David Menzies and Kean Bexte recount police shoving Menzies at Trudeau’s boxing event in Montreal (May 2024) while protesters against Canada-Haiti ties were arrested, including one woman without cause. Bexte details undercover RCMP searching his bag and following him post-debate, contrasting it with Harper-era press freedom. Ezra’s interview with Tommy Robinson exposes BBC’s John Sweeney’s shelved takedown over alleged misconduct, sparking debates on government persecution and investigative ethics. Their experiences highlight a troubling erosion of journalistic rights and political accountability under current leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you, in which we take a look back on the very best commentaries of the last week from your favorite rebels.
I'm your host, Sheila Gunnreid, filling in for the intrepid David Menzies as he's out on the road chasing the election news wherever he might find it.
This is your Relaxed Fit edition of Rebel Roundup.
Now, Trudeau staged his customary boxing match campaign photo opportunity earlier this week, but the real fight, well, that was outside on the street.
It was a fight for free speech for peaceful protesters outside the boxing gym, but also a fight for journalistic independence for our David Menzies, who joins us today to tell us how things got physical for him when he tried to do his job and ask Trudeau a question.
Then, outside of the French language debate in Montreal, our reporters had a run-in with some overzealous RCMP officers who identified themselves as part of Justin Trudeau's executive security detail.
Kean Becksty joins me from the airport to talk about how he was stopped, searched, and then followed by the cops while just trying to do his job.
Then finally, your comments and letters on Ezra's interview with former political prisoner Tommy Robinson on the retirement of BBC's John Sweeney.
That's the man behind the panorama episode that was meant to be a takedown of Tommy that never was.
Those are your rebels.
Let's round him up.
Mr. Shudo, what do you have to say to these protesters?
WHY DID YOU CALL THE POLICE ON THESE PROTESTERS, MR. TRUDO?
HEY!
SHAY!
WHY DO YOU GUYS DO THAT?
I was just trying to ask a question.
I'm okay, but why would you push me to the ground like that?
You're not a problem, sir.
Who did that?
You didn't see me.
No, come, please, tune, no.
Unbelievable.
As the federal election campaign goes on, so does the erosion of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for Canadians.
Our noble police force appears to be doing the dirty work of protecting the public personas of our politicians.
And it's happening on the left and on the right.
And one man has been right in the thick of it this week.
It's been the usual host of this show, David Menzies, and he's joining me now from Montreal.
Hey, David, you were there in Montreal where Trudeau was in the boxing ring, but you were the one that ended up flat on your back outside.
Yeah, I guess I was, Sheila, but you know, like my wristwatch, I don't mean to give a free plug, but it's a Timex.
Remember the saying?
Takes a licking, keeps on ticking?
I guess that's me, especially this week.
It was inexplicable.
First of all, I don't want to make the story about me, and I never intend to do that, but I should point out that there were members of the Haitian community and their allies there doing a peaceful protest.
Yeah, they were loud, but they were on public property and they were, you know, they were on the sidewalk and they, as far as I could tell, they weren't even uttering profanity.
And an inordinate amount of law enforcement was called in, so much so that I think, Sheila, at one point, law enforcement outnumbered the protesters, which was wild.
And one woman was actually arrested.
I witnessed the whole thing.
I've got it on camera.
And as far as I could tell, she did nothing wrong.
She was on a sidewalk.
She didn't violate private property.
She certainly didn't go into the gym.
And so I don't understand why she was hauled away in handcuffs.
And then, of course, a little later after that, what you saw was me on a sidewalk, public property, behind a police line, merely yelling questions at Justin Trudeau as he went onto the bus.
And I had to yell them because unlike the anointed and state-approved stenographer pool that gets to go in from the media bus, I wasn't allowed in.
And by the way, there was another dirty trick that wasn't in my report about that.
I was told I got there more than an hour early, Sheila, and the gatekeeper said that local media, and for some reason I was deemed local media.
I guess that he really means media that aren't on the media bus have to line up against the wall.
Yeah.
And then you're let in at 11, you know, after they process whatever they need to process.
And sure enough, at 11, I said, hey, my friend, the photo ops about to begin.
Can I come in?
And then, of course, I'm sorry, you're not allowed in here.
Why?
I don't know.
And so I just thought there was a bit of, it was malicious to make somebody wait for more than an hour against the wall when the answer was always no.
Why didn't you just tell me no, you know, more than an hour ago?
So it was, as you alluded to in your introduction, Sheila, I think these are, aside from the pettiness, it's the erosion of freedoms that we're seeing, whether it's peaceful protesters or reporters asking impolite questions.
You're the prime minister.
You're the leader of the country.
You should have the thickest skin of all.
You should be the most accountable of all.
And yet, this is the new abnormal in Canada.
Shut down access and if necessary, arrest reporters, get violent with reporters.
I can't believe what I'm seeing, Sheila.
Now, the people with you out on the street, they, I'm willing to bet were probably disaffected liberals, certainly not conservative voters.
Probably I'm willing to bet NDP Green Party supporters.
But, you know, even they understood that what Trudeau was doing is trampling on our free speech rights and our right to hold politicians to account.
I mean, you're a journalist.
I'm a journalist.
What we do is protected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
It's protected from the politicians using police to abuse the jobs we do.
I mean, it's a right of the public to be able to hold their politicians to account.
And I think our role in that is to ask the questions the public can't be there to ask.
And I can't imagine.
I'm pro-cop.
I'm generally pro-cop.
I love to give cops the benefit of the doubt.
They got a tough job.
They don't know who they're dealing with on a day-to-day basis.
But they know who a journalist is.
You're standing there with a mic flush that says rebel news.
Oh, you're a journalist.
I can't imagine these cops went into policing thinking, well, I could catch him rapists, murderers, gangsters, people trading in illegal guns, but I'm going to be in the street corner hassling journalists because a fancy politician doesn't want his feelings hurt.
Oh, 100%, Sheila, you raised a couple of points.
The protesters, I really, I don't know what their political affiliations are.
I didn't ask them.
They're skin in the game in protesting Trudeau as they're very upset with Canada's relationship with Haiti propping up what they claim is a very odious regime there.
And of course, we know so many of our tax dollars do go to foreign aid to some of the worst countries in the world, which really makes me scratch my head.
But aside from that, I too am pro-cop.
I think the vast majority of cops are good.
Look, there are rotten apples in every bushel.
There's no doubt about that.
And we have to call out the bad cops when we see them.
But in terms of the policing, I think this week has been a tale of two cities in a way.
When I was arrested or detained, I should say, with handcuffs by the RCMP in Whitby at the Conservative press conference, holy cow.
I still can't believe that, Sheila.
And the RCMP called in Durham Regional Police because they were going to be the ones to drop the hammer in terms of which criminal charges would be applied against me.
Those Durham Regional cops were so professional, so nice.
I even got the vibe from their facial expressions and body language, which was, what the hell are we doing here?
Here's five police cruisers, and here's this guy, a journalist in handcuffs, and the RCMP is saying, you know, I think at one point, I think I overheard the female RCMP officer say, obstruction of justice.
Gee, where have I heard that line before?
I wish I'd get on the bigger obstruction of justice, SNC Lavlin, but that's neither here nor there.
And when the Durham Regional Constable heard my side of the story, he said, sir, as far as I'm concerned, this story ends here.
There's going to be no charges.
Please don't.
I mean, it almost sounded that he was about to apologize.
I apologize to them because I was mortified at the amount of police resources being used for little old me.
I mean, I'm sure there's real crime happening in Durham Region.
The idea that five cruisers are dispatched for this farce is ludicrous.
However, with Montreal, whichever, and for sure it was a police officer, and I don't know which one, but I'm trying to get into his head why he would think that, and I don't even think it really was an impolite question.
It was, I said to Mr. Trudeau, I believe, you know, what do you have to say to these protesters?
Why are you calling the police on them?
I think that's a completely fair question, given that they weren't doing anything wrong.
One of them got hauled away in a cruiser in handcuffs.
What would make that cop think I got to push this guy to the sidewalk?
I mean, Sheila, this is inexplicable.
You know, and I don't know if this was a rogue action or they being told, you know, if anyone's being impolite, act with physicality.
There's another guilty party, I think, in all of this, and it is the Poutine panhandlers in the mainstream media.
They came out police out of the photo opportunity where Trudeau floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.
They came out and they didn't even, like you recorded them walking to the media bus and their heads are down looking straight ahead.
They weren't even interested in what was happening.
They weren't, I mean, walking with Justin Trudeau.
They could be asking the same question, you have to shout from behind a police line.
I mean, that's pretty telling.
But the fact that they didn't even have curiosity to poke their head up, look around and see what was actually happening in the world around him, around them.
I think one of the real travesties in this entire election campaign has just been the intellectual incuriosity of the mainstream media.
It's so shameless what they're doing trying to protect their beloved prince and thus protect their bailout money.
Yeah, and blinded to the real story.
I mean, you know, the real story there wasn't some silly and frivolous photo op of, you know, Justin Trudeau in a tank top doing, you know, some rounds with a guy in the ring, Sheila.
But I think the real story was all the anger outside and the response to the anger.
And yet they weren't interested in that.
And it reminds me of the old joke in journalism circles about the cub reporter who was assigned to cover the cat show.
And he comes back to the office and the editor says, you know, how'd it go?
And he says, sorry, boss, no story.
He goes, why?
He says, well, the cat show was canceled.
Oh, why is that?
Well, an arsonist came and burnt down the venue, right?
I mean, like, that's the real news, right?
And so as the fire rages, they put their heads down.
We don't want to sully ourselves with these unwashed masses saying nasty things about the Trudeau liberals.
And we have our story, which is, oh, gracious, what a beautiful physique our prime minister has.
And look at that hair and not even a dab of brill cream on it.
I mean, give me a break, Sheila.
Like, are you in the news gathering business or are you in the public relations business?
I mean, I didn't even see, I didn't see any journalists really come out, poke their heads and say, what are you people yelling about?
Which is even just like what a general person on the street would be asking themselves, like, huh, what's going on around here?
They don't even have that.
They're just it.
They're staring at their beloved and they're going back the bus with their beloved.
Nerry, a difficult question to be asked.
And I think also the lack of, you know, outside of, you know, Joe Warmington and our friends at True North, there haven't been a lot of people who really seem to give a damn about how our journalists have been treated just in this last week in general, but especially just in this last week.
And I think that's really telling.
Journalists Under Threat00:04:36
I agree, Sheila.
And one of the things, if we go back to the Conservative event on Monday, Monday in Whitby, when I'm being rusted, on national TV.
And I said to, you know, my brothers and sisters in the media business, are we going to have some solidarity?
Is anyone going to stand with me?
Because you know what?
Sheila, if this was happening to a Toronto Star reporter or CBC reporter, I would say, hey, wait a minute, that's offside.
Not only did they not do anything, but what was even more, I mean, I didn't show my frustration or anger, but what really bothered me is they didn't even say anything.
They wouldn't even, I mean, like, it was like this is some circus sideshow happening and they're just a member of the silent audience and have no skin in the game.
Well, you know what?
You do have skin in the game because today, Sheila, it's me and you and Ezra and Kian getting roughed up.
What about in the not too distant future?
What about when they might cross the line and start asking impolite questions?
Who's going to stand up for them?
That's what they should be saying.
It's a matter of principle.
And there was no principle.
Having said that, I'm very happy that they recorded the incident so that you could see.
Because, of course, with two hands tied behind my back with hands up, Sheila, I'm unable to operate a camera and microphone.
Yeah, you know, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that these guys are working in the Ottawa bubble.
You know, when I was in London at the Press Freedom Conference, it was mainstream media journalists stood up for my right to attend press conference, but they weren't from the Ottawa bureaus.
They were foreign bureaus or from BC bureaus, but they weren't looking for prime ministerial access or ministerial access for that matter on a day-day basis.
They were just, you know, journalists.
They got a job in journalism, trying to do their job.
They're trying to do the news.
And they still care about those sorts of things.
I think once you get into that Ottawa bubble, it's all about making that lateral move towards a government paycheck.
Yeah, and clearly there's a new system in town, isn't there, Sheila?
We can do this the easy way or the hard way.
The easy way is be a good little worker bee drone and get your government paycheck and have a job and support your family, or do it the hard way.
Be like, say, the rebel, and you're going to be shunned, arrested, potentially deplatformed, and cast aside to the margins.
So if I'm a journalist and maybe I've got a mortgage and a family to support, like, really, how do I go up against the state?
And I'm working in what is really a sunset industry.
This is, there are no jobs in journalism.
It's a declining business.
This is why it needed the bailout in the first place.
So maybe instead of being a muckraker and shaking the cage, I'll just settle back and write nice stuff about the people buttering my brain.
And I think also, I'm not quite sure.
I've never had another boss in journalism, so I'm just speculating.
I've never actually been a journalist other than now.
But we have a boss that understands freedom, who's made a career and a life of fighting for freedom and fighting for free speech.
I'm not quite sure those other journalists have that same sort of boss that had your back.
That if your free speech rights get trampled on, if your ability to report gets trampled on by the state, we have a boss who will move heaven and earth to help us.
I'm not quite sure those other journalists have that.
Although I don't know.
Like I said, I'm just speculating because I was never a journalist until that boss took dance on me.
So.
No, and Ezra is a champion, clearly, Sheila.
And you're right.
And I would say we might have a new class of younger journalists coming up that maybe think that, you know, let's not, if something is offensive to a certain group, you know, a certain coalition, maybe we should tone that down and be less and not be and tell you, that's not what journalism is all about.
Journalism is the antithesis, or it should be, of political correctness.
But look what we have today.
Following Us: Stop00:17:16
David, I know that is key in calling you in your hotel room to tell you that you have to get moving to the very next story.
So, David, thanks for coming on your show and making the time.
Please stand out there.
A pleasure, Sheila.
Thank you so much.
us more up next after the break.
There's police officers following us.
He was pulled over to see what he could do.
Now I wait to the stop sign.
No, he's not.
Okay, now go.
Just go straight past him.
If he's following us, this is just bad for them.
Okay.
Plate number FJX4713.
And now it's pointing out.
No kidding.
This guy's actually falling.
What have we done?
That exchange right there with rebel top gun Kian Bexte and the police, well, it didn't happen on the streets of Tehran, Iran, or Caracas, Venezuela, or Havana, Cuba.
It happened in Montreal outside of the federal leaders' debate.
And it, frankly, it shocked me to see it.
It shocked me to think that there are people tasked with the duty of protecting our entrenched rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, yet they don't know what those charter rights exactly are.
It's astounding and disappointing.
Joining me right now is that very dissident reporter, Kian Bexte, fresh off a plane and off to catch another one.
Hey, Kian, let me start with my first question.
Were you as dumbfounded as I was?
I'm still shocked at what I saw unfold there with the police.
Hopefully the audio is not too bad right now.
I'm just in an airport, but I was absolutely stunned with what happened in Montreal last night.
It reminded me more of what I would expect in China or Russia.
Two undercover police agents, RCMP, approached me while I was totally minding my own business.
I was kind of disappointed actually with how the night had turned out.
I was already kicked off of a sidewalk and I expected that I would be able to get some more interactions with some of the federal leaders.
That didn't happen.
I was uploading what I had, and then two police officers approached me and told me that I needed to show them my journalism license.
And then they demanded that they search my bag.
That was despicable that that happened in the first place, but it didn't stop there.
From there, David Menzies showed up so that I had some backup and we had cameras in more than one location.
And at that point, six Montreal police officers showed up on bicycles saying that two complaints were filed against David and I. We're not sure by who exactly.
They wouldn't tell us.
Sorry, I just got to check to make sure I'm going to my right gate here.
They wouldn't tell us who complained against us or anything like that.
And then they just rode off into the night as we were asking them questions as they demanded IDs from us as well.
And it didn't even stop there.
After the Trudeau bus drove around the block multiple times to distract the journalists and make us not sure which door he was going to come out of, he ended up coming out of the trash exit on the north side of the building.
The back door, he came out the trash door.
I guess it's fitting.
And we managed to get off one question while Trudeau waved at me like an idiot.
It was really frustrating.
It was a sad night.
And then David and I left.
We got to our car three blocks away.
We were walking, got in the car, started driving a few blocks, and realized that there was a police officer in a cruiser following us for blocks.
check out this video police officers following us he just pulled over to see what he could do Now I wait to the stop sign.
No, he's not.
Okay, now go.
Just go straight past him.
If he's following us, this is just bad for them.
Okay.
Plate.
Plate number FJX4713.
And that was pulling out.
No kidding.
Let's go.
What have we done?
Okay, get to another parking spot and i'll get out.
So you can see that they were following us.
And after we turned that right corner onto that main drag heading through Montreal, they decided it probably wasn't worth it.
But they were very obviously and very, very clearly trying to intimidate us or, I don't know, collect information on journalists like some sort of secret police.
Like, what is this?
This is like Anne McGrath's Stasi in action.
This is the people that Ann McGrath call on journalists.
This is the Canada that we live in where journalists can ask questions.
You know what?
The undercover police officers that you had your first interaction on camera with, they identified themselves as Trudeau's executive detail.
They said that they are there to protect the prime minister.
So don't give me this while they're just doing their job.
They're just, they didn't know who Kian was.
He had a backpack.
He looked suspicious.
Don't tell me Trudeau's security detail doesn't know exactly who we are at the Rebel.
We're jumping out of bushes and running up on liberal candidates on the street.
Our faces have been circulated, I bet you, on hundreds of internal emails warning people to keep an eyeball out for us.
So don't tell me that they didn't know exactly who they were when they wanted to search your bag.
I'm surprised they didn't try to look through your phone and delete some of your footage.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised either.
Well, actually, you could see he was upset.
I don't know if they played this part of the video or not, because I'm obviously not watching it.
But at the start of the video that I posted on Twitter last night, it went viral.
I took a picture of this guy's badge, this RCMP officer.
I took a picture of his badge.
And right after I did that, he said, why did you do that?
I told you not to take a picture of my badge.
What?
Yeah, I was speaking to some people in policing, and they said, actually, when you're an undercover cop, you actually have to be more transparent with the public when you're talking to them.
As a police officer, you need to identify them.
They need to identify themselves as a police officer.
Otherwise, it could be just any old rubby running up on you, telling you they're a cop.
That's really what I thought it was.
They were dressed grubby.
I mean, they're good at what they do.
They didn't look like police officers.
This girl in some snow jacket, really indignant about the fact that I was a journalist and she was a police officer.
You might see that interaction again where I said, well, I'm recording things.
That's what I do.
I record things and I report back.
And then they said, well, and then I said, I'm a journalist.
And then the police officer, the female one, it just very indignantly said, we are the police.
Like, like that was supposed to mean something like that.
It was supposed to affect my job and how I did it.
Just absolutely disgraceful, this prime minister's office.
I'll remind people of what the Harper government acted like around media.
Everyone said that, oh, he has contempt for journalists.
But at the end of the day, throughout the campaign, he took five questions from journalists every single day of the campaign.
Now we're in a place where Trudeau only has very select media opportunities on his plane on one of his jets and behind closed doors with pre-approved, pre-authorized journalists, journalists who have licenses to practice their craft.
Now that's not the case.
We have police following journalists who are disobeying Trudeau.
We have police who are cooperating with Trudeau to cordon him off and make sure that he's not ever exposed to the public during a campaign where everyone is neck and neck.
There's no clear leader.
I mean, I don't even know what to say at this point.
I'm just so at a loss.
I don't know how we can continue to do our job.
I mean, we're going to try, but I'm worried it's going to lead to something worse than them illegally searching my bag, which they did last night.
I'm worried that someone's going to get arrested for practicing journalism by the end of this campaign.
And it worries me.
But if it's not us that's doing it, who's going to do it?
David Aiken from Global News?
I don't think so.
Yeah, that's true.
They only ask tough questions to conservatives.
You know, you just reminded me of something when you said how Stephen Harper did things.
I'm just going to scooch off camera real quick for a second.
This is my media pass from when Stephen Harper was in office.
We were at the conservative convention.
It was one of my first conventions as a rebel and not as a conventioneer.
Not as just your run-in-the-mill conservative.
We were accredited as media.
That says media there.
Stephen Harper allowed us to come in and do our jobs and report.
And it's a great travesty that all the parties have moved so far away from what's entrenched in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Kian, I know that you are waiting at the gate and everybody's boarding.
So I want to thank you for making the time to come on the show to talk about this travesty.
And I can't wait for the next hijink you get up to or, you know, it's not even hijinks anymore.
You're out there fighting for freedom.
Thanks, Sheila.
I'm going to have to set up some pings on my phone.
So every 30 minutes it sends you a message that I'm not yet in jail.
So that when those pings stop, you know that I've been disappeared because I'm sure it's going to happen one of these.
Is Kian in jail yet tracker?
Have a great weekend.
Stay with us.
Stay with us more up next after the break.
I'll ask the BBC again.
I'd still want to know where is your documentary.
They couriered a letter to my front door to let me know that a documentary was due to be screened on me in the coming weeks.
It was at that point that I produced my panodrama and showed everybody, where is your documentary?
haven't you screened it what's taken i i know i know people just a lot of people saying that i should be happy what's What's taken nine months?
We gave evidence to the entire world of the lead face of the tax-funded BBC making false sexual allegations against me.
He was trying to do a Me Too story against me.
He was constantly lying.
He was being homophobic.
And yet the amazing thing still for me, Ezra, is that not one single British journalist talked about what we uncovered.
The biggest expose on the BBC in history.
Not one mention from any journalist anywhere in the country.
Even so, I sat down with a lead journalist for the Telegraph, a lead journalist who used to work for the Sunday Times.
And I showed him all the old undercover footage before we put our documentary out.
And he couldn't believe it.
He said, this is massive.
This is huge.
He took that footage back.
He then rang me up and said, our editor says, no.
I said, how can that be?
How can that be that you won't even talk about it?
So it just shows that they're all in it together.
It's complete corruption.
But you're right.
John Sweeney's gone.
In his final leaving statement, he showed how a year later we know why he's gone.
It's because he has not been seen on the BBC since we exposed him.
That was Tommy Robinson's reaction after the journalist who worked so hard to set him up and destroy his life, a man named John Sweeney from the BBC program Panadrama, resigned, retired in shame and disgrace after Tommy flipped the tables on him and did his own expose of John Sweeney and exposed John Sweeney's underhanded tactics in trying to dig up dirt on Tommy.
Liza Rosie writes, I know Tommy doesn't want to leave England, but unless Boris, that's Boris Johnson, can perform magic, starting with securing their sovereignty by getting out of the EU, shifting the government and judicial system back to sanity, what chance does Tommy have of making any headway?
Any perceived wrong move and they'll throw him back in jail.
I don't know how many more times he is going to be able to make it out.
I hope he gets back on his feet soon.
But I worry about what they are going to do to him next.
You know, Liza, I worry about that too.
And I've never actually met Tommy firsthand.
I know the British government isn't through with him yet, though.
And if and when they re-imprison Tommy for some perceived slight that they would never imprison another person for, the world will be watching.
And as Ezra likes to point out, when we measure something, we change it by measuring it.
So I think when we continued to visit Tommy in prison last time, we helped keep him safe.
So we need to watch.
Panther 8282 says, I wonder how many more people Sweeney exposed were actually innocent and just set up.
Boy, isn't that the truth?
There's a lot of fake news out there.
You know, this reminds me of the time that CBC was caught faking the news.
They hired actors to try to goad normal people into buying t-shirts the CBC said were racist.
Now, in amongst the CBC's actual racist shirts were shirts that said make Canada great again, because according to the CBC, that was also racist.
And if you bought it, then you were racist too.
But the point is, these are just two prominent instances that we know about of state broadcasters faking the news.
How many more don't we know about?
And the elites and the media, quite frankly, they seem very eager for social media to censor its users because people have been using social media to debunk these media lies in real time.
Mike writes, I love how much of a devoted father Tommy is.
What a great man.
You know, you can differ with Tommy on politics and style all you want, but you can't disagree that that's a man who loves his children deeply and he cares about their future.
And his innocent children, they're really the forgotten victims in the government's targeted persecution of Tommy Robinson.
Well, that wraps up another edition of Rebel Roundup.