Quebec Conservative MP Aaron O’Toole’s heritage critic, Alain Reyes, pushed to ban The Epoch Times from government funding, citing conspiracy theories—some debunked (like Spygate), others unverified—while ignoring similar scrutiny of CBC or Toronto Star. Meanwhile, China’s trial of detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor drags on as leverage over Meng Wenzhou’s case, while Biden’s early executive orders risk weakening Five Eyes security against Huawei. Experts warn China’s aggression demands firmer action, yet the host notes Reyes’ move reflects a broader pattern: silencing right-wing dissent under disinformation pretexts. [Automatically generated summary]
It's about Aaron O'Toole's MP out there, his heritage critic as he's called, calling for a newspaper to be defunded, banned really, cancel culture, for being too conservative.
Aaron O'Toole's guy is trying to cancel a newspaper.
I'm not even kidding.
I'll read you this story.
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Tonight, Cancel Culture returns.
The Conservative Party demands that the FOC Times be banned from government funding.
It's March 11th, and this is the Ezra Levance 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 it.
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
I don't really know what Aaron O'Toole stands for.
He claims he's against the carbon tax, but he says he's for net zero emissions.
He says he's critical of communist China, but he just hired the former vice president of Huawei Canada, a position that is effectively a Chinese intelligence asset.
What does Aaron O'Toole actually believe?
Well, I think the answer is cancel culture.
It's the only thing he truly seems to commit to with passion.
It's the thing he acts on most dramatically.
He had Jim Karajelios kicked out of the Conservative Party leadership campaign.
He accused Derek Sloan of racism and kicked him out of the party.
Derek Sloan is no racist, and neither are his visible minority wife and kids.
And then O'Toole sacked Pierre Polyev, widely regarded as the most effective Conservative MP in parliament, which is probably why he sacked him.
Aaron O'Toole needs to be the brightest star in the sky.
Justin Trudeau himself couldn't help but notice.
What was that?
Is he really going to expect us to believe that when I ask him about having the worst vaccination rates, the worst jobless rate, among the highest misery rate during COVID, the best he can do is stand up and read some talking points that were written for him by his bureaucrats?
Why can't he show a little bit of contrition for his failures?
This prime minister has cost the most to achieve the worst results, and what he expects us now to do is to just continue down this failed path.
If the prime minister wants the confidence of Canadians, will he tell them what will he change to reverse the failures that he has delivered thus far?
The Right Honorable Prime Minister.
I can understand the frustration of the member officer being amongst the many Canadians who've lost their jobs during this pandemic.
I think he even tried to cancel us.
You might recall that I did an exclusive interview with Aaron O'Toole about my big China scoop a few months back, where I revealed that Canada was actually training Chinese People's Liberation Army troops in cold weather warfare.
O'Toole did an in-email interview with me, and I thought he came across pretty well in it.
But as soon as we published it, the mean girls of Twitter just sputtered, and then O'Toole immediately capitulated to them.
Here's Andrew Coyne, not particularly articulate, just what in the absolute F?
Like just sputtering.
And that was enough to make Aaron O'Toole panic and cower and try to throw us under the bus and say he would never do another interview with us again.
I don't know exactly what was wrong with that.
I'll be honest, losing Aaron O'Toole as an interview subject isn't a particularly grievous loss.
O'Toole really doesn't have a lot to say, but his willingness to panic and join any outraged mob of the left does say a lot about him.
I think it's the one thing he truly believes in.
It's the one thing he's good at, throwing people away, casting people out, culling the herd.
I'm just not sure how that's going to grow the coalition to win this year's federal election.
But what do I know?
I don't know.
According to the CBC's poll aggregator, which simply blends every public opinion poll out there, if an election were held today, O'Toole would lose more than a dozen MPs.
And the Liberals would pick up more than a dozen MPs.
So I'm not sure if O'Toole's strategy is working.
But look at this.
It's in French.
I came across this by accident.
It's in La Presse, which is a left-wing newspaper in Montreal.
It takes massive handouts from Trudeau, by the way.
It's a leader in that.
Here's the story in French, but I'm going to show you the Google Translate version of it, which is pretty good.
So I'll read it to you in English.
Grant of $455,000, a helping hand from Ottawa for newspaper fun of conspiracy theories.
Now, what conspiracy theories are they talking about?
Is it the grand conspiracy theory unanimously promoted by the Canadian mainstream media for years that Donald Trump didn't actually win the 2016 election and that he was actually a Russian agent?
Because that was quite a doozy, and pretty much every Canadian journalist promoted it, and many still do, even though it's been categorically refuted by a team of Democrats led by Robert Mueller after their massive inquiry.
Maybe they're talking about a conspiracy theory that came true.
I guess that wasn't a conspiracy theory, but a conspiracy fact.
Here's a story from October from Trudeau's CBC State broadcaster saying not to believe reports that Trudeau was setting up mandatory quarantine detention facilities in hotels.
That was all disinformation, they said.
No truth to it, they said.
Yeah, no, it was true.
But incredibly, that CBC conspiracy theory story is still online without any retraction or correction.
So is this the press story about the government funding those conspiracy theories?
Is that what they're talking about?
No.
I'll tell you what it's about.
Let me read.
The Department of Canadian Heritage last March awarded a grant of $455,000 to the Epoch Times, a publication which, according to the majority of experts, has been promoting conspiracy theories for several years and which has become a forum for the movements of the far right.
Oh, the Epoch Times, one of the few media outlets that is actually skeptical of Communist China, for example.
They're the conspiracy theorists.
And I love that phrase.
The majority of experts say it's been promoting conspiracy theories.
Can I see that list of experts?
An expert in what?
An expert in what's right and wrong, what's reasonable or what's not?
There's no expert in charge of that.
That's each of us using our own judgment.
Who is this list of experts?
How many are on it?
And how do we know it's a majority?
And who is not part of the majority?
Who thinks, like, isn't that just a lazy way of a newspaper saying, we know better than you, just trust us.
And since you don't trust us, we'll say experts say, but it's really just us couching our own opinions that way.
That's called an appeal to authority.
You have to believe us because we're important and we're experts.
It's a logical fallacy.
Let me read some more.
The newspaper, which publishes an edition in 36 countries and in 22 languages, received a financial boost from Ottawa through the Canada Periodical Fund on 1st of April 2020, reveals the federal site.
Again, I'm just reading from the Google translation here.
The grant, which was awarded under a special component to support media affected by the crisis caused by the pandemic, ends March 31st.
The newspaper's owner, the Epoch Times Media, also got a second financial boost from Ottawa through the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, according to the Canada Revenue Agency website.
But it was impossible to know the extent of this financial assistance, the amount not being disclosed by the CRA.
Okay, I got it.
Suddenly, La Presse is against media bailouts.
Yeah, no, they're not.
They were actually amongst the most aggressive in lobbying for media bailouts and special tax treatment from the government.
They just don't want people to disagree with them to get the same bailouts.
That's all this is.
I'll read some more.
In the United States, the Epoch Times openly supported former United States President Donald Trump during his years in office, even receiving praise from a former close aide to Mr. Trump, Stephen K. Bannon, who claimed to be impressed by the newspaper's growing influence with right-wingers.
Whoa!
They openly supported the president?
That's shocking.
They should be ashamed to have a political point of view that's different from La Presse, a left-wing newspaper in a left-wing city, in a left-wing province in the French language in Canada.
I mean, how dare the Epoch Times' American edition support the American president?
That's all you got.
Founded in 2000 in the United States by Chinese Americans affiliated with the spiritual movement Falun Gong or Falandafa, the newspaper has been very critical of the Chinese Communist Party since its inception.
Among other things, he accuses her, or it accuses, this is the translation again, of persecuting members of the spiritual movement in China.
Are we still calling the persecution of the Falun Gong just an accusation?
The press won't acknowledge it.
What's going on here?
I can't quite tell.
Is La Presse saying that the Falun Gong people are not to be trusted or that they really are not being persecuted by China?
This isn't religious bigotry from La Presse, is it?
This isn't just Chinese Communist Party talking points from La Presse, is it?
Oh, this is my favorite.
Last October, the New York Times ran a lengthy report about the newspaper's management, noting that it was one of the promoters of Spygate, a baseless conspiracy theory that Obama administration officials illegally spied on Mr. Trump's campaign in 2016.
Yeah, no, that is not a conspiracy theory.
That has been incontrovertibly proven true through not only declassified documents, but also by disciplinary measures taken against Obama officials who were involved in the illegal surveillance.
That's not a conspiracy theory.
Let me read some more.
The Epoch Times also relayed other QAnon conspiracy theories on voter fraud and the Black Lives Matter movement.
And during the pandemic, the newspaper focused on the unfounded theory that the coronavirus was engineered in a Chinese military laboratory at the instigation of the Communist Party of China.
Well, there was voter fraud.
How much there was is in dispute.
I'll grant you that.
I'm not sure about a conspiracy theory with the Black Lives Matter movement.
I don't know what that is.
La Presse never tells us.
I don't know if they know.
I've never heard that as part of the QAnon belief system.
And I read that Epoch Times story that they mentioned about the theory that the coronavirus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It absolutely was a theory that the Epoch Times investigated.
La Presse should investigate it too.
Epoch Times was never conclusive about it.
There are more questions than answers.
But they talked about it like I guess La Presse is doing.
So where's the scandal here?
I'm still waiting for it.
But my point is, instead of trying to defend Epoch Times point by point on these subjects, which is not really my job, I would say to all these questions by La Press, so what?
So what if the Epoch Times is wrong or right on all these issues?
So what?
Is the rule now that no newspaper is allowed in Canada if it deviates from the mushy left-wing pro-Trudeau pro-China crud, the talking points that has reduced Canadian trust in media to an all-time low?
Let's say the Epoch Times was wrong on every one of those things I just mentioned.
So what?
Isn't part of freedom of the press the right to be wrong?
Isn't that part of a national discussion, figuring these things out together?
Now, I'm not going to read this whole thing in the press.
It's pretty embarrassing for La Presse, to be frank.
But look at this comment from Stephen Gilbo, the heritage minister in charge of the media bailout.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Stephen Gilbo, indicated that, quote, it is undeniable that the past publications of the Epoch Times have conveyed prejudices and reproduced stereotypes against Asian communities, particularly on the internet.
I strongly denounce it.
The pandemic has exacerbated the effect of racism and hatred online on racialized communities.
We are currently working on a bill that will specifically target hate speech on online platforms.
Alain Reyes Criticizes Epoch Times Funding00:03:53
However, he insisted that is not his role as minister, quote, to determine for Canadians what news content and opinions to read or avoid.
As a government, our role is to act upstream to prevent, raise awareness, and educate about disinformation.
What?
This is a picture of Cindy Gu.
She's the publisher of the Epoch Times in Canada.
You may note, she is ethnically Chinese.
I know Cindy a little bit.
She speaks with a Chinese accent, so I presume she was born there and is a refugee from there for religious reasons.
This is a picture of Stephen Gilbo.
He has white privilege.
He was convicted of a crime, and yet he sits in cabinet and calls Cindy Gu and other Chinese Canadians who work for the Epoch Times, he calls them anti-Asian?
You can't make this stuff up.
That's a conspiracy theory.
But at least while he calls Cindy Gu and other Chinese Canadians who work at Epoch Times, while he calls them racist, this man-splaining, white-splaining, liberal defames are, at least he's not calling for her to be cut off from the government teat.
Enter Aaron O'Toole's conservative MP.
Let me read.
Conservative MP Alain Reyes said he was outraged that aid was being given to this newspaper when community newspapers were closing their doors.
How can the Minister of Canadian Heritage justify giving $455,000 to such a controversial newspaper?
I am not questioning the existence of the newspaper, but the fact that the federal government is giving it money while our community media are dying out is completely, totally unacceptable.
So the Liberal cabinet minister says he hates the Epoch Times.
He calls them names.
He man-splains to a woman and white splains to an Asian Canadian.
But at the end of the day, he says he will not censor them or shut them down.
And the conservative critic, well, hold my beer, he says.
He'll be the censor if the Liberals won't.
You heard him.
He's outraged that they're receiving any funds like other media are.
He wants to punish them, cut them off, demand that the feds cut them off.
It's the only newspaper or media outlet Alain Reis has ever ordered or demanded be cut off from money.
Have you ever heard Alain Reyes say that about the CBC?
About the press?
About the Toronto Star, the National Post, anything that they've been cut off?
I spent some time searching online his Twitter feed, his parliamentary speeches.
I couldn't find such a statement in English or French.
I have never heard Alain Reyes say that he would cut off the newspaper bailout to all the liberal media.
Have you?
I'm open to correction here.
If you can dig something up, let me know.
I'll read it online.
But I cannot find any such thing.
The only newspaper in the entire country, the only media company in the entire country that Aaron O'Toole's heritage critic hates so viciously that he wants them cut off and he's furious about it is the Epoch Times because they're controversial.
It's totally unacceptable.
Even that crackpot convicted criminal, Stephen Gilbeau, won't say that, but Aaron O'Toole's guy will.
So yeah, if you were to ask me today to be as honest as I can be, as fair as I can be, and tell you what I really think the core beliefs of Aaron O'Toole's Conservative Party are, I would have to say the thing they are most vocal about, most passionate about, most consistent about, most angry about, most motivated about, is silencing.
Well, it has been well over two years since the two Michaels, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, Canadian citizens in China, were snatched off the street in a retaliation to Canada's arrest of Meng Wenzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei.
And now comes news on a Chinese propaganda website that the two men are headed to trial.
Let me quote to you from the editor of Global Times, which of course, like all media in China, is controlled by the Communist Party.
The editor says, Canadian nationals Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were prosecuted by the procuratorates in China for suspected crimes undermining China's national security in June 2020.
Source told me China's judicial department will conduct the first trial over these two cases soon.
So it sounds like there was a preliminary trial last summer, and now comes the main event.
Of course, the Chinese judicial system is not independent.
The result is known in advance.
Joining us now, Vlaya Skype, to talk about this is perhaps North America's leading expert on China, democracy, and North America-China relations, our friend Gordon G. Chang, who you can follow on Twitter at Gordon G. Chang.
Gordon, great to see you again.
What do you make of this statement by Hu Shi Jim?
Obviously, it's just information the Chinese Communist Party wants to deliver to the West.
Yes, and I think this is basically China's regime trying to put more pressure on your prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
The thing the Chinese are doing is dragging this out because they know that if they actually were to sentence both of these guys, that that would sort of remove some of their leverage over Canada.
So they're just drawing it out, hoping that they can use this to free Meng Wangzhou, the Huawei Technologies chief financial officer, who is now under house arrest in Vancouver.
Right.
Well, there was a point in time where the Chinese truly thought Xi would be released from prison.
I understand they actually chartered a jet and were ready to go into celebration mode.
Perhaps they thought that our judiciary in Canada was also under the thumb of politicians or bureaucrats or diplomats.
The fact that they sent a plane, they must have been stunned that it didn't go their way.
I agree with your analysis, though.
It's like a hostage.
I hate to use that metaphor, but the moment, God forbid, you kill a hostage, you've lost your leverage.
That's sort of what dragging this out is, right?
It keeps things in play.
Is that your point?
Yes.
And we've also got to remember that a government grabbing innocent people and holding them as hostages is pretty much a crime against humanity.
So we've got to understand the gravity of what China is doing.
Now, China commits all sorts of human rights abuses.
And what it's really saying in this case is that it believes that Canada doesn't have free will, that it can push Canada around by grabbing the two Michaels.
And Justin Trudeau, unfortunately, hasn't done very much to disabuse the guys in Beijing of that notion.
Yeah.
Well, recently, there was a vote in Canada's parliament as to whether or not China's treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinji province was a genocide.
And the entire cabinet just simply did not show up to vote.
One single cabinet minister showed up and voted to abstain.
Justin Trudeau, the foreign minister, they just didn't show their faces.
So it passed by every non-cabinet minister.
I found that perplexing.
Either Trudeau thinks it's a genocide or doesn't, but he wouldn't even show up.
That seemed like a sign of weakness and indecisiveness to me.
I don't know how that would be read by Beijing.
Maybe it was read as a great victory by Beijing since they saw that Trudeau wasn't willing to speak plainly on the subject.
Yes, this was a test of political will, and Justin Trudeau obviously failed it.
And I'm sure that's the way Beijing saw this, that they've got a lot of people in parliament who don't like them, but they don't really care because they believe that when push comes to shove, that they can get Justin Trudeau to do what they want.
And I think that what we're seeing right now is Canada is going to go through some very difficult times because Beijing is just generally arrogant, but it's especially arrogant when it comes to your government.
Let me ask you about the United States, because over the years, you and I have talked a lot about Donald Trump's China policy, which was very forceful and had a strong point of view.
And, you know, we could have quarreled with different aspects or the speed of it.
But generally, I think Trump was the first president to really take on China in decades.
Can you give us a 50-day report?
I think Joe Biden's been president for about 50 days, long enough that we can see the contours of his China policy.
Can you give us a quick review of the first 50 days?
Well, that would be a quick review of his slew of executive orders because many of them either propagated China's narratives, like his one on January 26 on xenophobia, or more important, they've also took down protections that President Trump put in place.
Biden's China Policy Reversal00:07:18
The one that I think is just indefensible in the part of President Biden was that on January 20, just a few hours after taking the oath of office, he repealed President Trump's May 2020 executive order.
And President Trump's order prohibited utilities and grid operators from purchasing equipment from China, which could be compromised and sabotaged.
And we know from what happened in Texas during the winter storm, what happens when a grid is not resilient.
Also, there's been reporting that China turned off the lights in India's Mumbai in October of last year, which means that President Trump was thinking about things which were not just theoretical, that China was actually doing this stuff.
So we've got to be concerned that Biden's instincts on China are all wrong.
And of course, by the way, his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, his Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, are going to meet their Chinese counterparts in Alaska on the 18th of this month.
We'll know a lot more after that meeting.
You know, I recall Susan Rice, who was Barack Obama's security advisor, she did an interview with Canadian media where she warned against Huawei.
I was in quite firm language.
Here, we'll play a quick clip of that.
What is the security risk to Canada if it does business with Huawei while the United States does not?
It's hard for me to emphasize adequately without getting into classified terrain how serious it is, particularly for countries that are part of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network with the United States, so UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. for those countries in particular to be reliant on Huawei technology.
It gives the Chinese the ability, if they choose to use it, to access all kinds of information, civilian intelligence, military, that could be very, very compromising.
So much as I disagree with the Trump administration on a number of things, on this, their concern about Huawei, I believe they're right.
And I believe they've handled it badly.
There's all kinds of ways that they're doing things around this issue which are unhelpful.
But on the very specific concern about Huawei, I think it's frankly quite justified.
In terms of the relationship between Canada and the United States and the rest of the Five Eyes, if Canada does business with Huawei in the future, as a matter of protection, would the United States have to have a slightly different security relationship?
Yes.
And that will throw the Five Eyes collaboration, which serves the security interests of every Canadian and every American, into jeopardy.
We just, it can't be done.
Can't share.
I don't see how we can share in the way we have.
It's not a joke.
It's truly serious.
So that's a leading Democrat thinking about security and foreign affairs.
I thought, I was a little bit startled by that, frankly, Gordon, because Barack Obama was not known for a hardline foreign policy, but there it was.
Do you think, which is the new Joe Biden?
Because she was the national security boss when Biden was VP.
Has Biden changed from when he was VP?
Is he more pro-China?
Can we expect a change from the Obama years?
I think we'll see a change, Ezra.
And the reason is that it's not so much that Biden has changed.
I actually don't think that he has.
But it's the Chinese that have changed.
They've become much more obviously hostile and provocative.
And that means as a political matter, Biden's going to have to respond to that.
We got a very sort of disturbing view into Biden's state of mind on China in that CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper when Anderson Cooper just asked him about China's human rights abuses.
And what we got from Biden, who was, this was just after the oath of office, what we got from Biden was essentially, oh, well, you know, these crimes against humanity, this genocide, it's just a result of China's different cultural norms.
We've got a clip of that here.
Let's just play that really quickly to refresh our viewers' memory.
It was quite startling.
Take a look.
You know, Chinese leaders, if you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been the time when China has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven't been unified at home.
So the central principle, vastly overstated, the central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China.
And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that.
I point out, Tim, no American president can be sustained as a president if he doesn't reflect the values of the United States.
And so the idea, I'm not going to speak out against what he's doing in Hong Kong, what he's doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China and Taiwan trying to end the one China policy by making it forceful.
I said, and by the way, he said he gets it.
Culturally, there are different norms at each country, and their leaders are expected to follow.
That was quite a startling statement, and I noticed that the CNN didn't follow up on it.
I really wish they had.
Last question for you, and I really appreciate your time.
I know you've got so many things on your days, so we're grateful to grab you for a few minutes.
One thing about Donald Trump, like him or hate him, the guy had an energy.
He liked to use that phrase, high energy.
He was very engaged.
He would sometimes do a press conference for more than an hour.
Joe Biden seems more frail.
He hasn't done a press conference since becoming president.
Some people wonder about his stamina and even, frankly, his mental state.
I sometimes wonder if Joe Biden is the key decider on these things.
And, you know, I don't know any unknown details about his health.
It's just what I see.
Who do you think other than Joe Biden is the center of the action when it comes to foreign affairs?
Do you think it's the chief of staff?
Do you think it's the Secretary of State?
I frankly doubt it's Joe Biden.
Who would it be if it's not him?
I don't know, Ezra, but if I had to take a guess, I'd say Jill Biden, his wife.
She seems to me to be like a Nancy Reagan.
And so I'd look to her to basically being an important influencer.
Also, she's the protector of him.
Because as you point out, there are questions about his mental acuity and other things.
And I think she's probably the one who could very well be influential in getting her husband to do or not do things.
You know, that is a very keen observation.
And we see that she accompanies him sometimes into journalistic interviews.
And I think you've nailed it.
I think that's spot on.
Jill Biden's Influence00:01:03
Well, listen, Gordon, it's great to catch up with you again.
Once again, folks, if you are not following Gordon on Twitter, you're doing it wrong.
You got to go there right now.
Go to Gordon G. Chang.
Follow him on Twitter.
You will learn more about China and China-Canada relations, China-America relations than from any other source.
And as you can see, he's a great communicator and a great friend of ours.
Thanks, my friend.
Good luck out there.
Talk to you again soon.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Gordon Cheng.
Stay with us.
Well, it's great to be back.
Thank you to my friends, Kian and David, for holding the fort while I was away.
I'll be back here for a while.
I just had to go out to Edmonton for, believe it or not, an old legal matter hanging over from the Sun News Network seven years ago.
So I was out of town for a few days.
It's good to be back.
And thanks for watching.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters to you at home, good night.