Ezra Levant exposes how governments weaponize disinformation, from Canada’s GetCyberSafe redefining truth by consensus to Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell silencing critics of China’s Arctic interference—despite CSIS confirmation. Bill C-18’s $650M tech-to-media payouts and CBC’s partisan funding (now $1.4B annually) risk merging corporate and state control, stifling dissent like Rebel News while favoring Liberal narratives. Speculation ties Russia to Oak Ridge fires, East Palestine delays, and Nord Stream sabotage, warning of broader internet censorship threats under Trudeau’s "news license" system. The result? A democracy where the state dictates what citizens can question—undermining transparency and free speech. [Automatically generated summary]
A strange tale today about disinformation and what the heck is going on with all these industrial accidents.
Did you hear about the fire at the Manhattan Project Lab in Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory?
Did you hear about that fire?
Is that an accident?
Is that sabotage?
I've got some questions, and I'm going to try and put it in the context of government disinformation and misinformation.
That's today's show.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
$8 a month, you get the video version of this program, plus the satisfaction of knowing that you're helping to keep us strong because we don't take any money from the government.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, there really is an information war.
There really is a battle on for the control of your mind.
It's February 23rd, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious thug.
Hey, look at this tweet that I saw on Twitter from GetCyberSafe.
That's a Canadian government agency.
And here's what they say.
They say, if you are unsure if something you see online is true, check to see if other sources are reporting the same story.
If not, it may be disinformation.
Really?
So if everyone is not saying it, it may be disinformation.
That's not a test for disinformation.
That's a test for whether or not you're compliant.
You're part of groupthink.
If there's message control, whether everyone is saying it doesn't have a bearing on whether or not it's true.
That's a bizarre thing to say.
And it's a bizarre thing for the government of Canada to be paying to promote a definition of what you should or shouldn't believe and to be some sort of arbiter of what is true and what is not.
I want to show you another liberal emanation.
This is from a Canadian liberal MP named Jennifer O'Connell.
She's got vocal fry, which is very unbecoming in an MP.
And she says, speaking of disinformation and misinformation, she says the uncontroverted fact that China interfered in the last election, no one is denying it, and the uncontroversial fact that China is now placing listening devices in the Arctic, she says that if you even talk about these facts, you're a conspiracy theorist like a January 6th Trump extremist.
Here, take a look at this crackpot.
And this is the same Trump-type tactics to question election results moving forward.
But what I'm curious about was where were the conservatives after 2019?
Where were they in 2020, 2021?
And now only now they're raising it in 2023?
So speaking of misinformation and disinformation, it is a fact, according to CSIS, that China interfered in the last election.
I really don't think anyone is denying that.
And yet this liberal MP says, don't believe your lying eyes.
In fact, if you believe this fact is true, you are a crazy conspiracy theorist who is participating in disinformation.
Like I say, for the government to get in the business of telling us what is or isn't true is terrifying and dangerous.
But let me show you, of course, the new, I feel like this is relevant.
Pete Buttige, if I'm saying his name right, is the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, a portfolio that you might think is very important given the train drailment and explosion and other crises that unfolded in the town of East Palestine, Ohio.
And he didn't visit there until today, weeks after the explosion.
We sent a team, as you know, over a week ago.
Pete Buttigieg's Delayed Visit00:08:05
So an enterprising young journalist in Washington, D.C. happened to bump into Buttigej and his husband as they were walking home from some dinner or bar, I presume, and put in a very polite way questions to him about why he hasn't been to East Palestine, Ohio.
And would he get just very basic accountability questions?
There was nothing even close to a threat.
She was not blocking him.
You can tell she was in stature, a small person physically.
She was not rude in any way.
I'm just saying all these obvious things.
And take a look at the disdain and the dismissiveness with which she dealt with her.
And then the final moment is the most shocking.
Take a look.
Secretary, what do you have to say?
Hi, how are you?
Jenny's here with the Daily Color News Foundation.
What do you have to say to the folks in Ohio, East Palestine, who are suffering right now?
Well, I'd refer you to about a dozen interviews I've given today.
And if you'd like to arrange a conversation, be sure to reach out to our press office.
But I'll have to have that conversation with you.
Just walking in the middle of the page.
You don't have a message for them?
I do, and I shared it with the press many times today.
I'd refer you to those comments.
Would you mind sharing it with us?
No, I'm going to refer you to the comments that I made to the press because right now I'm taking some personal time and I'm walking down the street.
Are you going down there?
What's up?
Are you going down there at all?
Yeah, I am.
When are you going?
I'll share that when I'm ready.
Thank you.
Can I get a photo of you?
Yeah.
So, hey, this is my personal time.
How dare you?
How dare you ask me a question?
I mean, you'll just have to wait.
You'll just have to look at what I said elsewhere.
I owe you nothing.
And you know what?
I'm a little bit busy right now.
You know, I'm having a personal moment.
So you can wait.
And the people in East Palestine, Ohio, they've waited two weeks.
They can wait a little bit longer.
How imperious, but that last moment was the creepy moment where he said, I'm going to take a picture of you.
Why would he do that?
To remember the moment fondly.
Sometimes people ask for selfies with politicians the same way people used to get autographs of celebrities in the era before smartphones.
Anyone under 40 wouldn't know this.
But before smartphones, before everyone had a camera in their hand all the time, there was a tradition when you met a celebrity and if you had the courage to go up to them, what would you do?
You might say hello, but the thing you did in the 70s and 80s and 90s was you asked for their autograph.
Especially if you were a super fan and had, say, a photo of them, they would sign it.
They would sign anything, a diary, a piece of paper, the back of an envelope.
That was a thing.
That was a meme before the era of selfies.
So it might be normal for someone to want a selfie with Pete Buttigieg.
I would find that very odd.
But he asked for a photo of this young reporter, not because he was enamored with her, not because he was excited or impressed with her, but it's obvious why.
He wanted to do a workup on her.
Who was she?
He wanted to do a facial recognition scan of her and find out everything about her.
Now, he didn't need to do that because she posted the video first.
But what a creepy, creepy man who would not answer her most basic questions, who said, how dare you interrupt my private time.
This is the same cabinet minister who, as soon as he became elected, took months of paternity leave for his adopted surrogate baby.
I mean, he certainly is.
I don't know who's taking more vacation time, him or Joe Biden.
Absolutely creepy.
It's been weeks since the derailment and explosion in East Palestine.
When we sent our team down there, we were already a week late.
No one really cared about that town until Donald Trump went to visit.
The same time that Joe Biden went to Kiev, Ukraine, Donald Trump went to East Palestine, Ohio.
Here's a shot of that.
He was handing out bottled water and, of course, buying McDonald's for all the first responders.
Take a look.
How are you today?
Nice to meet you.
Hello, everybody.
That's a nice, beautiful looking group of people.
So I know this menu better than you do.
I probably know it better than anybody in here.
We're going to take care of the fire department.
Okay.
We're going to take care of the police department.
That's Trump at his best out of fancy places, out of Washington, out of his campaign offices, mingling with severely normal people.
That's the best Trump.
That's good Trump.
Well, Pete Buttigieg obviously felt sparked into action by that embarrassment.
And so he finally found the time to put aside everything less important and go to East Palestine where our friend Savannah Hernandez, a young reporter we've worked with before, including at Davos, Switzerland, she was there with her team, and she thought she would scrum Pete Buttigieg, who didn't have the excuse now of being in the middle of private time for a little bit of me time.
He was there on the scene, and part of his job, of course, is to talk to America.
And you typically do that through the media.
That's what the word media means.
It means middleman in between.
But he quickly and bravely ran away from the young lady.
And of course, the weirdness doesn't stop with Pete Buttigieg.
He left Savannah in the hands of his press secretary, who bizarrely said, I will talk to you, but only if you turn off your cameras.
Look at this weirdness.
Mayor Kate, why did it take you an entire two and a half weeks to actually get here to respond to East Palestine?
Will you apologize to the residents of this city for the slow response to the government's slow response?
Do you have any apologies?
Sure, sure, sure.
So can we ask why it took him almost three weeks to get here?
I'm sorry, I don't want to do this on camera.
What was his personal time off while there was a tragedy happening here?
And can we also ask you why he waited until President Donald Trump came here to actually make an appearance?
This is a very important question that people across America would like to know.
I'm happy to have a conversation with you.
I do not want to be on camera.
Well, please put your cameras away.
I'm sorry, we're on a public area, so we are allowed as press.
You guys, I would like you guys to turn your cameras off.
You're on the microphone.
Well, I'm on a camera.
I would like your cameras to be off, and then I'm happy to talk to you guys.
Well, if you're the press secretary of the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, don't you think you should be able to ask questions from the American public?
Absolutely.
I would like to do it without the camera on.
Can I ask why?
I think that is a little bit aggressive.
That's why it is.
Why is it aggressive?
On behalf of the American people, I'm just asking why he has not been here until Donald Trump.
He's asked him, she's asked several times for them to turn the cameras off, and they will not do it.
Okay, well, she's been able to walk away.
Would you like to go inside?
I do not.
I will walk this way.
Can I ask what the secretary is going to do with the picture of Jenny Kerr?
He took her the other day when he had to choose us.
You guys are watching LBC.
I'm happy to answer your questions.
I would like you guys to not have your cameras on.
I had my camera up a minute ago.
If I turn around with you, you all have your cameras on.
I can see them.
You guys.
Happy to have this conversation.
All right, y'all.
So, we are with the press secretary for Pete Butige, and right now we are being told that we are not supposed to be filming.
Again, we are here on behalf of the American public because we would like to have the conversation, and we would like to ask the question as to why, again, it took almost three weeks for Pete Budigej to be here on the ground.
He waited until Donald Trump came here to actually be here and speak to residents.
The people here have been quite tight-knit about when we can ask questions.
And again, we're here on behalf of the American public, and we wish we could be able to ask these questions, but for some reason, you know, we're not allowed.
Fire At The Manhattan Project00:06:00
That's crazy.
I like the cop there who said to Pete Buttigieg's press secretary: if you're uncomfortable, just walk away.
As in, I'm not going to arrest these journalists for asking you basic questions.
So, what's going on here?
I think these things are related in some ways.
The tweet by the government of Canada saying, If only one person says something, it's probably disinformation.
No, that person is actually the most interesting person.
I'm not saying they're necessarily right, but don't you think you should always just check what the other side is, especially on a controversy?
Imagine trying to teach citizens that facts and truth are determined by a vote, by the number of people who say something.
What an outrageous thing to say.
And then, of course, that liberal MP saying, no, no, no, if you ask questions, you're the crazy one.
And then, when two different reporters, young women both, I might add, ask Pete Buttigieg questions, he's dismissive to both of them.
What's going on there?
What's going on with government gaslighting and disinformation and running away from the press?
What's going on in Ohio, really?
Our team was there for a few days, but we weren't able to get to the bottom of it.
I don't think anyone's able to get to the bottom of it yet, and the government's not talking.
But I can't help but notice another strange story of a kind of, I don't know, industrial accident in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, does that name ring a bell at all?
Take a look at this video from the local ABC station there.
So, this is the mainstream media.
Officials say there was an emergency at the Y-12 National Security Complex this morning around 9 a.m. and we're told it was a fire involving uranium.
Right now, there's no off-site impact, and officials also say no injuries were reported.
And we also just learned that all employees have been accounted for.
We want to go out live to WATE's Fix on Your Side reporter Molly O'Brien.
She's out in Oak Ridge right now.
Molly, what can you tell us?
Yeah, Alexi, like you said, good news: there is no threat to the public, but what I can tell you is crews responded to a fire involving uranium in building 9212, which is actually on the west side of the complex.
When they crews were eventually, or excuse me, workers were eventually evacuated.
There were a couple hundred workers, and they put a shelter in place.
Now, what I can tell you is all employees have been accounted for.
No injuries were reported at this time.
And like I said, that fire involved Ukrainium.
The protocols to put out and fire involving uranium is different at this time, or is different right now.
We asked officials what that looks like.
Here's what they have to say.
That building does uranium processing for all of our uranium-based missions as the uranium center of excellence for the NNSA.
We process materials in support of nuclear navy mission as part of non-proliferation and as part of our classical NNSA mission.
So, there's a lot of different forms of material there.
Now, good news so far.
Those air monitors show no chemicals have been released, meaning there's no radioactivity.
Of course, officials will keep following up and monitoring this.
As of what caused the fire, that investigation is still ongoing.
We, of course, will keep you updated.
Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge, have you ever heard of that before?
You know, it's a fairly new city.
It was created by the U.S. military.
Oak Ridge is the home of the Manhattan Project.
You know what that is, right?
That was the crash course to build a nuclear bomb to win the Second World War.
It was an artificial town built by the military.
Here's a picture of it.
In 1943, they were building a reactor.
You know, Oak Ridge, then the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, you know, when you think nuclear weapons, you might think California, you might think Los Alamos, you might think Lawrence Livermore, but Tennessee was where it actually happened.
So much so that did you know that there's only two U.S. states that are memorialized by having an element on the periodic table named after them?
You know, there's Americium, there's Europium, there's Francium, Polonium, Germanium, but there's only two U.S. states, Californium and Tennessee, element number 117, named in large part because of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Whenever you think of the nuclear bomb, and I put it to you, it ended the war against Japan early and ended up saving probably a million lives.
Tennessee is a very important place in the world of nuclear research.
And you saw that story on ABC.
There is an industrial fire at the successor to the Manhattan Project.
Did you hear about that on the CBC yet?
I think that's news.
You know, when we sent our team down to Ohio, I said to them, look, just follow the facts wherever they lead, but just realize there are so many trains across the United States, and there's so much freight and so much heavy equipment and industrial goods to travel by train, which we would prefer.
We don't want that stuff going on our roads through our cities.
There are four derailments a day in the United States.
So this could just be some random accident that happened to be in a spectacular setting near a town, as opposed to in the middle of nowhere.
Russia's Theater of Sabotage00:09:03
So I said to our team, follow the facts wherever they lead, but don't jump to conclusions.
This could just be a random derailment.
It's a little bit harder to say that when the fire is at the Manhattan Project.
And I have one question for you.
And it is pure speculation.
It's not disinformation because I think you're still allowed to ask questions.
You know, I look at the war in Ukraine and I look at how the United States and the United Kingdom and other countries, including Canada, are getting involved in that war with Ukraine as the proxy.
Ukraine is the battleground, but it's really Russia on one side with China now its ally versus Ukraine, which is massively funded by the United States, the UK, and even Canada, and weaponry from the West.
It is a battleground between both sides.
But the theater of war is in Ukraine, and I pity the people of Ukraine who are paying the price for that with blood and their destroyed country.
And I saw some of that when I was in Davos at the Ukraine Pavilion at the World Economic Forum.
And although I'm hostile to the World Economic Forum and although I knew I was being managed and handled when I was in there, I could not help but be affected by the images of civilian casualties in Ukraine.
It's very touching.
And it makes me angry when armchair generals in the West are happy to fight to the last Ukrainian.
But Ukraine is the theater of war, isn't it?
But it is not only the theater of war.
Remember a few months ago when the mighty Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Europe was bombed underwater in a special operation?
That wasn't in Ukraine.
That was 1,000 kilometers away.
And you remember this incredible footage of a bomb exploding right under the Kerch Bridge, which is a mighty bridge built by Vladimir Putin to cement Crimea into Russia proper when they annexed it.
It's an enormously important strategic bridge, and the Nord Stream 2 is enormously important.
Both of those were outside the theater of war.
Both of those were clearly done by Western agents, whether it was America or Ukraine is not known.
By the way, here's Joe Biden threatening to end the Nord Stream if Russia entered Ukraine.
Take a look.
Let me answer the first question first.
If Germany, if Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.
We will bring an end to it.
But how will you do that?
Exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control.
We will, I promise you, we'll be able to do it.
I don't know about you, but that's as close to a confession as it comes.
Look, I'm not engaging in disinformation, but I'm asking a question, a question about strategic fires, explosions, derailments.
Are they statistically normal?
The other day, I don't know if you remember, in January, literally every single flight in the United States was canceled.
Do you remember that?
Here's the headline in the Globe and Mail.
All air travel across the U.S. thrown into chaos after computer outage.
Canadian airports hit with delays.
When I say every airline was canceled, I mean every.
Like, this was not just one airline or another.
This was a computer error.
Oh, just a glitch that affected every commercial flight in the United States.
And here's my point.
In an era of propaganda and state disinformation, in an era when you can't get a straight answer from your transport secretary, Pete Budijej, when you can't get a straight answer about Chinese interference in the Canadian election because you'll be called a conspiracy theorist,
is it a possibility that these industrial accidents, fires, derailments, explosions, computer glitches in the United States, is it possible?
I don't know if you remember the Rodgers outage in Canada a few months ago when every single Rogers phone just went down for hours.
Is that a glitch?
A little whoopsie?
Or is it just possible that as the West is taking the war to Russia, not in the theater of Ukraine anymore, but in the Nord Stream II pipeline and in the Kerch Bridge and threatening long-range weapons as Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the UK has done.
Is it possible that Russia, which is led by Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent who learned his ways during the Cold War, is it just possible, maybe, that these industrial accidents are not accidents, but rather sabotage, a tit for tat, an answer to the explosion of the Kerch Bridge or the detonation of the Nord Stream II?
I have no facts to support this.
I'm asking questions.
I think, though, that unlike the United States, who seems to leak and boast to the New York Times of all their battles against Russia, I think if Russia were to engage in sabotage in the West, it would probably not chat about it or boast about it in the New York Times, probably to avoid some retaliation and also because they're not looking for coverage in the New York Times.
I wonder if Vladimir Putin, the Cold War KGB agent, would ever engage in sabotage in the West in retaliation for our sabotage of him.
It reminds me, I don't know if you ever watched that movie, that TV show called The Americans.
It's very entertaining.
It was about a young man and woman from Russia who were taught perfect English, taught their American culture and history, and then were sent to live in the Washington suburbs as sleeper cells to have a family and join the PTA and have real jobs in the city, but secretly be Russian spies ready to be activated, but looking outwardly like an American mom and dad.
It was a great series, and it took you back to the 1980s.
It was called The Americans.
Now, I know that was a work of fiction, but I also know it's a fact that there were spies in the West, and they didn't all go away when the Cold War ended.
I think that Vladimir Putin has the means, the method, and the opportunity, the motivation, the method, and the opportunity to commit sabotage against the West.
He's a brutal man.
And I think he's up against people in the West who are just woke.
I showed you the young women of the Munich Security Conference.
Remember, I showed you all those Instagram photos of feminist foreign policy.
They're showing the guys how it's done.
Here's Santa Marin, the prime minister of Finland, just partying, partying, and not being embarrassed by it when she's asked, is this appropriate for a prime minister to do?
She says, yeah, I want to live my life.
I'm still a young woman.
Okay.
But do you think that these Western prime ministers and foreign ministers and defense ministers truly understand who they're fighting with?
In the case of the brutal Vladimir Putin, I don't know if these are attacks on the West or just random industrial accidents, but I don't think that party girl Santa Marin or that paternity leave Pete Buttigieg know or care.
Or if they did, I don't think they'd know what to do other than, I don't know, if it was Marin just get drunk and party, and if it was Mayor Pete, just, I don't know, accuse the train derailment or the nuclear fire of being racist.
Government Control Over Media00:15:04
Yeah, I don't think we know what we're getting into.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Well, as I've told you on a number of occasions, if you measure Justin Trudeau's interest in something by the number of bills he has introduced or proposed to introduce to Parliament, then the number one thing in his heart, more than Ukraine, more than carbon taxes, more than anything, certainly more than our economy or cost of living, is his desire to regulate the internet.
Bill C-11, Bill C-18, the bill formerly known as Bill C-36 and the yet introduced bill called the Online Harms Act, that's four pieces of legislation Justin Trudeau has proposed or is planning to introduce to regulate what you see and hear and say online.
He's obsessed with controlling it.
Some of you might have seen my email and my video over the Christmas break about how Bill C-11 allows Trudeau to adjust the algorithm in private companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, to force them to boost news sources that he likes and to de-boost those that he doesn't.
He calls it discoverability.
That is, he will determine what shows up when you type in news story or Justin Trudeau.
Type that into the internet right now, and you're subject to Google's algorithm.
And they might have some political views themselves.
They'll boost this or that.
But under C-11, they will be able to dictate what political stripe those companies show.
Well, that's C-11.
C-18 has some unintended consequences, or maybe they're intended consequences as well.
The idea there is to take money from these tech giants and spread it around.
Justin Trudeau's friends in the media joining us more now to talk more about it is our friend Spencer Fernando from spencerfernando.com.
Spencer, great to see you again.
It's hard to keep track of all these bills, C-11, C-18, but what you're focused on in your story today, and we'll put it on our screen here, is some Canadians already facing restricted access to online news due to Liberal Bill C-18.
The Liberal government was warned this could happen.
They ignored the warnings and pushed ahead with an ideological centralizing agenda.
Why don't you tell our viewers what's happening?
Yeah, well, so basically C-18 will make companies like Google, possibly Twitter, Facebook, pay for links.
And, you know, as you think about that, you're thinking, well, that kind of sounds like a stupid idea because if I post something on Twitter or, you know, it gets spread on Google, I'm benefiting.
It's my content and people are seeing it.
You know, I don't control Google.
I don't control Twitter.
And that's a platform I wouldn't have access to unless they provided it, right?
So the idea that they should be paying people to be able to post their links on there obviously makes no sense.
And so it's interesting.
It's something you see a lot from governments, especially centralizing governments, where they could never create a business.
They could never be innovative enough to create a Google or Twitter or anything like that.
But they somehow still feel entitled to control it and to decide what the company should do, what it's allowed to, how it's allowed to function, how it has to be run.
And so, what Google's kind of saying is: look, you know, you're saying that we either have to pay for links or, you know, we're not allowed to provide our service.
So, we're not going to provide our service.
You know, you can't make us provide a service to people in Canada.
It's an independent company.
They can choose to do that or not.
So, they're testing out, I think it's about 4% of the population is having restricted access to Canadian news on Google.
You know, I've seen some journalists saying that they went on to Google, they searched up certain news stories and just nothing came up.
And so, they had to go search elsewhere.
And that's because Google's testing out what they will probably roll out at a much bigger scale if the liberals go ahead with C18 as there's every indication they're going to.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you're in the same position that we are.
I mean, we live on the internet.
We don't have any other way of expression.
The internet is everything these days.
But how do you get people to look at your stuff?
Well, you hope to catch a wave.
You hope to go viral.
You hope that some big page links to your stuff on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, whatever.
And it's a happy day when that happens because people follow the link to your website and they maybe click on an ad or maybe buy something or at least get to know you, maybe subscribe.
It is a happy day for a publisher when someone links to you.
In fact, publishers typically pay for that in an ad.
The idea that Google or other big companies would pay Rebel News, would pay spencerfernando.com, would pay the CBC for the privilege of sending traffic to them is so opposite of the strategic concept of the internet.
The concept of the internet is that you can link to anyone.
You can follow the links.
You never know where you're going to wind up.
And you don't have to pay to click on a link.
This is Trudeau trying to charge Google for a link.
Let me quote from your story.
You have a really good point here.
You quote Professor Michael Geist, who is a liberal, by the way.
He's not a right-winger, but here's what he says about what's so crazy about charging Google to have a link to your site.
Let me just read this.
You were quoting Michael Geist.
This is the problem with C18 in a nutshell.
Pablo Rodriguez spokesman says they want compensation for use, but that's not what the bill says.
It mandates payments for facilitating access to news, including just links.
That's not compensable use.
And I understand what that means.
If someone were to take a Rebel news video and play it for their people and not give us any money, I'd say, hey, we did all the work.
You're stealing our work and giving it away for free.
I would want some compensation.
But if all Google did was say, give a link that people can come to my site, that's not something that they have to pay me for.
It's something I have to pay them for.
I just think that this is a really weird law.
And although I hate Google for a number of reasons, I'm on their side here.
Yeah, and it's not just this.
It's the trend of what the liberals are doing, you know, upping CBC's budget, you know, the $650 million media bailout, just older legislation, C11, obviously.
It's that they don't like the fact that they're losing control over the narrative on many different issues.
And they don't like the fact that they're not able to get it back easily, right?
Because, I mean, look, if you feel, if you're the liberals and you feel that the establishment media, you know, traditional outlets are turning against you, there's a lot of things you could do.
There's government regulations you can apply to them.
You know, there's money, as the liberals have already done, that you can give to them to make them more dependent.
It's far tougher to control every individual Canadian who can share their viewpoint on the internet, right?
So how do you, what do you do about that?
If you're a government that is upset that you're losing centralized control over certain issues, and one of the ways you do that, of course, is to either push services to compensate people, which what it really means is they want to direct even more money to establish a media outlets.
That's the whole idea.
And then if the liberals, I don't think they'll be too upset if Google actually stops showing as much Canadian news online, because that'll mean that they can just direct more people to try to follow establishing media.
Let's say they'd be glad to see a constrained number of places where Canadians can freely get news.
And so it's just the trend with them, right?
And so I think you see some liberal MPs who on certain other issues have been concerned about unintended, supposedly consequences of what Trudeau is doing.
And we'll see if people speak out about this one because it's just a drip, drip, drip, right?
You know, you never just wake up and say, oh, well, we lost all our freedoms.
Oh, we can't speak freely on the internet.
The internet's super restrictive in Canada.
It happens bit by bit by bit by bit, and people don't notice one change to the other.
And so I think the liberals hope that they're just going to get away with it by people, you know, just not noticing each individual change.
And that's why it's important to fight against it now, because at some point it will be too late.
I see it as all of those things, but I see it as another piece too.
Right now, about a third of the money in most Canadian media outlets comes from Trudeau himself through his bailouts, through his, through a number of, it varies from company to company.
But this allows Trudeau to access huge pots of money from Facebook, Google, YouTube, and add that to what he's going to gift to these same media companies.
But again, only qualified Canadian journalism organizations.
That's a term of art under the CRA, QCJO.
It's a kind of news license.
So I think what Trudeau wants to do is everything you just described there, limiting, restricting, regulating.
But he looks at big tech and he just sees dollar size.
He says, hey, I'm going to come up with this excuse.
They link to you.
They have to pay you.
I'm going to scoop up $100 million a year or whatever from Google and YouTube and Facebook.
And then I'm going to disperse it along with my money.
And soon big government and big tech will literally be a majority of the money that Canadian media get.
It'll only go to Trudeau qualified media companies.
So none of that money will ever come to Rebel News.
And he gets to promote and pump up his friends in the media.
And of course, it sounds like Google's against it.
I think Facebook actually agrees with all this, because if you're taking money from Facebook, are you going to be criticizing Facebook?
Probably not.
I think this is the merger between big media and big government, sort of like in the 90s when those tobacco companies did their master settlement agreement.
They said to all the states, if you stop suing us, we'll pay you a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next 30 years or whatever.
So they basically merged.
The government stopped suing tobacco and tobacco said, we'll give you an unlimited stream of funds.
I think that's what's going on here.
Trudeau just says, oh, there's a lot of money there.
Let me get it and spend it on my friends.
What do you think?
Do you think the money is really the root of things?
Yeah, that's a big part of it.
I think it's also, you know, the liberals are often very clueless about human nature, you know, when it comes to protecting Canada or building up the military.
But one way they do understand it is that if someone, if you pay somebody's bills, that person works for you, right?
So what they're doing is they're getting more and more of the media to be completely dependent on government money.
And they also, the media also knows, of course, that the conservatives are much less likely to give them that money, whereas the liberals are likely to give even more the longer they stay in power.
So you create an incentive for people within the media ecosystem to want the liberals to stay in power.
And that, of course, it's a feedback loop, right?
The more money the liberals give to the media, the more the media wants them to stay in power, which makes it easier for the liberals to stay in power and they give them more money.
And so that's a real obstacle in many ways for the conservatives, because of course, if they gave in to all of this, then their own base would be upset with them and rightfully so.
So they're going to have to really face down not just a media that already has, just often due to the types of people on average who get into the media in the first place, they're going to face not just that ideological opposition, but also the real financial self-interest of much of the press who are going to say, look, if we want to keep getting all this government money, well, we better make sure Polyev loses and Trudeau wins.
So it's going to be very interesting.
And it's funny to see all these Canadians who are so concerned, supposedly, about the conservatives, you know, being right-wing and super right-wing.
And you see them saying fascist all over the place.
But the merger of corporate media and the government, that's generally considered pretty fascist or Trudeau maybe sees it more as communist.
That's more the direction he leans in.
But either way, we built Western societies on the foundation of freedom of speech, freedom of the press.
The press is supposed to be antagonistic towards the government.
The government's extremely powerful, even in a relatively free country.
And so without people who can hold it accountable and speak out against it, people are in real danger of having their rights taken away.
So to see the press in Canada increasingly co-opted by the government is something that not just people on the right should be concerned about, but people across the whole political spectrum, because no party is going to stay in power forever.
And if you build a huge apparatus that lets the government control the media to a great extent, that's going to be used against people who you agree with and people who you disagree with.
And at some point, it's going to hit you.
Yeah, well, right now they certainly feel like they control all the levers and it really feels like a closed shop for their side.
Spencer Fernando, great to see you again.
Thanks very much for your time.
Folks, you can see Spencer's content at spencerfernando.com opinion and insight.
You can visit him there.
Thank you for your time.
Stay with us.
more head.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Igg Steve says, yes, there is a very small group spreading information and causing hardship and deaths.
They're called the Trudeau government.
Well, look, I think that everyone has their side of the story.
You know, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.
One man's revolutionary is another man's mutineer.
I mean, look at the different sides of the U.S. American Revolution.
Yeah, I was listening to an obscure song.
You know, forgive my terrible musical taste.
I love those sea shanties, even though I grew up very far away from the sea.
And there's this amazing song called John Paul Jones is a pirate.
No loyalty does he possess.
That's the song.
John Paul Jones is a hero in the United States.
He's the father of their Navy.
There's statues of him.
And this British song, John Paul Jones is a pirate.
No loyalty does he possess.
Like he's a traitor, a disloyal pirate, which is true.
Well, they're both true, depending on whose side you're on.
I'm obviously desperately glad that the United States broke free and became the country that it is today.
But as a Canadian, I also understand that was a mutiny against the British Empire, of which Canada was then a part.
So which side was the disinformation side there?
Well, I think it's up to everyone to decide for themselves.
There's certain things that I think are true no matter who disputes them.
But I don't think the arbiter of truth can ever be the government.
In fact, the whole point of a democracy is that there are two points of view.
Partisanship For Trudeau Never Higher00:01:42
That's why we have an institution called the official opposition.
And every once in a while, there ought to be an opportunity to throw an entire group of people out.
And that's why we have an election with a campaign.
In fact, if you look at the root of the word campaign, it comes from a military analogy.
We're fighting these desperate battles, but instead of using guns, we're using ballots, not bullets.
My show today was in large part about the government saying what you can and can't know, can and can't talk about, and can and can't ask about.
Ron Ross says, reveals that the deep state is part of the lies.
I think your letter there is in reaction to Bruce Party's interview with us, but frankly, Ron, that letter could be in reaction to half the stories we talk about.
Isn't that the truth?
I'm very curious about that fire at the Manhattan Project, aren't you?
Is that an accident?
Could be.
Obviously, it could be.
But I'm guessing that the Russians, ever since Vladimir Putin was just a young KGB agent in St. Petersburg, I'm guessing that the Russians have had their eyes on that Oak Ridge National Laboratory for decades.
On my interview with Franco Terrazano, Delta Mail says, less viewers, more staffers.
You're talking about the CBC.
You're exactly right.
They've never been bigger at the CBC.
Their budget has never been higher.
And yet their viewership as a percentage of Canadians has never been lower.
And their partisanship for Trudeau has never been more intense.
They're the worst.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.