Ezra Levant celebrates a legal victory after left-wing Twitter mobs, including University of Alberta staff Michael Corliss and Jordan Thompson, pressured Princess Theater (Edmonton) and Plaza Theater (Calgary) owners to cancel his October 2019 book signings for The Labranos, costing him $50K. Mike Brar’s apology admitted financial harm and acknowledged no prior Rebel News issues, but Levant warns of pending lawsuits for tortious interference. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court upheld Trudeau’s carbon tax—despite Canada’s 1-2% global emissions—via the "national concern doctrine," sparking separatist fears in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Levant dismisses the tax as performative virtue signaling, citing Trudeau’s private jet use, while praising conservative MP Derek Sloan for clear communication amid political polarization. The episode underscores cancel culture’s coercive power and federal overreach’s divisive economic toll. [Automatically generated summary]
At least it feels good news to me and I just put me in a good spirit.
I don't know if you remember, but a year and a half ago, I had a couple of book signings scheduled for Alberta.
I rented out some theaters.
It was for my new book, The Labranos.
But then a canceled culture mob came along and stampeded the owner in a canceling, ripping up the contract at the last minute.
Well, I've got a beautiful letter from that theater owner today that I want to read to you.
And I want to give you an update on the lawsuit in that case.
Because I actually think we've cracked the code on how to fight canceled culture.
At least that's how it feels.
Why don't you listen to the podcast and tell me what you think?
And, you know, I'm going to show you some things.
I'm going to show you some video footage and a letter and a lawsuit.
I know you're listening on the podcast, but if you can, go to RebelNews.com and click subscribe because I want you to see the video version of this podcast because it's partly a visual story.
Anyway, you can do that at RebelNews.com.
It's just $8 a month.
And it would sure mean a lot to us in terms of financial support.
Okay, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, we fought against de-platforming and we won.
I've got some great news for you.
It's March 25th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a 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 will want to publish.
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
I've got some good news for a change.
We have a major victory in our lawsuit against the cancel culture mob.
I think we found a way, at least in Canada and probably in the United Kingdom and Australia, to use the law to stop deplatforming.
It took 18 months, but I think it's really working.
We've proven the concept.
Let me show you the results and let me tell you how we did it and how you might be able to.
Also, I have in my hand a signed apology from the owner of two theaters in Alberta that canceled two book signings I had scheduled back in October of 2019 for my book about Justin Trudeau called The Labranos, What the Media Won't Tell You About Justin Trudeau's Corruption.
As you can imagine, the book was very well received.
It hit number one on the Amazon.ca bestseller list.
It has more than a thousand positive reviews.
So I was scheduled to do a book launch in Edmonton and then in Calgary at these great independent movie theaters that I knew when I was a student in Alberta.
One in Calgary where I grew up called the Plaza Theater and its sister theater in Edmonton called The Princess.
I got to know that theater when I went to law school up in Edmonton.
So I knew these two theaters personally.
I love them.
I actually had rented them out before to host a movie premiere a few years ago with Rebel News.
Totally sold out events, by the way.
Very well received.
The staff and the owner of the theaters liked it.
It sold a lot of popcorn for them.
So I signed a contract with these two theaters to do my book signings there for the Labranos.
And I paid the whole rental fee in advance.
And I was pretty excited about it.
We sold a lot of tickets.
But then about a week before my book launch, a left-wing Twitter mob started threatening the theater owner.
The mob wanted to cancel my book signing.
So I called up the theater owner to reassure him.
I told him I'd even hire some private security at my own expense just to make sure there was no problem and to put him at ease.
But really, it's Alberta.
A book criticizing Justin Trudeau really isn't a radical idea.
This was just a woke Twitter mob.
The owner, Mike Brar, told me in 30 years he had never canceled a movie and he didn't expect to start now.
The thing is, there wasn't Twitter or Facebook in the 80s or 90s.
So this theater owner, Mike Brar, really didn't know how, you know, how a mob would feel, what it would look like.
And as the online mob got wilder and wilder, Mike Brar felt like he was in a tornado.
I talked to him on the phone and he told me he couldn't even sleep at night.
He said he felt he had to cancel.
I implored him not to.
But finally, when the day of the book signing came and we all showed up at the theater in Edmonton, well, the doors were locked on us and we were kept out.
So I did my book launch on the street outside.
Here's a moment of what that mayhem looked like.
My name's Ezra Levant.
I'm the Rebel Commander at RebelNews.com.
Hey, and welcome to my book launch of the Librados.
Now, the thing is, we were supposed to have the book launch inside the theater.
But as you can see, we are outside the theater.
Now, this isn't supposed to be that way because I have in my hand here a contract with the theater owner and I also have proof of payment on my credit card.
So why am I outside instead of inside?
Same thing happened in both Edmonton and Calgary.
By the way, there was just a single protester at each event.
One guy.
I'm not kidding.
And we had hundreds of eager book buyers.
Well, fast forward to today.
Let me read this letter to you, which you can find on the website stopdplatforming.com.
You can read it for yourself.
But let me just read it to you now.
I feel great about getting this.
It's called Apology.
I, McEnbrar of Edmonton, Alberta, am the owner and operator of Historic Princess Theaters, Inc.
Rebel News Network Limited had scheduled two book launch events for October 10th, 2019 at the Princess Theater in Edmonton and October 15, 2019 at the Plaza Theater in Calgary.
I made the decision to cancel those events at the last minute due to pressure from my staff and because of the specter of large community protests.
In particular, two employees, Michael Corliss and Jordan Thompson, told me that Rebel News was not welcome on White Avenue in Edmonton and that they had faced problems at other events.
In fact, Rebel News had held events at my theaters in the past without incident, and I should not have canceled these events.
Doing so caused financial damage to Rebel News and damage to Rebel News reputation.
I apologize to Rebel News and its owner, Ezra Levant, for canceling the events and for any damage suffered.
Mike Brar.
Mike?
Apology accepted.
I really think he means it.
I just don't think he had ever been threatened that way by the mob.
You know how cruel people can be on the internet.
Leftists know that that kind of threats wouldn't work on me.
So they picked on an immigrant entrepreneur and scared him to death.
What a bunch of bullies they were.
But back to October of 2019, the mob won.
I was canceled.
Seriously, who does that?
Who bans a book talk?
If you don't like my book, ignore it or rebut it.
Or if you're in town, come and ask me a tough question about it.
Remember, the book banners hadn't even read my book yet.
We had just published it.
This was the launch.
What was so gross is that some of the mob were professors and staff at the University of Alberta.
How awful is that professors banning book launches?
That's disgraceful, frankly.
But like I say, what could I do?
The doors were actually locked.
My contract with the theaters were not honored.
Now, as you can sort of tell, I sued Mike Brar and the two theaters for breach of contract.
I had paid him in advance.
He took my money and then he scuppered the whole evening.
I don't like it, but I can understand it.
And I really do accept his apology and the other parts of the settlement that I'm not at liberty to discuss.
But what about the real bad guys here, the mob itself?
You heard Mike's apology.
Even his own staff, Michael Corliss and Jordan Thompson, they pressured him to rip up his contract with me.
Do they really get to walk away from this?
Does the Twitter mob?
Do those woke professors?
No.
And this is the lesson I want to share with you today.
This is how I fought back.
See, it's sort of an obvious move to sue for breach of contract when someone breaches their contract with you.
So that's Mike Brar in the Princess Theaters.
But even though he was the one who actually canceled the event, it was the mob who forced him to do it, who abused him, who threatened him, who pressured him, who scared him.
Metaphorically, they had a gun to his head, and nothing I could say or do could make him feel safe.
Even the private security I hired, they did this to him.
And this is the new legal strategy that we used.
And I don't know if it's been used anywhere before to fight cancel culture.
We sued individual members of the Twitter mob and the email mob and the Facebook mob and everyone else who threatened Mike Brar where we could find their real name.
We sued them for inducing a breach of contract.
That's what's called a tort in law.
That comes from the French word for wrong.
Well, let me tell you a little bit about this tort called inducing a breach of contract.
Back in the year 1853, this gorgeous theater hired an opera singer named Joanna Wagner, Wagner, to sing for them exclusively for a three-month run.
Apparently, she was very popular.
Well, the guy who ran this rival theater in London in 1853 induced her to breach her contract to the first guy and sing at his theater instead.
So he paid her to rip up her first contract and then come to sing for him.
So the first theater owner sued the second guy who induced the opera singer to break her contract.
And here's what that old-time court had to say about 170 years ago.
It's a little bit archaic English.
It must now be considered clear law that a person who wrongfully and maliciously, or which is the same thing with notice, interrupts the relation subsisting between master and servant, commits a wrongful act for which he is responsible at law.
Now that's slightly archaic wording, but it means that if two people have a contract and you induce one of those people to break the contract and run away, you're on the hook too, buddy.
So Mike Brar did the right thing in the end, apologizing, settling, appreciate it.
My lingering regret, truly, is that the theaters look like they've been crushed by the COVID lockdown.
It's too bad.
You know, I'd still like to do that book signing.
I'd still like to see movies at those theaters.
I'm glad to have settled with Mike Brar.
He was a victim in a way, too.
But now we proceed against the mob.
They induced him to breach the contract.
You heard his apology and explanation.
Now we continue.
As you can see, Mike even told us the name of his staff who pressured him.
We're going to add their names to the lawsuit, too.
And we're going to continue until justice is done.
We are proceeding to court.
Inducing a breach of contract is a tort in the United Kingdom.
It's a tort in Canada.
And it's probably a tort in other jurisdictions too.
And I think it is the right way to fight back against the cancel culture mob.
Let those University of Alberta professors and staff come to the court and explain to the judge why they pressured a theater into canceling a book signing.
Let them come to court and explain themselves.
If their own conscience wasn't enough for them to respect freedom of speech and freedom of the press and freedom of association and assembly and the sanctity of a contract, well, then maybe they need to hear it from a judge.
If you want to see our lawsuit for yourself, it's on that same website, stopdeplatforming.com, that I put Mike's apology.
I put Mike's apology there.
You can read it.
And if you are deplatformed somewhere, feel free to use my lawyer's lawsuit as a template.
The mob carried the day back in October of 2019.
But I don't think they're going to carry the day in a court of law.
Go to stopdeplatforming.com to learn more.
And if you can help me cover the costs of pursuing this litigation, please do.
You can do it right there on the same website, too.
National Concern Over Federal Power00:15:12
Stay with us for more.
So, of course, the federal government appealed that decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, which released its judgment today.
We are obviously disappointed with that decision.
The Supreme Court ignored the Alberta Court of Appeals warning and discovered a new federal power that erodes provincial jurisdiction and undermines our constitutional federal system.
We'll take time to study that decision in detail.
I do appreciate the three thoughtful dissenting opinions, including that of Mr. Justice Russell Brown, which warns that, quote, the true danger in the majority's reasons lies in its abandonment of any meaningful constraint on federal power.
That's Jason Kenney, Alberta's Premier, reacting to a 6-3 ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada upholding the constitutionality of the Liberal Party's carbon tax.
It was 6-3, which, frankly, was more dissent than I thought there would be.
And it wasn't so much ideological dissent as saying, you know, that's not the federal government's jurisdiction.
Our Constitution gives some powers to the feds, some to the provinces.
This just ain't it.
But the Chief Justice Wagner said it is a matter for the feds because global warming, he said, was an existential threat.
So you know this tax had to go into law.
Joining us now via Skype from Emmetton is our friend Lauren Gunter, senior columnist with the Edmonton Sun.
You know, I find that Judge Wagner, by saying it's an existential threat, climate change is real, he's showing he's deeply obedient to the establishment religion.
You know, the UK has their Church of England.
We have our Church of Global Warming.
And it shows that he's implying that this carbon tax will somehow change the temperature of the world because he thinks global warming is such a threat.
And maybe he's right.
I don't think he is.
That this tax, therefore, must go through as if it's going to save the world.
I think it shows that he's a bit of a zealot, but that's just me.
What do you think, Lauren?
There's no doubt there's some of that in there.
The reasoning in his argument is that if you accept the federal government's premise that this is an existential threat, then you can't have individual provinces making decisions that may or may not trip up the national strategy for dealing with this existential threat.
He's fairly careful not to pass too much judgment on whether or not global warming is real.
That's giving him too much credit.
There's just an assumption now in almost all elite opinion, of course, that climate change is catastrophic.
It's happening very quickly.
We have to deal with it right away.
So he is driven by some of that.
But mostly the legal reasoning in this is that, you know, if you accept the federal position that this is an existential threat, then you can't afford to have individual provinces abiding or not abiding by federal rules.
And so they've evoked what's called the national concern doctrine that the courts have over the last six decades sort of read into the Constitution.
It's not in the initial Constitution, but it comes out of Section 91 of the Constitution, which says any residual powers not articulated in the Constitution go to the federal government.
It's very different from the U.S. Constitution where any powers not articulated by the authors of the initial Constitution go to the states.
Here, any leftover powers that they didn't actually talk about go to the federal government.
And out of that, probably since the early 50s, the court has been gradually growing this thing called the national concern doctrine.
You know, it's yet another setback and frustration for Alberta and Saskatchewan, too.
I'm in exile out here in Toronto, but I still in my heart feel like an Albertan in my sensibilities.
And that province has had so many setbacks, some from Mother Nature, some from global forces like the price of oil.
Some were inflicted on it by its own government under the NDP, I put it to you.
But this feels like insult to injury for the fifth time.
And I've got to wonder how much that province can take.
I see in the polls that conservatives are running behind federally and provincially.
They're not behind federally, but they're far back from where they were federally.
And provincially, the last two polls have put them behind.
I have a question for you because you're there every day and I only just visit.
Is the province of Alberta now thinking, what are we even doing?
What are we even doing in a confederation that doesn't work?
At least under Stephen Harper, we had a Conservative Party that represented us.
Aaron O'Toole is telling us we've got to shut up about global warming.
The Supreme Court is telling us we've got to shut up about global warming.
I look at the glee with which the liberals are disparaging Alberta and Saskatchewan.
I see the Environment Minister called them recalcitrant, like they're children that need to be disciplined.
Maybe the three Supreme Court judges are recalcitrant true.
And I'm thinking, is Alberta ready to go?
Not yet.
And I'm not sure how long it's going to take for this decision to sink in.
But the thing I was talking about before, this national concern doctrine, they just expand it in a mushroom cloud in this decision.
For the length of time that the Supreme Court has been developing this doctrine very slowly, it's been very, very, very careful to not carry the national concern wedge further into an issue than it had to.
I mean, for instance, it once decided that nuclear power needed to be nationally regulated because of the danger and because of the international aspects of it, but that nothing in a nuclear plant that was regulated by the provinces should be infringed upon.
For instance, if you had a labor dispute between the plant owner and workers, well, that was a provincial jurisdiction.
The feds had no, couldn't invoke the national concern doctrine.
In this decision, they basically say, they have added everything to be a national concern.
Ottawa wants it to be a national concern.
It's a national concern.
We'll just let them ride roughshod over the provinces.
And I think in the long run, this decision could do as much to spark a separatist sentiment in Alberta and Saskatchewan as anything else that the Feds.
I mean, the tanker ban off the northern British Columbia coast, the cancellation of two pipelines, the acquiescence to the Biden administration on the cancellation of Keystone.
I mean, I have no trouble believing, I have no idea at all if this happened, but I have no trouble believing at all that the Biden administration said, hey, we'll give you a couple million vials of a vaccine that we're not using anyway.
AstraZeneca, we haven't even approved it yet.
We'll give you a couple million vials of that if you'll just nudge nudge wink wink on Keystone.
So the federal government has done all it can to batter down Alberta and to a lesser extent Saskatchewan.
And that has caused an awful lot of friction in those two provinces.
But I think in the long run, this expansion of the national concern doctrine will be as damaging to national immunity as any of the things that the Trudeau government has done.
And by the way, now that the precedent is set, it might be used against Quebec.
And it might, although what politician would do that, but it has set the, it has made it possible.
You know, it's funny, you mentioned how Trudeau didn't lift a finger for the Keystone Excel.
That wasn't a national concern.
Energy East wasn't a national concern.
It's so frustrating to me.
You know, I was just doodling here some numbers.
Canada is about 1% of worldwide emissions.
Officially, it's almost 2%, but China is so big.
So if Canada is about 1% of the world and Saskatchewan, the population of Saskatchewan is 1 30th of the country.
I know their emissions are a bit higher.
So that's 1 3,000ths of the world.
And I know that my numbers aren't exactly right here.
And if this carbon tax will cause a reduction in emissions by, I don't even think it's going to cause a reduction, but let's say by 1%.
So we're at 1,300,000.
And I know my numbers aren't spot on, but I'm just trying to make the point that you're roughing up Saskatchewan, you're roughing up Alberta for a negligible change in a negligible province in a negligible country that will be offset in like two days' worth of coal-fired power plant construction in China.
China is building hundreds of coal-fired power plants.
All of this abuse of Alberta and Saskatchewan is undone in days by China.
In hours, maybe.
You know, in Alberta, we decided we were going to shutter under the NDP.
We decided we were going to spend billions of dollars paying utility companies to shutter their coal-fired power plant.
And there's 16 of them.
We're going to shut it.
China is building or paying to be built in other countries hundreds of coal-fired power plants.
And so, whatever we were going to save by emissions will be unseen by the atmosphere.
And the other thing to remember: so, you said, you know, Canada is 1% of total emissions, officially 2%.
Say it's 2%.
That's 2% of the 6% of total carbon dioxide that's man-made.
90% goes into the atmosphere.
It's natural.
So the whole idea that you can marginally change the 6%.
So let's say the whole world jumps in on Justin Trudeau's green enthusiasm.
And we switch from squeeze that down from 6% to 5.2%.
I have no idea what difference that's going to make.
But then you take 2% of the 6%.
So you're talking about here, I can't even move my fingers close enough together to show that kind of action.
I remember one time I gave a speech you had invited me to give where I said, take carbon dioxide and say it's 2,400 cases of 24 one-liter water bottles.
Canada's contribution to that in terms of CO2 would be a few capful in one bottle.
And how in heaven's name do we think that's going to make any difference?
So we should beggar our economy.
We should spend billions and billions and billions of dollars on wind power, solar power, bug burps, whatever it is that we think is going to be the alternative.
And put up with years, decades of intermittent power, rolling brownouts, rolling blackouts, because these alternative green energies aren't good enough to meet our demand.
It just baffles me that we're doing this.
And now we have a Supreme Court that has said that's within the federal constitutional power to do that.
Very frustrating.
You know, I'm reminded of the Alberta coal shutdown.
And there was this phrase that was in vogue five years ago: social license.
If we stab ourselves, it'll make others less likely to stab us.
If we punch ourselves very hard in the face, the bullies won't do it.
So we shut down our coal.
Alberta brought in all sorts of taxes and punishments.
And the carbon tax was still foisted on the province.
I mean, social license was a lie.
It's just the new front line for the leftists.
You know, there's a phrase that the liberals use.
They no longer say stop climate change or reverse climate change.
It's an action word, combating climate change.
Just the performance, because even they know what you just said: that if everyone in the world agreed to shut off all of our carbon-emitting activities, it still wouldn't change anything.
So, you're not actually stopping climate change, let alone reversing it.
They just want to see you combating it.
Let's see you combat it for a bit.
It's like King Canute ordering the waves to stop.
You're not going to stop the waves, but I want to see you try.
Start bailing, get out your little cup and bail out the ocean.
Yeah, you know, this is the virtue signaling government.
Yeah, they achieved nothing.
Like, what did they achieve with the $380 billion that they spent that they didn't have last year?
Yeah, they increased personal savings rate in Canada and sent hundreds of billions of dollars to people who weren't out of work.
So, basically, what they did was they achieved the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in Canadian history, probably in Western history, the history of the Western world.
And, you know, they talk about feminism.
Well, what have they really done to advance women?
And they talk a lot about gun control, but what have they done to advance?
They don't achieve much of anything.
But they virtue signal on everything.
Virtue Signaling Fails00:04:38
And that is what this is all about.
That's all the carbon tax is.
It's virtual signaling.
It will have no impact.
BC has had one now since 2008.
It has had virtually no impact on emissions in DC.
It had a little impact from 2008 to 2010.
But since that time, emissions have grown as much as they've grown in other provinces.
It hasn't pushed people to give up their cars and get on the bus and give up their cars and ride their bikes to work.
It has achieved nothing of significance.
But it's virtuous.
It shows, oh, we're woke.
We know that this is a problem and we want to show how concerned we are.
Not by actually achieving it, but by simply inflicting, self-inflicting pain.
You remember in old Catholic churches, there were people who flogged themselves to get rid of sin.
And that's what they're doing.
They put on a hair shirt.
They make themselves uncomfortable to prove that morally they're superior.
My one objection to your analogy is people who hit themselves are hurting themselves.
Trudeau himself hasn't stopped flying private jets or his motorcades or his various homes.
So that's my one objection to your analogy.
Well, in the last election, they had two airplanes.
Yeah, two airplanes, right?
Remember that?
Yeah.
And the second one, which was just for props to put up behind the prime minister and some staffers, was one of the oldest models of the 737 out there, which was one of the biggest emitters going.
But of course, he's out there making these speeches talking about how greedy he is.
It's very, very frustrating.
Lauren, it's great to catch up with you.
I'm going to study this ruling more closely in the days ahead, but I think you've got the main takeaway there for sure.
Nice to see you, my friend.
Thanks for joining us.
Better.
All right, there you have Lauren Gunter, senior columnist at the Edmonton Sun.
Stay with us more.
Hey, welcome back on my show.
Last night, John writes, I'm cutting up my conservative membership card.
Well, I just don't even get it.
You know, I saw a new poll out last night on iPolitics.
It wasn't a private poll for the Privy Council office.
It was, I think it was Main Street or Public Polster.
And it showed that everyone in Canada has pretty much made up their mind on carbon taxes and global warming.
And no one's going to move.
No one's going to move from conservative to liberal on that issue.
No one's going to move from liberal to conservative.
So Aaron O'Toole attacking his own party, upsetting the whole party, stepping on his own messaging, it's not going to work according to this poll that was published in iPolitics.
I just don't understand why he's burning himself up on Trudeau's favorite issue.
Bruce writes, I'm ready to vote for any other real conservative.
Shannon Stubbs is a great MP, but Aaron O'Sheare is destroying the party.
Look, there are good MPs.
I know many of them.
I know Shannon Stubbs, your MP.
I think a lot of them are biting their tongue and maybe hoping that Aaron O'Toole will be gone after the next election.
I mean, what's going to happen if the party loses, let's say, 20 seats?
If it's rolled back, is Aaron O'Toole going to get another shot?
Normally, I don't think he would, but who's going to run?
I'm for Pier Polyev.
I'm for bringing back Harper.
We got that whole petition, bring back Harper.com.
But I don't know.
I just, I feel terrible about what's going on.
It's not going to work.
How's that?
Even if you're willing to put water in your wine on that issue, the polls say it's not working.
Paul writes, people wouldn't vote for Sloan because their TVs told them he was unelectable.
Yeah, every time I talk to Derek Sloan, I think he's a good communicator.
He sounds smart.
He's moderate and rational.
Anyone the CBC or the Toronto Star tells you to hate, I mean, maybe, I suppose a stop clock is right twice a day.
But check him out because if the CBC and the Toronto Star hate him so bad, maybe they are a bad person, or maybe they're just very effective at promoting conservative ideas, which is why the star and the CBC hate him.
I think Derek Sloan is sort of an MVP.
Why Derek Sloan Might Be Right00:01:07
I think he's an excellent MP.
Those are my thoughts.
Maybe you disagree.
Let me know.
Send me a letter.
That's our show for today.
What do you think?
What do you think about this apology from Mike Brarr?
I have to say, it made me feel good.
I mean, I still really wish that I had my book signing, but it felt really authentic and genuine.
And he knows I've had events in this theater before with no problem.
They were big successes.
I think he just, I'm not going to say he got caught up in the moment.
I think he felt surrounded.
He had never been the victim of a mob.
And I got to tell you, I'm the victim of a mob every day on Twitter.
So I don't even notice it anymore.
But for severely normal people, like just some guy who runs an artsy theater, it's never happened to him before.
And you might think you're tough, but you've never been through that.
So I have some, I don't like what he did.
I disagree with what he did, but I understand what he did.
That's why we're suing the guys who induced him to breach the contract.
But I was just really glad to settle with him and get this apology.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters, good night.