Ezra Levant exposes CBC’s hypocrisy by revealing how CEO Catherine Tate invited staff to join the Orange Shirt March in 2022, despite journalistic impartiality rules. The corporation dodged transparency on social media spending, evading a House of Commons inquiry while managing 668 accounts—128 on Instagram alone. Robbie Picard’s bus tour counters anti-oil narratives, linking $1T in potential LNG exports to Europe and criticizing Trudeau’s energy policies as communities suffer from coal plant closures. Alberta’s separatist push mirrors 1775’s colonial rebellion, fueled by federal disdain and media bias. [Automatically generated summary]
CBC refuses to be accountable, even to the House of Commons, about the extent of the resources they are wasting manipulating the public.
Then, Robbie Picard joins me to discuss his pro-oil and gas cross-Canada bus tour.
It's September 30th, 2022.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reid, but you're watching the Ezra Levant show.
You know, I saw this tweet in my inbox this morning and it was very, very interesting.
It's about Catherine Tate, the head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who doesn't actually spend very much time in Canada producing Canadian content.
In fact, since being given her role back in 2018, Tate's resided largely in Brooklyn, New York with her husband in a $5.4 million home.
But as one of those so-called essential workers, she was allowed to commute back and forth across the border.
At the same time, her organization published many, many screens condemning unnecessary travel and maligning truckers who didn't want to get vaccinated to cross the border for their job as, I don't know, some sort of Russian operatives.
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.
Anyway, back to that interesting tweet I saw in my email inbox.
It was from Norman Specter.
He's a former journalist, former ambassador to Israel, a former federal civil servant, and ironically, a some-time panelist at the CBC.
And he tweeted out this article in French from Le Devoir.
Catherine Tate, that's the New York City residing head of the CBC, she had invited newsroom employees to participate in a march in memory of the victims of residential schools this Thursday, despite, as Le Devoir writes, their duty of restraint written in black and white in the public broadcaster's journalistic standards and practices.
I'm not questioning the value of this day, but from a journalistic point of view, there's a clear discomfort in being invited to participate, said an employee of the newsroom of the Ottawa station who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from his employer.
Well, well, well, there you go.
Isn't that interesting?
So many interesting things.
That's definitely why we don't hear more of people breaking ranks at CBC.
It's apparently not the sort of workplace where you can speak your mind freely to management, is it?
But let's keep reading from this Le Devoir article.
All employees of the station, all sectors combined, received an email on Tuesday, a copy of which was obtained by Le Devoir, inviting them to participate in the Orange Shirt March in recognition of the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, organized by CBC's Indigenous offices, Equity and Inclusion Department, and Radio Canada's Diversity and Inclusion Department.
The event was intended to raise awareness of the legacy of residential schools and honor thousands of survivors.
I see this invitation as a lack of consideration or lack of understanding of journalistic work, said the employee with whom Le Devoir spoke.
He recalled impartiality as one of the fundamental principles of journalistic standards and practices.
asked once again about inviting journalists to take sides by participating in this event, CBC Radio Canada management responded through its spokesperson, Leon Marr, that journalists are an integral part of CBC Radio Canada and that this is why they receive these communications.
Their status as journalists then requires them to consider our journalistic standards and practices before making the decision whether or not to participate in such an event.
So management invites them to participate in an event that may violate the journalistic standards and practices of impartiality.
Then the journalists feel intimidated to the point where they speak out, but only on the promise of anonymity.
What happens if they don't go march in this thing?
Are they fired, shamed, bullied?
Maybe.
Who knows?
Apparently, the workplace environment at CBC is so toxic that you don't feel empowered to resist these sorts of things publicly when they violate your conscience.
But this all got me thinking about how CBC quietly influences the public in much the same manner as they overtly influence some of the free thinking employees that remain there for some reason.
And how CBC feels emboldened to just get away with it all, forgetting that they are supposed to be impartial because Canadians from all side of the political spectrum are the ones footing the bills at CBC, not just left-wing radicals.
This week, an order paper question rolled across my desk, and it speaks to just how the CBC sees itself beyond criticism to the point of defying parliamentary rules.
And at CBC, they think their activism is none of the business of the people who are paying for it all.
It's activism that violates their own standards, and that's fine.
And also not answering to parliament.
That's fine too.
Rules are for the rest of us, not friends of the liberals like the CBC.
This week, a conservative MP, Shelby Cramp Newman, hit a bunch of government agencies with order paper requests inquiring how many people are working in the social media departments at those respective agencies.
Now, many agencies responded.
For example, that's how I know that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans had 13 people involved in drafting a tweet reminding people not to eat lobsters that wash up on the beach during Hurricane Fiona, no matter how hungry they are.
Apparently, it's illegal.
So federal ministries responded to the order paper query.
And order paper queries legally compel agencies to provide information before the House of Commons within a statutory amount of time, unless there's some sort of extraordinary circumstance preventing the information from being divulged.
But not the CBC.
When they were asked how many full-time employees were working at the CBC in their brainwashing, I mean social media departments, they couldn't answer that question.
How does any grown-up accountable company not know how many full-time employees are working in a specific department?
I mean, in the private sector, where you're beholden to the bottom line and not reliant on constant subsidies, this is something that you would definitely know.
You'd have to.
And if your shareholders asked you for it, you would indeed provide it.
But not the CBC.
Look at this.
The information requested is not readily available.
To provide the information as requested, the corporation would need to undertake a manual search.
How are these employees getting paid if you don't know how many of them work at the company?
Anyway, CBC then gave 14 single space pages of social media accounts, including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook that they manage.
And it's not just for the shows that nobody watches that I didn't even realize existed in many circumstances, but it's also for the talent too.
On Instagram, 128 separate accounts are managed by the CBC.
On Facebook, 235 accounts are managed.
On Twitter, 208 separate accounts are managed.
LinkedIn, five.
I suppose we should be grateful for the low number there.
On Pinterest, they've got nine.
On YouTube, 69 separate accounts.
There's one CBC Reddit account, thank goodness.
And then to make sure that your kids are sufficiently brainwashed, there are two Snapchat accounts from CBC and 11 TikTok accounts that they manage.
By my rough chicken scratch math, I think that's close to 668 separate social media accounts that CBC barfs into the ether every single day.
Each one of the people managing those accounts is fully funded by you, but you don't get to know how many people are doing that boring, obscene, brainwashing work.
But that's a lot of opportunities to manipulate the narrative for CBC, isn't it?
And if you think I'm exaggerating when I say manipulate the narrative, I'm not.
CBC accused the trucker convoy of being Russian disinformation twice.
And CBC had to retract those allegations twice.
It's a lot of social media accounts, though, to make sure the lie goes all the way around the world before the truth has time to put his pants on, right?
Don't you think you're entitled to know who these people are, how many of them there are, and how much they make?
Or do you just pay for it all and shut up?
I know what CBC wants you to do if they had their way.
Nearly 700 accounts would be the only things left on the internet telling you what to think and what to say and what's acceptable.
Voices From Oil Sands00:10:31
Stay tuned for an interview I recorded with Robbie Picard from Oil Sands Strong while he was on his cross-country pro-Oil Sands bus tour.
Up next, after the break.
Robbie Picard from Oil Sands Strong Way.
What are you doing here today?
So I'm here in Red Deer.
I'm parked in the parking lot and I am selling t-shirts, hoodies, and toques and promoting the new project, Oil and Gas World magazine.
And it has been awesome.
I've interviewed the premier, Jason Kenney.
I've interviewed tons of other politicians.
And we have the first issue.
It's still a sample issue of Oil and Gas World Magazine, but it's pretty much done.
We have some editing to do and we're working on the second issue.
And it's been amazing.
I'm taking this 1977.
I actually was told to call it a Bluebird School Bus that's been converted because that sounds better.
So it's a Bluebird bus.
I'm taking it across the country on a very slow pace, interviewing Canadians about oil and gas, connecting Ottawa, and also hyper-focusing on Justin Trudeau's failure to address the energy crisis in Europe, particularly Germany.
Now, in Red Deer today, this is the Canada's strong and free networking conference.
What's been the reception from the crowd?
It has been amazing.
There's this new movement with conservatives that they feel that they have not been properly heard and represented in mainstream media.
And I'm surprised it's coming from all walks of life.
So it's nice to see that there's a new initiative to tell all sides of the story.
And I'm happy that I'm contributing in my small way by reaching out.
I've had people come up to me today quite emotional, saying like they've, I'm hyper-focusing too, not just on oil sands, but and oil and gas, but also on the communities that have been brutalized when they shut down the coal.
And I find it really odd that government, regardless of what Stripe, would come in and say, look, we're going to shut down your industry, promise you jobs, and literally ruin your lives.
And then there might be a slow economic turnaround as you adjust, but it's caused a lot of damage, particularly in the Parkland County region.
So I'm finding that quite intriguing.
This project with this magazine, The Digital and the Video, it's not just about CEOs.
We'll definitely interview everyone and we're getting all kinds of requests, but it's about telling all the stories.
And I'm really happy to tell stories of regular people.
Like me.
Yeah, you and me.
Regular people, families.
And it brings a lot of joy.
And the project's been a lot of fun.
And it's fun.
I'm starting to enjoy the bus now.
I went shopping.
I got new bedding for it.
It's a mess inside right now because I've got to kind of organize it.
But yeah, I'm really enjoying it.
I haven't slept in it yet, but I will probably start sleeping in it probably tomorrow.
And as I inch up my way through these towns.
So you've told me before, but maybe for people who don't know, what inspired the bus tour here?
So the main, there's two.
Okay.
So the one was when Pierre Polyev wore this logo in Ottawa and the Carlton Liberal Association implied that he was a white supremacist, implied that we were white supremacists.
And that really bothered me.
Not to the point where I need to go and like scream and yell, but I just thought like what kind of narcissistic douchebag loser would label an organization without even meeting them?
And I have like, I mean, well, Sans Strong has, you know, millions of reach, like one, like last month we had over 37 million.
I can fight back.
And people that know me, though, that's not true.
But I thought about it, what if there was someone else who didn't know people in media couldn't fight back?
And that could have permanently damaged their brand.
And that's happened.
Like if you remember, like Tommy Hill figure, they said his brand was racist and he said something on Oprah's show that never happened.
But the damage that that did, and Oprah had to come up and say, no, that didn't actually happen.
So I don't appreciate the privileged people of Ottawa that have live in that recession-proof community whose decisions affect everyone here in Alberta doing that.
And the other reason is kind of simple.
I'm really enjoying taking a break and driving a bus.
And I want to tell the stories of Canadians that are not necessarily heard or listened to and provide them a platform.
And I like the deep dive that I'm able to do with this magazine.
I can tell stories that are like about cooking and canning and family.
And I want to go a little deeper because I do believe that there's such a disconnect between Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and the rest of Canada.
And sometimes we're completely two different nations.
So I'd like to kind of give people a voice.
And the new thing is like our prime minister had a chance to once to could you imagine the I heard a low estimate of what would mean if we did the LNG to Europe and it's like a quarter of a trillion dollars every year.
I think that's low.
We could have probably added a trillion dollars to our economy.
And outside of our economy, think about what we would contribute to world peace.
100%.
I mean, there's all this talk about dictators, Russia, Putin, and we could provide environmentally stable.
And they talk about like the United Nations saying that we need to have better relations with our indigenous Residents of the country.
And there's nothing better for economic reconciliation for Indigenous people than resource development, particularly the Sailor 2 First Nations in British Columbia, of course, Fort McMurray and across.
And I think that energy will provide that.
So if the United Nations actually cares about the Indigenous people of this country as a Métis person, I think they would double down on energy development for our country.
And like, look, Germany is a smarter country than we are when it comes to technology.
They know what green energy did.
They developed it.
They did it fast.
And now they're going back to fossil fuels.
They're going back to natural gas.
And it really, really suck if they have to go beg Putin to get energy so they don't freeze this winter.
And I think there's been a one good thing.
I think there's an energy wake-up call.
I think these so-called environmentalists are realizing there's no such thing as green energy and it's moronic to shut down natural gas, propane, fossil fuels.
And I think, I think there's a bit of a switch.
It's unfortunate, though, that our prime minister comes from second generational wealth, doesn't understand that in business, you need to market and fight for business.
And this was an opportunity.
It's unfortunate that he was the face.
But I do believe that there's a fight province-wide to make this work.
Now, you've mentioned brand a couple of times and the business case.
And you are, I think, systematically undoing just you and your little bus.
All the damage that the mainstream media, quite frankly, has inflicted on the reputation of oil and gas and the green movement, the foreign-funded green movement.
You would think that this is work that should have been done by deep-pocketed billion-dollar multinational companies who are benefiting from Canadian oil and gas, but they haven't really been in the fight.
It's fallen on activists like you.
Yeah, you know what?
And I'm not going to sugarcoat it, okay?
When I stood up to Jane Fonda, the amount of money that saved the industry, like they should have been a little bit more generous.
I mean, that triggered the premier at the time, Rachel Notley, to denounce her visit.
It triggered the left-wing green premier.
Exactly.
It also triggered all the Indigenous communities in Fort McMurray to speak out against her visit.
She got booed at the airport.
She missed her flight.
She wasn't welcomed.
And standing up to her, there's not been a celebrity visit since.
I mean, you can say Greta, but Greta visit was pretty low-key.
And I'm proud of that.
I'm proud that we fought back.
So I think that there needs to be a lot more of that.
And you're going to see a lot more of that.
Now, lastly, where can people keep track of your travels?
Because you're selling t-shirts to fundraise for your trip.
You're going to be all over the place.
You're going to be in small towns and big cities all across the country.
How do people find you?
Go to oilsandstrong.com.
And I don't like asking, but I'm going to ask.
We have a $500 mystery pack, which means you're going to get a couple big shirts probably too big for you and a bunch of other stuff that you can give out of Christmas presents.
We're going to unload all the shirts that we have and you contribute 500 bucks, which helps pay for this trip, which is very expensive.
Mostly I fund Oil Sandstrong through my company, Robbie Bicard Media.
I treat it like a client, but I'm going to be trying to drum up a little bit more and we're going to hire a couple staff.
And then please check out Oil and Gas World Magazine and subscribe for the print edition.
The online will always be free.
I want this to be free, but if you want to help out, it'll be $10 plus shipping a month and you get a beautiful magazine and some mystery shirt or something, whichever.
We're trying to unload that month.
We have extra and that would really be helpful.
So if you go to our page, we've set it up, Oil Sandstrong mystery thing, 500 bucks.
I don't think we're going to do a GoFundMe or Go Give Sengo at this moment, but we'll see how it goes.
But it helps.
And we, this is, also I want to be very clear.
This is not a fast moving thing.
I'm going to inch my way along.
I will park in Ottawa, but I'm not going to.
I'm going to be hopefully interviewing Pierre Polyev on the bus and I'm going to be talking to stories.
But this is more of a sort of a launch of a magazine, a digital slash print magazine that is going to tell the stories of average oil working Canadians and then a little bit of fashion.
I've actually got a fitness guy in there that he's going to be teaching oil workers that work at site how to work out.
And we've actually filmed the video with him, like pumping weights.
He's going to say, this is what you should do on your six days off.
So it's not just about promoting oil.
It's about promoting the beauty of the interesting culture.
I've reached out to Funky Bunjoko, who's one of our counselors.
She's going to be talking about multiculturalism.
And I'll be featuring Mayor Bowman.
He's our MMA fighting mayor who kicked Butterbean in the head and knocked him out.
There's a lot of cool stuff happening.
Great.
Thanks, Robbie.
Thank you for having me.
Well, friends, we've come to the portion of the show where we take your viewer feedback.
Unlike the highly unaccountable CBC, as I alluded to in my mono, actually, as I proved in my mono, we actually care what you think about the work that we're doing and we welcome your ideas and opinions on the stories that we cover.
Gordron's Take on Trudeau00:04:35
Now, some of the best ways to make sure your comment gets to us is just right here.
That's why we put this up.
But if you leave a comment on one of our Rumble videos, we have Mr. Producer and Ms. Producer who go looking for those and they send them over to me or Ezra, as the case may be.
Now, the letters today.
On Ezra's interview with our friend, Manny Montenegrino on Trudeau, snubbing Italy's newly elected female prime minister, Gordron writes, Canada's brave leader has a unique taste for the democracy types he admires most.
Yeah, that's hinting at Justin Trudeau.
I think it was back in 2013, 2014.
He said that one of the reasons that he admires China and that one of the reasons China is his favorite dictatorship is their ability to turn on a dime with regard to going green, as though China's going green.
And they can turn on a dime when it comes to everything because they don't consider the civil liberties and rights of the people of China.
So though the government can just react however they want, but imagine being somebody that's thought about what their favorite dictatorship might be.
I know what my favorite democracies are, but I've never thought about what my favorite, like my highest ranking dictatorship.
It's quite crazy.
Wild Bill says she scares moisture boy.
Yeah, Justin Trudeau.
Remember when he said that we should avoid speaking moistly?
I think he should avoid speaking at all.
However, yeah, Italy's new female prime minister, she does scare him.
And that's why, you know, the left are so quick to malign her too.
Justin Trudeau is doing his best to ignore her, but the left is actively campaigning to label her something that I don't think she is.
And I'll tell you why I don't think she is the things that the media and the left, although I'm probably repeating myself, say she is.
And it's because she campaigned on three things: God, family, and country.
Now, for that, the left is calling Italy's new female prime minister a fascist or a neo-fascist or a crypto-fascist.
But here's why I don't think she's a fascist.
Although I'm willing to be wrong, I'd just like to see evidence to the contrary.
Two of the three things that she campaigned on as her central platform, the cornerstones of her campaign, are the things fascists fear the most.
Family and God.
Because any dictator, whether fascist or communist, they require unwavering loyalty or allegiance to the state.
whether that is ideology that compels it or fear of reprisal that compels it.
But when you have family and when you have God, you have something the people are more loyal to always than the state.
It's one of the reasons why most communist dictatorships immediately scratch out God and replace religion with the state is because they need people without a moral compass, without another allegiance, except for that which is only only to the state.
Keith Talk says, lol, I don't think anyone with any intelligence cares what Trudeau thinks.
The people of Canada congratulate her.
Well, I mean, yeah, of course.
I think more and more, like as normal people, we definitely don't think Trudeau speaks for us.
But at the same time, he does have an obligation to speak on behalf of the government of Canada and congratulate her.
And let us never forget that this is the guy who sent a glowing eulogy when Fidel Castro died, the dictator of Cuba.
So at the very least, he could say something about, you know, what a great leap this would be for feminism.
He doesn't even have to thank her, but he could thank feminism, and I think he cares about that.
Trudeau's Obligations00:02:25
But he's just so petty and shallow that he couldn't.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Thank you to everybody in studio in Toronto working to put the show together.
Everybody who works behind the scenes to get the show to you.
Thanks for bearing with me as I put the show together for Ezra tonight.
And as Ezra always says, keep fighting for freedom.
It's the values.
You look at Western values in Western society, and these are values we could all relate to, but they're old world values of grit and community and perseverance.
It's a place where you can make a living with your back and your hands and a little bit of hard work.
And it's a place of opportunity.
And I think as Albertans, we're fiercely protective of that.
The world's energy crisis has been grabbing newspaper headlines.
In a nutshell, we're running short of petroleum resources and the prices are zooming upwards.
My colleagues in the government and I have come reluctantly to believe that the price of oil in Canada must go up.
This was Alberta.
The origin of the Alberta separatist movement begins with the election of Pierre Trudeau as prime minister.
It was a deliberate and malicious targeting of the West, which suited Pierre Trudeau just fine, just like it suits Justin Trudeau just fine.
Sunny ways, my friends.
Blackface.
There is an actual hostile government towards Alberta.
Why did your dad give everyone in Western Canada the middle finger?
Really, in politics, you do have to make big decisions.
And whenever you make big decisions, there's going to be people who agree with it and people who don't disagree with it.
Plenty of people want to leave this country.
It's not the kind of idea you'd expect to hear from someone who wants to win power and hold power.
It's a it is a radical idea.
And you would normalize the discussion.
And so maybe Alberta wouldn't have to go because maybe the rest of the country and the rest of the world would say, Whoa, don't go.
Will you accept these changes instead?
That's what happened for Quebec.
There's no maple leaves west of the Manitoba borders.
Why do we have a maple leaf by unilateral decision on Canadian flags?