Ezra Levant exposes Canada’s September 9 Leaders’ Debate as a rigged spectacle, where the Debates Commission blocked 11 Rebel News journalists—only allowing one on-site via COVID excuses—yet granted six questions, including vaccine passport evasions. Erin O’Toole dodged accountability, Trudeau dismissed Rebel as "misinformation," and Jagmeet Singh outright refused answers, revealing systemic bias against dissenting media. The episode underscores how governments weaponize debate rules to silence critics while mainstream outlets like The Logic (funded by taxpayers) ignore the suppression of free speech. [Automatically generated summary]
Today is the second leader's debate, or at least the second official one in Canada.
It's the only English language debate.
How pitiful is that?
I think that these debates are engineered to be as awful as possible because it suits the government's interests that way.
They're designed to have no conflict, no differences of opinion, and to really mute journalists.
But nonetheless, we've been able to get 11 journalists accredited by going to the federal court.
And we'll do our best to talk about that and to ask the good questions tonight.
Anyways, here's tonight's show where I review last night's debate and have some thoughts about tonight's.
Before I do that, let me just invite you to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber.
That's the video version of this.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
If you want it for free for a month, put in the promo code Elections.
Election Singular.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, it's the second day of the political debates, and we will be there.
It's September 9th, and this is the Azure 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 to the government will buy publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I'm recording this video a few hours before we publish it online.
By the time this is online, tonight's debates, the second round of debates under the auspices of the Debates Commission, will be underway or almost underway.
We'll be having our own live stream here at Rebel News with a pre-game show where we talk to different people.
And then obviously we'll watch the debate together.
Sheila will be out west.
I'll be here in Toronto.
And then we'll have our commentary afterwards.
As you know, part of the excitement was that we had 11 reporters apply to be accredited.
They were all rejected by the Debates Commission.
We went to the federal court like we did two years ago, and we won like we did two years ago.
So all 11 are accredited, like our two were accredited two years ago.
Now, the difference is, using COVID as an excuse, we only have one inside the other 10 on the phones for a special media access phone call.
But as you may have seen last night, we actually got six questions in throughout the night, which I thought was pretty good.
Just a first, here's what I want to do.
I want to talk a little bit about the debate last night, our questions, and the follow-up.
But then I want to cut it off because we're going to have the big show tonight live.
So if you are watching this show in real time, when you're done, go onto our page, Rebelnews.com, and we're going to be live streaming tonight's debate on all four platforms.
YouTube, Rumble, SuperU.net, and Odyssey.com.
Here's my quick thoughts on last night's debate.
The first was it was simply awful.
And I think that was because the government wants it that way.
They didn't want to have any diversity of opinion.
They want the bandwidth of ideas you're allowed to hold to be very narrow.
You have to agree that global warming is the lead crisis.
You have to be woke and to tear down structures of patriarchy.
You know, they didn't call it tear down statues section, but they had a special reconciliation section.
I'm all for reconciliation with First Nations.
You bet I am.
But is that really a larger issue than the lockdowns and vaccine passports?
I just don't think that you could make the case that the choices of topics last night accurately reflect the issues in the election.
But then again, neither did the exclusion of Maxine Bernier.
The way, a native Quebecer and native French speaker.
He was excluded, but you had obviously, the Bloch Québécois was there as a French language debate, and you had this accidental tourist named Annamie Paul, the new leader of the Green Party, who's been hobbled by her own party.
I understand this was actually her first trip outside of Toronto in the whole campaign.
She's just simply not campaigning anywhere other than her own district.
She's trying to get that position as an MP.
I sort of get it, but why would you even pretend that that is a national party?
Here's the latest ECOS poll.
You can say that um, the green party's at three percent margin of error in this poll is 2.8 percent, so they actually might be one-tenth of where it shows there.
Maxime Bernier at 10, not allowed in.
So this was a scientifically engineered debate to have irrelevant things that the government likes to talk about.
No risk to the official consensus, the manufactured consent on the issue, certainly no anti-lockdowner like Maxime Bernier and uh, put in Anime Paul for the illusion of diversity of opinion.
She was terrible, by the way.
Other things that irked me about the debate last night if you tuned in you heard me say this is that Quebec has had half of the official debates, one out of two, and they had an unofficial debate, so two out of three debates in this whole campaign have been in French.
And in Quebec, the pandering and catering to that province.
I suppose it's nice if you're there, but if you're anywhere else it's outrageous.
And it was really who could outdo each other in promises to spend in Quebec and promises to demonize Alberta.
It's almost like they had a whole section on let us bash Alberta en Français in Quebec.
Now they called it climate change and fossil fuels, and they brought in a French language child actor, sort of like a mini-me version of Greta Tunberg, and all the politicians were treating this child actor as if he had devised this very careful thought on his own.
He's just a child actor just reading a script that someone put in front of him, and they were trying to outdo each other.
For who would be more anti-oil sands than the next was rather, actually quite pitiful.
Important Changes Made00:15:19
Um, then the politicians came out and, of course, rebel news was there and we had some questions and i'll show you those in a moment.
But they made an important change from 2019, 2019, every reporter had a question and then a quick follow-up, so if the politician evaded or avoided or said something unfair or off point, the journalist could say, hang on, you didn't answer my question.
Can I ask you this?
This time they didn't.
So the journalist could ask a question and the politician could answer anything or nothing or on a totally different subject, and then just sort of sit and smile and laugh because you had no recourse.
It was literally the worst debate you could have confected, which is why it was that way because remember, this debate was arranged by the government.
That's why we were kicked out and that's why we sued and got to get back in in the scrum.
That's when the leaders came out.
They had 10 minutes per candidate with the journalists and we managed to get a Into each of them.
And I'm going to show you these six questions in the order they came.
The first was from Mocha Bazirgan.
You know Mocha, he's got that big head of hair.
And his question was to Erin O'Toole.
Take a look.
This is Mocha Bazirgan with Rebel News, and my question is to Mr. O'Toole.
Do you think that natural immunity from having COVID and recovering from it should be an exemption under vaccine rules?
Are there any other exemptions would you support, like for religious reasons?
I couldn't hear all of the questions, but we've been very clear on our approach on vaccines.
Vaccines are critically important.
They're safe and effective for use.
I encourage everyone to get vaccinated.
I've been very public in that.
We do respect people making their own decisions about their health care, and that's going to be our approach.
We must inform and encourage and respect people as we use all tools to fight COVID-19, everything from masks to rapid testing, in addition to getting vaccine levels up as high as possible.
I think that's a pretty good question.
Why don't we recognize natural immunity, that is, you recovered from COVID-on these vaccine passports?
Millions of Canadians have got the COVID and recovered from it, and that is a stronger, according to Israeli studies, a stronger resistance to the virus and an artificial injection of the vaccine.
Why don't we recognize that?
No answer on point.
Then our friend Alexa Lavoie, who was there in person, put a question to O'Toole.
Great question.
Again, a weak non-answer from O'Toole, and that was designed that way because there's no follow-up allowed.
Hello, Mr. O'Toole.
I spoke to you and to several of your candidates in this election.
I asked you questions, and you answered me.
But when your personnel discovered that I was with Rebel News, and they allowed me to enter, and also, some of your candidates were hiding from me, like Gerard Deltel.
Do you not think that it is your work to talk to all Canadians, and not only to those who are in agreement with you, and the people you love?
We have a plan to have a positive campaign.
I expect that approach across the country, and that's why every day that I have a press conference after my announcement, that's why at the beginning of the campaign, we launched our platform.
And we've just received the report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
We have a transparent approach when it comes to our plan.
And that's important for me as a leader.
And it's important for me to answer questions like I'm doing tonight.
One of my most exciting moments for me of the night was when Tamara Ugalini, you know her, she started out as a fight the fines client and she was so great.
We hire she's a busy mom, so she only works about half time for us these days because she's got a new baby.
But she was on the line and she put a good question to Trudeau.
Well, of course, he didn't answer it.
He just teed off on her.
Here's the question and here's the answer.
I have a question from Tamara Ugalini from Rebel News.
Thank you, Mr. Trudeau.
The only reason that I'm allowed to ask you this question is because today the federal court ruled that the government doesn't have the right to determine who is or is not a journalist.
This is the second election in a row that the court has overturned your government.
Do you still insist on being able to make that decision and why?
First of all, questions around accreditation were handled by the press gallery and the consortium of networks who have strong perspectives on quality journalism and the important information that is shared with Canadians.
The reality is, organizations, Organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines,
around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic and be there for each other and keep our kids safe, is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger and lack of understanding of basic science.
And quite frankly, your I won't call it a media organization, your group of individuals need to take accountability for some of the polarization that we're seeing in this country.
And I think Canadians are cluing into the fact that there is a really important decision we take about the kind of country we want to see.
And I salute all extraordinary, hardworking journalists that put science and facts at the heart of what they do and ask me tough questions every day, but make sure that they are educating and informing Canadians from a broad range of perspectives, which is the last thing that you guys do.
You know, a lot of people saw that, and their reaction was 180 degrees different from I said, whoa, Trudeau, you put Rebel News in their place.
I saw a lot of cheering on the left, but I saw just as much cheering on the right.
People saying, whoa, Rebel, you put Trudeau in his place and look, you made him sweat and lose is cool.
It's like Scott Adams says, two people were watching the same thing, but it was like they were seeing two different movies.
And I think both saw something in that exchange that got their blood boiling.
I thought we got, I thought Tamara just nailed them.
But people who don't like the Rebel and like Trudeau thought he nailed us.
I don't know.
You be the judge.
Annamie Paul, the accidental leader of the Green Party, was up next.
And then Adam Sos of Calgary had a question.
And just the faces on Annamie Paul when she answered were very childish, but it's a childish party.
It's a joke of a party, and she's a joke of a leader.
So I'm not surprised with her response.
But after she made the faces, she said something that was close to thoughtful.
Now wasn't on point for Adam's question.
But you know what?
I have to give her credit.
She was better than nothing.
Take a look.
Questions from Adam Seuss, Rebel News.
Hello.
This debate is an insider's club for the political establishment.
It banned Maxime Bernie and the People's Party, even though he's ahead of you and the bloc combined in the polls.
It also banned myself and Rebel News from even reporting until the federal court interjected and said that was illegal.
You haven't spoken out against this exclusion.
Do you think that all voices should be heard in Canada?
I didn't fully hear the question.
The sound isn't fantastic.
I believe you asked if voices should be heard.
I certainly believe that there is space and should be space for differences of opinion.
I believe that our democracy is healthier when we have a diversity of opinions.
I think that actually what has gone on within my party has demonstrated that there are many healthy debates going on within politics, some of them difficult.
So if that was your question, then certainly.
I certainly am not looking for people just to agree with everything that I have to say.
I think that parliament is a place where we should be able to have robust exchanges, but still find the common ground.
And there is a difference between having legitimate differences on policy and hyper-partisanship.
We need to change the culture of politics.
Speaking of better than nothing, that's how I described Annamie Paul's answer.
Here's Alexa Lavoie talking to an empty suit, a clothes horse.
You know, Jagmeet Singh is very stylish.
He loves fancy jewelry, fancy vehicles, luxury vacations.
He's given some of that up to pretend he's a candidate for the working man.
I sort of like his look and his style, but I don't think you can be a serious observer and come to the conclusion that Jack Meet Singh is an intellectual lightweight.
I mean, he's just sort of dumb.
I mean, again, we're talking a class that includes Justin Trudeau, so perhaps I shouldn't be so superlative.
But I don't think he answers questions very well.
He was asked questions about foreign policy, about Chad and the Congo.
I don't even think he knows.
I don't know if he even knows Chad is a country.
He probably thinks Chad is his assistant or something.
But here's Alexa Lavois putting a very thoughtful question to the NDP.
And Jack Meet Singh just saying, no, I'm just not going to answer you.
Again, I don't know if that's an appropriate thing for a politician who, in his mind, thinks he can be a prime minister for the whole country.
He just isn't going to talk to the people he doesn't like.
Take a look.
Alexandra, pour news.
Historically, the NPD has been opposed to the large pharmaceutical companies and the billionaires that have been enriched thanks to blockages like Amazon and Walmart.
And the NPD has been very attentive to civil freedom, including being pro-choice in its own body.
Why have you embraced the billionaires of Big Pharma and abandoned your pro-choice philosophy?
Thank you, but I don't answer the questions of Rebel News.
Thank you.
Well, as luck would have it, the very next question was also from a Rebel, one of our newer Rebels, Kathryn Krasnowski.
And boy, did she give her.
Take a listen to this.
Question is from Rebel News.
Good evening.
Before you tell me that you're not going to answer my question, I just want to say that I'm not here representing myself or my company.
I'm here representing millions of Canadians who have real questions for you, like the one my colleague Alexa just asked.
People who you would marginalize, is your message to them that they are second-class citizens?
Not at all.
Sorry.
I thought that was just absolutely perfect and on point.
So Rebel News had a good night.
I want to tell you, there were some shenanigans.
As I said yesterday, the Debates Commission tried to keep out Alexa Lavois by making her jump through a bunch of hoops to get this test and that test.
We managed to jump through all the hoops and we had a special case management conference with the judge of the federal court.
I wanted to get that judge to smash the debates commission again, but they surrendered pretty quick and let Alexa in.
But the judge said that they had to have no interference with our reporters on the phone.
There was some interference.
In fact, three times last night, you could hear the MC say, is there anyone on the phone?
There's no one on the phone.
Let's move on.
There were people on the phone.
Every one of our 11 reporters was on the phone the whole time.
Sheila Gunread was on the phone the whole time, other reporters, and yet the debate operator claimed no one was on the phone.
So we've sent a scorching letter over to the Debates Commission today.
Let's see if they play that game.
We had six questions yesterday, as you saw.
If they would have actually taken our calls on the line, we would have had nine questions.
Now, it's not the end of the world, but we have gone to great lengths to be there.
And the judge told them they had to be fair.
But it's Trudeau's commission.
They're not fair.
They're not honest.
I want to show you.
I mentioned earlier that Trudeau's rebuttal to us is causing his team to cheer.
Just moments ago, I saw this tweet by Ahmed Hassan.
That's one of Trudeau's cabinet ministers.
You can see the tweet here.
And let me just play it for you in its entirety.
It's about a two-minute clip of me talking to Aaron O'Toole a couple years back.
I don't even think this is from last year.
I think this is from like three years ago or something.
What do you think?
Do you think this is deeply embarrassing?
Who do you think should be embarrassed here, me or Aaron O'Toole?
Here, watch the whole clip, and I'll come right back.
I think a lot of our viewers want to know where the candidates are on the spectrum of social liberalism and social conservatism.
I'm touching on issues ranging from abortion, transgender issues.
Some candidates have sought to distinguish themselves on this as being libertarian.
Others are more Christian or socially conservative.
Where would you put yourself on that spectrum?
You know, I think kind of in the middle with respect for both sides.
You know, I voted against euthanasia, for example, and actually made a very public, wrote a blog on the subject, both from a moral and a legal viewpoint on that subject.
And I thought we had a very good debate in the House on that.
And in fact, the Liberals use closure on a matter of that when they used to howl if we use closure on a tax bill, for example.
On other things, I do not agree with bringing the abortion debate back as a government bill to the House, but I certainly respect the ability for MPs to bring their faith, their passion, and their viewpoints.
I like to say, Ezra, that Justin Trudeau talks about diversity a lot, except if it's a diversity of opinion on moral or religious issues or faith issues in general.
And I think the House of Commons is better if the men and women in it bring their experience, their perspectives, and their faith views.
And we have real debates on issues.
So I'm fortunate to have support of people in our caucus that would identify as social conservatives, that would on the other end of the spectrum identify as red Tories, for example.
I like to say I look at each issue as a father, as a Catholic, but as an MP and as a lawyer, and my voting record is sort of accordingly.
So that's it.
That's the entire clip that Ahmed Hassan in the Liberal War Room published.
Was my question embarrassing?
Hey, Aaron O'Toole, tell me what kind of conservative are you?
Are you libertarian?
Are you Christian?
Are you socially conservative?
Where are you on the spectrum?
Is that an embarrassing question?
And O'Toole gave his answer.
He said, Well, I'm not going to go for pro-life.
I'm sort of in the middle.
Like, I'm not sure exactly what the embarrassing part of that was supposed to be, other than I once talked to Aaron O'Toole.
I think it's sort of interesting that the Liberal Party thinks that attacking rebel news is their most successful way out of the pickle they're in.
I don't know if that's true, but I found it very interesting.
Trudeau's Double Standard00:03:57
I thought it was also pitiful in a way and somewhat dark and disturbing that when Tamara Ugolini called out Trudeau for twice breaking the law in censoring us, he didn't show any contrition or any mediation or moderation.
He said, Yeah, you guys are junk.
You're fake news, and I have no time for you.
And although that was a stylish flourish, it was also substantive.
It was Trudeau's way of saying, Yeah, I do believe I can regulate you, and I don't believe you should have a place.
That's the closest thing to him saying, if I'm re-elected, I will crush media I don't like.
I don't care what the federal court says.
I've done it twice.
I will do it again, and you can keep going to court because I'm going to get like basically he said, I don't care.
Tamara said, twice you've lost now, twice we've had to fight here.
And Trudeau basically said, Yeah, yeah, that's right.
I think that's a very dark premonition.
You know, what was interesting is very, very few journalists had anything to say about the fact we had to go to court.
And some of those who had those things to say were just full of such rage and frustration that we were even allowed in.
Here's one by a guy named David Reevely.
Here's his tweet.
He was just furious that we were allowed in and that we dared to ask a question about the fact we had to suit again.
And he thought that was narcissistic of us for asking Trudeau about the fact that twice now Trudeau has violated our charter rights.
How dare we talk about that?
That's so navel-gazing.
No, I don't think it is.
I think it's actually a pretty important issue.
We happened to go through that ring of fire.
But if anyone else had to go through that ring of fire, it would be newsworthy too.
But let me show you, I think, proof of my entire thesis here.
That Revely character, he works for a website called The Logic.
It's just some website news source like we are, and good luck to them.
And they started, and like we did, they said we will never take any money from the government.
They said that if you're not financially independent, you're not editorially independent.
I thought, wow, not only do I agree with that, I'm impressed that he would, you know, the founder of The Logic, take that approach.
Well, he took that approach for a few months, but he didn't have any talent, I suppose, or he didn't, or he had a lot of talent, but he didn't have any customers that wanted his talent.
Whatever went wrong, something went wrong.
Because The Logic, after swearing on a stack of Bibles, it would never take government money, it took government money.
After saying you can't be independent if you take cash from Trudeau, they took cash from Trudeau.
And when our friends at blackbox.ca asked him about it, he refused comment.
I think it would have been more appropriate for David Revely, who was mocking us and our presence there last night.
Don't you think he should have disclosed that he's on Trudeau's payroll?
All the journalists howling us for going there last night.
Don't you think they ought to disclose that they're being paid by Trudeau?
You know, when Donald Trump would say some mean things to Jim Acosta of CNN, now Jim Acosta loved it, you know, turned him into a star.
He was the foil to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was the best thing that ever happened to Jim Acosta.
People said, oh, Donald Trump is shredding the First Amendment.
He's a danger to press freedom.
No, he didn't.
He just had some mean tweets.
But here we have Justin Trudeau banning journalists who have to run the court to get in.
And when asked about it, he says, yeah, I don't even think you're real reporters.
And the media party is silent and the press advocates are silent.
What do you think he's going to do if he wins?
Justin Trudeau's Journalist Ban00:00:23
Well, listen, that's our show for today.
Normally we have another segment.
I talk to a guest, but we've got so much for you tonight.
So if you're watching this on election night, thank you.
But now go to RebelNews.com and watch our very lengthy, in-depth coverage of the second leader's debate.
That's our show for now.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, do you at home?