Ezra Levant exposes CBC’s pro-China smear campaign against Epoch Times, an independent newspaper founded by Falun Gong activists, after it criticized Trudeau’s reliance on CCP data—like Health Minister Patty Haidu and Dr. Teresa Tam’s unquestioned support for tracking bracelets and forced quarantines. The outlet’s 3.8M-view documentary on Wuhan lab leaks and reports on China’s 10,000 fake Twitter accounts were ignored until Epoch Times challenged Trudeau’s policies, revealing CBC’s selective bias. Meanwhile, lawyer Harmeet Dylan’s Liberty Center sued U.S. governors over illegal COVID spending, like California’s $75M for undocumented workers, and religious freedoms, while Canada’s Civil Liberties Association remained silent. Levant warns of pandemic-era power grabs mirroring China’s social credit system, questioning whether excessive precautions risk economic collapse—history shows quarantines often prevent worse disasters, yet media and elites still downplay Epoch Times’ revelations, like Sheila Gunn Reid’s uncovered 400-page House of Commons document, as fringe. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm steaming mad at a smear job the CBC did on one of the few independent newspapers in the country called the Epoch Times.
Oh what a pack of lies they throw at the Epoch Times, including the lyingest lie of all the lies, that they're racist.
Of course the Epoch Times is Chinese, but they dared to criticize Justin Trudeau, so they must be deemed racist.
I'll take you through the smear.
Oh I'm mad.
Hey before I do let me invite you to become a Rebel News premium subscriber.
It's eight bucks a month.
Go to RebelNews.com and you get the video version of the show.
Okay, here's the podcast.
Tonight, Trudeau's CBC state broadcaster joins forces with China's state broadcasters and smears a small newspaper published by Chinese democracy activists.
It's April 29th and 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.
This CBC had an insane attack on a newspaper today, a newspaper called the Epoch Times.
I've followed the newspaper for years.
You can see their newspaper boxes on street corners in some of the big cities of North America.
Of course, it being 2020, their biggest and best work is online.
They have a lively website and they're getting really strong on video too.
You'll recall that a couple of weeks ago they published this great documentary about the origins of the Wuhan virus, an investigative report into where the virus actually comes from.
That video has been seen nearly 4 million times.
And I was honored to interview the host and narrator of that documentary, Joshua Phillip.
You might not know it, but the Epoch Times is Chinese in some ways.
Joshua Phillip isn't, obviously, the documentary, the newspaper, they're in English.
I don't know if you saw my noontime show today, but I talked at length about the paper edition that was delivered for free as a promotion to many households across Canada, including my own.
I was delighted to come home the other day and see the newspaper in my mailbox.
It truly told the other side of the story in very interesting ways.
Stories like 10,000 fake Twitter accounts that the Communist Party of China uses to promote their propaganda, or the history of China's biological warfare plans, citing a 20-year-old speech by Secretary of Defense over there that really lays out their plans.
Or the story I mentioned the other day that there are now 21 million fewer Chinese cell phone users, suggesting that there might be a vastly higher death toll in that country than let on.
All of those are interesting stories.
All are presented scrupulously accurately.
Lots of factual basis.
I really appreciated this part.
It's a big timeline of how the virus spread and how Canada dithered.
And it's one of the reasons why a newspaper can still really do a great job.
I mean, you can't see this on your phone screen or your laptop.
It really takes a gorgeous newspaper to see it.
Right.
Look at that chart.
Anyways, I love the newspapers.
Like I say, what a perfect antidote to the BS served up daily by Canada's media party.
Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between Canadian journalists and Chinese propaganda organs.
They call concerns about the virus racist.
They opposed stopping flights from China.
They all said masks weren't needed while China was quietly buying up 2 billion masks around the world and bringing them back home.
So yeah, what a refreshing change to read something independent.
I really like it.
I've subscribed, by the way.
The Epoch Times is interested in China, and it came by that interest, honestly.
Its founders were members of China's Falun Gong spiritual movement, which I would describe as a kind of chai chi.
I know that's not really accurate, but that's sort of what it looks like to me.
You can often see Falun Gong supporters in places like Vancouver doing exercises together in the park.
Peaceful, friendly.
They were once regarded as a friendly hobby by the Chinese Communist Party, something healthy, something positive.
But then about 20 years ago, China criminalized Falun Gong as an illegal religion.
not only banning it, but, and this is terrifying, this is gross, but this is true.
Imprisoning their adherents and literally using them as forced donors of human organs for transplants, as in they would involuntarily, forcibly cut out organs and sell them to people who need transplants.
Not just Communist Party high-ups in China, but desperate and unscrupulous foreign buyers of organs.
China was literally killing prisoners and selling their body parts.
In fact, it was a nonpartisan Canadian investigation that really put this on the human rights map a decade plus ago.
So yeah, you couldn't believe they have good reasons to be skeptical of China and worried about China and reporting on the crisis in China.
And while they definitely come from their own strong point of view, they are very accurate and responsible journalists.
I've never seen anything they publish being undone by claims of factual inaccuracy.
And if they are exuberant in their criticism of China, well, let's call that a welcome antidote to the pro-China insanity in our own establishment from the top down.
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship.
Yeah, you need to add the Epoch Times to your media diet if you can.
I subscribed.
I'm really happy I did.
So they're like us a little bit of the rebel.
They're dissidents, except for they paid a much higher price.
They're small, but they punch above their weight.
And authoritarian governments, or at least one, China's authoritarian government, just hate them.
In the U.S., they cover the news broadly.
And given that Donald Trump himself has challenged China's world dominance, the Epoch Times is naturally more sympathetic to him than the rest of the Washington-based media party are.
So the Epoch Times is criticized down in the States for not getting with the anti-Trump program of the rest of the journalists.
Here in Canada, they've largely been ignored by our media party establishment until they started to criticize Trudeau's absurd pro-China stance.
And even weirder, Patty Haidu, the health minister, her pro-China propaganda.
Like, remember what she said this?
There's no indication that the data that came out of China in terms of their infection rate and their death rate was falsified in any way.
So I would say that your question is feeding into the conspiracy theories that many people have been perpetuating on the internet.
Did you hear that?
Patty Haidu literally said she trusted the Communist Party of China and the propaganda they were feeding to the world through the World Health Organization, even though it's being debunked.
And she actually called a reporter who dared to ask her about her.
She called him a conspiracy theorist.
Finally, I see other media are starting to catch up on this.
Here's Evan Solomon.
February 17th, you said that the suspension of flights to and from China and closing the borders, and I'll quote you, was not effective at all in controlling the spread of the disease.
You also said in the long term, they create a greater risk to public health.
You also praised China as being very open.
I'm just, were you wrong about that, Minister?
And I think it's important to know that because we still got a long road ahead.
Well, I think, you know, the praise that I offered China in the early days was based on their historic containment efforts.
Don't forget there were, you know, multiple, millions and millions of Chinese people under essentially confinement, if you will, for a very long time.
In fact, in some of those cities, people are just getting back to normal.
And that was a public health measure that had never been seen before.
Those containment efforts ultimately failed.
And I will point to the fact that I understand by the remarks that I made.
I like Evan.
He asked good questions.
So the work done by Rebel News and by Epoch Times was having an effect.
Oh, I think we did some heavy lifting.
You know, my video about Teresa Tam called FireTam.com, that video has been watched more than 400,000 times now.
That caused a reaction.
And then we found this clip of Teresa Tam daydreaming about making us wear licenses and tracking bracelets and stuff.
Did you see this?
If there are people who are non-compliant, there are definitely laws and public health powers that can quarantine people in mandatory settings.
It's potential.
You could track people, put bracelets on their arms, have police and other setups to ensure quarantine is undertaken.
Yeah, that's crazy, but that's how China rules.
And Teresa Tam works for the China-run WHO.
That's not a racial comment, it's a comment for who she works for.
When conservative MP and leadership candidate Derek Sloan repeated our points, well, it's just too much for the establishment.
Our ideas were taking purchase.
After ignoring us and the Epoch Times, they decided to fight back.
They flipped out.
Trudeau went nuts on it, rehashing the Communist Party of China talking points that anyone who disagrees with them is obviously racist.
We've seen a spike in anti-Asian violence in different parts of our country.
In BC, an elderly man with dementia was shoved out of a store by an assailant that brought up remarks about COVID-19.
We now have a conservative leadership candidate that is asking for Dr. Tam to be fired and is accusing her, the WHO in China, of being in cahoots.
What is your message to Canadians as they see this?
Intolerance and racism have no place in our country.
Yeah, that wasn't a real question by that reporter.
It was a softball, puffball set up to the question, conflating an alleged racist assault with a political criticism.
I wonder who wrote that question, the reporter or the PMO?
Well, I don't care, and the Epoch Times doesn't care, and we both do our thing, and our readers like us for it.
But Trudeau wasn't done, and the media party wasn't done.
The CBC had ignored the Epoch Times more or less, but oh man, did they blow a gasket?
I mentioned that I got this newspaper for free in the mail.
I'm lucky, I loved it.
Well, the CBC found three people in our country who didn't like this or thought they didn't like it.
Two were white liberals, and one was a postal worker.
They didn't like the criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.
And so look at this disgraceful story in the CBC today.
Racist and inflammatory!
Canadians upset by Epoch Times claim China behind virus made it as a bioweapon.
Racist and inflammatory, really?
Canadians are upset?
How many Canadians?
All Canadians?
Some Canadians?
Who?
Which ones?
Canadians are upset.
And the newspaper claimed that China created the virus as a weapon.
Is that what the newspaper really claimed?
Well, I told you that despite having some white journalists and their North American editions, including their Canadian edition, being published in English, it's in its bones as a Chinese newspaper.
It was started by Falun Gong democracy activists to tell the truth about China.
It's like underground Samizdat news sheets published in Poland under Solodarnovsk in the 80s.
It's like an underground resistance paper in France during German occupation during the Second World War.
And they're calling this Chinese newspaper racist?
It says who?
It says Canadians.
Canadians say it's racist, really?
And did the Epoch Times really, really say that the virus was a biological weapon?
Did they say that, as the CBC claims?
Let's read some more, starting with the photo caption.
A special eight-page edition of the Epoch Times was delivered to some households across Canada.
Some Canadians who received it were put off by the newspaper's content, which one recipient described as racist and inflammatory, submitted by Carol Harmon.
I wonder who Carol Harmon is.
The CBC never tells us.
But the story's already changing, isn't it?
So now it's some Canadians were put off by the content, and then we're told it was just, well, actually, just one person called it racist.
That's funny, because that's not what the headline implied, right?
I mean, I guess you really couldn't have a five-alarm fire written by three CBC government journalists.
Huge story.
Couldn't really do it if your headline was accurate.
One Canadian says she thinks a story couldn't be racist.
Who is that one person?
Is she Chinese herself?
Does she even know that the Chinese, that the Epoch Times is Chinese?
By any chance, this couldn't be, could it?
Is that by any chance a know-nothing white liberal being professionally offended on behalf of Chinese people just to look woke?
Accidentally actually attacking a Chinese democracy newspaper just out of sheer ignorance?
The CBC wouldn't do that.
They wouldn't do that.
The Epoch Times, a free newspaper typically found in street boxes, is coming under fire for advancing a conspiracy theory about the origin of the coronavirus and putting it straight into people's mailboxes unsolicited.
Whoa, you didn't say that, so it went straight in the mailbox, eh?
That's quite something.
I think that's actually how all mail goes in the mailbox.
That's how magazines and newspapers and flyers and junk mail and government mail and government junk mail.
I think it just goes all in there, solicited or unsolicited.
It's shocking.
And it's coming under fire.
Some people say, Canadians say, coming under fire.
These are the giveaways that it's not real news.
People on the internet are saying, this is all just backfilling for the government journalist's own point of view.
This is bad.
Now dress up our pro-China opinion about it as a news story.
Just find someone to say something.
Some Canadians who received it by mail and a postal carrier who says he is forced to deliver it are angry over a special eight-page edition of the paper exploring the idea that the virus that causes COVID-19 was created as a biological weapon and arguing it should be called the CCP virus, a reference to the Chinese Communist Party.
Really?
A postal carrier is angry that he's forced to deliver mail.
Yeah, mate, you're not forced to deliver mail.
You just chose to do that as your job.
So you're only forced to deliver mail in the same way a taxi driver is forced to give people rides or a waitress is forced to give people food.
It's what you said you wanted to do for a living if you don't want to deliver mail.
Why did you become a mailman?
And hang on, are you, you're not reading people's mail, are you?
Are you reading people's mail?
Is that why you're bravely staying confidential while you bravely take a stand?
Because you're a bit of a snoop?
Or is it because you're just so painfully stupid?
You forgot what your mail, your job is to deliver the mail, whether you like it or not.
Or is it that you have a collateral interest?
Maybe if your name were published, you'd be revealed as a liberal activist or a Communist Party supporter or a Trudeau supporter, maybe the brother of a CBC journalist.
CBC's Censorship Impulse00:10:56
I don't know.
And thus we could understand the real source of your censorship impulse.
Who knows?
One branch of the government, the CBC, is reporting that another branch of the government, the post office, is mad that a private newspaper is criticizing the government, Trudeau's government and China's government.
They won't hold Trudeau or Haidu or Teresa Tam accountable.
They'll go after a grassroots newspaper published by Chinese democracy activists.
Very brave.
Here, let me read some more.
Lisa Armstrong in Kelowna found a copy in her rural mailbox.
That's when I got annoyed or suspicious.
It's like, why is this in my mailbox?
You expect to see those kind of things online on social media, she said.
It did seem to allude to conspiracy theories like, you know, maybe it was manufactured, this virus was manufactured in the lab.
Well, no, we know scientifically that's just not true.
Okay, so that's quoted authoritatively.
Who is Lisa Armstrong, who the CBC trusts to make scientific judgments from Kelowna as to the source of the virus in Wuhan?
I don't know.
They don't tell us, again, is it this young lady who specializes in making websites?
I don't know.
She seems quite nice.
The CBC doesn't tell us which Lisa Armstrong it is.
And I think that's the point.
They just found someone on the internet willing to say what they themselves wanted to say about this article but couldn't justify.
So let's go to Lisa from Armstrong.
But look at that language.
It did seem to allude to conspiracy theories like, you know, maybe it was manufactured, this virus was manufactured in the lab.
Yeah, no, I've read this newspaper cover to cover.
I loved it.
Something the CBC doesn't actually let you do.
They don't link to it, so they won't let you check for yourself.
But this quote, they quote Lisa Armstrong from Kelowna paraphrasing this.
Here's what it actually says right on the front page, actually.
There is understandable concern about the activities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China's only P4 lab, one meant for working with easily transmitted pathogens that can cause fatal illness.
As the official narratives offered for the source of the virus have been disproven, questions have been raised about whether the CCP virus leaked from the Institute.
That's it.
It doesn't say it was manufactured there, that it leaked from there.
They were maybe studying it, and there's no doubt there were viruses there.
It doesn't say that it was manufactured.
It asks if it even came from there.
It doesn't give an answer to the question.
In fact, the only conspiracy theory they publish is in the very next line where they talk about the Chinese Communist Party and their conspiracy theory that the virus was created by America.
The CBC just lied by republishing the lie of Lisa Armstrong from Kelowna, who wasn't even quoting it.
And the CBC won't link to this to let you check.
This is a smear, a hit job.
Classic CBC, dishonest, unethical, sloppy, false, and paid for by Trudeau, by you.
Then the CBC quotes some Canadian virologist who says he thinks the virus was not engineered.
Again, something the Epoch Times newspaper does not say.
But then this.
Armstrong was also worried the issue's anti-communist party messaging could inflame racial tensions in Canada during the pandemic.
Okay, got it.
Got it, got it, got it.
So this white liberal from Kelowna, I assume this is the same Lisa Armstrong from Kelowna, because the CBC doesn't tell us who she is.
So she says that an anti-communist message would inflame racial tensions.
Got it.
So a white girl says that Cindy Gu, the Chinese publisher of the Epoch Times, Cindy Gu's whipping up racial tensions by opposing the dictatorship that rules over her home country.
Got it.
And I'm guessing that Germans who didn't like the Nazi Party, they were also whipping up anti-German sentiment.
Is that right?
Only a white liberal CBC hack would publish that criticizing the Communist Party of China is racist because only a white liberal hack of the CBC would conflate communism with being Chinese.
That's so lame.
That's racist.
Look at this.
Another CBC expert, a sociology professor, says the Epoch Media Group is affiliated with the Falun Gong Movement, a religious group that began in China and was declared illegal and occult by the Chinese government in 1999.
Its followers say the Chinese government persecutes them and oppresses their religious rights.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, look at that wording.
The CBC will not actually acknowledge that the Falun Gong is persecuted.
They won't accept it as a fact.
They'll just say it's something that Falun Gong followers say.
Really?
Jews say that the Nazis killed some of them in what they call the Holocaust.
So Jews say it, did it happen or not?
Does the Chinese Communist Party persecute the Falun Gong or not?
Why is the CBC saying, well, Falun Gong members say it, did the CBC just reduce this to a rumor?
Do you see how the CBC is reducing this, diminishing what the Chinese Communists did?
Research said the CBC itself won't do.
It's a fact, an incontrovertible fact, corroborated and proved repeatedly that in fact the Falun Gong was persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party.
The CBC is literally deodorizing the Chinese Communist torture and organ harvesting of the Falun Gong just to own a newspaper freebie insert that embarrassed their boss Justin Trudeau.
Imagine working on the CBC smear.
There's three journalists who worked on this.
Imagine how low you'd have to be to do this and call yourself a journalist, just to curry favor with Trudeau.
This is just one step above Holocaust denial.
Seriously.
Falun Gong members claim they were persecuted.
No, they were murdered en masse.
Then the CBC quotes another expert who tells us that it's a peculiar trick of dictators to try to get people to distrust their governments.
Really?
That actually sounds more like a democracy than a dictatorship.
Wardle says people who read the special edition of the Epoch Times may not be completely convinced about its findings, but will have been left with questions about what their governments are telling them.
Oh my god, don't let that happen.
That is a technique of disinformation actors who want people to question as much as possible authoritative sources, she said.
Well, you can't do that.
Don't question authority.
Ultimately, you're no longer going to your trusted news site or the World Health Organization or your government even for information.
You're left thinking, I can't trust anybody.
Imagine that.
A Canadian not trusting the UN's World Health Organization, which is run by China.
Imagine someone not trusting Trudeau's government.
Why, we can't let that happen, can we?
That's really the crux of this whole thing.
The Epoch Times criticized the government, and so they have to be stomped on by the government broadcaster and anyone they can get to give them a quote.
And that bizarre peeping Tom mail carrier.
It was an article about a possible bioweapons link to coronavirus that set off alarm bells for a Toronto mail carrier when he saw the special edition appear in his mail station on Friday.
CBC News is not naming the carrier because he's concerned he could lose his job with Canada Post.
They're saying the coronavirus is part of a biowarfare agenda by the Chinese people.
That's over the line for me, he said.
I saw the headlines on the thing and my heart sank because I thought the world right now is full of fear and confusion.
The last thing that people need is this kind of hatred.
Well, that's a double lie there.
The Chinese people, no, no, no.
They were quoting the Chinese Communist Party.
I have the article right here.
The headline is, China's bioweapons ambitions.
And they didn't say that at all.
It's an article clearly marked commentary where a journalist goes through that speech by that Chinese defense minister years ago that outlines China's plan that they believe in bioweapons as the best way to fight America asymmetrically, as in it's easier for them to do than to spend tens of billions of dollars on aircraft carriers to match America.
It's a historical treatment of a speech that was given years ago by the Communist Party's defense minister.
They absolutely didn't publish the lie that this postal worker says that it was a bioweapon by the Chinese people?
No, the Chinese people published this newspaper criticizing the Chinese Communist Party, just like the CBC didn't was lying when they said what Lisa from Kelowna says.
And again, the CBC does not link to the article for you to check for yourself.
They surely know what they're doing, but they have deceived you by not correcting this peeping Tom mailman, by not correcting Lisa from Kelowna.
Like I say, this was a hatchet piece, and the CBC just needed some people to say what they needed them to say.
I love that cowardly weirdo who's reading everyone's mail and tattling to the state broadcaster about it.
He'd fit right in in China, wouldn't he?
I love that the CBC is treating him like some major whistleblower.
He's just a weirdo coward peeping Tom, just like the CBC state broadcaster would fit in with the People's Daily.
This is so gross.
I reached out to Cindy Gu today.
She pointed out that most people in the comment section on the CBC website were tearing this hit job to shreds.
I have no doubt the CBC will soon shut down their comment section, Chinese Communist Party style.
And Cindy sent me this rebuttal, and I'm so glad she did.
And we'll publish the link to this on the website.
I want you to read it for yourself.
It's too long for me to go through now.
CBC intentionally excludes crucial facts about Epoch Times in our coverage of Beijing's cover-up of virus outbreak.
I like that she fights back, don't you?
Maybe our Conservative Party MPs might try it one day.
It's an exhaustive rebuttal, and it's damning, and it includes a copy of Gu's letter to the CBC hacks before publication, 90% of which the CBC omitted or buried deep down in the story.
The very first point in Gu's response that the CBC either ignored, because otherwise how could they have that racism headline, or pushed way down was this, this is the letter Cindy Gu sent that was never incorporated.
Hi, Katie.
Thank you for the inquiry.
The Epoch Times was founded by Chinese immigrants in North America who fled communist persecution in their home country.
All of our reporters, editors and reporters in China were arrested, with some enduring long prison sentences and brutal torture.
We have connections in China with people who provide exclusive information that we report on.
Wow.
Wow.
Imagine getting that email back and still going on with your hit job.
Imagine burying that deep in the story or omitting it, just to smear Cindy Gu as racist, smear her team as racist.
Imagine how low you have to be to do that.
That is the disgusting CBC.
They are as low as the Chinese communist press.
They are allies with the Chinese communist press, just like Trudeau is, just like Patty Haidu is.
Advocating Freedom Amidst Media Manipulation00:11:25
I'm going to talk more about this on my noon hour show tomorrow.
It's so infuriating, and I'm only half started.
But never forget, Justin Trudeau's CBC state broadcaster hates you, so they lie to you, and they lie about you.
And the CBC would, if they would be so deliberately deceptive about saintly victims of Chinese torture and persecution, imagine how they would treat mere you if you ever crossed their man, Justin Trudeau.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, as you know, here in Canada, we have started a website called fight thefines.com.
And it's about fighting these outrageous, overweening actions by police and bureaucrats, ticketing people for walking their dog, fining people for feeding the homeless.
We have almost a dozen cases, and we'll show you them every day or so as our lawyer processes them.
We're doing the civil liberties work that the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, for some reason, refuses to do.
You would think this would be their banner moment, a kind of martial law.
Well, we're filling that void in Canada.
I'm very proud of our viewers for supporting us.
But I am even more amazed and impressed by what I see in the United States.
Same thing down there, the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union.
Well, they're not really in the driver's seat.
I wonder why.
But look at this tweet from my friend Harmit Dylan, a lawyer in Silicon Valley who's actually helped us out here at Rebel News before.
She tweeted, if you'd like to support this important civil rights work, please visit libertycenter.org and contribute.
Literally no other civil rights organization in America has filed as many lawsuits to liberate America from unconstitutional, overbroad, and arbitrary COVID orders.
Hashtag freedom.
And if you go to that website, libertycenter.org, it's a new freedom-oriented civil liberties group.
Fascinating cases.
You can see the lawyer Harmeet Dylan there.
And if you go to her own law firm page, it's got beautiful graphics that sum up the nature of the different kinds of cases.
For example, churches being closed, businesses being told you're essential, but you're not.
Protests being banned.
The government taking the opportunity to spend money on illegal aliens.
So many different species of lawsuits.
Joining us now to talk about her campaign.
I was going to call her a one-woman army, but I know she's got a team with her.
My friend Harmee Dylan joins us now live via Skype.
Harmee, great to see you.
Congratulations.
I knew you would do this.
You've helped us before, and now you're helping America fight for freedom.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
It's a really exciting time for civil libertarians.
Unfortunately, it's a little bit lonelier than I thought it would be fighting these battles because most of America seems to want to accept the government controlling every aspect of our lives.
And my concern as a civil libertarian is not so much about the current situation.
Of course, we all want to be safe.
We want to make sure none of our neighbors or our family members or anybody around the world perishes from this disease.
But I'm concerned about what happens with the next crisis and the next crisis.
And I frankly don't want to live in a society where the governor tells me I'm not essential, where I don't have the right to pray, but people who consume alcohol, marijuana, and other vice goods have the right to go buy that because their lobbyists are better than the church lobbyists.
So I think these are some of the issues that we face here is make sure that those fundamental civil liberties are respected.
And I think they're even more important in a time of crisis than before.
Yeah, you know, Naomi Klein, the Canadian socialist author, wrote a book called The Shock Doctrine.
And she claimed crises allow capitalists to take root.
I think that was a trick.
It's the opposite.
As so many leftists and Democrats say, never let a crisis go to waste.
And I think what's happened here is that there may have been, or it looked like there was possibly going to be a public health crisis.
Thankfully, it hasn't really taken root anywhere, probably not even in New York.
But opportunistically, every big government scheme said, oh, I can rebrand this as an emergency virus measure.
I'm going to shut down churches.
I'm going to do massive spending.
I'll just sort of say what is like, there's so many things that have sneaked in as stowaways with legitimate virus reactions.
I think that's what's really gone on.
The virus itself, thankfully, isn't a crisis, but all these other things that we've been saddled with really have nothing to do with the virus, do they?
That's right.
For example, we've seen the media even before the government got involved crying about the fact that since there's a shutdown, this is really great for the environment and global warming, and we have less traffic on the roads, et cetera.
So you can see the agenda immediately as they're always looking for an opportunity to take advantage.
But right now, one of the lawsuits that the center filed was on behalf of a couple of Latino Californians who challenged the governor's order to give $75 million of taxpayer money to illegal alien workers who are unemployed right now in this crisis.
And that violates state law and it violates federal law as well.
But they're getting away with it because guess what?
The legislature is out of session, the courts are closed, and it's frankly popular politically amongst the allies of the governor.
City councils are doing this as well throughout California.
They're taking advantage of the fact that Congress's eyes are elsewhere and there's no bandwidth for law enforcement.
But this is illegal in our country the way it's being done.
And, you know, when patrons who get this money, you know, they know who gave it to them.
So it's going to be turned into a political advantage by the left.
And so we have to be vigilant about that.
Right now, Americans are out of work.
We're soon from having among the lowest unemployment in history.
We're going to have 20% unemployment as a result of China's sending this disease over here by their negligence or worse.
And so I think it's really important that we prioritize people who follow the law, be they immigrants or citizens.
And also on a humanitarian basis, of course, we have to take care of people's food needs and health if they're in a crisis, regardless of their legal status.
I don't have a problem with that.
But subsidizing people who are working here illegally and encouraging that is against our public policy and it's against my moral beliefs as well.
Here in Canada, I have been appalled that civil liberties groups have just said, no, we're going to sit this one out.
Our version of the ACLU literally put up a website saying, yeah, you can send us your stories and we'll put together a little scrapbook afterwards when it's all over.
Like they say, yeah, send us your complaints and we'll write about them later.
Yeah, no, I need a doctor to fix the disease, not to write an autopsy.
That was my line.
That's right.
Can you tell me in America?
I read on your tweet and I looked at your impressive websites that you filed more cases than anyone else.
Where have the traditional liberal defenders of, well, that's where the word liberal comes from, from the Latin root for freedom.
Where are the lefty or liberal civil libertarians?
Aren't they concerned about these house arrest and martial law type orders?
I think they have some niche concerns, okay?
So here in California, the niche concerns are letting as many criminals or accused criminals out of the prisons as quickly as possible with no conditions.
In fact, just yesterday, I saw a news story in Orange County where numerous sex offenders were released from the county jail to the extent that the district attorney there who disagreed with this issued a public warning to people saying, you know, there's a bunch of sex offenders on the loose.
So this is kind of what's happening there.
There have been some, you know, thought pieces about how is this crisis impacting the transgender community and et cetera.
And there's been one legitimate issue that I think, at least in New York, activists have taken up, and I think in California as well, which is apparently the early lists regarding who would get a ventilator put people who are disabled and elderly at a lower priority than younger people and people who are not disabled.
That's, of course, disgusting and appalling.
And the governor and his team have dialed that back.
But so that's a legitimate thing to focus on.
Nowhere is anybody focusing on the, we have five rights under our First Amendment right to free speech, the right to free press, assembly, petition the government, worship, and religion.
So, and and I think I've maybe restated one of those, but from the beginning of this crisis, our governor gave the media an exemption from his order.
So the media was all considered essential workers.
But church, not essential.
Assembly, not essential.
One of the lawsuits I filed has sued the governor for banning all political protest at the Capitol.
Speech is limited to what you can do from your home, which is a significant limitation.
And petitioning the government, when you're not allowing protests, that's assembly, speech, and petition.
So these are fundamental rights, and nobody's fighting for them except for us here in California.
I think that the issues now with regarding churches, people are beginning to wake up and stand up for their rights.
We had at the first month of this, our Catholic friends said, you know, we're going to follow the Pope's lead and the bishop and the archbishop and they don't want to do anything about this.
They want to go along.
But when yesterday our governor said he's going to allow schools to open up sooner than churches, there's no public health or logical justification for that.
That's simply putting religion at a third tier level of importance in our world.
And it's totally unacceptable.
I can tell you as a person of faith, our faith is much more important to people who have faith in a crisis than it is in normal terms.
And telling people they have to stay inside to pray with their family, but they can go out to get any other item that they need because the marijuana industry or the alcohol industry have their lobbyists or addicts amongst people who make policy.
I think that's really insulting and offensive.
Yeah, we heard that exact same line from a pastor in Aylmer, Ontario.
He said, I just want to be treated the same way as the local liquor store.
I thought that was a good way to put it.
Well, I'm so pleased that you're fighting the fight.
I would like to encourage all our viewers to go to libertycenter.org and center is spelt the American way, C-E-N-T-E-R.org.
Risks Of Surveillance State00:08:20
Do you accept donations?
How are you paying for this?
Are they pro bono lawyers?
Are you paying people?
Where's the money coming from?
So our model is pro bono or low bono, meaning any lawyer who represents clients through our efforts either agrees to do it for free, which is, by the way, in many bar associations in the United States, lawyers are requested and in some cases mandated to do a certain amount of work for free for the public.
And, you know, they usually have some left-wing causes that they're allowed to do it for, but they're in fact allowed to do it for our cause as well.
We're a recognized charity in America.
But, or if they need to get paid, which, you know, of course, not everybody can afford to work all of this time for free, they get paid a fraction of what their normal rate is.
And the center pays the filing fees and court costs for our cases.
And so we absolutely rely on donations from the public.
And in America, those donations are tax deductible, but we will take them from anywhere they'd like to come.
Sure.
Well, Courts Canada has deep problems too, but we have American viewers, and I'd certainly encourage them to go to LibertyCenter, C-N-T-E-R.org.
And I see right there in the top right, that red button says give, because I know firsthand how effective you and your team are.
And it's amazing, you're right there in one of the most liberal cities in America, San Francisco, but you're fighting for freedoms.
Here's one worry I have.
I remember the last massive crisis in America that everyone felt like they were in it together and scared all together.
I'm referring to 9-11.
And out of that came a number of awful decisions, including something that lives with us to this day, the TSA, the people at the airport that touch and grope and search and delay.
And as far as I know, in the 20 years that the TSA and our Canadian version, the CATSA, have been in effect, not a single terrorist has ever been found.
But millions of people have been groped.
Billions of dollars have been spent.
Tens of billions of dollars of costs foisted on the industry.
And worse than all that, that's just money and groping.
We have been conditioned to become obedient.
We're now cool with strangers with the imprimatur of the government's authority touching us, making us take off our belts and get uncomfortable.
That would have been unthinkable to the sense of personal self-respect of any ordinary American and Canadian.
Now we just say, oh yeah, that's just how it is.
That's the new normal.
We've been conditioned.
I'm worried that we're going to be conditioned to accept infringements on our liberties from this crisis.
Well, you're 100% correct.
After 9-11, I was just an ordinary lawyer toiling away in the fields.
And, you know, people from my faith community, the Sikh community, my brother and other people in my family wear turbans.
We were getting both harassed by racists.
Of course, so that's a problem.
But also the government came knocking on the doors of people who look different, brown-skinned people, people from India, and just harassing people, asking all the Muslims to come in for questioning.
This is outrageous as well.
And so that's when I joined the American Civil Liberties Union because I was an activist on behalf of the Sikh community and the Asian community.
And they didn't know I was a conservative.
They just knew I was doing the same work.
And they did good work at that time pushing back.
We did good work trying to educate Americans about the Patriot Act.
But the Patriot Act, out of which a lot of these surveillance mechanisms have flown, every Democrat voted for it except for one.
Every Republican voted for it.
And Nancy Pelosi voted for it.
And today, the Patriot Act is used to oppose additional externalities on our banking transactions as well as all the TSA stuff that you mentioned and other surveillance.
And now our governor is talking about basically saying it, if you read carefully, a surveillance state regarding health issues.
So eventually when you get tested for COVID, the government's going to track you and see what happens with that disease.
And God forbid, if you're positive for it, you may lose your liberty.
And I'm deeply concerned about that.
And I don't accept it as a condition of living in a free society.
As I've written in some of our legal briefs, there is not a presumption of illness in our Constitution or in our public health laws.
It is the government's burden to prove that somebody is communicable and then treat them with a limited amount of restraint necessary to achieve the government interest.
Not closing churches until November or until next year until when the governor says it's okay because maybe he doesn't care about going to church himself.
It's not a convenience.
It's not like going to the nail salon.
It's very important.
And so, and by the way, the nail salon is very important for the people who work there and for the people who go there and for the vendors who sell them supplies.
I have received hundreds, if not thousands, of heartbreaking stories.
I'm receiving two dozen of them every hour of businesses in California and citizens who work in businesses that have been shut down for frankly no good reason at this point.
This entire crisis was, I think, exaggerated in terms of its importance, and it is now being used to shut down our civil liberties in California and around the country, by the way.
While our president is urging that we begin going back to work as normal, but do it prudently, the governors are not hearing the prudent part.
They're loving their absolute control.
And unless the citizens begin to fight back, we're going to be living under their thumb forever.
You know, you're so right.
The merger of the big surveillance, big data, and big government is terrifying.
Just a quick clip.
Here's Canada's public health officer, our version of the U.S., Dr. Fauci.
Here she is in a documentary about a theoretical smallpox outbreak musing about having everybody tracked, tracking everybody with bracelets and having police detention centers for recalcitrants.
Here, take a look at Teresa Tam a few years ago.
If there are people who are non-compliant, there are definitely laws and public health powers that can quarantine people in mandatory settings.
It's potential you could track people, put bracelets on their arms, have police and other setups to ensure quarantine is undertaken.
Well, that's what the conversation was like 10 years ago.
Now, with databases and cell phone tracking, that daydream by Canada's health authoritarians, it's one inch from reality.
I heard that Ontario's government gave the health info straight to the police, just handed it over.
I think we're about one inch away from what China calls their social credit system, where they know everything about you, everything you've searched on the internet, your financial information, your health information, your police information.
That's a total surveillance state.
And China had it first, but I'm worried we're stumbling there.
I don't want to sound paranoid or terrified, but these are these crisis moments where authoritarians can make their move.
Am I being too cautious or too concerned?
Not at all.
We're seeing it in front of our eyes.
The governor of California's six-step program involves really tracking everybody and making sure everybody's vaccinated or not allowed to participate in society.
And frankly, from what I've seen and the conflicting stories about the origin of this virus and its long-term health impacts, I'm not going to be one of the first people to get that vaccine, I can tell you that.
And, you know, I think it is time that we prudently take precautions.
I'm certainly, you know, not the spring youth of my life.
And, you know, we need to take precautions if we're older or more vulnerable.
But that does not mean we do not go on with our lives.
There are many risks out there.
When you drive on the highway, you have a risk of dying from a traffic accident.
And we all need to factor those risks, accept them, be careful to not infect other people, and go back to our lives as normal as fast as possible, lest we all end up presiding over the murder of our economy and all of the lives we've built around ourselves.
Time for Prudent Precautions00:02:15
Well, Harmee Dylan, what a pleasure to catch up with you.
You've been a friend to Rebel News before, and you're a friend to Liberty.
I knew that you would pick up this challenge.
I just knew it in my bones.
And I'm so proud that we know you.
I'm grateful for the time you've given us on the show today.
We're a Canadian-based news network, as you know, but we have many friends in the United States.
We're going to put this on YouTube and email it out.
And to my American friends in particular, I would encourage you to put your money where your mouth is and go to libertycenter.org and click on that red button in the top right corner.
As you heard Harmit say, many of the lawyers are pro bono or low bono.
They're just working for a fraction, but there's still costs, filing fees, you know, couriers, even the website itself.
So I think that a small investment in liberty is what we should all do.
And here in Canada, of course, we have our own campaign.
So Harmeet, great to see you.
I'll let you get back to work.
It sounds like you're very busy.
Thanks for your time today.
Thank you so much.
All right, there you have it.
Harmee Dylan, a Liberty lawyer.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue about the plague in Marseille, France in the 1700s.
Bruce writes, the plague demonstrates that laws won't stop anything.
Putting up a stop sign won't prevent someone from racing through the intersection.
Neither did the Great Wall of China stop barbarians from bribing their way through.
We're only as strong as our weakest link.
Well, the system was pretty smart and seemed to work pretty well.
You had the different bills of health.
You had the different lazaretos where you had to wait.
It was just when you bribed, like you say, the weak link, the corrupt, I don't know if corrupts are the right word, sanitation board.
Oh, go back to Livorno and get a clean bill of health there and we'll let you in.
Yeah, it was the government that led it.
The plan was solid, and I guess the plan worked for a couple of centuries, but all it took was one plague boat to kill half the city.
Bev writes, your show reminded me of a car trip we took two years ago.
We took a ferry to Grosil in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.
Grosile is a national historic site.
It was a quarantine island that all ships had to stop at before they were allowed to proceed to Quebec City.
Quarantines and Weak Links00:01:22
If people were sick, then the whole ship was quarantined.
Over 5,000 Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine died of typhus there during the epidemic of 1847.
I heard about that island.
Someone mentioned that to me in a super chat at my noontime show.
And I was studying about the smallpox in Montreal in 1885.
So we have had experiences with quarantines before.
And of course, it's terrible that 5,000 Irish migrants died of typhus.
But of course, it would have been so much more terrible had they been allowed to enter the city.
And that's the thing about quarantines.
Quarantine sick people, or you're going to have to quarantine everybody.
On my interview with Sheila Gunnread, Mary Lee writes, Sheila Gunreed, a true journalist, thank you for all your hard work.
Oh, she's great.
You don't need to get me started on Sheila.
She's breaking news every day.
If not every day, every week.
Sometimes she covers the news that's out there, but she's digging.
She's digging.
She digged a 400-page document.
By the way, that document wasn't leaked to us.
It wasn't even an access to information document.
That document was tabled in the House of Commons, but no other reporter and no Conservative Party researcher seemed to be that bothered to go through it, except our Sheila.
All right, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters to you at home, goodbye.