Ezra Levant highlights Pastor Artur Pavlovsky’s conviction in Alberta for a 19-minute sermon at the Cooch border blockade, despite no witnesses or cross-examination, raising free speech concerns. The ruling mirrors government pressure on Rebel News, excluded from Alberta’s press gallery, while Trudeau’s CBC appointments and CRTC internet revenue law—enforced by figures like Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez—undermine media independence. Levant critiques Trudeau’s election interference, including the CBC’s 2019 lawsuit against Conservatives, and questions why RCMP shot Alexa Lavoie during the convoy protests while others received aid. Chong’s family faces China-linked threats after his 2020 Uyghur motion, yet CSIS didn’t escalate warnings, exposing systemic risks to political dissenters’ safety. [Automatically generated summary]
I am back in our Toronto studios after being in lovely Lethbridge, Alberta, yesterday, where I went to attend the results, the issuing of the judgment in the triple prosecution of Arthur Pavlovsky, the Christian pastor, who has been in a series of troubles and prosecutions, really for three years during the lockdown.
It started because he had an illegal gathering outside feeding the homeless in the very early days of the pandemic.
They gave him huge tickets for that.
Then he wouldn't close his church.
They gave him criminal prosecutions for that.
They convicted him.
He later won.
And now he was on trial for giving a sermon to the truckers blockading the Cooch border crossing last year.
And I was at the trial in February, and it was an unusual trial.
I've been in court more than any man should be as a lawyer at one time.
I no longer practice law, obviously.
As a plaintiff, as a defendant, and as a journalist, I have been, I have seen maybe 100 trials in my life.
And I had not seen one quite like this.
I think I told you before, there were no witnesses in this trial.
There was no cross-examination.
No one took the stand.
Really, the only piece of evidence of any note, like they had a couple of photographs of things that were really nothing turned on them.
The only piece of evidence was a Facebook video that's also on YouTube recorded by Arthur Pavlovsky himself, I presume, of him giving a pep talk sermon, history lesson, motivational speech, a bit of everything, to a group of truckers and their supporters.
Actually, I don't know how many of these people were actually truckers or just locals because there was a kid in the room, I understand, for example.
They were spouses.
This was in a saloon.
So actually, I don't know how many these people were truckers.
I think I know there were some.
Here, turn up the volume.
Let's just listen to this illegal broadcast for a minute.
Will you, and this is why you have this famous solidarity movement, because when he was stopped, he looked at the people that were outside under the hammer of the goods of the Soviets, and he said, yeah, you're right.
We got what we wanted, but what about you?
And here is this lady.
This is what she said.
Will you stand in solidarity with the rest of us?
Because you guys got what you wanted, but what about us?
So when I decided to come here, I'm risking to be arrested at every moment, everywhere I go.
The criminal charges on me, left and right.
We lost count of the charges I have right now.
But I decided to come here because I believe.
I don't need to put any more of it.
It goes on for 19 minutes.
I had said it was 17 minutes before.
It's actually just over 19 minutes.
So he's a Christian pastor.
He went down there.
That was not the blockade itself.
As you can see, that is not a highway.
That is in a saloon near the highway.
And the truckers had been blockading the border crossing before he came down there.
And they blockaded it after he came down there.
He went down there, went through a police checkpoint.
They never told him, don't go.
They never stopped him.
It was just a checkpoint.
I gave the speech and he came back up, and he was arrested and prosecuted for it.
Prosecuted three ways.
First of all, they said that incited mischief, that he incited means stimulated, caused, counseled, promoted.
So they said he incited mischief being the tampering with property, mischief in this case being blocking the highway.
They prosecuted him under the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, a never-before-used anti-ecoterrorism law, which is basically the same thing, but only applies to infrastructure, convicted him on that too.
And then the third one, which is sort of a throw it in the mix because why not?
He was under a court order to keep the peace and be of good behavior.
And the judge said, and he surely is right, that if you're convicted of a crime, that is, by definition, not keeping the peace and being of good behavior.
And so the judge convicted him.
I was going to say on all three, but I want to make an amendment because yesterday I was moving at the speed of my fingers, typing as fast as I could in the court, and then giving my comments outside.
Technically, the court did not convict on the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act because the court said, all right, I'm going to see if at first glance, prima facie, as they say in the law, at first glance, did he break the law?
If he did, then we will go towards a determination of if this law is constitutional, because this law has never been tested in court yet.
So the judge said, look, I'm going to convict him under the Criminal Infrastructure Defense Act, but we have to now, because I'm going to convict him under it, we have to test whether or not the law is constitutional.
So we're not actually, we haven't actually convicted him yet, although I can tell you right now, he checks all the boxes for breaking the law.
I have, beyond a reasonable doubt, concluded he's broken the law.
But before I technically convict on this, we're going to have a hearing on the constitutionality of it.
Now, yesterday, the prosecutor sort of panicked a little bit because he doesn't want to have this law literally thrown out just to get Arthur.
He's got Arthur on the mischief and the breaching of a court order.
And so that prosecutor was, no, no, no, I have the right to stay charged at any time.
I don't want to proceed.
No, Let's call off that part.
So that was sort of an interesting wrinkle.
But the bad news is this judge said that that 19-minute sermon really did incite mischief, even though there is, we don't know the identity of the people in the room.
We don't know if anyone made a decision to block based on that.
But the judge said it's not necessary.
You can counsel an offense without that person having done it.
And maybe they extended their stay there.
There was one part of his speech where he said, stay here and hold the line.
And the judge said, well, that's a crime.
I'm trying to think back of all my hundreds of commentaries and reports during the lockdown.
And of course, I'm just one man here at Rebel News.
We have a team.
And actually, our team was even larger during the lockdowns.
We had, I remember that one day we had 17 journalists in the field at like half a dozen locations.
So we probably, I'm not kidding when I say we probably did a thousand reports.
Well, not a thousand on the convoy, but probably 250.
I mean, there was a point there we were doing, maybe not two, let's say at least 100 during the actual convoy period.
We did over a thousand during the lockdowns, obviously.
Let's say we did 100 during the convoy.
Did we ever say hold the line?
I mean, I don't remember saying those words, but I might have.
It's not a crazy thing to say hold the line.
Hold the line is a very generic term.
I heard it used during the Peace Act strike.
Hold the line.
I mean, hold the line just sort of means don't give in.
Does it technically mean block the highway?
The judge in Lethbridge said, yes, it does.
The judge said that what Arthur Pavlovsky said amounted to inciting crime.
And the reason I say, did we say that here at Rebel News?
Did Rex Murphy say that in the National Post?
Did Rupa Subramania say that?
Did Jordan Peterson say that?
I can't actually remember if I ever said the words hold the line.
I'm sorry, I just don't remember if I actually said those terms.
But if Arthur Pavlovsky can be convicted of a crime for saying hold the line, paralyze the system, that was another word the judge didn't like, paralyze.
And actually, because Arthur is Polish, you can tell by his accent, when he referred to the Polish Solidarnosk or Solidarity Movement, the judge referred to that.
So, oh, well, the Solidarity Movement had a general strike which paralyzed the whole country of Poland.
So that's what he meant here.
So I'm going to convict him.
If you can convict Arthur Pavlovsky for saying hold the line, paralyze the system, be like the Polish Solidarity Movement in the 1980s, like seriously 40 years ago.
If you can convict Arthur of that, why couldn't you convict me or my fellow rebels for saying the phrase hold the line?
We just literally published a book three weeks ago by Tamara Leeds called Hold the Line.
By the way, there's more than one book about the convoy called Hold the Line.
There was another book by that saying, Hold the line is a very common phrase.
Are you now saying that if there's someone who says hold the line, keep it up, don't leave, be peaceful, but you know, stay the course?
Like Arthur specifically said, be peaceful, three times he said it.
Judge said, that doesn't matter.
We're not accusing him of violence.
We're accusing him of inciting mischief.
So I want to clarify because yesterday from the location I said that he was convicted under the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act.
He wasn't yet convicted there.
They still have to test the constitutionality of it.
And the Crown now says, oh, no, We're going to drop that charge, even though we already had a trial on it.
But he's convicted under two other criminal code offenses.
My point is, this is a worrying ruling.
Because if Arthur Pavlovsky cannot say hold the line, paralyze the system, do what Solidarity did, if he can't say that there, can I say it here?
Can Rex Murphy say it from where he is?
Can Jordan Peterson say it?
Can you say it on Facebook?
Literally expressing a peaceful opinion, telling someone to hold the line and paralyze the system and fight the power.
I mean, you can watch Arthur's speech in its entirety.
It's still on YouTube.
Why is Arthur Pavlovsky guilty of a crime and I'm not and Rex Murphy is not and others who were sympathetic to the protesters?
You know, theoretically, anyone who published an expression in support of the truckers could have been.
Is that good law?
But like I said when I was covering the trial, again, no witnesses, no cross-examination, just a bunch of lawyers arguing for two days in a courtroom over the wording of a sermon.
I'm going to call it a sermon.
As a pet talk, also, but he was there as a pastor, and that was his authority.
Do you think it's normal in Canada in 2023 to have a trial, very serious trial, in a courtroom?
And there's a plaque over the judge.
It's the emblem of Alberta.
And do you know what the motto of Alberta is, Olivia?
It's taken from our national anthem.
Strong and free, exactly.
And I think that's a great, isn't that a great motto for a province?
Strong and free.
You know, our true north, strong and free.
So it's in the anthem.
In Latin, it's fortis et leber, if I'm pronouncing my Latin right.
So literally right above the judge, it says strong and free, but not free enough to let a man express his freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and not strong enough that you can withstand some truckers.
Yeah, that's it.
I really like that.
That's the coat of arms.
That's the Alberta coat of arms, I believe it's called.
You can see the motto there.
And isn't that great?
My favorite thing about that Herald is you can see the field, then the foothills, and then the Rocky Mountains, and then the sky.
And when I grew up, that was actually the view from my window.
I would look out over the prairies, and I would see the foothills in the distance, and I could actually see the top of the Rocky Mountains.
It's one of the most beautiful places in the world.
And I really enjoyed my trip there yesterday.
And I'm glad we were able to get my show done, my evening show.
It was 11 minutes late because we had trouble uploading it, all that footage from Letbridge.
But I was glad to be there and back and not miss a day's work.
We support Arthur Pavlovsky.
As you may know, he was client number one under the Fight the Fines program, which has now grown to 2,500 people.
I was very, I was surprised that he was convicted the way he was because, you know, under the law, you have to be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt.
And I do not think it is beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed.
And I think that if those are crimes, are the other journalistic, political, religious comments that others have made, including myself, are they crimes as well?
There were other media there, by the way.
Not really in the courtroom, I don't think, but certainly outside the courtroom.
And their coverage, I think, was fairly straight.
They enjoyed the conviction.
So it would have been more interesting, I think, to see what they would have said if Arthur had been acquitted, but alas, he was not.
Now, it's interesting because Danielle Smith is premier because of the trucker convoy.
Let me explain myself.
Because of Arthur Pavlovsky's fight against the provincial health enforcers, because of the truckers, because of Jason Kenney fighting with the truckers, Jason Kenney lost the confidence of his own party.
You might recall there was a leadership confirmation vote, and Kenney got, I think, 51%, which is obviously you cannot continue with 51%.
If half of your own party is against you, you can't continue.
And so there was sort of a surprise resignation by Kenny and then a surprise leadership.
And one of the candidates, the one who later went on to win, was Danielle Smith.
Matthew McConaughey's Unexpected Journey00:11:23
And when she was in her pre-politician, like she was a politician before, then she did like seven years in journalism.
And she weighed in on the truckers before there was even the prospect of running for premier.
And I see that the left-wing NDP super PAC called Press Progress, I think we're suing them, by the way, for defamation.
I won't get into that now.
They dug up some public comments that Danielle Smith made that they believe are embarrassing.
Let's play it and let's see what you think.
Here's a clip that Press Progress released today.
Now, the media will eat this up.
What will voters think?
Take a look.
All right, Danielle Coutz and Andrew Doe.
You know, I would love Rob to talk a bit about this because he's the lawyer and I'm not.
But this whole phrase of peace, order, and good government, I think it's become a shorthand to the federal government can do whatever the heck it wants and we just have to be peaceful and orderly about it.
And that's not, in my view, what it should be.
The federal government has said they want every federally regulated industry to have vaccine mandates.
So that's broadcast media, radio and television broadcast media.
It's all the telecom companies.
It's all of the grain elevators.
It's the ports.
It's the banks.
And so are we going to get to a point where to be able to get a bank account, you're going to have to be vaccinated because you won't be able to walk in the door?
I have no idea.
But the fact that this is just, this is the line in the sand that's been drawn because the federal government has so much more planned.
They have so much more coming.
And I think this is the reason why we want to see this win.
We want to see it win so that they don't end up rolling out the full plan.
And we want to see it win at Coots so that Jason Kenney, Scott Moe together become the first premiers to turn it around at the provincial level so that other premiers will follow.
Yeah, I got to say, I don't find that embarrassing for her at all.
I mean, she said we have to win at Coutz.
Coots was a win.
Here's why it was a win.
It was ended peacefully.
There was no deployment of riot horses.
It absolutely caused Jason Kenney in the province of Alberta to abandon their vaccine mandates and their vaccine passport.
And as I mentioned a moment ago, it was a precursor to Jason Kenney's removal as premier.
And by the way, when Danielle Smith talked about the possibilities of vaccine mandates in every federally regulated industry, that absolutely was a possibility.
And we saw that happening.
You couldn't get on a plane or a train in Canada, the second largest country in the world, if you weren't jabbed.
You couldn't travel internationally, of course.
There were onerous impunity restrictions.
If that is the best gotcha moment that they have on Danielle Smith, I don't think it's very gotcha.
But of course, the media party despises Danielle Smith, so they'll make hay with it.
Of course, the election is this month, so that's not far away.
So that was where I was yesterday.
And I always like going to court to live tweet things.
I should tell you, and it's a tiny thing, because parliament, access to parliament is open to all Canadians, but access as a journalist to the scrum area and the foyer is controlled by the parliamentary press gallery.
Well, what is that?
Well, that is a club of journalists, so how do they have any authority?
Well, the Speaker of the House, who, of course, right now is a liberal, delegates that parliamentary privilege to them, and they vote on which journalists can or can't report.
And so normally I would sue them in a heartbeat if they banned rebel news.
The press gallery in the province of Alberta voted to ban rebel news from attending the legislature there.
We just talked to the speaker directly because he was a conservative and he said, yeah, we're not going to ban you.
And we went in.
And the press gallery panicked in Alberta and they asked me, please don't.
They actually called me up to see if I was going to sue them.
And I said, no.
Federally, though, we can't sue them.
I don't think.
I'm not sure the latest state of the law there because it's under the protection of the Liberal Speaker of the House of Commons.
So it just shows you how the collusion, you've got the media party banning Trudeau's enemies from attending.
And they're legally immune, they say, because the Speaker will protect them from litigation.
You can't, most things in Parliament cannot be sued over because it's protected by parliamentary privilege.
That's one of the reasons you can't sue someone for defamation for what they say in the floor of the House of Commons.
My reason for saying all this is that it is such a clubby little club.
Which is a perfect moment to move straight to our next subject, which is it's World Press Freedom Day.
And what a joke that is.
I'm going to get back to this in a room, but first I think we should play an ad because a third of our time has gone by and we've got to pay some bills around here.
Take a look at this and don't go away.
Come right back.
Tamara Leach has been released from jail.
Western separatist Tamara Leach.
Lych will remain in custody.
We have breaking news out of Ottawa to tell you about.
A judge has made a decision on whether to grant bail for Tamara Leach, one of the leaders of that recent demonstration in Ottawa.
have seen me on the news, but there's more to my story.
In my new book, Hold the Line, I share the story of the Freedom Convoy from the heart of the Freedom Convoy.
It's a story of hope, courage, and coming together as a community in the Canadian way.
You can buy my new book at theconvoybook.com, and in that book, you're going to hear stories from the heart of the convoy, as well as my arrest and my time in jail, like you've never heard them before.
Until very recently, I've been quite silent because of my bail conditions, but now I'm ready to tell my story, my side of the story.
I know the mainstream media isn't going to be fair to me, as they've already called me and my friends from the convoy terrorists.
There is increasing concern about violent online rhetoric supporting the convoy and that those with extreme views are planning on attending.
The mayor made, in my estimation, just a horrendous decision to negotiate with terrorists.
So I'm launching a book tour across Canada.
We'll be doing interviews, signing books, and saying thank you to all Canadians for your support.
I've partnered with Rebel News to crowdfund for the cost of my book, as well as our advertising campaign.
With your help, we'll be purchasing ads and billboards to spread the word about my book.
We'll also be upgrading my home studio, which will enable me to do interviews all around the world.
If you're a shop owner or a business owner and you'd like to have a book signing, please fill out the form on our website, which you can find here.
And if you'd like to make a donation for the tour, we'll greatly appreciate it.
The first 500 people to send in a donation of $200 or more will receive a free signed copy of my book, Hold the Line, My Story from the Heart of the Freedom Convoy.
The last time I drove across Canada, something very special happened.
Let's make that happen again.
Go to theconvoybook.com.
Thank you.
You know, I deeply admire that woman.
I've gotten to know her a little bit in the last few months, and she is the real deal.
She's very humble.
She's very caring.
She's a grandma.
I was talking to her the other day.
She was on the road driving one of her grandkids around, and I could hear the little one in the background.
And I just thought, that is a good woman.
Imagine going to jail for nearly 50 days.
She hasn't even had a day in court yet, but they're punishing her like a political prisoner, like they did for Arthur Pavlovsky.
And her book is interesting.
I mean, like I said, we covered the lockdown.
We covered the convoy comprehensively.
And I felt like I knew a lot about it.
Like, I don't know if I would call myself an expert in the lockdown of the convoy, but I feel like I really paid close attention, and we had a lot of teammates really drilling into it.
So, yeah, I would say I probably knew more about it than most people.
Holy cow, did I learn a lot of things from this book about how it really went down from the inside?
So can I recommend this book to you, theconvoybook.com?
And last I checked, it was still number one.
Do you want to just quickly go to Amazon.ca and you know how to do that?
Just type right in that search bar, Tamara Leech, hold the line.
And yeah, put it on the screen.
Let's all take a look at it together, what the ranking is.
So, yeah, click on it there.
Yeah, what's the ranking?
Oh, scroll down a little bit.
Okay, so it's fallen from number one to number four.
Matthew McConaughey.
How dare he?
I certainly like Matthew McConaughey.
I got a real kick out of him.
So Tamara's book has fallen to number four.
Let's get it back up there, people.
If you don't have your copy yet, please go to theconvoybook.com.
Now, you'll notice that most bestseller lists, they have Canadian fiction, Canadian nonfiction.
Non-Canadian fiction, non-Canadian nonfiction.
They break it down into categories.
So it's not that surprising that a Canadian political book is being beaten by a general interest book by an American celebrity, Matthew McConaughey.
That said, for the first two weeks, Tamara was number one.
Let's get her back up there.
And I say that because to me, it's a great proof point that the elite media, the elite bookstores, the elite book reviewers are out of sync with the people.
Like, seriously, you know how many copies you have to sell to beat Matthew McConaughey and chapters won't even put the book on their shelves?
It's not surprising, though.
Hey, we got some super chats.
Let me read them.
Cool beans, 89 chips in five bucks.
Ezra, I really appreciate what you're doing, but you have your own show.
The live stream was much better with the format from last year.
Okay, I'm trying to understand what you mean by last year.
Do you mean like 2022?
Or do you mean Sheila and David?
Because I'm trying to, I don't, I need to understand that a little bit more.
I like doing this show.
I mean, I'm very pressed for time because I do my own daily show called The Esfelant Show.
It's on every night at 8 p.m.
Plus, I do a lot of writing for like emails and campaigns, and I manage the team.
And I'm involved in a lot of things.
So I like doing, there was a time early in the lockdowns where I did a show every noon hour and every night, but that's just impossible.
Moderna Vaccine Effectiveness Study00:06:47
The size of our company basically tripled during the lockdowns.
Maybe you're just saying you missed the banter between Sheila and David.
I don't know exactly what you mean.
I love it when David and Sheila do the show, but from time to time I want to come and do the show too.
So maybe if I understood a little bit more about what you like or don't like, I would be able to answer your question smarter.
JCMN84 chips in 50 smackers.
Well, that's nice, yeah.
Thank you very much.
Links to a Time magazine story.
How long, here's how long COVID-19 vaccine immunity really lasts.
Wow.
Studies show vax effectiveness.
Omicron drops 20% six months post-primary series and only 30% post-booster.
I remember, hey, can you go on Twitter, search, do you know, from colon, Ezra Levant, space, Danish?
Do you know how to do that?
Yeah, exactly.
And then just Danish, space, and then scroll down a little bit and click when it says latest.
Just sort it that way.
Scroll down a bit.
Yeah, that second one there.
Pump that one up.
What's the date on that one?
Scroll up a bit.
January 8th, 2022.
So this is over a year old.
So you see, Christine Elliott said the best vaccine for your booster dose is the vaccine that's available first.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine provide strong protection against COVID-19 and the Omicron variant.
And look what I said.
Can you pump that up even bigger?
According to this large Danish study, Pfizer and Moderna only work for a couple of months against Omicron.
And after 90 days, they give you negative protection.
You know that.
Why lie?
And then click on that image there.
And I'll take you to the link in a second.
So this is sort of technical, I know.
Estimated vaccine effectiveness for those are two different technical terms for vaccines against infection with SARS-Coronavirus, Omicron, and Delta variants during November 20th to December 12th in Denmark.
So this is the Danish study.
So you can see, you see on the left, time since vaccine protection.
30 days, 30 to 60 days, 60 to 90 days, 91 to 150 days.
So for the Pfizer, VE is vaccine effectiveness.
So it's 55%.
So this was a study I posted over a year ago.
The vaccine was effective, the Pfizer vaccine was effective 55% of the time, 55% effective for the first month.
Fell to 16% in the second month.
By the time you're in the third month, it was negligible, single digits.
But this is what I couldn't believe.
After three months, it was negative effectiveness.
It actually made you more susceptible to the virus.
And the same thing for Moderna.
Do you see on the right?
Moderna, 36% effective for the first month, 30%, only 4.2% effective.
And then again, negative effectiveness.
Isn't that insane?
Close this image and then click on the link because I linked to the primary study.
That's what's so important here.
Who said this?
Did I make this up?
No.
Pump that up and let people see the source of this.
This is a preprint server for health sciences sponsored by the BMJ, British Medical Journal, and Yale.
And what's that other thing that's I think I'm yeah, so this is as legit as it gets.
British Medical Journal, you kidding me?
Yale University, you kidding me?
And look at these scientists.
These are scientists from I'm not even going to say those Danish words and those names.
This is a so this was a preprint that was not yet peer reviewed, but it was just the numbers from Denmark.
So go back to my tweet there.
And I know I'm taking a lot of time here, but this tweet was one of my most viral tweets viral that I'd ever done.
What's the stats on it?
Can you see what the stats on it are?
Okay, it doesn't look quite as big as I seem to think, only 1,200 likes, 54 quotes, et cetera.
But I think it was seen a lot.
It was fact-checked by all the official fact-checkers.
And what could they say?
I literally quoted what they said.
I literally took a picture of the study and I put it in the tweet.
There really was no commentary from me, but they tried their best to debunk this saying, oh, well, maybe it was because of this and maybe it was because of that.
Like it was in, they called up the scientists and tried to get them to denounce my tweet.
I'm serious.
All sorts of official fact checkers went to work to rebut my tweet.
I'd never seen anything like it before.
And what is my tweet?
I just showed you.
I was just showing the chart there.
And they actually managed to get some of those Danish scientists, and I think they just scared the hell out of them.
And they said, oh, well, maybe it was this, maybe it was that.
I'm not saying I know the reason for this.
I'm just pointing out what the study pointed out, which is that the effectiveness of both Pfizer and Moderna fell to zero after 90 days and actually went negative.
I didn't explain that.
How would I know why that was?
But that was just absolutely incredible.
And so that goes to your comment there.
Another super chat from JCMN for 50 bucks.
That's very generous.
Thank you.
Public health officer Bonnie mandated on healthcare workers and plenty implemented fall 2021 only for primary series.
Where's the justification for the ongoing BC mandate based on current science?
Yeah, there's no science there at all.
There's no science.
So thank you very much for those tweets.
And there's one more here by Abelist SL.
Rcmp Shooting Controversy00:15:31
Do you support the mass prosecution of regressive leftists and globalist conspirators in retaliation for the mass defamation, terrorist propaganda, SJW riots, and government tyranny and corruption?
Mass prosecution in retaliation for the mass definition.
No, is my answer.
Because I don't think that most wars that involve words should be criminalized or legalized.
I believe there is a place for defamation law.
I think it probably needs some reform.
I like free speech in general.
And you can see that when freedom of speech is abrogated, it is always the government that is the censor.
There's really no such thing as, I mean, even the so-called private Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, I'll show you in my Ezra LeVant show tonight, that often it's governments behind the scenes pushing those so-called private companies to censor.
It's just not a natural thing for companies to censor, I don't think.
I mean, they sort of do, but it's almost always the result of some pressure by government.
And so you bring in limits to free speech, and it's always going to be the authoritarian government that smashes you.
You know, there was a while there where people were talking about arrest Trudeau, prosecute Trudeau.
If the guy commits a crime, obviously arrest him.
But just because you hate him, if you set that precedent that you could charge prosecute arrest people who you really, hate, you don't think that's going to be used on you first and almost always?
So that's why my answer to your question is no.
All right, speaking of censorship, I want to show you the Chutzpa Award for today.
Justin Trudeau has something to say about press freedom.
I am not kidding.
There's some Justin Trudeau parody websites out there, but this is his actual account.
He says today, journalists inform Canadians and hold governments accountable.
Their work is independent and indispensable.
Well, let's just stop there for one second.
Is that true?
Some journalists are independent, but is the CBC independent?
The CBC board of directors is appointed by Justin Trudeau.
The CBC president is appointed by Trudeau.
The CBC is funded by Trudeau.
The CBC models and mirrors and echoes Trudeau's policies to a T, whether it's a war in Ukraine, carbon taxes, general anti-Americanism, global warming, gun control, transgenderism.
I cannot think of a single issue where the CBC disagrees with Justin Trudeau.
Can you?
They don't disagree.
Sometimes the CBC can't keep it in their pants, and they, like when they filed a lawsuit against the Conservative Party of Canada, literally in the middle of the 2019 election.
How can you possibly say the CBC is independent?
So that's me just reacting to the first sentence.
Let's finish the tweet.
He says, as they continue to face harassment, censorship, and violence simply for doing their jobs, let me say this.
We'll always support and promote the freedom of the press.
Okay.
Do you know of any journalists in Canada other than rebel news journalists who have faced violence?
Let me know if you know.
Have you, Olivia or Efron, have you heard of any journalists in Canada facing violence?
The last violence I can think of was more than a decade ago.
It was a Sikh journalist in British Columbia who was attacked.
Very violent.
That was, I think, over an internecine Sikh matter.
And I'm not saying that excuses it, but it was not just a generic, I hate journalists.
I'm going to kill a journalist.
Sikh S-I-K-H.
I forget the I'm sorry, I forget the name of the journalist, and I shouldn't, because it's quite a bad thing.
I think you've got chic in there, just S-I-K-H.
Anyways, and that was decades ago.
I cannot think of another journalist who has been attacked, let alone killed.
Yeah, so pump that one up.
I'll just, you know, let's just, yeah, this is the one.
This is a CBC story.
You'll notice this is a Canadian press story on CBC.
This is from 2007.
RCMP video system failed the day Sikh journalists was killed, inquiry hears.
An RCMP video surveillance system installed at the home of a potential witness in the prosecution of key suspects wasn't working the day he was murdered in 1998.
Ah, okay.
David Hayer, the son of the slain man and a liberal member of the BC legislature, said the time, okay, so that's very sad.
But that looks like it was literally 25 years ago, right?
If the attack was in 1998.
So there was a murder of a journalist 25 years ago, and it sounds like the journalist was also potentially a witness.
And again, that doesn't change the gravity or the tragedy or the crime of his murder.
But I think it's been 25 years exactly.
In the last 25 years, have you heard of any journalists being attacked in Canada?
I have not, and I'm not like I'm really racking my brains right now, other than Justin Trudeau's personal bodyguards beating up David Menjis and dumping him on the side of the road.
And we have video of that.
It's just absolutely horrible to watch.
Take a look.
Hey, I can.
Hey, this is assault.
I'm on a side.
I'm on a sidewalk.
What is this?
You cannot touch me.
No question, or are you kidding?
Are you kidding me?
Let's go.
What is this?
You can't.
Am I under arrest?
Because otherwise, you have no right!
Get off of me!
Guys, relax.
Get off of me.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Okay, thanks.
We got to get another version of that from without the music in the background, just the clean, clean audio of that.
What the hell were they doing there?
He was standing on the street.
He was going to holler a question at Trudeau walking in.
I know the question: why are you having a Christmas party when they're banned?
When they're legally banned in lockdowns, what were they doing there?
David was just a report.
He didn't, I don't even think he had a chance to call out his question.
I can't remember that part.
But he didn't touch anyone, didn't threaten anyone, didn't even insult anyone.
And they just took him and roughed him up.
What was that?
Why?
And then, of course, during the trucker convoy, even during the Emergencies Act, there was only one shooting in the whole country.
And it wasn't from a trucker.
It was from Trudeau's RCMP.
And what are the odds?
Let me ask you this.
There were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people in Ottawa that day.
And there were hundreds of thousands, maybe a million, who were involved in some way in the trucker convoy across the country, went out to watch them driving by, something like that.
Of the tens or hundreds of thousands of people, what are the odds that the only person who was shot was our reporter, Alexa Lavoie?
And the only person who did the shooting was Trudeau's RCMP.
What are the odds of that?
take a look You got shot in the head!
Oh jeez!
Oh!
Bring her to the left here.
What are the odds?
Alexa was not a protester, of course.
She was a journalist.
She was holding her camera.
Why would they shoot her?
Why would they shoot her?
We're suing the RCMP.
If you want to support us, go to standwithalxa.com, and the case is progressing.
We have received from the RCMP information, including details about the gun that was used and the training manual for that gun and the sort of rules of engagement for that gun.
that gun was not to be used for that purpose.
Why would you shoot a reporter in the leg with an anti-riot device that is literally against the manual, against the operating procedure, against the standing orders for the use of that weapon?
Even if Alexa were doing something wrong, which she was not doing, that weapon was an inappropriate weapon to use and it was used inappropriately.
And this is the prime minister who says he'll stand up against violence.
His personal bodyguards and his Brenda Lucky-run RCMP are the ones who've committed 100% of the violence against journalists in the last eight years.
And by the way, one thing that also came out, all those cops in Ottawa during the convoy, one of the things they actually did is they gave first aid to people.
That's just something I saw in their police notes.
Why did they shoot Alexa but not help her afterwards?
Why did they not give her first aid?
Why did they not offer to take her to the hospital?
Why did they shoot her and leave her there?
They were helping other people.
That's odd, isn't it?
And this is the guy who's putting out a press release saying they'll always support and promote the freedom of the press.
He just last week, he just last week passed a law that nationalizes the internet.
And I see in Blacklocks today, did you see that story in Blacklock?
Click on blacklocks.ca.
It hasn't even been a week, but yeah, CRTC to define new ethics.
So the CRTC, yeah, perfect.
Log in if you can.
Thanks very much.
Blacklocks is great, and we have a subscription.
It's not cheap, but it's worth it.
Yeah, let's just take a quick look.
The CRTC yesterday said it will define newsroom ethics under a cabinet bill on internet revenue sharing.
I have met with newspaper publishers, Scott Shortliff, Executive Director of the Broadcasting Policy, told Senators.
Okay, just stop for a second.
So you didn't think to mention that until now, that you were going to, that Justin Trudeau's staff, Justin Trudeau, who's been convicted under the Conflict of Interest Act for taking huge bribe vacations, like first from the Aga Khan, and he just took another bribe vacation.
I think it was in Jamaica or wherever.
I can't remember the latest bribe vacation.
He takes bribes all the time, is convicted all the time, and says, Well, whoops, here's my $500 fine for taking a $100,000 free vacation.
This is the guy who's going to write newsroom ethics.
And what's the newspapers?
I have met with newspaper publishers, Scott Shortlift said.
So you're going to regulate newspapers now?
It puts, frankly, a bit of an onus on us to define that, said Shortlife.
The Canadian Radio, Television, and Telecommunications Commission would determine if a newsroom, quote, can show it is a credible news organization that would benefit under the revenue scheme.
So media have to prove themselves to the government.
You know, in the past, journalists helped hold politicians to account.
But do you see how they flip that around?
Now politicians are going to hold journalists to account.
Politicians are going to say whether you're ethical enough to be a journalist.
That's sort of insane.
Pablo Rodriguez, the heritage minister, is literally a drunk driver.
He got caught drunk driving and he lied about it.
He is an unethical criminal man, but he's going to enforce an ethics standard on journalists whose job is to hold him to account.
So politicians are now going to write newsroom ethics.
What are they doing?
There is no separation.
I mean, Justin Trudeau already owns the CBC, which is larger than all other news media combined.
And they rent out the rest of the news media through their subsidies.
But he just can't stand the fact that there's any critics out there.
Here's Pablo Rodriguez, the drunk driver.
No democracy can work without facts and without the journalists that get to them.
When politicians attack the media, our democracy doesn't get stronger, it gets weaker.
Fact-based independent journalism is not the enemy.
It's a pillar of democracy.
You just nationalized the internet.
You just put politicians in control of the internet.
Your guy just said he's going to be writing newsroom ethical guidelines.
And you're the one talking about ethics and facts.
What an absolute comedy if it weren't so outrageous.
It's 1:52 p.m.
Shaking Up The Store00:03:31
Let's take another ad.
I want to show you an ad for the store.
I'm excited about it.
We're shaking up our store.
We're going to freshen it up.
We just hired a full-timer to come up with one of our jobs is to come up with great store items.
I think we've got great stuff there now, but we've got more to go.
Do we have any store ads kicking around?
Or what other ads do you have?
Oh, this is a good one.
This one's already got some results.
There's a new ad from Avi.
Maybe we've shown this to you already, but this is pretty fresh.
It's like in last new week.
Take a look at this ad from Avi Amini.
I am doing something today that I have never tried before.
Listen up, I'm looking for collaborators in a new and exciting initiative.
As you most likely know, YouTube a long time ago demonetized rebel news, and we are 100% dual funded.
Now, while our supporters are fantastic at helping us cover legal campaigns and special reporting missions, unfortunately, the reality is our day-to-day operational expenses often exceed our income stream, which is crazy if you think about it, because my videos across all platforms attract hundreds of thousands of views and sometimes even millions.
So I want to share that reach with the right partners.
If you have a product or business and want to enter a win-win relationship with me, please go to rebelnews.com forward slash ads and fill in the form to let me know.
I won't be accepting anyone.
I need to believe in your business or product so I can sell it proudly for you.
And for successful applicants, I will guarantee a minimum view count.
Meaning, even if your ad is published on the less popular reports, we'll keep promoting your business or product until it gets the agreed minimum eyeball.
So again, if you have a cool company or product that either wants to take advantage of my reach or want to support my work through advertising in a way that you can write it off as a tax deduction or both, head over to rebelnews.com forward slash ads and hopefully we can join forces soon.
Yeah, I think that's a great idea.
I had the pleasure of going down to Glenn Beck's studio a couple months ago and he has a few advertisers that he really likes and trusts and he does live ad reads.
And you know, and in fact, I was so moved by them.
I was convinced.
I mean, he talked about some of his anyway.
I mean, you can see he truly uses the company.
So I love the idea because, of course, YouTube has demonetized us.
But really, the ads they were serving up were generally sort of general interest, retail ads, nothing really specific to the passionate viewers that Rebel News has.
Whereas if you have a product that you think, you know, I bet other Rebel viewers would want this.
And if, and if, especially if you're conservative linear freedom-oriented and you're immune to the kind of whiny leftist woke cancel culture types, that is a great way.
Like, imagine if you had Avi or myself, if I believed in the product, doing an ad read.
I think that could really work.
I think Rebels would love to know who to support on our side of the issues.
It's 1.55, and I covered a few issues today.
David Thompson's Wealth00:02:53
I'm glad I did.
I think I got through.
Oh, there's one more super chat here.
It's from Cool Beans89, the fellow who said, I want the old style live stream.
He says, what I meant is this.
I liked the live stream that was on weekdays at noon in the summer fall of 2022.
Okay, so, and again, I'm trying to understand the difference.
Is it the time slot?
Is that what I'm trying to understand?
So I liked it too.
What is the difference between now and then and now?
Is it the time slot?
Is it the host?
Is it the style?
Again, I'm not being obtuse.
I just am trying to understand exactly what your complaint is.
But I'm glad you're watching.
So thank you for that.
It's almost the top of the hour, so I'm going to say goodbye.
Pleasure to be with you today.
For those who don't watch, every day at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, I have what we call Ezra Levant show.
That's just me.
And it's behind the paywall, which is $8 a month.
And that's one of the ways we make money around here because, of course, we were demonetized by YouTube, as I mentioned.
So for $8 a month, you get my show every day.
You get Sheila Gun Read Show on a weekly basis.
And because we don't take money from Trudeau, never will, never have, never could, never should.
And we survive off the support of our viewers, which the CBC could never do.
Toronto Star can never do either.
Globe Mail can never do.
Globe Mail is owned by Canada's richest man, David Thompson.
You'd think he could pay his own way, but he insists on taking taxpayer bailouts.
What a cheapskate.
Seriously, if I was Canada's richest man.
Seriously, what's the value on that guy?
Google, just before we go.
David Thompson.
I think that's his first name.
Yeah.
David Thompson, third Baron Thompson of Fleet.
He is, here I'm on his, as of November 2022, Thompson is the richest person in Canada, 23rd richest in the world.
Oh my God, with an estimated net worth of $52 billion.
Did you even know that?
If you have $52 billion, like that's almost Elon Musk money, like show some self-respect and show some respect for the country that has enriched you.
And how about don't sub-net worth is not trustworthy, but Forbes and other sources are.
Yeah, let me send you the Forbes link.
Yeah, that's it right there.
$56.7 billion.
He's the chairman of Thompson Reuters, huge vaccine promoters, real deep state fact-checker, bad guy.
Why MP Chong Matters00:04:18
But put aside political disagreements.
Let's say he's a good guy.
Let's say he's a great guy.
He's got $56.7 billion.
Why is he taking the government bailout for the Global Mail?
He owns the Global Mail.
Why is he taking the bailout?
Like, I mean, he's rich enough that he'll never be able to spend that money, his children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandmother, for the rest of all recorded time.
They've got enough money.
So it's not a matter of money.
Does he think he's owed money from Joe Lunchbucket, who's making $50,000 a year and pays taxes to subsidize the plaything of David Thompson, the Global Mail?
Why the hell would that oligarch need to be subsidized?
By the way, I think the Global Mail could survive without subsidies.
But even if it couldn't, why the hell is he hitting you and me up at tax time?
Isn't that atrocious?
I say that because Rebel News does not take government money and never will.
That's the difference.
So if you can help us out, go to rebelnewsplus.com and become a subscriber.
That's the show for today.
Until tonight, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, goodbye and keep fighting for freedom.
The Prime Minister wants to leave our lives when exactly when you're first told about MP Michael Chong and China's targeting of him in his family.
Over the past couple of days, we've done a lot of follow-up to find out exactly what happened and where various people knew at different points in the system.
We all knew after the genocide motion that China made a public thing about sanctioning Michael Chong two years ago because of his strong leadership on condemning the violence against the Uyghurs.
CSIS made a determination at that point that they should give Michael defensive briefings, which they did over the following years a number of times on issues surrounding this concern that China had an engagement.
On Monday morning, two days ago, we asked what happened to that information.
Was it ever briefed up out of CSIS?
It was not.
CSIS made the determination that it wasn't something that needed to be raised to a higher level because it wasn't a significant enough concern.
That's why they chose to give direct defensive briefings to the MP in question, but they didn't feel that it was necessary to do anything else.
Going forward, we're making it very, very clear to CSIS and all our intelligence officials that when there are concerns that talk specifically about any MP, particularly about their family, those need to be elevated.
Even if CSIS doesn't feel that it's a sufficient level of concern for them to take more direct action, we still need to know about it at the upper government level.
When did you learn about it?
We are making that direction now.
We are making it clear to CSIS that when it involves an MP, even if it's not hitting a threshold that they would previously think needs to be highlighted, we should still know about the government.
When did you learn specifically about this information about Mr. Chong?
I learned that following the media reports on Monday morning, I asked CSIS, what is this briefing?
What is this supposed story that is out in the media from a leak?
What do we know about it?
We then retraced over the past couple of days what this was, that CSIS knew about certain things, didn't feel that it reached a threshold that required them to pass it up out of CSIS or give more than just a defensive briefing to Mr. Chong a few months later and then repeat in.
But obviously, when it comes to an MP's safety, when it comes to their family's safety, we need to know even if it's a mild concern or something that wouldn't otherwise hit a threshold that CSIS would feel,