Free the Two Michaels campaign accuses Justin Trudeau’s government of failing to act after Canada’s Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor endured 600 days of detention—alleged torture via artificial lighting, spying charges, and blocked consular visits—while China received $1.5M in PPE aid and funding for the Wuhan lab. Meng Wanzhou’s Vancouver bailout hints at a hostage swap, yet Trudeau remains silent. The movement plans a UN Human Rights Council complaint in Geneva to force accountability, despite families’ reluctance due to Chinese threats. Meanwhile, cancel culture’s weaponization—from UBC firing a board chair for liking Trump tweets to Margaret Atwood and J.K. Rowling facing backlash for opposing it—exposes a chilling consensus, where only defiance could break the cycle. Legal and public pressure may be the last hope for both justice and free speech in Canada’s fractured political landscape. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey rebels, today I have a bit of a different story for you.
We're going to try and do something about Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, the two Canadians held hostage in China.
And by do something, I mean not just talk about it, actually do something about it.
At the United Nations, we will do something about it.
I'll give you the details, and frankly, I need your help.
But before I do, let me ask for your help in another way.
Can you please join as a subscriber to Rebel News Plus?
That means you get the video version of the show.
And a couple other shows, one by Sheila Gunread, one by David Menzies.
You can get all that at RebelNews.com.
It's just $8 a month.
Or if you buy the whole year, it's only $80, so it's a discount for any healthy discount.
And of course, the most important thing is it keeps us going because we don't take a dime from the government.
You know that.
All right, here's today's podcast.
We have a plan to help the two Michaels being held hostage in China.
It's July 16th, 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 the government about why I publish them.
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Almost 600 days ago, the Chinese dictatorship kidnapped two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
Justin Trudeau hasn't done anything about it.
In fact, he continues to send foreign aid to China, even sending our entire national stockpile of face masks and other personal protective equipment to China for free in the middle of the pandemic.
He really is their poodle.
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime.
The two Michaels weren't captured in a legal arrest.
They were held for the first year and a half without even being charged with a crime.
They're being held in brutal conditions in a light, in a room where the lights are never turned off.
That's a form of torture.
They're being denied visits from Canadian diplomats.
China has been crystal clear about what they're doing.
They're taking hostages.
That's not what G20 countries do.
That's what terrorists or pirates or criminals do.
Communist China is acting like a rogue country, like gangsters.
That dictatorship may be producing your high-tech cell phones and computers, but it is still a dictatorship.
It still has that 1970s Mao Zedong thuggery in it.
They're not even trying to hide it.
Chinese dictators repeatedly admit that these two Canadians were seized as a bargaining chip to force the release of an accused Chinese criminal in Canada, Meng Wanzou, the CFO of the huge Chinese tech company called Huawei.
She was arrested in Vancouver and is being extradited to the U.S. to face charges of fraud.
Hmg, of course, is out on bail.
She's living the high life in Vancouver, a wonderful city where she's free to go out and about and has the very best lawyers that her billions can buy.
So far, she's lost her first round in court.
A fair judge in an independent legal system said that the extradition hearing can proceed.
But the Chinese dictators want her sprung out of jail before the trial is even over.
It's a tit for tat, say the Chinese.
It's an admission that the two Michaels didn't do anything wrong.
They're just hostages, bargaining chips.
So what have we done as a country in response to this barbaric behavior by China?
This is hostage taking, kidnapping.
Have we kicked out Chinese diplomats in protest?
Have we sent home some of the thousands of children of corrupt Communist Party of China officials who send their kids to attend Canadian universities, taking up spaces otherwise available to Canadian citizens?
Have we kicked them out?
Have we put any tariffs on Chinese imported goods?
Have we even just used our words to condemn them?
No, no, no, and no.
The opposite, actually, we are completely compliant and submissive.
Trudeau is even giving more foreign aid to China, including a bizarre financial grant to the Wuhan Virology Lab.
I'm not kidding.
Is there nothing China can do that Trudeau won't just shrug off?
It's humiliating, of course.
It's un-Canadian.
And most importantly, it's not working.
It's not getting the two Michaels back.
In fact, the Chinese fake legal system, it's all predetermined by the Communist Party over there.
They've ratcheted up the propaganda war, recently charging the two Michaels with spying.
It's world news.
Here's the BBC story.
And yet, still, Trudeau does nothing.
No sanctions, no diplomatic expulsions.
In fact, Trudeau is actually sending our pandemic benefits to those Chinese Communist Party children I talked about, the ones who attend school in Canada.
They're not Canadian citizens, but they're getting that Canadian welfare check, that weekly cash gift.
Maybe Donald Trump could help us.
He's put a big premium on getting Americans back from around the world.
He's repatriated around 40 American citizens at great cost.
It seems to be very important to him.
China would never dare to take an American hostage with Trump in charge.
They know Trump would punish them dearly.
So if Trudeau doesn't have the courage himself, maybe he could borrow some of Trump's courage.
Well, Trump really wanted something from Trudeau recently.
He wanted Trudeau to come down to Washington, along with the Mexican president, to sign the revised NAFTA renegotiated treaty.
Now, the Mexican president came up, but Trudeau just refused to come.
He said he was too busy.
I'm seriously, that's what Trudeau said.
Trudeau, who hasn't left this house for months, except for the odd photo op, he's too busy.
Trump really wanted Trudeau at that meeting for some reason.
He proceeded with just the Mexican president, and he made a proud little video of the meeting.
I'm sure Trump was irritated with the fact that Trudeau skipped out with no good reason.
But imagine if instead Trudeau had gone and said, all right, Mr. President, I'm here for your photo op, and I'll do it with a smile, but can you do me a favor in return?
Can you please phone President Xi Jinping right now while I'm here and tell him to release the two Michaels?
By the way, they were kidnapped because we Canadians arrested Meng Wenzhou to extradite her to America, so maybe you can help us out since we're sort of paying the price for that.
And I bet if Trudeau wasn't snarky about it, and if he asked in a genuine and maybe even a complimentary or flattering way, I bet Trump would have done it.
But Trudeau didn't.
And so the two Michaels remain in prison.
So nothing.
It'll soon be 600 days in prison.
So we've got an idea.
There's a great Canadian human rights law scholar.
He used to teach constitutional law.
He's been a lawyer.
And most importantly, for our purposes, he championed the case of the Falun Gong, who were persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party.
He worked with a member of parliament named David Kilgore to investigate and expose China's horrific practice of forcibly harvesting human organs from live prisoners, including Falun Gong political prisoners.
They would cut those organs out of people and sell them to Chinese Communist Party officials or even foreign buyers.
David Matis is the name of the lawyer who exposed that and who told the world.
Well, we've asked Professor Matis, who knows about China and Chinese prisons and human rights law in the UN, we asked him what we could possibly do to help the two Michaels.
What we could do.
I mean, we're not in government.
We're just citizens who wish something would be done.
Well, Matis had an idea.
Here, watch my recent interview with him.
Professor, based on your work scrutinizing China, your lifelong dedication to civil rights, and your interest in Canadian politics, our mutual friend, our lawyer Aaron Rosenberg,
reached out to you to discuss how we could perhaps work with you on the troubling case of the two Michaels, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who have been in illegal detention in China for a year and a half.
Can you explain to our viewers what legal steps you think we can take, given that we don't have standing as the family or the two men, given that we're not the government of Canada, and given that China is in some ways a rogue state, what could we do legally about what is really a hostage taking?
The opportunities for dealing legally with Chinese violations of international human rights standards is relatively limited because China is not a signatory to most human rights or to many human rights treaties.
And the ones where it does sign on to, like the Convention Against Torture, it tends to not sign on to the optional complaints mechanisms or the international legal disputes mechanisms.
There are some recourses nonetheless, and a couple of those are through the, or several of those are through the United Nations Human Rights Council thematic mechanisms.
What the United Nations Human Rights Council has done is set up a number of thematic mechanisms, rapporteurs, working groups, dealing with specific human rights issues.
There's a rapporteur on torture, there's a working group on disappearances, there's a working group on arbitrary detention and so on.
And there's dozens of them.
And these thematic mechanisms, they're not treaty-based, they're just council-based.
And so they have jurisdiction over the whole world, including China.
And there's no agreement necessary from states of the United Nations for these mechanisms to deal with human rights in those countries.
And so these mechanisms can and have in the past dealt with China.
And I was dealing, for instance, with the UN rapporteur on torture and the UN rapporteur on religious intolerance about this issue of organ transplant abuse in Falun Gong.
And also with the UN Committee Against Torture, because China is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture.
Also with the Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council, because the Universal Periodic Review, as the name indicates, is universal.
And China comes up for review every few years.
And then any state can raise any human rights concern at once during the Universal Periodic Review.
When it comes to the Universal Periodic Review or the Convention Against Torture, we are dealing with periodicity.
We are dealing with events which occur every so often.
But when it comes to the thematic mechanisms, they're continuously functioning.
They report to the Human Rights Council every year and they can take complaints at any time or petitions.
Now these human rights mechanisms do have complaints or petition options.
And the petitions are open to everybody.
They're open to states, they're open to NGOs, and of course they're open to the victims and their families.
But consent is not necessary of the families or the victims.
I mean, obviously, in some situations, the consent of the victims is impossible where they're disappeared or maybe arbitrarily executed.
And the families may be intimidated, which is often the case in China, where the Communist Party makes a point of not just intimidating their target, but everybody in their network to try to get at their target.
And so often the only available recourse, which is true really of my situation dealing with Felong Gong, is an outsider who has no connection to China and no point of pressure.
I mean, I'm not going to lose any business with China by doing this sort of thing because I don't have any business with China.
And so that's the system.
It is a system of complaint or petition by NGOs or somebody like Rebel News.
They can make such a complaint or petition and then the thematic mechanism will deal with it.
Well, Professor, we would like to do that because we, like so many Canadians and others around the world, have watched what we perceive to be inaction on the part of the Canadian government.
There's the odd, gentle statement, but there's been no diplomatic repercussions, no sanctions, no deported diplomats, no trade consequences.
I think that the fact that those two men are still in detention a year and a half later says everything we need to know.
Now, I want to tell our viewers that you did take steps to reach out to the family to get their thoughts on this process, to invite them to participate, to invite them to receive updates.
What have you heard back, if anything, from the families after you emailed and reached out to them about our proposed steps?
Well, yes, that's true.
There was a communication to the families because we did have contact information telling them that we, well, Rebel News is planning to do this, that we would keep them in touch.
We wanted to inform them.
We invited them to participate if they wanted to participate.
We haven't heard back from them since.
The communication is relatively recent.
So I don't know if that tells us anything yet because very often people are slow in communications.
And also, I assume they get a lot of stuff.
But in any case, we're giving them an option of something they may want to do, but they don't have to answer.
Government China's Legal Complaint00:08:35
And their non-answer is, there is no requirement for them to answer for the UN system to become engaged.
And I can imagine that given that the thing they care about most, these people are still in grave jeopardy, I'm trying to put myself in their shoes, they most likely would not want to be seen as being personally antagonistic to the government of China.
So even if they were to reply, it would be under a form of duress.
It would almost be like asking a hostage, do you want us to help?
I mean, but I'm glad you did reach out to them and of course keep us posted what they say.
Tell our viewers, what would the form of a complaint be?
You mentioned that there are these thematic groups at the UN Human Rights Council.
Would it be the form of a letter?
Is it a formal application, a formal report?
What would it look like what you would prepare as a lawyer?
You would refer to certain principles and bring facts to the attention of the UN?
Is it just a letter?
The UN website actually tells you what they want and they ask for specific types of information.
Obviously, what they want is as much detail as possible, because often the problem is that when people make complaints, it's difficult to know exactly what they're talking about.
So names, dates, times, places, as much detail about the specific violation as you could possibly get.
They'd be interested in exhaustion of remedies, not in terms of Canada, but in terms of China, like what has been done or could be done in China to alleviate the plight of these people.
They'd be interested in other remedies that are being sought that might be useful either in the UN system or anywhere else around the world.
They'd be interested in how the particular complaint fits within the mandate of the theme mechanism to which the complaint is being addressed.
Those are the sorts of things that the complaint would address.
I have a question for you, and it would touch on anything of the United Nations.
China is very influential at the UN.
It runs four agencies and effectively controls a fifth.
We saw their interference recently with the World Health Organization.
What is the ability of China simply to veto or crush or shut down or summarily dismiss something that criticizes it?
Because the UN is not friendly to democratic activists who ask pesky questions like you will do.
What do you think China will do in reaction to our legal complaint?
Well, as I said, typically what happens with these complaints is that the rapporteur will send the complaint to the foreign government for response.
And then in the report, afterwards, typically what happens is that the rapporteur will put in the complaint, a report on the complaint, and report on the response and may draw some concluding or may draw some observations based on it.
And my experience is, at least with some of the other times I've dealt with the system, is the exercise is useful, even if when you're dealing with China, what you get back is nonsense.
Because if I were to write to the government of China directly and say, I don't like what you're doing with the two Michaels, they'd probably just ignore it.
But with the UN system, though they may generate nonsense in response, they feel they can't ignore it, so they will reply.
And a nonsensical reply from the government of China serves its own purpose because it becomes possible to point out how nonsensical it is.
And so for instance, with this organ transplant abuse, we were concerned about the government of China was saying, look at, you know, they were boasting, look at how big our transplant numbers are, trying to show they're technologically head in transplants.
And so then the UN rapporteur said, well, okay, you've got these big transplant numbers.
Where do the organs come from?
And the response to that was, we never said our transplant numbers were big, which of course they had said, and it was posted on their internet sites at the same time as they were denying they said it.
So, I mean, it was just such obvious nonsense that it became another point of attack.
And so I would say that exercise, I mean, obviously didn't stop the abuse, and it still continues.
It just added to the weight of the argument that we had and gave us an additional reason why our position was strong.
Because, I mean, if the government of China, in response to a well-reasoned argument, can answer only nonsense, it must be that they don't have a good answer if all they can give is a bad answer.
Well, so that's the goal here, is to write a complaint that properly marshals the facts and the law and shows what China's doing, and at the very least compel them to give, I guess it's like question period in parliament that way.
You don't really get a good answer most of the time, but sometimes the absurdity of the answer is telling in itself.
So that's our goal here.
Write a letter to bring attention to this and smoke out China's answers and maybe use those to contradict China or to show how unlawful they are.
That's our goal.
Is that correct?
Yes, I would agree with that.
I mean, I think question period is a good analogy.
I don't mean to suggest that the government is anything like the government of China, but otherwise, I think it's a good analogy.
Well, what do you think?
The plan is simple and small, but I think it's better than zero, better than nothing, Trudeau's approach.
Draft a formal complaint about how the two Michaels are being mistreated by China.
File it with the special rapporteurs at the UN's Human Rights Council.
Make China answer it.
And use their answer politically and diplomatically to name and shame China as breaking international law, breaking international norms.
They hate that.
They don't like losing face.
We have a few other ideas too, but the main thing is to do something, something that the world will at least see and hear, not the total silent surrender that Trudeau is doing.
Will this free the two Michaels?
Probably not.
Will it bring their plight to a wider audience?
You bet it will.
Will we hopefully spur actual politicians to do something more, maybe even to take over this project?
I hope so.
In any event, we're just going to do it.
I just feel like we have to.
If you want to help, please do.
We're paying Professor Matis' fee for his legal work.
We'll file a complaint when it's ready, which should be soon.
And when the time is right, we will actually go to Geneva, Switzerland, where the UN Human Rights Council is, and maybe make a bit of a fuss about this too.
I do need your help, please.
I've signed a retainer agreement with Professor Matis to cover his fees and his travel costs if we go to Geneva.
If you think this is a good idea, please help me out by going to free the two Michaels.com, freethetomicha.com.
I will post updates at that website when the legal complaint is ready.
We'll publish the legal complaint itself.
You can read it for yourself.
And all of our follow-up work, including hopefully the trip to Geneva itself.
This is a small step, but that's more than anything Trudeau has done.
If you believe in standing up to China and calling out their bullying and standing up for Canadian citizens, please go to freethetomichaels.com and lend a hand.
Thanks.
Welcome back.
Well, it wasn't too long ago that we spoke to our next guest.
Why Feisty Debates Matter00:06:40
His name is Philip Layton.
He's a former law school dean and is the author of a book about freedom of speech in Canada called Nothing Left to Lose, an impolite report on the state of freedom in Canada.
It was a very interesting discussion.
It was well received by our viewers.
But who knew that it would be so timely with the wave of cancel culture mobs that we've seen since that interview?
I think, for example, the case of Barry Weiss, a liberal journalist who was brought into the New York Times to provide a little bit of diversity of opinion and was thrown out, spat out for precisely that reason.
Technically, she resigned, but only because, as she described in a powerful letter, she was targeted by others within the Times with attacks, personal attacks, even anti-Semitic attacks, for daring not to tow the woke intersectional leftist take on everything.
And so we brought back our guest, Philip Slayton, to talk about the latest in cancel culture.
He joins us now via Skype.
Philip, what do you make of the liberal icons who have been tumbling?
Not just right-wingers or conservatives, but people who style themselves as liberal, who write for liberal bastions like the New York Times.
If Barry Weiss is worried about cancel culture, it tells me it's gone pretty far.
Well, I think it has gone far.
Ezra, by the way, I'm delighted to be back on your show.
I enjoyed it the first time around, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it this time.
I think it has gone too far, although I find it somewhat confusing.
It's not, the cancel culture is not clearly identified with either the right or the left.
Both seem to employ it when it suits them.
And it's also not entirely clear to me what is meant by cancel culture.
I have no problem with people getting feisty on social media, with people criticizing the views or the careers of people when they do it on social media, even if they do it in a rather intemperate, perhaps even rude way.
I mean, we're all grown-ups.
We can handle this.
If we can't handle this, we should just stay home and not turn on the television or turn on our computer.
But the question is, if that's okay, what isn't it?
And I would suggest to you that there's a couple of things that are not okay.
It's not okay when what's really happening is an attempt, not just to criticize somebody's views or their conduct in a particular case, but to destroy their reputation and destroy their career.
In fact, getting fired because they've said something or done something that's not regarded as acceptable.
But worst of all, in my view, is the often craven way in which institutions respond to this by firing people, by issuing apologies when it's not clear what the apology is issued for.
And even more distressing in some respects is the way people who are the subjects of these kinds of attacks feel obliged to kind of put on sackcloth and ashes and apologize and tell everybody they're going to go away to listen and reflect and learn.
To me, that's just a bunch of rubbish.
You know, there was a case, I mean, I agree with you that we should allow feisty debate and even flame wars, as they're called, but that's the point, I think, is that the left doesn't, and I say it's the left because I don't see cancel culture as a traditional or regular tactic on the right.
I challenge anyone to tell me a case of a conservative-leaning campus group trying to ban a leftist speaker from campus or shut down a leftist club on campus.
I've just never seen it.
Whereas the reverse is almost universally true.
But let me give you an example.
So I wish that it was feisty debates.
I wish it was rollicking, you know, elbows up arguing.
I don't think that's there.
We have safe spaces and trigger warnings now.
I mean, for God's sakes, the chain of newspapers in Atlantic, Canada called Saltwire, had a warning on their Canada Day newspaper that there was a Canadian flag inside.
They literally had a trigger warning that there was a Canadian flag inside.
But let me give you an example that I'd love you to talk about.
This is a tweet from the West Midlands Police Department, which is in the UK.
It's Birmingham and whatnot.
And they're boasting, they're bragging, they're gleeful in announcing that they literally arrested a 12-year-old for making racially insensitive comments on social media about a professional football, that's what they call soccer over there.
They boasted that they arrested him, that they found him and arrested him.
They later, in a subsequent tweet, said that the footballer in question never even complained.
He didn't know about it.
It was just some 12-year-old saying some rude words online.
You know, maybe he deserves a spanking, but the cops boasted they arrest him.
I think that's part of cancel culture.
Well, I mean, what I think is absurd, and if it weren't so dangerous, I suppose, it would be humorous.
I mean, for God's sake, it's clearly ridiculous.
But I would, I'm not so much agitated by that kind of bizarre case, which I'm sure will attract a lot of negative attention and probably lead to an apology by the police department, perhaps the sacking of the police officers involved.
I'm more concerned with the case I just read about, for example, before I came on your show, about the longtime director of the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art, who's just been forced to resign because he said that despite what was going on in the United States and the world of culture in general, the international world of culture, he was still interested in acquiring works of art by white men.
He wasn't going to rule that out as a possibility or as a tactic of the future.
And this comment was met with outrage, and a lot of the staff of the museum said his departure was non-negotiable.
This gentleman may have used language that wasn't too clever, perhaps, or he may have not thought all that carefully about how he positioned himself.
But what he said was, to me at least, entirely reasonable, and now he's gone.
A major cultural figure who apparently did a splendid job is gone because of that.
Five Minutes of Fame00:02:54
But we've seen other examples of this around the world and indeed in our own country.
When that happens, I think this thing is out of control.
But the question, Ezra, is: how do you rein it in?
I mean, how do you stop this sort of nonsense happening?
And I think, as I suggested to you earlier, that part of it is the responsibility of institutions, of universities, for example, or the CBC, for example, to stand up to this, to be able to make a judgment as to when the criticism is leveled.
The attempt to cancel someone's career and identity is perhaps legitimate, which it may be sometimes, not often, I think, but sometimes, when it clearly isn't, when it isn't legitimate, to reject the attack and stand behind the person who's being attacked.
You know, there's a moment a week or two ago when a group of intellectuals, including from Canada, Margaret Atwood, who has impeccable liberal credentials, I mean, and she's had a bit of a revival with her TV show about the handmaid's tale.
So she's exquisitely politically correct.
But she signed a letter along with Solomon Rushdie and J.K. Rowley and others saying that these protests have gone too far, the cancel culture's gone too far.
I was momentarily cheered by that because no one is more official Canada establishment than Margaret Atwood.
That lasted for about five minutes and then it went right back to what you're talking about, the kind of cancel culture driving people out.
What does it take?
I mean, that was, it wasn't a great letter, but it was signed, but I don't think anything happened.
Well, you're right.
I mean, it was good to see that letter, but as I'm sure you know, the people who signed that letter were immediately themselves attacked for doing it.
And one of them recanted.
One of them said, oh, I didn't know that guy was signing it.
I forgot her name.
So I mean, imagine that.
You sign a letter saying, let's stop cancel culture, and then you engage in.
Then you make a self-renunciation like the Red Guards.
We had a show the other day, Professor, where we went through photographs of the Cultural Revolution, the self-denunciations, the mass denunciations.
And I tell you, other than the fact that it was black and white photos in China, I felt like we were five minutes from that in North America.
Yeah, I understand that.
But let's just talk about that letter for a minute.
There's about 150 people, I think, signed it.
You're right, Margaret Atwood signed it.
J.K. Rowling signed it.
Salmon Rushi signed it.
I mean, these people are titans in their field.
They're extremely well-known, famous.
They have a lot of authority and cloud.
And then, of course, they were attacked.
Of course, J.K. Rowling is an interesting case all by itself.
And you have to ask yourself, who's doing the attacking and why are they doing it?
The views expressed were very hard to attack.
Famous Figures Under Attack00:09:36
It was more ad hominem than anything else, attacking the people.
And I think it's perhaps because it's a way of people who are not fake and who are not rich, but who don't want their voices heard, of getting their voices heard.
I mean, that's one of the things that's happened now.
People who can tussle with, can take on and confront and maybe even harm and damage these famous people who before were virtually immune from this kind of thing.
Another recent example is Steven Pinker, the Harvard professor, linguist, very well-known, famous indeed, who has just come under attack because people have been sifting through his tweet from years ago and finding things that he said that might be subject to misinterpretation.
For example, he used the word urban crime, the phrase urban crime.
And apparently, and I didn't know this, but I read the article in the New York Times, urban is kind of a code word for black crime.
Who knew, right?
Now, he has been tawed with the racist brush.
So many other people have been taught with it.
He's famous enough and strong enough, perhaps, to resist this kind of attack.
But the people who are doing it, and Stephen Pinker himself pointed this out, are people that he'd never heard of.
He said, I've never heard of these people who are signing this letter and attacked me.
And that in itself was taken to be kind of a derogatory comment.
So you get into this incredible miasma of insult and ridiculous behavior and ridiculous expression of opinion.
You know, it's funny you say that.
I mean, you've listed a few really big, big shots, you know, bosses of museums.
Pinker is very prominent in his field.
At the University of British Columbia, we did a show on this about a month ago.
The chair of their board of governors was fired for the crime of liking a few tweets by Donald Trump.
I swear that's all he did.
And I went through and I looked at the tweets and they were completely boring, typical Trump braggadoccio, but they weren't even racial in any way.
The word black did not appear in them.
One of them was about coronavirus and protecting seniors, but simply liking a tweet from Trump.
And here's what's so insane.
There was an emergency weekend meeting of the board to sack him.
But what gets me, Professor, is that this hero of the community, this super volunteer, this fundraiser for UBC, who's not doing it for his self-enrichment, he's giving.
And because he liked a tweet of the U.S. president, he was being fired.
But instead of standing up and saying this is wrong, he joined in the denunciation of himself, just like something out of the Red Guard.
And my question for you, whether it's that UBC board chairman or the museum boss you talked about who said, well, I would still look at art from white men or the professor at Harvard, if any one of them said, you know what, guys, I'm not going to join in the self-denunciation struggle session.
I'm going to fight back and I'm going to sue the university and I'm going to make a fuss and I'm going to try and rally donors to the university and I'm going to try and become a seed crystal around which others will fight.
So not just signing a letter.
You know, signing a letter is nothing.
It's like checking like on Facebook.
But if one of these people actually said, you know what, I'm not quitting because I like to tweet from Donald Trump.
I'm not.
And I will fight you and burn you to the ground instead of if that's what you are now.
Maybe that's not normal people think.
Maybe normal people don't do that.
Maybe they love the institution so much they would rather let it be taken over than burnt to the ground.
But if I was being fired, I would sue.
I'm sure you would, Esther.
I think you're right about this.
I think it's time for people who are on the receiving end of this kind of nonsense.
It's not always nonsense.
Sometimes it's justified, but often it's nonsense for them to fight back.
It takes a lot of guts.
It takes courage.
It takes fortitude.
Those are the qualities perhaps that are required.
And I also think it's time for our institution, for government, for universities, for businesses, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, also to stand up and to say, well, let's take CBC, for example.
These charges have been made.
These allegations have been made.
People are demanding somebody's head as a result of something they said last week or last month or 10 years ago.
We are not going to respond to this.
We are not doing it.
We are standing behind our employee.
We do not think the behavior of the government is sufficiently egregious or damaging or racist or whatever to warrant any kind of action.
But there seems to be a failure to do that.
I don't know whether it's because people are scared.
I don't know whether because they're scared of the mob or what.
But it's time for people to stand up and fight.
I mean, there have been a handful of examples of this recently, not nearly enough.
So I agree with you.
I'm not sure about a bit about burning down the house, but I agree with you.
Yeah.
No, I'm just saying, I can understand someone, but if someone was so falsely accused, the idea of accusing yourself is just so well that's the red guard thing, of course.
Well, absolutely.
Yeah, that's the red guard.
Drag them in front of a tribunal and get them to confess to whatever it is.
I have a theory, it's a political theory, that there are certain subjects out there that are so universally believed by people quietly, yet so rarely expressed by those in power, that if any politician actually says the words, they're immediately embraced by the people in a populist way.
I point to the Premier of Quebec, who, in my view, became Premier in part because he said, I want to roll back immigration by 20%, and I want to bring in a law to ensure the secular nature of symbols in government, so no burqas, no religious symbols.
Those two things, and he said them both rather meekly, at least he said them, and I believe, as an outsider, that's one of the reasons he's Premier of Quebec.
I also think cancel culture is that sort of thing.
And I have this hope more than a suspicion that if some politician somewhere just said, enough, I'm going to speak out against this cancel culture.
I'm going to hold universities to account.
I'm going to hold museums to account.
I'm going to summon the board of governors.
I'm going to summon the board of the museum to answer, and I'm going to cut off their funding.
I just think such a politician would immediately be met by the silent majority with such a thunderous applause.
And that's what gets me, is how few even conservatives, how few opposition MPs who have nothing to lose, are they so afraid of taking this off.
I mean, I mean, Rex Murphy held his ground at the National Post.
But most people cower, and I don't see an opposition politician who's an entrepreneur and who would say, hey, I can make a name for myself as a freedom fighter.
I just don't see it.
Is there anyone in Canada who fits that role, Professor?
Well, let me just say that again.
I agree with you.
In fact, in my book, as you know, there's a chapter on political leadership, which I think is sorely lacking around the world in our country.
You know the famous story about the French Revolutionary who looked out of his window and saw the mob surging down the street.
And he said, I must follow them, for I am their leader.
That's the sort of thing we have.
We don't need political leaders who are running after the mob thinking they're the leader.
We need political leaders who are out in front and are articulating what should happen in their view and trying to convince people that's the right thing to do.
I'm fond of telling the story of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who just before the 1936 election gave a big speech talking about his initial attempts to implement the New Deal.
And he said, there are people in this country who hate me for what I am trying to do.
And then he said, I welcome their hatred.
To me, that's leadership.
That's willing to fight back.
Whatever you think of the New Deal or whatever you think of FDR, he showed leadership strength and a willingness to fight back, a willingness to try and guide the nation.
And I think that's what we need, not just at the highest political level, but in the universities, presidents of universities, chairmen of the board of governors, boards of governors of museums, the people who run the CBC.
We need people with courage, who have a vision of what they should be doing, and do not bend to every passing breeze.
We need people of oak, not of willow.
You know, I just thought of someone who meets that definition.
The head of the Toronto Public Library, when asked to cancel a room rental to Megan Murphy, a feminist, who wanted to talk about how, in her view, transgenderism is threatening women's spaces.
There was a transgender move to blacklist her and cancel that.
And the head of the library said, we really care about trans people very, very much in these five ways, but we are not going to cancel this feminist.
Library of Oak00:04:24
And you know what?
I remember that heroic moment.
We did a show on that too.
That's a local hero.
And you know what?
She survived.
I might also add that all of a sudden, every institution, like the library system, for example, is supposed to have kind of political and sociological theories about everything.
Why don't they just run the library or run their institution without feeling that they have to be involved in basic kind of down and dirty politics all the time?
That's not really their role.
That's not what they're there to do.
They're there, in the case, let's say, of the library system, to provide a library system.
Everybody seems to get dragged in this horrible, bitter, often senseless political fight.
Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you, and there's so much canceling going on.
I wanted to reach out to you again.
I enjoyed our conversation last time.
Folks, if you haven't got it yet, we have the Amazon link under this video.
We're talking to Philip Slayton, former Dean of Law.
His book is called Nothing Left to Lose, an Impolite Report on the State of Freedom in Canada.
And I have to disclose that there's a very friendly chapter on one of my free speech battles, so I appreciate that.
And there's a lot of important news there that I think our view, you know, and I say to our viewers, there's a lot of leftist books, there's a lot of censorious books.
When there's a book that comes along in defense of freedom, not only should we read it because it's interesting and we can learn something, but I think we have a bit of a public obligation to support conservative books if we want more of them made.
So what I would encourage folks, I mean, if you're on the edge, I think you should buy this book because it's interesting and it makes the case for free speech.
But we also have to support the few freedom-oriented books published in Canada at all.
So please do that at the Amazon link below.
Last word to you, Professor.
Well, thank you, Edward.
It's always a pleasure to be on your show.
You and I don't agree on everything, that's for certain, but we do agree on a lot of things.
Well, it's nice to see you keep fighting for freedom.
It's what we do here, and your book is an important part of that, and I'll encourage all our rebels to do their part.
Take care, Professor.
I appreciate it.
Thank you, Edward.
Bye-bye.
All right, there you have it.
Philip Slayton is the author of Nothing Left to Lose.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
On my monologue last night, Matt writes, Canada should ban all Chinese companies like Huawei from doing business here.
Well, I mean, I don't know if I have an objection to Huawei selling actual hand phones here, like a phone itself.
I wouldn't use one for sure.
I'm sure it's spying on you.
But at least you can choose not to do that.
If Huawei technology is built into TELUS and Shaw and Bell and whatever other companies there are, you can't avoid it.
That's the problem.
And even our military and police and other confidential people can't avoid it.
That's the reason you have to ban them from the 5G network.
Christine writes, Canada is the only Five Eyes country that has not banned Huawei.
What's Trudeau waiting for?
Well, that's the question.
Is it ideological?
Or is it compromat, as the Soviets would say, compromising materials?
Do they have him in a blackmail or extortion position?
That's a real question.
We know about some of his bad behavior.
Groping people, blackface, his financial skullduggery with We.
If that's what ordinary journalists can dig up, imagine what the Chinese government spies can dig up on Trudeau.
I bet they have some pretty nasty stuff on them.
On my interview with Joel Pollock on Barry Weiss, Peter writes, putting any opinions of Barry Weiss to one side, this bowing down to the Twitter mob is a major concern.
Yeah, I thought it was interesting to hear from Joel Pollack that Barry Weiss herself was a practitioner of cancel culture.
That makes it all the more interesting, don't you think, that even if you try and go along with a mob, one day they will devour you, as we've just decided, discovered, I mean.
Well, that's the show for today.
What do you think of FreeThe2Michaels.com?
Do you think it has any chance?
Professor Matis knows how to tell a story and fight with the law.
I don't put a lot of stock in international law.
You know, you and what army is the first thing that comes to mind.
But if it names and shames the Chinese communists who want a safe face, I think it's worth a few bucks.