Ezra Levant reveals Rebel News’ urgent $380,000 loan crisis—$195K due Dec 28 and $185K Jan 28—after a new banker demanded full repayment of pandemic-era funding used for journalism, including staff hires and investigations. Meanwhile, he condemns Calgary police tasering hockey player Ocean Weisblack on an open rink with only 15 players present, calling officers "rogue" and questioning Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s complicity amid a 12K-signature petition. The episode ties financial instability to relentless battles against state overreach, urging supporters to fund helprebelnews.com or face shutdown, while exposing systemic police abuse during COVID enforcement. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I want to tell you something that's been on my mind for a little while but I haven't really talked about publicly.
We have a new banker in charge of our loans and to our surprise he's called them all in.
We have to pay off what I regarded as a mortgage, a long-term loan.
We have to pay it off immediately.
I'll tell you the details about it but we're going to try and turn lemons into lemonade and I'll tell you what we're going to do.
Boy I hope we can have your support.
So that's all I'll say now.
I'll let you get straight to the podcast.
And listen, I appreciate your help.
Tonight, we've got some lemons.
I'm going to try and turn them into lemonade.
It's December 21st 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 to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I have a problem, and normally I wouldn't talk about it publicly, but it affects Rebel News.
And I think I need some help because I don't think I can solve it all by myself.
Like most guys, I don't do very well asking for personal help, especially if it makes me look weak in some way.
But I really do need some help and I'm stressing about it a little bit, so here goes.
And you don't have to help if you don't want, but if you can, I'd appreciate it.
It would be a real personal favor to me.
I've had a banker call in two Rebel News loans, and we have to pay them off right away.
We had expected to be able to roll the loans over for another year, as we've done for the past three years.
But there's a new boss over there, and they are demanding the money in full.
We have to pay off approximately $195,000 by next week, December 28th, and we have to pay off another $185,000 a month later on January 28th.
That's a total of $380,000.
And obviously, that's an incredible burden on us.
We were surprised by this.
The loan has always been like a mortgage.
It has 8.5% interest, so it works out to around $2,500 a month in interest payments, which we treated like a mortgage payment.
And we can totally handle $2,500 a month.
And every Christmas, the loan was just rolled over.
But this year, the banker has asked for all the money back, and he said he'd only let us keep the loan if we now pay double-digit interest rates on it, which we can't afford to do either.
So it feels like we're between a rock and a hard place.
How am I going to come up with $380,000 in the next five weeks?
Instead of stressing about this privately, I thought I'd just ask for help.
Why not?
It couldn't hurt.
Maybe some of our viewers can help.
I mean, we crowdfund all the time for other projects.
These days, we hire lawyers to help people fight pandemic lockdown fines.
We've defended churches and seniors and kids and shopkeepers.
We crowdfund for other people all the time.
So I thought, well, maybe people won't mind if I ask for help to crowdfund the repayment of this loan.
Let me give you some background.
Three years ago, when Rebel News was in some choppy waters, we borrowed money from a friendly supporter to help tide us over.
It was actually specifically to do more journalism.
Our lender was a great guy who actually was a generous donor to us too and a real friend.
We used that money not just to get through the hard times, but to build up our company, including to hire new talent to do great reporting across the country and around the world.
In many ways, I think Rebel News has never been better.
Now, along the way, our friend who loaned us the money ran into a change of circumstance himself, and he had to sell our loan to a banker who doesn't know us and who isn't a supporter.
He's not a bad guy.
He just is a banker who wants his money back, and under the terms of the contract, he can ask for it back.
He doesn't actually have to renew the loan.
And he has what's called a general security agreement.
Basically, a mortgage on all of our property from our cameras to our computers, everything.
And he's calling in the loan now.
I wish he wouldn't, but he's a banker.
He's not like our old friend who actually gave the loan to us three years ago.
We have to pay it.
I'm not even mad at him.
It's his right.
And we really did use the money to our benefit these years.
So I guess I need your help.
If you're in a position to replace this loan or part of it, let me know.
I mean, if you are in a position to lend us $380,000, send me an email to Ezra at RebelNews.com.
If you're in a position to lend us some money and think 8.5% is a good rate of return, just write to me.
But I think this is sort of an unrealistic hope that someone would just lend us that large amount of money on such short notice.
If I were with 99% of the media in Canada, I know exactly what I would do.
I would just call up Justin Trudeau and sign up for his media bailout.
And I would just get free money from the government.
Trudeau loves collecting little house pets in the media, but I'm not a prostitute.
I won't let him rent me.
I'd have to agree to be a good liberal boy and obey this guy.
So how will this work?
How are you going to regulate websites?
How are you going to register all that?
Do you buy these recommendations?
Well, I mean, one of the recommendations, so you're talking about a couple of different things here, but as far as the licensing is concerned, if you're a distributor of content in Canada, and obviously, you know, if you're a very small media organization, the requirement probably wouldn't be the same as if you're Facebook or Google.
So there would have to be some proportionality embedded into this.
But we would ask that they have a license.
Yes.
Yeah, frankly, I'd rather Rebel News go out of business than take a cent from those guys.
So if it's unlikely that I can find a miracle lender in the next week, and if I won't go to Trudeau for a bailout, maybe you can help me, not with $380,000, but maybe with $38 or even $380.
Can you please help us?
We really did put the money towards good things.
We hired new staff.
We've done great journalism and we've done important investigations that no one else has done.
And most importantly, we've told the other side of the story, especially during the pandemic lockdown.
That's what we need this money for to do our journalism.
So if you can, please go to helprebelnews.com and help me pay off these two loans, which are due right now.
I promise that in return, we'll stay focused on what's important, on what we do best, news, commentary, and activism, fighting back.
And if you give us a generous gift, we'll put your name on our wall here in the office for our entire staff to see every day.
I don't think I've shown this to you before.
It's all the people who donated to our crowdfunding campaign to build our studio years ago.
We still see all of your names every day and your messages.
Well, we have another wall that's bare.
I propose to put on it all the names of people who help us burn the mortgage.
If you help me pay down this $380,000 loan that frankly caught us by surprise, I'll put your name up there if you donate $100 at helprebelnews.com.
We'll put your name up on a brick with a short message.
If you donate $380, imagine if 1,000 people did that.
We could retire the whole loan that way.
We'll give you not just a brick, but we'll engrave your name on a list on a brass plaque.
that will hang on our wall right next to our YouTube plaques that celebrate our 100,000th and our millionth subscribers.
And if you think this is a good time and a good reason to really help us out, and if you can afford to chip in $3,800, we'll give you a whole block.
We'll call it a cornerstone.
We'll put you on a special plaque for cornerstone buyers.
And we'll give you a copy of all of our books signed by the authors.
And if you're someone who has the ability to help us beyond our wildest expectations, if you're in a position to donate $38,000, we will name a room of our office for you, our boardroom, our video editing room, or even my favorite room, the kitchen lunch room.
Look, we never thought we'd have to repay this mortgage in an emergency.
It was always just renewed, and we could handle paying $2,500 a month in interest like a regular mortgage payment.
But then the loan was acquired by a new banker, and he just doesn't care.
We've never done such important work as we're doing now.
I don't want this to knock us off course.
Let's turn lemons into lemonade.
Please help Rebel News.
Go to helprebelnews.com and we can pay down this debt and get back to business.
And if you're able to buy a brick, whether it's $100 brick or a $380 engraving or a $3,800 cornerstone or even a whole room, your name will forever grace our walls.
And if you are an amazing guardian angel who wants to name our lunchroom or our boardroom, well, this is the time, my friends.
2020 was a terrible year for the world, but it was the year that we at Rebel News proved our importance by telling the other side of the story.
Please help us pay down this surprise mortgage call so we can do even more important work in the year ahead.
Please visit helprebelnews.com.
Thank you, and Merry Christmas.
Cops vs. Hockey Players00:14:35
Get down on the brown.
Why are you guys cracking?
You guys just need to.
Why are you guys copying?
Hey, orcs, orcs, orcs.
Ocean, get on the f ⁇ ing ground.
Ocean!
Get on the f ⁇ ing ground right now!
Orcs!
Ocean!
Guys, let you go!
Get on the ground!
Ocean!
Why are you teasering us?
It was crazy.
Like, I was so shocked.
Like, I came out here to play hockey, and I got arrested for playing hockey.
That shocking footage has been seen tens of millions of times around the world.
Even TMZ, the celebrity tabloid website out of Hollywood, focused on it.
It's so incredible.
It's an incredible Canadian story.
A young man, Ocean Wiseblad is his name, threatened with a tasering for not getting off an ice rink in Calgary.
And by the way, I should point out that Ice Rink was officially open by the city of Calgary.
There were, you know, there was a sign saying it was open.
It had been zambonied by the city.
Completely out of control, cops.
And our own Kian Bexty was on the scene with the story.
Kian joins us now while I escape from Calgary.
There were so many things about this story that make it newsworthy, Kiam.
Lockdown, Canadian hockey, nice young kid, Ocean Weisblatt.
The tasering was shocking.
You did a wonderful report, and we're going to show a clip from it in a minute.
But what is so surprising and disappointing to me is how most of the mainstream media has cheered for the tasering cops here.
In fact, they don't even mention the tasering because that looks too bad.
They're cheering for the cops against the kid.
That's weird to me.
Yeah, it's really strange.
And part of their coverage was what was so strange of it was that their coverage neglected to even mention that the kid had the crap beaten out of him, right?
Like he was kneading the gut.
He was kneading the groin on the hip.
And then they pulled out a taser when these two incompetent police officers couldn't bring this kid to the ground.
They resorted to, you know, tasers can kill people.
They resorted to what could have been lethal force, especially on the ice, because they couldn't do their job.
And the media didn't mention that.
They just mentioned that, oh, you know, there's this kid who's not following the rules and we all got to be locked down right now because, you know, staying home saves lives.
But, you know, the police are the ones that are really putting lives in danger.
You know, there are some police rules of engagement.
One of them involves high-speed chases, for example.
It's sort of a rule of thumb that police very rarely engage in high-speed chases because the risks are simply too high.
Other examples are to de-escalate situations.
These two cops, screaming at him, swearing at him, drawing a taser when he's just saying, what did I do wrong?
What's the rule?
Those police showed they don't have emotional self-control.
And when you've got someone with a taser and a real gun in their other holster, not to have emotional control of themselves, to go so crazy on a kid just who's standing on an ice rink, I think that's what's shocking.
I mean, yeah, kicking the kid, cutting his skates off his feet.
I've never heard of anything so weird.
Throwing him in the back of a police car.
That's all weird and crazy.
But the fact that we don't yet even know the names of these officers, that they're still presumably on the force, that is actually the shocking story of the day.
Yeah, and that's why we put together a petition at helpocean.ca to condemn these officers, to condemn the police force that enabled this, and to condemn Nenshi and demand a personal apology be sent from Nenshi because Nenshi is the one that controls the Calgary Police Service.
Lots of people want to say that it is the provincial government, but that's not really true.
The line of, you know, the chief of police reports to Nenshi, and Nenshi has asked the chief of police to enforce these COVID restrictions more than they already have been.
In fact, that very day is when they started doubling down on this.
So Nenshi needs to apologize.
The police need to fire these two officers because, you know, not only did they act horrendously in that situation, but when is the next time they can't take down someone who's actually a threat to the community, to Calgary?
What happens if it's someone with a gun and they're wrestling over a gun?
These two incompetent officers wouldn't be able to deal with an actual criminal if they saw one.
Yeah, I mean, I couldn't help but chuckle.
I mean, he's just a hockey player saying, what's going on?
What's going on?
And they're both, uh, uh, uh, uh, it's like play fighting with him.
They couldn't tip him over.
They were kicking him.
They were like, it was sort of embarrassing.
He's just sort of, what's going on?
What's going on?
And I mean, those cops, they have no moral authority.
They command no respect.
They have no charisma.
They have no way to affect an order other than to shoot.
That is a dangerous ticking time bomb.
I'm going to show you another clip.
This is also from the Calgary Police.
This is at an anti-lockdown rally.
I've never seen anything like this.
The police grab people from the crowd, pull them over, pound them, and then release them.
It's some weird catch and release.
This looks more like something from Moscow than Calgary.
Take a look at this just for a second.
And crushing that guy's skull.
Like, just crushing his head against the pavement.
I don't even know what the policing tactic is there.
Just physically beat people up as a personal deterrent.
Like, this is so shocking to me, but I suppose it, I mean, I'm a former Calgarian.
I suppose it shouldn't be shocking to me anymore because that city has fallen so far.
I think you mentioned the province.
I think there comes a point where KC Medu, the attorney general, has to take charge of the police because they're being abusive.
I think they're being a bit brutal.
I think they're dangerous.
And I think the problem starts at the chief level.
I'm not a fan of premiers coming in and meddling with local affairs.
But seriously, if they keep this up, it's just gone too far.
Give me a quick word on that other beating video, and then I want to play a clip from your interview with Ocean Wiseblatt in a second.
Yeah, it just, I've been in that very location where that took place, and I interviewed people there very frequently.
And I expected something like that would happen when I went to Hong Kong last November when the riot police were absolutely terrorizing their own citizens.
I never expected that within a year, that would be happening in the streets of my hometown.
A police officer doesn't have the right to come and rough someone up.
I mean, they barely have that right when they're arresting someone.
They don't have that right when they're not arresting someone.
You don't just beat the hell out of someone and say, all right, you learned your lesson.
Get on with it.
That's not how our justice system works.
That's not how law enforcement works.
That officer should be ashamed of himself.
Yeah, I thought that was very strange, very un-Calgarian.
Now, I want to throw to your interview, and I want to run a few minutes of this because it was really good.
Ocean Weisblack comes across as a really good kid.
And what I like about this is in the background you're at that very hockey ice, like it's on the arena, it's an outdoor rink, a ice patch really.
It was Zambonied by the city, so it's an official place.
What's so interesting is that hockey's going on right as you interview them, because that's normal because hockey is allowed.
These cops were on some insane misguided mission.
And by the way, Ocean was repeatedly saying, what's going on?
What did I do wrong?
What's the law?
And they couldn't answer because they couldn't know.
And the more frustrated they became, the more violent they became.
Let's throw to your clip interviewing Ocean at the hockey rink.
So me and the boys, you know, we were just going out to the outdoor rink as usual.
And, you know, winter sports.
We all headed out here to Southwood where we play outdoor rink hockey.
And just, we came to play hockey just like another day.
And police officer came by and just technically just gave us a warning that two cops were going to come.
And then everyone started, a lot of people started just running away.
And then me and like four other guys, we just said, you know, like we're playing hockey.
Like this is outrageous with all this COVID stuff and not letting us play hockey, not letting us go outdoors, but they're going to have all these indoor buildings opening up, all these indoor social gatherings.
And it's, you know, it just doesn't make any sense to me.
And we were just playing hockey, so we decided to stay and not run away from the cops.
And the cops came by and we were, me and the boys were just sitting over there by the bench.
And then I just saw like these kids getting, they were being talked to by the cops.
And then I didn't know what was said, but like I just felt like I had to go over there just because of a younger crowd.
So just as an older person, just making sure like everything's okay.
So I just went over there.
Didn't know what was going on, but just asked the cop, you know, just like, you know, pretty much just told her, like, I'm not sure what's going on with these COVID rules.
Like everything's, everything indoors open.
Like, you guys got all the malls open.
You got all these businesses open.
But like, you can't let us play hockey out here.
It doesn't make sense.
Everyone's skiing.
Everyone's doing all these winter sports and it's life.
It's what we should be doing.
We should be enjoying life.
Like, we only get one life, and you should be doing what you want to do in life.
And, you know, I asked her that, and then she said I was breaking the, what is it called?
Public health orders.
Yeah, public health orders.
Yeah.
And apparently I was breaking one of the public health orders and I wasn't aware of that.
You know, I kind of just got off news, got off social media just because everything's just on social media.
It's crazy.
It's all negative.
So I just wanted to get off that.
So I just came out to play like an ordinary another hockey day and she said I was breaking the Public Health Act and I just asked like, what was I breaking?
And she didn't tell me.
She just said I was just breaking Public Health Act.
And that's strange to me because even Mayor Nenshi, this like radical mayor who really sort of seems to enjoy rubbing this in into like salt in the wound of his people, he said that it's fine to play hockey as long as it's not too big.
And from what you told me earlier, there was only 15 people on the rink.
And by the time the police were really getting testy with you, you were the last one on the rinks.
So what public health order could you possibly have been breaking at that moment when they decide to pull out a taser?
Yeah, like that was my point.
That's why I was talking tonight, because it's a joke.
It's literally a joke, like we have 15 players out here skating, playing a hockey game.
We're having fun.
We're living life.
Well, I think he comes across very well.
And I think that the fact that the police are doubling down on this discredits the rest of the police force.
These were two rogue officers, clearly affirmative action hires.
They were very small women who cannot impose themselves on the world and so reach for the taser and were swearing very unprofessional.
The fact that the chief has chosen to stand in solidarity with his gender quota cops here and to approve of this brutality, I think is deeply discrediting.
And it may come to the point where Casey Medu in the province has to take over the Calgary police directly and just clean that whole house.
Last word to you, Kian.
The police, whether they're in Calgary or Toronto, need the respect of the people that they are enforcing the law on to be able to do their job properly.
And if they lose that respect, and it should be a mutual respect, if they lose that, then they won't be able to do the important things like catching criminals, breaking apart sex trafficking rings.
They have real important work to be doing, and beating the hell out of kids is not one of them.
Bobbies and Respect00:02:49
Yeah, you're so right.
Robert Peel, really the founder of modern Western policing, it's where the phrase bobbies came from.
That's why British police are called bobbies.
He said it all rests on the consent of the citizens.
Unless you're willing to have a full police state, the only way to have the light touch policing we've come to love in the West is by having the support and cooperation and respect and even the love of citizens.
And I feel like in the last six months, police forces have torched literally a century of public support for what?
To help out some politicians in some ephemeral authoritarian power trip.
I find it deeply depressing.
As you mentioned at the end of your video, we've offered legal help to Ocean.
In fact, I should tell you, Kean, I just spoke to him on the phone moments ago and I gave him some advice on how to approach lawyers.
We've offered to help him.
If he wants our help, we're there.
I think he's trying to do this on his own, so we're giving him some tips.
But we like to help people who are in this sort of trouble.
So if you know someone who's been treated like Ocean, or God forbid that bad, or even just got a ticket, have them go to fight thefines.com.
If you want to sign our petition, go to helpocean.ca.
And last I checked, we have over 12,000 signatures there in just one day.
So obviously, this is ringing a bell with people.
Kean, more great work on your part.
Thank you for that.
I know you're working on some very exciting projects over the Christmas break, and you're going to come back with a bang in the New Year's, so I can hardly wait for that.
Great.
Thanks so much, Ezra.
All right, you take care of there.
You have a Kian Bextee, who besides being our reporter in Calgary, I should let you know that at our recent in-house Rebel Awards we call the Rebbe's, he won the Brave Adventurer Award.
Stay with us, Moorhead.
Welcome back on my show Friday.
David writes, Ezra, I'm pretty sure the insult pig in the wig is like, you know, pig in a blanket insult, not meaning fat, as in a wiener made me laugh.
Oh, okay.
You know what?
I wasn't thinking that way, but fair enough.
You never know.
I mean, the Brits have a funny sense of humor, don't they?
Nellis writes, beware the thought police on Twitter.
Oh, yeah, on Twitter they're bad, but they're in real life now, in real life, with real guns and tasers.
Bruce writes, thanks for all those funny cameos.
I was especially surprised at John Cleese still being alive.
Congratulations to all the Rebbe Award winners.
John Cleese is around, and he's a bit of a liberal these days, but I mean, most of the cameos, as you can see, they're sort of strangers, and you just give them a little script.
Good Night, Rebels00:00:45
But some of them were real friends, and it was a really nice night to show which rebels, I mean, we've got a lot of great people here, but there were some who were really just had an outstanding year, and we were glad to recognize them.
That's our show for today.
Listen, if you can help us out, I was sort of surprised.
We've always just rolled these loans over.
We pay our mortgage payment, and we just assumed the loan would keep going at the 8.5% interest rate.
And then all of a sudden, the banker said, no, pay it off.
And I'm not even mad at the guy.
He's not hostile to Rebel News.
He's just a banker.
He's not a supporter like the original lender was.
So we're in a bit of a pickle.
If you can help us out, go to helprebelnews.com.
I appreciate it.
All right, that's it for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.