Ezra Levant and Rebel News detail June 24’s Toronto City Hall assault, where Antifa-backed protesters—with police and security complicity—chased reporters off Nathan Phillips Square, calling it a "sacred circle" tied to Indigenous claims. Over $8,000 covered security (7 guards at $600/hr) and legal fees, yet mainstream media groups like CCLA stayed silent. Levant dismisses their inaction as collusion with "cancel culture," vowing to release footage and fight for press rights despite systemic bias against conservative journalists. [Automatically generated summary]
The first part today is we were kicked off of Toronto City Hall by a bunch of Antifa ruffians yesterday.
So we went back again today with not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, but seven professional security guards.
How do you think that went?
Well, I'll tell you a little bit.
There's a lot of interesting footage, so I would invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
I want you to see what we saw with our eyes.
If all you do is hear it, you'll just hear some shouting.
We went down to this Antifa encampment in Toronto with a bit of muscle.
I'll show you how that goes, and the rest of the story will be out tomorrow.
To get the video form, go to rebelnews.com and click subscribe.
It's just $8 a month or $80 for the whole year.
I hope you do.
Thanks.
Here's the podcast.
Tonight, first Antifa protesters told our reporters to move.
Then Toronto police did.
What do you think we should do?
It's June 24th, 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 is in the government.
But why?
Just because it's my bloody right to do so.
I just got back to the studio.
I was downtown all day.
I haven't prepared a monologue as I normally do.
But I have a different experience to share with you.
What happened today and what's been happening to us over the past few days.
As you know, rebel reporters have sometimes been pushed and shoved by left-wing activists who don't like the fact that we tell the other side of the story.
This goes back years, actually.
Many of our staff have been punched or pushed.
We make it a rule that we always go to the police to press charges, and where we can, we file a civil suit.
One of the worst moments in our company's history was when our friend Sheila Gunreed was hit in the face by this thug named Dion Buges outside the Alberta legislature at, believe it or not, a women's march.
Remember this?
I try to have a conversation with you.
Get out of my fucking face.
I will bring you the right to kill.
Calm down.
We're going to calm down.
You don't have the right to film me before you go.
Yes, he does.
Just yelling.
Just hit me into my face.
I found that absolutely atrocious.
I found it even more atrocious that the NDP feminist activists sided with him and helped him to escape.
Alas, he could not escape.
Deion Buges was convicted of a crime, and we additionally sued him in civil court.
That's what we do to people who touch our reporters.
Sometimes we don't always catch them.
We've had people attack many of our reporters over the years.
Sometimes they just come right up and punch the camera like this one when our cameraman Efron and David Menzies were outside a hotel in Toronto.
Oh, okay, then.
Would you like to come on camera?
No, we're not.
I would like to go off the property right now.
I'd like you to take my picture.
Hey, hey, excuse me.
Take the picture.
Take your.
Hey, get your Rebel Job News out of here right now.
Why is it Rebel Crowd News, sir?
Get out!
Roberto, call the police.
Sometimes the people attacking us are just plain old deranged, like Jonathan Yaneve and his kooky mum.
Look at them attack David Menzies, including with a cane.
Go away, huh?
Yes, I am.
Go away.
You go away!
Go away!
You're gonna do it again?
You're gonna do it again?
Come on, get another shot.
Go away!
Pick up my iPhone!
Go away!
Go away!
Okay, that's a second shot.
Did you see that, sir?
Go away!
Go away!
I do!
Go!
That way!
Go!
This is a common parking lot!
You're not that long!
Okay, you have knocked me twice with your cane.
Go!
Get away!
You're lucky I don't beat up girls or fake girls.
Oh, now you too, eh?
Go away!
Go away!
You go away!
Get off the car!
Okay, that's four shots.
Get off the shots.
Hi, you go.
Go away!
Go!
Excuse me!
Get off the path!
Go away!
Look, go away!
There's lots of eyewitnesses!
I don't care.
Get away!
Go away!
You are a provoker!
I'm a provoker!
Go away!
That's okay.
I'm really hoping for the cops to come.
Go away!
Yaneeve is out of control.
He also attacked Kian Bexte.
Remember this?
Yaniv, will you be pleading guilty?
What?
Go.
No, don't touch me.
Don't touch me.
Hey!
Stop!
Go away from me!
Go away!
In each of those cases, we have applied to the police department to take steps, and even if they don't, we go to civil court.
We are suing Yaniv right now.
But something deeply troubling has happened to our society in general the last month.
All these things I've just listed for you, all these attacks on our people are individual, unconnected episodes.
They're a deranged kook like Yaniv.
They're an agitated New Democrat activist like Dion Buges.
They're a momentary ad hoc thing.
They're not part of a sustained pattern.
Oh, yes, there's a pattern that the left feels comfortable punching the right in a way that a conservative would never do to a liberal journalist.
I haven't heard of any other journalist in Canada ever being attacked on the job, except for us, have you?
But something has changed recently.
Antifa, the street thugs of the left, the paramilitary wing of the left-wing parties, have taken to the streets en masse.
In the United States, it's been positively deadly, but here in Canada, there's just lots of pushing and shoving.
Our Antifa are a little bit cowardly, I suppose.
They're not quite as insane as they are in America, but they still punch and they still hurt, and they would do much more if they could.
We started seeing this, so we started to deploy private security guards.
Now, whenever I mention this, people volunteer.
I get emails every day because a lot of our rebel viewers are former police or people with security training, former military.
And I say the same thing to each of them.
I thank them for their offer, but I explain we absolutely need professional, licensed, insured security who are compliant with the laws and frankly who know what they're doing.
Sometimes we just have big burly guys who say, I'll protect you.
No, I don't want that.
I want someone who, if things go sideways, there's insurance over them.
They're trained.
And the training includes when to leave.
Because sometimes people who want to be a volunteer bodyguard, well, sometimes they're actually looking for a fight.
We don't want that.
Sometimes the smart move is just to get out.
So we have taken to hiring professional bodyguards for our staff.
Let me give you an example.
When we sent Sheila Gunread out to cover Yaniv, the madman, we sent two bodyguards with her.
And I'm glad we did because look at this moment.
Sheila's at the courthouse in Vancouver.
Yaniv and his mom come barreling towards her and the two bodyguards who are out of frame in the camera suddenly go whoop and form a wall protecting Sheila.
Remember this?
Then are you going to plead guilty to assaulting my colleague Kian Bexty?
Rebel media.
Hey!
Hey!
Jay, keep your hands off me!
Whoa, whoa.
You go away.
Are you going to plead guilty for assaulting my colleague, Kian Bexti?
That was amazing.
Those two security were so professional, they were inconspicuous.
They were not in the story until they just closed like a pair of doors and protected Sheila.
I'm sure if they didn't do that, Yeniv would have smashed her the same way he smashed David Menzies and Kian Bextee.
But back to Antifa.
We have taken to hiring security guards all the time.
We sent David, as you know, to Kingston, Ontario to watch as Canada's ragtag Antifa wanted to tear down the Johnny McDonald's statue.
They didn't come prepared for.
They just egged it.
We had a professional security guard with him, but it still got pretty bad.
I showed you a bit of this.
Take a look.
Time to go.
As you can see, these people.
It's a park.
It's a public park.
Do not push us.
Time to go.
Do not push us.
We're making our way out.
Okay, good.
Get your boy out.
Get your boy out.
You're going to get egged.
Get out.
What, you're going to threaten me by throwing an egg at me, sir?
No.
Get out of here.
It's a public park.
Whoa.
Let's move over.
Oh, you're a tough guy behind that mask, aren't you?
Get out.
Oh, and you too.
Get out.
Huh?
Is this your idea?
That's cool.
Get this boy.
I'm going to lose that camera, Kasman.
Go.
Go.
This is.
Hey.
Touch me.
Don't touch out.
The security guard wanted to pull David away.
That's what a security guard does.
He leans towards caution.
David wanted to go in.
I think the tension between the two of them worked out just fine.
David got the story he wanted and he showed that he wasn't going to back down.
But our security guard, I think, held David back a bit.
Frankly, he did the Antifa a favor.
But that upset me.
And so I said to David when he called me that day, I said, David, your next event, we're going to have two security guards, including one for your cameraman.
You'll notice that the cameraman is often attacked too.
So we sent David and a cameraman and two security guards down to City Hall.
And then we sent another journalist, Andrew, who's just joined our team, and a cameraman to downtown Toronto City Hall also.
So we had a grand total of four security guards.
And I was thinking to myself, we've got them very well covered.
That's one security guard per body.
In fact, there was a moment of time when it was just one journalist and one cameraman.
We had four security guards.
So that's a lot of security.
But what happened was, well, let me show you a little bit of what happened at Toronto City Hall.
This was just the other day.
I love you.
Don't run away from love.
Uh-oh.
Don't run away from love.
Don't run away from love.
Uh-oh.
See, Toronto City Hall Security ordered our private security guards off the property.
They said they would charge them with trespass.
Otherwise, our lawyers weren't there, so our private security left.
And you could see what happened.
They literally chased our cameraman, Mocha, around.
Now, they didn't physically hurt him, but not for lack of trying.
They were wild.
And all the while, Toronto City Hall was just flying with it.
In fact, they ordered Mocha, our cameraman, off.
Mocha had been chased around by these Antifa losers.
I mean, it wasn't particularly violent, but he'd been chased.
Our security guards had been sent away.
They shouldn't have left, but they did.
And then City Hall Security said to Mocha, What are you doing here?
Here's how that went.
And I like how Mocha stood up for his rights.
Take a look at that.
One minute, sir.
Yeah.
What are you?
What's your purpose here?
I'm a cameraman.
Can I stop you?
Are you going to stop me instead of them trying to block you?
I'm asking you.
I don't have to provide you anything.
Okay, well, you can't.
Like they don't have to provide anything to you.
I'm not harassing them, they're following me.
Oh, this is their space.
No, so we actually had four security guards with Mocha and David and Andrew yesterday, but they didn't, they were just.
They were pushed out too easily.
I thought we had it well covered.
I thought four security guards, that that's a small squad, that's a whole army, but nonetheless they were.
Our security was pushed out by Toronto City Hall security and then Toronto police real cops i'm not talking about MALL cops said to David that if he didn't leave he would be charged with trespass.
And the reason that was so shocking is that the story that Mocha and Andrew and David and our whole crew were there to report on was an encampment, an urban tent city, a slum set up literally on the plaza outside Toronto City Hall, in a square called Nathan Phillips Square.
It's the town center of Toronto, political rallies festivals celebrations, it's the center of the city.
These squatters had sent up uh, set up, a tent city there, Antifa style.
David and the rest of our team was there and report on it.
City Hall security sent away.
Our security told our people they were trespassing, but we're leaving this slum there.
I mean, it's one thing when mall style mall cops at Toronto security say to leave, but when an actual Toronto police officer says it, look at this guy and look at implying that the orders came from on high yes sir, how you doing?
Oh, he's with me.
Sir, I know this was a private conversation so it's not my first time.
You can record from what's happening.
You can record from what's it go over, so this isn't probably the best time to be coming here and doing this.
I understand what you're trying to do okay, it's not the best time okay, so in the, in the, are you telling me to come at night time, sir?
So, like I said, so for today yeah, City Hall security and their staff they're they're, they're trespassing you okay, so we're gonna have to escort you off the property.
Let me get this straight.
You're they're saying i'm as i'm Tres, as a taxpayer, I am trespassing with it.
You're getting trespassed, so we're gonna ask you to leave.
Politically okay, you mean, they're not being charged with trespassing.
Why this double standard?
If you want to take it up with City Hall, you can okay, so this is their property, so they're the ones that are trespassing it.
Sir, just to be clear, i'm not causing the disturbance.
I'm practicing journalism.
Protecting Our Team00:02:22
These people are being belligerent and physically violent to us.
Sir, it ticks two parts.
It ticks two right, you know?
That's saying so, I guess.
Well, I thought we had freedom of the press.
I thought we had freedom of speech speech here in Toronto, and you do.
So they can say that it's not black and white.
Well, I watched that and I was deeply troubled because I have promised our team here at Rebel NEWS that we will protect them as best we can.
We will sue people who hurt them, as we sued Deon Bewes, but I would much rather protect someone in the first place than sue after the fact.
I would rather spend a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars on security rather than $30,000 chasing down someone who assaulted us.
And more to the point, I don't want our people getting punched or kicked or God forbid worse.
So we had sent four professional security at great expense and they were brushed away and we were threatened by the police itself.
I saw this yesterday and I said this can not stand.
I mean, either we have freedom in the press and the right to assemble in a town square in the largest city in the country peacefully, or we don't.
And I happen to say we do have that freedom and I'm backed up by centuries of tradition, including, if you want to get down to it, Section 2B of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Section 1 of Diefenbaker's Bill of Freedoms, Bill of Rights, excuse me.
So I said, we're not going to stand for this.
So we arranged for a team of seven security guards, tougher ones.
We called our lawyer, our free speech lawyer, Aaron Rosenberg.
We said, you're coming too.
We had eight people.
And I said, I'm going down to Mocha and Efron, our cameraman, and Andrew and David and myself and a couple of others.
We had, altogether we had 15 rebels there.
A lot of them holding cameras from different angles with different instructions.
Some people to film the action up close, others to stand further back and not even get into the fray, but film everything.
So we went down there today with seven security.
Now it was quite a day.
We just came back to the office.
Breaking the Law to Report the News00:05:36
We're still editing the footage.
We'll have the full video for you out, we hope, tomorrow.
But I want to give you a little bit of a taste of how it went.
Here, take a look at this when we first arrived.
How are you going to warrior?
Fernando, how you doing?
Steve.
Steve, how are you?
How do you feel here, bro?
There's a counter.
He mumbles incoherently.
he's doing some kind of live stream broadcast.
When they saw we weren't going to leave, things got violent.
Come on!
All this time, Toronto City Hall Security was standing and watching, twiddling their thumbs, doing nothing, not trying to keep the peace themselves, just watching and not even calling 911.
I went to Toronto City Hall Security to ask for their help, and they told me I was breaking the law by even being there.
Take a look at this.
What's your purpose here?
My purpose here is to do some journalism.
All right, so right now what you're doing is causing a disturbance with everybody here.
I need to ask you to leave, okay?
What have I done to cause a disturbance?
Disturbance.
I need you to leave the property.
And what have I done to cause a disturbance?
I'm not causing disturbance, sir.
I need you to leave the property.
You have been cautioned.
And I've said it.
It is loud and clear.
You have been cautioned.
I need you to leave the property.
I've been trespassing you, okay?
For causing disturbance.
But what did I do to cause a disturbance?
If you have a formal notice, we'll take a look at it.
But right now, you need a verbal notice, trespass notice.
Well, what would you do?
What would you do?
There were no police.
There was dozens of thugs.
City Hall security told us we were breaking the law and to leave the property.
Well, I don't want to tell you the whole story today because I don't have the footage edited yet.
But tomorrow we'll reveal what happened and how we took a stand today, not just against the violent thugs of Antifa, but against City Hall itself and the Toronto police force who wanted us to leave and wanted the protesters to rule the roost.
I don't know if you've been following this Seattle Chaz, it's called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
It's a little few square blocks of anarchy in Seattle where the police have abandoned the place and the left-wing mayor says, oh, it's a free love experiment.
No, it's not.
It's a place of actual murder and rape and drugs and lawlessness and a gang lord, a warlord named Raz, it's Lord of the Flies and it's happening, of course, in a Democrat-run city.
At least there, though, the police aren't enforcing it.
That's the whole point.
It's a police-free zone.
In Toronto, in front of the Toronto City Hall, it's a knockoff of that.
It's a pale imitation.
But the police are actually helping to enforce this anarchy zone.
I don't mean to tease you or leave you high and dry.
I just don't have the footage ready.
We just got back to the office.
I'll have the whole report for you tomorrow, including my extended conversation with the police, and I'll show you how it ended.
But let me tell you this right now.
Between the last few days, between the lawyer we brought down and the seven security today and the four yesterday, we have over $8,000 worth of expenses just to fight for our freedom of the press.
And I said to the team today, no other media company would ever pay these prices to report.
And it wasn't that we were that interested in these urine-soaked protesters.
It's that if we don't have the freedom of the press to stand outside Toronto City Hall and peacefully report the news, then none of us have that freedom.
And you know what?
All the other media companies don't care because they're either pro-Antifa, like the CBC, or they're just obedient now.
They take their bailout from Justin Trudeau and work their solid 35 hours a week in their dime.
We're the only people fighting.
I'll tell you how it's resolved tomorrow, and I hope you're proud of what we did.
Stay with us for more.
Hey, welcome back.
Well, the man who has led the charge in Ontario, especially against Antifa, is our friend David Mentes.
And I was with him downtown Toronto at City Hall today.
And like I said a moment ago, we don't have all the footage processed.
We just got back to the office.
City Hall Security's Role00:09:28
Frankly, we're still a little bit adrenalized by it, but I'd like to talk with David about it and how it went today.
David, great to see you.
And congratulations on your work through the pandemic.
Not only your coverage of Antifa, but your coverage of the airports, the virus, your coverage of Fight the Fines, Civil Liberties.
It's been very interesting.
But in the last few weeks, the physical violence and the threat of violence in Canada against rebel journalists, and rebel journalists only is the worst I've ever seen it.
It's amazing, isn't it, Ezra?
First of all, the left, the progressives, they always talk about love Trump's hate.
And then the first ones to literally throw a bottle off your head is what happened to me in Kingston.
Yeah, the other thing that is notable, Ezra, is that I know our critics, our haters, they'll say, well, you go into a group that is diametrically opposed to you politically.
What do you expect to do by asking triggering questions?
And yet, when I went to Kingston, we were 60 meters away from the protesters in front of the Sir John A. McDonald statue.
I was just doing my stand-up.
Why we're there, what the protest is about.
And like ants to an open jam jar, they came to us dropping F-bombs, using all kinds of slurs.
And today at City Hall, or I think I'm going to start calling it Silly Hall like our friend Sue Ann Levy does at The Sun, we went to report on an illegal occupation of a filthy tent city.
And one of the so-called rules, it's not a real rule, it's a fake rule, is you do not go in the circle because they're playing the, this is also a native spiritual circle, a sacred circle that you cannot go in.
So they've one-upped Antifa in Seattle with their autonomous zone that way.
And we were reporting from outside the circle.
And again, like ants to an open jam jar, they come looking for trouble.
Yeah, and by the way, there is no such thing as having a protest and having the right not to be covered by journalists.
I mean, that's the whole thing about a protest.
It's a public protest in a public place.
You have signs, you're making a message.
It is not only lawful and proper for journalists to come and ask questions, that should sort of be evident that that was your point.
You can't pick and choose which journalists come to cover it.
What was so interesting today is we didn't even have a chance to say anything, and they swarmed us, and they got violent fairly quickly.
Now, street urchins, professional protesters, thugs, and there are some genuine homeless people and mentally ill people who just sort of find a temporary sense of community.
Like, you're a homeless person on the street with some mental illness.
It's a very lonely life, I imagine.
And then every once in a while you see these tent cities, you say, oh, good, people I can talk to, hang out with, whatever, just some social company.
So you have some genuine troubled cases, but they're being run by professional protesters, being financed, and there's that Antifa hidden hand there behind it all.
That's all to be expected.
What is less expected and completely unacceptable in my mind is that City Hall security, I'll call them moll cops because they're not real police, and then Toronto police are not just deferential to these protesters in their illegal slum, but are sort of running interference for them, pushing us out, threatening us with arrest.
That's what's shocking, at least in the United States.
I mean, some police have abnegated themselves by taking a knee and some have lying flat.
Fine.
But you don't have American police actually leading the mob.
At most, they bow to the mob themselves.
But here in Toronto, City Hall Police and Toronto Police were enforcing the mob's orders against you and me.
And you know, and I want to cut some slack, Ezra, for the man and woman on the beat.
That's not their decision.
They're being told to by their hires up.
And I should say that we always believe in fair comment.
So I reached out to Mayor John Torrey's office, no comment.
I reached out to Brad Ross, he's the official spokesman for the City of Toronto.
And Brad is usually great at getting back to me within hours.
No comment.
It's been more than 24 hours.
And yeah, law enforcement is aiding and abetting basically the thugs that, and let's not forget, the ostensible policy reason for this sit-in, it says so on a giant red and white poster, Ezra, is abolish the police.
Not defund the police, not give them a budgetary kick in the shins, but actually get rid of the police.
And again, to address your earlier point, when it comes to articulating their point of view, which is what you'd think is the whole rationale behind a protest and behind a demonstration, they are thoroughly unable to do so.
The best comment I got when I asked one of the people in the Nathan Phillips Square protest, how does abolishing the police help people who are being victimized, people in danger?
And her response was, I'm paraphrasing, but it's on the tape, it was along the lines of, well, when we abolish the police, we won't have any bad guys, implying that all the bad guys are in the police.
I think we've got that clip.
Let's see if we can find it here.
Let's take a look.
I don't want to get into history.
I want to get into current events.
If you want to abolish the police, ma'am, who do we call when the bad guys harass people out?
The bad guys can get the f ⁇ out of here.
It's your people that did this, had this mindset in here.
Our people were peaceful people before they came here.
You know, I watched your questions.
I didn't really interact with the protesters.
That wasn't my purpose.
My purpose today was to show that the rebel news will not be pushed off the town square.
I'm not interested in talking to those people.
They're very incoherent.
I don't think they particularly regard themselves as an intellectual movement.
They're just a physical movement.
They're the street gangs of the left.
They're not the debate society people.
I think it's a fool's errand to try and interview these people other than to show how ridiculous they are.
One of our other reporters, Andrew, went down and tried to have like a college type, college dorm type.
Let's really figure it out, man.
They're not built for that.
They're not there for that.
They're there for, they're probably getting about $100 a day cash.
A lot of them are getting drugs and alcohol.
And some of them are getting a feeling of community, but they're not there to talk the opposite.
I mean, people talk at the ballot.
People talk in newspaper columns and call-in shows.
They're there as the opposite of that.
They're a physical threat.
And that's what's so appalling about Mayor John Torrey abiding them.
We're in Toronto, so he's the mayor we see.
But every big city mayor across North America is a mayor of the left.
And they all capitulate.
But you know, it's even more so here, Ezra, I think, when you compare to Seattle.
Now, granted, Seattle, that autonomous zone encompasses a police precinct.
Which is being abandoned, though.
Yes, indeed.
Here in Toronto, it would be like the police where they're enforcing the warlords' views.
Well, this is it.
But this protest, Nathan Phillips Square is the actual square.
If you've never been to Toronto, folks, where Toronto City Hall is based on, it is the seat of municipal government.
It is the barbarians have come to the castle, and King John Torre has taken a knee.
And not only that, he wants to make it comfortable for them.
There are porter potties for this illegal encampment.
Meanwhile, those practicing journalism, such as myself, yesterday and today, as we saw, we're told to get off the public square or else face trespassing charges.
You know, and that's the thing.
I mean, I do a daily show.
Occasionally, I go and travel and do journalism outside the office.
I always enjoy it.
And I mean, for example, before the pandemic, I would go to the UK about once a month to cover some interesting free speech or Tommy Robinson matter.
And I'd occasionally go out.
I would really enjoy it, but I'm busy.
You know, I got to do my show.
We've got to run the company.
And I myself, I don't think I would have gone down to interview some ragamuffins.
But when I saw the footage of the security guards and the cops saying no peaceful journalists but yes to these violent protesters, I thought we must take a stand.
And you know what?
There was a time so long ago, maybe it was in the last century, the 20th century, where every media outlet would have been appalled by police censorship, by partisan policing, by any infringements of speech.
But here we are in an era where Trudeau bans us from asking questions at press conferences.
Not a single mainstream media journalist cares.
Where our reporter Kiam Bexti is frog marched out of a press conference by RCMP holding his arm behind his back.
Not a word from any other journalist.
We're in court fighting Trudeau in two separate lawsuits.
No other journalists other than our friends at True North.
And you and I, and the reason I, my long point here is the reason I got up out of the office, went downtown, is because I thought, I don't even care about the protesters.
I mean, I do care about them.
But what I really care about is that the right to report safely, freely, peacefully is being trumped by these thugs.
Barberhood's Press Fight00:03:06
And that cannot stand.
If we are to live up, I mean, every day I end my show, keep fighting for freedom.
Well, either I mean it or I don't.
And today we went down there to prove that we mean it.
And as I said before you came on, we got so much footage.
I want to give writers a time to make a good job out of it.
And I don't want to give away the ending of how the story ended.
But that's a must-see show that we're going to put on tomorrow.
Yeah, and Answer, to your point, I think it's because we now truly do live in a world of cancel culture.
And I think members of the media agree with the cancellation of an offensive viewpoint.
Listen, I remember going back...
You just cancelled Margaret Wenny.
Margaret Wendy, they tried to take out Rex Burke.
They took out Wendy Mesley, to which I say, what a shame.
She canceled so many in her days.
Every day someone else goes down.
Jessica Mulrooney.
And then the person who named Jessica Mulrooney, who shamed and named her, she was revealed to be a racist herself.
It's never ending.
Jimmy Kimmel.
It just never stops.
And Ben Mulroney stepping down for allegedly offensive viewpoints of his wife.
But, you know, you remember in yesterday, in the United States, which has the First Amendment, you would have the American Civil Liberties Union, they would go to bat for such odious individuals as neo-Nazis marching through a Jewish neighborhood, Ku Klux Klan marching through a black neighborhood.
And it was disgusting.
It was filthy rhetoric, but it was an example of free speech.
And typically you'd have people screaming on the sides, but they were that committed to freedom of speech.
Now it's, well, you know what?
If you're going to offend somebody, zip it.
Yeah, you know what?
I'm a member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
I make a small monthly donation to them.
And I'm extremely disappointed in them.
In fact, I got a fundraising call from him.
I don't know if I told you.
I got a fundraising call from him the other day.
And, you know, well, how do you think we're doing?
And, well, I gave them an earful.
And I said, where are you?
Where are you guys for civil liberties?
They had a real black rights vibe on the call.
I said, hey, I'm with you.
You did the story along the street in Toronto.
There's a street that has got, I think, 11 black barber shops in the course of three blocks.
It's on Eglands and West.
It's just amazing.
There's just barber-barber barber.
I've never seen anything like it.
It's like a barberhood, barber neighborhood.
Barberhood, I like it.
Barberhood.
It's a barberhood.
I'm going down to the barberhood.
And they're all black men cutting hair.
And it's like a social club.
Yeah, and I said to the Civil Liberties Association, okay, for black rights and everything, why don't you stand up for these black men who are being forced out of business for no genuine health reason?
And they obviously didn't listen to me, even though I said I would donate more to them if they took the case.
My point is the Civil Liberties Association, AWOL.
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, AWOL, absent without leave.
Canadian Association of Journalists.
There's so many of these groups that have journalists or freedom or civil liberties in the name and they're all liars, maybe once long time ago.
But not anymore.
And it's strange that we are filling that gap because I really, when we started the Rebel five and a half years ago, I didn't think, oh, we're going to be a civil liberties organization.
We're going to be a press association.
Fighting for Freedom00:07:50
No, I just thought, well, let's just report the news.
But you can't even do that.
And the people who are supposed to be on guard are not on guard.
And that's not hype.
I mean, we are running fight the fines.
We have something like about 20 cases, I believe, Ezra.
You'd think this is what the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is.
Exactly, I was trying to get them to do that.
Yeah, and instead, we've seen, I have seen two things, two mandates through this whole Wuhan virus thing.
We're keeping notes, and when we examine our notes, we're sending out another press release saying we've got really bad notes about you government officials.
And they're on this jihad of releasing more violent criminals out of correctional institutions to maintain the two-meter social distancing.
This is mad.
Yeah, it's crazy.
Well, listen, we'll show people the whole footage tomorrow.
I just want this story to be told properly.
I want to let people know that we spent four times $600 because we hire these security at $100 an hour, minimum six-hour purchase.
And as I said earlier, everyone says, oh, I'll do it for free.
I'll do it for free.
I don't want free security.
There's nothing more expensive than a cheap security guard.
Because when things go down, you want someone who uses their brains as much as their brawn.
And you want someone who knows how to avoid a problem rather than just deal with it.
And today we had seven times $600.
That's a total of 11 hours, sorry, 11 security times $600.
That's $6,600.
I think it was a little bit more than that in the end.
I think my math is right here.
And then we had a lawyer on top of that, and we had other costs.
I think we're looking at approximately $8,000 all in just to do a stupid story.
And I know the CBC, no one else would have to do it.
We did it not because we care about this particular story, but we care about our right to talk about this particular story.
And I want to say to our folks, if you're watching this show, you're obviously a paywall subscriber, and you're obviously given $8 a month, and thank you very much for that.
But if you can help us out at journalistdefensefund.com, please do.
We're going to release tonight's show.
Well, actually, really, what we're going to release is tomorrow's video.
Tomorrow's video, which we're going to have in the show, we're going to release it widely because I want everyone to see it.
And I've got to recoup that $8,000.
I mean, that's a lot of money.
No other media company in Canada has to hire any security.
But we do for this reason.
Last word to you, David.
Well, and folks, I know as Ezra does, that this is probably the worst time given how many layoffs, the economic damage in the economy.
But if you do have it within you to give, please do.
You can call this shameless shilling if you want, but we're doing it honestly.
We're not like the mainstream media that takes it directly out of your paycheck as a form of a government grant.
And I think what we did today, Ezra, was so important.
And the aftermath meeting, our great lawyer Aaron, was talking about in terms of journalism, in terms of fighting for the freedom of speech in the public square.
He thought it was masterful.
I think you were masterful in your engagement with the police officer in explaining why you needed at least five minutes in the public square, not behind the dumpster off Bay Street, not where the service entrance is, but in the public square where all the thugs are occupying the public square.
And you eventually got them around to your way of thinking.
So not 100% freedom, but we scored a victory for Freedom Light, let's call it.
And I think it's going to be one of our best videos ever.
Well, I look forward to it.
You gave a bit of a tantalizer of what's to come, so you'll want to watch tomorrow.
And we are going to put it outside the paywall, too.
It was a great video.
And between the seven security, our VP who was there, I think we had five guys on camera, you and me, five guys behind the camera, you and me on camera.
I think we had 15 people there.
And we needed them, Ezra.
And by the way, folks, these are the worst kind of thugs.
And I say that because maybe not in terms of ultra-violence.
They were kicking, they were punching, they were pushing, they were jamming their umbrellas at us.
You'll see it all on the video.
But they're getting in our grill.
They're causing the trouble.
They're embracing that great Bruce Springsteen line about the guy going down to the bar wearing trouble on his shirt.
And yet, if you slightly brush past them to get out of their way, they make a big production of falling down, crying, saying they were assaulted.
They suck and blow at the same time.
They are disgraceful.
And to think we are tolerating it, law enforcement is turning a blind eye.
And Mayor John Torrey is talking to the Port-a-Potty Company.
Make sure they're taken care of.
We don't want them uncomfortable as they're illegally occupying the public square.
This is a dark day for Toronto, Ezra.
Yeah, well, we'll do our best to light a candle.
You know, I say that we do reporting, news.
We do commentary, opinion, and we do activism.
Today we did all three.
I agree.
All right.
Well, David, great to see you.
Congratulations.
You've had a great run, as I said in the staff meeting the other day.
You've been a real star these last few months.
Thank you for doing that.
And some physical risk.
I mean, you got hit in Kingston, and they tried to really get you again today.
They didn't get you today, though, did they?
Some kicks.
And by the way, there's an unspoken strategy there, Ezra, as I was saying to the other guys.
That's typically below the camera line, so they can get away with, you know, below the belt bullets.
And it's not picked up by the camera.
And for some reason, I'm always walking away with a lip.
But you know what?
It's a five-coupon ride.
And what we're fighting for is so important.
And who else is doing it?
Nobody.
No one else is.
You know what?
We had seven security today.
That's a lot.
We'll bring as many as it takes.
You know what?
I mean, if we have a squad of 20 security, we'll do what it takes.
Because I am not going to stop doing journalism because of some thugs or because the police don't want to take on the thugs.
I promise you that.
All right, David, great to see you.
Thank you.
final comments ahead.
So I was out there today at Toronto City Hall, Nathan Phillips Square.
It's a big plaza in front of the City Hall.
It's outrageous that this has been turned into an anarchy camp, a slum by anti-fungal, at least the Seattle Chaz, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
It's not really right outside the mayor's office.
So obviously this slum is being done with the full approval of Toronto's left-wing mayor, John Torrey.
He's the worst.
But you know what?
I just don't accept that.
I just don't accept that, I mean, I'm a citizen of Toronto.
I pay taxes here, but I'm just a free man.
And I will not move because some thug says move.
And I will certainly not move because some mall cop hired from the mayor says move.
I don't mean to leave you in suspense.
It's just that it takes some time to edit all of the film, especially we had about five cameras filming it from very many angles today.
We'll have a full report for you tomorrow.
And I hope you'll be as proud of us as I am of our team.
As I said to the team when we came back to the office and had a quick debrief, every one of them showed more courage than any other media company in Canada.
And that is what we do.
Every night I end by saying keep fighting for freedom.
My friends, I want to let you know today, every rebel fought for freedom and even at personal physical risk.
All right, everybody, good night.
Until tomorrow, from all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, including those 15 or so of us who fought for freedom, you do too.