Manny Montenegrino performs an ethical audit of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, exposing five major failures: profiting from charity/school speaking fees as an MP, pressuring Jody Wilson-Raybould in the SNC Lavalin scandal, a $200K private island granted for favors, appointing Judge Rudo with China ties to rule on his own conduct, and perjury ignored. Trudeau’s cronyism—like appointing pro-China David Johnson to investigate election interference—mirrors authoritarian practices while institutions like Elections Canada and the RCMP appear co-opted, undermining democracy. Their analysis reveals systemic bias and corruption, suggesting Trudeau’s power persists despite repeated ethical breaches. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, one of our fan favorites, people love Manny Montenegrino.
And I know why.
First of all, he's a character, great sense of humor, but he's got so much wisdom and experience.
I mean, the guy has been around politics, law, journalism, and he makes connections.
One of the signs of intelligence is finding patterns or relating things to each other.
And Manny comes up with ideas and linkages that I just don't think of until he mentions them, and then they're clear as day.
I really like him.
He's got a great sense of humor and he's just so smart.
So we're going to have a talk with him today.
An idea that, yeah, I've never heard of before, an ethical audit of Justin Trudeau.
Well, you know how that's going to go.
But first, let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast.
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All right, thanks.
here's my friend Manny.
Tonight, an ethical audit of Trudeau's liberal government.
It's April 7th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Honesty Over Bias00:11:40
You know, I don't follow everything that Warren Buffett says, but I heard once how he hires people and it stuck with me.
He said he hires for honesty, for intelligence, and for work ethic in that order.
He says honesty has to be the most important thing because you don't want a dishonest person, and you certainly don't want a clever, hardworking, dishonest person in your company.
Honesty and character, he said, was the most important.
And that's an interesting thing to hear from one of the world's richest men.
You would think cleverness and work ethic, but no.
At a certain point in time, the professional conduct, the trustworthiness is the most important asset that a worker would have, and certainly a CEO.
Because, of course, the example from the top, everyone looks to see how the boss does.
It's like children.
As I said the other day, they don't listen to what you say, they watch what you do.
And so I ask you, is Justin Trudeau's leadership does it pass the ethical test?
If we were to subject his government, especially in recent months, to an ethical audit, would he pass?
Would he be hired from Warren Buffett?
I don't know if he has the intelligence needed.
I certainly don't think he has the work ethic.
I think he is the least hardworking prime minister in decades.
But I think on the first category, ethics, he is sorely lacking.
Joining me now via Skype from Ottawa is the CEO of Think Sharp, also former lawyer to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and partner at a major national law firm.
I'm talking about our friend, Manny Montenegrino.
Great to see you again, Manny.
Welcome back.
It's nice to have you on the program.
Great to be with you, Ezra.
You know, Manny, people make a lot of lawyer jokes.
But in fact, being ethical and honest is a core requirement to be a lawyer.
And you can understand why lawyers handle a lot of money.
Lawyers handle secrets.
Lawyers have to stand up for clients, even when clients don't know the law.
You are really putting yourself in the hands of a lawyer when you hire them, especially for certain sensitive matters.
And so, although the public likes to joke about lawyers, they actually have a code of ethical conduct that is enforced, that is enforced constantly.
Lawyers are constantly being reviewed and audited and even prosecuted by their own law societies.
And so, I think the higher you get up the legal ladder, the more ethics counts.
And Justin Trudeau is not a lawyer, but everything he touches affects the law, affects these kinds of ethical matters I talked about-financial matters, privacy matters.
I think all the things I've just said apply to a prime minister and then some.
From your vantage point, how would you rate Justin Trudeau's ethical conduct in recent months?
Yeah, well, Ezra, I would say that our whole parliamentary system depends on ministerial responsibility.
And we can go back through the history of Canada, the tuna gate, the orange juice, $16 orange juice, the unethical purchase of an orange juice got that cabinet minister removed.
So, our parliamentary system, I would argue, only can only survive on ministerial ethical responsibility.
If that's lacking, our parliamentary system completely fails.
So, I would say the standard is much higher because it really depends on ethical procedures.
Now, if I look at Justin Trudeau, you could start from the day that he decided to charge charities.
While he's a member of parliament, paid to speak to children, he was a member of parliament, paid to speak to charities and paid to speak to schools, young high school kids.
He charged a fee.
I mean, that's unethical.
He did return some of the money at that time.
So, his unethical roots go right to the beginning.
But the major five elements, the SNC Lavalin, we've never seen in history the Attorney General, which is there to protect Canada from wrongdoings from members of Parliament or even the Prime Minister.
That Attorney General was removed.
Never in history.
I mean, in America, the removing of an Attorney General will get you impeached.
Trudeau removed the Attorney General because he wanted to cover up his obstruction of justice.
There's number one, an unethical conflict.
Number two, we all know that he was found guilty not once, but twice for unethical practice under the Conflict of Interest Act.
Now, there, he personally gained, in one instance, he got a beautiful private island.
And some say the cost of that island, if it were to be bought, it'd be about $200,000 for his family.
And the deal was give something to the owner of that island, and they got a grant.
And that was unethical and found guilty.
So there's three examples.
And then we get, and Trudeau gets away with it.
And when you get away with unethical behavior, you're emboldened and you do more.
I found that the Emergency Act was clearly not called for.
And Trudeau, to make sure that he stacked the odds in its favor, appoints Judge Rudo.
Judge Rudol has been involved in the Liberal Party since the 1970s, was part of John Turner's transition team, was appointed and was a major donator to the Liberal Party his whole life.
He should never have taken that appointment.
And Trudeau should never have appointed him.
But Trudeau knows that by appointing friends and family, he can get away with more unethical conduct.
And that, I mean, as you and I know as lawyers, there has to be no bias, but also no apprehension of bias.
That is, anyone that watches and say, sure, the person might be great, but I have a suspicion that he might be biased.
If there's even a hint of suspicion of bias or any apprehension of bias, the person cannot sit.
I mean, in my law career, a good friend of mine was a judge, and it came from a very, she came from a very good law firm.
She wouldn't hear a case from one of her ex-partners.
And it was a big law firm because she felt that people might think that she was biased hearing her old partner's case.
That's the level of app.
There was no bias.
There was no evidence of bias, but she didn't want to see anyone say, oh, but your decision, we feel there's an apprehension of bias.
Out it goes.
I mean, Judge Rudol, I watched his behavior.
Justin Trudeau committed perjury in that hearing.
He was asked directly, why did you disparage the unvaccinated?
He said, I never did.
And we know there's a video where he called them racist bigots and don't belong in our society.
It was pure perjury, nothing picked up by the judge.
And so whether you believe he was biased or not, you can absolutely be convinced there was an apprehension of bias.
And so whatever that decision, and I've read it, whatever that decision says, it reeks with bias because of the apprehension.
Then he's emboldened and he gets away with that.
I mean, the madness of it, CBC and all the legacy media were arguing, well, he's a wonderful judge.
And that's not the point.
The point is, does the public feel that there's a bias?
And if the public feels the bias, the question ends, he should be removed.
And that was, you don't argue whether he, and that also happened with the appointment of, this is amazing, appointing the CEO of the Trudeau Foundation to look into the China influencing of elections, who received hundreds, if not millions of dollars from China.
I mean, but he appointed the head of the Trudeau, the CEO of the Trudeau Foundation, to provide an opinion whether that was a raw runger.
Yeah, I mean, he had a Trudeau Foundation insider, Morris Rosenberg, I think was his name, write a report exonerating him.
And now he's appointed David Johnson, his lifetime, lifelong family friend, who is so pro-China, he sent all his kids to school in China.
Even after he was no longer governor general, he would still call the Chinese embassy to talk about who knows what.
Was it friends?
Was he working for them?
Was he working for someone to lobby them?
To choose, I mean, it's just incredible.
You know, there's a lot of sayings in law, a lot of legal maxims.
Sometimes they're even in Latin.
They're so ancient.
You know, one of them in English is justice must be done, but it also must be seen to be done.
Seen to be done.
Because that's how you get confidence in the justice system.
And there's language that is in so many laws and codes of conduct about bringing the administration of justice into disrepute.
That's the phrase, bringing the administration, because it's not just important that each case is handled fairly, but you must have public trust in the system.
The only way the system works is if people believe in it.
Another analogy would be the only way people believe that a game or a sport is fair.
It's not just that the referees were fair in that one case.
It's the entire sport is sporting.
And that's sports, but this is the government.
Manny, I think that public trust in our institutions has got to be at an all-time low.
I saw a story just recently in Blacklocks suggesting that trust in institutions, whether it's police or judges or the media or even schools, is at an all-time low.
And I think it's because people like Justin Trudeau are leveling down.
They're not increasing public standards, they're decreasing them.
And we're sort of in a race to the bottom.
Well, that's true, but I wouldn't even call it leveling down, Ezra.
I call it exploiting for your own benefit.
And the media sits silent, silent, while Trudeau has a history.
And the fifth one I was going to mention was appointing the interim ethics commissioner, who happens to be the sister-in-law of a cabinet minister who was found guilty of an ethics violation.
I mean, that's how brazen it is now.
That's how, like, you were caught five, six times.
You would think that you would say, okay, look, I can't bring the disrepute of Parliament any further lower.
And he does.
Elections Canada's Failings00:12:34
I mean, to answer your question, Ezra, with respect to our institutions, the RCMP, I don't want to get into it, but you know how much it's failed because to the common folk, the RCMP, at least that last commissioner, was there to protect Trudeau in every instance.
We found that in Nova Scotia.
We found that with the SNC Lavalin, where there was pure obstruction of justice and there was no case commenced.
The Attorney General left.
The Attorney General hinted.
There was even a decision, a 70-page decision from the Ethics Commissioner saying that there was obstruction of justice, and that wasn't even looked at the RCMP.
But one institution that really concerns me, and you look at it, and most institutions have been co-opted by Trudeau, is Elections Canada.
I mean, I was there when the Elections Canada was very vigorously against the Conservatives on the In-N-Out scandal.
That was a six-year trial on the Robocall, where there was not even one vote lost.
No evidence of someone losing a vote, but there were trials, and the Elections Canada proceeded against a volunteer who did a robocall but amounted to nothing.
We had Dean DeMastro go to jail for five months because he put $20,000 in his own election campaign.
And now we have China putting in millions, affecting many ridings.
The CISA saying effectively winning ridings on the China direction.
And Elections Canada hasn't even issued a statement saying we are going.
There are enough laws, Ezra, enough laws in the Criminal Code and the Elections Canada Act to proceed against China or any Liberal Party member who influenced an election improperly.
There's enough laws on the books.
We don't need to have an inquiry.
Elections Canada needs to stand up and say, under these laws, under the criminal code, we are prosecuting for the millions of dollars that went in for what they have done in this election, and they haven't.
They haven't said a word.
I mean, if you ask me, do I feel confident that the elections in Canada are at the highest standard?
I haven't heard from Elections Canada during this major thesis outbreak that there was an influence in many writings, money giving to people, money giving to top-up expenses, money given to the Trudeau Foundation.
I mean, and Elections Canada sat there, doesn't issue a tweet, or at least I haven't seen it, or it certainly hasn't been in the news.
They're the ones.
I don't want Trudeau protecting my elections.
I don't want him setting up another sham committee to look into his elections.
I want Elections Canada standing up.
I want RCMP standing up.
I want the people that are entrusted to protect Canadians to stand up, not there to protect the prime minister.
That's incredible.
You know what?
I never thought of it that way.
You're so right.
Dean Nell Mastro, a Conservative MP, literally was sent to prison for what's not much more than an accounting error.
I mean, obviously, it was more than that, but I don't know if you know this, Manny, but Elections Canada right now is prosecuting me for publishing my book, The Libranos, and not registering it with the government.
I was one of 24 authors to write a book about Justin Trudeau in the 2019 election.
I was the only one to be investigated, prosecuted, convicted, and fined.
We're appealing that.
We're still fighting in court.
Elections Canada is very, very busy going after my book, but too busy, apparently, to do a thing about this handong Chinese influence.
It's been the front page of the papers for weeks.
And you're right.
They've been quiet as mice.
They wouldn't.
I tell you, if it was a conservative who was accused of taking payments from Russia or the Russian embassy, it would be all the Elections Canada would be talking about.
They have been silent, and I don't think it's a coincidence.
Ezra, on the In and Out scandal, I was peripherally involved in that.
It was a six-year or five to six-year trial.
It went to the federal court.
It went to the federal court of appeal.
Four conservatives were criminally charged.
It was all about monies from the federal party down to the local writings.
It was approved at the federal court.
It was denied at the federal court of appeal.
It was simply, at the end, Ezra, it ended with a $52,000 fine.
Elections Canada spent $5 million and five years prosecuting the Conservative Party for a $52,000 fine.
That's what it was.
So, I mean, when you ask me, I mean, like, what institution is not working in favor of Justin Trudeau?
They get paid.
I mean, you have like the RCMP.
I mean, it's embarrassing that the commissioner during the mass murder in Nova Scotia was only concerned about making Trudeau look good on the gun laws, not about the people that were slain and how the RCMP failed completely, the people of Nova Scotia.
The only thing that the commissioner was worried about is, hey, we got an opportunity to make Trudeau look good.
I mean, you know, it's so when I look at the institutions, they're all working for Trudeau.
How do you have any confidence?
And therefore, Trudeau can lower his bar of ethics to a point.
I mean, the laughable point, the poor outgoing Commissioner, ethics commissioner, said we need to have a training exercise for the Liberal Party because too many of them are breaching the ethics commission of the code.
I mean, if you can't get any lower than that, the man that's running the ethics commission saying it's so bad.
Not all members of parliament, not the conservatives, not the MDP, but the Liberal Party should all take a refresher, what it is to be a normal human being.
You know what?
And I know there was that cabinet minister, Ng is her name, if I'm pronouncing it right.
And she kept giving contracts to her personal friends.
And she said, oh, no one told me it was wrong.
No one told me it was wrong.
She knew it was wrong.
She just knew that that's how it rolls with Trudeau.
And if Trudeau can do it, obviously she could do it.
And if Trudeau can get away with it, obviously she can get away with it.
Ezra Bevoda, cabinet minister, a wonderful woman who I know, lost her cabinet spot for drinking a $16 orange juice.
What she should have done is she should have had the $80 breakfast buffet and it would have been all right.
But she had the $16.
She just didn't want to eat that morning.
So for $16, the ethics and the accountability was so important to the media and so important to Trudeau.
He tweeted on that, saying, we must get rid of her because she's, you know, this is how high and moral they are.
But when it comes to them in power, they all circle.
The media circles the wagon to protect Trudeau.
Like, how do you appoint a long time?
I gave an analogy.
I did a lot of work for the Conservative Party.
And if it had been Stephen Harper appointing a judge to do the emergency act, first of all, he would never appoint me.
Stephen Harper has so much ethics.
He would not appoint a friend or a long-term serving conservative lawyer to the position.
And certainly, if he did try to appoint, I would not take it.
As a lawyer, I'd say, come on, I have to recuse myself.
Everybody knows that I've worked for the Conservative Party.
We don't want to bring everything down to disrepute.
So there were two tests and they wouldn't have not happened.
Under Trudeau, the two tests never happened.
And then the media circles and says, what a wonderful man, what a wonderful judge he is.
And you know what?
David Johnston, who has had a successful and prominent career, shame on him for taking the gig.
I mean, everyone praises him for a life of public service.
Okay.
Well, in his final hour, he made the wrong judgment call.
He cannot properly review Trudeau and China, given his connections to Trudeau and China, and he should know better.
Ezra, there was an interview, and I think you posted it, and I saw it from The Rebel, and it was where Trudeau was lavishing in his public speech, and David Johnson was behind him saying how wonderful of a friendship their family was.
And he was gloating.
And he's saying, you know, we skied together, our kids together, 30-year relationship.
And he's behind gloating.
I would be puking if I was behind hearing that from the prime minister saying, oh my God, everybody knows how close we are, and I'm still taking the job.
You know, it's not just David Johnson, but someone who really is a soulless sociopathic operator, if I may say so, is Gerald Butts.
And I say that based on his track record of the SNC Lavaland matter.
He is the one who basically had Jodi Wilson-Raybold fired because she would not drop the criminal prosecution of his friends at SNC Lavaland, a corruption trial.
And Gerald Butts was thrown out of the PMO over his disgrace.
He basically left for New York where he got a job with a lobby group called the Eurasia Group.
But Gerald Butts is being rehabilitated in the media party.
I see him on pundits' panels all the time.
Sure.
And he was recently at the state dinner for Trudeau and Biden in Ottawa.
How did the man who knifed in the back the first Indigenous justice minister in Canadian history, how did the man who orchestrated the SNC Lavalan matter become redeemed and rebuilt?
Other than, I mean, you can't just blame Trudeau for that.
Where the hell is the media party, as I call it?
How can Gerald Butts be polite company?
Because at the end of it all, the media wants what Trudeau is doing.
And I forgot, you now reminded me of now the sixth or seventh institutions that the Canadians depend on.
We know the RCNP, how it behaved under the commissioner, the past commissioner, Brenda Lucky, in favor of Trudeau.
We've talked about Elections Canada being silent on an elections issue.
Can you imagine that?
For the first time, there was a poll.
I think about 37 Canadians, 37% of Canadians, do not have faith in our elections.
We haven't heard from Elections Canada saying, we're going to shore it up.
So there's another institution.
But the public service, we forgot Kevin Lynch, for the first time in history, as the clerk of the Privy Council had to leave because of a bias or an apprehension of bias in favor of Trudeau.
The public service is supposed to be independent.
So if I poke everywhere, if I, in Israel, we could do a two-hour show on this, but every institution that's important, we already know the universities are in, but every major, if I took the five top institutions that are there to protect Canadians from all politicians, all five are beholden to Justin Trudeau.
How could you, how could you?
And we see it when he's so brazen that he appoints the last three appointments and the last appointment, the ethics commissioner, is the sister-in-law of how is she going to do her job if Trudeau or her brother-in-law gets in trouble again?
And by the way, John Lee LeBlanc and Seamus O'Regan, these are all old crowds.
And Gerald Butts, these are all old cronies of Trudeau.
Trudeau's Crony Appointments00:05:02
They were part of his wedding party.
Like, right.
He has put his hand-picked, lifelong friends in place around him.
Some of them have some competence.
Some of them clearly don't.
Their only value is their loyalty to him.
And you know, I was thinking about it.
There are some places in the world where shame is still part of public life.
I mean, let me give you an example from 40 years ago, but it was still incredible when it happened.
Remember when the Argentine government seized the Falkland Islands, those were British islands way at the southern tip of South America.
And, you know, very small population, very close to Argentina.
And then the Brits sent this Armada, an aircraft carrier, all the way down and retook it.
It was quite a dramatic thing happened about 40 years ago.
If I remember, the British defense minister resigned.
He said, it's on me.
I didn't see it coming.
I should have known.
The only thing for me to do now is to resign.
And that happens from time to time in healthy democracies, but it requires a certain amount of character on the politician in question.
Well, Japanese MEs, I mean, go ahead.
Sorry.
You're now going to the beginning of our discussion, and that is our Canadian system, parliamentary system, depends on ministerial responsibility.
So that minister did something wrong, and he resigned.
I am old enough to see many ministers resign for very small, inappropriate behaviors, usually ethical in nature or conflict in nature, or failure in nature.
So without ministerial responsibility or conflict of interest and all that, our system is no better than Russia or Z.
I ask you, replace Justin Trudeau with Putin and Z.
And then if I told you Putin had his six cronies from his wedding as part of all these institutions doing something wrong and directing the government, you'd say, yeah, well, of course, that's Russia.
I mean, he's got his buddies, his closest friends protecting him.
And the media doesn't do anything in Russia because it's owned by the Russian government.
Yeah, of course you'd expect that.
Of course you'd expect to see that with Z in China.
Z's got his best friends, his brother-in-law and his wedding party all running in the country.
Well, of course, that's China.
This is Canada.
We don't have that.
We have accountability.
Well, no, we don't.
We are no better than Russia, no better than China.
And we see the evidence.
I mean, the blood is dripping from everyone's hands when the ethics commissioner is related to one of the cabinet ministers, when the China influence.
I mean, we've never seen this in Canada.
You know, Trump went through two-year Russian investigation influencing trial where there is no evidence and it was impeachable.
Even if there was no evidence, he was impeached.
In Canada, we have actual evidence of China interfering and everyone's saying, well, yeah, well, that's okay.
They were interfering for the liberals.
Had they interfered for the conservatives, people would be in jail.
Yeah.
You know, I was thinking about this.
I was talking to some Americans about Justin Trudeau and his dad, Pierre Trudeau.
And I added it up.
Justin Trudeau has been in office for about eight years.
And his dad was in office for about, I don't know, if he was first elected in 68, and then there was a bit of a Joe Clark moment, but then he went all the way to 1984.
So between the two of them, the Trudeau's have been the prime minister of this country for about a quarter of a century.
Canada is officially 156 years old.
So 25 years of that has been under the Trudeau's.
And I think it changes a country.
Obviously, there's more to Canada besides politicians.
There's more to Canada besides a prime minister.
There's a lot of other forces in our life.
But I think in terms of the public life of this country, the arrogant authoritarianism of that Trudeau family has made a mark on this country.
I think it's made us less free.
I think it's made us less democratic.
I think it's tilted us away from our natural allies in the world towards our natural rivals or even our enemies, whether it's communist China, communist Cuba.
I really think that you can't have a quarter of century of authoritarian style, authoritarian ideology leadership without corroding the system.
Like you've talked about elections, Canada, you've talked about the Ethics Commissioner, talked about the RCMP Commissioner.
You talked about just how cabinet ministers operate.
A fish rots from the head down.
And we have had a rotten fish leading this country for 25 years.
Canadians Under Threat00:07:31
Yeah, no, and it's so true.
I mean, you know, there was, I forget what it is, a security group, which includes the United States, UK, and Australia.
They went on without Canada.
Yeah.
I guess, you know, so when's the first time that Canada has been part of this joint committee with the rest of the top common law countries?
So Commonwealth countries.
So yeah, we're moving that way.
The recent article is the United States is very concerned about our close connection with China.
So yeah, that's what's happened.
And Canadians have let it happen.
Listen, I mean, I came to this country when it was when all those wonderful values that were fought in two wars and, you know, the concept of freedom, freedom of speech, the charter, the Bill of Rights that now became the Charter of Rights.
And these were things that drew us closer to a country that repelled authoritative.
This is a country that said no one politician should be above Canadians.
Well, we saw this guy use the Emergency Act.
There wasn't, I live in Ottawa.
There was noise.
The noise lasted for a week.
Then the noise ended.
There wasn't one broken window.
You look at what happens in the United States with, look what's happening in France.
There are fires.
Millions are on the street.
Arson, fires, property damage, human damage.
There's no emergency act placed on these citizens.
In Canada, there wasn't one assault charge.
There wasn't one arson charge.
And the commissioner found that it was okay.
Actually, if you read the, it's amazing.
If you read the decision from a lawyer's point of view, Judge Rudol basically said, yeah, there's a lot of reasonable doubt that they shouldn't have used it, but I'm saying it's okay.
Can you imagine?
Imagine hearing any, and this is the standard for the Emergency Act has to be the highest beyond reasonable doubt.
I mean, the standard for a criminal conviction is reasonable doubt.
So if you found it's beyond any reasonable doubt, boom, he's convicted.
To use, to strip away Canadians' individual rights protected under the charter, the standard has to be higher.
He says, oh, there's no way that, you know, it should have happened, but I think it's okay.
Well, you can imagine a judge saying, I find there's a lot of reasonable doubt in this case.
I find that, but however, he's guilty of murder.
I mean, that would never happen in the real world.
But it happens when you, when I see the apprehension of bias, I say, oh, I can see why that happened.
He agrees with me in law that there should be an emergency act, but his political side said, I got to protect Trudeau.
That's how I read the decision.
He agreed with me in law, but I'm a politician.
I'm a political favor guy.
That's my apprehension of bias.
That's the only way I can square that decision, because if you read the decision, he's basically saying it could not have happened, but it happened and it's okay.
Yeah.
Well, in the UK, they'd call that a stitch-up.
A stitch-up.
It's an inside job.
Well, let me ask you, because at a certain point, too many institutions are broken.
The media being an important one, I mean, he's colonized the media with his subsidies and grants.
And I really think it's taken the fire out of them because they're not just taking money, they're constantly lobbying for more money.
The Canadian Association of Journalists, which used to care about journalism, almost exclusively, besides talking about woke things that have nothing to do with journalism, almost exclusively talks about getting more subsidies from Trudeau.
They've been completely defanged.
They've been tamed and trained.
And you can't turn every journalist in this country into a beggar from Trudeau without having some subconscious effect on the journalists that they're going to pull their punches, that they're not going to, they can't beg on Monday, but then criticize Trudeau on Tuesday.
So exactly.
I'm worried, Manny, that between the courts and the media and the other institutions in civil society, that Justin Trudeau actually might squeak through another victory.
I like Pierre Polyev.
I think he's a clear thinker, a clear talker.
He's younger than Trudeau.
He's smarter than Trudeau.
He's tougher than past conservative leaders.
But I am worried that if you corrode the entire system for long enough, you can slouch to another win.
I mean, I think it would be wrong to bet against Trudeau.
I'm hopeful for Pierre Polyev, but I'm not counting out Trudeau.
He's just simply corrupted the system too much.
Yeah, I think I agree.
But in addition to the financial, you know, I mean, Ezra, the most important, you know, I'm a lawyer.
I would say the justice system is the most important system in a country, but I really do believe it's a media.
I do believe with a robust, independent media, you have a great country.
And we've had that for a long time.
But in the last 10 years, and I'm going to add another flavor, it's not just that Trudeau was smart enough to buy the media.
I mean, CBC, I don't know what those hundreds of thousands of people or how many people to CBC do, but they certainly do a lot to protect Trudeau.
But the media, it's something different.
It's not only the money, Ezra.
Social media has.
The first time I was on Twitter, I was shocked to see the editor of the Ottawa Citizen make certain posts.
And it was, to me, very biased in favor of the liberals.
And I was shocked because what I saw was the unveiling of the bias that they normally held behind that we didn't know.
Social media.
So here's what's really happened, Ezra.
Yes, they bought, Trudeau bought the media.
That's easy.
That's easy to say.
But more importantly, social media did two things.
It exposes the bias of people.
You saw journalists, you know, and I remember once I wrote when I was on Twitter, I said, hey, that's pretty biased on one side.
And you got to see the bias.
So social media allowed the bias to come out.
And number two, it solidified it and made it open and apparent.
And it's one team versus the other.
So what's happened now is not only are the media bought, but they're on a team.
And it's team liberal.
And they know they're on the team and they want their team to win, even if it means unethical practices, conflict, through conflict of interest charges.
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter.
Our team has to win.
And so they'll work for their team.
So the bad thing about social media is it allowed what I would call the hidden latent bias of the media to surface and to solidify and to be part of an organized team to win.
Great Catch Up!00:00:25
Well, Manny, it's always great to catch up with you.
You are the place where law, politics, and journalism combine.
And so you have such interesting insights on things.