Ezra Levant exposes CBC’s smear attempt after receiving a threatening email, revealing his November letter to Danielle Smith urging COVID-related charges be dropped—publicly supported for years. The Public Order Emergency Commission’s report on Trudeau’s Emergencies Act invocation risks secrecy, with Cabinet seeing it two weeks before Parliament, while critical legal opinions remain hidden. Lawyer Ava Chipiuk warns of potential government interference, calling the lack of transparency alarming. Listeners praise Levant’s tough questioning of Pfizer and WEF elites, while others mock the FBI’s presence at Davos amid political controversies. The episode underscores media bias and systemic opacity in holding leaders accountable. [Automatically generated summary]
I woke up to an email from the CBC threatening to, well, really do a hit job on me in Rebel News if I didn't answer them within a few hours.
They gave me very little notice.
Well, I decided to answer them in the form of a video, and that's my monologue for today.
We'll also interview our friend Ava Chipiuk from the Trucker Convoy.
That's up a little bit later.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this show.
And I'd like you to do that because I'm going to show you a few things about this CBC threat to me.
I want to show you the letter.
I want to show you my reply.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
And you know, we really rely on that money because, unlike the CBC, we don't take any public funds.
All right, here's today's show tonight.
The CBC threatens to smear Rebel News.
I'll give you my response.
It's January 25th, and this is the Eswell of Ant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Trudeau's CBC state broadcaster just told me they're coming to smear Rebel News.
This morning, they contacted me telling me they were going to publish an attack on us at 12 noon Alberta time today.
They say they have a secret letter written by me to the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, and that they're going to publish a story about that letter at 12 noon.
And do I have any explanations for it?
Wow.
Well, what would you do if a government journalist from Trudeau's CBC State Broadcaster was trying to blackmail you with a gotcha story?
Well, I think you'd probably do the obvious.
You would publish the letter yourself first so everyone could see it in full.
You'd call the CBC's bluff.
So that's what I'm doing.
You can see my letter to Danielle Smith right now at a website we've set up called lockdownamnesty.com.
It's a five-page letter that I sent to the Premier's chief of staff back in November after I had a chat with her in person.
And I want to let you know I am very proud of that letter and I stand by every word of it and I want you to read it at lockdownamnesty.com.
Read the whole thing for yourself.
It should come as no surprise that the CBC is coming to throw mud at Rebel News and me.
They are Justin Trudeau's state broadcaster.
They are his attack dogs and they hate nothing more than Rebel News and the people who support us.
They follow Justin Trudeau's lead.
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 CBC obeys Trudeau and copies him.
So they smear us and they attack us.
They're part of the parliamentary press gallery that has illegally voted to block our reporters from attending press conferences in Ottawa.
That's how gross the CBC is.
So the CBC has come for Rebel News now.
They think this is their moment to hurt us.
Now, when I got their letter this morning, I thought for a moment of writing back to the CBC smear merchants directly, but then I thought, why would I do that?
Rebel News has far more viewers in Alberta than the CBC does.
Why wouldn't I just make this video with their gotcha questions and my answers and send it out myself?
At least that way I know that Trudeau's journalists won't tamper with what I say.
Out of fairness, I'll read to you their entire letter to me.
They would never give me that fairness.
Their letter is from a wicked liar named Megan Grant.
But first, let me tell you a little bit about what this is all about and why it's happening.
See, when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was first running for the leadership of the United Conservative Party a few months ago to succeed Jason Kenney, when she launched her campaign, our reporter, Adam Sos, asked her a great question that the CBC would never ask her.
We asked if she would call off Jason Kenney's politically motivated lockdown prosecutions.
Meanwhile, though, we're still seeing targeted charges against pastors and small business owners.
Some of these are being dropped, fortunately.
Others are still clogging up the courts.
Are you willing to commit to staying charges and freezing ongoing investigations against those emanating from the lockdown?
And how do you plan to restore faith in the courts and in politics?
Yes, we have to.
We never should have come down on pastors the way we did.
Every other jurisdiction, it seems, were able to enforce their measures without putting pastors in jail, and it's created so much division in our communities.
So, yes, we should drop those.
We should also drop charges against small businesses.
Part of the reason why we're enjoying the freedoms that we have today and the ability to go and watch hockey games is because there were some courageous people who stood up and said, you know what, there's another way to do this.
Enough is enough.
It took the politicians a little while longer to realize that.
But now that they've realized that, I think part of the healing process is to make sure that some of those charges are dropped.
The other thing we need to do, though, is we need to have a full reckoning about what happened, who made the decisions, why they made the decisions that they did.
Great question and a great answer.
It became part of her campaign platform.
And right then, the CBC resolved that they would do anything in their power to destroy Danielle Smith, but they failed.
She is now the Premier of Alberta, but the CBC knows they'll get another chance just four months from now in the general election.
So they are campaigning against her full tilt.
Anyways, it looks like Smith is serious about keeping her promise to call off these very political lockdown prosecutions.
Here's Smith confirming her position when our reporter Selena Gillas asked her about it in November.
During your campaign, we said that not only would you issue an apology to those prosecuted during COVID restrictions, but you would also grant them amnesty.
When can we expect those apologies?
I can apologize right now.
I'm deeply sorry for anyone who was inappropriately subjected to discrimination as a result of their vaccine status.
I'm deeply sorry for any government employee that was fired from their job because of their vaccine status.
And I welcome them back if they want to come back.
As for the amnesty, I have to get some legal advice on that.
And so I've already asked my staff to request that advice so I can see how we would be able to proceed on that.
My view has been that these were political decisions that were made.
And so I think that they could be political decisions to offer a reversal.
But I do want to get some legal advice on that first.
Would that also have to do with the timeline of the proposed amnesties?
I would have to see, you know, if I can, if I can do it, I will do it at the earliest opportunity.
So I'm hoping within the next week, I'll get that legal advice.
And at Christmas, I personally sat down for a one-on-one year-end interview with Premier Smith, and it was actually the main issue I asked her about.
And I'm not going to play you the whole interview.
We talked for almost half an hour.
You can see that whole interview at walkdownamnesty.com if you want.
We put the video there.
But here's just a taste of it.
The world has moved on, but Alberta Health and Alberta Justice are still prosecuting.
And they haven't had a lot of wins, but they've had a few.
And it just feels like a hangover from a bygone era.
It doesn't feel like it's in sync with the times.
Is there a way to move on?
It feels like a vendetta from some prosecutors that really want to punish these guys.
That's how I'm coming from a very strong point of view.
I support these guys.
And I know you've got to be, you can't meddle in a judicial process, but boy, it doesn't feel like it's in the public interest.
You know, I think we learned a lot about how our justice system works in watching things at the federal level and how the Attorney General and the Crown have an independence from the Premier's office.
Crown's Push for Conviction00:11:49
The questions that I can ask and have asked and continue to ask is: is it in the public interest?
And is there a reasonable likelihood of conviction?
And I think the longer that we go on seeing that prosecutions are not being successful, it makes a stronger case on both of those fronts.
That if the conviction isn't likely, we know that we have a lot of pressure on our courts.
And if the public has now come to terms with wanting a different approach, is it in the public interest?
It's becoming increasingly hard to answer those two questions.
Now, I put it to the prosecutors.
I've asked them to do a review of the cases with those two things in mind.
Smith was very careful with her words, wasn't she?
She said she wasn't going to interfere with any prosecutions.
That's what Justin Trudeau did to save his corrupt friends at SNC Lavalam.
But Smith would follow the rules and just have a look at cases to make sure they were legally appropriate, especially since the province was losing so many of those cases in court.
Were they really in the public interest to pursue?
Did they really have a chance of conviction?
Well, the government journalists at Trudeau's CBC State Broadcaster couldn't stand that.
And they hunted and hunted for proof that someone did something wrong.
They showed a passion for this story that they never showed for Trudeau's interference with the SNC Lavaland case.
And huge scoop.
They found the smoking gun.
Here's the blockbuster story that Megan, the CBC liar, published last week.
Let me show it to you on Twitter.
New Alberta Premier's office contacted Crown Prosecution about Coots cases.
Sources.
Coots is some of the trucker cases.
And I'm not sure if you can see it, but more than half a million people read that tweet.
And if you click on it, it leads to this story that is still up on the CBC website right now.
Alberta Premier's office contacted Crown Prosecution about Coots cases, sources.
Now, I'll read just a little bit from the story.
A staffer in Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's office sent a series of emails to the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service challenging prosecutors' assessment and direction on cases stemming from the Coots border blockades and protests.
CBC News has learned.
The emails were sent last fall, according to sources whom CBC has agreed not to identify because they fear they could lose their jobs.
Wow.
That is a bombshell.
That's amazing investigative journalism.
It's a smoking gun.
In fact, it was so devastating it caused an emergency caucus meeting in Alberta.
Smith's MLAs were in open revolt.
Except it wasn't true.
There were no such emails.
And the CBC didn't admit until days later that they actually never saw any such emails.
They didn't disclose that in their original story because they're not real journalists.
They're government journalists.
That's a very different thing, you have to understand.
They work for Trudeau.
But because of that false accusation, the Public Service of Alberta, the nonpartisan permanent staff of the government, they had an emergency search of every single email between the Premier's entire staff and the Justice Department.
They literally reviewed 1 million emails.
And there wasn't a single one.
Not one.
Here's a CBC story grudgingly admitting that, nearly a week after their smear was first published.
You can see this was written by a different CBC reporter.
Megan Grant is still lying about things.
Her lie is still being published, both the tweet and the story that I showed you.
They're still up.
All they've done is added this little note to it.
They say, editor's note, the original version of the story published January 19th, neglected to note that CBC News has not seen the emails in question.
Seriously, they left that out?
They didn't mention that when they first made the accusation.
They didn't admit they actually hadn't seen any proof.
They smeared the entire government, not to mention the prosecutors.
They tried to cause a caucus revolt, and they actually hadn't seen the emails they claimed existed and that we now know do not exist.
How is that story even still online?
How are they still broadcasting then?
How is that headline even still there?
How is that wicked liar, that fabricator, that hoaxer, that disinformation spreader, that Trudeau shill Megan Grant, how is she even still employed there?
Well, because lying to Albertans and lying about Albertans is a key requirement to work for Trudeau CBC.
Remember this other CBC liar lying about the trucker convoy?
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.
She actually got a raise and a promotion after that lie because it pleased Justin Trudeau.
I bet Megan Grant got an Ada Girl call from the PMO too.
So the CBC just blew up whatever credibility they had left in Alberta.
I mean, not that they had any.
I mean, they really hit rock bottom such a long time ago, but they're still digging.
But Megan Grant is now trying in some way to salvage her credibility.
So she sent me this letter this morning, and I'm going to read it to you.
And you can see it in full at our special website, lockdownamnesty.com.
Here's what the liar Megan Grant said to me.
Hi, Ezra.
My colleagues and I are working on a story about the Premier putting pressure on the Justice Minister in an effort to get COVID-related charges dropped, especially Arthur Pavlovsky's.
We have an email dated October 25 sent from you to the Premier's office following an in-person meeting which took place at the UCP convention days earlier.
The email advocates for nonviolent COVID-related charges to be stayed or withdrawn and advises the Premier on how she could make that happen.
The email makes the case for why some charges should be dropped and why the Attorney General should intervene.
My questions for you are, what prompted you to send that email?
What influence do you feel your advocacy has had on these types of cases?
Do you wish to add further comment on these matters?
We plan to publish at noon.
Many thanks, Megan Grant.
So now she's trying to imply that in some way Rebel News has done something wrong, or that I have, or that we have somehow counseled the Premier to do something wrong.
It's a gotcha, and she says I only have a few hours to reply, or she's going to leak my letter.
So I'm going to leak it first at lockdownamnesty.com.
You know, Rebel News and I have been saying the same thing about these lockdown prosecutions in public and in private to anyone who would listen for nearly three years, including at Smith's annual general meeting and in my year-end interview with Smith.
You might even know we literally have a billboard at the side of the main highway in Alberta calling on Smith to drop the prosecutions.
It's called Lockdown Amnesty.
Here's an excerpt from my five-page letter, the one that the CBC thinks is a smoking gun.
It is five pages with legal footnotes.
There's a lot of legalese in it.
So I won't read the whole thing to you, but here's part of it.
I just want to give you a flavor of this letter.
I am only suggesting that the prosecutions, which have been politically motivated, targeting people who only sought to exercise their constitutional freedom of expression and religion, be stayed or discontinued.
From my knowledge of the prosecutions, most people charged were either attending a protest or a religious gathering.
Usually the people charged were the low-hanging fruit, the most vocal or the ones sharing their message on social media.
None of the prosecutions that the Democracy Fund or Rebel News supports have any violence or firearms involved.
The Premier's action on these prosecutions will promote democratic principles and ensure an appropriate use of our court's limited resources.
You've heard me say that a dozen times before, including in my year-end interview with the Premier.
The CBC somehow thinks this is a gotcha moment, but it just shows they only re-breathe their own air and listen to their own point of view.
They never listen to any other voices, and they obviously don't watch my show, or they know what I said to the Premier herself in my year-end interview.
Here's another excerpt from my letter.
Really, go and read the whole thing at lockdownamnesty.com.
I'm very proud of that letter, and I think you might enjoy it.
You might learn something from it.
I think it was a useful letter.
Let me read some more.
Withdrawing charges, staying proceedings, or declining to prosecute or continue a prosecution is justified if there is no reasonable likelihood of conviction.
This standard varies by the facts of each case.
Or if the prosecution does not serve the public interest.
The prosecutions that I am aware of do not meet either element of the test, let alone both.
So staying the charges is well justified.
There are clear legal issues with many of the prosecutions that I am familiar with.
Prosecutions under the Public Health Act are likely to fail because, as the Premier likely recalls, the Chief Medical Officer of Health Orders were vague, confusing, inconsistent, and did not specifically prohibit certain activities, unquote.
Okay, there's a little legal ease in there, but I think you can get it.
Last excerpt.
I'm proud of this letter.
I want you to read it.
Quote, the Premier can, should she choose to, direct the Attorney General to review and withdraw or discontinue any cases arising from the Chief Medical Officer of Health Orders under the Public Health Act, criminal charges being prosecuted by the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service, charges under the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, or any pending charges or applications stemming from alleged breaches of the court's orders to refrain from public gatherings or otherwise.
The Premier could request that the review be undertaken with respect to each prosecution held with Alberta Crown Prosecution Service, and cases where there is no reasonable chance of conviction or where prosecution does not serve the public interest be discontinued immediately.
Obviously, the Attorney General would take into account the Premier's view that without more, i.e. violence, proceeding with these prosecutions is not in the public interest, unquote.
Look, I've said that in public.
I've said that in private.
I've said that to the previous government.
I've said it to the current government.
I said it to Danielle Smith in an interview.
And I've said it to her in a private conversation.
And I've said it to her in an amazing five-page letter that you really should read for yourself.
And that's what the CBC can't stand.
They can't stand that Premier Danielle Smith would actually listen to another point of view besides Trudeau's point of view or the CBC's point of view.
She can't stand, sorry, they can't stand, that Premier Smith actually might care about freedom and think that bullying Christian pastors or, you know, small restaurateurs or other peaceful protesters is not in the public interest.
The CBC can't stand that Smith actually talks to me and gave me a great year-end interview, by the way.
Look, I have no idea what Smith did or didn't do with the letter I wrote to her.
I hope it was circulated, frankly.
I'm just glad that she's interested in more points of view than the Trudeau shills at the CBC.
And that's what the CBC hates.
Government Legal Opinions & Transparency00:14:33
So that's why I'm not actually scared about the CBC leaking my letter because they might think it's scandalous, but I am actually very proud of it.
In fact, I would be grateful if you read it.
And in fact, if you are an Albertan, I would encourage you to send a version of that letter to Smith yourself or to your local MLA.
And while you're at that special website, lockdownamnesty.com, take a moment to sign our petition.
I just checked, and nearly 25,000 people have signed it so far to call off these prosecutions.
Let's see how high we can get that number.
If you're like me and you despise the CBC and you're deeply embarrassed for the unethical journalism published by Megan Grant last week, do something positive about it.
Sign our petition calling on the Premier to bring in lockdown amnesty.
That's what we're calling it.
And while you're on that website, feel free to chip in and support our journalism and our advocacy.
Megan Grant is bought and paid for by Justin Trudeau.
And it shows.
Well, I'm recording this interview segment at 3 p.m. Eastern time, which is 1 p.m. Alberta time.
And the reason I tell you that is because the CBC has not yet published their threatened smear against me or Rebel News, despite saying their deadline was 12 noon.
So I will keep you posted on how that goes.
I'll let you know probably tomorrow.
We'll see what they do about it.
But I want to talk about a very important thing.
It was very important to Rebel News viewers in 2022, the trucker convoy, and then the echo of that in the Trucker Commission, the Public Order Inquiry Commission, where a judge presided over a judicial inquiry for weeks into whether or not Justin Trudeau's invocation of that form of martial law was justifiable.
And one of the stars, in fact, I would say I was very proud of the Democracy Fund's rule, but there is no denying it.
The gaggle of lawyers from the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms really set the tone.
There was, I think, seven of them all together, and they were related.
There was the JCCF lawyers and the Freedom Convoy lawyers, the trucker lawyers.
Couldn't quite keep them all straight, but one of our favorites was Eva Chipiook, who not only grilled the prime minister directly, but she also was a regular guest on our pop-up studio that we had in Ottawa, where we did our live streams every day.
I was really proud that we did that.
We really covered that commission.
Well, here's just a little recap of Ava asking questions of Justin Trudeau.
I'll just play this before we bring Ava back on the show.
Take a look.
Minister Blair, Public Safety Minister, Minister Mendicino, National Security Intelligence Advisor Jody Thomas, and RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucky.
And today you testified that the federal government was committed to exhausting all alternatives to a resolution prior to making a decision to invoke the extraordinary powers of the Emergencies Act.
Do you agree that that accurately describes your government's position?
That the invocation of the Emergencies Act was a measure of last resort, was not something to be taken lightly.
Thank you.
And something to do when other options were not effective.
And you are aware that the OPP, along with others, developed an engagement proposal and you were advised of that proposal at the IRG meeting on February 12th, correct?
It was a proposal, but we had, and it was presented to us.
We had more questions about how it would actually work.
It was not a complete proposal.
My last question, Mr. Prime Minister.
When did you and your government start to become so afraid of your own citizens?
That's a very questions.
Well, good for her.
And I'm glad that freedom-oriented lawyers were allowed in.
But the other day, I saw Ava tweeting about the imminent release of the Judicial Commission's report.
And I wanted to bring her on the show to hear her elocute on that at greater length.
Joining me now via Skype from Edmonton, the City of Champions, is our friend Eva Chipio.
Eva, great to see you again.
Nice to see you as well, Ezra.
Well, it's a pleasure to have you on, and you were a very strong part of the team out there, the Freedom team.
I really think that were it not for you guys and Alan Honor of the Democracy Fund, the whole flavor, the whole tone of that commission would have been very different.
So I'm glad you were on it.
But the other day, I saw you tweeting a bit that you were a little worried.
And I thought, well, let's get Eva on the show.
Let's talk about it because I want to hear it.
And, you know, you might be right.
So, first of all, when do we expect the Judicial Commission to issue its report?
Is that date set in stone?
It is.
And that's one of the concerns I raised on Twitter and via social media: is that the Commission is going to publicly release the decision on February 20th.
That goes directly to Parliament and the public.
So one year anniversary of the day the Emergencies Act was revoked.
So it's statutorily required that within a year a report is presented to Parliament and presented to the public.
Where the concern has been raised is in order to set up the commission, Parliament, Cabinet issued an order in council and it made certain specifications.
And one of the specifications that we noted is that the Commissioner was directed by Cabinet to issue a report no later than February 6th.
And that goes to Cabinet only.
So two weeks in advance of Parliament and the public getting the report, Cabinet is getting it.
Got it.
Now, I saw that, and that is concerning for two reasons.
First of all, it shortens the amount of time the judge has to operate by two weeks, and it was a very compressed timeframe.
By the way, the judge, I think, had an emergency surgery, if I'm not mistaken, which delayed the whole inquiry by a number of weeks anyway.
So there were obviously that couldn't be helped, but it shortened the amount of time.
But the idea of Trudeau getting a secret copy of it for two weeks to work on his spin is troubling in a way.
But Ebba, I think that is a standard practice with some reports about the government.
If I'm not mistaken, auditors general give their report to the government in advance too.
And the rationale, I think, is that since the government is what is sort of being on trial, they have a chance to think about it, digest it, so that when it's released to the public, they can say, okay, we've reviewed it.
We accept this.
We dispute that.
Like, I can understand it so that the government has some time to think about their response.
I just don't like the fact that the government obviously will be spinning against any criticism.
But isn't that sort of normal on like Auditor General reports?
Not that I'm aware.
And so let's think about that for a moment.
That's the best case scenario is that it's given to the government in advance.
And I do have concerns with the short timeframe as well.
That shortens the timeline for two weeks when we had such an insane schedule in Ottawa.
It's, you know, completely unfair for the Commission and for the parties to then even shorten it more.
So that being one concern, spinning it would be the milder of the issues.
But given that nobody sees it, what if the issue is a little bit more sinister?
And then at that point, cabinet has an opportunity to ask for changes.
We don't see it, so we don't know.
One thing I do know that happens, at least in other countries in situations like this, is that you would all parties at a minimum, parties that were involved, lawyers that were involved, should be able to get a copy like under embargo or under some kind of undertakings.
We were all asked to sign very stringent undertakings, which we did have some concerns about.
So why isn't that put in place for everybody at the same time either?
Got it.
I understand that because, of course, the government is one party, but so was everybody else there, I suppose.
I mean, a party or at least had some standing.
I mean, I wouldn't want the report to go into the hands of crazy activists like, say, Zexee Lee, but at least some of the lawyers there, I think.
But do you really think that changes would be made?
Is that permitted?
Is that in the cabinet order?
Because the idea that, you know, other than like a typo would be corrected, I would think that I would hope that a judge would push back.
Because this is a judge and a judicial inquiry, if I'm not mistaken.
So it has a certain, it has a certain level of authority.
And to have one party ex parte, as they say, in secret with no one else there, asking for changes, I've got to hope that's unlikely or irregular.
Do we have, is there anything in the cabinet order that would permit that?
So not that I see it.
I think the words are final, but what I would go to is what we saw throughout the inquiry.
And I went very optimistic about how it would be handled.
But we did see that we had quite a bit of challenges with the redacted documents that the federal government was giving to everyone and very late disclosure, incredibly late, so late that it's not useful.
Same with the redacted documents.
It's almost not useful to the parties when you can't understand it, when redactions were deemed to be not proper because there's no lawyers and they're claiming solicitor client privilege.
And it shouldn't be on parties in an inquiry like that to be adversarial within one another.
So it was on the commission to ensure that it was a fair process for everyone.
Given that that actually didn't transpire throughout the whole inquiry, that's where I have a little bit more concerns about the transparency now.
We didn't get transparency during the inquiry, so I have a little bit less faith that we're going to have it at this end of the game.
All right.
Well, I hope that you're wrong.
Now, are there other issues that you're worried about?
I take your point that this shortens the amount of time the judge has to contemplate things.
I take your point that it's only being shared with the bad guys, so to speak.
And I take your point that there's a possibility that changes could be made.
But I have to hope that that's an unlikely outcome.
Me too.
And I have to agree.
The second thing I did post about was that the government really, by the last week especially, relied on the legal opinion that was presented to cabinet that was the reason they justified the emergencies act.
That is also secret.
So again, the transparency is really hard to see.
And let me remind the viewers that this isn't just any act.
This is the Emergencies Act, formerly known as the War Measures Act.
And when this new Emergencies Act was debated, there was so much debate about this inquiry and that how important it is to be transparent and accountable because this is the most egregious tool you can put on Canadians.
So if we're going to ask about transparency and accountability of the Canadian government at any time, this is the time.
Right.
I take your point and you're right.
And the thing is, a legal opinion, well, there are tens of thousands of lawyers in Canada.
Who wrote it?
Was it a Justice Department lawyer or did justice hire an outside firm?
Was it a constitutional expert or someone friendly to the Liberal Party?
Do we know any of those answers?
Do we know anything about like, I mean, you could get five lawyers writing five different opinions, sort of like doctors.
Now, there is a common body of law, but you can shop around.
And there are law firms that are closely connected to the Liberal Party.
There are law firms that sort of tilt Liberal.
There are some that tilt conservative, believe it or not.
There are even some that tilt NDP, sort of labor-oriented law firms.
So the fact that we don't even know that information, let alone see the legal memo, I think is worrying.
They presented a document, and all that said on the top of the document was Department of Justice, and everything else blanked out.
So just, you know, disheartening to see.
And again, reminder, this is the most, you know, stringent act that they could use.
And it is for the federal government to show that they justified using the Emergencies Act, not for parties, especially the protesters.
You know, it's incumbent on the federal government to do that.
And if everything is so secret, it's incredibly hard to be reassured that they did the right thing.
Yeah, the whole point of the inquiry is to inquire.
And it's a public inquiry.
It's not a secret inquiry.
Are there anything else?
Is there anything else that's on your mind?
I would say that those are legitimate worries of different degrees of worrisomeness.
The fact that the legal opinion was not shown, I think, goes to a lack of transparency.
Now, do we know if the judge himself saw the legal opinion?
Not that we're aware of.
Why Transparency Matters00:08:19
No.
Wow.
See, that's weird.
Why wouldn't a judge who's running this community?
I can understand, like, in a lot of trials, there are matters that both sides haggle over.
I think the phrases of voir deer, where you have sort of a trial within a trial about whether or not you can disclose a certain piece of evidence.
And typically the judge and the two lawyers talk about it, and the judge will say, yes, I will show that to the jury, or no, I won't because it's too prejudicial or whatever.
But typically, the judge gets to see everything.
If the judge himself couldn't see that legal opinion, that's troubling.
Do we know that?
I'm fairly confident because we do know that that kind of void deer process was set up for the CSIS information.
And you touched on something very important, is that in normal cases, the lawyers from both sides and the judge would, again, go into this voir deer where nobody else can see it.
And that makes sense.
Again, we were under very strict undertakings.
But what happened with the CSIS was very interesting in its own right, in that the judge got to see it and only people with special national clearance could go.
So none of the lawyers for the Freedom Corporation and the Freedom Oriented that I know of were able to participate in that voir deer.
You know what?
I think that they were just using that to keep out other eyes.
I just have no idea how a legal opinion could be a national security issue if there was one or two facts in that legal opinion.
And by the way, did the lawyer who wrote the legal opinion have national security clearance?
So I have to be clear, that was a separate issue.
It was the CSIS national security and threat.
Their assessments.
Oh, I see.
So while we were in Ottawa, they did a voir deer prior to.
Thank you.
Now I understand.
So you're saying there was a void deer process for another document.
Thank you.
Now I understand.
All right.
Well, listen, here's my take on this.
I was worried from the outset because I had heard scuttlebutt that the judge may have some connections to the Liberal Party.
My first reply to that was, yeah, many judges do.
Most judges, I would say, in this country, a lean liberal either ideologically or were appointed by a partisan liberal.
But you've got to be able to put that aside or you're not going to be happy with any legal process.
So I sort of held my breath on that.
I also believe that the judge had a really tough time.
Any judge would have balancing all the different people and interests and parties and interveners.
And, you know, it was his job to make it run on time because, as you pointed out, it has an end date.
Most trials could be adjourned.
That means postponed, delayed, more days added.
So this judge had a very tough job.
He couldn't just call a break and say, okay, we're going to spend two days looking at this side issue.
He had to do it almost, well, in a very rushed way.
So I sympathize with the judge.
And even if he got some of the calls wrong, I don't think you can reject a judge.
If a judge is asked to make 50 different decisions in the course of a trial, and he gets a few of them wrong, or a few of them go the other way, I don't think you can write off the judge for that because it would be too high a standard to say, I want the judge to be perfect in every way from my point of view.
So I'm going into this with some hope.
I'm going into this.
I still am hope.
Maybe I'm going to be proven to be a foolish, naive Justice lover who still believes that there's the rule of law.
Believe me, that's being taxed over the last three years.
But at this point, Ava, I still am hopeful that this Public Order Inquiry Commission will do the right thing and say what we all know, which is Justin Trudeau had no national crisis rationale.
It was all a political optics campaign matter.
And he just used the nuclear weapon just to save face against the truckers.
I think that's evident to everybody, even this judge.
What I'm really afraid of, Eva, and sorry, I'm rambling on.
I'd like your thoughts on this.
Here's what I'm worried about.
I'm worried that the judge is going to do what the Conflict of Interest Commissioner did, which is say, yeah, Trudeau broke the law.
Duh.
Of course he did.
And then the whole country shrugs and says, oh, well.
And all the media says, oh, okay.
And Trudeau says, well, it's a learning experience for all of us.
And nothing.
Because Trudeau has had so many scandals, including being convicted for breaking the Conflict of Interest Act, taking that secret vacation, firing Jody Wilson Raybold as another crisis.
And he just says, oh, yeah, sorry about it.
That's what I'm more worried about.
I'm more worried that the judge will do the right thing.
And the entire national establishment, which is basically on his payroll, will say, oh, yeah, that's okay.
It's okay.
Don't worry.
So I'm actually really glad you brought that up.
And that was part of my tweet as well.
Is I put in a call to action.
I said, if you don't believe this is fair or this is right or this is not transparent, you as a Canadian should reach out to your MPs.
And I think maybe as Canadians, we've gotten a little bit passive about things in the last few years.
And obviously, what's happened in the last year or so has shown that Canadians are interested in what's going on in government.
And exactly to your point, is this commission we knew from the beginning, it doesn't have teeth like many Canadians were asking for it to have teeth to put Justin Trudeau in jail or something like that.
It never had the power to do anything more than to make an assessment.
My call to action for Canadians is right now, if you don't think this is fair, reach out to your MPs, maybe do it on social media because they are looking at them.
That's one thing we did learn at the inquiry is they're sending, texting each other tweets all the time, even at high ministerial levels.
But the second thing is, if the commission does find that Justin Trudeau should not have invoked the Emergencies Act, it was not justified, like both of us agree, then what is the next step?
Canadians should call to action their MPs and say, that's it.
This is the final straw now.
This was the worst thing he could have done to his own Canadian citizens, and it was found to be not justified.
We need to do something about it.
Well, listen, I hope Canadians do do something about it because I'm worried that the establishment won't remember the truckers.
It fell to the truckers, as George Orwell would say, the proles, the proletariat, ordinary people to do something because all the fancy people in the country for two years did not.
All the political parties, all the mainstream media, all the law professors, all the colleges of physicians and surgeons, all the old school civil liberties groups, all the celebrities, all the influencers, all the checks and balances failed, except for the common sense of the common people.
So who knows?
Maybe they'll save us again.
That's where it's you, Ava.
Yeah, well, thanks because it is the one-year anniversary, if you could believe it or not, of the Freedom Convoy starting to work its way to Ottawa and them getting settled into Ottawa, escorted into Ottawa by the Ottawa police on Saturday.
And so some of the people on the Freedom Corp board still, they've been thinking about how they can commemorate it.
There's still so much incredible support.
And what they've thought about is for people to go out to where they were on the highways to wave in the truckers, to go there Saturday at noon and take pictures and wave their flags and bring that community back together because it was strong a year ago.
And again, it's still so strong right now.
Davos Discussions00:04:31
Right on.
Well, listen, great to catch up with you.
I hope that you're being pessimistic and that things turn out better.
We'll find out soon.
And of course, there is a chance that the report will leak.
It wouldn't surprise me that anything that's positive towards Trudeau will be strategically leaked by his office.
Trudeau has no compunction about that, so he may well do that.
But we'll all find out on February 20th.
Hey, Vachipiak, lawyer for freedom.
Great to see you again.
Likewise.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
Our pleasure.
Stay with us.
your letters to me next.
Hey, welcome back.
I got a couple of letters from last week when I was with the team at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Let me read those.
Margarita writes, Good evening, Ezra.
I am following a bunch of Hungarian YouTubers because of my Hungarian mother tongue.
The video on you reporting from Davos asking tough questions from the Pfizer guy, Greta, as well as Larry Fink.
I heard some of it from a rebel, but it was nice to hear your reporting being appreciated by Hungarian reporters as well.
I just love it.
Kind regards.
Well, isn't that fun?
As I mentioned the other day, I have seen our Rebel news videos being translated into so many other languages.
Now you're saying it's in Hungarian too.
Sometimes we have a real viral video and I see it get translated into a few.
But the thing is, the vaccines and the mRNA vaccines and the Pfizer mandates and the fact that so many countries forced you to take a jab or you would be fired from your job or couldn't go in public means this issue is something that literally billions of people around the world care about.
In fact, as I mentioned, it was a real kerfuffle in India, even though the Pfizer vaccine was not allowed in.
And I tried to watch some of that coverage.
A lot of Indian news is in English, by the way.
And I think it was because there were some politicians in India who were clearly on Pfizer's side trying to bring the mRNA vaccines into the country.
So our reporting, I just, it was quite something.
I didn't quite understand why there was this uproar and kerfuffle in India about my interview and Avi's interview.
It was amazing to see.
So thank you for the report from Hungary.
I think that is the most watched video of all time that we have done in our eight years.
So it obviously connected with people.
And I keep laughing because we didn't actually get any answers.
How could such a video be so popular if there was no answers?
But it was putting the questions to a guy who'd never been questioned before.
That's why.
Christopher Ray says, hi, Ezra.
Just wondering, has the FBI been a contributor to the World Economic Forum in the past?
If so, for how long?
Continuously.
Wondering why the current director is there to contribute.
Then little Brian Stelter, what a clown show, literally and figuratively.
Like what you were doing and the great people you meet, you look cold, stay warm.
Now, I think Christopher Ray is a pseudonym because I think that's the name of the FBI director.
It's a great question.
Why would the FBI director go to Davos?
I understand why a businessman might to make money to get a deal.
I understand why a political leader might to meet political leaders from other countries to try and, I don't know, get donations or something.
There's a lot of people who there being there makes sense to me, even if I don't like the World Economic Forum.
The media being there, you can have media trying to suck up and get access or media like us trying to hold to account.
But why would America's top policeman, who is very recently engaged in very political raids against Donald Trump, why would America's top policemen be at Davos for the World Economic Forum?
I don't know.
And the thing is, we'll never know, because one of the whole perks or attributes of the World Economic Forum is that what goes on in Davos stays in Davos unless they positively want you to know about it.
It's not like Congress or Parliament where there's a handsert, where there's a record, where there's a lobbyist registry.
So I think it's sort of creepy that the head of the FBI was there.
Thanks for your letters.
I'll let you know when the CBC finally publishes their smear against me, if they ever do.
Between this morning and now, they haven't done anything, so we'll see.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.