Ezra Levant and Spencer Fernando expose Stephen Gilbo’s taxpayer-funded poll—93% of Canadians oppose "hate speech"—while questioning its bias, as it ignores left-wing groups like Antifa. Gilbo, a Liberal-appointed heritage minister, pushes for an e-tribunal and 24-hour content removal, despite Canada’s existing criminal code laws. Tech giants like Zuckerberg may resist, but pressure from Trudeau’s aligned Liberals and O’Toole’s shifting stance risks silencing dissent under vague definitions of "harmful communications," threatening free speech and democratic norms. Ontario and Saskatchewan explore constitutional challenges, signaling a broader fight against government overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I take you through some of the censorship proposals that the convicted criminal and heritage minister in Canada, his name is Stephen Gilbeau, is considering to make into law.
And they've invented a new word.
I'm sorry, I'm laughing at it.
I'm not going to spoil the podcast.
You got to go, you got to, it's about eight minutes in.
They invented a new word, and that's pretty cool.
It's like witnessing a baby panda being born.
It's a wonderful moment.
The Liberals invented a new word for how they're going to censor things.
It just makes me laugh.
That's ahead.
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I'm pretty sure I'm paying double that on Netflix.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, are you a hater?
It's January 28th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government about why I publish them is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Hey, can I ask you a question?
Are you a hater?
Well, of course not.
It would be very odd if you said you were.
It's like me asking, are you a bad person?
But it's even more specific.
It's asking you about a particular sin, the sin of hatred.
I think if you were deeply philosophical and introspective, you could say, sometimes it's like asking about any of the other sins, envy, greed, lust, pride.
I think all of us have elements of those in us.
And part of our work as people is to manage those, to transcend them, to tame them.
I think the great men of history have actually harnessed their sinning impulses and wrestled them and transformed them into energy to do great things.
I mean, what wouldn't a young man do to impress a woman if he were motivated by lust?
Could he transform that into something positive?
How much more enduring beauty in the world is there because, you know, in the form of art, a sculpture, a painting, or even sports achievements, how much was done to impress a woman?
If that's an odd example for you, how's this one?
Let me talk about greed instead of lust.
Adam Smith said, I quote, it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.
Another way of saying that is when capitalism works well, people serve us, you know, bread and beer, not because they're saints or charitable or altruistic or wanting to do us a favor, but because it's in their own greedy interest because they managed to make a profit of it.
Smith puts it better, but his point is, if you can harness people's selfishness in a system that transforms it and makes them take the sin of greed and transform it into something productive, well, that's wonderful.
In darker systems, people get rich by fraud or theft or coercion.
In free societies, the richer you are, odds are the more people you have helped or made happy in some way, whether you're an inventor or a pop star.
Protecting Expression from Platforms00:15:28
So back to my question, are you a hater?
Are you a hater?
Well, then philosophically, we are all a bit.
Don't pretend you're not.
You can't love things and like things unless you also, I suppose, hate things or even just hate the opposite or the absence of what you like.
I love my family means I hate or fear those things that would hurt my family.
I love my hockey team and I want them to win implies you hate to see them lose, maybe even hate the other team.
I'm stretching the words, but I say that anyone who doesn't have some hate in their heart doesn't have a heart.
It's a natural human emotion.
The whole idea is to control yourself, right?
If you can watch 9-11, the scene of the planes hitting the Twin Towers, without having feelings of hatred, then I put it to you, you do not have a normal or healthy personality.
So I ask a third time, are you a hater?
Well, if a pollster asks you that question, some stranger on the phone, you're probably not going to give them a five-minute amateur philosophy answer like I just tried to do there.
You're going to say, of course not.
I mean, it really couldn't be an easier question to answer.
Hey, do you like breathing?
Are you a hater?
Because only bad people are bad.
I'd actually call that a stupid question.
But it is, is it much less stupid to ask people in an official public opinion poll, are you against hate?
I mean, it would be bizarre for anyone to say anything except, of course, even haters.
And it's true, even those of us who wrestle with sins, especially those of us who wrestle with sins, I say especially.
I mean, say we're against sins, especially if we're overcome by them.
Look how fat I am.
Am I against gluttony?
Of course, more than most people, because I'm so familiar with its evil.
If you ask a hater if he's against hatred, he probably will say, yes, I am so very much.
And so what value should we put on a public opinion poll commissioned by a taxpayer-funded lobby group called the Canadian Race Relations Foundation that commissioned a poll from a polling company owned by a Liberal Party activist named Bruce Anderson that asks Canadians if they're against hate?
Here's that poll by the Liberal Lobby Group.
Poll demonstrates support for strong social media regulations to prevent online hate and racism.
Here's a press release.
Recent events in the U.S. have caused Canadians to internally examine the rise of extremism and hate speech within the world of online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
The findings of a poll conducted by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and Abacus Data released today indicate that 93% of Canadians believe that online hate speech and racism are a problem, including 49% who believe online hate speech and racism are very serious problems.
Look at that, eh?
That first part.
That Americans have made Canadians afraid of extremism.
That's their starting point.
That's called having your thumb on the scale.
If you say that to someone before asking them a poll question, you've torqued it.
If that's the predicate for asking Canadians about hatred, Abacus Data, as you can see, is a liberal firm.
Bruce Anderson, liberal strategist, is its boss.
His daughter is Kate Purchase, who was Justin Trudeau's longtime communications director.
You can see his son-in-law, Perry Sergis, is on there, a Liberal Party lobbyist.
This is an inside job, of course.
Seriously, I'm surprised that only 93% of Canadians say they don't like hate.
I mean, who are those 7% who say, I like hate, I do.
Who are those 7%?
But if you read through the poll, you can see it's worse than that.
The poll only asks about right-wing violence.
Hang on, what about an entire year of left-wing violence from Antifa and Black Lives Matter just burning and shooting?
How is it a legitimate survey to specifically only ask about right-wing violence when we've had a year of riots across America from the left?
And they've started up again, by the way, in Portland, for example.
Well, this is a liberal polling company commissioned by a liberal-funded NGO for a liberal cabinet minister.
Garbage in, garbage out.
You'll learn nothing from people asking if they're against hate.
Of course they are.
You'll learn nothing from asking people if they're against violence.
Of course they are.
And once you've whipped them up with your narrative that we're in a crisis, if you ask them if they want the government to do something about it, well, of course they do.
Or at least, of course, they say they do, especially if you don't tell them exactly what you're going to do.
That report was given massive coverage in the mainstream media.
And I didn't see one story that either mentioned that it's a liberal firm that conducted the poll or that the questions only focused on right-wing haters.
Not surprisingly, Trudeau's censorship mission minister was thrilled with it.
I should tell you, he appointed the president of the NGO that started this whole government-funded thing.
And this was timed just coincidentally with another think tank, which means a government-funded liberal front group called the Public Policy Forum.
It came out with a deep thinking policy paper calling for the censorship of hate too.
Here's a story about it in the Globe and Mail.
Heritage Minister says, takedown rules coming, welcomes calls for a new social media regulator.
They're not calls, you paid them to say that.
No one, you told, it's like sending yourself flowers on Valentine's Day.
No one said, you paid them to say that to you.
Let me read.
Canadian Heritage Minister Stephen Gilbo says government rules are coming that will require social media companies to take down illegal or hateful content.
On Wednesday, Mr. Gilbo welcomed federally funded reports from the Public Policy Forum and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation that urged the government to act because they say internet giants like Google and Facebook are not doing enough to review and remove dangerous content on their platforms.
Canadians are now asking their government to hold social media companies accountable for the content that appears on their platforms, Mr. Gilbo said in a statement provided by his office.
This is exactly what we intend to do by introducing new regulations that will require online platforms to remove illegal and hateful content before they cause more harm and damage.
Here's my favorite part.
The Public Policy Forum, an independent policy organization that received Canadian heritage funding to produce its report, called this week for the creation of a powerful federal regulator to oversee how platform companies moderate content on their sites.
The forum also recommended creating an e-tribunal to which Canadians can bring concerns over individual social media posts.
Don't you love that?
An independent organization that was paid by Gilbo.
Well, don't be surprised.
This story was published in the Globe and Mail, which is another independent organization that is funded by Trudeau, actually by Gilbo.
Here's my favorite part of the whole thing.
Karen Sweebel, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association's Fundamental Freedoms Program, said she is not opposed to an independent tribunal that resolves disputes over online content, but noted the government has not been clear exactly what it's proposing.
If new rules go beyond existing legal definitions of hate speech or attempt to define misinformation, she said that will raise freedom of speech concerns.
Yeah, I don't know.
The devil really will be in the details, she said.
Oh, well, I'm nervous about the prospect of government deciding on what is true.
Probably just as nervous as I am about social media platforms deciding what is true.
So I think we need to really be careful about regulation that tries to deal with the problem.
But she started by saying she's open to it.
The devil's in the details.
She says there's some questions she wants answered.
Okay, fair enough.
But she is fine with the concept.
She just wants to see the details on this.
But she's not saying no.
I don't know if you noticed that.
And how about this thing, what's it called again?
The Conservative Party.
And what are they called again?
The official opposition.
Did they say anything conservative or did they oppose this?
Well, let's go to the globe.
Conservative MP Alain Reyes said in an email that he appreciated the thoroughness of the PPF report and he's consulting with interested groups.
We are waiting impatiently for the government to table a bill so that we can start working on this file, he said.
The government needs to find the right balance between regulation and preserving freedom of expression, which is so important to our democracy.
That's all you got.
You're consulting with interested parties.
Aren't all 37 million of us interested parties?
You're not opposed to this.
You're going to wait for the details too.
You think maybe the balance right now is too far towards free speech, and so you're willing to balance it with more liberal censorship, and you're a conservative MP.
All right.
Here's how they're going to do it, if you're wondering.
It's another item from a liberal-funded Oregon, the Toronto Star.
Look at this from just yesterday.
During an interview with the Star, Gilbo also said that a new regulator will be set up to oversee the rules Ottawa is bringing in to curb the sharing of illegal content, including hate speech, child pornography, and non-consensual intimate images on platforms like those owned by Facebook and Google.
Now, do you see the difference there?
They're talking about child pornography and revenge porn, and they sneak in hate speech.
And here's a CBC story, also funded by the Liberals, where they say it's about terrorist propaganda.
That should include rules around hate speech, the letter said, as well as radicalization, incitement to violence, exploitation of children, or creation or distribution of terrorist propaganda.
I think it's pretty clear.
They're going to announce that they're going after terrorist speech and child pornography and criminal things.
And who could be against that?
I mean, you're not against that, are you?
You're not pro-terrorist, are you?
I already asked if you're pro-hate.
You're not pro-terrorist now.
And then they're just going to sneak in a little stowaway.
What they're really after here, political censorship, because you know what?
Terrorist propaganda is already illegal if you say it, if you phone it, if you type it, if you internet it.
Those laws were brought in after 9-11.
You can't even give moral support to terrorist groups.
You don't have to be a terrorist yourself, but merely supporting a terrorist group is a crime in our criminal code.
Same with child pornography.
We have had these online laws from the pre-social media era.
The internet itself has been really popular for about 25 years.
This is not new.
The criminal code is already pretty much caught up.
What's new is the political censorship.
So let me show you what was written by the Public Policy Forum, that Liberal Party think tank.
I'm going to read for you the principles of their memo.
It's a long report.
The first principle, free speech is fundamental to a democratic society and that the internet enables more people to participate in public discussions and debates.
All right, now that's where you end it.
That's it.
That's the principle.
But like they say, ignore everything in the sentence before the word but.
Oh yeah, that dress looks really good on you, but you might want something that's a bit more slimming.
You can ignore everything before the word but.
So they just said, hey guys, we really like free speech, but and I mean it would be weird to pay attention to anything before the word but because let me show you the next principles underneath that.
The rise of hatred, disinformation, conspiracies, bullying, and other harmful communications online is undermining these gains and having a corrosive impact on democratic expression in Canada.
So you can't have free speech if you engage in conspiracies.
That should be illegal.
Disinformation should be illegal.
And other harmful communications that they don't list.
Like what?
Is one man's disinformation another man's truth?
I think it could be.
You know, for three years, the media party, including here in Canada, the CBC, the Star of the Globe, they all said that Trump was colluding with Russia.
I mean, he was non-stop for three years, but after a $50 million investigation by Robert Mueller, that was ruled out as just fake news.
There was no evidence of it whatsoever.
That was disinformation.
The CBC and the government itself promotes disinformation to this day from the China-run World Health Organization.
But now the government will decide what information is disinformation, and that's more important than free speech.
Let me read their third point.
The status quo of leaving a content moderation to the sole discretion of the platforms has failed to stem the spread of these harms and that platform companies can find themselves in conflict between their private interests and the public good.
But that's actually not true.
You can sue anyone for publishing something on Twitter or Facebook, just like you can sue anyone for saying something on TV or radio or on a printing press or with a ink and quill.
Each of those technologies were incremental innovations to the ancient laws of libel that predated those technologies.
There's no such thing as an unmoderated content on the internet.
You can sue anyone if you don't like the content.
But what's new is they want the government of Canada to do it.
Translation, they want the Liberal Party to do it.
Maybe the next point.
We find fault with the notion that platforms are neutral disseminators of information.
Platforms curate content to serve their commercial interests and so must assume greater responsibility for the harms they amplify and spread.
All right, I don't know exactly what they mean, but I think it's code four.
They're going to delegate the censorship to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, because the Liberals want their censorship to happen quickly and without a trial, without public scrutiny, not in public courts where the accused disinformer might actually have a fair trial.
Point five, government must play a more active role in furthering the cause of democratic expression and protecting Canadians from online harms.
Politicians' Dilemma: Censorship vs. Freedom00:15:35
Look at that Orwellian speak.
We need to protect expression.
We're going to further expression by protecting people from expression.
You'd have to be a pretzel to think that way.
And get this.
Tell me if you can see the new word they invented here.
Any policy response must put citizens first, reduce online harms, and guard against the potential for over-censorship of content in putting forth remedies.
This requires a balanced and multi-pronged approach.
So did you see it?
It's that word over-censorship.
So the government's fine with censorship, of course.
It's just over-censorship they're worried about.
Censorship's fine.
Just don't over-censor.
And they'll tell you where that line is.
My friends, this is a done deal.
This has been in the works for years.
These reports were commissioned a long time ago, especially this public policy forum was.
Trudeau hates dissident voices.
He has banned, for example, our rebel reporters from press conferences.
That hasn't stopped us.
He banned us from reporting on the leaders' debates.
That didn't stop us.
We went to federal court.
Trudeau threatened me personally and fined me $3,000 for publishing a book about him called The Labranos.
Trudeau bought off 99% of the media in this country, including all the media sources I showed you today, the CBC, the Toronto Star, the Global Mail.
He bought them off through his $600 million bailout.
But he just can't stand that last 1% holding out like us.
And he can't stand you as citizens saying things on Facebook to your friends without him prosecuting you.
He hates that.
He hates us, he hates you, but that's the good kind of hate.
And if a pollster asked him, do you hate anything?
He'd say, no, no, no.
I don't hate anyone.
But don't worry, sure, he'll censor us.
He just won't over censor us.
And if you hate that, well, you just hate criminal, aren't you?
Stay with us for more.
Hey, welcome back.
You know, I like to follow politicians of all stripes on Twitter because I like to know what the other side is saying.
In fact, if I counted them up, I think I probably follow people I disagree with or frankly am scared of more than I follow people on my own side because I sort of already know what my team thinks.
But I can't follow Canada's heritage minister, Stephen Gilbo.
Maybe it's because I have been sharp in my commentary about him.
I always mention that he's a convicted criminal, which is odd to be elevated to cabinet.
But whatever it is, Stephen Gilbo has blocked me on Twitter, which is too bad because I'd like to know what he's planning to do to me.
Because you see, Stephen Gilbeau has announced, and the Liberals have confirmed to the Global Mail and other places, that they intend to bring in brutal censorship laws post-haste to tackle not just things like terrorism online or child pornography online, things everyone could agree with.
But they throw into the laundry list hurtful opinions and offensive opinions.
Well, no one could disagree with fighting terrorism or child pornography, but they throw in these stowaways of offensive words.
Well, that makes me think maybe they're coming from me and a handful of other conservative critics of Gilbo and the Liberal Party, including our next guest.
You know him.
He's one of Canada's few independent journalists.
His name is Spencer Fernando.
He's the boss of SpencerFernando.com, and he joins us now, Vice Guide from Winnipeg.
Great to see you again, Spencer.
I have to say I'm a little bit nervous about this because the Liberals have almost total control over the legacy media.
There's just a handful of independents left like you and me and True North and a few others.
They don't want any dissonance at all.
That's my worry.
Do you think that there's going to have political censorship here in addition to actual censorship of criminal acts like terrorism or child porn?
Yeah, it seems like they're moving that direction.
And, you know, one thing I repeatedly say is when the government already has authority to do something and then they create a new bureaucracy or a new program to fight against a thing they can already deal with, that tells you that what they're claiming the problem is is not actually what they're really talking about, right?
So the government says, oh, they need to fight hate online, right?
Well, there's already hate speech laws that the government has the authority to use, right?
So they don't need new authority there.
And then when you start throwing in things like, oh, an offensive opinion, well, offensive to who, hurtful opinion, or hurtful to who, right?
Everyone's got a different idea of that.
It's very subjective.
So it looks like they're trying to, I think, capitalize on what they feel is perhaps a political environment where people are pushing for more censorship and more control, and they feel they can appeal to that.
Of course, that's the kind of thing that, you know, people, they may want that for a while.
You know, there's a certain mood in the country or North America or the world.
But, you know, that kind of shifts and people, you know, the opinions change, but you're left with the government control.
And a lot of people regret what they had previously pushed for.
So I think it is very concerning, and I don't trust the government to use that kind of authority wisely.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I mean, there are hate speech and hate propaganda provisions in our criminal code.
But the thing is, that's a problem for a guy like Stephen Gilbo because he's got to get a prosecutor to take the case to a judge beyond a reasonable doubt.
There are some legal defenses.
Now, there are some convictions under those sections of the criminal code, but there's a whole legal process.
It can be appealed theoretically all the way to the Supreme Court.
One of the things that I note about the way the Liberal Party is talking about their proposals, they haven't published their proposals yet, is that they want to copy some approaches done in European jurisdictions where they don't value free speech.
One of the things that I've heard Gilbo talk about, and it was in his mandate letter from Justin Trudeau, I think going back to 2019, was they want social media companies to delete comments that are complained about within 24 hours or face enormous fines.
Now, the thing is, you can't have a trial in 24 hours.
In fact, if it's on a weekend, people might not even be at work answering.
So if you have a complaint on a Saturday, does Facebook have to have some sort of trial, Saturday night, Sunday morning, and have the...
There is no way to properly have a hearing on the facts.
And if there's massive fines, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, all these social media companies, they'll just delete everything because if there's a million-dollar fine, they're not going to risk it for free speech.
I'm deeply worried not just about the substance of the censorship, but this lack of process.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, well, I think, you know, whenever you see a government impose something that's obviously impossible to meet, a regulation that's impossible to meet, then I think they want exactly what you're talking about, right?
They know the companies will just say, well, I'm going to shut down comments entirely.
We're going to shut down entirely.
And that's really what they want, right?
You know, it's funny.
I don't know if you're watching some of the financial news today.
You're seeing a lot of the hedge funds in big trouble because I think it's GameStop.
A bunch of just regular retail investors are buying up GameStop, kind of playing the same game the hedge funds have been playing, right?
And all of a sudden, oh, it's so unfair.
Oh, we need regulation.
We need to be bailed out.
All the big hedge funds that were so powerful and so influential, they're all panicking and begging for government help.
And that kind of reminds me of much of the media as they've responded to social media.
It's like, oh, wait a minute.
No, no, no, no.
We're the only ones who are allowed to reach people and share our opinions and share the facts, right?
Oh, how dare these regular people share their opinions freely as well.
And so I think you're seeing a bit of the same thing.
It's both the media and the government who have lost their monopoly, the control and flow of information, and they're panicking and they're trying to get it back.
And, you know, regulation and government control is always the way they try to do that.
You know, it's funny.
I'm looking at these crazy statements by Stephen Gilbo.
I mean, I remember when he went on Evan Solomon's show and talked about a media license.
You need a license for a website.
And he later walked that back when he was embarrassed.
Here's a quick reminder of what that looked like for folks.
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.
So he was willing to talk about a news license.
Evan Solomon, to his credit, pushed back, and Gilbo was trotted out a few days later and said, no, no, no, I didn't mean it.
But Spencer, imagine if 10 years ago, Stephen Harper were to say, we're going to bring in extreme regulation of social media.
I'm going to demand that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter have 24-hour turnaround when I complain.
We're going to set up a new bureaucracy for things that are offensive.
I am certain that the entire press corps and all the NGOs and all the civil liberties groups and all the law professors and all the intellectual class would say he's a fascist, he's a censor, he's a control freak.
You know, we heard the CBC calling him Heil Harper, like Herr Harper.
They call him a Nazi.
My point to you is, where are the Canadian Association of Journalists, the Canadian Journalists for Free Speech, where are all these civil liberties groups in the face of the most brazen censorship proposal in a generation?
Yeah, well, they're really nowhere to be found.
We'll see if someone will speak up.
But that's exactly right.
I mean, if Harper had tried anything like this, they would have gone absolutely crazy.
They would have been right to criticize him, right?
But he never went anywhere close to this kind of censorship.
So it's obviously very hypocritical.
But, you know, the thing is, I think to the, call them the elites or just, you know, the governing class, you know, people basically in the business world, media and the government who have really an interest in not letting just regular people share our views.
I think the issue is the wrong people in their mind are sharing their views now, right?
They don't see democracy as just everyone's free to say what they want.
They have to say exactly what's certain, you know, what the government wants to hear, right?
So now, oh, people are too critical.
People are too free to share their views.
Oh, it's getting too negative.
It's getting too partisan.
And all of a sudden, now they're worried about it, right?
But it's only when the left is in power.
To be honest, it's not just the left.
You see people on the right who are either silent on this or pushing for it as well in some cases.
And, you know, I just think it's, you know, we're losing our faith in freedom and we're losing our faith in free speech and free expression.
And it always feels tempting in the moment to use government power to shut down your opponents, but no one's in power forever, and that power can be turned around back on the people who wielded it.
And then they'll be the ones complaining, oh, this is totally unfair.
This is undemocratic.
So people need to be careful what they wish for here.
Yeah, I mean, Facebook just banned some far left-wing groups who in the past have called for the censorship of right-wing groups.
I'm not happy with any groups being silenced.
Here's the one surprise to me.
I'm surprised that the government is doing this publicly through, they say they're going to do it in parliament.
I'm surprised by that.
I had always assumed that it would just be a quiet phone call between Trudeau and Mark Zuckerberg.
Trudeau would say, it would be like a log rolling deal, like, let's cut a deal.
I won't agree to a trust-busting lawsuit against you.
I won't tax you.
I won't have a Facebook tax.
And in return, you will just quietly censor from Silicon Valley anyone right-wing.
I assumed it would be like a secret private outsourcing of censorship to Facebook.
Because how are you going to track that?
How are you going to fight that?
How are you going to appeal that?
How are you going to take that to court in Canada?
You can't.
So to do this through the legislature is sort of surprising to me.
I wonder if Google, Facebook, YouTube, et cetera, are going to object to what Gilbo is proposing.
And maybe they would fight him.
Or maybe they want to get on side with it.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know what a tech titan like Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey thinks of this.
Maybe they are repelled by this and say, hey, only we get to choose who we censor.
We don't listen to puny prime ministers.
I don't know.
I'm confused by what's going on a little bit.
Yeah, well, I think the kind of the disturbing thing is, you know, to be honest, I think people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, to be honest, I think they actually are more pro-free speech than Justin Trudeau and most politicians are.
And it sounds crazy, but look at what they said when they first started their companies, right?
Jack Dorsey said, we are the free speech wing of the free speech party.
Facebook was all about openness and free speech.
And I think in some cases, these companies grew far beyond what even the CEOs expected.
And now they've got a bunch of politicians threatening to shut them down and attack them and break them up if you don't censor people.
So in some cases, they're obviously giving in.
But I think they're definitely more pro-free speech than most politicians are.
So I think I'd be much more concerned about Justin Trudeau or Stephen Gilbo than Mark Zuckerberg.
And they probably do think they'll fight it.
So they can't just do some sort of backroom deal.
I think they know there's going to be some pushback.
But I think the other thing is they want to, if I was the liberals, you'd want to put the conservatives on the record on this.
And that's what's going to be interesting.
The liberals, we know how they're going to frame it.
They're going to say, oh, well, no, this is totally innocent.
We're just fighting hate speech.
I mean, surely everyone wants to fight hate speech, right?
How could you possibly be against that?
And we look forward to Aaron O'Toole and the Conservatives joining us to fight against hate speech and racism online.
So puts the conservatives in an interesting situation.
If they're true to their values, obviously they would oppose a new government bureaucracy and oppose government control over social media and free expression.
But as we've seen in the past few weeks, they're definitely running very scared, you know, falling into the liberal narrative and trying to make themselves seem very much like the liberals in many ways.
So I think that puts them in a tough position.
They're party based, and I think most conservative MPs, in their personal opinions, would be totally against this.
But we'll see if there's some pressure from the top of the party and the leadership of the party that might push people to support it.
Conservatives In An Interesting Situation00:02:55
So I think it's going to be interesting to see how that goes.
Well, you have terrified me because Aaron O'Toole in the last few weeks has shown himself extremely vulnerable to, I'm going to call it peer pressure.
Peer pressure from the media party, from the Liberal Party.
He's so worried about being liked by the cool kids and so terrified of being painted as a hater that he'll go along with anything.
And I think you are very wise to keep your eye on the Conservative Party.
Will they actually stand for free speech?
I don't know the answer yet.
Spencer, thank you for taking the time with us.
You've scared me a little bit, but you've also given me a little drop of hope.
Wouldn't it be something if Zuckerberg and Dorsey and the others said, yeah, you know what?
We don't want Justin Trudeau telling us what we can and can't publish.
Wouldn't it be something if they pushed back, I don't know, with a constitutional objection or lawsuit or something?
We're in interesting days.
Thanks for joining us today and keep up the great work at spencerfernando.com.
I always tell our viewers, you got to go there.
Fast on the news, smart takes, and a good Western point of view, too.
So thanks for joining us.
No problem.
Take care.
All right, there you have it.
Spencer Fernando, stay with us.
more happy.
Welcome back to my show last night.
Max writes, start lawsuits across Canada and take the feds to court over the lockdowns and open up the country.
Max, we are slowly but surely doing that.
We are very seriously investigating a constitutional challenge in Ontario.
We've got the one in Saskatchewan, and I'm very open to challenges across the country.
We need to find good plaintiffs who have standing.
That is, they have the right to go to court.
Justin writes, I gave up on Canada.
I'm making this comment in a packed breakfast restaurant in Florida.
Freedom is glorious.
Well, you had me at breakfast restaurant, but I do remember the before times when people could go out and see each other, look each other in the face, not be all masked up like, you know, we're on Mars or something.
And do you remember, I don't know if you remember this, there was a thing called concerts where you'd be seated next to people.
Sometimes you'd be standing.
You might even brush up against someone.
That was in the before times.
What makes me so sad is that children are already forgetting those before times.
Isn't that sad?
Richard Wrights, glad to know someone in the media tackles issues playing out in Saskatchewan.
Well, listen, I feel like we have underpaid attention to Saskatchewan.
I've always wanted to do more there.
And I was trying to recruit someone there, and it didn't really come to fruition.
Sheila has gone out to Prince Albert to do some journalism there.
We need more work there.
I accept that.
And I'm just looking for the right talent who is ready to roll.
So I'm open to it.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Heritage Headquarters, to you at home.