Sheila Gunn Reid mocks the 2023 Liberal Party policy convention in Ottawa, where youth voting age was proposed to drop to 17 despite low turnout, and "15-minute cities" faced backlash for potential forced street closures. Rebel News’ Alexa Lavoie was barred as "extremist far-right," while CBC CEO Catherine Tate allegedly pressured Twitter to censor critics—revealed in Ezra Levant’s FOI scoop. The episode ties these moves to Trudeau’s expanding censorship, warning of a slippery slope toward state-controlled media and politicized truth boards. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, I go through the proposals for the Liberal Party Policy Convention, and there's quite a few things in there that the Liberals told me were just conspiracy theories.
Then, Rebel News Quebec-based reporter Alexa Lavoie joins me to discuss what happened to her when she tried to go to the Liberal Party policy convention.
It's May 4th, 2023.
I'm Sheila Gunread, but you're watching the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you.
You censorious bug.
Policy convention is in full swing this weekend in Ottawa.
It would have been delightfully picketed by striking federal civil service workers, but they just struck a deal to go back to work, which is too bad.
Because I love when my political enemies in the big government unions fight with my other political enemies in big government and the Liberal Party of Canada.
It would have been a wonderful deathmatch wherein I hope for nobody to win, but I guess we'll never get to see how that all shakes out.
Now, as an aside, at the Liberal Party Policy Convention, two of the absolute most unlikable women in all of politics are going to have what's called a fireside chat.
Hillary Clinton and Christy Freeland are going to, I don't know, cackle till the roof comes down in the venue.
As I remarked on Twitter, I think this is going to sound like two old ravens fighting over a dead deer carcass in the ditch.
Just a cacophony of cackling.
But there's no accounting for tastes, and liberals will indeed be interested in this.
Anyway, I thought I would go through some of the more extreme, I guess from the outside looking in, policy initiatives being proposed to be adopted at the Liberal Policy Convention.
Now, some of these may never make it onto the books, but since they're being proposed, they're pretty mainstream ideas within the Liberal Party of Canada.
So let's take a peek.
It's all online.
Makes you wonder why the other journalists aren't doing this sort of thing.
Notable policy resolutions include a whole manner of social justice things, including lowering the voting age to 17, which I suspect is being proposed by people who are either 17 years old or who have never actually met a 17-year-old.
Because how could you propose this if you've ever actually spoken to a 17-year-old?
Anyway, look at this.
Lower the federal voting age to 17 years old.
Sponsor, Liberal Party of Canada, Alberta.
How embarrassing.
Whereas youth in Canada vote at lower rates than any other age group, whereas polling stations are often located at high schools, a feature that could combat some of the traditional challenges such as accessibility faced by potential voters.
Whereas in 1970, the federal voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in a bid to increase the voter turnout rates.
Whereas past Liberal Party of Canada policy proposals lowering the federal voting age to 16 haven't been successful and have proven unpalatable to the general public.
Yeah, no kidding.
Whereas providing greater opportunities to participate in the political process strengthens democracy, whereas voting is habit forming and by expanding access to the ballot box, we can ensure strong civic turnouts for generations to come.
Be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada urged the Government of Canada to amend Section 3 of the Canada Elections Act to state that every person who is a Canadian citizen and who on polling day is 17 years of age or older is qualified as an elector.
Let's hope that one makes it to the dustbin of history.
There's also a policy resolution to create 15-minute cities, which the Liberals and the Liberal media keep telling me is some form of conspiracy theory.
Look at this.
Creating livable, walkable cities to fight climate change.
Sponsor, Liberal Party of Canada, Ontario.
Well, at least it's not Alberta.
Whereas studies have shown that making cities more walkable and bikeable improves residents' health and quality of life, decreases cost of living, and allows for cities to more effectively meet emission reduction goals.
Whereas across the world, countries are attempting to make their cities more walkable and bikeable in an effort to achieve the benefits mentioned.
Whereas in order to remain economically, socially, and culturally competitive with the rest of the world, the government of Canada must incentivize cities to enact policies that make their communities more walkable and bikeable.
Whereas cities often face the perception that prioritizing active transportation and greening in commercial areas will have a negative financial impact on businesses, be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada will urge the government of Canada to create a fund, of course there's money involved, that will cover the cost to incentivize the closure of major commercial streets to car traffic and test the scalability of such projects across cities in Canada.
Do you want your city to be one of those test markets for major street closures in the name of climate change?
This is why I don't live in a city.
Amusingly, there's also a whistleblower protection resolution, which I think is pretty funny as the Liberals are on a bit of a witch hunt right now to hunt down whomever in the security apparatus is leaking information about just how much benefit the liberals are reaping from Chinese communist government intervention to win elections here in Canada.
There's a disinformation resolution calling on the government to have power to control what online news sources are allowed to even post.
Let's just call this the rebel news resolution, shall we?
Look at this.
Combating disinformation in Canada, sponsor Liberal Party of Canada, British Columbia.
BC, hang your heads in shame.
Whereas the United Nations Secretary General recognizes disinformation as an existential risk to humanity, whereas online information sources are the source of most disinformation aimed at and or available to Canadians, whereas those who produce misinformation seek to undermine trust in people and institutions, including mainstream media and governments.
No, I think the mainstream media and governments are doing that on their own, undermining their own trust.
Anyway, I'll shut up.
Let's keep going.
Whereas one recent poll found 44% of Canadians believe much of the information from news organizations is false, and 71% believe official government accounts of events are untrustworthy.
Whereas the demand for information 24-7 has increased the need for programming contemporaneously with the loss of advertising revenue to online platforms.
Whereas to reduce costs, mainstream media no longer employs as many reporters with extensive knowledge of particular subject areas and fills content with opinion programming rather than news, CBC.
And whereas the result has devalued mainstream media as a source of news and information, be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada requests the government provide additional public funds to support advertisement-free news and information reporting by Canadian media through an arm's-length nonpartisan mechanism.
Great.
Does this mean more money for the CBC and then more money for the rest of them?
I think so.
Request the government explore options to hold online information services accountable for the veracity of material published on their platforms and to limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced.
So the government is going to decide if your news is accurate, if the Liberal Party gets their way and the Liberal Party is in charge, so they just might.
And they'll hold you accountable.
What does that mean?
What are you going to do to us?
The separate fast-track resolutions in the policy proposals also include a green transition for the prairie provinces, wherein the Liberals, from their power base in the Laurentians, transition hardworking prairie people into abject poverty by phasing out our jobs and our main industry, while the Liberals also continue to buy oil and gas from some of the more odious regimes of the world.
Seems reasonable.
There's also a call to export Canada's energy to NATO partners.
Now, I'm in agreement with this, but not just to our NATO partners for the sake of fueling a war machine, but for the sake of starving those aforementioned odious regimes of the money they need to oppress human rights and civil liberties.
This is stuff conservatives have been saying for years.
It's the whole premise behind Ezra's book, Ethical Oil.
Look at this.
Energy export strategy for NATO sponsor Liberal Party of Canada, Saskatchewan.
Whereas Canada is a global defender of democratic values, economic freedom, equality, and self-determination, whereas Russia's reckless and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine offends all of those values, whereas Canada is working steadfastly with our allies in NATO to provide military and financial support to Ukraine, whereas Russia is seeking to reduce NATO resolve in Europe by cutting off supplies of energy to our allies,
whereas Germany and other NATO allies are working to reduce dependence on Russian energy, whereas Canada is able to expand its ability to provide our European NATO allies with energy in the form of liquefied natural gas alongside exports of renewable energy sources and liquefied hydrogen,
be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada will develop a policy framework to expeditiously build critical infrastructure to enable Canada to export energy to our NATO allies.
Didn't Justin Trudeau just say there was no business case for providing Canada's natural gas to Europe?
Didn't he just say that?
Well, even his own party disagrees with his stupid comments.
And I mean, there's some extreme irony here of offering up our Alberta-produced energy to NATO after also proposing a policy initiative to phase out Alberta oil and gas.
Like pick a lane, you guys.
There's also some irony in offering up our oil and gas to NATO while carbon taxing Canadians at the pump on the very same oil and gas, right?
And naturally, there's a proposal called Truth in Politics, which will potentially create a review board where the Liberals get to use the machinery of government to fact-check their political critics.
What could possibly go wrong there?
I mean, let's just call it the Ministry of Truth review board.
And of course, the Liberals want mandatory voting.
So first of all, they lower the voting age so that kids without a grasp of reality are suddenly voting and then will also simultaneously force them to vote.
That's not rigging the system or anything.
Although it wouldn't be a system if the left weren't constantly trying to rig it against reality.
Up next, after the break, Rebel News Quebec reporter Alexa Lavoie joins me to discuss what happened to her when she tried to report on the Liberal Policy Convention.
I think you know exactly how it went.
Stay with us.
Journalists inform Canadians and hold governments accountable.
Journalists Under Fire00:13:52
Their work is independent and indispensable.
As they continue to face harassment, censorship, and violence simply for doing their jobs, let me say this.
We will always support and promote the freedom of the press.
Now, I'm reading from my phone here Justin Trudeau's tweet from, well, yesterday on World Press Freedom Day.
But once his statement was tested, he failed completely because Rebel News sent a journalist Alexa Lavoie, our Quebec-based superstar, to the Liberal Party Policy Convention.
And, well, take a look at what happened to her here.
One of my questions is, we heard recently that CCS knew about the threat made to Michael Chong, that is the opposition MP, and...
Sorry, sorry.
Thank you.
I would just go and check with them.
Hi, if you're not accredited media, unfortunately, we'll have to ask you to leave.
But we didn't do anything for disturbing the event.
We are just asking people questions.
I'm the director of the party.
What outlet are you with?
What are you with?
What outlet are you with?
Sorry?
With Ruben News?
Yeah, unfortunately, the organization.
The organization you work for is widely reported to represent extremist far-right views, and you're not welcome.
Extremist, far-right views?
You're not welcome.
Can you tell me one extreme far-right news that we publish?
It's time to go.
No, I want you to answer, and I will go after.
It's time to go.
No, I just asked you what is the far-right news that we did.
One, just one.
We publish almost 100 per week.
One news that is far-right, extremist.
We're asking you.
Can you please tell me one?
It's time to go.
And I will go peacefully.
It's time to go.
But I want you to tell me one.
It's time to go.
Let's go.
Did you ever watch what we do?
Did you ever watch what we do?
Gratitude is very bad for us.
So why you ask me to be accredited when this man knew about my outlet and called me extreme right-wing news?
It's time to go, please.
Yeah, but I want you to tell me one news that we published that is considered far-right extremist news.
It's time to go.
You can answer or not?
Because you don't know.
You never watch what we are doing.
Think yes or no?
Is it true or not?
I'm asking you.
It's time to go.
So joining me now is Alexa Lavois, unfortunately, one of the most assaulted journalists in this entire country, to describe what happened to her when she tried to go to the Liberal Party Policy Convention.
Now, hi, Alexa.
Thanks so much for joining me.
Now, we were sending you there because there was a completely different story, kind of, right?
We had heard that the public sector union PSAC would be picketing the Liberal Party policy convention, and that sounds lovely to me, where my enemies are just yelling at each other, and I stand back and watch it happen.
So I was kind of looking forward to that a little bit, but a deal was struck with the union, of course, so that they didn't embarrass the liberals at their policy convention.
I think there's some of that happening there.
So you went there with another story in mind, but it became about press freedom.
Tell us what happened.
So we arrived there and we were like, oh, okay, there is a problem because you have nobody outside of the shot center.
And I said, okay, I'm going to Google it.
And I saw that just before I arrived, an agreement with the CRA workers and the government have been made.
And so I was like, okay, so I'm going to just look around and look inside since the event was not started yet.
We went up, a bunch of Benevol was working and we were like, okay, maybe we can like try to interview a couple of people who were going to assist to the convention.
And so during I was waiting, since we were there pretty early, a security agent from the SHA Center came to see us and asked, can you just wear your accreditation?
Really nice person, just watching like if everything is okay.
And because we were just sitting alone.
And so we were on our way to go and try to get our accreditation.
But people, you need to know that same if we apply, we will be refused, refused, and refused.
And this is how the liberals work with rubber news.
We get denied access all the time.
Same if we write multiple email.
So I took my chance.
I asked on the way a couple of questions to the attendees.
And during I was interviewing my last attendees, really nice person, by the way, at the end, two people who work for Justin Trudeau came towards Guillaume, my camera person, asking him to stop filming.
And so you guys are outside.
No, no, we were inside, just not in the room.
We needed in.
We were in the shot center.
We were like at the main floor.
And so I was like, there is a problem.
And they say, yeah, you cannot film if you're not accredited.
I say, yeah, but how I get accredited.
They say, well, you need to apply online.
And I say, oh, I can do my job if your party keeps denying independent journalists as ribbon news to assist to what is going on with the liberal party.
So all independent news can do their job properly if you stop them to do so.
And so after an argumentation, I asked them, what is your name and what is your position?
And she didn't want it to tell me the woman, but the man said, I'm the director of the party.
And finally, he said, for which outlet do you work?
And I know he knew.
I know he knew.
He just wanted to confirm.
So I said, for ribbon news, and the answer was like, oh, it's because your organization is extreme right-wing news and you have nothing to do here.
So I will ask you to leave now.
And I asked him, which news do you say that is extreme far-right?
Name me one and I will leave peacefully the place.
Name one news that we publish that is extreme far right.
And he never wanted to answer.
I say, do you watch what we are publishing for saying that?
Do you know really what we work on?
And he didn't answer.
And obviously that person probably never see any piece of what we produce.
It just repeat what he have been told to say that rebel news, you cannot have them because they are extreme far right because they don't go in the same narrative that we are going.
So they are a threat for the Liberal Party.
So get them out.
Can you imagine the liberal outrage?
And you would get a statement from Justin Trudeau himself.
If the Conservative Party of Canada kicked out a female reporter from, I don't know, Press Progress or CBC or one of the left-wing media groups, Vice, whatever, if Vice is even still open, they would be calling names.
They would be saying, you know, this is censorious.
You don't care about free speech.
You don't care about the free press.
And you're sexist.
You're bullying these female journalists, but they do it to you repeatedly.
Justin Trudeau himself has done this to you repeatedly.
So I'm surprised you got as far as you did into the policy convention, quite frankly.
And I think your little button had something to do with it.
Oh, yeah.
I receive a nice gift.
But as I say, the first question I asked to the two staff, I say, are we disturbing anything?
Do we are actually making trouble?
And they say, no.
It's just we go by the rules that you need to be accredited.
But why are you refusing us to be accredited if we are here doing what we should do by doing our job, not causing any problem, doing normal journalism, just asking normal questions to the people?
Why are you refusing us to be there if we were just acting as every journalist because we are just as other journalists?
It's just because we are not showing the same nice, perfectly thing about Justin Trudeau, how nice it is when we show actually the other side.
Yeah, I mean, we're not bought off and colonized by Justin Trudeau.
I was going through the policy initiatives that are proposed.
They're going to be voted on.
But the idea that these things are even being proposed by constituency associations and, you know, liberal party organizations, I think it's Ontario behind this one, that they want a panel, like a truth in politics panel, to decide what's honest of your critics to say about you.
They've called for more funding for the media in their policy initiatives.
And they've also called for consequences, whatever that means, to hold online publishers to account for what the liberals decide is disinformation.
So how they treated you is completely in line with the policy proposals they're proposing this weekend.
And I think with Bill C11 that passed and all this regulation that's coming up, because it's not, it's just the beginning, the Bill C11, I think is just going to get worse.
So I encourage everybody, please go to subscribe to rubennews.com because if we get censor in every platform, at least we get our platform.
Yeah, that's exactly why we have that little pop-up.
When you go to the rebelnews.com website, we have a little pop-up and we encourage people to drop their email in there because we need to stay in touch with you because we don't even know what C-11 is going to do to us.
They've passed it and they said, now we're going to build the regulations into it.
So how do you even fight back against censorship when they haven't even told us how exactly they are going to censor us?
But what we do know is the entire internet is now under the control of a government that will not allow one single female journalist to ask a non-compliant question.
It's probably my second question when I ask the people if they think that Justin Trudeau is the best leader to represent the Liberal Party.
The answer I got, something is hilarious.
You know, it's funny.
That's a great question, Alexa.
I am very curious if they are satisfied with him, especially as the scandals regarding his political contamination by the Chinese communists just keep piling up and piling up.
I'm curious what the grassroots think, because I know how conservatives are.
When we don't like the leader, we're like, throw him out the door, get rid of him right now, get gone, get into the dustbin of history.
But the liberals don't seem to have that same mindset unless they're getting there.
I'm curious.
I can't wait to see that report.
I have just one answer that I got, and I was like, and the person was like, but who helped?
Like, if you have nobody else better than him, that is actually really like sad, like answer when you say that you have nothing, nobody else than him that can do the job.
Yeah, what does that say about the depth of talent in the Liberal Party when Justin Trudeau is the best that they can put up?
I suppose there's Christy Freeland, but not sure about that.
Would she be better?
Yeah, I don't think she'd be better.
She cackled as she stole bank accounts from people.
Alexa, I look very much forward to your report.
Thank you for always working so hard and really putting yourself out there in the interest of press freedom.
Between when David Menzies, you might be the most assaulted journalists in this country.
And, you know, it's a net, you guys are neck and neck for probably the most censored too.
You've been censored by Justin Trudeau himself, who refused to take your questions at a debate wherein we had to sue to get in.
So we know that you intimidate Justin Trudeau.
Strong women generally do.
And I think he experienced his interaction with you a little differently than you did.
Oh, I certainly remember my face now.
I don't think you could forget it.
Alexa, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Wink Wink: Musk's Impact00:04:19
Thank you.
We'll talk very, very soon.
Stay with us.
your letters to Ezra, read by me, up after the break.
Friends, if you'd like to help us stand against Justin Trudeau's attempts to control what you can see, say, and view on the internet, please go to stopc11.com and add your name to the growing list of Canadians who reject Justin Trudeau's North Korean-style attempts to control the internet.
Now, today's letters, or at least this next few, come to us on Ezra's massive, incredible scoop yesterday.
Now, the scoop was made possible through access to information filing.
We are only able to do access to information filing through your generous donations to a very special website that helps offset our filing fees and our research fees.
It's rebelinvestigates.com.
It allows us to file for these documents, get a little bit of research help to go through them.
And this is what Ezra found.
He found that the CBC's CEO, Catherine Tate, who by the way lives in New York, she isn't even Canadian content, she was pressuring Twitter to censor users.
And she did this in a couple of different ways, kind of overtly, but also kind of passively.
She suggested, well, maybe if you don't censor those people, maybe we just won't spend any advertising dollars with you.
And at the time, this was pre-Elon Musk takeover.
Twitter was definitely cash strapped, excuse me.
But she also said, well, maybe I could ask the federal government to bring in censorship legislation.
Nice internet, you got there.
Wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to it?
Wink, wink, wink.
That's what Catherine Tate was doing, unless Twitter started censoring the users that she just didn't want to hear from.
So, anyway, we published those documents in full, and the Epoch Times has picked up the story.
I await the mainstream media to pick up the story, but I'm not sure they will because I'm pretty certain they're probably doing the same thing to social media platforms.
It wouldn't surprise me whatsoever.
Rational Thinker writes: We all knew these were going to come out eventually.
Nobody believed they didn't exist for even a second.
I agree with you.
I'm very curious to know if there are Twitter files, as we saw from the United States, that will be made public.
I did see that Elon Musk responded to Ezra's story yesterday.
So maybe now he's turned his eyes north to see what the company was doing before he came along in conjunction with the federal government and the, I guess, the communications arm of the federal government that we call the CBC.
High and salty writes: Nobody in government is complaining about the abuse rebel news and true North journalists endure on a daily basis.
Most of it is gross and a lot of it is physical.
There is no network in the country that works harder each day to bring us up to speed on daily events.
Thank you.
You just saw the interview that I did with Alexa Lavois.
It's almost, and it makes me sad to say it, but it has almost become a rite of passage here at Rebel News to be censored by someone in government or some politician.
It's happened to Alexa, it's happened to me, it's happened to David, it's happened to Drea, it's happened to Tamara, it has even happened to our newswriter, Alex Dollywall.
It's happened to Adam, it's happened to our former staff.
And there's a reason they censor just us, and it's because they know that even though we are always on our best behavior at these events, the most dangerous thing we are going to do is ask a question that the people at home care about.
And they know CBC will never do that, or for that matter, the rest of the mainstream media.
Rural Crime and Bug Cuisine00:03:18
On Ezra's interview with Mark Murano from Climate Depot the other day on Britain promoting bugs as food, Heather Jones writes, I will starve before I eat damn bugs.
Now, Heather, I don't know if you know this, but I did a story a little while ago explaining how bugs are a real disease vector.
They carry parasites that are transmissible to humans, and it is really dangerous for these massive bug farms, gross, I can't even call them a real farm, like a farm.
It's a bug factory, I guess.
That their parasites can spread to the food chain.
So for you and I, Heather, we would never eat bugs, right?
Because we wouldn't, I mean, it's gross.
Why would I eat a bug?
I can eat a steak or eat some venison.
There's a deer in the backyard.
But for those of us who wouldn't eat a bug, our food chain could be contaminated from parasites that spread from these bug factories to our cattle or even to us.
And I don't think that we truly recognize just the extreme biohazard these bug farm facilities have the potential to be.
It's quite frightening, actually.
I think you'd think we would have learned something about biosecurity over the last three years, right?
We've got another letter to us that's Alberta focused, so I'm happy to read this one.
It's from Brian H., who writes, just finished, watching your segment with your guests discussing the RCMP and Alberta possibly replacing them with their own provincial police service.
One of the stats you put up showed an increase in rural crime, and I believe the reason for the increase, not only in Alberta, but Saskatchewan and Manitoba as well, is the on-duty mounties go to bed around 1 a.m.
I don't know.
I've seen them out later.
That means if you have a crime being committed on your property at 2 a.m., after calling the emergency number, which isn't always 911 in rural Canada, the appropriate mountain needs to be woken up and then he or she needs to put on all their gear, get the dispatch report and location, then travel out to the location, which could be over half an hour away.
Plus they are probably going out there solo with backup being who knows how far there.
When seconds count, the RCMP are only minutes away.
It's sad.
I don't know when they go to bed.
I don't know if that's true or not.
But what I can tell you is there are a lot of things in your letter that I know to be true because I am a rural Albertan and I live a half an hour from the closest police station.
And a lot can happen to me and my family in a half an hour.
And so by the time the police respond, the crime is over.
And that's why I'm such an advocate for firearms rights and the ability for Canadians, particularly rural Canadians, but all Canadians, to be able to defend themselves and not outsource their personal safety to somebody else with a gun when the best person I think to defend your life with a gun is probably you.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Thank you to everybody in studio in Toronto who's going to work very, very hard to put this show together that I just threw together.