and said hi to some of the Canadians, some of whom I know, some whom I'm on friendly terms with.
I met Lucy Zhou, who's with New Tang Dynasty TV.
That's a Chinese language TV station in Canada that's very democracy-oriented and freedom-oriented.
And we know other people from NTD TV like Joe Wong.
So there were ideological friends here.
I won't name all of them because I don't want to get them in trouble.
But I had a good chat with some friends, but I also saw those parliamentary press gallery executives who had blackballed me, who had written me the letters saying, you're not allowed here.
And they were a little surprised to see me.
Now, I want to tell you, as you probably know, it's hard to be mean to someone when they're right in front of you.
It was easy for them to write us a terse one-line email, you're not allowed here because the rebel's not a real media, or whatever they said.
It's easy to do that from the coldness of a keyboard.
But when I was standing in front of them, flesh and bone, I said, what's your beef?
Let's just talk it out, like, like, man.
And they, maybe they just said it to get through the stress of the moment, but they said yes.
So I said, let's just sit down over coffee, cell phones off, off the record.
What's your beef?
Let's get the rebel here.
And simply objecting to our ideology or philosophy or our style is not sufficient because, I mean, I didn't mention it to them here, but if you look at who's a member of the parliamentary press gallery, you even have, for example, Xinhua.
That's a state propaganda channel in China.
So how could they possibly be granted official parliamentary gallery press status?
And we're not.
I mean, they're not even, that is not even journalism when you are a propaganda outlet for China.
So I said to them, well, let's talk it out.
I want to solve the problem because I don't want to be a perpetual victim of being blacklisted.
I want to come to the events that are interesting to me.
But let me tell you what happened when I walked over to the other Canadian journalists.
I knew some of them, some of them knew me.
I mentioned a couple of them from the parliamentary press gallery, but we got down to the business of what questions would we ask the minister, and it was a bit of a collective exercise, which I'm naturally not that comfortable with because I think journalism-I mean, I guess you could do it collectively with your competitors, but I don't know.
But that's that's the style of it, and here's why.
Because I think there were only four questions allowed in total.
If memory serves two from the Americans and two from the Canadians, so if you have a gaggle of half a dozen Canadians, it makes sense that they sort of talk amongst themselves and say, Okay, well, what do we really want to press them on?
And given that it was foreign affairs, the theme was, well, what do we do about China?
And I agreed, and there were some ideas.
The lady from New Tang Dynasty TV gave her suggestion and other suggestions, and I put a suggestion forward.
I saw this press release by the United Steelworkers.
They're not exactly right-wing people, it's a left-wing labor union, and it was scorching the Liberals for waiving tariffs and duties on an enormous amount of Chinese-made steel.
Let me explain what I mean.
There's a huge LNG construction project in BC, $42 billion jobs project.
It's the largest construction project in Canada.
And a Canadian tribunal just ruled that China was illegally dumping Chinese steel in the Canadian market, illegally, unfairly, below cost to drive out Canadian competitors, and this was illegal.
And Christy Freeland just said, Oh, that's okay.
That's okay.
We'll waive the rules and dump all your cheap steel here.
Say what?
And so, by the way, a lot of the journalists I spoke to didn't even know this news.
How could they not know that?
So, I actually emailed them the story.
I showed them on my phone.
And I said, Hey guys, how about we put this question to her because it's fresh and she might not have a pat answer?
And I said, You recently waived tariffs and duties on Chinese steel being dumped in Canada.
How could you do that, especially given that China still holds two Canadian citizens?
I said it almost word for word like that.
And everyone said, That's a great question.
That's a great question.
And they all agreed that I had a great question.
I felt sort of good about that.
And then they said, Oh, but Ezra, we don't want you to ask it.
And I said, Well, you know, no offense, mate, but why?
And they said, Oh, well, you'll antagonize the minister.
I said, No, I'll just say word for word, like I just put it to you.
And they said, Well, oh, you came in with Mike Pompeo, so you have to take one of the American two questions.
You can't say it in the Canadian question.
We'll take your question and we'll ask it as one of the two Canadians.
And I thought, you know what?
I'm just glad that there's some proper journalism with a real question being asked.
Although, to be honest, I think it wasn't asked as sharply as it could have been.
But here's Global TV writing the question that I suggested and sort of wrote.
Here, take a look.
To Minister Freeland, the steel workers are denouncing the decision to lift tariffs on the illegally dumped steel from China in British Columbia and the LNG projects.
I'm wondering if you can talk about why that decision was made in light of the two Canadians detained in China.
When it comes to steel, let me just start by saying our government is tremendously supportive of our steel and aluminum sectors and our steel and aluminum workers.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, one of the successes that Canada and the United States have enjoyed in our relationship earlier this year is coming to a point where we were able to lift the 232 tariffs in both directions.
And that has added to the prosperity of both of our countries, both of whose economies are growing strongly.
And that has been really good news for Canadian steel workers.
And that is a really good thing.
When it comes to the LNG project, this is one of the biggest investments in Canadian history.
It is going to create a great number of new jobs in Canada.
And it's an investment that Canadians can be proud of because it will contribute to the fight against climate change by making available Canadian LNG to replace coal in a lot of countries.
So it's a very important project.
It's something we are glad to be supporting and facilitating.
Now, listen, as I said to that journalist from Global after she said it, I said I was flattered that she thought my question was good enough to ask.
Christia Freeland's Sock Choice00:07:39
And frankly, even if she was asking it even more sharply, it was Christia Freeland who gave a non-answer.
And there were no supplementary questions allowed.
So, you know what?
I felt pretty good that I came up with a question that the rest of the media gaggle said, yeah, let's make that our first question as a group.
But I thought it was a little bit clubby and a little bit of a clique to say, Ezra, thanks for doing the thinking work.
Now you go off and sit with the Americans.
We're going to ask this because you're not one of us.
Well, I don't want to bitch too much, but my point is, this is a problem.
This clubby guild, don't they see it's a problem?
Listen, I would have had fun asking that question, and it would have been fun to see if Christy Freeland would have answered it with a straight face.
I don't know.
Maybe she would have kicked me out.
But don't these other journalists see it's a problem that I'm being kicked out and Keen's being kicked out and Sheila's being kicked out and David Menzies being kicked out, every single one of us being kicked out because of our ideology?
Like maybe a severely normal person wouldn't care, but you're a journalist in the freedom of expression business and you just think, oh, well, yeah, we're going to ban you.
How can that be normal?
Anyways, I would regard today as a success.
Neither I nor Kean were given one of the two Canadian slots, and obviously we weren't given one of the two American slots.
They were taken by the New York Times and the Washington Post that traveled with Mike Pompeo, and I think it made sense to give them the slot.
I mean, it would be absurd for them to give it to me.
I was treated delightfully well by the American staff, including from embassy staff who came over and said they were huge fans.
I'm not going to say who they were because I don't want to get them in trouble.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see some other Canadian journalists who sympathized with us and said they too had been blackballed by this media party guild that runs the parliamentary press gallery.
So in closing, I'd say we had a little bit of fun today.
We were smuggled in by the Americans who believe in freedom here more than we believe in freedom here.
And although it was fun, I know that's not going to happen often because most of the things we want to cover in Canada, there's no American friend who can smuggle us in with the First Amendment.
We're left here with Christia Freeland and her bizarre little troop of parliamentary staffers trying to censor us every term.
You know what, though?
It hasn't stopped us yet.
I looked at our stats.
We've had 100 million views of our videos in the last year.
100 million.
And that's all with being blackballed by Christia Freeland and her little elves.
So that doesn't bother me too much.
It just bothers me as a Canadian that we don't have the freedom that we deserve.
From Ottawa, for TheRebel.media, I'm Ezra LeVance.
Well, I recorded that experience at the National Arts Center when it happened on Thursday, but I'm recording this little video on Monday.
As you can see, I've gotten a haircut since.
And in fact, I needed a haircut pretty badly.
I was looking a little bit schleppy, and I got some good advice from viewers on that.
But it made me think about a strange encounter that I had at the National Arts Center when I walked in.
And remember, this is for one of the highest-ranking American cabinet secretaries, Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, meeting Christia Freeland.
There's so much at stake, military, commerce, diplomacy with China.
There's so much going on.
And everyone was on their best behavior.
Everything was scripted.
There were so many handlers.
There was so much security.
And it was quite an amazing feeling.
The ambassador from the United States to Canada was there.
It was her last day.
She was dressed to the nines, a whole lots of VIPs.
And as I walked into the National Arts Center, I saw a guy who was scurrying about, talking on his cell phone.
And he reminded me a little bit of a wedding planner.
He came across that way.
He was effusive.
He was very dramatic.
And the strange thing about him was that he wasn't wearing socks.
He was wearing a suit, but his pants were short.
And I could tell he was wearing teeny tiny socks that exposed his ankles and a little string anklet, an ankle bracelet.
Here's what it looks like.
And I later discovered that that is Christia Freeland's communications director.
That's the man in charge of sending our images, sending our impressions to the world as Canadians.
And that was how he was dressing on this momentous day where Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was coming to town.
And my first thought was, put on some socks, what are you doing?
And of course, Kian, who's much younger than me, said, Ezra, that's sort of the millennial style.
Well, I don't care what style it is.
You have the Secretary of State of the United States coming and you're dressing like you're at some bar or club or something.
Put on a suit, put on some socks, and yeah, we know you want to show us that anklet.
And maybe that's a high fashion somewhere, but it just, I thought to myself, who would do that?
Who would do that on this most grave and important meeting?
It felt disrespectful to me.
Now, maybe I'm just showing my age.
I'm coming across as a fuddy duddy, but I just couldn't stop looking at this guy.
Everyone else was wearing suits and very formal, but the maestro of the whole event was dressed like a punk, like a kid.
And I thought, well, you know, that's how Christia Freeland's whole entourage is.
They're this millennial team shaking up the world order and doing it their way.
And they're not going to be button-down fuddy duddies like old Mike Pompeo is.
Yeah, except for how's that working out for Canada?
From Saudi Arabia to China to India to the United States, it's been a series of diplomatic disasters, some of which has been substantive.
You just can't get around what China did to Canada in retribution for us arresting the Huawei executive.
But how Canada has handled that has been a disaster.
Look at how Canada handled India, blaming India for the fiasco of the trip there.
Point is, Christian Freeland's team of millennial know-nothings and their arrogant style, which it rubs people the wrong way.
I understand from news reports that Freeland herself was asked to leave the final phases of the NAFTA renegotiations because she was so irritating to the U.S. delegation.
My point is that is who we are putting forward as our best face.
And even the little things like not wearing socks when Mike Balpeo is coming, it just shows an arrogant, know-nothing, know-it-all.
But come to think of it, that's a perfect hire for Christia Freeland and Justin Trudeau, who I guess loves socks a little too much.
Stay with us for more.
Canada's Thin-Skinned Government00:01:04
Well, folks, I'm in front of the National War Memorial.
Again, that's just outside the National Arts Center.
There are tourists here.
You can see the honor guard.
I've had a very interesting day.
Because there were only two questions for the Canadians and two for the Americans.
It's not surprising that, given that we were smuggled in at the last minute, that we didn't get an opportunity to ask one of them.
But I am a little bit proud that the question I came up with was put by another Canadian journalist, and I give her credit for accepting what I thought was good advice, and she must have too.
I come out of this with a lowered respect for Canada's government.
The fact that they are so thin-skinned that they didn't even want us in the room.
Hopefully something will come from those meetings with the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
But you know what?
Even if it doesn't, we're going to keep providing the kind of journalism that only we can do.
Because we do it, they don't want us in.
I should say that we live streamed the press conference for those who follow us on Twitter.
So there's so many ways to get the news from the Rebel.
Well, that's it for today.
On behalf of all of us here at, well, I guess we're in the nation's capital, not the Rebels' capital, to you at home.