Ezra Levant critiques fact-checkers’ suppression of a Fort Denison meme, alleging Pentagon-backed bias and Facebook partnerships to silence dissent. CSIS now prioritizes Chinese CCP interference over climate or food security threats, yet Trudeau’s appointments allegedly politicize its leadership. Operation Dragonlord’s findings and AUKUS exclusion suggest Canada’s alignment with China risks undermining Western security. Meanwhile, powerlifter April Hutchinson fights flawed transgender policies, calling for biological fairness after being labeled for "hate speech" by her federation—sparking global support but media silence. Levant’s Rebel News faces financial struggles while legally backing truckers, rejecting fabricated murder claims and conscription debates. The episode reveals systemic pressures on free speech and sports integrity under progressive governance. [Automatically generated summary]
You've probably seen it of a little naval fort in Sydney Harper, Australia.
A photo taken 130 years ago and a photo taken now and showing the same sea level.
That is the most hated photo on the internet in the eyes of fact-checkers.
I'll show you why they hate that photo so much and what they're trying to do to cover it up.
It's so weird.
And then I'm going to pivot somehow from that to the latest China revelations.
I do make a connection.
You'll bear with me as I show it to you.
I think it's a good show today.
We also have a great guest.
Let me invite you to see the video version.
I want you to see this fort, this naval force.
It's called Fort Denison.
The photo is so powerful, you can see why the fact-checkers hate it.
To see it, go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe, eight bucks a month, get the video version of the show.
And we need the dough because that eight bucks a month might not be a lot to you, but it's a lot to us.
That's how we pay our bills.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, maybe CSIS can put aside its important global warming work to focus on Chinese spies for a bit.
It's March 20th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Hey, I want to talk to you about China's dictatorship undermining our democracy.
Just so many different parts of the democratic establishment, but look at this first.
I wonder if you've ever seen this meme on Facebook or Twitter.
That's Fort Dennison, which is in Sydney Harbor in Australia.
False Climate Claims00:15:25
There are three pictures over 130 years suggesting just a few inches of sea level rise in more than 100 years.
Here's another one.
There's a lot of versions of this meme.
Here's another shot.
It's pretty clear, and I find it convincing.
It's surprisingly hard to find this meme if you search for it, actually.
I went to Google, which was probably my first mistake, and the first 10 items are actually rebuttals to the meme.
You can't find the meme, but the first 10 things you see are, it's false, it's false.
Well, let me read what's supposedly false before you tell me it's false.
Can I make up my own mind?
Let me click on some of the links.
This is from the Australian Associated Press.
AAP fact-check, trusted, accurate, and impartial.
Yeah, if you have to tell me that, I'm pretty sure it's not true.
Here's what they wrote in there: fact-check.
Fort Dennison picks no indicator of sea level rise.
Hey, guys, don't believe your lying eyes.
Sea level is no indication of sea level.
You have to understand that.
Surely you believe in science, right?
Here's the Independent, which doesn't really live up to its name, does it?
Sydney sea level image spread by climate change deniers, debunked.
It is not possible to gauge sea level rise simply by comparing two images of a location side by side.
Experts said, Oh, is that what the experts said?
Okay, well, I better stop doing that then.
Here's the Associated Press.
Photos of water at Sydney Harbor Fort do not refute sea level rise.
Now, refute is sort of a matter of opinion, actually.
But AP is doing a fact-check saying it do not believe in that, people.
That is wrong to believe that.
Here's Reuters.
They're the worst.
And it's not possible to gauge sea level rise simply by comparing two images of a location side by side.
Experts told Reuters, despite claims being made online.
And here's Snopes, the original left-wing fact checkers.
As we have previously reported, these types of oversimplified memes are meant to discredit science.
They're meant for that?
Are you a mind reader?
Can you tell me what was in the mind of the people and what they're meant to do?
And isn't science a process?
It's not a point of view or an ideology or a person, doesn't it?
Isn't science meant to be challenged all the time and it's always improving?
Here's PolitiFact.
You get my point here.
No, two photos don't reveal sea levels, don't prove climate change is a hoax.
And then they say, if your time is short, water's edge photographs don't show changes in sea level over time.
Global sea levels are rising and climate change is the primary reason.
They don't show what you think they show, but just trust us, okay?
Just trust us because we're called PolitiFact.
And this is what is a little bit dark about this.
The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and information on its news feed.
Read more about our partnership with Facebook.
They'll tell you how to think and they'll tell you what to think.
Here's USA Today.
Boy, are they concerned about this photo?
I mean, I think this photo must be quite powerful if they're so terrified of it.
But the claim is false.
The pictures of the meme don't demonstrate a lack of sea level rise over the claimed period of time.
The waterline at the harbor fluctuates daily due to changing tides and the photos don't include any information about the tidal states at the time the photos are captured.
So you don't know that they're false is what you're saying.
Your theory is that the first photo might have been misleading because of tides or whatever or that there were different tide phases.
But they don't know that.
They're the ones cooking up conspiracies.
They're the ones with the unproven theories.
Really weird.
But this is what is served up also positively, if you Google that.
It's on kids' news.
Digital pictures of warmer worlds show water reaching landmarks.
That's right-winger Rupert Murdoch and his news corp propagandizing fear to children.
So this is kosher.
This will be in the first 10 results.
Oh my God, the Sydney harbor is going to be completely flooded.
Coasts everywhere will be flooded.
That is scientifically valid, for sure.
And that won't be fact-checked.
We've learned the fact-checkers are funded by the Pentagon, which I think is really creepy.
And the Secretary of State, basically America's Foreign Ministry.
That's really weird that the Pentagon, which is supposed to be fighting bad guys in other countries, is fighting ideas in American and Canadian elections.
It's really weird in Canada here, too.
Recent Twitter files written by Matt Taibbi demonstrate this.
We know that at Rebel News, we were fact-checked by the U.S. Department of Navy, by military contractors at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
It's so weird.
And the only way I can explain that, I don't think anyone from Rebel News has ever even been to Arkansas, is it was probably just a quid pro quo done for Canada.
Trudeau probably didn't want to be seen getting Canadian spies to spy on us.
So he probably said to America, can you spy on Rebel News?
And we'll spy on some Americans and we'll do each other a favor and not break our own laws that way.
Oh, and here's, speaking of spies, here's CSIS, Canada's Security and Intelligence Service.
Story in the CBC, of course, climate change is posing a serious threat to Canada and BC in particular.
intelligence service says.
Significant parts of the province could be lost to rising sea levels according to CSIS.
Okay, so you sent out your spies and this is what they spied.
You got some secret sources, some secret documents.
Canada Spy Agency says climate change is threatening the nation's prosperity and security and has identified British Columbia as a region of particular concern.
A newly released analysis by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CESIS, that was prepared in April 2021 and only recently disclosed to the Canadian press spells out several concerns presented by global warming.
They include looming threats to water and food security, Arctic sovereignty and coastal security, the latter of which could greatly impact British Columbians.
According to the report, rising sea levels could cause irretrievable loss of infrastructure and even entire communities with the potential to destroy significant parts of the westernmost province.
So that photo of the fort in port in the Sydney port, that was disinformation.
But this insane fear-mongering that entire communities will be swallowed up, that's just good spycraft.
And by the way, I don't think food is at risk because of global warming.
The warmer the temperature, the better crops grow.
I think that it's because of carbon taxes or Trudeau's new scheme of nitrogen taxes on farmers.
And in Canada, the price of food is, I don't know, double that in the United States when you're talking about milk and butter and cheese and poultry and eggs because of our cartels.
If you actually cared about food security, you would get rid of these marketing boards and cut the price of those staples in half.
And I will believe any of this is a threat when celebrities and politicians stop buying homes on the sea, like Barack Obama's gorgeous pad in Hawaii in Al Gore, or when Trudeau stops being Canada's single largest CO2 emitter from all his private jetting.
That same CSIS that was terrified of the truckers is telling us they're terrified of global warming.
So we know what they've been busy doing instead of countering Chinese spies.
They're worried about the truckers.
They're worried about global warming.
And by the way, of all the places in the world that would benefit from global warming, Canada is the best.
Even the UN itself says that.
I mean, it is cold here.
And I don't know if you've been to the north.
I've been to Innovik.
I've been to Yellowknife, White Horse.
I've been to Tuck Tayuktuk on the Arctic Ocean.
90% of our country is hard to live in.
It's so cold.
There is no agriculture in the north because the permafrost of the soil literally never unfreezes.
It was so warm a thousand years ago that there were grapes grown in Newfoundland.
The Vikings came over.
They called it Vinland.
If you're ever in Newfoundland, I encourage you to visit Lanso Meadows, where the Vikings Viking community was found.
It was like the Caribbean back then.
Imagine how nice that was.
As Patrick Moore reminds us, all life loves warmth.
Most of the huge cities in the world are in the tropics for a reason.
Most plant and animal life is in the tropics for a reason.
It's the most abundant, the most diverse there, too.
More people die from cold than die from heat.
There's a reason why, other than Moscow and Edmonton, you don't have million-person cities in the far north.
People don't do well when it's cold year-round and there's no food to eat and it's just hard.
Yeah, Canada could do well under global warming.
I wish it was happening more than, what, a degree a century or whatever the pace is.
So yeah, CISA is pretty useless.
Now, I'm not quite done because I just wanted to tell you those stories, but apparently, CISIS has changed direction.
And they know which way the wind is blowing.
The greatest threat to Canada is no longer global warming or truckers.
It's actually China again, and I'm glad.
I'm glad they've decided to pay attention to actually spy threats.
I believe China is a threat, but I think it's so obvious.
But for some reason, CESIS has kept pretty quiet as mice about it ever since Trudeau was elected.
Think of CESIS like you think of the RCMP, utterly compromised and undermined by Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau installed Brenda Lucky at the RCMP to protect him.
Not to enforce the law, but to protect him from having the law enforce against him.
David Vigno at the CESIS, same thing, was installed by Trudeau to protect him.
This photo shows you everything you need to know.
Photo on the state broadcaster.
Look, he's Trudeau's man at a CSIS.
But the good news appears to be that there are still some individual spies at CSAS who are worried about, you know, hostile countries, not truckers or global warming.
Imagine a spy agency taking people and resources off the China beat and putting them on, saying, hey, read the Greenpeace website and come back with a listicle of the top 10 scary things about global warming.
It's so embarrassing that grown-ups would do that.
Hey, maybe they should hire Greta as a CESIS agent.
Let me read this story.
Foreign interference is the greatest strategic threat facing Canada's national security, CSIS says.
This is a story in the CBC, so you know it's true.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is calling foreign interference activities by the Chinese government the, quote, greatest strategic threat to national security.
In a statement provided in French to CBC Radio Canada on Friday, a CSIS spokesperson said that this threat comes not from the Chinese population, but from the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, which is deploying a strategy aimed at geopolitical gains on economic, technological, political, and military fronts.
Quote, to do so, it uses all the state powers at its disposal to carry out activities that directly threaten the national security and sovereignty of the country, said the unnamed spokesperson.
Yeah, well, no one said and no one thought that the threat to Canada was from ordinary Chinese citizens.
It's obviously the basic dictatorship that's the threat, and the basic dictatorship is actually the only part that Trudeau says he deeply admires.
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green as fast as we need to start investing in solar.
I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harfer must dream about of having a dictatorship that he could do everything he wanted.
So yeah, thanks, Officer Obvious of CSIS, but I guess he's afraid of being called racist.
Now, CSIS is not the only spy agency that is worried about China infiltrating Canada.
The U.S. deep state has its problems too, but not enough to bury their concerns about China.
Look at this story also in the CBC.
It's almost like they're paying attention now.
U.S. ran a secret probe into China's operations in Canada, new book alleges.
The United States ran a secret probe into national security threats posed by Chinese overseas operations that drew alarming conclusions about Canada, alleges a new book co-authored by a former RCMP and military intelligence official.
The book says the project codenamed Operation Dragonlord led to an unnerving takeaway that Beijing's activities in Canada represented a security threat to the United States.
Wow.
And did you see this just a few days ago?
Did you read about this?
Did you see this in the Globe Mail or the CBC?
The AUKUS Alliance, AU, K-U-S, Australia, UK, and United States.
There used to be something called Canzuk, and there was all these different acronyms.
Have you heard of the five I's?
That's Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Britain.
Those were like the super friends.
There's NATO, which had a ton of countries, but the inside circle was the five eyes.
Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the UK.
That's gone.
It's not gone.
But the Ku Klux kids have set up their own club.
They call it AUKUS.
It's only got three countries.
Australia, U.S., and U.K. Here's Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister of the UK, tweeting about it.
Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau have taken both countries out of their American orbit and put us in a Chinese orbit.
You know, I'm a little bit tired of the racism card being played by Trudeau.
It's all he has.
Oh, he's into the feminism card and the transphobia card.
But the liberals aren't tired of it yet.
Here's Gerald Butts.
He keeps making the same Chinese food tweet.
Here he is two years ago.
He said, we're getting close to the point where Bob Fife or Steve Chase at the Global Mail could see someone having dim sum and turn it into a Globe and Mail front page.
Ha ha ha.
Yeah.
Here he is just trying that line out again this year.
Pretty soon the press will be auditing Uber Eats records for excessive Chinese food orders.
How much Golden Palace is too much Golden Palace?
Yeah, Gerald Butts keeps making Chinese food jokes, but you're the racist one.
Chinese Canadians Under Surveillance00:03:26
But of course, the greatest victims of Chinese dictators and their infiltration in Canada are Chinese Canadians.
And the greatest victims of Chinese dictators in the world are Chinese people themselves.
Mao murdered more Chinese people than Hitler killed.
Estimates are up to 85 million people killed by Mao.
They're Chinese people.
Look at this story in the CBC.
Alleged meddling by China's government goes deeper than elections.
Hong Kong pro-democracy group in Canada.
And here's the point.
The people in Canada being bullied and victimized are Chinese Canadians.
Sorry, Gerald Butts.
Sorry, your racism card doesn't work.
Sherry Wong says Chinese poorest Canadians deal with surveillance, intimidation from Chinese government.
And here's the story, quoting Sherry Wong, executive director of the Alliance of Canada, Hong Kong.
Let me read what she says.
Wong, whose organization describes itself as a pro-democracy group that seeks to empower Chinese Hong Kong community groups to take political action, says foreign interference extends outside of elections.
Quote, we have seen a lot of different types of interference into Canadian society, Wong said.
I think the most obvious one would be surveillance and intimidation of dissidents and diaspora members.
We often live in a culture of fear, worrying that if we anger Beijing, then our families back home would be threatened.
She added, diaspora members are worried that if they voice their concerns and their job promotions, their businesses, their social relationships would be at risk as well.
Wong says those concerns are also common for Chinese people born in Canada.
It's getting bad, isn't it?
But you know what?
I'm still betting on Trudeau.
I mean, why would he change?
Why would he confess?
Why would he admit doing anything?
Who's going to make him?
The Supreme Court?
They haven't even heard a single lockdown case yet.
They're too busy.
Is the justice minister going to hold him to account?
He already got rid of Jody Wilson Raybold because she said no.
Now he's got a yes man named David LeMetty.
Who's going to stop him?
Brenda Lucky of the RCMP, David Wigno of CSIS.
He's more worried about global warming.
Who's the media going to stop him?
I admire what Bob Fife and Steve Chase are doing these days.
But how many, as Stalin said, how many divisions does the Pope have?
I mean, the media has influence, but no power.
Trudeau has already told you that is all he respects.
Raw power, the basic dictatorship of China.
I am impressed with some of the reporting on this issue, but so what?
It sells newspapers.
I don't know, maybe it scares some liberal backbenchers, but Jagmeet Singh is fully committed to propping up Trudeau.
And congrats to that one CSIS agent who's becoming a real whistleblower.
I bet he will be ferreted out and punished.
Oh, not by the CSIS or the RCMP, but by Chinese intelligence.
They're probably better.
Show me where in eight years Trudeau has ever been held to account.
He'll brazen this out like he always does.
Do you doubt it?
Stay with us for more.
If you know anything about hockey, amateur hockey in Canada, many parents do, you know that in Canada there are girls who play on boys' teams.
Transgender Athletes' Challenges00:15:18
but that only lasts for a certain period of time until the players get to a certain age, after which point in time, the physical differences of these athletes after puberty become too pronounced, and the girls have their own league.
There's nothing wrong about it.
It's, in fact, right to keep the sportsmanship alive.
And I think that same sexual difference, the difference between the sexes, is pronounced, especially in certain sports.
In some sports, I'm not sure how big the difference is, but I remember a few months ago when the British singer, commentator, pundit, and amateur athlete declared that for one day he identified as a woman, and then he went ahead and broke every British weightlifting record for women.
And then he said, I'm not a woman anymore.
I'm a bloke again, making the point that although he wouldn't be a top competitor amongst men, he could be the strongest woman in the UK just by declaring him to be that.
I think that powerlifting is one of the sports where the sex difference is probably the most pronounced, at least at the elite level.
And so it is the least sportsmanlike to have transgender male-to-female athletes competing against biological female competitors.
That's my point of view.
But let's talk to someone who is actually a competitive powerlifter.
We're joined now via Skype from London, Ontario, by April Hutchinson, who is with the Canadian Powerlifting Union.
What a pleasure to meet you, April.
Thanks for taking the time to come on the show.
Thank you very much, Ezra.
Tell me a little bit about powerlifting.
Is there any difference between powerlifting and weightlifting?
Is it the same thing?
What would a powerlifting contest be like?
So the difference between weightlifting, which is actually in the Olympics, powerlifting consists of three lifts: the bench press, the squat, and the deadlift.
Basically, you take the, so you have three attempts at each lift during a competition, and whatever your best lift in all those three lifts gets totaled together for an overall sum.
And that's basically which will give you a first place, second, or your placing within the competition.
Now, I can imagine that performance-enhancing drugs are screened because that, especially in powerlifting and weightlifting, there is a culture of people who are juiced.
And then there's the natty, the natural culture.
And I suppose both of them, if everyone's on the same terms, they can both be competitive, but you have to have a level playing field.
Is the Canadian Powerlifting Union do they screen for performance enhancing drugs?
Yeah, so my federation is a tested federation.
There are federations that you can enter, for example, the Canadian Powerlifting League, which they have non-tested leagues.
But specifically, the Canadian Powerlifting Union is a tested federation.
So that means when I go to compete, like I went to Worlds last year and I got drug tested after my competition, and there's also out-of-meat testing.
So very random.
You're put into an athletic pool in which they can show up at your workplace, your gym, kind of like surprise element of getting tested, right?
So, and I think that makes sense because, again, if someone was taking performance-enhancing drugs and someone was not, it would ruin the sportsmanship of it.
Like you say, there are leagues where people can do what they like, and everyone knows that.
I would imagine that the natural athletes would be in the same league because it would just be too unfair.
I'm just guessing this.
I'm not a power lifter myself.
And the reason I ask about this is because it seems to me the whole idea of having a natural league without performance enhancements is you're trying to keep it fair.
And when a man says, I identify as a woman, and a man has a different muscle structure, bone structure, weight, every single thing about him is different and has been his whole life.
Maybe he decided to identify as a woman a few weeks or months ago.
I would imagine that that degree of physical unfairness would dwarf anything that someone on a performance enhancing drug would have.
It just strikes me as the exact same unfairness that you're changing the terms.
Everyone else is a natural athlete on the same footing.
And then you have a man saying, Oh, I'm a girl for today.
And there's no way he's not going to dominate.
Yeah, exactly.
It's hypocritical.
It's yeah, so that's the thing with my union, the Canadian Powerlifting Union, right now.
I'm not sure if you read up on it, but there's basically no transgender policy.
Like there is, but the only thing they have to do to compete is to show up at a competition with their passport that says what sex they are, either male or female.
So whatever, you know, so this transgender athlete in my category basically has a passport that states that she is a female.
So, I mean, and we all know how easily that can be obtained to switch over your passport.
It's a couple doctor's notes and psychological assessments.
And that's about it.
So that's the policy today.
Now, I did have a phone call with the International Powerlifting Federation.
They do have a more extensive transgender policy, which is basically monitoring of testosterone levels.
Now, the monitoring, I believe, would have to be over a matter of a four-year period.
It does, it is a little bit more difficult for a trans-identifying athlete to compete.
But again, like I asked the doctors today, the chief medical doctor, I said, well, what about the muscle mass, the lung capacity, even just the grip strength, right?
The hands, like the list goes on and on.
So specifically, the powerlifter who I competed against or was going to compete against transitioned at 22 years old.
So full-blown puberty, a full-grown biological male.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm just trying to think of Mike Tyson or some enormous man who had a certain size and a bone and muscle.
Sure, okay, he could transition, but there's no way that's not going to be an inherent genetic advantage over a natural woman.
We were talking to Linda Blade, Coach Blade, about this a few weeks ago.
And what brought it to our attention was a court case where the judge said, Oh, well, there are disadvantages to being a male-to-female trans athlete as well, including, and none of his reasons made sense to me other than for politics.
Well, there's the risk of suicide and depression and the inability to find a gym that can accommodate you.
And I thought, those may well all be things, by the way, but they have nothing to do with the essential competition, which is on the sport itself.
All of those were political accoutrements, not the fairness of the sport.
So let me ask you: has this you said you started talking about a competitor?
You said you were going to compete against, you're using the pronoun her.
Did that happen?
And if not, why not?
What happened?
You said you were going to compete against someone.
How did that end?
So at nationals, the nationals were held in February this year, this past year in British Columbia.
So I competed in my category between 40 and 50.
So there's another category.
We do have categories for people called masters categories.
I'm 40, turning 47.
So I lifted between 40 and 50 year olds.
I also signed up for the open category, which is ages 20 up to age 39, in which the trans-identifying athlete was competing in.
I did not show up for that competition.
I simply did not give them any warning.
I just didn't show up as my way to protest and to boycott.
I do know that Linda Blade and ICFS were there to protest.
20 protesters did show up to silently protest.
But yeah, that's all I could think about doing right at that time is to not show up, just to show that I definitely did not agree with that.
And how did the trans athlete do in that competition?
The athletes placed a third, so bronze medal.
This athlete also is number two in Canada for the open class, also takes the Alberta bench record and deadlift record.
You know what?
I mean, I started by mentioning Zuby, who as a joke said, I'm now going to break every record.
And I think it's only a matter of time before men who are uncompetitive against men just say, well, I can get attention and kudos and I can win.
And this is so politically acceptable and normalized now.
And so it's not just coming in third or second.
Like, why would how long would it be before first, second, and third are all trans athletes?
Like, as the case of Zuby shows, you could be ranked, you know, a thousand on the men's list.
You could be ranked 10,000, but you would be, and this is not a disparagement of women.
It's just the difference between the sexes.
You could be competitive amongst the women.
How long before there are no women left in women powerlifting?
Because you've got a dozen former blokes just seeing who is the, you know, that old joke, the tallest, short guy, who's the strongest of the weak men who've moved over to the Women's League.
Like, it can't be long before other grifters say, well, this is how I'm going to come in for second or third also.
I think we're watching the sunset of women's sports.
It's very true.
And this is the thing that's very disheartening: I actually had a conference call with the IPF, the Powerlifting Federation president this morning with three chief medical doctors.
And he actually said to me, Well, you know, there's only one transgender in your in your union, April.
It's not like there's a team of eight.
So it was almost like this, let's just brush it off until like there's a whole team.
And I said to him, like, well, is that what we need?
Like, are we going to like, are we going to wait for that to happen?
Because if we don't set precedents now, if we don't do something now, in 20 years or maybe even 10 years, there will no, there will be no female sports.
And I thought that was a very weak, weak approach.
And just going back on that note that you said about the judge and they ruled about, you know, the high-risk suicide with transgenders, I actually wrote a letter to my union expressing to them: you know, I'm a recovering alcoholic as well.
I got sober before COVID.
Powerlifting literally helped save my life and helped me with my sobriety.
Alcoholism is actually a medical condition.
So I feel like they're putting away, like putting aside, say, my mental health issues, all the other women's mental health issues, because we all lift for a reason.
There actually is high suicide rates in general with athletes because we are overachievers.
You know, if we don't make podium, who knows?
Someone might feel suicidal, right?
We all have our personal reasons.
And I just feel like they've just told us all to be quiet, like women's rights don't matter.
We've just been told to be quiet.
I've been reprimanded for speaking out against this.
I've been silenced.
I've been actually warned by my federation: be quiet.
Stop posting stuff on social media.
And that judge's rationale is basically forcing you and the other female competitors to be part of this athlete's therapy.
And of course, we don't know why this trans so you are not there.
You're not a person in your own right.
You have a bit part.
You're a supporting actress in the transgender athlete show, a reality show about his life that you have, your part is to be therapy for him.
I think this whole thing is a kind of therapy.
Now, you say your protest has been social media and other media, and at the moment, you decline to compete.
I wonder why more women athletes don't do that.
Is it because they're not thinking politically?
They're not used to conflict.
They've been working so hard for this.
They don't want to give up on the big day.
Like, why is it that so many women are going along with this?
Even in the case of Leah Thomas, the swimming transgender athlete, changing in a changing room when he's buck naked.
I'm saying he, because he's still got his twig and berries.
He's standing naked in the change room, observing the women in the change room.
They're still going along with this.
There are athletic clubs on campuses where the athletes are, you know, two to a room and they're assigning women to travel with male transgender to male to female transgender athletes.
I can't believe what female athletes are putting up with.
And I, is it out of fear?
Is it out of conformity?
Is it out of, are they afraid of being called bigots?
Why are so few female?
Because I would imagine you could shut this down if you had a general strike at a tournament.
If every woman simply stood there and folded their arms and said, we're not going to compete against this unfairness.
You would break the back of it, but you need a union.
Like it's called the powerlifting union, but you need a union of members in the union.
Yeah.
And well, that's the thing.
It's so powerlifting is an individual sport.
So it's not like we're a team, like a rugby team, where we can all just not show up.
It's obviously to everyone's personal choice.
But there's a bunch of different underlying things here.
There's the fact that some people, it doesn't affect them.
So they're like, well, if it doesn't affect me and my lifting, why should I even get involved?
We also have, I mean, there are a fair amount of powerlifters in the union that are LGBT or supporters, which is fine.
And I think that's great.
And I'm all for inclusiveness.
But when it comes down to sports, I think they're getting it mixed up.
I think they're, because obviously they want to be included, right?
But I mean, we're talking about science here.
We're talking about male and female.
We're talking about bodies together, biology.
We're not talking about, I don't think gender should even have been brought into this in the first place.
But, and I think that's, again, for me, like I told you, I posted some stuff on my social media.
I literally tweeted, save women's sports, those three words.
Save Women's Sports00:06:23
My federation took a screenshot of that and said basically that that is hate speech.
Jeez, hate speech.
Now, standing up for women is hate speech.
I would never have thunk it.
Now, I hear that you were made an appearance on the largest cable news talk show in America, Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News.
I've had the pleasure of appearing on it.
Whenever I go on that show, my phone blows up afterwards because so many people see it.
I mean, when you, when three, four, five million people watch a show, you can really tell.
Here's a clip of your appearance on that show.
Take a look.
April, thank you.
And I'm sorry to laugh.
This is actually a very sad story.
And I'm just wondering how you feel about it.
Well, thank you for having me, Tucker.
How are we feeling?
The women of powerlifting are outraged.
We're angry.
We're hurt.
We're offended.
We're basically every emotion except for happy.
I just don't, I know you're not supposed to criticize trans anybody, but here's a guy who's horning into your sport and wrecking it.
Like, I don't know why he has to be a hero.
That's appalling.
Who would do something like that?
What's this guy's problem?
Do you think?
You know what?
I don't even know if it's so much the person, right?
It's the policy.
So at the end of the day, the policy is allowing him to compete.
April, what was it like being on that show?
Did other athletes reach out to you with their stories?
Did you have offers of help?
And here's a question for you: Have you been interviewed by CBC, CTV, Global News, or other Canadian media?
So, yeah, it's true.
My phone basically blew up after Tucker.
And honestly, I think I did a little video.
I took a screenshot of all the people that messaged me.
I mean, from all around, especially America, but just like a crazy amount of support.
I've had lifters from around the world.
I've had actually people, I had a trans-identifying male actually reach out to me and say, I am so sorry for what is happening to your sport.
People of the LGBT community, I mean, just everyone.
I've actually never had maybe one negative message about since I've started this kind of platform fighting for fairness in women's sports.
It's all been very, very positive.
And again, going back to the other thing, I mean, I think the people I've had a lot of inboxes, right?
But I know a lot of people feel the same way as myself, but they just, they're too afraid to speak up, basically, right?
But no, it's been very supportive, very, very much so.
And how about on the media side?
I think that Tucker takes a real interest in Canada, which I think is good because sometimes it takes a foreigner to care about something before Canadians do.
It's sort of funny that way.
Have you been interviewed by CBC, CTV, Global, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, any of the mainstream media?
Have they talked to you?
Well, I don't see CBC interviewing me, probably because they know we're right.
But, you know, in fairness to them, have they?
Because it's a very newsy subject.
You have a lot of credibility and standing.
You are an athlete.
You're taking a tolerant view towards the other side.
You've said you are tolerant of LGBTQ and you're not hostile.
You're just standing up for women's sports.
You would seem to be a perfect CBC interviewee.
And you're saying they've just never reached out.
They've never talked to you.
Even though you've gone on the biggest American show, they're just not talking to you.
Yeah, I have not had any requests.
I have done True North, which is great.
But no, I've actually said that I'm more than willing to go on any media platform to share my side and to stand up for women's rights.
I'm all for it.
Again, I'm very respectful.
I'm a very compassionate person.
I just want our message to be heard.
And, you know, yeah, I mean, I'm more than willing to speak to any other, any other media, I guess.
I'm sure you are, but they don't want to hear your point of view.
Is there a place where people can get in touch with you or follow you or hear your thoughts on things?
Do you have a website or even a Facebook page?
Yeah, I have, I mean, my Twitter, I just started a couple months ago since I actually started this whole working with state women's sports.
So it's literally, I think it's under Lee underscore Christina.
And then I also have my Instagram, which is basically just my name, April Hutchinson.
Great.
Well, we'll put links to those underneath this video so folks can follow along because it sounds like you're doing competing, which is very exciting, but you're also standing up for women's rights and for the whole idea of sport itself.
Well, listen, what a pleasure to talk with you.
And I'm glad to hear True North interviewed you.
They're good people too.
But like us, they're independent.
They're small compared to the big guys.
And so I'm not surprised they talked with you.
I'm glad they did.
They're great people over there.
But, you know, I find it disappointing that the big media have not talked to you.
And I don't think they will because I don't think they are truly open-minded.
I don't think they care about women's sports.
I think in the pecking order, they would care about women's sports against white straight men.
But when it comes to the hierarchy of political correctness, I'm afraid you're not in top spot anymore.
And what a shame.
April, I've enjoyed talking with you and congratulations on going on Tucker.
And if more news happens, if you spot things or something good or bad happens, don't be shy about reaching out.
We'd love to have you on again.
Yeah, for sure.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Nice to meet you.
There she is, April Hutchinson, a competitor in the Canadian Powerlifting Union.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Lynn says, I, like many others, thought you promised to help the coups protesters with their justice problem.
What is happening to these four in jail shouldn't be happening in Canada, and especially in Alberta.
Conspiracy to Commit Murder00:05:11
The rebel needs to be putting pressure on Smith and Chandro to get this taken care of because they are in the remand system and they're not even receiving the rights they would get in jail.
One of them had to cut out the toes of his shoes because they didn't give him shoes to fit his size 15 feet.
They're having trouble with getting lawyers.
I think the rebel could put on pressure by just reporting on the situation.
I'm glad you raised that with me.
Rebel News and also the Democracy Fund between the two entities are defending approximately 30 truckers.
The most prominent case are three truckers in Lethbridge, including a town councilor in one of the nearby towns there.
And I've had the pleasure of meeting all three men and I've attended at court in Lethbridge.
Just today, literally today, the Democracy Fund is defending another trucker protester who was accused of swerving his car dangerously towards a policeman.
I'm pretty sure that's a lie.
I think it was a lie propagated by Jason Kenney to try and demonize the truckers as violent.
So he's being represented by the Democracy Fund.
There's a number of others who are being represented either by Rebel or the Democracy Fund.
You are referring to four truckers who have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
And the question is, is that something contemplated by Rebel's offer to help people in court?
We were offering to help people who were civilly disobedient.
But the charges of conspiracy to commit murder feel outside that scope.
Now, I have, through a middle person, middleman, offered to meet with the families to talk to learn more about the case and to review disclosure.
Because if it is just a pack of lies designed to demonize the men, and if it's so obviously just a bunch of lies, then that I think would change the calculus.
But I remember when I personally got on the phone to the men in that saloon on the phone, I said, we will defend you against charges for your protest.
But that did not include conspiracy to commit murder.
There's just no way I would have that my agreement to help the men charged with the peaceful protest would cover conspiracy to commit murder.
I'm just sorry.
I'm just not going to, unless, the one asterisk being, if it's such a clear fake frame-up just designed to demonize these men.
And I've asked for more information in that regard.
I have not received it.
But if I receive information that convinces me that this conspiracy to commit murder is just fake, the charges are fake, it's all trumped up, then I certainly would consider defending them.
But let me close as I open, which is between Rebel News and the Democracy Fund, the two entities are defending over 30 truckers.
And in fact, we are in court today.
And Rebel News is there to report it.
So I'm open to more information, but I think I might have told you we also turned down a biker gang that asked for financial help.
Sorry, we are not providing financial help to hire a lawyer for a biker game.
I'm just not going to do it.
That's not where our donors had in mind.
It's certainly not what I had in mind.
I'm not demonizing these men.
I'm saying I need more information before I can confirm in my mind that it is something that we promise to defend.
God forbid, may it never happen, and it didn't happen.
But if someone was shot and killed, I'm not going to defend a guy from murder.
That's just outside the scope.
And I'm not equating the two, but I'm giving you an extreme example of something that would never have been contemplated and would never have been done.
Richard says, I would like you to ask a question to Pierre Polyev, a question that the MSM chooses not to ask.
It can be a deciding factor for some.
Here's my question.
Mr. Polyev, if you win the next election, are you going to conscript Canadians to help Ukrainians fight the war against the Russians?
It's a very important question.
Maxime Bernier doesn't favor it.
What is Pierre's opinion?
I don't know his opinion on that, but I would be shocked.
I would say that it's less than a one in a thousand chance he would say yes.
To bring in conscription.
Now, maybe some Canadian soldiers would be deployed to train Ukrainian soldiers in the use of, say, the leopard tank.
But that's different from conscription.
You use the word conscript, which is to use the force of law to compel people to join the military, to go and fight and possibly die in Ukraine.
That would never happen.
Trudeau himself would never do that.
And believe me, if I had a sit-down interview with Pier Polyev, which I don't know if I will get, I would not make that one of my top 10 questions.
I might ask him about Ukraine in general, but I'm not going to ask about conscription because it's so unlikely to happen.
Stephen says, hey, Ezra, why do you not have a journalist in the maritime provinces?
Budget Constraints00:01:13
All we have is the MSM, which I obviously don't trust.
Keep up the good work.
It's a good question, and I have a good answer.
Budget reasons.
If I had my way, I'd have someone in the Atlantic.
If I had my way, I'd have someone in the North.
I'd have someone in the prairies, not just Alberta, but Manitoba Skype.
We did have someone, but she had to withdraw for personal reasons.
Having Drea in Vancouver and having Alexa in Montreal has been a real benefit to our company, but it's a matter of budget.
We simply do not receive ad money from Facebook, or sorry, pardon me, from YouTube.
We do not receive government money from Trudeau and we don't want it.
There are many sources of income that are banned because of political correctness, so we have to live off crowdfunding.
And it's a miracle we're able to maintain a company of over 40 people.
I think we have 47 staff.
To be able to do that without ads and without government money is, frankly, unique in Canada.
I just don't think we have the budget to roll out a person in the Atlantic.
We have been out there to cover stories before.
And the Democracy Fund has helped a church in the lockdown.
So we have been out there, but you're right.
We don't have a full-timer, and I just don't think we can afford it.