Sheila Gunn Reid debunks the Trudeau Liberals’ and CBC’s repeated claims of Russian involvement in the 2022 Freedom Convoy, citing the Justice Department’s December 14, 2022, submission—no evidence found. The Emergencies Act was invoked despite only two U.S. sympathizers being intercepted at the border, while Chorus Entertainment’s ESG-aligned sustainability report raises concerns about media bias tied to Liberal funding, including a $600M bailout. OLG’s continued sale of unclaimed scratch tickets like Royal Riches ($75K prize) exposes systemic transparency failures, underscoring how government-linked entities prioritize profit over accountability while targeting dissenters. [Automatically generated summary]
I bet you're expecting the melodious tones of Ezra Levant right now, but unfortunately, no, it's me, Sheila Gunrid, and I'm filling in for Ezra tonight in the big show.
Now, tonight, my guest is True North's Cosman Jerja on an expose that he has recently done on the infection of woke culture at Chorus Media.
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And before I let you go, I'm going to ask you to do a little something for me.
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It helps us turn up higher in the podcast rankings, which puts us as a choice for more people, makes us more visible.
But the thing that I need you to do for me is that it helps us beat CBC in the podcast rankings, and they just get so much of your money to create content that you just care so little about.
And so wouldn't it be great if a company that you actually like did well in the podcast rankings?
So if you could leave us a five-star review so that we could beat CBC just, you know, for my own personal spite, that would be great.
Thanks, and enjoy the show.
The Liberals' claims about the Freedom Convoy being some sort of Kremlin operation continue to be debunked, this time by the government's own bureaucrats.
It's December 14th, 2022.
I'm Sheila Gunread, but you're watching the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Another lie about the Freedom Convoy falls apart.
And with it, yet another excuse to invoke the Emergencies Act falls apart simultaneously too.
I'll never not use this next clip at every opportunity I have.
It's of a CBC tinfoil hat kook accusing the working class uprising of the anti-vaccine mandate Freedom Convoy of being some sort of Kremlin operation.
And as always with the CBC, you paid for it all.
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.
Now that CBC contributor Wackadoo made that allegation up out of whole cloth, and the CBC had to retract not one, but two stories accusing the Freedom Convoy of being foreign funded.
But still, it was the insane groundwork the Trudeau Liberals needed to invoke a counterterrorism law, the Emergencies Act, on the truckers and supporters of the Freedom Convoy last February after the Liberals ran out of patience with the boisterous weeks-long demonstration against COVID restrictions.
But let's just stop here for a quick second, because the Liberals, as I'll inform you here, aren't actually against foreign funding of activism.
They're against foreign funding of activism for causes they don't like.
The Liberals put a stop to the audit of environmental charities who were credibly accused of taking American money to block Canadian pipelines.
The Liberals did that in 2017.
And it's something the Allen inquiry in Alberta was able to confirm that foreign-funded activism was harming the Canadian economy.
But now, even the Liberals' own government bureaucrats admit there was no substantial Russian funding to the Freedom Convoy.
Look at this.
It's from Black Locks on the government's submissions to the Public Order Emergency Commission.
And that is the official examination into the government's use of that counterterrorism law, the Emergencies Act.
The Department of Justice yesterday acknowledged Russia had no involvement in the Freedom Convoy.
False claims of large amounts of foreign funding and disinformation by Russian agents were not supported by any proof.
Government lawyers, wrote the Public Order Emergency Commission.
There was no evidence foreign state actors or foreign governments were conducting any disinformation campaign against Canada in relation to the convoy.
Federal lawyers wrote in closing submissions to the Commission.
Multiple messages in support of the Freedom Convoy emanated from individuals believed to be located outside Canada, wrote lawyers, as though that's some kind of crime.
Certain sectors of the American political sphere amplified elements of the convoy emergency.
Cabinet had repeatedly pointed to foreign involvement as justification for invoking the Emergencies Act against parliament hill protesters.
CBC reported, I believe, on the 14th of February or the 13th of February that there was foreign funding.
Attorney General David LeMetti testified April 26th at the Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency.
But the thing about the Emergencies Act is that you just can't whip it out for bouncy castles, extended traffic snarls, and peaceful anti-regime protesters who are committing the crime of embarrassing you internationally and ultimately inspiring the world to do the same with their own tyrannical governments.
The Emergencies Act has never been used before, not even for 9-11, not for mass murders or killings, not for even attempted terror plots.
It has a very high bar for invocation, and that's by design.
The threat to Canada to invoke the Emergencies Act has to rise to Section 2 of the CESIS Act.
And Section 2B reads that a threat to Canada can mean foreign-influenced activities within or relating to Canada that are detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve a threat to any person.
I guess there was none of that though, and the government knew it.
David LeMetti's own people knew it, even though he was saying something totally different in public and basing his speculation on CBC's flawed reporting.
And let's not forget about how extreme that non-existent foreign threat was beyond the alleged foreign financing and alleged foreign manipulation and alleged foreign organizing of the convoy that did not whatsoever exist.
If you asked the public safety minister Marco Mendicino and his equally inept colleague, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, Bill Blair, the man who actually oversaw the explosion of illegal gun violence during his tenure as Toronto Police Chief, the border guards, the CBSA, those two guys said they needed additional tools to be able to stop, I guess, a reverse war of 1812 from happening.
You see, instead of Canadians rushing the White House to burn it down like what happened two centuries ago, Americans drunk on January 6th frenzy would be coming here to join the Freedom Convoy to cause mayhem in the streets of the orderly nation's capital.
Those streets are normally occupied by civilized, boring, work-at-home federal bureaucrats who value their peace and quiet, so I'm told.
Except that also was not true.
Look at this again from Blacklock's reporter.
Only two Freedom Convoy sympathizers were intercepted at the border under the Emergencies Act, according to secret cabinet committee minutes.
The Canada Border Services Agency, that's the CBSA, claimed it needed emergency powers to keep out American neo-Nazis.
Canada Border Services Agency reported they have had limited use of the Emergencies Act, having only turned two individuals away from ports of entry under the new authority to do so, read confidential minutes of a February 20th meeting.
Canada has 117 land crossings.
The act allowed the agency to prohibit Americans from crossing the border into Canada to attend what became the illegal assembly under the act.
It is unclear police have these powers under common law, the Department of Public Safety wrote in a March 24 memo.
The Emergencies Act provided additional authority that had a direct influence on protest participants, although I guess just two of them.
Neither the Public Safety Department nor Border Services Agency publicly disclosed only two American protesters were intercepted.
John Ozowski, now retired agency president, avoided mention, isn't that convenient, of details in November 16th testimony at the Public Order Emergency Commission.
Was it your understanding many U.S. or foreign nationals were coming into the country to participate in the protest? asked lawyer Alexander Hine, counsel for the commission.
We turned away people that intended to come and participate in the protest, replied Ozowski.
There was no ability for us to stop people from coming in and foreign nationals from coming in to participate in that protest if they were otherwise able to enter, if they met all other quarantine act requirements, testified Ozowski.
We identified that as a gap, he said.
Except there were just two people, just two people, not people, only two.
That information probably would have been relevant to his testimony to the size of that so-called gap in powers, to use his language, right?
You know, just suspend all the civil liberties of all Canadians, seize bank accounts of protesters, and for what?
Two Americans with obviously no criminal records because they otherwise met all the entry requirements to come into Canada and who were coming here to what?
Look upon a street party?
Gee, thanks.
Thanks for stopping that terrorism from happening, guys.
Now, maybe, maybe I can direct you people to do something to deal with the constant influx of illegal border crossers just walking into the country at Wroxham Road.
Global News vs. Local Journalism00:13:01
Maybe?
The government never has its priorities straight, do they?
Stay with us.
True North's Cosmin Georgia joins us after the break.
You can go as woke as you want and as broke as you want, and you can just go jangling hand in hand to Justin Trudeau's liberals.
Chorus Entertainment last week published a sustainability report, and it's not just sustainability with regard to environmentalism and those goals, but also with regard to diversity.
And this company, Chorus, it's been going broke for a very long time, but that's fine because Justin Trudeau has all of your money to give them.
Joining me now to discuss his expose into Chorus Entertainment's new woke policies is Cosmo Jerja from True North.
Cosmo, thanks for joining us and thanks for your careful eye to these sorts of crazy stories.
What does their sustainability policy, what does it entail?
Sure.
Thanks for having me, Sheila.
So this report, it's an annual report that Chorus Entertainment has produced, I think for a few years now.
Now, for those of you who don't know, Chorus Entertainment owns a bunch of media companies, both in terms of producing like TV shows, but they also own Global News, which is a major news provider here in Canada.
Now, this report essentially sets out to align all of these subsidiaries of Chorus along what are called environmental social development goals.
Now, these are closely borrowed from the United Nations, which has SDG goals, and they've promoted that worldwide, both in the private and public sector.
So, this is an attempt to essentially align behind this ideological perspective.
Now, what does that mean in practice?
That means giving employees diversity, equity, training, inclusion training, subjecting them to carbon tracking, etc.
So, it's a sort of grab bag of this environmental, progressive left ideology subjected on what is a private company from the top down.
Yeah, this is really just, you know, the, I don't want to say the CBCification of global news, but really that is what it is at the end of the day.
And I don't think people really understand just how big global news is.
They are very difficult to avoid if you're consuming any sort of Canadian media because not only do they own global news, but they also own so many of the local news stations that are on old-fashioned terrestrial radio.
That's for sure.
I believe media in Canada is owned, 80% of the media in this country is owned by a handful of companies, very wealthy Canadian families and individuals control most of the media narrative in Canada.
So it's concerning to see when you have all of these companies uniting under this umbrella and going in the exact same direction, which is a progressively woke direction.
And you see it in their reporting.
I mean, we saw it with coverage from Global News on the Freedom Convoy.
We see it with their coverage of conservative leader Pierre Polyev.
It's very troubling from a media observation perspective to see this monopoly that's being formed in this country.
Yeah, it's almost like a re-education camp for the employees of Global News so that their viewpoints are nearly completely homogenous if they know what's good for them.
Now, I want to talk to you about just how diverse Global News really is, because when I saw your article, it just piqued my curiosity because they have this focus on diversity.
And so I thought, who's running the show down there?
Definitely not a person that the mainstream media or the woesters would consider a diversity hire.
The CEO of Global News is Doug Murphy.
And it's my understanding he's a middle-aged white guy, based on what I can find out about him on the news.
But at the end of the day, regardless of his ethnic background, and I don't really care about those things, but the left tells me they do, I care about his success.
And as it would turn out, he's overseen the decrease in stock value over at Chorus of about 80% over the past five years.
And so instead of focusing on fixing that and making this a profitable company, that doesn't really seem to be the focus of what's happening at Chorus whatsoever.
Lee, and it's interesting that it's called a sustainability report, but the question remains: what are they actually sustaining here?
Are they sustaining their business practices, their profitability, their responsibility to shareholders?
Are they sustaining their responsibility to Canadian viewers who need quality journalism?
And look, Global News has produced some very fine journalism.
I know here in British Columbia, they covered the money laundering situation.
They've recently done some great reporting on the Chinese interference.
So I feel really bad for some of the journalists there who have veteran journalists, quite frankly, who have spent their careers putting out excellent work.
And now this company is getting them tangled up in Stalinistic ideological sweat sessions instead of letting these very brave journalists do their work, do the reporting that this country needs and hold the government to account.
You know, that is true that there are some really great journalists left in mainstream media.
When I hear about Chorus, I always think, how do we get Roy Greene out of there?
How do we airlift that poor man out of that company?
But the remaining good journalists there, their good work is tainted by these policies, but also the bailouts.
So, you know, that was one thing you noted in your piece: this company is losing money.
Instead of focusing on fixing that problem, the guy who's responsible for the loss in share price seems to not be facing any consequences.
In a normal company, that guy might get fired.
But instead of fixing it, they just go hand in hand to the federal government and demand more money.
And they will get it as long as they publish news that is favorable with regard to the liberals.
Right.
It's an interesting situation because Global News, well, Chorus is essentially going to the government right now, asking to be included in the $600 media bailout.
Now that bailout was some adjustments to the Income Tax Act, which allowed print publications to tap into that taxpayer funding.
Now, that excludes broadcasters like Global News and various radio subsidiaries of Chorus.
So now they want to get in on that party.
So it makes me wonder, are these sustainability reports a means for them to curry favor with the government, saying, look, hey, we're making these changes that are obviously very much endorsed and loved by the liberal government.
Can you let us in on this big cash grab?
You know, that's a great point that, you know, it appears as though Chorus is aligning themselves or their company goals with that of the government.
As you say, to, you know, be able to prove to the government, give us some money.
We're doing all these good things that you really like and we're reporting favorably on you and not your scandals.
Wouldn't that be great if you would give us some money?
But, you know, this is just the media bailout for print.
But there are other ways that broadcasters in this country get their hands on federal cash.
And some of it was through the COVID bailouts.
You know, they got wage subsidies to support themselves during COVID as though the news ever stopped.
You know, that was a little strange.
And, you know, there are also grants that are given to publishers for things like climate change journalism.
You know, it's funny you see this climate change journalism shoehorned into your local news, and you wonder why that is.
Well, it's because a lot of times these publishers are given grants to publish beats that the government cares about and then they say it's supporting local journalism.
Yeah, and, you know, a former CRTC vice chair, Peter Menzies, put it perfectly to me when I asked him about all these subs subsidies, like all these subsidies going on from the government.
It creates a situation where these media companies rely on the liberals remaining in power.
Now they have a codependent relationship, as he explained it.
And, you know, to discuss that local journalism stuff, what you're talking about with the climate reporters, that's the local journalism initiative.
As I mentioned earlier, around 80% of the media, including local news outlets, are owned by a handful of mega-conglomerate media companies.
So what local journalism are we saving here?
There's no ma and pa newspapers anymore.
You know, there might be some small community prints, but these are all corporate news, which all have the same sort of message.
They all have the same agenda at the editorial level.
So it really astounds me when the government tries to claim that they're saving local journalism.
Well, local journalism has been gone for a very long time, whether we like it or not.
We live in a completely different media ecosystem today.
So that's just an excuse for them to put money in the pockets of their friends who own these companies.
You know, that's never been more true than it is in Alberta.
If you look at the, we have, you know, we have the Edmonton Journal and the Calgary Sun and the Calgary Herald.
Those are our local journalism and they're all owned by the same company, publishing the same version of the same article.
And the paper continues to shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink because nobody's advertising in it and nobody's buying it.
And instead of fixing the problem, I think that's the problem with the media bailouts is these companies are never going to get what's coming to them and they're never going to fix the problem because they are protected from the market correction they so rightly deserve.
And to point to another story I recently did, the Saltwire Network, which is one of the major media companies out on the East Coast, similar thing happened, right?
They took money from the local journalism initiative and they've all just recently announced that they're cutting newspaper deliveries to rural communities in Nova Scotia, I believe.
So it makes me question, what was that money for?
I thought you're supposed to sustain local journalism, but these communities that are so cut off from everybody else, whether because they have bad internet service, now they're not even getting their daily or weekly paper.
So it's just a total sham.
And they're cutting jobs, yet they're taking all of this money.
It's quite incredible.
Now, Cosmo, you are an independent journalist.
You work for one of those companies that does not take any money from Justin Trudeau, True North.
Independent Journalist's Work00:02:14
How do people find your work?
How did they support your work?
Because you do some of, I think, the best investigative journalism in the country.
And besides keeping a careful eye to what the other media is doing, you also do, I think, some of the Lord's work, paying attention to what's happening at the school board level and the educational level.
I think you're doing work that parents can't do when you are paying attention to these educational policies that are exceptionally woke and weird.
So where do people find your work?
How do they support you?
Well, it's very kind of you to say, and I appreciate that.
I wouldn't say I'm doing the best.
Rebel does some amazing stuff as well.
But if people want to check me out, you can go to tnc.news and find my articles there.
Or you could follow me on Twitter at CosmanDZS.
You also have a substack, too.
Tell people about yourself.
I started a substack, which is outeredge.substack.com.
And it's a weekly newsletter that covers dissident news from around the globe.
That's great.
Thanks, Cosman, for your great work.
You know, like I said, watching the media, but also watching those school boards as they try to brainwash your kids.
Thank you, Sheila.
Stay with us.
Ezra's letters unceremoniously read by me up after the break.
Now, unlike the mainstream media, we actually care about what you think about the work that we do here at Rebel News.
So we invite your comments.
And this is where Ezra normally reads your letters to him, but he's not here, so you'll have to deal with me reading them.
Our first letter comes from Bernd Haas, and he writes to us on Ezra's show about Justin Trudeau's attacks on internet freedom and his pursuit of internet censorship.
Bernd Haas writes, We have courts to deal with harmful rhetoric, misinformation, and disinformation, be it from the internet or any other source.
Vulnerability Lost00:03:38
You know, that is true that we do have courts to deal with violent rhetoric, but I don't think we should have courts that deal with misinformation and disinformation.
As I mentioned in my monologue, there are actually provisions in the Cesis Act that deal with foreign-influenced terrorism in Canada, although I believe the supply of that does not meet the demand.
But I don't think that we want judges telling people on the internet that they can only tweet true things, because as you know, over the last two years, there were a lot of people tweeting or posting things that ultimately ended up being true.
However, they were censored by big tech along the way.
I don't think we want our legal system to become just the enforcement arm of big tech censors.
Gord Tron writes, he's, I suppose, Trudeau.
He's actively working to destroy Canada and its people while he does all he says we need to change worse than any other Canadian.
They need to live the lives to set an example of what they want onto us.
You know, that's really true.
And we see this with the environmentalist movement.
They jet-set around the world and then they pat themselves on the back while buying carbon offsets that the rest of us can't afford.
And they claim that they're saving the environment because of it.
And Justin Trudeau, he claims to be a male feminist, right?
When somebody says they're a male feminist, that's my cue to leave because things are about to get a little handsy.
But Justin Trudeau says that he's a male feminist, but he's the guy firing powerful women who speak truth to power to him and groping female journalists in the famous Kokoni grope.
The world's elites, they really are hypocrites.
Another great example of this is David Suzuki.
He says there are too many people on the face of the earth and that humanity, we're just a bunch of maggots, but he has five kids and he lives on the beach.
And so I'm going to start taking these people seriously when they start taking themselves seriously.
So I think the good news is I'll never have to take them seriously.
Woofius, if that's even your real name, right?
Speaking of blaming the victim, my one question to Prime Minister Trudeau would be, why did he cut the widow's pension from 66% down to 60% right before the pandemic starter?
What did he know about the virus he wasn't telling the rest of the country?
You know, the liberals do this sort of stuff all the time.
They say they care about the vulnerable and then they do things to harm the vulnerable.
And if you look at the liberals, the only time they're ever fiscally conservative is when it's on issues that they don't actually care about.
You see this all the time at Veterans Affairs.
The Liberals spend money all over the place, just handing out money, making it rain all over the developing world.
But when Canada's veterans, with whom we have a sacred covenant, ask for help from the Veterans Affairs, they are so often, as we are recently hearing, either ignored or as my veterans friends say, deny, deny, deny, I guess, until they die, or they're offered medical assistance in dying.
The liberals, like I said, the only time they're fiscally conservative is when it comes to people and things that they don't care about.
Olg's Unfair Scratch Ticket Practices00:03:43
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Thank you for bearing with me as I muddled my way through hosting the show today.
Thanks to everybody behind the board in studio here in Toronto.
And as Ezra always says, keep fighting for freedom.
David Menzies for Rebel News here in Toronto.
And folks, I'm standing outside the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation's Prize Center.
But one must wonder when it comes to scratch tickets that the OLG sells, is it a matter of, well, to paraphrase the soup Nancy from Seinfeld, no prize for you.
That's because the Auditor General's report was recently unveiled.
And one of the findings by Auditor General Bonnie Lissick was the fact that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation continues to sell scratch tickets even after the major prizes have all been won.
So for example, this ticket here, it's called Royal Riches.
The top prize is $75,000.
And there are, I believe, five top prizes of $75,000.
Or are they?
Because here's the situation in Ontario, folks.
All five of those prizes could already have been won and claimed.
And yet people are still buying these tickets with the hope of buying a ticket that will give them the $75,000 when they have absolutely zero chance of that occurring.
That is shameful because in other jurisdictions, what the Lottery Corporation will do is remove all the remaining tickets from sale, but apparently not the OLG.
That's not how they roll.
Indeed, Ms. Lissick said in her report, we noted that OLG is not ensuring that Ontarians are aware of whether any top instant scratch ticket prizes are still available at the time of a purchase of open packets of scratch tickets, end quote.
Her report goes on to say, previous consumer research conducted by OLG showed that a prize amount of $100,000 or greater was considered by the public to be a life-changing amount and that consumers were less likely to purchase instant scratch tickets once all the top prizes have been claimed.
Well, of course, I mean, why would you buy something promising you great riches when all those prizes have been eradicated?
Now, the OLG, I love this.
This is what they said in a statement, quote, OLG is committed to openness and transparency in the sale of its products and encourages customers to contact us should they have any questions or concerns, end quote.
Yeah, so when it comes to a lack of transparency, when it comes to selling these tickets, the OLG says they're all about transparency and openness.
Does that make sense to anyone?
Now, we did reach out to OLG, but at the time of recording, they hadn't responded.
No surprise there, especially when it comes to the issue of fairness and social responsibility, which OLG bases its lotto monopoly on in the first place.
But as the evidence shows, folks, the chances of the OLG doing the right and responsible thing, well, I think the odds of that happening would make even the most reckless gambler cringe.