Canada’s pandemic response risks cementing a surveillance state: Justin Trudeau’s COVID Alert app, launched in 2021 with 6.3M downloads, now faces federal panel proposals to repurpose its data for economic and mental health tracking despite privacy warnings and limited public health use—just 24,695 infected users uploaded alerts by February 24th. Alberta’s drone surveillance plan, initially targeting campers with live video, was scaled back after backlash but approved before removal. At a protest in Elmer, officers threatened David Menzies and Ezra Levant with arrest for asking questions, invoking criminal harassment laws despite no evidence of wrongdoing, mirroring patterns of selective enforcement and police overreach seen during lockdowns. With courts ignoring challenges to gathering restrictions and Trudeau’s history of protest crackdowns, Canada’s drift toward authoritarianism raises alarms about eroding freedoms under pandemic excuses. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I want to give you two examples of how the pandemic is being used as an excuse to bring in what I fear could be irreversible elements of a surveillance state.
In the name of the virus, the federal government and provincial governments are spying on us and I don't think we'll ever be able to get that malware out.
I'll take you through two examples.
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here's today's show.
Tonight, the pandemic is being used as an excuse to set up a permanent surveillance state.
I'll give you two examples.
It's May 18th, 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.
But why publish it?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
You know what a ratchet is, right?
Pandemic Privacy Push00:09:46
It's a tool, actually a family of tools, really, where you move a wrench or another lever in both directions, but it only has an effect one way.
Like here's a jack for lifting up a car.
You move the lever of the ratchet back and forth, but the car you're lifting doesn't go up and down and up and down.
It just goes up or you switch it and then it goes down.
That's a ratchet at work.
It's the same thing when it comes to government regulation or government taxation, pretty much anything to do with the scope of government.
Once a tax is introduced, like the income tax, it goes up, but it never goes back down.
It never goes away.
Once a freedom is lost, you never get it back.
It only goes one way like a ratchet.
And of course, I'm talking about the pandemic.
Look at this story in Blacklock's Reporter out of Ottawa.
It's about that app made by the federal government to download onto your cell phone that would detect other cell phones with the app, and it would contact Trace You for the virus to let you know if you've been near other people with the app who had the virus too.
I mean, imagine willingly, voluntarily signing up for that spyware on your phone.
But don't worry.
I mean, Justin Trudeau himself promised, and I mean, cross your heart, no cross fingers, stamp stamp, no erases.
He totally promised it wouldn't invade your privacy.
I mean, you can trust him, right?
It protects the privacy to a greater degree than some health experts would like.
They'd love to know who you contacted so they could communicate with them.
They'd love to know where you were in order to see better what kind of case spread is happening.
But we made the decision that protecting people's privacy and getting more people to use it was the right decision.
So it absolutely protects your privacy.
It's totally voluntary.
Well, incredibly, 6.3 million people actually did download that app.
Now, out of 38 million Canadians, it's not a ton, but it's still a lot.
I mean, that's a heck of a thing right there.
And to know that there are 6.3 million people who love to tell the government about themselves.
It's sort of an IQ test.
They voluntarily let their health data into the hands of Trudeau, but he promised he'd treat it carefully.
But it's look, it's still a failure.
So says the government itself.
They wanted us all to have this malware on our phones.
But here's what the story is about.
Let me read the headline.
Use Fed app for data scoop.
A COVID alert app downloaded by more than 6 million Canadians has been used for data collection, says a federal panel.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had promised users' privacy would be respected when the app was launched 11 months ago.
The government of Canada has begun to broadly consider how the COVID Alert app could potentially extend beyond a government service to Canadians and the public health systems towards a tool that will also support Canadians and businesses in our economic, social, and mental health recovery and restoration, wrote Cabinet's App Advisory Council.
The panel acknowledged privacy worries.
The Council in a first interim report said Cabinet, quote, has consulted Statistics Canada regarding any data of value they may be collecting, e.g. the number of mobiles in Canada and best methodologies and practices for the calculation of data that could be applied to the government of Canada's current approach, e.g. app downloads.
Hmm, that's odd.
I thought Trudeau said this was all private.
The report did not identify what information was sought from 6.3 million of 33 million Canadian mobile device users who downloaded the app.
It will be critical for individuals and businesses in Canada to have trust in the app's ability to support the safe return to work sites and universities, their reopening of businesses, and their use of modes of transportation, including public transit, wrote the council.
Huh?
Really?
Is that what we have to trust?
That it'll be used for those good purposes?
I thought we were told it wouldn't be used for any purposes.
But remember Doug Ford himself, the Premier of Ontario, boasting that one time that he could track people who landed at the Pearson International Airport and went into the city.
He said he could do that.
Gee, who gave him the search warrant to track people on their cell phone?
Here's more from BlackLocks.
The Council wants to continue to be engaged in discussions on collection of data, particularly the viability of data collection given privacy considerations, it wrote.
The Council has indicated the Government of Canada must continue to carefully consider the risks of public perception and trust from a privacy perspective when considering additional data collection.
The expected outcomes associated with additional data collection should be clearly articulated to ensure it outweighs the risk.
Yeah, I think they're conditioning us to accept these invasions of privacy.
6.3 million people have obediently agreed to it already.
That's pretty incredible.
Now, it didn't work, by the way, at least for the original purpose, but was that the real purpose?
Let me read.
As of February 24th, only 24,695 of 852,000 Canadians infected with the COVID uploaded an app alert, less than 3%.
The council acknowledged the program was not successful.
Some Canadians remain unaware of the existence of the app or its primary benefits, wrote the council.
Some who have downloaded the app have chosen to uninstall it.
Well, they're naughty.
Some subgroups within Canada's population may be less inclined, able, or willing to download the COVID alert app, said the council, including students, privacy advocates, they're the worst.
Immigrants who speak neither English nor French and seniors, only 60% of whom carry smartphones with them on a regular basis.
Hey, do you really think that the contract tracing was the primary purpose of the app?
Or do you think there was another purpose that we're starting to get a feeling for now?
Imagine giving Trudeau access to that.
But look, it's not just Trudeau.
Look at this story from Alberta.
It's every government, conservative or liberal.
There are authoritarians in every party.
This is from the Alberta Institute, a group I want to learn a little more about.
I like the cut of their jib from what I can see.
They saw news that the government of Alberta had put out what's called a requisition or a request for proposal, RFP.
That means the government asked companies to send in pitches, proposals, prices on a project to spy on families going out camping this summer by using spy drones.
I'm serious.
Now, the backlash today has been so strong the government has already deleted it, but not before the Alberta Institute took a screenshot of it to, quote, provide airborne intelligence surveillance reconnaissance, including live electro-optical and infrared video.
I'm serious, that's military-grade spying, infrared, that's spying at night even.
And look at the completion date during holidays and weekends this summer.
Best summer ever.
And look, they want to spy on people camping, campfires and vehicles in parks.
And look at the bottom panel there, to provide digital images to the government at the end of each weekend.
Oh, really?
Presumably for use with facial recognition technology, and then hit those people with fines or arrest them, maybe throw them in jail.
I mean, why not?
They're putting pastors in prison.
Why not put some families who were camping in prison too?
I've showed you before the graph of people who are dying from the virus in Alberta.
It's about five people a day, which I regret, but the average age is 81 with three or more deep health problems, dementia, heart attacks, stroke, that sort of thing, serious illness.
So not the kind of folks who would be off-roading or hiking in the wild on summer weekends.
But even that five people a day, as you can see, is down 80% from flu season.
So there is no panic, no crisis, no justification for this.
But still, this idea is new, using the pandemic as an excuse to justify and establish spying on citizens in the countryside from afar using aircraft drones collected by private companies that are outsourcing spying on people without a warrant.
I mean, why not?
Look, 6.3 million people signed up to have your phone track you.
I bet some voyeurs out there would love to have spies filming their private camping and hiking moments, but most of us wouldn't.
Look, you know, I remember, it must be 25 years ago, I read a book called The Road to Serfdom.
Have you ever heard of that book?
The Road to Serfdom, by an Austrian economist named Friedrich Hayek.
He's the granddaddy of free market economics.
The book was dedicated, there's a dedication in the front of the book, to the socialists of all parties.
And I never understood that.
When I read that, I said, what do you mean?
The socialists of all the parties, even the conservative parties?
Surely, surely he's just joking.
Yeah, I'm older now, and I see that he's right.
There aren't just socialists in all parties, which there are.
There are authoritarian Orwellian bullies in all parties too.
Justin Trudeau, Jason Kenney, Liberal Tory, NDP, whatever.
They are all using the pandemic as an excuse to ratchet away our freedoms, the socialists of all parties.
Hayek was right.
Harassment in Aylmer00:15:11
This drone project was scrapped, but not before it was approved by dozens of people.
The government knew about it and were fine with it, and they published it.
None of this is really about a virus, is it?
We'll leave.
I've also heard of studies of secondhand smoke, and I really don't want my lungs to suffer from that from this lady's beautiful wife here.
Yeah, thank you, ma'am.
You two, have a nice day.
Oh, good, sir.
How about yourself?
Just mind leaving them alone, okay?
They don't want you talking to them, so can you just move on?
Here, why don't we go behind here?
Well, let's go over here.
Well, no, wait a second.
I'm sorry.
No, no, I'm sorry.
No, no.
They don't want you to talk to them, okay?
So they're in a public, they're in a public place, officer, so I will talk to them.
Please move out of the way.
I'm losing myself out of the way right now.
I'm standing in the roadway.
I don't want to get hit by a car.
So please move.
Come over here, officer.
What is the crime I'm committing right now?
What is the crime?
I'm not obstructing you.
please move out of the way.
Okay, I am here asking order to leave these people alone.
You're telling me you're not going to.
So if you don't follow my directions, get your microphone out of my face.
You came to me, sir.
Yes.
Okay.
Asking you to move back out of the way.
Okay, well, as far as I know, the practice of journalism is not illegal yet.
So unless I'm mistaken, you can write me up for a ticket.
That's what happened, okay?
Mr. Menzies, you're going to leave this area.
I've asked you not to harass these people.
If you come back, can you speak with them?
You will be arrested for I am on a public piece of land.
You have no right whatsoever to make me leave this area.
I do have a right to allow you to.
Can you quote me the law, sir?
Okay, yeah, criminal harassment, okay?
They've asked you to not speak with them and not to bother them.
Conducting journalism, sir.
You are arrestable for that.
I am arrestable for harassment.
Is he not able to answer the questions?
The course of my duties to inform you that you are not to harass people.
That's why I'm here speaking with you.
Okay, then you're going to write me a ticket for harassment.
I didn't say that I'm going to write you a ticket.
I think I'm trying to figure out what these people alone, or you're going to get arrested for criminal harassment.
And I know you don't believe in freedom of the press.
Can you stand there and be quiet?
No, I will not be quiet.
Then you will be arrested if you approach these people.
Arrested for talking.
Is that what we're into now?
And asking questions is harassment?
If they don't want to talk to you, yes, and absolutely.
Can I see the criminal code violation that spells that out?
Anybody has a right to not be harassed, okay?
So move away from me.
Please get the microphone out of my face, okay?
What is the benchmark of harassment?
Anybody that doesn't want to be harassed, okay?
Please move out of the way.
I've told you.
I think you're harassing me, officer.
I'd sure love to see the proviso of the criminal code that says a journalist can't ask questions.
I know that exists in North Korea.
I know that exists in Iran.
But in Elmer, well, I guess these guys are misplaced officers.
They would be cops of the year in those kind of dictatorships, I should think.
Absolutely outrageous.
Our friend David Menzies, who held his own admirably, joins us now in studio.
David, where was that?
Aylmer, I understand that's where the Church of God, Pastor Hildebrand, was.
Their church was raided by police, in my opinion, an illegal and unconstitutional raid.
But let's put that aside.
Where were you and who were you talking to when these busybody cops came up to you and said, stop doing journalism?
Yes, Ezra, that is directly across a major artery that runs into Elmer, right across the street from the Church of God in Elmer.
And we pulled over because there is, and I'm not making this up, Elmer's only a town of 7,000.
Members of the trans community, which I think is two, were staging a protest on the side.
So in that SUV, there were two people and they were, I don't know why they were protesting the church.
They kind of got their way.
The doors were locked on Friday by court order.
The church was fined $117,000, which they do not have in their coffers.
And I guess they were protesting the fact that there's an outdoor assembly.
So my line of questions were along the lines of, why are you concerned about congregants getting together outdoors, Ezra?
Whereas as we saw last summer, Black Lives Matter protesters in greater numbers getting together, as we saw on the weekend as well, pro-Hamas demonstrators getting together.
And also we know from top infectious disease experts that the chance of outdoor transmission at a protest at a religious gathering is virtually zero.
And further to the fact, I don't even remember, I can't remember, you know, it was not a pleasant exchange back and forth, but I don't remember them saying, go away, I'm not talking to you, you're harassing me.
The cop made that narrative.
Yeah, the cop was not involved in your conversation with the trans folks, am I right?
That's right.
He wasn't even there.
He didn't even hear it.
Well, as you saw, when the police approached me, I was at a red minivan.
It was full of rebel fans.
They couldn't go on camera, of course, because I think they have jobs we're a little bit fired from, such as our society.
Made some jokes.
You saw smoking or something.
So they came up to you afterwards.
Yeah, this no-smoking thing, Ezra, was the woman in the SUV, and I'm not saying this to be mean, but she was obese.
She was lighting up a cigarette.
It doesn't even matter what it was.
My point is that the cops were not involved in your conversation with the trans folks at all.
Yeah, and the conversation had ended by the time they got on the scene.
You know, there's so many things wrong with this.
First of all, and you held your own very admirably.
First of all, never turn the camera off.
Oh, we didn't.
I know you did.
And I'm glad you did.
Just because some cop says, turn off the camera, I can conceive of no place where a policeman would have lawful authority to ever tell someone to turn off camera other than perhaps in a private bathroom or changing room where privacy is required.
Other than that, for a cop to say, stop filming at a public street, a public protest about an event in the public interest, when someone is coming to protest, they, through their conduct, invite media scrutiny.
And for these police, these officious intermeddlers, to inject themselves, actually not even to inject themselves.
They weren't even part of your conversation with the trans.
They came up afterwards because they hate you.
Yeah.
Because, and they knew your name because they follow you on rebel news because you are the only journalist, one of the few journalists, Rebel News is one of the few journalism organizations that scrutinizes and criticizes these locked down bullies.
So they hate you for a pre-existing reason, and they were just trying to shut you up and make some excuse up.
Yeah, in fact, I want to touch upon what you just said, Ezra.
The ostensible policy reason, I would think, of a protest is to get the message out to as many people as possible.
Even if you hate little old rebel news, that's besides the point.
We're going to get this message, whatever their message was, out to far more people than them just screaming on a roadside and honking their horn.
So it goes against the very idea of having a protest in the first place.
But this officer, I think he was making up things that goes along with that.
Absolutely.
I know a little bit about the law of criminal harassment.
And you have to repeatedly, on multiple occasions, stalk someone or beset them in a manner that is threatening to them.
Yes.
None of the, and there's several other elements.
I don't have the criminal code in front of me.
But for him to say you having a mutually voluntary conversation with a public protester in your capacity as a public interest journalist, where you're not threatening, you're not stalking, where you had already left, he is lying.
I don't think he's that stupid.
I think he and his boss there were trying to come up with reasons to paper over their pure distaste for you.
But they live in a still-free country.
I got to tell you, David, I'm so mad at their misconduct.
I think 99% of journalists would have fled saying, oh, please don't charge me, officer.
I think you know enough to stand your ground, but it's not enough just to stand your ground.
And I'm glad we put the names of those two coward.
You know, I'm embarrassed to call them cops.
They're destroying trust and respect and any admiration for the police.
I have to say, the amount of damage that the police of this country have done to the reputation last year and a half will take decades to rebuild.
And these are amongst two of the worst.
I don't think it's enough for you to have stood your ground because two armed cops threatening you with arrest.
And one of them even for a moment there said, if you continue to ask questions.
Really?
Really?
I think it behooves you and us to file an official complaint against those cops with whatever the police complaints commission is in Aylmer.
I don't think those cops did anything worthy of a lawsuit.
They didn't assault you, as has happened to our people before.
They didn't falsely imprison you or handcuff you or falsely arrest you.
But they're unprofessional, misleading.
I mean, you were bloody right when you said you're almost harassing me, officer.
That was the harassment.
Yeah, and Ezra, you know, you're absolutely right.
First of all, I hope you are right about the fact that they're not that dumb, that they are merely lying as opposed to being so unintelligent.
Because I don't want people armed with lethal force being dummies.
But you're right.
Where was the harassment?
It was a public street.
Now, these two trans individuals, if they were in their home and I was on their porch on private property, banging on the door, I demand you talk to me.
Oh, that's harassment.
Absolutely.
And I have no right to be there.
However, the law actually requires it to be a series of events.
But I take your point.
That would be very different.
You'd be on private property.
You wouldn't be leaving.
There would be some element of threat there.
You're right.
None of those elements were here.
Exactly.
These cops know it.
The fact that they knew your name, to me, was the tip off.
How do they know your name?
Because they follow your journalism and they're angry that they can't do things in the shadows.
And one of the things that Rebel has done over the last 14 months is shine a light of public scrutiny on police forces that think they can get away with it.
And we've talked about this in our staff meetings.
It's called the observer effect.
When you measure something, sometimes you change it.
And what I mean by that is if you hadn't been there with our cameraman Sid to film what was going on, the police misconduct would have likely have been greater.
And whenever we, you know, I know this from various weekend protests in Hamilton, in Toronto, even in Montreal.
When our camera goes on, the police all of a sudden are very well behaved because they know the public will see it.
And so that's the observer effect.
Our filming changes the world, but not every cop likes that.
And what we saw here are two cops who are furious that we observe and that they want to be unsupervised.
They want to act with impunity.
They don't want any accountability.
The worst are the Montreal police who don't even have body cameras.
They lie and there's no video to check.
I really mean it.
I think you need to, with our lawyers, file a complaint to the police commission.
Have the chief answer for this.
Is this the kind of conduct that is cool in Aylmer?
Because it is a disgrace if it is.
And the cherry on this Sunday, Ezra, is let's go back to last October.
This is when there was a big outdoor rally and there was a counter demonstration.
And I had an individual, we ran one of our projects, Find the Thug.
He came to me.
He grabbed my hands.
That's physical assault.
He took the microphone out of my hands.
He smashed it on the ground.
The Elmer cops were there in a heartbeat.
I said, arrest this man.
And they said, what's the effect of, can't you see we're busy?
Busy doing what?
Directing traffic?
Handing up parking tickets?
The Elmer police really are one of the most disgraceful police forces in Canada.
I will not say they're worse than Montreal because I don't think any police are more corrupt.
But Elmer sure is trying hard to get that low title.
Well, David, you have the full support of our team.
Luckily, in this case, the police were restrained probably by their own cowardice from touching you, from arresting you, from proceeding.
They just thought they could bully you, and you were resistant to their threats.
But that is not good enough conduct for police.
And I look forward to your filed complaint, and we should do another segment when you do that.
14 months into this lockdown, into this pandemic authoritarianism, the best police have either been reassigned or quit, and the worst police are loving their new boundless powers.
And it is terrifying.
And I have to wonder how much more of this before we truly start to meet the definition of a police state.
Imagine two cops saying, if you ask more questions, you will be arrested.
That is a shame to police everywhere.
In Ontario 2021, not North Korea, not Iran, you know, not some banana republic, but right here in our great dominion, in our democracy.
I share your concern, Ezra.
And it almost makes me want to go back next Sunday and see if the counter protest with the trans community is there and interview them again.
And because we don't bend our knee, and I want to thank you for going to bat for Sid and I and getting that complaint process.
This deserves to be complained about.
It's not a lawsuit, like you said, but these are cops that are either too dumb to understand the Charter of Rights and our constitutional freedoms, or they're lying through their teeth about it.
And my question is, what's the agenda?
Yeah, I don't think they're dumb.
I think they're bullies.
And that's the worst thing you want in a policeman.
Someone who can't control his emotions and is motivated by a vendetta.
Such a person should not have a gun.
Yeah, I agree.
All right, folks, there you have it.
David Menzies fighting for freedom, fighting for your freedom.
He's there with the camera.
His freedom of speech is protecting your freedom of speech.
Stay with us more ahead.
Hey, welcome back on my show.
Last night, BB writes about Trudeau and says, Can this tweet be used as evidence in those cases of tickets issued for gathering for protests?
Oh, listen, I mean, I don't really think we have the rule of law.
I think we have police issuing tickets that they either know are unconstitutional or know they're issuing just as abusive harassment.
Issue of Abusive Policing00:01:43
I think the courts are slowing down like molasses.
I don't think any of these lockdown fines have actually gone to trial yet.
The whole thing is abusive.
The massive fines are surely unconstitutional.
So if there were the rule of law here, I think we're moving pretty close to a police state these days.
Yeah, maybe that tweet could be used as some sort of evidence, but I think the entire political system is failing.
The government is failing.
The opposition is absent without leave.
The media in the main is cheering on the authoritarians.
And the courts aren't touching this.
I think we have a total system failure.
On the police barging into Pastor Hildebrand's church, Jane writes, Pastor Hildebrandt motioned for them to come into the church.
If you had watched a few minutes before on the video, listen, those cops disturbed the service.
They just did.
And they didn't just come in.
They ordered everyone out.
Now, if I were there, I would have stopped my church, but I would have said, come back with a warrant.
But it is indisputable that the church was disrupted and disturbed by those cops.
And why did they do so?
Why were they there in the middle of the service?
I hear your point.
You're trying to make a technical, specific point.
I don't think that's the issue here.
I think the issue is, what are you doing attacking a church on the same weekend as thousands of people are meeting for a politically correct protest?
It's just like last summer when you had all the Black Lives Matter protests and Justin Trudeau himself went out to take an E and the cops went out to take an E.
They didn't give out tickets for illegal gatherings then.
This is selective justice, which is another way of saying no justice.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.