Ezra Levant highlights the March 9 Federal Court ruling striking down Canada’s arbitrary exclusion of Rebel News from the 2021 election debate, calling it censorship by Justin Trudeau. The court condemned government overreach, including freezing bank accounts and labeling protesters as racist during the Truckers Convoy. Levant compares Trudeau to Putin, notes UK protests against his masked hypocrisy, and critiques U.S. Democrats’ silence while Republicans like Cruz met truckers—though without concessions. Rebel News Plus’s $8/month independence contrasts with state-funded media, yet organizers face frustration over stalled demands and police crackdowns, like the Pavlovsky brothers’ arrests for feeding homeless or preaching to protesters. The episode reveals a pattern of government suppression targeting dissent, mirroring authoritarian tactics while claiming democratic values. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I'm going to take you through a court ruling, Canadian court ruling for free speech.
It's a very rare thing to have a Canadian ruling for free speech, isn't it?
I'll take you through the ruling and I'll tell you why it's a little twinkle of hope, but that of course more censorship is on the way.
That's ahead.
But first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this show.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's $8 a month.
That's half the price of Netflix.
And in addition to my daily show in video form, you get weekly shows from Sheila Gunnreid, Andrew Chapatos, David Menzies, and Nat and Kat, who have their own new show.
So there's a lot of stuff there for $8 a month.
And most importantly, you help keep us independent.
We don't take a dime from Trudeau and its shows.
So that's just RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, the Federal Court of Canada finally releases its written judgment in our last free speech victory against Justin Trudeau.
It's March 9th, 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 don'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.
There is bad news everywhere if you care about freedom.
It's never been worse in Canada, actually.
I say that after considering it carefully.
It's never been worse for freedom, and those who should care do not seem to care.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association finally roused itself a few weeks ago on the subject of the Emergencies Act.
That was really the first time during the entire lockdown that they spoke out about anything.
But like Hallie's comment, they're apparently gone now for 75 more years.
Most journalists don't care about censorship because these days they actually work for the government itself.
I mean, they're all too eager to do smiling photo ops of Justin Trudeau and Anita Anan, the defense minister in Europe.
Smiling photo ops.
They're not in Ukraine, of course.
They're just posing for selfies, posing for photos.
Just a loving, loving treatment by journalists, by Canadian journalists, I mean.
The ones who are on Trudeau's payroll, I mean.
Here are some clips from UK journalists, not paid by Trudeau, just appalled by him.
Can I show you a few clips?
I want to show you three different media shows, just to prove to you that it's not just one or two people.
Here's a rollicking go at him.
Unthinkable that you'd see something like this on This Hour Has 22 Minutes or anywhere in Canadian media.
No, take a look.
The Queen had her first in-person engagement since she had COVID.
And unfortunately, he was with a despicable dictator.
This is from the Metro.
Not only despicable, but hypocritical.
Yeah, yeah, probably one of the worst dictators in the world up until Putin decided to invade Ukraine.
So Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, is visiting the UK.
You might have seen the pictures of him.
He gets off the plane.
And so he's standing in the open air at the top of the steps of the plane with a mask on.
And then you see him meeting the Queen.
So she's a 95-year-old vulnerable woman, indoors, no mask.
So, I mean, it just shows...
Bill Grant claims she just had COVID, so she was...
She was immune.
I mean, I think the air, the open air had just had COVID, so it wasn't going to catch COVID.
You know what, I think it just shows the theater of all of this.
But yeah, the Canadian Prime Minister was seen laughing as he greeted the 95-year-old monarch, they mean the queen, at Windsor Castle, where she's actually moved to, I believe.
She's not going back to Buckingham Palace.
She's permanently moved to Windsor Castle.
Well, the view's nicer.
So, yeah, it is nice part of the world.
I'm performing there at Fuzzy Bear in Windsor this weekend.
But, yeah, she looked happy and healthy because, obviously, she's recently recovered from COVID, so it's good to see her looking happy and healthy again.
But she said...
Was she still happy after she met Trudeau?
She apparently was, but I mean, this is the thing.
She's got to meet and greet some not very savoury people.
That is the job of being a head of state.
You've got to be dictators.
I've read all the dark conspiracies about Trudeau on the internet, Nick.
What are those?
There's all sorts of people.
Castro's son.
Well, that's just true.
I thought you said conspiracies.
I'm hoping the Queen at least kept him in line.
It's a Commonwealth nation.
I'm hoping she gave him some tips on how to actually govern.
But I'm a bit worried it went gone the other way and she'll suddenly freeze Harry's bank account or something.
Do you know what I mean?
I mean, this guy's freezing his citizens' bank accounts.
Yeah, he loved meeting the Queen, though.
You could see how chuffed he was.
I would have loved him for him to meet Prince Philip while he was in blackface.
That would have been, I think Prince Philip would have appreciated it.
It would have been a meeting of minds.
Here's another clip from the United Kingdom, same trip by Trudeau.
He gave this great long diatribe today against Putin, saying that he wants respect for sovereignty.
He wants to have democracy stood for.
He wants to stay true to these values.
He wants to fight for that all over the world.
This was a man that basically froze the bank accounts of truckers, decided that he was going to forcibly round them up.
He took tactics directly out of the rule book of Vladimir Putin to deal with his own people.
And then he has the audacity and the lack of self-awareness to stand at a podium and tell us that he wants to fight for sovereignty and democracy.
He's a hypocrite.
He has a neck made of brass and he's a moron.
And he's a plank.
He really is.
He's been on this show already this year for some of the actions that he's taken.
So for him to be on it yet again, that's going to keep him.
Yeah.
But he also, all the protesting truckers, most of whom were vaccinated, by the way, in any case, he also branded them racist and misogynist, didn't he?
And when a Conservative MP stood up and said, like, you can't say that, you can't slander them that way, he said, well, maybe you might be happy to stand with swastikas and Confederate flags, but I'm not.
She was a Jewish MP.
He really is an absolute idiot.
He had no self-awareness as to what he was doing.
And now Putin is clamping down on protesters, treating them absolutely at Paul.
You know, obviously, there's no comparison between what Trudeau has done with his people and what Putin is doing with the people.
The Canadian police were pretty rough with them.
But the Canadian police were really rough.
And he was clamping down on free speech and protests.
Yeah, yeah, freezing their bank accounts.
Confiscating their pets.
with a potential threat of...
And also, did he not say he was going to kill the pet?
Yeah.
If anyone came near Dominique Devereux or Dolly Parton, I'm telling you right now, there would be murder.
Or watch a bit from this.
It goes on.
I won't play you the whole thing.
Just watch a bit.
There's an old saying, genius loves company.
But the flip side of that is that prize numpties seem to stick together like glue.
Take a look at this double act from hell.
The grinning tyrant Justin Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister, only half his face covered in black this time.
And a man who spends more time on his knees than a Playboy bunny, Sir Keir Starmer, a man who campaigned to get Russia-loving communist Jeremy Corbyn into number 10.
What a pair.
With the Labour Party having supported all of the increasingly questionable COVID measures and at every turn pushing for more, longer, harder, faster, Starmer called Freedom Day reckless, don't forget, it strikes me that the most pious, seemingly most lovely, caring, hand-wringing political leaders have proven to be the most autocratic.
Pierce Morgan, perhaps the most famous journalist in the United Kingdom, tweeted this, just a tweet.
But why hasn't any Canadian journalists tweeted this?
Why on earth would Justin Trudeau wear a mask to meet Kier Starmer, but not the Queen?
Preposterous.
Thing is, if you talk that way in the Canadian media, you're not going to get your bailout.
It's not just the media.
I showed you how ordinary Brits are literally protesting in the streets against Trudeau.
So do you see the problem?
We don't really have a civil liberties movement in Canada, with the notable exception of the JCCF, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, and of course, our friends at the Democracy Fund, and a smaller group at the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
But that's pretty much it.
And the media, who are normally on guard for freedom of the press and freedom of speech, they're almost completely compromised.
I can count on one hand's fingers, the independent media in this country.
I mean, seriously, imagine listening to this guy say this with a straight face.
My friends, as long as we don't take our democracy for granted, as long as we keep working to make it better, as long as we stay united, we needn't ever feel intimidated by tyrants.
So you're lecturing Putin on democracy after you suspended democracy in Canada because peaceful truckers were honking their horns.
Or here's some more.
We mustn't despair.
Because at its best, democracy is always stronger than authoritarianism.
But if we're going to be honest with each other, democracy hasn't exactly been at its best these past few years.
So democracy hasn't been at its best.
What does that mean?
Democracy, the system, the ideology?
Or the politicians who hold office?
Or is he saying, which I think he is, that we, the people, have failed to live up to his greatness?
We haven't been worthy of his leadership.
You know that's what he means.
And hey, guys, the way to have better government, better democracy, is to ban certain criticisms of the government from the internet.
We all have a responsibility to deal in facts and to flight to fight the flood of disinformation and manipulation.
While social media has a profound positive effect on society, it also has a role in enabling harmful content like hate speech and misinformation.
Domestically, our government is working on new legislation to address online harms.
This year, Canada is chair of the Freedom Online Coalition.
And our goal is to encourage the public to have informed and meaningful engagement in society, both offline and online.
We all have more work to do.
Yeah, I'm not optimistic, are you, but I will fight until the end.
I've made the personal decision that until I die or until I retire, which I really can't imagine happening until I've lost my faculties.
I mean, people try to convince me to leave Canada for the United States, in particular, for the free states like Florida or Texas or Tennessee.
Or frankly, even blue states are freer than much of Canada.
There's no requirements to be vaxed to get on a plane or a train in New York or California.
Courts have been active defenders of liberty, knocking down bizarre impunitive lockdowns.
Even their Supreme Court has.
Our Supreme Court hasn't said a word about any lockdown.
They haven't taken any case.
Imagine that.
Two years of a civil liberties bonfire and not a peep from the Supreme Court.
Yeah, it would have been nice.
But let me read to you a little symbol of hope.
You already know the result already.
It was from last fall when Rebel News applied to send a dozen or so journalists to cover the federal leaders' debate in the election campaign.
We had been kept out of the leaders' debate in the previous election in 2019, and we ran to court to get an emergency injunction.
And to my everlasting delight and satisfaction, we won.
And so we cover the 2019 election debates better than anyone else.
Here's just a reminder of some of the questions we asked.
Have you, your campaign, or any other agents secured non-disclosure agreements from anyone about inappropriate sexual personal conduct?
No.
Follow-up.
The 2001 yearbook from West Point Gray Academy says that you and convicted sex offender Christopher Ingvaltson made a young student's, quote, life at WPGA a lot more interesting slash amusing, end quote.
How did you two keep her amused?
Mr. Chair, only 6% of Canadians indicate they want to see immigration increased, yet you are on board with the Trudeau Liberals' plan to increase immigration to 350,000 migrants per year.
Why is that?
Well, between 2019 and 2021, Trudeau's lawyers worked tirelessly to try and strengthen their defenses against rebel news.
They read that 2019 court ruling that we won very carefully, and they tried to remove all of the judges' objections.
So, for example, in 2021, they published very detailed rules for how to get in, unlike 2019, where they published really no rules.
Instead of giving us a one-line rejection email like they did in 2019, in 2021, they sent us each a dozen pages of detailed rejection points drafted by lawyers.
They must have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers.
But miracle of miracle, we beat them again in court.
We had the best questions of the night.
Here's just a little reminder.
I have a question from Tamara Ugolini from Rebel News.
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 won?
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.
Opinion on Media Accreditation00:09:25
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.
The left love that answer.
I don't think they should.
I think it makes their man look like a tyrant.
And this question by Alexa Lavoie was just top-notch.
I am scientifically, and I surrounded.
But Israel is the country the more vaccinated.
They are in 2019 to their vaccine.
They can do the vaccine.
My question is: more Canadians desert a rappelle to vaccine.
The personality.
And the obligations of the Prime Minister or abolition.
Yeah, Trudeau doesn't do very well with strong women, does he?
Anyways, we beat them in 2021 in court.
I'm sure they'll try to keep us out next election, too.
They surely have lawyers working on that right now.
But anyways, the win was quick.
It had to be.
We rushed to court in a hurry to get the order to let us in.
But the judge who heard the case at the time, Justice Elizabeth Hinahan, only gave a very short ruling at the time.
This week, she released her formal written reasons.
I want to read a fair bit of it to you.
So, at paragraph 21, she talks about Trudeau's debates commissioner.
Quote: In those letters, the commissioner set out the commission's mandate.
He referred to the Canadian Association of Journalists, the CAJ, guidelines on conflict of interest, the guidelines, and referred to the media accreditation document issued by the Commission, by which the Commission adopted those guidelines.
Okay, so stay with me here for a moment and you'll understand why I'm quoting this.
Paragraph 22.
The Commissioner proceeded to identify elements of conflict of interest that include the participation of a journalist in demonstrations, endorsements of political candidates, and written opinion pieces about subject matter addressed in the articles written.
Now, that's absurd.
Every newspaper in Canada endorses candidates in the election.
And opinion journalism is absolutely journalism.
I think Canada's best journalist is Rex Murphy, who is an opinion journalist.
Trudeau's lawyers said we violated those rules by our activism and on our endorsements, and they listed some.
They specifically mentioned our fight against vaccine passports, for example, and they mentioned a petition against censorship, by example.
But here's why Justice Heenahan mentioned those Canadian Association of Journalism rules, whether they make sense or not.
It's because the government, Trudeau, only applied those rules to us.
Trudeau didn't apply those same rules about no endorsements or whatever to anyone else who applied.
So what Trudeau's lawyers thought was very clever actually undid them.
And their complicated and bizarre rules designed to deliberately trap us and just us, well, their sneaky plans were actually what made them lose.
Here, let me read a little bit more for you from the ruling.
Paragraph 39.
In my opinion, the applicant, that's us, a rebel, has established a strong prima facie case that it was arbitrarily targeted from the group of accredited media outlets.
By means of a media statement entitled Media Accreditation for the 44th General Election, the Commission set out three options as to how media representatives could apply for accreditation.
Option one and two allowed for automatic accreditation for media representatives who were members of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery or one of four professional media organizations.
Any media representatives who was not a member of the above-mentioned groups could only apply under option three.
Media representatives apply under option three were not eligible for automatic accreditation.
Instead, these applicants were evaluated pursuant to the guidelines.
The Commission adopted the guidelines, but only applied them to certain applicants.
This looks like an arbitrary distinction between groups.
Exactly.
So if you were part of Trudeau's press gallery, which includes foreign state broadcasters, if you can believe that, you were automatically approved.
You didn't have to prove anything.
You just, you're in.
Only we had to jump through these hoops and prove we met some arbitrary criteria, including not endorsing people with that.
But all their tricks were what undid them.
But let me read to you my favorite part of the ruling.
This is paragraph 50.
The applicant, that's us at Rebel News, the applicant's case this issue, in terms of freedom of the press and the ability to put critical questions to the leader of the vying political parties.
In my opinion, the applicant established irreparable harm in terms of being prevented from participation in the political process on behalf of the electorate.
There is room in the nation for the expression of opposing points of view.
The applicant, that's at Rebel News, did not ask to impose his views, but for the opportunity to participate in coverage of matters of importance during a federal election.
Isn't that great?
I love how this judge talks about the interests of the voters, the interests of the electorate.
It's not just our rights at Rebel News to be in there.
It's the right of the people to have us asking questions on their behalf.
So we won the case.
But it's nice to see the reasoning, and that's on the books now.
It proves what we've been saying, that Trudeau is a thin-skinned censor, that he's obsessed with controlling journalists.
So we're one of the few that he doesn't control.
That he has spent countless dollars finding ways of silencing us at Rebel News.
But that so far, we beat him two out of two times when it comes to us covering federal election debates.
Now, there are many other battles that we are losing, I have to tell you.
And Trudeau is trying to tilt the playing field for the next time.
He's bringing in three new censorship laws.
We'll talk about those more in the weeks and months ahead.
But for now, take satisfaction and hope in the fact that Justice Elizabeth Heenahan from Newfoundland and Labrador has told Justin Trudeau that he, well, has to toughen up a bit and take critical questions and that his attempts to silence the media are frankly un-Canadian and illegal.
Stay with us for more.
Truckers at the Capitol00:13:12
Welcome back.
Well, the reverberations of the Canadian Truckers Convoy continue, as I mentioned to you this week.
Tamara Lynch was finally released from prison, a shocking 18-day incarceration for inciting mischief.
I don't think anyone in Canadian history has ever been jailed before for that, but equally atrocious to her time in prison were the restrictions on her banning her from protesting against Trudeau's COVID rules.
I've never seen that before, or at least nothing like that upheld by a higher court.
In the United States, though, the truckers are reaching a crescendo.
After starting in California, they've finally made their way to Washington, D.C.
They have met with U.S. senators and they're trying to press their demands.
Don't take it from me, take it from Jeremy LaFredo, the freelance journalist who's been on assignment for Rebel News these past week or 10 days or so.
And he joins us live via Skype right now.
Jeremy, nice to see you.
How long have you been with the Convoy now?
It's got to be more than a week.
It's been 13 days I've been with the Convoy.
Well, that's great.
You've really had a chance to get to know it.
And we've been posting your videos on our Rebel News site.
And I really appreciate it.
You've really shown who is there and what they stand for.
Now, you're outside D.C., you're about an hour outside D.C., I guess, in Maryland.
But you went to the Capitol with the truckers to meet some U.S. senators.
Tell us about that.
And then we've got a clip.
But why don't you set it up?
How did the meeting come about?
Who was there on the trucker side?
Who was there on the politician side?
And I guess who was there on the media side?
Of course.
So the plan was we're going to get to Washington.
Well, they're going to get to Washington.
And they're going to slow roll the Beltway, which is the highway that surrounds Washington, D.C., once the first day, and then they're going to go slower and take up two lanes the second day.
And after the second slow roll, they received a call from Senator Ron Johnson's office and said, we would like to talk about your demands.
We'd like to meet with you at the Capitol.
It would be me and Senator Cruz.
And they had a meeting.
And for the Truckers, this seemed, well, for the organizers, this seemed like a relative, a small win.
You know, it looks like the government was relatively scared.
They didn't want the truckers to enter the city.
Let's meet with them, see what their demands are.
And they had a meeting yesterday.
And it was Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Johnson, Pierre Corey and Paul Alexander, which are two doctors, very credentialed doctors.
And there was the organizer, and there was a few other truckers, maybe three or four other truckers.
And media was a little light on the media side.
I was there for Rebel News.
There was a few other people there.
Then the liberal media was there just to ask, you know, questions, trying to trip up the truckers, trying to make them look like they're asking for something extreme or something that they're not asking for.
And that was about it.
And it doesn't seem like they've reached any type of agreement yet.
And so the idea is that the truckers will remain here until the government concedes something or gives the truckers something that they're asking for, namely the scrapping of the Emergencies Act or the scrapping of vaccine mandates.
And if that doesn't work out, then they're going to go into Washington.
All right.
Well, we have a clip.
It's very exciting to be in close quarters with U.S. senators up here in Canada, Jeremy.
You probably don't know this, but our Canadian Senate, although it looks powerful on paper, it's not given much Democratic respect because it's appointed for life.
They're not elected.
So most people ignore senators.
Of course, in the United States, senators are very powerful.
There's only two of them per state, and they are elected for a six-year term.
So they're very powerful people.
So to get a meeting with two sitting senators actually is a big deal.
Whereas in Canada, we wouldn't even care about it.
So let's play the clip now of you in this small meeting with the truckers and the two senators.
Let's take a look.
I'm Jeremy Lafayette on the Rebel News Out of Canada.
That's tripping.
Of course.
So in Canada, we saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau enact a form of martial law against his people.
And I was wondering if you think that America should condemn Canada as a nation as it does enemy states, or we should be okay with it because they're our ally.
Look, I think we have seen government officials in countries all over the world abusing power.
And whether it was Justin Trudeau or Joe Biden, they're both abusing their power.
And it's wrong.
And I think we ought to use our voice to speak up for individual liberty.
When the Canadian truckers gave voice to their frustrations, they spoke for the people of Canada, but they also spoke for Americans.
They spoke for people all over the world, and that was powerful.
And we saw a pattern that sadly has been repeated over and over again of government officials reaching out to their buddies in big tech and demanding they use their power to try to silence dissent.
And so in Canada, we saw the government officials demanding of GoFundMe that they essentially go steal $10 million from the Canadian truckers.
We saw in the United States, the Biden White House, Jen Saki at the White House press room, reach out and demand of Spotify that it pull down Joe Rogan for daring to even ask questions about the COVID orthodoxy.
That abuse of individual rights is wrong, and we ought to speak out for freedom across the globe.
Well, Jeremy, that was a very substantive answer, I thought.
He obviously has been following the Canadian trucker situation.
He knew the details of the GoFundMe.
You know, that's a big get.
I mean, Ted Cruz, not everyone, he's not everyone's cup of tea, but he is a fairly senior and fairly prominent.
I mean, he ran for president in 2016 for the Republican primary, presidential primary.
Obviously, he was not successful, but I think he is, you would have to call him one of the probably five most prominent senators on the Republican side.
I thought that was a very substantial exchange.
What did you think?
Yeah, I mean, he's definitely, he's saying all the right things.
That's for sure.
And in America, we have, in every country you have it, but we have a type of political theater that's kind of unmatched by any other nation.
So while that they are saying the right thing, you have truckers sitting here outside the Capitol who've traveled from across the country demanding policy changes.
And Ted Cruz sitting down with the organizers is great, but they didn't reach any substantial concessions or the government's really not going to give in to the truckers.
It doesn't look like as of now.
Well, I think you're right.
And I'm certainly not here to defend Ted Cruz or any politician, but I do note that the mandate, the requirement that truckers get vaxxed across the Canada-U.S. border, which has been the real spark for these trucker convoys, on the Canadian side, that's Justin Trudeau's order.
And on the American side, that's the White House.
So I don't even think that Ted Cruz or the other senator who was there, first of all, they're in the minority party in the Senate.
And second of all, I suppose they could have introduced some bill or motion in the Senate.
But at the end of the day, the decision to rescind that mandate either has to come from the White House or a court striking it down, which may happen, by the way.
But no, I take your point.
I guess all I would say is in reply to your accurate comment, which is that the truckers actually didn't get anything in hand, is that unless they were to talk to the governing party or the White House or the majority party in Congress, I don't know what Ted Cruz could have given them.
That's exactly right.
But he gave them some of his time, which is of value, and he gave them words of support.
So I'm going to say it's more than nothing.
And given that Cruz is in the minority party in the Senate and that it's not within the Senate's power to make or break the mandate, I'm going to say it was, well, let me put it this way.
A lot of Canadian politicians were terrified to meet with the truckers on our side of the border.
So I got to tip my hat to Ted Cruz.
And I like the fact that he gave you a real answer.
I mean, he talked to you for about a minute there, which I know that sounds laughable, but no, he's, you know, I thought he gave you a little bit of respect for your question, too.
No, it was very well thought out.
And it's about time that we, in America, our elected leaders say something of what's going on just north of the border.
You know, we have your government enacted a form of martial law against these peaceful protesters.
And when that happens in, you know, an enemy state, official enemy state, if that happens in Venezuela, if that happens in Iran or China, you know, it's all over the news.
It's blasted all over the news.
There's condemnations across the U.S. government.
But, you know, with what happened in Canada, since they're, you know, an ally, we were kind of relaxed about it.
It's nice to hear somebody really speak out about it.
Yeah, I thought so too.
I don't know if you know this, but our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, went to London, England the other day, and Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister there, greeted him warmly.
But there were actual street protesters, so many and so noisy that Trudeau had to take another way in.
And I was delighted to hear that because I thought, wow, people even that far away have heard about the truckers and know what's going on.
And by the way, one of the things they protested was the treatment of trucker organizer Tamara Lich, who spent 18 days in prison.
So I was very surprised, pleasantly, by the protests on the streets of the UK.
I got one last question for you.
And that is, you know, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, both Republicans, traditionally not known as the party of the working man.
These truckers are working class people.
They may be independent owner operators, but still, it's just aesthetically, it feels like a Joe Biden Democrat Party base.
Are there any people on the Congress side, on the House of Representatives side, is there anyone who would typically be called liberal or leftist who met with them, even just to give them the courtesy of a hearing?
So we saw the two Republicans.
Has anyone else met with the truckers?
No one.
Not one person who represents the American people and the U.S. government has met with the truckers at any capacity or voiced any support towards them.
Well, I'm disappointed to hear that, but I can't say that I'm actually shocked because it was the same.
In fact, in Canada, they were denounced by, there's a party of the left up here called the NDP, which is typically called a socialist party.
And they actually condemned the truckers the most viciously, which I found startling.
Let me ask you this, Jeremy, before I let you go.
And by the way, thanks for joining us for our viewers who are curious.
Jeremy's been embedded with the convoy, and he's doing this interview from an RV, which there was a lot of RVs in the Canadian convoys, too.
It saves on hotels, and you can roll along with the convoy.
What are your plans?
I mean, we're delighted to have you stay on this project.
You've been at it for almost two weeks.
What's the plan?
What's your plan?
What's the plan of the truckers?
Well, I've been speaking to the truckers often, and, you know, I spoke with them late last night.
I was there at the Haggerstown Speedway where they're all parked.
There's still more.
It's hard to believe.
There's still more trucks and convoys coming in from across the country and parking at Haggerstown Speedway in Maryland, right outside of Washington, where we are.
Just a couple days ago, over 60 big rigs and 30 RVs and 20 cars came in and joined our convoy.
And I asked, it's late in the game.
Why are you joining now?
And many of them are, you know, they're interested to see what happens and they're kind of eager to go into Washington.
We hear a lot of talk from the organizers saying, you know, we're going to do another lap around.
We're going to do another slow roll.
And a lot of the truckers are thinking, you know, we came all this way for my families, for our right to livelihood.
We want to work.
We want to cross the border.
We don't want these mandates to be able to go in and out as they wish to put them with the Emergencies Act.
So the organizers are being lightfooted and they just want to keep having meetings and they want to maybe clog up the beltway a little bit.
And the truckers themselves, you know, they're not working.
They're not making money.
They're away from their families.
They can only stay here so long.
So they're getting a little antsy.
Why Truckers Head to Washington00:04:05
That's what I sense.
And I'll be here until everyone goes home or everyone goes into D.C. We'll see what happens.
Yeah, very interesting.
I bet that the Washington, D.C. police and political operators watched very closely what happened in Ottawa.
What happened in Ottawa was an international disgrace, by the way.
As I think you know, Jeremy, one of our reporters was actually shot at point-blank range by a riot policeman with a chemical canister.
It was shocking.
I certainly hope that the D.C. police or other police forces don't copy Ottawa's atrocious example.
I hope they regard it as a cautionary tale, but I'm not so sure.
Thanks for being on the file for us.
I think you made some real news with your interview with Ted Cruz there, so congrats on that.
And keep us posted what happens.
And if the truckers do go into the city, not just the beltway around the city, but the actual capital region, sparks are going to fly.
And we're glad that you're on the scene to cover it for us.
Thank you, Rosa.
All right, there you have it.
Jeremy Lafredo, freelance journalist who is on assignment for Rebel News, embedded with the truckers in Hagerstown, Maryland.
Stay with us.
ahead.
Welcome back.
Your letters.
This is one from Brian, who says, The real kicker here is that Trump said this is exactly what would happen if the states in Canada gave up energy independence.
Oh, you're so right.
Trump was drilled, drill, drill, dig for coal, frack, everything.
He was sort of an all-of-the-above guy, and he actually said to Europe, Don't you buy that Russian gas?
Well, they ignored him.
Ha ha, Trump, what do you know about the world?
Well, he seems to know a lot, I guess.
Hankster the Prankster says this play on logic might make sense, but liberals will argue that they would rather freeze in the dark than use our own oil.
Take one for the team.
I say let them prove that.
Well, that's a funny phrase because Ralph Klein once said, Let those Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.
That was a phrase he said.
I think it was Klein who said that.
Because, of course, Trudeau's father and many other Eastern politicians loved attacking the oil patch.
But as I mentioned in my show a few weeks ago, I think the number one person to blame for the fact that there aren't literally millions more barrels of oil a day on the world market is Gerald Butts, who killed all the oil sands pipelines, Energy East, Northern Gateway, Trans Mountain.
Gerald Butts, who used to be paid by the World Wildlife Fund, which is a foreign-funded environmental extremist group, he did what he said he would do.
He killed it.
Who did that benefit?
Well, more than anyone else, it benefited Russia and OPEC by keeping ethical oil off the world market.
I blame Trudeau and Gerald Butts.
Travis Poulson says, Russia, Russia, Russia.
Where was all the sanction talk when it came to Saudi Arabia pounding on Yemen?
Not only was there not massive sanctions, they were tripping over each other to sell Saudi Arabia weapons.
Well, what's so crazy is that Biden's first move was to go to Venezuela and go to the Saudis and say, hey, can you guys pump some more oil?
How about go to Americans and go to Canadians?
It's so weird that he wanted to replace Russian conflict oil with OPEC conflict oil.
I just don't get it.
I think it's crazy.
Anyways, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with a video of the day of Adam Sos with an exclusive interview with David Pavlovsky after he was released from jail.
I tell you, those Pavlovsky brothers, Arthur and David, have been arrested, I'm going to say a dozen times over the lockdown.
It's insane.
I'll leave you with that video.
See you later, everybody.
Adam Sos here for Rebel News, and you very likely heard that Pastor Arthur Pavlowski remains behind bars.
Moment of Arrest00:03:40
Well, last week, you likely also heard that his brother David Pavlovsky was arrested.
Now, he's arrested on breach of probation, but the sort of troubling thing is the fact he met most of the criteria of his probation.
And the one thing he had to do was community service hours.
He did some, much of it not being acknowledged by his probation officer.
He struggled to find somewhere where he could do his sort of acknowledged court-approved volunteer service because of his vaccination status.
So he's effectively being persecuted against for his vaccination status yet again, which is what the Pavlovskys have spent so much time rallying against.
Ultimately, I want to remind you that Pastor Arthur Pavlowski and David Pavlowski, the extent of their so-called crimes includes feeding the homeless, opening their church through COVID-19 restrictions, and as pastors daring to preach to truckers at the Coots blockade, all of these things, charter-enshrined rights and freedoms that should be defended, are in the world of COVID-19 now considered to be crimes.
And for those crimes, David was arrested.
Pastor Arthur Pavlowski was arrested, and he remains behind bars.
We're going to join David Pavelski in a moment, who has been released for an update on his situation to discuss his arrest and to talk about his brother's situation in prison.
Well, I was just helping somebody, you know, that needed to move.
And all of a sudden, it was, I believe, it was a sting operation.
This is my thoughts.
It was done not by the police, but by the sheriffs, which is kind of weird, knowing that we are doing vigils at the Riemann and the sheriffs are there and they hear the messages.
It was just kind of weird that it was all sheriffs.
There was no police present.
So they just, he, he ran out of nowhere, like from a slingshot and started to just freak out and stop the church truck.
So I didn't know what I did, you know.
So I pulled over and they kept me for about half an hour in a car, kind of guessing what's going on.
He was walking around, checking the car, you know, and reading the signs, street church and everything.
And yeah, I had to wait half an hour.
Then I saw him creeping in.
And it was, I think, five of them that came to arrest me, which was, it's a joke.
It's really a sad joke.
It's a Greek drama because, you know, five guys to arrest a preacher that's feeding the homeless, it's ridiculous.
I'm not a gangster.
I'm not a mafia person, you know.
I'm just a preacher that feeds the homeless.
And the weird thing was it seemed you were under the impression, Nathaniel we spoke to as well, Archer's son, was under the impression that they were kind of making it seem like it was just a stop.
And then, oh, it's the second time there's been a check stop or some sort of stop.
And they're like, oh, we just happened to find you.
The other thing that's really interesting that Nathaniel mentioned, though, is you were, of course, forced to leave your truck there.
And then Nathaniel, by the time he got there to leave the truck, any stop or check, there was no officers left.
So they were waiting by the side of the road.
You pull up, they randomly stop you.
Then you're arrested and then they're gone.
And then they all packed their tools, their toys, you know, and they left.
You know, so their job was done.
You know what was crazy?
When they were walking, talking for so long, I seen them make phone calls.
I seen them talking to one another.
Some of them were putting gear on.
I was like, what's going on?
Random Stops and Arrests00:03:41
Really?
What are they?
I started to get worried.
Like, what is this?
What's going on?
And the whole thing was just ridiculous.
The moment they arrested me, everybody just left.
It's like the way they were walking, it was like negotiating who's going to get the trophy.
It was that feeling.
So they took me to a processing center.
And of course, on the cement, they searched my wallet for some reason.
I don't understand why, but they did.
Like, it looked like they were looking for anything.
Anything.
They were ready to cook things up.
That's what it seemed like to me.
And so they put me in a cell.
Now, what goes through your head?
Obviously, you're seeing them start to put on gear.
It's the sheriffs.
We've seen tactical gear in the past.
I know we heard from Archer that, and we don't know if this is true for sure, but we heard that other inmates were saying that the guards suggested that they should maybe rough them up and their lives would get a little bit better.
What's starting to go through your head with this persecution?
I know some members of the family have said they're worried they're going to do something dramatic.
Are you scared that they might do something dangerous or that they might get violent?
Well, you know, you see by the fruits, I mean, this is very alarming.
In Canada, this is crazy.
Yeah, who knows?
At this point, who knows?
It's lawlessness.
You know, this seems like it's a wild, wild west.
We've heard that term from politicians a lot, lawlessness.
They talk about the protesters, they talk about the Pavlowskis, they talk about the Coots blockade.
They call all of this lawlessness.
But I think the real lawlessness is very much in the courts, is in the persecution of your family.
So you were out within about 14 hours.
I think it was Sarah Miller working very hard to secure your release.
Have you spoken with her?
Do you have any updates from your brother who, unlike you, is still behind bars?
Well, I'm still waiting for the updates.
They gave me a charge.
Even though we did certain community hours, she denied them.
So that's another thing.
Like, how can she just deny when we did the community hours?
So this is a malicious persecution, okay?
They want to silence any opposition, any person that doesn't go with their rhetoric.
I've seen this.
I've seen this growing up all the time in Poland when it used to be communism.
It's the same tactics, the same intimidations, the same lawlessness, the same disrespect and disregard to the law of Canada.
So unbelievable.
You know, what's the sad thing is that we came to a point in Canada where parents are teaching the children now that the police, it's a don't become a police officer because that is shameful and disrespectful.
That's actually bad.
You know, this is terrible.
That's kind of like what I experienced growing up again behind the Iron Curtain.
People just did not respect the police because there was such an abuse of power and disregard to law.
Well, it's certainly sad to see these things that so many people, including your family, moved away from government overreach, authoritarianism, police that are corrupt and can't be trusted, making their way to Canada.
Very happy to see that you are out of jail.
Hoping Pastor Arthur will join you soon.
Dywood, thank you so much for this update.
And I'm sure we'll be seeing you soon for everyone out there.