Ezra Levant exposes leaked Toronto Police Service training videos from the Gender Diversity Trans Inclusion Project (GDTIP), mandating officers to use preferred pronouns and avoid misgendering, framed as "hateful" under policies influenced by cases like Boyd Kodak’s 2015 complaint. He ties this to Canada’s C-18 (Online News Act) and C-36, warning these laws—backed by figures like Conrad von Finkensteinen—threaten internet freedom, media independence, and could trigger U.S. trade disputes while rewarding state-aligned outlets like CBC. The episode suggests a pattern of institutional overreach, from policing to journalism, reshaping public discourse under regulatory pressure. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, folks, we have just obtained video evidence showing that the Toronto Police must treat transgendered people in a preferential fashion or else.
It's Friday, April 21, 2023.
I'm David Menzies, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
In recent years, we've witnessed so many entities going woke from academic institutions and major corporations to Hollywood studios and even professional sports leagues.
This commitment to wokeism is especially true when it comes to one particular file, namely advocating for transgender rights.
Sure, that chick might look like Herman Munster in a mini skirt, but he or she or they, well, they've got rights, you see.
Oh, not equal rights, mind you, but extra special rights.
Indeed, advocating for transgenderism seems to be the hip and fashionable thing to do these days, be it taking in a drag queen story time down at the public library or accommodating a high school shop teacher who likes to dress as a grotesque caricature of a woman while teaching woodworking 101.
But to quote Bachman Turner Overdrive circa 1974.
Yep, folks, you ain't seen nothing yet.
In fact, you were never meant to see what I am about to present.
That's because this material was never meant to be seen by the general public, but rather only the rank and file of the Toronto Police Service.
This material was leaked to Rebel News by a whistleblowing Toronto police officer, a whistleblower who shall remain anonymous.
And so it is we have in our possession online training modules from the newly woke Toronto Police Service.
And the message is simple.
When it comes to that whole, you know, serve and protect shtick, a different set of law enforcement rules must be put into play when it comes to the transgender community.
Yes, in the quest to affirm and appease the Spirit Unicorn Demographic, all Toronto police staffers are now obligated to watch an education initiative called, and I'm not making this up, the Gender Diversity Trans Inclusion Project, or GDTIP for short.
Hmm, GDTIP.
Wasn't that a trim level for the Pontiac Bonneville back in the day?
But I digress.
Much like Disney World, where it is now verboten for staff to say, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the cops are being forced to go woke too.
Now, in fairness, the only difference is that all this woeful wokeness is being forced upon the Toronto Police Service by that non-elected and unaccountable kangaroo court, that is the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
And our whistleblower tells us that many of the rank and file simply cannot believe what they've had to endure with this training module.
Little wonder, as you are about to see for yourself, many of the videos essentially involve members of the Toronto trans community.
Many of whom seem to be homeless and or struggling with mental health issues, lecturing cops on the unique ways they must police transgender people.
And like everything else pertaining to the trans sanity file these days, the prevailing theme boils down to three specific points.
One, if it's trans, it's good, and if it's good, it's trans.
Two, transgender people should be treated in a special way because, well, these are special people.
And three, if anyone has a problem with the aforementioned two points, then you are insensitive at best and a hateful transphobe at worst.
The content is truly jaw-dropping, folks.
I can only imagine what goes through the heads of Toronto's finest when they are forced to sit down and watch this rainbow-hued propaganda while being forbidden to laugh out loud.
But don't take my word for it.
I've spent a few hours going through this agonizing and at times nonsensical module so that you don't have to.
Yep, you're welcome.
So without further ado, let's get to it.
The first spokesman, or I mean, sport spokeswoman, no, that's not quite right either.
You see, this person identifies as a gender.
That's A-G-E-N-D-E-R.
That means neither male or female, or a trans man or a trans woman.
Yep, agender is a new one for me too, folks.
So I looked it up.
Here's the definition: Agender people see themselves as neither a man nor a woman or both.
They're gender neutral and often are described as gender-free or genderless.
Thanks for the clarity, Merriam-Webster.
Much obliged.
Make those messages clear!
Make those messages clear!
Oh, yeah, it's clear, all right.
By the way, Gotham City has nothing on Hogtown these days, folks, thanks to the disgraceful stewardship of the dishonorable ex-Mayor John Torrey.
Anyway, let's get more clarity from Mr./slash/Mrs. Agender, his/slash/herself.
Being a gender in Toronto is very pleasant experience most of the time.
I feel like there's a very vibrant, gender-diverse community.
I feel like I have a lot of peers that I can relate to.
I feel like I feel relatively safe.
If I were approached by law enforcement in Toronto, I want to be acknowledged using my preferred pronouns.
I want there to be awareness that I won't necessarily move in a way that might be expected of someone who presents like me.
And my behaviors and the way I carry myself just might be a bit different than what is anticipated.
Fascinating.
You know, it'd be most helpful if those pronouns were presented in that teaching module.
Is the speaker a he, him, or a she, her, or a they, them, or a per-pers, or a V-Ver or a Z-ZI.
And as Ron Popal used to say on those cheesy roncoats, but wait, there's more.
I feel like I've had some really negative and sort of neutral experiences in my interactions with Toronto police.
In the circumstances where I found it to be a bad experience, I was handled really physically violently, which is really dehumanizing.
Okay, this person was handled really physically and violently, but was she her z-zervy perhaps, you know, breaking the law at the time?
What led to this negative encounter with police?
It's never explained.
And yes, I know we are supposed to think of trans people as being soft and cuddly and full of love and giggles, but is this truly always the case?
Remember this guy?
I mean, gal?
I mean, something?
Excuse me, it's ma'am.
It is ma'am.
I can call the police if you'd like me to.
You need to settle down.
You need to settle down and mind your business.
Okay.
Ma'am.
Once again, ma'am.
I said both of you.
No, you said sir.
Once again, it's ma'am.
I actually said both of you guys.
Right beforehand, you fucking said sir.
Sir?
Motherfucker, take it outside.
If you want to call me sir again, I will show you a fucking sir.
I apologize.
Motherfucker!
I apologize now.
Yeah, the clerk was obviously at fault for calling someone who is obviously a biological male sir.
And par for the course, when a trans person has their feelings hurt, well, they tend to self-identify as violent thugs.
Okay, so we leapfrog from high energy Miss America to a message from none other than Toronto Police Chief James Reimer.
Poor Chief Reimer, he displays all the enthusiasm of a man marching to the gallows as he explains what led to this torturous transgender training, something that has little to do with law enforcement and everything to do with wokeness and political correctness and virtue signaling.
Welcome to the Diversity and Trans Inclusion module, an essential part of the Toronto Police Service's GDTI inclusion initiative.
The training you are about to undergo reflects our commitment to strengthening our relationship with the trans and gender diverse communities in Toronto and to making TPS a safe and inclusive workplace for our trans and non-binary employees.
In 2015, Boyd Kodak, a trans man, filed a human rights complaint after being discriminated against by both TPS and the Ministry of Community, Safety and Correctional Services.
Following his arrest, Mr. Kodak was placed in the woman's sections of both police and correctional facilities, had his gender-affirming articles confiscated.
Oh my god in heaven, she had her gender-affirming articles confiscated.
In other words, they took away her dildo.
Sorry, but when one is being incarcerated, that's standard procedure when one is placed in a prison cell.
You surrender your shoelaces, your necktie, wristwatch, cell phone, you name it.
But apparently a dildo is a gender-affirming article.
No, it's not.
It's most likely a phallic-shaped piece of plastic made in China.
And in theory, it's something that could be weaponized.
But because the owner of this dildo is a transgendered humanoid, well, as Gelda Radner used to say.
Oh, that's very different.
Never mind.
Now, back to the chief, who by now must be wondering why he ever got into the policing business in the first place.
In 2016, Mr. Kodak, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and the Toronto Police Services Board reached a settlement requiring TPS to take major steps to address the treatment of trans people in custody.
This case, Waterman versus the Toronto Police Services Board and the Missing Persons Report, have served as catalysts for change.
TPS must do the necessary work to build bridges and restore trust with members of our vulnerable communities, supported by inclusive programming, operations, and services.
TPS has conducted online and in-person consultations with experts and with members of our trans and gender diverse communities to receive their feedback on policies, procedures, and officer training.
It is crucial that you, as Toronto police officers, understand the experiences of trans individuals in order to address their concerns and protect their safety, while also avoiding potentially dangerous or dehumanizing situations.
How you interact with trans individuals and the actions you take in the course of your duties can make the difference between individuals and their communities feeling harmed or protected.
This training will support you in providing police services that are bias-free and trans-inclusive.
You see, it's all about getting to know the members of the transgender community, their needs, their wants, their ambitions, their dreams.
Know you, getting to know a lot about you.
Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me.
Seriously, after that pep talk from the chief, how many police officers in Toronto are now updating their resumes?
Oh, but the propaganda keeps coming.
Here's a message from someone who is actually a Toronto police officer.
He's part of the Equity, Inclusion, and Human Rights Unit.
Yeah, as Torontonians are getting randomly mugged and stabbed and murdered, well, by golly, it warms the heart to know that a cop shop has an equity, inclusion, and human rights unit.
The Equity and Inclusion and Human Rights Unit will be continuing to support the organization in enhancing access for trans and non-binary people through taking a look at our hiring and recruitment processes to ensure that we can begin to recruit individuals who will be able to work effectively with people with different lived experiences, as well as recruiting those of different lived experiences, including trans and non-binary individuals.
Gender Expression Matters00:02:23
Yeah, so welcome to your whiz-bang woke joke Toronto Police Service in 2023 in which hiring is no longer determined by merit, but rather gender identity.
In other words, you want a job with the Toronto cops, make sure you bring along that white, pink, and baby blue colored flag to the hiring interview and tone down all that toxic masculinity, will you, you big bully?
Moving on, in case you thought the role of a police officer was to uphold the law and keep the peace, alas and alack, that's just so yesterday decade.
Because while it would be quite jolly that cops are familiar with the criminal code and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in Toronto, the powers that be would prefer that the constables morph into gender bender know-it-alls.
Check out what this specimen has to say.
Gender refers to all the societal assumptions we make about someone connected to their assumed or assigned sex.
Gender includes an individual's roles in society, what we think they might be like or good at.
For gender, we might expect words like woman, man, and non-binary, but there's many other possible genders.
Gender includes both gender identity and gender expression.
Gender identity is a person's internal sense of their own gender.
Gender expression refers to all the ways a person conveys their gender to others, which can include hairstyle, choosing what makeup to wear or not, what clothes someone wears, if they wear perfume or cologne, how someone takes up space, the pitch of a person's voice.
Other people can see, hear, or smell our gender expression.
Oh, well, thank God gender expression has a scent.
After all, we wouldn't want to exclude the canine unit when it comes to all this trans inclusion now, would we?
Just keep that dog from looking at me.
That's the scariest looking dog I've ever seen.
Now, assuming you can stomach it, let's move on to Module 5, which actually features an uber-sensitive Toronto cop.
Yet again, no toxic masculinity to be found here, folks.
Hello, my name is Robert Chevalier.
I'm the LGBTQ2S Plus Liaison Officer for the Toronto Police Service.
Now, wait a minute.
Respecting Trans Identities00:13:34
Did he say LGBTQ2S plus?
Wow, that is such outdated language to describe the alphabet soup community.
After all, back in 2017, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario said the proper descriptor for this set was the following.
LGBDD TIQQAPP, which stands for, take a breath, lesbian, gay, genderqueer, bisexual, demisexual, transgender, transsexual, two-spirit, intersex, queer, questioning, asexual, allies, pansexual, and polyamorous.
As an aside, do you notice that one letter is conspicuously absent, namely H for heterosexual.
You know, that silly sexual orientation that comprises, oh, about 98% of the population on the planet.
But I digress.
Say, this never gets old, folks.
Let's watch ex-Liberal Party of Canada President Stephen Ledru going to bat for that astonishing acronym.
So what does this acronym mean specifically?
What are the categories?
Well, I mean, it's generally shortened to LGBTQ, which is a communities, and there's a few extra ones they've added in there.
But no one goes by that.
Maybe that's to teach kids the alphabet or not.
But generally, it's referred to, the Prime Minister referred to it yesterday in the House of Commons during his apology, as LGBTQ.
And some people don't even know what it means, but they just know that means inclusiveness.
It's a good thing.
It's a question of tolerance.
For example, what's Two-Spirit?
Well, Two-Spirit sounds like there's someone they don't know whether they're fish or foul.
They don't know whether they're frick or frack.
So they're clearly confused.
And again, if you're confused, what better place to go than to be at school?
Oh, poor Ledrie.
That statement ended his 20-year career at Bell Media.
You can't call confused trans people confused, after all.
So much for classical liberalism, I guess.
You see, even the people pushing this crap don't even know what it means.
As for Chevalier, who I believe is now a sergeant, I suggest you turn yourself into HR for some gender diversity training, but I digress.
Let's see what other tips Officer Friendly has for the rank and file.
One of the reasons why the GDTI, the Gender Diversity Trans Inclusion Project, is so important to me and I feel so attached to it is not only because I'm a gay male, but just in the past few months, my previous niece has come out as non-binary.
So I call her my previous niece because niece is no longer appropriate.
So the two of us sort of put our heads together, did some research, and we came up with the word nibbling, which if you Google it, you may or may not find that it's a non-binary way to call your niece or nephew.
Did he really say nibbling?
Isn't that a brand of licorice-like candy?
Or maybe I'm thinking about canned corn from the Jolly Green Giant.
You know, does it disturb you as much as it disturbs me that the Jolly Green Giant wears a dress?
Say, do you think the Jolly Green Giant is trans?
But really, why is he always standing with his legs akimbo above the crops?
Like, where does he relieve himself?
Maybe that's why he's laughing all the time.
Ugh.
I think I'm not so keen about nibblets or nibs or even nibblings anymore, truth be told.
But we have more to learn, I should think, from the gay sergeant.
A lot of research has come out to show that just simply referring to people as the name that they choose is going to reduce thoughts of self-harm, suicide attempts, and attempted and actual suicide.
So it is very meaningful that we do this.
And that's one of the reasons why I jumped at the chance to get involved with the GDTI project.
Wow, policing just got so much tougher for the boys and girls in blue, don't you think?
I mean, next time some officer gets in a shootout with some gangbangers, hopefully they don't misgender anyone or fail to use their chosen names.
By the way, for all those still employed with the Toronto Police Service, for the record, my chosen name as of right now is Mother Goose.
Little Miss Muffet sat on a toffer eating a curds and wing.
Long came a spidey sat down beside his in the bulb, bitch.
Now it's on to module six and it's time for Lisa Crooker to weigh in.
She's the senior officer overseeing the Gender Diverse Trans Initiative because this is obviously the highest priority for the Toronto Police Service today as violent crime skyrockets in Hogtown.
But teaching the cops critical trans theory, that's the really, really important agenda item these days.
43% of the trans respondents reported experiencing discrimination compared to 5.3% of the overall population.
Overall, in 2013, the Trans Pulse Project found that experiences of transphobia were nearly universal among trans Ontarians, with 98% reporting at least one experience of transphobia.
You know, I call this fun with statistics because at no point in the module is transphobia defined.
And really, what is transphobia?
Being misgendered?
Calling your niece a niece as opposed to a nibbling?
Oh, by the way, the bio of that spokes thingy is very intriguing.
His name is Jay Wallace Skelton.
All lowercase letters, by the way, because apparently using uppercase is colonialist or an expression of white supremacy or something.
And he notes that he goes by no pronouns.
Yeah, there are about 128 pronouns out there to choose from, and Stinker Bell has yet to find the one that matches his category.
How about this for a whiz-bang, retro cool gender pronoun?
Fruitcake.
Let's continue, class.
To do no harm, basically, to do no harm, whether it be physically, emotionally, mentally, to do no harm to anybody else.
To ask this person, how would you prefer us to call you, what would you prefer us to call you?
Your preferred pronouns, you know, what's your name?
Agree to call her by her name.
If necessary, to have to go forward and actually to do an arrest, to do it gently.
Well, my heart is bleeding for all the normal cops right now because according to Raymond of No Fixed Address, before any interaction takes place, cops must determine the sexual orientation and gender identity and the preferred pronouns of those they might be arresting.
Oh, and once it's determined that the suspect is trans, please, officer, arrest him gently.
Again, another example of how the trans community is not fighting for equal rights, but rather extra special rights.
Excuse me, ma'am.
No porn at the bar.
Oh, it's okay.
I'm transgender.
Oh, I had no idea.
Do whatever you want all the time.
And now meet Stevia, self-described as a trans man, black, multi-disabled, neurodiverse trans man.
In other words, Stevia is the perfect diversity hire for any government bureaucracy today.
Hear how we identify and respect how we identify.
Don't decide to identify as how you see and what you're accustomed to.
Hear what we have to say and respect that.
So you see me, you see breasts.
You don't see a woman.
You see a man who just happens to have them.
Say, wasn't the thorny issue of male boobery adroitly addressed in the Seinfeld TV series?
Except we got to do something about the name.
Why?
What's wrong with bro?
No, bro's no good.
Too ethnic.
You got something better?
How about the man's ear?
Manzir.
That's right.
A Brazil for a man.
The man's here, get it?
But I digress.
Let's hear more from Stevia.
But trying to remember that our identity actually matters to us is important.
Trying to remember that you cause more harm than good.
And you might get more of an adverse reaction from a person who you're just trying to talk to or something if you misgender them.
For some people, that has very significant impacts.
I work with one person who the simplest misgendering can cause him suicidal ideation.
Sorry, Stevia, but if you know someone who becomes suicidal due to misgendering, they really need the help of a psychiatrist.
Transphobia, when it presents itself here, can cause such a serious impact on people.
I've dealt with misgendering in a number of settings and it does not, it really does not feel that great.
Now let's move on to another wise man-woman person.
My sexual orientation is lesbian and my gender identity and gender expression is that of a woman.
So when you interact with me, it's really important that you understand that my name, even though may not, for trans people, may legally be different than how we live our everyday lives.
And it's really important that you honor and respect that.
It also means that when you take down my sex characteristics, a male and female may not accurately describe who I am living every day.
What?
So this character once upon a time was a man and now he's a woman who happens to be a lesbian.
So nothing's changed really.
He presumably liked woman as a heterosexual man and now he still likes woman as a lesbian.
Is it just me or things getting really unnecessarily complicated these days?
Oh, by the way, Gapka, despite appearances, isn't a street person camping out at Trinity Bellwoods.
He too is an advisor with the Gender Diversity Trans Inclusion Project.
And he has much to say.
When you look at my sexual orientation and gender identity, it may not look on the surface as it is internally on me.
It's much, so I'm attracted to women, and so that's really important.
But on gender identity as a trans woman, it's really important that you understand that who I'm attracted to romantically and intimately is different than who I am every day as a woman, as Susan Gapka.
So there you have it, folks.
Toronto police officers must be clairvoyants these days, a la the amazing Crescent, because Susan, quote, is attracted to women, and that's really important, but it's really important as a trans woman who I am attracted to romantically and intimately is different than who I'm attracted to every day as a woman or something like that, end quote.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me as well.
Let's proceed with the next lesson, kids.
So I'm going to briefly explain to you that, you know, many people identify in different ways.
If you're Indigenous, you may identify as two-spirited, a rather new term since the 90s that was created by Dr. Mayor Laramie to describe those that don't fit into the gender binary that the Western learning system goes by.
So those boxes of either only being a man or only being a woman.
And some of us don't fit into that box and we don't relate to that box.
We don't see ourselves born necessarily with the same gender identity or genitalia that we were born with.
Yeah, that's because maybe, just maybe you're nuts.
Oh, and here's something interesting when it comes to Native affairs.
The trans training program notes that, quote, it is important to recognize that two-spirit is only ever a term for Indigenous people and that it is not appropriate for non-Indigenous people to call themselves two-spirit, end quote.
Gracious, that's not very inclusive now, is it?
I mean, isn't being trans all about identifying as something you aren't?
You know, going through your life as though Halloween is 365 days a year.
Vancouver's Trans Training Controversy00:04:32
And now you're telling us that if a cowboy identifies as an Indian, this is somehow offside?
Oh, again, it's so confusing, isn't it?
Let's wrap up things with a short pep talk from Officer Nibbling, I mean, Constable Chevalier.
In 2020, TPS added a new service standard, 1.9.2, respect for gender diverse and trans people.
This service standard ensures that TPS practices are consistent and compliant with the protections of the Ontario Human Rights Code.
Everything else in this training is about how we operationalize this service standard.
The words, actions, and attitudes that ensure we are truly serving and protecting trans and gender diverse people and communities.
And that's the thing, isn't it?
The cops across Canada have either been indoctrinated or they fear that their ass is grass if they don't act in a trans-friendly manner.
So much so that blatant crimes are being committed by trans people and those trans people are going unpunished.
You want proof?
Consider what happened to peaceful protester Billboard Chris in Vancouver just last month.
My colleague Drea Humphrey has the story.
A Vancouver police officer named Frederic Buckman must be fired.
Buckman appeared to be filled with glee while child protection activist Chris Elston, also known as Billboard Chris, was mobbed by rabid trans activists on Friday.
Excuse me, did you just say he came here to incite violence by forcing his opinion on people?
Yeah.
Yes.
You think he came here to incite violence because they got offended by his sign?
When you talk to someone and scream at someone and they put their face in his face.
What is wrong with you?
F you!
So when are we going to go find this person who assaulted me?
And what would you like me to do with charge them with assault?
Charge them with assault, arrest them like a police officer is supposed to do.
You know, maybe we all jump to conclusions by labeling Frederic Buckman a liar and incompetent due to her own inept actions by refusing to charge those violent transgendered thugs.
Because just maybe the Vancouver Police Service, much like the Toronto Police, well, they also have mandatory transgender training.
So when Buckman refused to press charges against that violent transgendered mental case, and when she instead re-victimized the victim by claiming that Billboard Chris was the author of his own misfortune by triggering the mob, this was not a matter of Buckman failing to carry out her sworn duties.
Rather, in our not-so-brave new world, Buckman was setting a jolly good example when it comes to modern-day progressive policing.
In our upside-down cloud world where trans sanity rules supreme, even when it comes to law enforcement, policing slogans such as to serve and protect and deed speak, well, they've gone by the wayside, at least when it comes to one small, unhinged, easily triggered demographic.
No, the whiz-bang model for modern policing today boils down to, again, if it's trans, it's good.
And if it's good, it's trans.
Oh, and if you, and when I say you, I mean normal law-abiding citizens, if you happen to have a problem with that slogan and its inherent double standard, you'd best keep your mouth shut because you might just be charged with a hate crime, given that the police are now being told to morph into Orwellian thought police.
So don't be too harsh on Officer Buckman and her ilk because, well, how shall I put it?
These days, they're just following orders.
Well, you heard me the other day.
Big Tech and Media Dependency00:14:43
I believe that Justin Trudeau has four bills or proposed bills in a row, like dominoes, that once they all fall, will put Canada's internet under his control.
The first is C-11, which in many ways is the most important.
It basically puts the internet under the control of the CRT scheme, something that only radio and TV was before.
And of course, it allows the government to adjust things like the algorithm to make it easy to hide or find things according to the government's own qualifications and algorithms.
The second bill is called C-18, the Online News Act, if I'm remembering the name correctly.
It basically takes the big tech companies, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and extracts hundreds of millions of dollars from them.
And then it apportions that money to journalists in Canada based on Trudeau's own qualifications.
There's something, as you know, called the QCJO, the Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization news license.
If you have that license, you'll get some of that sweet, sweet big tech dough.
If not, you won't.
The other bills are Bill C-36, which brings back the hate speech star chamber and the yet unnumbered Online Harms Act that talks about the digital safety commissioner who has the power to literally shut down or block websites.
It's terrifying.
At least that's my view as an outsider.
And by an outsider, I mean someone who I feel is going to be regulated.
When I think of someone the government wants to de-boost in the search algorithms, I think of rebel news.
When I think of someone the government wants to censor, I think of rebel news.
But that's me as a journalist.
What might it look like from inside the bureaucracy from someone who has the levers of power within the CRTC regulator?
Well, today we're lucky to have as a guest on the show Peter Menzies, who once was a CRTC commissioner, appointed to that post by Stephen Harper, the Conservative Prime Minister.
And he has a new article in C2C Journal, the headline of which is Extortion, Dependency and Media Welfare, the Liberals B Bill C18.
He joins us now by a sky.
Peter, it's great to see you again.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
I'm worried about all these bills, and I look at them together because I think that if all four of these things pass, we're going to lose a lot of our freedom in Canada.
Am I being alarmist?
No, you're not.
I mean, it's easy to say these, you know, people like myself who've criticized the bill occasionally get accused of being that.
But I think we have to remember that Canadians are no different than other human beings throughout history and around the world, and we can make the same mistakes they did.
And these bills, as you accurately describe them, will reduce our level of freedom.
We can have a debate about whether that's acceptable or not, but there's no question that our amount of online freedom is going to be restricted.
You will be, because you produce audio and visual content online, you are now, as soon as Bill C-11 passes, you will be subject to regulation of this routine.
And the CRTC has a history of overseeing the broadcasting world, which you're now going to be part of, to make sure it is of good standard.
As they say, there was the Ministers of Heritage protested for two years that the CRTC doesn't censor content.
And then we saw the Radio Canada decision last summer where the CRTC the entire time had been holding off on publishing a decision that censored content.
So it's a really important time for people to pay attention on this because usually you don't actually see these things happen.
You never see what's not there.
And that'll be the tricky part with this.
You know, I read your article in C2C Journal, and you speak as a former newspaperman at how newspapers have been gutted.
They've laid off so many staff, how some of the big chains are even foreign-owned.
I mean, post-media is actually the bulk of it's owned by a New Jersey-based hedge fund.
And so much of the attention and energy of the leaders of the industry are now just maximizing commercial extractions from the government.
They can no longer rely on what was once called the golden river of classified ads.
Since they can't make money the old-fashioned way, and it's hard to make money competing against Facebook and Google, it looks like the entire Canadian industry leadership is focused on getting money either from big government or now under C18 from big tech.
I think that it's turned once proud, once defiant, once independent newsmen into beggars who are willing to turn a blind eye to censorship if it means to get free cash.
I really think that's happening.
You're in an interesting position.
You were a newspaperman, and then you were our CRTC commissioner.
I think that the growling lions who used to fiercely defend press freedom in this company, they've all been trained pussycats now.
Yeah, well, you know, like going back to the Kent Commission, people just fought like dogs to keep the government out of the media business.
The government had no business being involved in that.
And, you know, that was an absolute hill to die on for newspaper publishers and editors and generally throughout the newsrooms and elsewhere.
The very meaning of a free press was that you were only answerable to your readers.
Now, in terms of people trying to transition, there are some newspapers that are finding some success and not just newspapers, but online news operators that are finding some success by working through donations or working through subscriptions.
In that method, the Globe and Mail these days claims, I think, about 230,000, 240,000 digital subscriptions, plus about 50 or 60,000 others, so about 300,000 totals.
The Wall Street Journal apparently does fine.
It seems to make money.
The Times of London, the Daily Telegraph of London, Daily Telegraph, I think, showed 19 million pounds profit last year.
There are ways you can do it, but you've got to be able to produce good content.
I mean, you have to have something to sell if you want to find somebody to, you know, if you want to sell it.
And after years of gutting your newsrooms, which is the post-media dilemma, and they own about 90% of the dailies and weeklies left in the country right now, it's questionable whether they have, and this is, you know,
I don't want anybody to take this as a personal slight within the industry because there's some good people inside there at a lot of the papers, but there isn't enough to justify people spending a dollar a day on a subscription to those papers.
Otherwise, they'd be doing it.
So they go for the web giant loop, right?
Which is like, and then as soon as that opened up, the broadcasters heard the dinner bell ringing and they bellied up to the bar.
And now with C18, according to the parliamentary budget officer, the biggest beneficiaries won't be these starving-to-death newspapers.
They're going to be number one, the CBC and number two, Bell Media.
Neither of which last I checked were nearing death's door.
Yeah.
You know, C11 is about regulating and controlling the internet.
I think C18 is about funding the internet, but only those parts of it that meet Trudeau's approval.
As I mentioned, you need that QCJO news license or you don't get any of it.
It's such a strange thing.
I mean, the whole idea of the internet, and you can see it right there in the name, is it's a network.
You click from site to site and place to place.
And sometimes you never know where you're going, but it's just this amazing network.
And there's no boss of it.
And everything's based on sharing and linking.
That's obvious how it works.
But C18 will require Facebook or Google to pay people in the news business for the pleasure of linking to them.
And I can tell you at Rebel News, when we get a story that is shared widely on Facebook, we love it because that means all sorts of people are clicking through to our website that might not have found us before.
In fact, you know, people with more money would actually buy ads on Facebook to make that happen more often.
I find it so weird that C18 would require these big tech companies to pay newsrooms for the pleasure of linking to them.
Aren't those same newsrooms paying to get those links?
It feels like it's being flipped on its head.
It makes no sense.
It feels like it's being designed by someone who's never used the internet before.
Yeah, it's illogical.
The rationale behind it, I mean, the newspapers have stated repeatedly that Google is stealing our content.
They're making money at our expense.
You know, Facebook is stealing our content.
Well, there's no stealing going on.
If there was, they'd have proven it by now and called the cops, right?
So, or at least filed some sort of claim for copyright violation.
But they get the post, as you described, for free.
Facebook has developed a platform which has access to millions and billions of eyeballs, which you can get access to for free.
And you can post your stuff on there, and people can link to it, and they go to your website and they enjoy themselves or they don't.
Either way, you get activity and you get distribution of a media product for free.
And those of us who go back long enough can remember when the cost of distributing a news product was considerable, whether it was via broadcasting, which is expensive, but also via trucks and newspaper boxes and corner stores and newspaper boys and girls and delivery and carriers of all kinds.
That was an awful lot of money that was spent on those things.
Now it's actually free almost to distribute a newspaper.
But at the same time, they want the guy who's giving them a free service to give them money because they're giving them a free service.
That's how crazy that is.
Yeah, it makes no sense to me.
And it's a shakedown.
If everyone had to do that, no one would link to anyone on the internet.
It's just, it's crazy, but I see why they're doing it because, first of all, everyone hates big tech for a variety of reasons.
Either you've come to loathe Mark Zuckerberg personally, or some people hate Elon Musk.
So it's, you know, these oligarchs, these titans, these billionaires, you know, over time, I think they build up an enemies list.
People are, you know, wary of their privacy violations and things like that.
But there's just some jealousy there.
But they've got the deep pockets.
So I think this is Trudeau's way of saying, all right, I'm going to grab money from these billionaires.
No one likes billionaires, especially American billionaires.
Trudeau was ranting about American billionaires today.
And I'm going to shower this money on journalists, but only the journalists I approve.
That's what gets me, Peter, is we applied for the QCJO news license just to see if we could get it, just to see what the process was like.
And they turned us down.
They said that 99% of what we do is not news.
And I'm not asking to weigh in on that.
I'm just showing you that this is all about money going from Facebook and Google only to Trudeau's choice of people.
And you mentioned that, you know, CBC and others will be the chief beneficiaries.
I wonder if this will trigger an international free trade complaint, because it sounds to me like Justin Trudeau in Ottawa is trying to make a bank raid on some Silicon Valley giants.
Can't imagine that this will be accepted by the U.S. trade representative who is ferociously loyal to his own country's companies.
Yeah, the issue has been raised in the U.S. Congress by some of their politicians there following lobby by the Silicon Valley companies.
And just on that, it seems weird to be defending the big tech, the Google guys, because there's lots of things governments should be doing to regulate online, like trying to make sure that somebody running a social media platform isn't essentially a bond villain, trying to manipulate the world, shape the world as he wishes and that sort of stuff.
But this is not one of them.
And you're right that it will probably, in all likelihood, lead to a complaint under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement because of the treatment of the American firms by Canada.
And in terms of the picking and choosing, you know, if there's a market argument to make that deals can be made with Google News or Apple News or other news or other platforms, and Google and Facebook already have commercial arrangements with a lot of companies.
They don't with some of the smaller ones.
They don't with some of the newer ones.
But I expect that if you let nature follow its economic course, eventually you'd see some of that.
Because where they can see a mutually profitable arrangement, people will make those.
But the government, as you say, is picking winners and losers rather than the market picking winners and losers.
So you end up with a media industry that is dependent on two things: the good graces of big government and the money from big tech.
Those are the two most imposing entities in people's lives today.
The thing, who do you fear the most will take away your freedom and squash you these days is big government and big tech.
And now you're going to have your media reliant on both of them.
Big Tech and Government Concerns00:09:27
And I don't think that's not a really comfortable position for anyone involved.
And I know an awful lot of journalists and some senior news executives too.
They won't say so publicly, but it keeps them up at night.
You know, I mean, big tech and big government are two of the things I'm most afraid of.
For my friends on the left, I would say, imagine if the two largest sources of income for a newspaper were big oil and big tobacco.
You'd be pretty sure there wouldn't be a lot of deep exposés into oil or tobacco.
And when Justin Trudeau and his cabinet, I mean, I saw the Globe and Mail was listing the most influential people in Canadian showbiz, and the number one in their selection was the government minister of heritage.
That is such an unhealthy thing.
If you said, who's the most powerful person in Hollywood?
Who's the most powerful person in the American entertainment industry?
And you came up with a cabinet minister, you would say that is a deeply unhealthy industry.
But no, that is the Canadian way.
I got a question for you, though, because you were on the CRTC and you had sort of a freedom mandate from Stephen Harper.
How is this going to go?
Does the CRTC know, like, I mean, part of me is hoping that they don't have the capacity, the know-how, or the smarts to do this.
The idea of just regulating the internet, which they haven't done before, they had a small number of TV and radio stations.
They've been doing that for more than seven, you know, even for decades.
They know what they're doing.
What do you think it'll be like when these laws pass and suddenly this fairly obscure agency that was becoming obsolete because of technology suddenly becomes the most important agency in the country other than the CRA?
Yeah, well, there's two ways to look at it.
One is consider the institution itself and its reputation, which is not terribly popular.
At the same time, I have worked there and there are some smart people there.
And I think some of the new people that have been appointed are smart people too.
So I'm going to be off my doom and gloom hat for a minute here and try to be optimistic that people at the CRTC will look at a lot of the issues you just pointed to.
You know, do we have the resources?
Do we have the technical background, the knowledge, the ability, the history, the institutional memory to be able to take on something as simple as, you know, we're going to regulate the global internet, right?
I mean, that's a huge task.
So I'm hoping, because there are some smart people there, that they take a look at Bill C11 out of the gate and they carve off scope.
They go back to what the government said was its original hope was to get money from big streaming companies and have them contribute to these official government funds.
I mean, that's a very 1980s approach to the 21st century, but that said, we are where we are.
And if they're in that position, the very best thing for them should be to say, okay, out of the gate, anything we do now, everything else, everything that has revenue of less than $150 million a year, and I'm thinking that might be you, Ezra, is exempt.
And we are not even going to walk in that space.
Everything over $150 million, the Netflix, the Disneys, et cetera, that's what we're going to talk about.
That's what we're going to deal with.
Down the road, they'll probably get to the rest, which is another issue.
But out of the gate, if they're smart, they'll just carve off the big money pie and start dividing that up for their friends in the CanCon industry.
Well, I am always worried because I know that in the past, and again, this interview is about C-18 and the CRTC.
It's not about rebel news.
But I do know that in the past, the Prime Minister himself has shown a great interest in rebel news.
He refers to us on the floor of the House of Commons.
He condemns our reporters on the rare occasion when they talk to him.
His bodyguards beat up our reporter, David Menzies.
to smash my face into a wooden wall.
The reality is organizations, organizations like yours, that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation.
I won't call it a media organization.
Your group of individuals need to take accountability, polarization that we're seeing in this country.
And it disappoints me to see the conservatives engage in peddling, engage in peddling, rebel media, conspiracy theories, conspiracies, perspectives, so it would not surprise me if there was some squad that was deputized to solve the problem of those rambunctious online conservative news outlets.
I don't know if they would go for Western Standard Online or True North as well, but I am pessimistic.
I don't think they want to leave us alone, but we'll see.
You've had to guess the most, if you had to think of what the Achilles' heel is here, if there was some way to stop this, you've already mentioned a potential trade complaint from the United States.
Frankly, I think that's what's going to do it.
It's going to be well-resourced.
It's going to have the best lawyers.
It's going to have a political club that is being carried.
I think, strangely, Joe Biden is going to save us if anyone does.
But other than that, is there some angle that you think critics or opponents in Canada could take?
Is there some way to slow this, to limit this, to solve this, to fight this, to object to this, to challenge this in court?
Is there some way?
What do you think the weakness of this is?
I think there's a constitutional weakness.
My former chairman, Conrad von Finkensteinen, and Philip Palmer, who's the vice chair of the Internet Society of Canada chapter, wrote a piece recently for an industry trade online magazine called CART.ca.
And they outlined what they thought was the constitutional issue with C-18 that, and this one exists, people have said similar things about C-11, that there's a jurisdictional issue regarding the internet and whether it actually meets the governmental or constitutional division of powers between federal power and provincial power.
And so I would expect, and both of those guys are pretty smart guys.
I mean, Conrad was CRTC chairman.
He was head of the Competition Bureau.
He was on the team that negotiated NAFTA back in the day, and he was a federal court judge.
So he knows a little bit about the law.
Phil was one of the guys who helped write the original Broadcasting Act and was a lawyer in the Department of Justice for many years.
So these are not like a couple of kooks from the fringes throwing rolling that idea out.
So I think there's a very good chance you're going to see these cases spend several years in the courts, starting at the lower level and then going through appeals and probably ending up at the Supreme Court.
I think there will be endless haggling over jurisdiction and definitions of CanCon at the CRTC.
And I think that whole process will probably take the better part of this decade, if not longer, before you get any real sense of what's going on.
The sad part about that is that you're taking what is largely a thriving and prospering film, television, et cetera, industry right now, and you're going to tie it up with question marks, and you're going to stifle investment, right?
It's going to hurt Canadians.
C-11 could just decimate the YouTube industry, the Canadian creators who chose to serve audiences as their primary purpose rather than applying for funds.
There's 30,000 people who have full-time jobs at stake there.
And most of those people are not like generally conservative people, right?
They're from the artistic sector and their jobs are, you know, they don't know.
Maybe they're going to move to the States.
They don't know what's going to happen to them.
Well, I mean, it's a well-titled piece: Extortion, Dependency, and Media Welfare, the Liberals Bill C-18.
That really is, that really is the future that this bill outlines.
I think that Rebel News has a role here, which is to challenge the constitutionality of this.
We like to do public interest litigation.
We like to crowdfund it.
We've done it before.
We've actually had a few successes, including in the censorship front.
In fact, our most spectacular and surprising successes have been for free speech.
And I really think it falls to us because, you know, whenever I check in on the Canadian Association of Journalists or groups like that, they're just obsessed with carving up the pie, not fighting against it.
This is going to be very interesting.
Challenging Censorship Constitutionally00:03:16
I thank you for taking the time to come on the show.
And I just want to give a shout out again for those who want to read your entire article.
It's at thec2cjournal.ca.
We'll have a link to it under the video.
Peter, great to see you again.
Thanks very much for your time today.
Thanks, Ezra.
Have a great summer.
You too.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Well, folks, lots of feedback from yesterday's live stream with Drea Humphrey and yours truly.
Let's start with Pat's Garage, who writes, I work for the federal government, not PSAC.
That's the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
And they are all making us look terrible right now.
They will justify working from home due to environmental reasons.
I'm surprised we haven't heard that from them yet.
You know, that's a great point.
Let's remember, folks, the reason why people got to work at home going back to 2020 was the pandemic.
We didn't know what we know about the coronavirus back then.
And this was a compromise.
But the pandemic is in the rearview mirror.
Time to get back to work.
And Cindy writes: it was the $2,000 that Trudeau handed out that made people even more lazy.
Well, yeah, I think what Cindy's referencing here is that even though we have a rocky economy with high interest rates, raging inflation, we also have a job shortage.
And basically, when you're being paid to stay at home, well, for some people, why bother getting out of bed in the first place?
And John Cherezna writes: Trudeau and all MP salaries have increased constantly and dramatically since 2015.
Never mind that all his appointed governor generals that we do pay forever, no matter how bad they are.
And then there is the senators and the Laurentian elites.
Yeah, you know, they have it pretty good, don't they?
But with the issue at hand, folks, if you were working in the private sector and your boss called you into the office and said, would you like a 9% raise over the next three years?
I'll tell you, I'd be elated with that.
But for the public sector workers in Ottawa and all over Canada, well, what's that title of that James Bond movie?
Oh, yes, the world is not enough.
No, they want more than 13%.
They want the ability to work at home.
They want contracting out to end so they can have more overtime.
And inexplicably, they want more anti-racism training.
Is the public service full of racists?
Yeek.
I wouldn't want to work there, would you?
Well, folks, that wraps up today's edition of the Ezra Levant Show.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
I believe the big boss man, he's back from his travels on Monday.