Ezra Levant argues Justin Trudeau’s Freedom Online Coalition—a 34-nation censorship push targeting Russian media like RT and Sputnik—exposes Canada’s Orwellian shift under Ukraine war pretexts. He contrasts the Truckers Rebellion (Feb 2022), where Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, with mainstream media’s classist dismissal of protesters as "yobs," ignoring their diverse, working-class voices. Levant highlights BKK Provida’s 2021 report of 2.1–3M suspected vaccine side effects in Germany, contradicted by official figures, and warns of institutional distrust—from media bias in Ukraine coverage to academic censorship of Russian literature like Solzhenitsyn’s works—undermining democratic discourse. [Automatically generated summary]
In today's podcast, I talk about a terrifying announcement that was made late last night by Canada as part of a coalition of a couple dozen countries.
It's called the Freedom Online Coalition.
That sounds wonderful, but that's like George Orwell or George Orwell talking about the Ministry of Peace as the war ministry or the Ministry of Plenty in charge of starvation.
This Freedom Online Coalition is all about banning things from the internet using the Ukraine war as the excuse.
I will take you through their press release line by line.
It's the most Orwellian thing I think I've ever read that wasn't written by Orwell.
Before I get to that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's a video version of this show plus, four other shows every week.
It's good value for eight bucks a month, half the price of Netflix, and more fun if you like politics.
The eight bucks a month also does us an important service because we don't take any money from Trudeau and its shows.
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All right, here's to the show.
Tonight, there is no war in Canada, but Trudeau is using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to bring in censorship here in Canada.
It's March 3rd, 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 to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I showed you the other day how Justin Trudeau, through his censorship minister, Pablo Rodriguez, pressured Canada's cable companies into banning Russia today from Canadian cable packages.
To be clear, there was no CRTC ruling.
The CRTC stands for the Canadian Radio, Television, and Telecommunications Commission.
That's Canada's TV and radio and cell phone regulator that Trudeau wants, that Trudeau wants to expand to the internet, of course.
We'll talk more about that another day.
But my point is, it's a kind of court for TV stations, the CRTC.
They decide a lot of things like which TV stations are mandatory when you get a cable package and which are optional.
Did you know that?
They decide how much cable companies can charge you for any given station.
The CRTC is how they killed the old Sun News network, if you recall.
They made absurd rulings against Sun News, denying them the same regulatory status as Canada's left-wing news network.
Stephen Harper didn't care enough to get involved.
It's unthinkable that a liberal prime minister would have allowed a left-leaning news station to be killed that way on the eve of an election.
Oh, well, I truly believe that the absence of Sun News was a real reason why Harper lost the 2015 election.
I wonder who gave him the advice to let Sun News be killed.
Anyway, sorry for that tangent, but my point stands, Sun News was killed by rulings of the CRTC, which you could call the TV court.
It has the power to have hearings, the power to issue rulings, orders really, that have the force of law.
They have the power to create and the power to destroy like a court.
They're biased.
They're left-wing.
They're run by cronies.
They are corrupt.
But at the end of the day, at least there is a process, a transparency, hearings.
Trudeau just skipped all that.
Skip the whole process by basically demanding that the cable companies ban Russia Today, the TV channel, and they all did.
No hearings, no rulings, no transparency, just the boss of a banana republic banning TV stations he didn't like.
And everyone was fine with that.
No, that doesn't even do it justice.
The media party was cheering for that, cheering.
As I said a few days ago, you can still find that TV channel Russia Today on the internet.
And these days, I think a lot of people know how to watch the internet on their smart TVs.
There really is a blurry line between what is internet and what is TV at all.
So I think that people who want to find it will, but it's still an obvious act of censorship to knock it off your cable package.
But the internet is now shutting down Russia today as well.
Google and YouTube just made that decision as if they themselves are countries at war.
Can I show you an example of a Russia Today report?
Now, there is no doubt that it has the Russian point of view, of course.
But it also shows the Ukrainian point of view and the American point of view.
I'm going to show you one of their daily news summaries.
It's just over two minutes long.
I want to show you the whole thing.
I think you might be surprised by how much airtime, say, the Ukrainian president gets.
I say again, this is Russian propaganda.
I know that.
Just like the CBC is Trudeau propaganda.
I know that.
But I think I actually learned more about the real facts of the war from this Russia Today broadcast than I would have from Trudeau's CBC state broadcaster or CNN in America.
What do you think?
Watch this.
It's just two minutes long.
And tell me if you feel tricked by it.
Day six of the Russian military offensive in Ukraine.
Latest news and updates.
Ukraine and Russia react to the first day of negotiations.
We've discussed every topic on the agenda in detail and found certain points where we may gain some common ground.
Most importantly, we agreed to continue the negotiations.
We'll meet at the Polish-Belarus border in a few days.
So far, we don't have the result that we hoped for.
Russia stated its position and voiced ours to stop this war.
We will analyze what we've heard and decide on how to move to the next round.
EU announces new sanctions against Russian companies and citizens.
Promises all-out economic war.
We are going to deliver a total economic and financial war against Russia.
We are going to provoke the collapse of the Russian economy.
Hollywood halts all releases in Russia.
Disney, Sony Pictures, and Warner Brothers join the ban.
Russia condemns Western involvement.
Names it responsible for the escalation.
Our goal is to protect the Russian Federation from military threats from the Western states, which are trying to use Ukrainians in the fight against our country.
Ukraine asks International Criminal Court to launch probe into Russian offensive.
We call for every country in the world to immediately react to the criminal tactics of the aggressor and to proclaim that Russia is conducting state terrorism.
We demand that they are held responsible in the international courts.
Russia denies attacking civilian targets.
Russian troops do not occupy Ukrainian territory.
Take all measures to protect lives and security of civilians.
I would like to emphasize that we only strike military targets and only with high-precision weapons.
The Ukrainian side does not shy away from using peaceful civilians as a human shield.
Ukrainian ambassador hands in application for EU membership demands immediate accession under a fast-track procedure.
We have earned our right to join the rest of Europe as equals.
YouTube bans Russian-sponsored RT and Sputnik in Europe.
Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we're blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, effective immediately.
Sergei Lavrov says Russia doesn't intend to harm Ukrainian people.
For us, the life of every Russian or Ukrainian, Donesk or Luhansk resident is no less valuable than the life of a European or American.
We do not intend in any way to infringe on the interests of the citizens of Ukraine, with whom we are united not only by a common history, civilizational, spiritual, cultural kinship, but also simply by blood, family ties.
The main thing is to stop the attempts of the temporary workers who illegally seized power in Ukraine from betraying the fundamental interests of the Ukrainian people by turning their country into anti-Russia, only to please the West.
Now, there are some absurd statements in there.
Russia denying that it has taken any Ukrainian territory seems like fake news to me.
I think that Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, does what most diplomats do.
In the famous words of a British politician about 400 years ago, an ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.
There's a pun in there that we probably don't get.
He tells lies abroad, as in he lies in foreign countries, but lie abroad was actually what they called it when a military ship would turn so that all of its cannons were aimed at the enemy to give them a broad side.
So there was a pun there.
I think Lavrov is a gentleman liar, of course.
That's what most diplomats are.
But I think of recent U.S. secretaries of state like John Kerry or like Hillary Clinton, who weighed in the other day.
And I honestly don't know who's the bigger liar.
Here's Hillary Clinton with some advice that isn't really so much about what she would do in Ukraine, but what she wants to do to Americans.
She wants to silence Americans who disagree with her.
We have to also make sure that within our own country, we are calling out those people who are giving aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin, who are talking about what a genius he is, what a smart move it is, who are unfortunately being broadcast by Russian media, not only inside Russia, but in Europe, to demonstrate the division within our own country.
Look, there's propaganda on both sides.
I have watched plenty of footage of Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, and I've watched a smaller amount of propaganda from the Russian side.
And of course, most of what I'm getting is a fog of rumors and gossip and lies that are not attributed to anyone.
It's tough to find out what's real or not.
I'm glad I can hear from all sides, by the way.
There's probably more than just two sides in this battle.
I don't trust any government to tell me the whole story, not even my own, of course.
And I certainly don't trust the media to either.
I always knew that, but the way the media party has acted as an auxiliary to the government during the past two years, and especially during the Truckers Rebellion, they've really disqualified themselves from being the arbiters of truth, in my mind.
To me, the only answer is to read and watch as much as you can from all sources.
I've told you my point of view.
I'm against the war.
I see Putin as the aggressor.
He's a former KGB.
I see him intent on establishing a new Russian empire.
I see Biden's weakness as a kind of provocation to tyrants, including Russia and China.
I am concerned about the civilians in Ukraine.
And I must say, I'm also aware that NATO has been particularly bellicose towards Russia, including wild military threats and calls for regime change.
My opinions are subject to change as I learn more, as the facts change, as we slowly understand what's actually happening.
This whole thing is just a week old.
Are you completely certain of what's going on?
I am not.
I'm on Ukraine's side largely because I see them as the civilians who are suffering at the hands of a larger, brutal regime.
But I'm not a cheerleader for the war, and I am certainly not for escalating it.
Is it okay to say that I hope the peace talks are fruitful?
Because I am.
But throughout all this, I reserve the right as a Canadian to make up my own mind, including how important it all is to me as a Canadian.
I don't know the answer to that yet.
And to do that, I want to read and view information as widely as I can, including even laughably false propaganda.
I do ask that because, you know, given Canada's support of Ukraine in this current crisis with Russia, I don't know if it's far-fetched to ask, but there is concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, but perhaps even instigating it from the outset.
Well, again, I'm going to defer to our partners in the public safety, the trained officials and experts in that area.
Yeah, that's an insane conspiracy theory, and yet I don't want the CBC banned for it.
I mean, I don't want to have to pay my taxes to support the CBC, but I would never say fire that woman.
I would never say take the CBC off cable packages and kick them off YouTube because they're liars.
They are liars, but can't I be the judge of that?
And maybe I want to hear what liars are lying about as a sort of intel about what the bad guys are thinking.
I despise the CBC's propaganda, but have you ever heard me call for them to be banned either on TV or the internet?
Well, just look at this.
Just out last night, look at this announcement here by the Canadian government.
Statement on behalf of Canada, chair of the Freedom Online Coalition, a call to action on state-sponsored disinformation in Ukraine.
And you can see this is from Global Affairs Canada.
That's the foreign ministry.
Freedom Online Coalition.
That's what they're called.
That sounds pretty great, doesn't it?
I mean, can I join?
I believe in online freedom.
The obvious and most important freedoms of which would be, you know, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of thought and belief.
Those are all found in our Canadian Charter of Rights in Section 2, by the way.
It's called Fundamental Freedoms.
In the U.S., they're covered by what they call the First Amendment.
So I'm pretty pumped up about Freedom Online Coalition.
But let me quote from Orwell's 1984.
This is from the book.
The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation.
These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy.
They are deliberate exercises in doublethink.
Ministry of Truth Propaganda00:11:41
Doublethink.
That's an important psychological term that Orwell invented to hold two mutually irreconcilable ideas at the same time.
So Trudeau is in blackface, but he calls you racist.
That's doublethink.
Trudeau sexually assaulted Rose Knight in Creston, B.C., but he calls you a misogynist.
That's doublethink.
Christy Freeland's own grandfather was a Nazi propagandist, and she helped cover that up for him, but she'll call truckers Nazis.
That's doublethink, do you get it?
And so it is with the Freedom Online Coalition.
That's what they have called their censorship committee.
So let me read a bit from their announcement.
As 2022 chair of the Freedom Online Coalition, Canada leads a coalition of 34 governments united by our belief that the same human rights people enjoy offline must be protected online.
All right, well, that sounds pretty good so far.
That's all those freedoms I mentioned a moment ago, right?
But that only lasts for one sentence.
Here's the second sentence: the unprovoked and unjustifiable attack by the Russian Federation against the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of the democratic state of Ukraine was preceded by a steady outpouring of fabricated claims and unfounded allegations online by the Russian Federation.
We have since witnessed a continued onslaught of disinformation orchestrated by the Russian Federation.
Okay, it's war.
Both sides engage in propaganda.
I don't know if you heard about the story of Snake Island, where a brave group of Ukrainian soldiers held out against all odds against a Russian military ship and they died, their last words being F you.
Did you see that story of heroism?
Or maybe you saw this.
Here's a tweet from a U.S. congressman about the ghost of Kiev, the Ukrainian fighter pilot who was shooting down so many Russian planes.
They have a picture of him, Samuel is his name.
Or maybe you heard that the Russians actually had the temerity to attack a Holocaust memorial at Babiar in Ukraine.
Did you hear about that?
All those were fake stories.
Did you know that?
That Snake Island story?
It happened, except for the soldiers actually surrendered.
So they're alive.
They're not dead.
That ghost of Ukraine, Samuel, that's a comedian from Rhode Island named Samuel Hyde.
It's not real.
And here's an Israeli reporter standing in front of the Holocaust Memorial at Babiar, which is obviously undamaged.
Like I say, propaganda everywhere.
And your job as a grown-up is to try to sort through it.
I have not been convinced by the Russian propaganda that they're right.
It has not made me support their war.
The Ukrainian propaganda has actually made me more cautious about repeating what they say because I don't want to republish things that are revealed to be fakes.
I don't want to talk about Snake Island if it turns out to be a fake story.
I don't think either side's propaganda has changed my mind.
It's only made me slower to jump to conclusions, which frankly is probably a good idea in this era of Twitter.
I don't know if we have to immediately come to a conclusion about things.
I think that if Canada were at war, a real war for our survival, I would permit myself to be more jingoistic.
The last war Canada was involved with, I don't know if you remember this, under Stephen Harper actually, was toppling Libya's Moa Markadafi.
And I'm not particularly proud of Canada for doing that.
I think it was a disaster.
I have no idea what our national interest supposedly was.
We did also have a grand total of six CF-18 fighter jets in the war against ISIS terrorists, but Trudeau almost immediately called them home after becoming prime minister.
Those aren't even really wars, though, are they?
I don't know.
I don't feel compelled by patriotism to support obvious PR projects like when Trudeau sent our troops to Mali.
Can you find Mali, M-A-L-I?
Can you find it on a map?
Don't fib.
I'll admit, I cannot find Mali on a map.
Why did we send troops there?
Oh, probably because Trudeau's mother, Margaret Trudeau, went on a vacation there and really fell in love with the place.
So why not use Canadian soldiers to make Trudeau's mom feel good?
Yeah, no.
I guess what I'm saying is I support our troops and I support peace.
And I would support a patriotic war in our national interest, God forbid, if Canada were ever thrust into one.
But that doesn't mean I clap along as our soldiers are used for virtue signaling or some pawns on a chessboard.
Don't think for a second that every one of those military deployments that I've just listed hasn't been wrung out for propaganda purposes of Trudeau or Harper, if not by our government.
I mean, Trudeau himself, that strange Molly decision.
Maybe it was for his mum.
Which brings me back to propaganda and the announcement last night by Trudeau and his censorship squad.
So they've got this freedom online coalition, and they're really mad at Vladimir Putin.
Okay, got it, me too.
And then they say this, I quote, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns undermine peace, prosperity, and individual freedoms, threatening to destabilize the fabric of our rules-based international system.
Now, I'm not sure how propaganda undermines my freedom.
Propaganda, its ideas, good ideas or bad ideas, depending on whose side you're on.
How does what Russia today, or the Ukrainian state broadcaster, which, by the way, is accredited at Canada's parliament, how do they erode my freedom or my prosperity for that matter?
And even the claim that they undermine peace, I mean, propaganda doesn't declare war.
Propaganda doesn't blow up buildings.
People do.
Soldiers do.
Russia has engaged in propaganda for years.
I don't think it's a coincidence that they only acted in the face of Joe Biden's weakness.
Propaganda didn't do that.
Putin looked at Biden, looked at the West, and made a decision.
Propaganda is how he excuses the thing, but it's not the thing itself.
The war is the thing itself.
The army is the thing itself.
Here's the very next line in this press release.
A strong democracy relies on access to diverse and reliable sources of news and information so that members of society can form opinions, hold governments and individuals to account, and participate in public debate.
Well, hang on.
I thought they just said that some divergent opinions were dangerous.
Which is it?
Is a diversity of opinion good or bad?
Or just the ones that Trudeau says are reliable.
What exactly does reliable mean?
For example, is Trudeau reliable?
No, I don't think so, but he thinks so.
How about we each decide for ourselves?
But look at this wording pretzel.
This is from the announcement.
We stand with the people of Ukraine, reaffirming that they should be able to participate meaningfully in society online and offline, free from oppressive practices such as state-sponsored disinformation.
Hang on, hang on.
But being free from words you don't like, that's a counterfeit freedom.
You're twisting the word freedom.
You have no human right not to be offended.
You have no right to have other points of view silenced.
That's not a human right at all, actually.
That's not a shield to protect you.
That's a sword to silence your opponents.
That's the power to censor.
They have announced a new censorship plan, and they've called it freedom.
They've simply come up with a trick to label anything they don't like as disinformation and call it oppressive.
They say you have a human right to be free from it, and they're going to start censoring media they don't like.
And what's so crazy is that Canada isn't even in this war.
Ukraine is, Russia is, but Canada is not.
NATO is not.
But Canada is using the excuse of someone else's war as a pretext to ban things on the internet in Canada.
Canadians' right to choose our right to hear other points of view.
Those Canadian rights by Canadian citizens, including you, are being destroyed by claiming that someone in Ukraine is being oppressed by propaganda.
I think it's actually the armies and the war that are oppressing them.
But even if it were the propaganda, it's not what I'm reading or watching on my computer here in Toronto that's the problem.
It's something over there.
This is a trick.
This is a pretext.
This is continuing with their censorship agenda.
This is them continuing with the Emergencies Act-style power to act like authoritarian bullies.
They never actually stopped, did they?
They just switched their emergency.
They switched their excuse from a peaceful truckers rebellion to a war 8,000 kilometers away between two countries that aren't us.
That's why they have to censor you in Canada, you see.
Sorry, but we have to in order to save freedom online.
You've just got to see this language.
Look at this.
This is real Ministry of Truth stuff.
First, they say, we call for the cessation of the conducting and sponsoring of disinformation campaigns and urge all stakeholders to take active steps to address the issue in a manner that respects human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.
So take active steps to censor the internet, just like they took active steps with the cable companies in Canada.
But Russia had better stop censoring the internet.
Quote, we call for the end of internet shutdowns and the blocking or filtering of services.
We also call for the Russian Federation to refrain from content restrictions on the Internet that violate international human rights laws.
States must not unduly restrict, moderate, or manipulate online content or disrupt networks to deny users access to information, contrary to their international obligations.
In order to stop Russia from censoring the internet, they are going to censor the internet.
That's what they mean.
They're tricksters with their wording, but it's what they say if you read it just slowly and carefully.
Let me just quote a little bit more.
Social media platforms play an important role in the fight against disinformation.
In the last few days, we have seen them make unprecedented and powerful decisions to restrain the Russian Federation's attempt to misinform national international audiences.
Talk about propaganda.
This is propaganda.
They literally name the websites they want smashed, but they immediately say how much they care about freedom while they smash it.
Let me quote.
While respecting freedom of expression, Canada calls on platforms to work with the Freedom Online Coalition and to keep taking every step possible to counter state-sponsored disinformation, including that propaganda by Russia today and Sputnik channels online.
We offer our continued collaboration to get this done in a manner guided by respect for human rights and the UN guiding principles on business and human rights.
Right, right, right, got it.
The closing couplet here, because it's like a poem, is just incredible.
Canadians cannot have freedom of the internet, but Ukrainians must.
Ottawa Convoy Clash00:11:08
Let me read this gorgeous ending.
Disinformation cannot be enabled whether through state media, private media, or social media platforms.
We support Ukrainians' human rights and internet freedoms, and we'll work together to counter state-sponsored disinformation, which puts democracies and lives at risk.
I think Ukrainians should have internet freedoms.
You bet I do.
But even more, I think that Canadians should, including to listen to propaganda from anyone they choose.
Whether it's from the Canadian government, the Canadian state broadcaster, or any foreign version of it.
My friends, they are using a war on the other side of the world as an excuse to censor you.
They're not going to stop till they do it.
Stay with us for more.
Well, as you may know, we had boots on the ground in downtown Ottawa for nearly a month.
We, in fact, embedded our reporter with the Trucker Convoy a week before it even got to Ottawa.
And covering the Trucker Convoy, I think, was the highlight of the last year for us.
It was such a condensed and concentrated political moment that has yielded so many results.
I put it to you that the Truckers did more to change the debate in Canada and to get more freedom-oriented results than any other actor in the past two years.
And I owe you always hear me say it more than the courts, more than the opposition, more than the media, more than academia.
The Truckers did.
An organic, authentic, grassroots movement.
It was amazing.
And it was really our time to shine as Rebel News.
We, at one time, had people in nine different cities covering different emanations of the Truckers.
In fact, as far away as Canberra, Australia, our chief Australian correspondent was there.
And I felt that there were a clash of narratives.
Rebel News was on one side with a handful of other independents against the media party.
As you know, that's a phrase I use loosely for the political media industrial complex quite often, journalists with legacy media.
But I have to say, other than my dear friends at Rebel News, the most effective journalist in Ottawa covering the convoy was not a rebel.
I mean, I think Rebel did wonderfully, and I would say we did a great job.
But there was an outstanding journalist who I think really made her mark.
And she reported, she's a freelance columnist.
She writes for the National Post.
She writes for an impressive list, a roster of other media, including the Wall Street Journal, where she was in just today.
Her name is Rupa Subramania.
And I am delighted to talk to her today via Skype from Ottawa.
Rupa, what a pleasure to meet you.
I've become a super fan, even though we've never had a chance to talk before.
I follow you so closely on Twitter.
I want to congratulate you for your journalism.
I love what our rebels are doing, and I think they're first rate.
But to have you writing in the National Post and in the Wall Street Journal, you were bringing a different point of view to people who otherwise might not have heard it.
Thanks, Ezra.
It's great to be here, and it's great to finally meet you.
And I also want to give a shout out to your team for covering the protests.
I know they were there till the very end and right on the front lines.
And, you know, there was a lot of live streaming from there.
So I really appreciate that coverage as well.
So, yeah, so Ezra, I, you know, I'm an outsider in journalism, really.
I'm a trained economist.
My specialties are economics, and my expertise is economics and IR and not necessarily the kind of stuff that I worked on recently.
Maybe that's what gave me this perspective, the outsiders' perspective on what was happening here.
And what happened here is before the convoy even showed up in Ottawa, there was already a received narrative in place.
And that narrative was pushed forward by a handful of journalists and amplified by their echo chamber that the protesters, the truckers, were a bunch of white supremacists, anti-vaxxers, racists, bigots here to overthrow the government.
And just pretty much anything Bad you could say about them was said at that time.
Now, to be fair, there were elements attached to the convoy, you know, and they didn't do any favors.
You know, they didn't do themselves any favors by, you know, by, you know, that they were part of the convoy.
I feel like the convoy should have been very aggressive right from the get-go in, you know, and just saying that these guys have nothing to do with that.
I know that they've done, they did that several times during the course of the protests, but I do feel that that should have been dealt with right from the get-go.
But having said that, I, you know, I went as a resident of the city where I live, not as a journalist, not as a writer, but just as someone who wanted to see what was happening.
I live right in the market, so I have a bird's eye view of what is happening.
And so I went there keeping an open mind of, you know, I was aware of this received narrative.
I'd read all of that stuff and I wanted to just check it out for myself and see what was happening.
And I discovered that my first impressions were: well, I mean, this feels a lot like Canada Day.
It felt like a winter carnival.
There was so much, you know, just so much joy and happiness.
And, you know, you saw the maple leaf everywhere.
You saw people laughing.
There were kids.
There was lots of music.
And you were there.
So you experienced some of this as well.
And, you know, that was striking.
And, you know, as I made my way through the crowds and I spent pretty much all day there, I was struck by, you know, it wasn't just a whole bunch of white people.
I saw Black Canadians.
I saw Canadians.
I saw Asians.
I saw pretty much everyone.
And everything was peaceful.
There was nothing.
As a person of color, and as a woman, I walked through this protest and felt completely safe, felt really, I didn't feel anything bad at all during the protests.
And when I came home, I came home and I told my partner, the political class in this country has completely underestimated what's going on here.
They're completely out of touch.
They're detached.
And I even tweeted this and I felt, I got a lot of pushback, especially from some very well-known journalists.
And they mocked me and they said, this is just a fringe group of people.
It won't last for a couple of days.
It's like, you know, the annual get-together of the PPP, sorry, the People's Party of Canada, the PPC.
And nothing, and there's going to be no political repercussions, no political consequences at all coming out of this.
And then what happened was a few days later, the leader of the Conservative Party was fired by his own caucus.
The protests continued on for three weeks.
Trudeau had to declare an emergency.
There was even dissent within his own party.
So, yeah, so that's what ended up happening.
Well, it was incredible.
And you really walked around.
Like, I was there for a few days.
It was so very cold.
I have to say, it was actually physically a challenge to cover this story.
I'm not complaining.
I'm just saying I saw you out there every day, all day.
I saw you on your Twitter feed, I mean, and the stories you wrote.
And so that's the kind of shoe leather journalism that I think really works for events like this.
I think a lot of the critics in what I call the media party never even went down there.
Like my old friend, Andrew Coyne, I'm certain he didn't physically go there.
He was writing from his apartment somewhere in Toronto.
So I think that you saw things with your own eyes.
You saw people of every background.
You mentioned race, but there's also a class element too.
Working class people, and they look different.
They're not as fancy.
They don't have the exact perfect words that the silver-tongued devils who work in Parliament Hill do.
And so there were some people a little rough around the edges.
And I think that brought out a kind of snobbery and condescension.
You know, there's a great lawyer in Toronto named Ryan O'Connor who he calls it the Peloton class.
People who they loved the lockdowns because they got themselves that expensive Peloton workout machine and maybe they had a country cottage.
So the fancy people sort of said, yuck, I don't like truckers.
I only like it when they drop off an Amazon package and I don't even have to see them.
They leave it at the door.
I don't actually want to meet a trucker.
And I felt there was a classism.
And I'm not a Marxist, but I just, it's hard not to notice some of the sneering.
That same Andrew Coyne was calling them yobs.
That's a British term for sort of lower class football hooligans.
I don't know.
I think you really nailed it because you were doing that shoe leather journalism.
You were there looking people in the eye, seeing what it was really like instead of just reading some pre-approved talking points.
So you have the digital economy, and that's all of us who are part of the digital economy.
We've managed to get through the last two years navigating the pandemic through Zoom and Peloton and whatnot, right?
But then you have the working class, they lay the brick and mortar of the economy.
They're part of the brick and mortar of the economy.
And they've been completely, you know, speaking to them, you get the sense that they've been completely left out.
They've been affected by the lockdowns.
They've been affected by the restrictions.
And then you had the mandates that kicked in.
And then, you know, I think that was the final straw for many of these folks.
Eye Opening Exemptions00:03:52
And what was unfortunate about all of this is that, you know, that there was no real attempt to really even try to understand where they were coming from.
You know, it was easier to denigrate and mock them and call them names.
And then when you were tired of that, you went back to calling them racists and white supremacists.
There was no real attempt to actually find out, you know, why are they upset?
Why are they angry?
What's the source of their frustration?
And that is what I tried to do.
I mean, all I did was talk to people.
I just got out of my apartment.
It was cold.
You know, and, you know, I'm not, you know, I was dressed warmly, but, you know, if you're there for 10, 12 hours every day, that's pretty, that's quite, you know, that's not good for you.
But, you know, I went there and I spoke to people and there were, you know, these people with some real heart, you know, some very, some heartbreaking stories.
You know, these are real people who've suffered during the pandemic and nobody really wants to even engage with them.
They're not all anti-vaxis.
Sure, there are some who are anti-vaxxers.
They will not take a vaccine, any vaccine of any kind.
But there was also a lot of, you know, there were people who had recovered from COVID.
Now, we know the research on people who've recovered from COVID, they actually have very high antibodies.
So, why are we forcing them to take the vaccine?
And so, there were a lot of people like that.
There were people who have a history of heart condition in their families and are not able to get a medical exemption from the vaccine.
Now, this is something I didn't know about.
So, there was a lot of stuff that I learned for the first time, Ezra, and this was an eye-opening experience for me.
I thought getting a medical exemption wouldn't be a big deal or even a religious exemption.
In fact, when those things were announced, I thought, ah, you know, these are potential loopholes.
If you want, you know, in the vaccine with vaccination, that people who don't want to get vaccinated will cite, you know, medical reasons and religious reasons.
But these are actually very hard to get.
So, these two siblings I met, they were not diagnosed with myocarditis, but they have a mystery of heart disease.
They themselves have some kind of a heart condition, which is not myocarditis.
You can only get this exemption for myocarditis.
But think about the fact that you have you're really worried about this.
It's not myocarditis that you have, but you're worried about it.
You don't want to take the vaccine.
We need to understand that fear instead of mocking them, right?
What we've done is we've mocked and denigrated these individuals.
Young people's lives have changed considerably.
So, people who used to love travel, who used to love to travel, can no longer do that because they're prisoners in their own country.
They can't get on a plane and backpack across the world if they wanted to.
They can't go for a hockey game.
So, they can't go on a date, you know.
And it's been quite, you know, for me, it was an eye-opening experience because I'll be very honest with you.
I'm, you know, I'm triple vaccinated.
And, you know, I kind of initially thought the mandates would be a way of getting more people vaccinated, but I hadn't quite realized how just how deeply unjust and discriminatory this whole thing has been.
And so, it really did open my eyes.
And that only happened because I spoke to people and I try to understand where they were coming from.
Eye-Opening Experiences00:08:17
Well, that's real journalism, isn't it?
I got one last question for you.
You mentioned a few moments ago that Aaron O'Toole was perhaps the first political casualty of the truckers because his conservative MPs didn't feel like he was being open-minded enough.
He was being really shy.
It was like he was afraid of the CBC being mean to him if he talked to a trucker.
There's been a lot of other things that these truckers, I think, a lot of other dominoes that have fallen.
I really, I mean, I said it before, I think they made a big difference.
But one institution that I think is in absolute denial and they have had no reckoning for their role, not just in the last month, but the last two years, I think it's the media.
And I think that in politics, there are consequences for getting it wrong.
You can be thrown out like Aaron O'Toole was, or you can admit you're wrong and make changes, like, frankly, most provincial governments are doing very quickly.
But I don't think there's been a reckoning in most of the media.
In fact, I see that the new narrative from the media class is we were victimized, we were threatened.
Some of the journalists who went down there said, I was heckled.
Now, I grant you, some people had some swears sworn at them.
And I think in one case, there was someone who spat, and I don't like that.
That's actually assault.
And someone said someone threw something.
And I don't agree with that.
But the whole media class is saying, We're the true victims here.
We need armed guards on Parliament Hill.
There's something terrible among, I mean, there's no self-reflection.
There's no introspection.
There's no acknowledgement that maybe they got something wrong over the last two years.
Maybe they were cheerleaders for the lockdown.
Maybe they defamed the truckers.
I've never seen a group so oblivious to what they're like.
Every other group in society has had a reckoning.
I'm even starting to see it in the courts, but not the media class.
They're having panel discussions about how hard done by they are.
What do you think of all that?
It's really bizarre, Ezra.
And, you know, I just really have no words.
The fact of the matter is that journalists are not supposed to be there to be liked, right?
They're supposed to be there to report on the story as objectively and as fairly as they possibly can.
There's no question that there was a real disdain for the mainstream media among the protesters.
I did see a few people, a few mainstream media journalists, trying to engage with the protesters, maybe try to speak to the truckers and to some of the protesters.
And they were met with a lot of hostility.
I didn't see any violent behavior, but I did see a lot of, just, we don't trust the mainstream media, or if you want to talk to us, we're going to record it so that you don't go and try to defame us or anything like that on the narrative for sure.
But the media still has to work hard to gain people's trust, I think.
It cannot just be handed to you on a silver platter.
And you have to earn their trust.
I, as an independent person, was also met with a lot of, you know, people didn't really want to speak to me.
But, you know, I had to really work hard at gaining people's trust.
And, you know, and that was not easy.
So, you know, it's never good when the media becomes the story, right?
Journalists should never become the story, be the story.
And that's unfortunately what ended up happening here.
I'm just not sure.
And they're never held accountable for anything, really, at least for the three weeks that the protests happen.
In fact, I was held more to account than anybody else.
You know, my tweets were fisked.
My pieces were fact-checked.
Everything, you name it, I was held more to account than Justin Trudeau or any of the talking heads on TV.
And I, as a freelancer, an outsider in journalism, so that was quite ironic.
You know, I just hope, because see, I've seen this movie play out before where, you know, a deep distrust of the media then descends into things that are not good.
You know, you do, journalists play a vital role, you know, and I think, you know, and that's very important.
And there needs to be a real introspection here of what they did wrong, what needs to be done to improve reporting.
You know, I feel like they've just, many of them have just moved on.
You know, the people who had this singular narrative of the protesters have now moved on to reporting on the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
And, you know, there's just no accountability anywhere.
Yeah, I think you're right.
And I actually, the distrust that I myself have learned in the last two years from watching the media cover COVID has stayed with me.
And I'm extra skeptical of the coverage of Ukraine.
And I'm sort of sad about that that I've been turned so skeptical and that my what little trust I had has been steamed off by what we've seen over the last little while.
Well, I got to tell you, Rupert, it's a pleasure to finally meet you and to talk with you at length.
Thank you very much for coming on the show today.
And thank you for the journalism you did.
And I'm very critical of most journalists, but I have to say, every day I look forward to seeing your side of the story because you told it like you saw it.
You challenged the myths on the other side and you proved it with photos and video clips and stories.
I really benefited a lot from you and I recommend everyone follow you on Twitter as I do and we'll have your Twitter handle underneath.
Great to meet you.
I hope to talk to you again.
And you are, you, along with Rex Murphy and Conrad Black, are my reason for reading the National Post.
So keep it up.
I think you're doing great.
Thanks, Ezra.
It was a real pleasure to be here to finally meet you.
Well, you're very nice to say that.
There you have it, Rupert Subramania, a freelance columnist at the National Post in today's Wall Street Journal and other places.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Sharon Kerr says, send Christia Freeland over there.
She can visit some relatives and it will cost a lot less.
She can also coerce them to join the World Economic Forum that she sits on the board of trustees, one world government ruled by the elites, and everyone else will have nothing.
Her plutocrats dream come true.
There's a lot in there.
I got to tell you that Vladimir Zelensky, the head of the president of Russia, is a World Economic Forum graduate.
And I saw a picture on Twitter today of him saying that he really looks up to Trudeau and Trudeau's role model.
I find that depressing.
Stephanie says, we are all Canadians.
It is completely unacceptable to discriminate in any way.
Why would we punish Russians for a war that was forced upon them by a corrupt leader?
Oh, I've seen just the craziest.
I've seen colleges saying we're going to stop teaching Russian literature hundreds of years ago.
I mean, I never was much into Russian literature myself, but for example, Solzhenitsyn, have you heard that name, Alexander Solzhenitsyn?
He was a real dissident.
He wrote about totalitarianism, including censorship.
Should he be banned because he's Russian?
He was warning against authoritarianism.
Should he be banned because he's Russian?
Makes no sense.
My friends, we got one more day this week.
Vaccine Side Effects Alarm Signal00:08:35
Who knows how crazy it's going to be.
We'll see you tomorrow.
Until then, on behalf of all of us from here, Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.
Keep fighting for freedom.
And I'm going to leave you with this video from Tamara Uglini, a German health insurance company that's sounding the alarm on vaccine injuries.
I promise you, this is news you won't see on the CBC State Broadcaster.
All right, see you tomorrow.
Tamara Ugolini here with Rebel News, and we are now slowly getting 2021 data showing just how devastating the novel mRNA COVID injectables have been on the general public.
Now it's showing up under the bottom line of health insurance companies.
This particular story comes out of Germany where I just so happened to have some family members and how it's making me very much regret not learning the mother tongue from my Oma and Omi.
Yes, I am German and Italian.
Makes for a very feisty combo, you can ask my husband.
Regardless, I have connected with those family members.
Hi, Tante.
To seek some clarification and make sure that my translations are in fact correct, I would welcome you.
And as always, to fact check what I am about to say using Google Translate, or maybe you can reference your own friends and family in Germany.
This story has been picked up by various English and Canadian media outlets, making its way on Twitter.
But I wanted to source the raw data for myself and find out exactly what was being said by this particular company.
As always, I will link all of my sources in the written component of this report.
Okay, so let's dig in.
So a large German health insurer called BKK Provida, that's one of Germany's oldest health insurance, filed this press release titled Strong Warning Signal for Coded Vaccination Side Effects After Corona Vaccination on February 21st, 2022.
It was directed to Professor Dr. Situtek at the Paul Ehrlich Institute, also referred to as PEI, which is the German Federal Ministry of Health.
The letter starts off by saying that the Paul Ehrlich Institute announced in a press release that for the calendar year of 2021, only 244,576 suspected cases of vaccination side effects occurred after corona vaccination and were reported.
The second paragraph basically states that using their own data, BKK Provida has reason to believe that this signals significant underreporting and that they are enclosing an evaluation of their own data.
The third paragraph, they lay it all out.
They used the billing data of doctors filing health insurance claims.
Using anonymous sample databases from the health insurance companies, they included just over 10.9 million policyholders and used the doctors' billing data for the first half of 2021 and about half for the third quarter of 2021.
Using the valid ICD codes for vaccine side effects, those codes stand for International Classification of Disease, ICD, that is a globally standardized code by the World Health Organization, the WHO.
You can search the various codes and their meanings out for yourself, but I will outline them later.
Okay, so going back to this third paragraph, BKK saw that already there had been 2,116,695 cases of vaccination side effects treated as per their own data.
They go on to extrapolate this figure to include the entire year of 2021 and apply it to the total German population and claim that there are probably two and a half to three million people in Germany seeking medical care due to vaccine side effects.
They note that this is a significant alarm signal.
The fourth paragraph, they reinforce that this means approximately 4 to 5% of vaccinated people were under medical treatment because of side effects to vaccination.
In the fifth paragraph, they speculate that the cause of underreporting could be that there is no monetary incentive for physicians to report to the Paul Ehrlich Institute.
They note that doctors claim it takes about half an hour to file a report and with 3 million suspected cases of side effects, that would take 1.5 million hours of work to complete, which would be the equivalent to the annual work performance of 1,000 doctors.
That's staggering.
The last two sentences note that they also sent the letter to the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds to request that they also analyze their data appropriately and since danger to people's lives cannot be ruled out, they ask for PEI's feedback by February 22nd, 2022 at 6 p.m.
It looks like they didn't receive a response from PEI directly, but a German doctors association called Verkaubund responded with this press release dated February 24th, 2022.
And it's been picked up and shared widely by German mainstream media.
The press release is authored by Dr. Dirk Heinrich, the federal chairman of Verkaubund.
He refers to BKK Provida's claim as embarrassing ignorance or insidious attempt to deceive and calls their conclusion complete nonsense.
The basis of the letter is that the findings by BKK are meaningless because the codes do not differentiate between mild or severe side effects.
He then attacks the company for its advertising of homeopathy and osteopathy in some sort of strange smear attempt.
To which BKK responded in a press release on February 25th, 2022, the very next day.
They reiterate that the basis for the evaluation is the billing data of the doctors themselves.
They repeat everything from their initial letter to PEI and also include some graphs.
The graphs include data from 2019 through 2022.
Graph number one shows patients with the code T88.1.
These are other complications following immunization that were not classified elsewhere.
Graph number two shows patients with the U12.9 code.
That's a new code since 2021, filed under special purposes and it's used to classify COVID-19 vaccines causing adverse effects in therapeutic use with unspecified reaction.
Graph number three shows the code U59.9, another unspecific reaction caused by a vaccine or biological substance.
And finally, graph four shows the code T88.0, which is an infection following vaccination, specifically sepsis.
That's alarming.
BKK again reiterates that they viewed themselves as obligated to report this data to PEI as they are the supreme authority for vaccine safety and they reference page 39 of PEI's own safety report, which notes that this health authority has undertaken a volunteer-driven observational survey on the tolerability of the COVID-19 vaccines over a 12-month period.
They further note that they don't interpret the data, they just want to connect it to the responsible authorities to provide possible safety signals as it's a significant finding.
The BKK executive board has agreed to do an in-depth discussion with the PEI for the coming week.
That's the first week of March.
Again, they encourage all health insurance companies to follow this lead and evaluate their own databases.
BKK Provida further distances itself from the dubious statements made by Verkau Bund in its press release on February 24th, and they claim that Dr. Dirk Heinrich did not communicate with the board of directors at BKK, nor did he request insight into the data analysis.
Noting that only serious and factual analysis can benefit vaccine safety and the health of the insured, they reject controversial statements as an unsuitable means of dispute and further reiterate that the Paul Ehrlich Institute is solely responsible for clarifying the safety of vaccines.
My family in Germany told me that a meeting was being facilitated between BKK Provida and the Elric Institute.
Apparently, the CEO of BKK has since been terminated and the meeting went forward without him.
I will give an update when there is one, so please stay tuned as I follow the potential unraveling of proper vaccine adverse effects documentation.
I think it'll be a showdown between the companies obviously profiteering from their sale versus the companies whose bottom lines are being affected by the disastrous health outcomes.