Ezra Levant exposes Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE), a $52B monopoly with $24B in revenue and $69B in assets, as hypocritical for demanding taxpayer bailouts while reporting record profits and cutting 1,300 news jobs. The company’s CEO, Mirko Bibbits, pushed for CRTC subsidies despite higher Q2 earnings, aligning with Trudeau’s Liberal policies like Bill C-18 and C-11, which Levant calls censorship. Meanwhile, Gordon Chang details China’s coercive espionage tactics against U.S. Navy sailors, fueled by COVID skepticism and military provocations like the spy balloon incident, arguing for full diplomatic decoupling. Levant links masking to violent anonymity, citing attacks on journalists like Andy Ngo, while criticizing Trudeau’s soft stance on CCP influence—including appointing David Johnston, tied to Confucius Institutes, as a rapporteur. Corporate greed and foreign threats collide in Canada’s media and security landscape. [Automatically generated summary]
I want to talk about Bell Canada Enterprises, one of the biggest companies in Canada, one of the oldest companies, too.
It's worth about $52 billion.
Did you know that they're begging for your tax dollars as a subsidy from Trudeau?
I'll give you the super gross details, but first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
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We never will.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, one of Canada's richest monopolies begs for more taxpayer bailouts.
It's really gross.
It's August 4th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
shame on you you sensorious bug let me read a gorgeous headline to you It's just too much.
It's from the Globe and Mail.
BCE's CEO calls for government assistance for the struggling media sector.
In case you don't know, BCE stands for Bell Canada Enterprises, one of the oldest and richest companies in Canada.
I checked, and as of today, it's worth $52 billion on the stock market.
Here's the stock price chart.
You can see they made a killing during the pandemic lockdowns.
Of course, they did.
When you were locked in your homes, not allowed to go to work or school or a restaurant or sports or whatever, couldn't go to funerals or weddings.
What could you do but sit at home and watch TV on cable from Bell?
They made billions off the lockdowns.
And it was not surprising to learn afterwards that Trudeau actually paid the big TV stations, including CTV, which is owned by Bell, paid them $104 million to promote their lockdown propaganda.
So that was pretty cozy.
Trudeau locks Canadians in their homes, shutting down any real-life social interactions, forcing you to go online for any human contact.
And surprise, the big internet and cable and cell phone company made billions of dollars off it and supports the lockdowns with a vicious vengeance against anyone who dared to call for freedom instead.
Look at that stock chart though.
It's not as shocking as the big pharma companies, but it's close.
So anyways, this big monopoly company that got rich off the lockdowns, they're begging for help, not trying to earn their wealth from their customers, trying to coax it out of Trudeau, because apparently $100 million to promote the lockdowns, that's already been spent.
Let me read a little bit from the story.
BCE's chief executive officer is calling on Canada's broadcasting and telecommunications regular to help the country's media sector cope with a challenging advertising market and competition from foreign giants.
Bell Canada is a giant itself, though.
I read their most recent annual report.
Look at page 81 on their report.
$24 billion in revenue last year, $69 billion in assets.
That's up $9 billion in two years.
Like I say, they literally made $9 billion off the lockdown.
They are profiteers, just like Pfizer is.
Oh, and they also happen to own, besides a swath of TV stations and cable companies and cell phones.
And well, they own a chunk of some major sports teams.
They own the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Toronto Raptors.
They own huge sports arenas.
There are billionaires who employ pampered millionaire athletes.
These are the people who charge $300,000, $500 for a ticket to see a ball game.
And they're begging for handouts from the government, which means, of course, from you, taxpayers.
Let me read a little more.
During a conference call Thursday to discuss the Montreal-based company's second quarter results, Mirko Bibbits said more needs to be done by the CRTC faster to ease the pressures on the industry.
Quote, the ecosystem in Canada is under severe stress and requires urgent government assistance, Mr. Bibbits said, as BCE reported higher second quarter revenue, but a steep drop in profit owing to higher expenses.
So hang on.
So they're wringing more money than ever out of Canadians, but they're just spending so much that taxpayers have to fix that.
Otherwise, these billionaires might have to take, you know, not even a pay cut, but maybe a slightly smaller bonus.
It's amazing to watch these predators who are rich mainly because they have a protected cell phone and cable monopoly claim to be the little guy.
When massive U.S. companies with global scale and global footprints are having extreme difficulty contending with the difficult advertising markets, you have to ask how Canadian broadcasters are expected to navigate them with such an unfair regulatory playing field, he added.
Got it, got it.
They have, they literally have a monopoly.
You're not allowed to set up a cell phone company in Canada without government permission.
But they're being treated unfairly.
Hey, how about poor Bell customers like me?
Take a look at this.
Here's an independent international review of cell phone prices in every country, including prices for data.
Look at the different charts.
Canada is literally the worst country in the world for how customers are treated.
We pay the most for cell phone data and coverage in the world, and we get the least because companies like BCE hoover it up without competition.
You cannot have American competitors up here because BCE lobbies to keep them out.
But they need more government money, aka money from you.
They really don't care about anything other than money, of course.
Look at this.
In June, BCE's Bell Media filed an application asking the CRTC to waive local news and Canadian programming requirements for its television stations.
Got it.
So they want CTV and their other propaganda stations to not have to publish Canadian stories.
They want to, I don't know, publish America's Got Talent or the Barbie movie or whatever.
But they still want a monopoly.
Oh, and they just laid off 1,300 people in their news division.
But can they please have more taxpayer money for Canadian content?
The company announced back in June that it was eliminating roughly 1,300 positions as part of a significant reorganization.
It expects to see the financial benefits in the second half of the year.
Okay, so they fired 1,300 people, and they think they're going to see the benefit of that soon because they paid them out, but they're still begging.
They're so gross, but it's a perfect fit for Trudeau, isn't it?
And look at the sucking up.
Mr. Bibbits said he's encouraged that the federal government is, quote, trying to help out on the news side of things with Bill C-18, the Online News Act, and that the industry is, quote, pushing back against the very aggressive moves by Meta and Google.
The tech giants have announced plans to block news content for Canadians in response to Bill C-18, which forces them to pay media organizations for that content.
Meta has already begun rolling out the change.
Except for the Globe and Mail is lying there, and I'm sure BCE is lying too.
Facebook and Google are not being forced to pay for content.
They're being forced to pay for even putting a link to that content.
Like, you know, when you do a Google search, it gives you a list of websites to fit your description, shows you the first sentence or two, and then a link.
So you go to those sites.
Google would have to pay the companies that show up in those links for the privilege of linking to them.
That's not paying for content.
That's paying for linking to someone, which the companies love.
That's how the whole internet works.
It's so stupid to pay to link to someone.
Bell knows it's stupid.
The Globe and Mail knows it's stupid.
Trudeau knows it's stupid.
They're all pretending that it's a thing because they're all in on it.
Bell, the Globe, the Liberals, everyone.
They're all in on it, just like they were all in on the pandemic feast, making billions.
See, I went through BCE's annual report, as I told you.
The word profit appears seven times, which seems a bit shy for a company that had a whopping 42.2% profit margin before interest, taxes, and depreciation.
A 42% profit margin?
Of course.
Because they have a new monopoly on cell phones and cable plans, and they're begging for more.
It seems shy to only mention the word profit seven times, but the letters ESG are in their annual report 64 times.
What's that?
Well, here's how they explain it.
Our environmental, social, and governments ESG objectives, which include without limitation, our objectives concerning diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, DEIB.
Our targeted reductions in the level of our greenhouse gas GHG emissions, including without limitation, our plans to be carbon neutral for our operational GHG emissions starting in 2025.
So they're basically implementing Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party platform within their company.
They also mention the word climate 36 times and greenhouse gases or GSGs 49 times.
Bell isn't really a company, you see.
They're an oligarchy.
China's Influence on Global Perception00:15:43
They're connected to the government.
They're protected by government monopoly rules.
They keep out foreign competitors.
They're fat and rich and lazy and uncompetitive.
The worst in the world for cell pricing.
Did you know that you as a Canadian have the worst cell phone plan in the world?
But boy, is Bell Canada good at woke politics, not so good at running a cell phone company.
I read through the report, I saw six mentions of Bill C-11 in their annual report too.
That's Trudeau's plan to censor the internet.
Bell loves it because it'll keep out their competition.
I already mentioned C-18.
That's Trudeau's plan to tax Facebook and Google.
That got five mentions.
BCE loves that too because they think they're going to get the dough.
Bell Canada is as atrocious in real life as they are when you try and deal with their cell phone customer service or table bill customer service.
They're the worst.
And I'll bet you $52 billion that Trudeau is going to give them more of your money.
Stay with us for more.
Shocking news, but not surprising.
Two members of the U.S. Navy, one with very high security clearance, have been charged with espionage.
They're allegedly spying for the People's Republic of China.
Joining us now to talk about this story is our friend Gordon Chang, who is an expert in China-American relations.
You can follow him on Twitter at Gordon G. Cheng.
Gordon, this is an interesting story.
What facts do we know?
And of course, these are just allegations not yet proven in court, but they sound like pretty serious allegations.
Yeah, the Justice Department wouldn't bring charges unless it had the goods on these guys.
And there are two sailors.
One of them gave information about the plans of ships.
The other one was, I think, even more concerning because He gave plans on radar in Okinawa, which is going to be a place of great consequence.
If there's a war, that war will be fought in the first hours in Okinawa.
And so what this is, is something of vital interest to China.
Now, of course, these are just allegations, but it appears, as in prior cases, that these allegations are true.
One of the things that's interesting, and I was reading some of the coverage in ABC News, was that these spies were allegedly paid a sum of money, in one case, $5,000, in another case, about $15,000.
What struck me was how small those amounts of money are.
I mean, I suppose that's not really the point, but I mean, the secrets and the technology and the information took millions or billions to create, I suppose.
And the fact that that could be stolen through industrial and military sabotage for a rounding error, that was astonishing.
I suppose there was some ideological or national motivation too.
I mean, I guess it's not just the cash, I suppose.
What do you think?
Yeah, I don't think cash is a motivating factor in most of these cases.
Got to remember that these are two ethnic Chinese.
And what's going on here is that Beijing, I'm sure, told them, look, if you don't cooperate, we are going to make life very difficult for your relatives still back in China.
Or they made the nationalist pitch.
So money, I don't think, really was a major factor.
And you're right, it's not a large amount in either case.
But I don't think that, you know, I think Beijing was using coercion more than anything else.
You know, that's a fascinating way to look at it.
And of course, there's no good explanation.
There's no good excuse for this.
But if someone was being blackmailed, if someone's family was being threatened back home, I suppose that that's a different motivation than if they were willing, you know, underminers of the United States.
We know, for example, that freedom-oriented activists in North America, whether they're Falun Gong or Hong Kong activists or Tibetan or whatever, their relatives back home are threatened.
So I suppose really, until we start to reduce the reach of China into society in the UK, Canada, United States, Australia, that problem is not going to go away, especially with more and more immigration.
I imagine a lot of these folks just want to join American or Canadian life, but it's the Chinese Communist Party that pull them into these intrigues.
Yes.
Well, Communist China is forcing Chinese Americans and others to choose.
You know, are they loyal to China or are they loyal to the United States?
And other Americans have a right to know.
This is not racist.
We know that China's campaign against Chinese Americans is comprehensive, it's coercive, and as we see here, it looks very successful.
So what we're going to have to do as a society is a couple of things.
One of them is we're going to have to have this national conversation about the loyalty of Chinese Americans.
As much as we don't want to do that, we're going to absolutely have to do that because it's an issue of national survival.
And the other thing is we're going to have to eliminate the reach of the Communist Party in the United States and elsewhere by removing CCP agents, which means closing their consulates, closing their state banks, their state enterprises, Confucius Institutes, Confucius classrooms, you name it.
We have to eliminate their presence from the United States.
You know, it's funny, you mentioned the Confucius Institute, which of course is a Chinese Communist Party directed influence operation, often on university campuses, influence, but also surveillance.
In Canada, as I know you know, Gordon, there's recently come a lot of revelations about the Chinese government's influence in the Liberal Party, all the way up to the prime minister and his brother.
And it was astonishing to me that, and to many other Canadians, that Canada's prime minister appointed what he called a special rapporteur to get to the bottom of it.
But that man he appointed, David Johnston, was a backer of the Confucius Institute, was deeply enmeshed with Xi Jinping and his family, sent his own family.
Like his, he was the president of a university in an earlier career.
He could have sent his kids to any university in the world.
He sent them to Chinese universities, not necessarily for the education, but for the connections.
He chose basically the Confucius Institute's key connection in Canada to investigate Chinese influence.
It was really quite incredible.
That just came to mind when you mentioned the Confucius Institute.
Yes, and the thing that is extremely distressing about Justin Trudeau is that he has been fighting people who have been trying to expose the Communist Party's influence in national elections.
And he's still making a big struggle out of this.
So that really says something that China actually has bought the prime minister of Canada.
It's a tough thing to say, but the point is, you know, Justin Trudeau's actions are extremely disturbing.
You know, there's more reports all the time, including that China has sort of infiltrated the Chinese language media within Canada.
And that's obviously true.
A lot of Chinese Canadians use social media apps from mainland China.
One of the things that we've heard in Canada is that people who feel the most victimized are the Chinese diaspora in Canada who are being ignored by Trudeau, who are being victimized.
I think one of the ways to fight back is to platform these people.
What I mean by that is give them a chance to say that's not us.
Help us resist it.
Because frankly, if it's white folks saying China is a threat, I don't think it packs the same punch as if a Chinese Canadian or Chinese American says it.
Because frankly, the embassies up here, they play the message track, oh, you're just being racist.
And they're tapping into that liberal instinct not to be racist.
Yeah, and China's diplomats reinforce that message.
So for instance, the former Chinese ambassador to Canada, Liu Xiaoyi, is a bad actor.
And he was specifically trying to racebate.
He was trying to divide Canadians based on their race.
And I mean, if I were the prime minister of Canada, I would have expelled him and other diplomats immediately.
This is just unacceptable.
And unfortunately, you know, China tries this stuff like police stations and all the rest because it gets away with it.
And there now has to be zero tolerance for the violation of Canadian or American sovereignty by China.
You know, one of the things I'm proud of in the last month or so, Rebel News has brought aboard a China affairs reporter who looks deeply into these Chinese language apps where a lot of this discussion is happening.
It's not happening in the pages of the Globe and Mail.
It's not happening in the English language at all.
That's where the battle is being fought in the WeChat apps and places like that.
Hey, let me ask you something.
You've mentioned twice about the consulates and really starting to push back.
You know, I think it's been a diplomatic tradition for a long time to have sort of a tit for tat.
During the Cold War, if America would expel some Soviets, the USSR would expel some American diplomats just out of parity.
It seemed like that was a diplomatic norm.
And so if either the United States or Canada started to shut down consulates over here, I would imagine that China, I'm just guessing, would do the same to our diplomatic efforts over there.
And I suppose that's just something that has to be managed and planned is a decoupling.
Is the answer to remove our diplomats almost first so that China can't hold that over us?
What do you think?
China is an extremely dangerous place right now for foreigners.
Xi Jinping is stirring up xenophobia, and we know where this leads, because we've seen this many times in Chinese history.
So as a defensive measure, I think that foreign countries should be closing their diplomatic compounds out of protection of their diplomats and their dependents.
Also, for various reasons, and this gets complex, but Americans and others should not be doing business in China.
And so therefore, if we don't extend diplomatic protection to them, then they'll leave.
That'll be an additional incentive for them to go.
So I actually, I don't care if China engages in tit-for-tat moves of closing our consulates.
Remember, we closed the Houston consulate of China.
China closed one of our consulates.
And, you know, a lot of people were upset about that, but I thought that was a good thing.
I think we should be closing China's remaining four consulates in the U.S.
And let them close our four consulates.
Let them close our embassy.
Because for various reasons, it is just wrong, not only strategically, but morally, to be doing business in a genocidal state, a state that is using the proceeds of investment and trade to build its military, which is configured to kill Americans.
Now, in Canada, public opinion has really swung against the Communist Party of China.
I think public opinion is very friendly towards Chinese Canadians.
I think the Chinese Canadian community is large and peaceful and prosperous.
And I mean, listen, I'm not Chinese, so I don't know if there's anti-Chinese bigotry, but I don't sense it widely.
I think there's a lot of warm feelings towards Chinese immigrants who, by the way, have been in this country for more than a century, helped build our national railway, which was really one of the key infrastructures of our country.
So I think Canadians are able to distinguish between Chinese Canadians and the malign influence of the CCP.
In Canadian polls, the antipathy towards China, I think, is higher than almost anywhere else in the world.
The only place I've seen that has more distrust of China is Sweden for some reason.
I haven't looked at the polls in the last month or so, but I think that grassroots Canadians are way ahead of the political leadership.
Can I ask what it's like in the U.S.?
I know you're based there and you follow things very carefully.
Is the American people as skeptical of the CCP as Canadians have become?
Americans have become increasingly skeptical of China's communist regime.
And part of it is because of the COVID crisis.
Because there's a feeling that China was grossly irresponsible with regard to COVID.
I actually think that they deliberately spread it beyond their borders because they lied about transmissibility and other things.
But the point is, COVID did change America's views on China.
And those changes, I think, are not going to be reversed in a very long time, at least as long as the Communist Party is ruling China.
Now, among the elites in the United States, we still have the Henry Kissingers of New York and we got Goldman Sachs and Walmart and all the rest of it.
But nonetheless, even among the elites, there's a change.
And part of it is because China has been attacking foreign business.
People don't want to go to China.
It is having an effect on even elite opinion.
And I suppose that spy balloon, that was such a startling slow motion educational moment.
And I think a lot of, I mean, remember, it came through Canada first.
And I think a lot of people said, why is no one taking action?
It was in real time, the frustration, I felt it in Canada, must have been intense in America.
And I think people started to say, is our military, is our political leadership in some way compromised?
How could that be allowed?
How did the balloon, the spy balloon factor, is it a large factor?
Do people think about that still or have they forgotten about it?
I think it's in the back of people's minds.
They haven't forgotten about it.
By the way, it entered North American airspace in Alaska.
Right, right.
It was Alaska then.
You're right.
And then it transversed Western Canada and then entered the lower 48 states.
But to your point, which is a critical one, there is reporting in the United States that this, first of all, the balloon entered territorial U.S. airspace on January 28th.
It was not until the fourth day of the incursion into North America that the Pentagon notify President Biden.
That, to me, is inexplicable.
And it shows a failure of the senior leadership of the American military.
Now, I believe that that reporting is credible.
You know, I have no way to substantiate it, but the point is that there was a failure of the American NORAD and as well as the Defense Secretary, as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
NORAD's Credible Failure00:04:10
And now, that's not to excuse Biden because Biden made mistakes as well, which were grievous.
But the point is that there's real problems in the Pentagon.
Yeah, you're so right.
You know, I think of NORAD.
I think of the old Soviet threat, flying the bombers over the Arctic.
It's unusual to think of NORAD as being on watch for Chinese balloons, but it's absolutely true.
And if I recall, it was only when people on the ground in those Pacific Northwestern states started observing it with their own eyes that the U.S. authorities acknowledged it.
So even though the president had been informed, it wasn't really made public until ordinary Americans spotted it with their plain sight.
Yeah, it was a guy in Montana who then brought it to the local newspaper.
And then, you know, the Biden administration was obviously trying to cover this up.
And, you know, and then Biden called it, quote, this silly balloon.
Really what it was is, and this is, you know, it surveyed our nuclear weapons sites.
It's trying to apparently, people believe, trying to figure out if they could disrupt command and control.
But the most frightening thing about this really is it showed China's utter disrespect for the United States, which means that there's been a breakdown in deterrence, which means when you look at it in the context of other things, this is a really dangerous moment in history.
You are so right about that.
I mean, that is such a provocative move, unthinkable under Donald Trump, I would say.
Well, Gordon, it's great to catch up with you.
I really appreciate your insight.
And folks, when Gordon is on the show, we learn so much.
And I encourage you to follow him on Twitter.
Follow him at Gordon G. Chang.
I guess it's now called X platform, but I still know it as Twitter.
Thanks, my friend.
Always a pleasure to talk with you.
Yeah, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
That's right.
That's right.
Well, you're still a must-follow for me, Gordon G. Chang.
Take care, my friend.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Snurp says, nailed it.
They are simply cowards hiding behind a mask and numbers.
Let's hope these cowards get what they deserve.
You're talking about my visit to Portland, Oregon.
I was only there for not even one day, but I was so glad I went, first of all, to see Andy No and give him some personal moral support.
I gave him a handshug, handshake, and a hug.
He's such a good guy.
They really, I don't know, to have the courage to sue bullies when they beat you up.
Most people wouldn't have that courage.
They would just go away.
I am very proud of him, and he's an independent journalist.
And I was really glad to be there, by the way.
Alaska 31300 says, when they came to Alaska during the riots, Alaskans and business owners stood outside their businesses with guns and told them, you won't be breaking windows here, boys.
They ran away like whipped pups.
Portland allows these punks to do whatever they want.
You know, I was thinking about exactly that when I saw that terrible closed-circuit TV footage of Andy No, who's not a big guy, being chased down the streets by four and then eight and then ten men.
They are bullies and thugs who hide their faces.
They're cowards.
The only way for one smallish guy to fight against 10 thugs, if the police are not there and the police make a point of not being there, is if you have the right to bear arms to save your life.
That's the moral of your story from Alaska.
Joseph PK4878 says the only way to deal with these hapless thugs who could only win a fight with 100 of them in a group on their own, they're mosquitoes, is to unmask them on site.
Get those face masks off and let them be dealt with in the open.
Seriously, start tearing off masks.
You're exactly right.
And that's why I hated the masking of COVID.
It's one of many reasons I hated it, is it allowed people to do nefarious things and sort of get away with it, like to go into a bank or a jewelry store with a mask on.
You would never be allowed to do that before, but COVID made that okay.