Ezra Levant exposes Facebook Canada’s August 19th move to empower Trudeau-appointed CBC as an election fact-checker, letting it suppress posts from outlets like Rebel News while ignoring its own errors—e.g., falsely claiming the AstraZeneca vaccine was 100% effective. The system, with appeals funneled back to CBC, mirrors YouTube’s censorship playbook, often targeting conservatives or dissenting views. LinkedIn’s Kevin Chan, Facebook Canada’s boss, hid his Liberal Party ties, raising conflict concerns. Trudeau’s dismissive "budgets balance themselves" stance clashes with economic realities like inflation, while his abortion-rights rhetoric ignores past public health mandates. Levant contrasts this with an independent anti-lockdown candidate winning in Nova Scotia, underscoring how CBC’s bias fuels political division over governance. [Automatically generated summary]
I don't understand what's happened with fact-checking.
I thought it was supposed to be journalists fact-checking the government, but now Facebook has done a deal with the CBC, which is the government broadcaster.
Now the government broadcaster will fact-check the people.
That's a bit upside down.
I'll give you all the terrible details.
And I'll show you who made the decision at Facebook and a curious omission on his LinkedIn biography.
I'll explain all that ahead.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
Just go to, actually you can go to RebelNewsPlus.com and click subscribe.
During the election, we're making this free to the world.
If you use the promo code election, just go to rebelnewsplus.com and use the promo code election.
See the good stuff.
And hopefully you'll like it so much that when the election's over and we put the paywall back up, you'll become a subscriber.
It's only eight bucks a month, half the price of Netflix.
And I think it's the other side of the story that's harder and harder to find these days.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Facebook gives Trudeau CBC the power to censor your posts.
It's August 19th, and this is the Azeral Vance 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 buy a publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Just astonishing news, Trudeau's CBC state broadcaster.
It's a government agency.
Their board is appointed by Trudeau.
It's a partisan left-wing biased group of bitter old state journalists.
People most Canadians ignore.
Only 1% of Canadians watch their nightly national news show.
Sometimes it's half that number.
It's really an uninteresting lobby group that has record low viewership.
Less than us most of the time.
Our little website, that's CBC.
They now have the power to censor you on Facebook.
As in, if Trudeau's CBC disagrees with what you say, they can get Facebook to censor you to take down your post.
And by you, I mean you and me, because Rebel News, like most news organizations, relies on our Facebook posts, our Facebook page, to communicate with many of our viewers.
So the CBC tells Facebook to censor us, and they will.
Here's the story in Blacklocks Reporter, one of the few independent media left in Canada.
I bet you this was censored.
CBC, name CBC as fact-checkers.
Facebook Canada yesterday named the CBC as an election campaign fact-checker.
The Crown broadcaster's French language service, Radio Canada, will monitor other media's news stories to ensure accuracy, though the network has acknowledged multiple errors in its own news coverage.
Can you believe that?
So you got two reporters covering the same story in the election for different news channels, different companies.
You can choose which one to listen to, which one to believe, or you could listen to both.
But no, now the government journalist, the Trudeau CBC, gets to censor the independent journalists.
And during an election campaign, no less.
When a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, we significantly reduce its distribution so that fewer people can see it, Facebook wrote in a 2021 Canadian Election Integrity Initiative.
We notify people who try to share the content or previously shared it that the information is false.
And we apply a warning label that links to the fact-checker's article disproving the claim.
Oh, so the CBC is now held as the gold standard, eh?
Disproving the claim.
Did you catch that language?
So it's like a court of law, or I don't know, maybe a scientific experiment.
You can prove it.
Like maybe run a little experiment with lab coats and Bunsen burners.
You can see which news source is correct.
What a joke, the fake status granted to these censors, like they have some secret truth the rest of us don't, or some secret talent or inside the insight that the rest of us don't.
One other media outlet agency, France Presse, the subsidized Paris-based news agency, will also act as a campaign fact-checker.
Facebook requires fact-checking organizations to be independently certified.
Oh, certified, said Alex Kacharsky, spokesperson for the company.
Every fact-checking organization in our program is required to have a public appeals email address, said Kacharski.
Media that objected to CBC fact findings could file a complaint, he said.
So the CBC will now have its own little court.
So you can appeal the CBC's rulings to the CBC.
Yeah, that sounds a teeny tiny bit rigged.
I'll keep reading.
The program was intended to, quote, fight disinformation and connect Canadians with credible information, wrote Facebook.
We are committed to doing our part to support civic engagement.
Hey, what is disinformation and what is credible information?
Can two people disagree on that?
Here's an easy test.
How many genders are there?
Are you going to fact-check me there, CBC, if I say there's just two?
What is it this week?
Are masks good or are masks bad?
Do vaccines work really, really well or do they need yearly boosters to top them up?
Can vaxed people carry the virus with them or not?
I mean, the science seems to change almost daily.
Imagine the CBC censoring what views they don't like.
That's really what this is about.
Got a wild guest coming.
They'll censor things that hurt their boy Trudeau.
Like when the CBC sued the Conservative Party in the last election, seriously, the people who sued the Conservatives as a favor to the Liberals now get to censor what 38 million Canadians say and hear on Facebook about the Conservatives and the Liberals.
The social media company in a guide combating misinformation and promoting credible information said fact-checking includes removing harmful information that could lead to imminent violence or physical harm, such as misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.
CBC News has acknowledged multiple errors in coverage, including information about COVID-19.
The network to date admitted inaccurately reported the AstraZeneca vaccine was 100% effective.
Mistakenly claimed Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman had COVID.
Garbled statements about the Medi's conflict by Green Party leader Anime Paul.
Falsely claimed the RCMP fatally shot a woman in Edmondson, New Brunswick.
Falsely claimed police fatally tasered a man in Winnipeg and misidentified the first black MP elected to parliament.
CBC began publicly tracking its corrections, errors, and clarifications for the first time last January 1st.
The thing is, look, we all get things wrong from time to time.
Over time, viewers decide if they trust us or not based on our track record.
Because of that, I wouldn't trust the CBC as far as I could throw them.
I'm sure they feel the same about me.
But only one of us now gets to silence the other.
And funny enough, it's big tech and big government teaming up.
I'll read some more.
Facebook Canada said fact-checkers will label other media's content deemed offside due to altered video or photography missing context and stories rated partly false or false.
So a forged image is now the same as missing context?
Got it.
They're going to ban whatever they think embarrasses their boss Trudeau.
Can I ask sort of a basic question?
What is a fact-checker?
They said certified.
Is there like you go to university or something for it?
Did fact-checkers not exist until a few years ago?
It seems that way.
I mean, all of a sudden, there's such a proliferation of fact-checking websites and official fact-checkers, and it's a job description.
And in so many cases, it's associated with very wealthy foundations or very big corporate media like Facebook.
Not a lot of independent fact-checkers out there, which is, I think, what you would want.
Then again, aren't all reporters and editors supposed to be fact-checkers?
Don't reporters always check the facts when they're running the news?
The facts are pretty much the currency of the business.
You can have opinions on top of those facts, and those aren't really checkable, since an opinion isn't really right or wrong.
It's an opinion.
I suppose opinions can be reasonable or unreasonable, but we're each entitled to our own opinions.
I notice that a lot of so-called fact-checkers really are opinion checkers.
Remember Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star and then CNN fact-checking Rob Ford and then Donald Trump.
A lot of fact-checking under conservatives is just people saying they disagree with Trump or didn't like him personally.
That's not a fact-check.
But my big point is we're all fact-checkers.
We're all allowed to do that, to weigh what different media say, what different politicians say, and to come to our own conclusions.
But this new push for official fact-checking, almost always backed by some big corporate interest, has two characteristics.
It always defends the mainstream narrative.
It rarely speaks truth to power unless it's a conservative.
It usually does the opposite, criticizing marginalized or dissident opinions, criticizing the opposition.
But related, and this is what's dark about so many so-called fact-checkers, is the conclusions and decisions held by these new corporate fact-checkers are more and more linked to real-world punishments.
So what I mean is if Wendy Mesley or Zhianga Meshi or Rosemary Barton of the CBC said you're wrong, in the past, you could listen to them or not or ignore them or not, whatever.
No difference.
You could take their criticism of you as a badge of honor.
I did.
I mean, let's talk about science.
If a so-called fact-checker told you there were more than two genders or that a carbon tax was going to change the weather, you could laugh at them.
But not if these fact-checkers are connected to a censorship machine like YouTube or Google.
I've shown you these rules by YouTube before.
They'll ban you if you say, for example, that ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine are a remedy for COVID.
There used to be a saying in medicine, can I get a second opinion, doctor?
Well, YouTube says, no, there is only one opinion allowed on these things and you'll be censored.
But even YouTube makes those outrageous decisions themselves.
They don't let one news company owned by a government censor all the other news companies.
I'm sure it's nothing, but the boss of Facebook in Canada is this guy, Kevin Chan.
He seems really nice, according to his biography.
He's done a lot of very interesting things in his career.
This is his LinkedIn page, his own biography that he wrote, which is odd, because I checked it twice and I couldn't find that period of time when he worked in the office of the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Why would Kevin Chan, who's very much interested in true facts and not fake news, why would Kevin Chan, Facebook's chief censor, who just signed a deal with the Liberal CBC, why would he omit the fact that he himself used to work for the Liberals?
Stalin Alley Poem00:02:41
Oh, it's probably nothing that just probably forgot.
Sure, it's nothing.
Fact-checking the powerful is a good idea, but this is fact-checking by the powerful of its critics.
The powerful will silence dissident voices, and now the CBC is in on that.
Can I end with a very short poem?
It was a German poem written in 1953 in East Germany by Bertol Brecht.
So it was under communist domination.
There was a brief uprising against the communists on June 17th of that year.
It didn't go well.
It was crushed, of course.
Here's the poem.
In German, it's called Die Losung, if I'm pronouncing that right, the solution.
This is an English translation, just FYI.
Stalin Alley, if I'm saying that right, is a major street in East Berlin named after Stalin.
All right, here's the poem.
It's very brief.
I'm going to read it in English.
After the uprising of the 17th of June, the Secretary of the Writers' Union had leaflets distributed on the Stalin alley stating that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could only win it back by increased work quotas.
Would it not, in that case, be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?
That's it.
That's the poem in English.
Those silly people, they didn't deserve the communist government.
They said the wrong things about it.
They certainly did the wrong things by rising up.
They were crushed.
So the writers' union, journalists, I suppose, an official journalist, government journalist, said that the people had let down the politicians and the people needed to work harder now.
But really what the government most needed was just to get a different people.
We just need to dissolve the people and get a new one.
How bitterly funny.
But really, are we not there now?
Our version of the German Writers' Union is handing out their version of leaflets on the Stalin alley, or really tweeting comments from Trudeau International Airport.
And the government's broadcaster is working to fact-check the people and to correct the people and to censor the people if the people don't think the right thoughts about the government.
Do you not see the parallels?
Stay with us for a moment.
Bank of Canada's Flexible Mandate00:13:46
You mentioned the Bank of Canada's mandate.
That mandate is actually expiring at the end of this year.
If re-elected, it's probably the review or the extension of the mandate is probably the first big economic policy decision you'd make after the election.
There's some talk of allowing the Bank of Canada to make some tweaks to the mandate to give it a little bit more flexibility to tolerate higher inflation so it could help stimulate the economy a little bit more in this very difficult time.
Do you have a position on the mandate?
Would you support a slightly higher tolerance for inflation?
I don't know.
When I think about the biggest, most important economic policy this government, if re-elected, would move forward.
You'll forgive me if I don't think about monetary policy.
What?
You'll forgive me if I don't think about monetary policy?
You know, monetary policy is a phrase that I bet you nine out of ten folks on the street wouldn't know what that means because it's another way of saying inflation.
Monetary policy means how to control the money supply and have interest rates go up and down.
Interest rates are going up.
The price of goods is going up.
What you spent a dollar for last year is maybe $1.05 or $1.10, depending on the good.
Justin Trudeau says he doesn't give any thought to monetary policy, even though it's his job to do so.
The government of Canada and Bank of Canada jointly come up with the mandate.
You heard the reporter no more than Trudeau.
What's the plan for the next five years for inflation?
He doesn't know he doesn't care.
No one briefed him on it.
It's not as much fun as selfies.
Jonius now to talk about this is our friend Spencer Fernando from spencerfernando.com.
Great to see you again, Spencer.
Do you think he was just being flippant, or do you think it's true that he just actually doesn't think about inflation?
He doesn't think about monetary policy.
It's just, you know, it's for the other kids to handle.
He's interested in the fun stuff.
Yeah, unfortunately, I do think it is true, actually.
You know, he's obviously someone who doesn't take a lot of that stuff seriously.
You look at his view on the economy, it's obviously just spend as much money as possible, you know, throw money out the door and then, oh, well, we'll see what happens.
But he thinks he's going to get political credit for just spending a bunch of money.
And I don't think he really cares about the long-term consequences.
And either doesn't understand the impact that just, you know, throwing a bunch of money out the door has, or he doesn't care.
I suspect it's a bit of both.
But yeah, it's, you know, monetary policy must be a little too boring for him.
So he probably doesn't even know that his government actually has to sign off on that.
I mean, I'm seeing people on Twitter saying, oh, well, you know, Trudeau has no control over this.
It's all the Bank of Canada.
He has nothing to do with it.
Well, the government of Canada has to jointly sign on to the inflation target, right?
So the idea that this has nothing to do with Trudeau or the federal government is just absurd.
Yeah.
You know, it makes me think of two other comments that Trudeau made off script, just, or maybe, who knows, maybe they were rehearsed.
Remember when he said, budgets will balance themselves?
He said that once, and he said, we'll grow the economy from the heart out.
I don't think he made that little heart symbol with his hands that he normally does.
But, you know, you say something like that once.
Maybe it's a little bit of a misspeak.
Maybe you were tired or stressed or the words didn't come.
You say it twice, that's carelessness.
But I'm starting to believe this guy when he says, look, I don't know what's going on.
Grow it from the heart out.
It'll balance itself.
And I think it's partly from his own life.
The very first time I met Justin Trudeau, this was years before he entered politics.
He was just sitting in some fancy bar in Toronto ordering drinks.
And he wasn't paying for anything himself.
He was living off the trust fund that his dad set up for him.
If he ever got into a problem, his dad's lawyers or accountants would fix it for him.
So it was true.
Budgets did balance themselves.
He didn't have to think about money.
There was always daddy's lawyers and accountants there to fix it.
I actually think he's telling the truth.
He doesn't even know that hard stuff.
There's always a smarter person around to take care of it for him.
Yeah, for his life experience, you know, when he's had a problem, it's been taken care of.
When he's wanted something, he's been able to afford it, right?
So he's never had to worry.
He's never had to sit around the table and think, okay, which bill do I pay now?
Which one do I have to put off?
You know, I need to get something, you know, for a member of the family, but I can't get something expensive.
So how do I find something cheaper?
You know, just never that kind of worry and concern and, you know, that kind of budgeting, right?
You know, the budgeting every person, every family has to do.
So I think, you know, he's in government now and he's all of a sudden, he's like, oh, well, I mean, the Bank of Canada just creates money for me, and then I get to spend it, right?
So it's just the same as the rest of my life.
You know, there's no consequences.
Of course, it's different for an entire country, right?
I mean, there are obviously consequences for Canada, but I think he just assumes he's going to be, you know, he'll be doing something else.
Maybe he'll be working for the UN by the time we all pay those consequences.
So he doesn't really care.
Yeah.
You know, one of the measures for how the liberal campaign is going is when they play the, oh my God, they're going to ban abortions card.
And I see that yesterday they rolled out a liberal cabinet minister to play that card, obviously timed strategically.
That tells me that maybe the liberal campaign is having a few bumps in the road.
If they're playing the abortion card so early, you know, that maybe they're getting a little panicky, and maybe they should be.
Nova Scotia, and I don't think a lot of folks outside the province were paying close attention to their provincial election, but the incumbent liberals lost.
And to me, the most interesting detail of the night was an independent candidate won.
And her claim to fame was sort of opposing the lockdown, opposing the quarantine.
She was a bit of a dissident on that.
And she actually won as an independent, very hard to do.
So you had a conservative win, and that independent, anti-lockdownist win.
Maybe things aren't quite as made in the shade for Trudeau as he might like.
Yeah, I think one interesting thing about the independent winning there is that it may tell us that people are answering polls one way and actually feeling a different way, right?
So I think there's a lot of societal pressure to go along with lockdowns, to go along with the idea of mandates, you know, to go along with the idea of punishing people who choose not to be vaccinated.
But I think maybe on a more individual, you know, personal level, when people actually get to vote, you know, and maybe when they're talking amongst themselves as opposed to answering a poll where they want to be, I guess, politically correct or socially desirable, I think there may be a little more nuance in how people are feeling.
So it is very interesting to see that.
And, you know, a lot of the polls in Nova Scotia did show the liberals really started to run into trouble when they started to push for vaccine passports within the province to go to gyms and restaurants and things like that.
You know, the polls showed that people like the idea, but it's interesting how they dropped in the polls when they introduced it.
And part of it might be that people may support certain ideas, but also feel a little bit disturbed when they see politicians exploiting a crisis for their own benefit.
And I think that's kind of a danger for Justin Trudeau as well.
People are going to say, well, it's interesting.
You know, I guess, does this guy just think he's going to try to divide people on vaccines and divide people on mandates for his own political benefit?
And I think a lot of people, it doesn't, that doesn't sit too well with them.
You know, it's funny.
I was looking at a poll that was trying to figure out, well, who are people who are worried about vaccines, hesitant, skeptical, maybe even anti-vaccine?
And I forget which pollster it was, but they said the typical vaccine hesitant, I'm not going to say anti-vax person, because I think most people are comfy with vaccines that are being tried and true.
And we know the underlying disease, you know, chickenpox, measles, mumps, rubella, things that we've known about for centuries, and vaccines that have been tried and true for decades.
I think there's a comfort level with that, as opposed to not just hasty vaccines, but the enormous pressure and threats.
I think that's anyway.
The average anti-vaxxer in Canada, according to polls, is a 42-year-old Ontario woman who votes liberal.
That's not your typical right-wing, you know, Tory voter.
So I think that Trudeau might be disturbing a part of his base with people who believe in bodily autonomy.
Let me play you a quick clip.
Spencer, look at this.
This is Trudeau talking about abortion.
But what I'd like you to do is, you know, he's talking about abortion.
I know he's talking about abortion.
But just for a moment, pretend he's talking about vaccine passports and think, how can someone say he's pro-choice and that doctors shouldn't rule your body on abortion, but demand that exact thing when it comes to these new and not yet fully approved vaccines?
Take a look at this.
I think it's clear that there's something fundamental that Aaron O'Toole doesn't understand.
Pro-choice doesn't mean the freedom of doctors to choose.
It means the freedom of women to choose.
Leaders have to be unequivocal on that.
And once again, Aero Notoul is not.
And he's saying certain things to some people, and it's opposite to others.
That's not good enough.
Rachel Aiello, CTV News.
You're attacking the conservatives today over their position on conscience rights.
However, in your legislation on assisted dying, you protected doctors' freedom of choice, of conscience.
If the concern now is doctor referrals, why haven't you, and would a liberal government, move legislation to further enshrine abortion rights?
I think it's very clear that the conservatives, conservative party, once again, doesn't understand what pro-choice actually means.
Pro-choice isn't the power for doctors to choose.
It's the power for women to choose.
And that is what we are going to continue to defend unequivocally.
And quite frankly, the conservatives have demonstrated time and time again that they will not.
Following up?
With respect, you didn't answer the question.
If you want to, you could.
Spencer, I noticed he gave the word-for-word same answer two times when she asked it.
And in a rare moment there, the reporter acknowledged, I think it was a CTV reporter, that he didn't give an answer.
That's the liberal line on abortion.
And I've heard it so often I could probably say it myself from memory.
But just to hear him say, doctors don't get to rule you.
Doctors don't get to choose.
And I'm thinking of Dr. Teresa Tam and every provincial and municipal public health officer that has ruled us and that has got to choose for a year and a half.
And by the way, some people could and probably should choose the vaccine.
But for this guy to say doctors don't have the power, has he not been listening to himself for the last year and a half?
Yeah, I mean, like, personally, I'm vaccinated, right?
And I don't think that means that, you know, people who make a different choice should lose any rights.
And I thought that was supposed to be the pro-choice position.
So, but of course, the thing with Justin Trudeau is he doesn't really have any beliefs except expanding his own power, right?
So he's got polling that says that the line you saw him use twice is a good line for the polls.
I mean, he's got polling, I guess, that says forcing people or, you know, you know, coercing people to be vaccinated also polls well.
So he's doing that.
And then he'll get a poll saying something else.
So that's what he'll do, right?
I mean, and you know, it's what you like, what you saw, you know, with the mandate he talked about for the public service.
He's just saying this stuff without doing anything in government to actually push for it, right?
I mean, and you see him continuously now getting prepped up where you saw the question there.
Oh, so you're going to mandate doctors to have to perform, you know, government-assisted suicide or assisted death.
And he doesn't have an answer for that because he obviously hasn't thought of it, just like he didn't have an answer for, so are you going to fire, you know, thousands of civil servants if they choose not to get vaccinated?
He doesn't have an answer for that either, right?
So he's just saying all this stuff because he thinks it polls well and he thinks it's going to divide the country to his benefit without really thinking it through.
And I hope people will actually notice that and see that and see that this guy is really just making stuff up as he goes along.
No concern for facts, no concern for governing.
It's just all about dividing people and try to win an election.
So just on that basis, you know, that kind of cynicism and willingness to, you know, you know, break the country apart in many ways for his own benefit.
I think, you know, the liberals need to be severely punished at the polls for doing that.
Well, I hope that happens.
I'm still doubtful, but there's a flicker of hope out there.
Spencer, it's great to see.
I just want to recommend Spencer's article on this subject.
It's called, I don't think about monetary policy, is the biggest gaff of the campaign so far.
And you can read that and all of Spencer's thoughts at spencerfernando.com.
Take care, my friend.
Thanks for your time.
All righty, take care.
All right, there you have it.
Stay with us.
More 17 journalists out there.
You know, that's a lot of journalists.
Some of those journalists also work behind the scenes.
They edit and do things like that, but we have 17 different people out in the field doing stories.
And I'm just talking about in Canada.
I'm not even including our two Australian reporters, Avi Yamini and Alexandra, who does written work down there.
So we've got some very interesting stories coming your way.
I spoke to Mocha Bazirgan, who was out in Victoria, BC today at a Trudeau event.
I don't want to give away his story because it's such an interesting one.
I'll just tell you two things about it.
Outside Insights00:00:22
He wasn't allowed to go to the official part, but he waited outside, and what he saw outside was far, far more interesting.
I'll let him tell you that story.
We'll have that video for you tomorrow.
Until then, on behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters, see you at home.