Ezra Levant highlights CBC journalist Tara Henley’s resignation letter, slamming the network’s "woke" pivot—like profiling guests by race and ignoring billionaires’ influence—while prioritizing divisive identity politics over substantive issues. Henley’s critique reveals a media landscape suppressing debate on lockdowns, mandates, and drug overdoses. Matt Brevner’s song More of Us mirrors these frustrations, exposing Big Tech censorship (Google/Facebook blocked its promo) and advocating for unity against forced compliance. Levant ties it to broader struggles: independent artists like Brevner thrive outside corporate gatekeeping, while dissenters face police overreach, raising questions about free speech and institutional bias in today’s media and law enforcement. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I'm going to take you through an extraordinary resignation letter by a longtime left-wing CBC journalist who just can't stand working there anymore.
She says it's just too woke.
It's obsessed with race.
And my favorite criticism, she says the CBC has really warmed over student journalism.
It's that juvenile.
I think she's right on all those points.
I'll take you through it and then I'll especially interview with our rebel Matt Brevner.
He's got a new song out, a musical creation.
We got an artist in our ranks.
I don't know if you know.
That's all I had.
I really want to invite you to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber because today's show, I want you to see Matt Brevner's new video.
Just go to Rebel News Plus, click subscribe, eight bucks a month, half the price of Netflix, and you get not only my daily show in video form, but weekly shows from Sheila Gonrie, David Menzies, and Andrew Chapato.
So go to RebelNewsPlus.com and click subscribe.
Thanks.
Tonight, a left-wing CBC insider says the place has gone absolutely nuts.
I'll read you from her amazing resignation letter.
It's January 4th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish this is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I honestly never heard of Tara Henley before.
Apparently, she's been a CBC journalist, a reporter, and producer for nine years.
Then again, the CBC has 7,500 staff.
You can't be expected to know them all.
Here is her official CBC biography page, which I'm slightly surprised that they haven't deleted yet.
So she's a real person, and it reads like you'd expect it to read.
Here, let me just read to you from one of her stories at the CBC.
This one goes, I never set out to make a radio doc about my private crisis, about staring down 40 and being single and childless and baffled by my life.
I didn't even really want to talk about it with family and friends.
So if you'd told me six months ago that I'd produced something this personal, I wouldn't have believed you.
But here's the thing.
Sometimes you don't go looking for a story.
Sometimes a story finds you.
So it's the usual CBC reporter who thinks she's the most interesting story there is.
It's always about them, isn't it?
I don't think she meant it that way, but to me, it reads like an anti-feminist letter of regret.
Here, I'll read it some more.
In the year or so leading up to my 39th birthday, I kept winding up in coffee shops with women my age having the same conversation over and over again.
Everywhere I turned, there were smart, successful women who hadn't found a partner or a family life and felt like time was running out.
Acquaintances, friends, colleagues, it didn't seem to matter.
Give them a cup of coffee in half an hour, and they'd inevitably open up about this 39 problem.
They all articulated the same frustration.
As daughters of this feminist revolution, we'd been told that we didn't need to seek out marriage and motherhood.
Our job was to go to school, get a career, fulfill our potential.
The rest would fall into place.
Spoiler alert, she's unhappy.
Now, I'm not picking on her.
I'm just telling you what her work was like at the CBC.
Solipsistic, leftist, trendy.
Kind of thing that you and I might put in a private diary or on a Facebook page just for friends and family.
We would never presume that we could earn a living complaining about our personal lives and our choices and getting paid handsomely by taxpayers to do things the private sector wouldn't report on.
I mean, that's the whole rationale for the CBC.
We have to pay them to do this work because no one else would do it.
Yeah.
So an absolutely representative CBC, wouldn't you say?
So why would someone like that, who really gets to run a feminist blog for a living at taxpayers' expense, why would she quit a job for life in a burst of fury?
Because that's exactly what she did yesterday.
You take a look at this.
Speaking freely, when I resign from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I like how it starts, eh?
I'll admit this much: the woman can write, or maybe I just like reading what she has to say.
I'll read some.
For months now, I've been getting complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where I've worked as a TV and radio producer and occasional on-air columnist for much of the past decade.
People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC when local issues of broad concern go unreported.
Or why our pop culture radio shows coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans or comics that did not find it offensive.
Or why exactly taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as brainstorm and lame.
Everyone asks the same thing.
What is going on at the CBC?
That's just great.
That last reference, by the way, it was to this story here, this unintentionally hilarious news report about how staff at the CBC brainstorm a list of 18 words you shouldn't use.
That's what they do over there at CBC News.
They come up with a list of words that they didn't like, and then they interviewed experts on why those words should not be used anymore.
You'll recall I did a show on that hilarious story.
Anyways, here's what Tara Henley had to say about that.
I'll read a bit.
When I started at the National Public Broadcaster in 2013, the network produced some of the best journalism in the country.
By the time I resigned last month, it embodied some of the worst trends in mainstream media.
In a short period of time, the CBC went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press.
Hey, that is so true.
I mean, that article about bad words, words I really, really don't like.
That's the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a childish student newspaper by someone who just got a piercing or a tattoo to make their parents mad, but still takes their laundry home on weekends for their mom to do.
Like it's just so childish that the CBC is doing that.
And this part of her resignation letter was really something.
Let me quote a bit more.
Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly and how dramatically the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted.
It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis.
I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics.
This happened in the span of about 18 months.
My own politics did not change.
That's quite something.
She says she was the most left-wing person in the newsroom a decade ago.
Now she's the most right-wing and she didn't do any changing.
Now don't let me slow down.
I'll read some more.
To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.
It is to sign on enthusiastically to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions.
It is to pretend that the woke worldview is near universal, even if it is far from popular with those you know and speak to and interview and read.
Hey, don't blame America, sister.
Political correctness is just as much a Canadian problem as it is in America.
Here's the key line in her whole thing.
Look at this.
To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others.
It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book, to actively book more people of some races and less of others.
To work at the CBC is to submit to job interviews that are not about qualifications or experience, but instead demand the parroting of orthodoxies, the demonstration of fealty to dogma.
It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn't like.
Can you believe it?
They fill out forms racially profiling the people they invite on their shows.
How gross is that?
By the way, what if someone is mixed race, you know, half white, half black, or something like that?
What if they merely identify as black but are really white, like Sean King or Rachel Dolezal?
Or what if they simply refuse to answer such a rude question?
I mean, do you have to guess about their race if they won't tell you?
There are light-skinned black people and dark-skinned white people.
Do they have some sort of color swatch at the CBC that they hold up to the person's photo to figure them out?
Imagine being booked for an interview and being asked about your race.
Would you go through with such an interview?
I wonder if it matters so if they're interviewing people who are privileged or working class.
That seems to be a real thing, a real divide, don't you think?
More real than the color of someone's eyes or skin.
There are many black millionaires.
Do you think they need a leg up?
Anyone with a PhD is obviously privileged enough to spend 10 years at a university.
Are they hard done by in 2022?
There are white working class people.
That elitism divide is probably a greater factor as to someone's role in Canadian society than their race, to be honest.
I mean, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver are majority minority cities, as in most people are not white.
It's no longer a thing to have a minority as a CEO or a politician or someone in high society.
You know, urban, rural, rich, poor, higher education versus high school education, trades versus professions.
That's the real divide.
I don't think the real divide is on race anymore.
And I don't think it's really solving it by being super racist yourself.
Is the goal diversity?
Is that the goal?
Or is it just plain old racism?
Tara Henley would say it's just plain racism or even just being bitter and aggrieved.
I'll read some more.
It is to endlessly document microaggressions but pay little attention to evictions, to spotlight companies' political platitudes, but have little interest in wages or working conditions.
It is to allow sweeping societal changes like lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school closures to roll out with little debate, to see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power with little scrutiny, and to watch the most vulnerable amongst us die of drug overdoses with little comment.
It is to consent to the idea that a growing list of subjects are off the table, the dialogue itself can be harmful, that the big issues of our time are already settled.
It is to capitulate to certainty, to shut down critical thinking, to stamp out curiosity, to keep one's mouth shut, to not ask questions, to not rock the boat.
This while the world burns.
Wow, she actually expressed some doubt about forced vaccines, or at least an interest in a debate about that subject and other things like the establishment's love for billionaires and big pharma.
This woman says she hasn't moved to the right, and perhaps I believe her.
Those used to be things that leftists cared about.
Not anymore.
Let me read some more.
How could good journalism possibly be done under such conditions?
How could any of this possibly be healthy for society?
All of this raises larger questions about the direction that North America is headed, questions about this new moment we are living through and its impact on the body politic of class divisions and economic inequality, on education, on mental health, on literature and comedy, on science, on liberalism and democracy.
These questions keep me up at night.
I can no longer push them down.
I will no longer hold them back.
This substack is an attempt to find some answers.
I won't read the rest.
Substack, by the way, is a publishing site.
It's like a little blog, a bit like an email system.
So she's apparently starting one of those.
I think I'm going to follow her, you know?
I'll do more than that.
I think I'm going to invite her on as a guest to the show.
And who knows if she would accept?
Maybe even, I know this is nuts, maybe to have her as a contributor from time to time.
I don't think we need more leftists in the media.
And she describes herself as a leftist.
There are already 7,499 of them still left at the CBC.
But if she really believes in diversity of opinion and following the facts where they lead and asking tough questions about things and having a debate, you know, maybe she might actually be a rebel after all.
Stay with us for more.
We've been told to trust the science, but the science just doesn't make sense.
Hope In Music00:11:25
They say it isn't mandatory, but they also say your jab at your job.
But if it doesn't start to spread, it makes it feel like this is just a facade.
What about the health care workers?
What about the frontline nurses?
How quickly we forget that they were working 18 hours a day.
What about informed consent?
What about due diligence?
It seems a country that I used to call home is surely slipping away.
Well, that is an excerpt from an amazing new music video made incredibly by one of our rebels.
Matt Brevner is a journalist in our BC Bureau.
And that's his rap video.
I don't know if rap is the right phrase.
I think it's beautiful.
Joining us now, Vius Guy from Vancouver is Matt Brevner.
Matt, great to see you again.
Thank you so much for having me on the program.
It's a pleasure.
Well, you know, I've watched that whole video.
You gave us a sneak preview at our Christmas party, and the whole room was shocked.
I mean, you work for us as a journalist.
You cover the news.
You're a cameraman.
You're an editor.
You're on screen sometimes.
I sort of forgot that you know how to sing.
That's actually your first profession.
You're a singer.
Yeah, it's my history.
That's actually how I came to Rebel was my music pass and getting canceled a year and a half ago or whatever that means now.
And I spent kind of the last year hiding behind the camera and ducking my past career.
But I felt like there was a lack of artists speaking out against what's happening right now.
And you would hope that the arts would be the first line of defense for this sort of thing.
And I just, I felt like I had to write about it.
So I'm so glad to see that video.
And it's a good point because artists require gatherings.
I mean, sure, you can stream and be digital only, but a lot of artists get started hard work in a small club at a small venue.
Heck, even at a wedding or a bar mitzvah, I mean, to pay the bills to get some exposure, to get some experience.
And when you shut down every theater, every concert venue, every gathering, every cycle of life event, I think a lot of times we think about the restaurant or the hotel, but we don't think about the artists.
I think artists have been devastated in the last two years.
Well, it's not only not being able to tour, there's been a muzzling, especially of Canadian artists, because so many Canadian artists are fully dependent on the Canadian grant program.
So if you step out of line of that, you don't get funded.
And if you don't get funded, you can't pay your rent.
And it's difficult as a musician, even with streams.
A million streams will pay you about $4,500.
And that's straight to the label, not including the labels cut, publishing, all expenses.
So an artist could be clocking millions of streams on your favorite platform and in fact still be hard pressed to get by.
You know, you mentioned censorship.
When we have to live our life virtually, when we don't live our life in real life, then there is always that middleman.
And it's a sensor quite often.
I don't want to live in the metaverse.
I want to live in the real universe.
And just before we turn the camera on, you were telling me that because your video takes a contrarian point of view to the master narrative about the pandemic and the vaccines, that you had some problem promoting it online.
Obviously, a big tech algorithm censoring it like they would censor a tweet.
Tell our viewers a little bit about this new kind of throttling that you saw on this music video.
Yeah, this is the first time anything like this has happened to me, and this is developing literally in the last 30 minutes.
But typically in an industry standard music video rollout, you would run a Google AdWords program and the pre-roll and you would market the song to like-minded people or people that have similar musical interests.
And that's very essential in getting the message out there and getting it to not only your fans, but new fans.
And Google blocked the video.
They won't let me promote it.
So, unfortunately, if you know, if we want to get the message out there and we want people to hear it, it's just going to take some grassroots sharing and liking and sending to friends because, yeah, obviously, big tech doesn't want this message to get out.
It sounds a little bit cliche at this point, but it's the reality.
And I'm looking at my ads manager and my Facebook manager right now, and they won't let me promote it.
So, I'm not sure actually who's actually seeing the video.
But if you are seeing it and you like it, I would just leave a comment and like and whatever else.
So, I can know.
But it's going to make it tricky to promote it, to be honest.
Well, you know, we've dealt with that, of course, on the news side.
We've been blocked and throttled and downranked by Google.
It's just shocking, but not surprising that they've applied that to artistic and creative endeavors like music.
You say Google blocked it.
What are the other platforms you've put it on?
I mean, there's different ways to get music out there.
I like the video format, but a lot of folks listen just to the audio.
Where else is your song right now?
Well, currently, the song is on a platform called Vancamp.
And the reason why I decided to release it with Bandcamp rather than Spotify or Apple Music immediately is because they have a pretty amazing platform set up where people can download your song for free or they can pay what they want to donate and get the download.
So, whether that's a penny or a dollar, whatever they want.
And that goes basically after some service fees basically goes directly to the artist.
So, you know, it really goes a long way.
If you're going out of your way to pre-save a Spotify link, share the Spotify link, you could play that song a thousand times, and the artist might not even see a dollar off of it.
So, this way, you know, it's I figured it would be a good way to kind of bypass the system in a sense.
This whole rollout is going to be a counter-cultural rollout, and I was expecting that to happen, and I'm actually excited by it.
So, if you like the song and you want to, you know, contribute to me and my grassroots marketing efforts directly, you can go to brevner.com and follow the bandcamp link and get the song there.
Brevner.com, B-R-E-V-N-E-R.com.
Of course, Matt Brevner is the artist.
Well, listen, I'm very excited about this.
Sometimes these counter-cultural, I'm not even going to call it counter-culture because it's authentic culture in response to the manufactured narrative of advertorials.
I saw the other day, all these late-night comedians ran the exact same sponsored content by Google and YouTube.
And it was sort of a mashup of like five different late-night comedians who actually have the same jokes, and it was all brought to you by Google.
And that's not mainstream content, that's corporate PR.
And I think sometimes an authentic grassroots person can fight back in the States, let's go, Brandon.
Some songs with that in their name have zoomed up as a way of people fighting back against the corporate message.
I'm hopeful that your song could do the same thing.
I mean, if it catches on, I think there's millions of Canadians and Americans and people anywhere around the world who would say, Yeah, I'm going to listen to that.
It could happen.
Well, I hope it inspires people to just have conversations with one another because something I really noticed is a big public sentiment shift, and the cracks are starting to show in the narrative, especially over the Christmas break, where people who, you know, they trust their government, they trust the news.
They've just been doing what they've been told over the past couple years, and it's still not enough.
So, people are starting to get fed up.
I just hope that something like this, like the way the song's packaged, I wanted it to be moderate and just speak to questions that everybody's having, reasonable questions that we can't even have any ask anymore.
And I hope it inspires people to have, you know, these similar conversations, even pipe up a little bit with people they love or friends or family or whatever.
And, you know, that's, I believe that's the way we're really going to get over all of this mess.
Well, that's very exciting.
I'm very hopeful.
Tell me a little bit about the title of the song, the name of it.
How did you come up with that?
Sure.
I mean, it's a lot of the footage was gathered by just Drea and I out at Vancouver protests or BC protests over this past year.
And it's crazy, especially I remember the major one at the end of the summer in front of City Hall and just the thousands of people.
And it really makes you realize how many people there are that are passionate about freedom.
And these are like the outspoken ones.
Never mind the people that are like speaking quietly or what have you.
And it really is like the group of people that are driving segregation and oppression and hatred and vitriol into the public zeitgeist.
They're really a minority.
You know, it's a, we've created this sort of like cultural hegemony where 1% of the population claim to speak for the 99.
And I truly believe that with just a spark of hope or a dash of inspiration, it may encourage the other 99 to stand up and speak up and stand up for themselves.
So more of us, I believe that.
I truly believe that there's more of us that are passionate about freedom and passionate about family and want to keep this country and our social fabric together than want to destroy it.
So I truly believe that.
Well, there you have it.
The song is called More of Us.
The artist is our friend Matt Brevner, who happens to be a rebel out in Vancouver.
You can get the track yourself at brevner.com and we'll end the show today by playing it for you in full.
Matt, great to see you.
Congratulations.
It really is thrilling to have someone of your talent in our shop.
I mean, we know you as a news gatherer and an editor and a journalist.
It's really fun to see your artistic side come up.
Thanks very much for this and good luck on the song.
I think it's going to do great.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate the opportunity to share this.
And this is my contribution to the fight, to the front.
And it really feels like a full circle moment.
So for that, I'm truly grateful to you, Ezra.
Thank you.
Well, I've done nothing other than enjoy the music and encourage our viewers to do the same, folks.
There aren't a lot of artists on our side of this idea battle who are willing to stand up and stand out.
So I would encourage you to go to brevner.com and chip in, as Matt said, it could be a penny, could be a dollar, whatever it is, just to help an independent creator fight the power with truth.
And I would encourage you to do that.
Matt, congrats.
We'll talk to you soon.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right.
You're welcome.
There you have it.
Matt Brevner, go to brevner.com.
Stay with us more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback.
Unlawful Arrests Protested00:03:48
Belmont family says, so Kenny says no one should protest at a politician's house, but they will arrest a pastor at his house in front of his crying children, or arrest Pastor Swatzda on the side of a road, or arrest a business owner for protesting unjust laws, which are crushing his business.
You started the fight, Kenny, but Albertans will finish it.
There's a lot of truth there.
By the way, there is no law against protesting anywhere on public property.
You can protest outside the legislature.
You can protest outside a shopping mall.
You can protest if you're on public property in a residential neighborhood.
I mean, I'm not recommending it.
For the main reason is that there are other people on that street besides a politician.
There's his wife and kids or her husband and kids.
I mean, you don't want to drag the family into it.
That's true.
But that's an aesthetic and moral and taste issue.
There is no law in Canada that says you cannot have a peaceful protest outside someone's house.
And Jason Kenney lied when he said there was trespass, or at least the crown prosecutor and the police did not say there was trespass.
I think they cooked that up to excuse an unlawful arrest.
Ian Anderson says policing used to be a noble profession.
These days, just about any warm body with a fragile ego in possession of a borderline average intelligence will do.
Canadian police services are not looking to recruit Rhodes Scholars.
You know, I don't know if I agree with all of that.
I think that a lot of great people are in policing, but the last two years, two things have happened to the best of them.
Anyone who truly believes in civil liberties has either been demoted or shuffled or quit because they don't want to participate in this political, biomedical security state.
None of the things we talk about here are crimes.
Unlike what that cop says, Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky was not arrested, charged, or convicted with any crime.
Keeping your church open is not a crime.
Show me where it is in the criminal code.
So cops who were squeamish about this kind of thing have either been transferred or reassigned or retired or quit or were fired.
And then secondly, any cop who doesn't want to take a forced jab has been put on leave or fired too.
So I think you've had the police do two culls of anyone who believes in thinking for themselves or civil liberties.
So I think that while there are still some good police out there, I think a lot of the good ones have been removed.
Someone with a nickname Construction Crony says, this is insane.
They had no reason to take him down like this.
Usually you will get a chance to turn yourself in first with breaches.
This is making a statement and it's an abuse of power.
You're exactly right.
I mean, the only reason to have 20 cops in 10 police cars stop someone on the road, pull him out of the vehicle and onto the street as other cars whiz by in the snow at night is if there is if that is the safest way to do it.
If there's a terrorist that if you let him drive one more block, he might kill someone.
Or if someone is actively speeding away and they're going to escape if you don't catch him, if you're in hot pursuit.
They were not in hot pursuit of Arthur Babzovsky.
He was meandering on his way home.
They knew where he was coming from.
They knew where he was going to.
They knew his phone number.
They knew his lawyer's phone number.
That was done for purposes of shock and awe.
And if Calgary police have so many policemen and police cars at their disposal that they've just got an extra 20 kicking around for a routine traffic stop like this, well, maybe their budget is too high and they're being too wasteful if they don't have real crime to catch.
And this, you know what?
It was all political.
And I believe it is fair to say that Arthur Pavlovsky is a political prisoner.
Way More of Us00:03:27
I believe that is fair to say.
And I know that sounds crazy in Canada, but you tell me differently if you watch that tape.
Well, that's our show for today.
On behalf of all of us here at Rubble World Headquarters, you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
And here, as promised, is the full video of Matt Brevner's new musical hit, More of Us.
Enjoy.
They say it isn't mandatory, but they also say you're jabbing your job.
But if it doesn't start to spread, it makes it feel like this is just a facade What about the healthcare workers?
What about the frontline nurses?
How quickly we forget that they were working 18 hours a day What about informed consent?
What about due diligence It seems a country that I used to call home is surely slipping away I can't help but look around and feel like minds are slowly starting to change Cause even if you're triple vaccinated,
no that segregation isn't the way Freedom is a choice and it's available to all if we choose But first things first You gotta turn off the news Yo, what about the healthcare workers?
What about the frontline nurses How quickly we forget that they were working 18 hours a day What about informed consent?
What about due diligence It seems a country that I used to call home is surely slipping away If you're late to the party, there's plenty room at the table This side, don't discriminate I'm calling on every single man, woman, child of the able It's time to take the streets and liberate But please don't be a part of the problem Staying willfully ignorant Cause there's just way too much at stake Yo, it's okay to change your mind,
you can admit you were wrong Cause where there's perfect love, there ain't no shame Heavenly Father, show me what I don't understand yet I got my marching orders, I don't fully know the plan yet Hold on to my Bible before bed, no, it ain't been yet Did you know the makers of the vaccine make the Xannex?
I would never lean on corporations for morality, Cause they put their profits over people for their salaries.
No, they wanna make you bend the knee for your normality.
I know you're feeling all alone, but in reality There's way more of us than them.