Ezra Levant’s September 21st trial in Toronto pits seven government lawyers—including Trudeau’s Justice Department—against his one defense, accusing him of violating election laws by publishing The Labranos, a bestselling critique of Trudeau’s alleged corruption that sold more than all other 2019 books about him combined. Justice Strickland’s ruling may take months, despite Levant’s argument that Elections Canada’s shifting stance to target his book is authoritarian overreach. With fines like Pavlovsky’s $3,000 "wrongthink" penalty and cases against Leach and Reimer, Levant warns Canada’s free speech erosion risks silencing dissent under the guise of democracy, vowing further legal battles if necessary. [Automatically generated summary]
I was in court today at the Federal Court of Canada fighting against the censorship of my 2019 best-selling book, The Labranos.
What a weird battle, four and a half years later, to be fighting seven lawyers and bureaucrats on the government side, just one lawyer on our side.
I'll tell you how the trial went.
Before I do that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
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Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, I'm in court all day here in Toronto about my book, The Libranos.
Is it in fact an illegal publication?
It's September 21st, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
I'm standing outside the Federal Court of Canada building in downtown Toronto's concrete jungle.
I've just spent the morning in courtroom 7C.
We have one lawyer.
There are four lawyers for the government, two lawyers for the Elections Canada office, two lawyers for Trudeau's Justice Department, and then three bureaucrats supporting them.
There are seven government lawyers and bureaucrats fighting against our one lawyer.
And of course, there's the entire investigative staff of Elections Canada behind them.
I estimate that between the lawyers and the bureaucrats, there are 20 people on the Canadian taxpayer's dime prosecuting me for the book I published more than four years ago called The Labranos.
It's actually the most best-selling book that I've ever published.
It was a criticism of Trudeau and his corruption.
And I footnoted the book intensively.
Not a single fact in that book has ever been disputed.
It's got that really fun cover for anyone over 40.
They know what it refers to.
The Labranos is a takeoff of The Sopranos, a classic TV show about a mob boss from New Jersey called Tony Soprano.
I don't think anyone over 40, under 40, knows what that's about, but Trudeau certainly knows what it's about, and he hated that book.
And so very early on, I remember it was over Christmas 2019, he had Elections Canada investigate me as the author and publisher and that book.
And he actually retained two 30-year veterans of the RCMP to come after me.
These weren't just like, I mean, to go after an author and a publisher, who do you even choose?
Well, he found two of the most senior mounties he could, and he actually got them to go after an author.
And they summoned me to their secure headquarters in Hull, Quebec.
And they interrogated me for an hour.
As you know, I brought a hidden camera in there and recorded some of the crazy things they said.
And I want to show you some excerpts from that just to remind you.
I'll tell you some of the things they said.
They said they acknowledged there were 24 books published about Trudeau during the 2019 campaign.
That's when you publish books about politicians during an election.
After the election is over, people aren't that interested in a campaign book.
They acknowledged that my book was the only one being prosecuted.
They asked me questions about my editorial plans.
They asked me about all sorts of ideas that were Rebel News business.
And they asked me, and this was very key, why didn't I register the book with the government?
Here's some excerpts from that hidden video.
Today we're here about Rebel News Network Limited.
Oh, I know that.
And I'm just asking you to confirm.
that not a single other loving book of Trudeau is being investigated.
But once we're done, if you believe that there should be complaints that are...
No, because I'm not a censor like you.
I'm not a bully and a censor.
I'm not a bureaucrat looking to justify my budget like you.
I go out and earn my living every day, fella.
You call in authors to grill them about a book criticizing your boss.
Think about who you are.
We call the director of Rebel News Network Limited.
Yeah, who happens to be the author of the book?
I think there's going to be a chapter about you two fellas in the next edition.
Do you have any more questions there?
Certainly do.
The knowledge that you would have or not have of the Election Act, the Canada Elections Act, when you are planning the book and the new third-party rules, because I believe there's some comments on your stuff as well about that.
Did you give any consideration of saying maybe I should register as a third party for this circumstance?
Or maybe I shouldn't because of my interpretation of what I'm going to do?
Or did you not make that determination?
Tim, I appreciate the question.
Yeah, I absolutely did think about that at great length.
Do you want to share any of those thoughts?
I'll sure some of them.
I mean, I thought the day I register with the government to write a book is the day we no longer are the True North strong and free.
And if Elections Canada's commissioners are stupid enough to prosecute me for writing, publishing, and promoting a book about an election during an election, then that's an important fight to have because we need to roll back these pencil neck bureaucrats and their blackface boss.
And we need to remind them that we're still a free country.
So I thought about it long and hard, Tim.
Well, I enjoyed giving them a bit of a tongue-lashing, but they got the last laugh, didn't they?
Because they convicted me of publishing an illegal book, and they fined me thousands of dollars.
By illegal book, here's what I mean.
They claim that that book was actually a campaign document that needed to be registered with the government as if I was a political party.
But like I say, there were 24 books published during the election season of 2019.
23 of those 24 books were either neutral or positive towards Justin Trudeau.
For example, Aaron Warry at the CBC State Broadcaster published a loving hey geography of Trudeau.
That could be called liberal partisan propaganda, but of course it's not because it's a book and the Canada Elections Act itself specifically, as you can see here, exempts books and the promotion of books as long as two things are met.
Number one, are they sold for a commercial price?
Yes, that's the case of Aaron Warry's love letter and my criticism.
And number two, whether they would be published regardless of an election.
And I don't really know what that means because regardless of an election now, an election coming, I mean, there will always be an election.
There's always the next election.
I don't really understand that.
Rebel News publishes books about Trudeau all the time.
I publish one called Trumping Trudeau.
I publish one called China Virus.
We talk about Trudeau every day.
This one was timed to coincide with the election campaign, like the other 23 books published about Trudeau.
I was never asked if I would publish it regardless of an election, because I don't even think the question makes sense.
There will always be an election.
If elections were somehow suspended in Canada, well, I think we would publish that book and many more, don't you think?
But instead, in order to convict me, because my book was totally legal, it was sold at a commercial value and it was published regardless of an election.
They needed to change the law just for me to weaponize the Canada Elections Act against an author for the first time in history.
Never before in Canadian history has a book been prosecuted or fined under the Canada Elections Act.
It's never happened before.
And my book, I mean, I like the book.
I think it's a good book, but it wasn't particularly startling.
It wasn't particularly innovative.
It just criticized Justin Trudeau the same way books historically have criticized Stephen Harper or Brian Mulroney or Jean-Cretchener, whomever.
So Elections Canada made a sneaky little change.
Although, and let me put it on the screen one more time.
As you can see here, Canada Elections Act says the test is, was it published at a commercial rate?
And number two, would it have been published regardless of whether there's an election?
Yes and yes, but Elections Canada changed the rule just for me.
They said, no, no, no, if you timed the election to coincide with the campaign, that's against the law.
And Levant admitted he did that, so we got him.
Yeah, that's not what the law says.
And like I say, all 24 books about the 2019 campaign were published during the 2019 campaign.
That is, when you publish books, it would be sort of crazy to write a book about the election campaign and then wait until the election is over to publish a book about the election campaign.
That doesn't make any sense.
That's why that's not in the law.
But that's how Elections Canada's sneaky little lawyers changed the law to get me.
They couldn't get me under the law, so they changed the law and they fined me $3,000.
Now, I'm in this position from time to time.
$3,000 is a lot of money, but it's not going to bankrupt Rebel News, thank God.
And so we had a choice: just pay the $3,000 and grumble and move on, or say, whoa, what are you doing?
Why are you criminalizing books and writing them?
And since when do we summon authors to secret meetings where they're being interrogated by senior RCMP officers about their politics?
And they went through our tweets and they went through our videos.
When does that happen?
Since when do police do that?
And so we did the principal thing that we like to do is we go to court and we appeal.
Now, the first time you appeal an elections Canada ruling, you appeal it within Elections Canada itself, which is rather ridiculous.
The same people go through it and review it.
So obviously we were convicted a second time.
Today we're in the federal court of Canada.
And like I say, there are seven Trudeau staffers in court versus our one lawyer.
And I'm excited to be in court and I'm excited to test this.
And I'm excited to the fact that we're the only people who would do this.
I'm also sad that we're the only people who would do this.
I got to say, in Canada, I can think of five organizations off the top of my head that are supposed to care about freedom of the press and freedom of speech.
There's something called the Canadian Association of Journalists.
There's something called Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
There's a Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
There's Penn Canada, of which I'm a dues-paying member.
There's Amnesty International.
That's five right there.
Not one of them has even said a word, even tweeted a word, let alone put out a press release, let alone sent lawyers to intervene in court, let alone said, hang on a second, since when do we summon authors to an interrogation, since when do we find authors for a book?
And this, of course, was a book.
It's for sale as a book.
It was an Amazon bestseller.
It actually sold more copies than the other 23 books combined.
It's a real book.
And by the way, whose right is it for the police to determine what's a real book or not anyways?
But obviously the Libranos is a real book.
You yourself might even have one.
By the way, it's still for sale on Amazon.
So none of those five so-called civil liberties groups were there or were anywhere.
I was sitting in the court alone with my lawyer.
That's okay.
Sometimes we're alone and we fight those lonely battles and we win.
It's a wonderful feeling.
A couple of weeks ago, we beat Stephen Gilbo.
We had a consent order commanding him to unblock us on Twitter and pay us $20,000 in costs.
And the reason I call that a victory is it depoliticizes the government.
Politicians can't block or ban their enemies list just because they don't like people.
I thought that was a big win.
We're in court today, but I have to say, and this is, I'm talking to you now at noon.
I'll do an update later after court.
I have to say, I don't think it's going well.
Our lawyer is making the case, but the judge, there was one moment where the judge in particular said, and I'm paraphrasing, well, what's the big deal of having to show the government your plan, your plan for the book, your marketing plan, your editorial plan?
What's the big deal?
Are you kidding me?
What's the big deal?
Now, by the way, look at the Canada Elections Act.
The line before the book exemption.
And by the way, it's an exemption not just for books, but for the promotion of books.
And they really hate the fact that we promoted this book with a lawn sign that had three words on it, buy the book.
They hate that lawn sign because it was so much fun.
Anyways, both books and the promotion of books are exempted.
But look at the line right before it in the Canada Elections Act.
Obviously, it exempts editorials, letters, opinions, because if anything weighing in on an election is a government-regulated activity, well, then every single human with an opinion would be treated like a government problem.
So imagine a judge saying, oh, what's the big deal of an author having to go down to the police and explain himself?
What's the big deal to tell your plans?
Well, what's the big deal about any journalist?
What's the big deal about anyone having, you know what, we live in a free country.
That's the big deal.
And the idea of journalists being summoned to talk to the police is what they do in dictatorships, not in Canada.
And I'm really worried.
Legal Battles Echoing00:07:38
Now, I got to say that maybe the judge was just asking these difficult questions to see what my lawyer would say in response.
But I'm not sure.
She seemed to genuinely think it's no big deal for us to have to go and sit down and answer questions and be grilled by a couple of 30-year RCMP vets just because.
And there was one moment where an elections candidate lawyer said, yeah, we most likely violated Rebel News's charter rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
She actually said that, and there weren't gasps in the courtroom, the courtroom being just me and a bunch of lawyers.
It was just a matter of fact, yeah, sure, we probably did violate Rebel News' civil liberties.
Yeah, welcome to Canada in 2023.
Now, the day's not over, but I'm not sure if it's going to get any better because up next are the Justice Department lawyers who are going to be arguing that this is fine and this is normal and that's Canada.
Look, I'm a little bit depressed about this.
I mean, I think that part of Rebel News is to fight the uphill battles, to fight the tough battles, to be contrarian, to be non-compliant.
We never take the easy way.
It's just not in our blood.
For the last three years during the lockdown and the forced vaccine mandates, we didn't take the easy way.
We stood with those who had no friends.
We were friends to them.
We, in fact, created a whole civil liberties group ourselves to provide lawyers for people charged with lockdown offenses or pandemic offenses.
So we are with the friendless.
Today, it just feels odd to be the friendless one myself.
I mean, listen, I know you're my friends, but it feels odd to have the establishment institutions so unfriendly, to have a judge who's just so blasé about government being able to interrogate journalists, to have an Elections Act lawyer so blasé about violating our rights.
And of course, all this happened in 2019.
That's when the election was.
That's when the book came out.
But since then, we've learned so much about election interference in Canada, especially by the Chinese Communist Party.
And just a couple of weeks ago, Elections Canada put out a report, and they didn't even mention the word China.
Blacklocks had that story.
So here we are with seven lawyers and 10 investigators.
We got close to 20 people bearing down on little rebel news for my little book.
And that's a higher investigative priority for them than the Chinese Communist Party literally interfering in elections and probably tilting the outcome in several of them.
I don't know.
Sometimes people say, why do you fight?
Move to Florida, they say.
I heard that a lot during the lockdowns.
We fight because this is our home.
We fight because we know it can be better.
We fight because you never know when a victory will come.
We've had some surprise victories before.
In this same court in 2019, Justin Trudeau tried to block us and our reporters from attending the election debates.
We went to this court and we won.
It happened again in 2021.
Like I say just a couple of weeks ago, we beat Stephen Gilbo.
So you can win these David and Goliath battles.
I think, though, when you look at the numbers, we probably lose more than we win because we're going uphill, because we're going against the grain.
I don't know.
I think this is an important fight.
What do you think?
Maybe it's not important.
Maybe it's just one book and the fine's only $3,000 and just pay it and grumble and move on.
But I can't stand the thought of a country where police do that and get away with it and they do it at the behest of a politician.
There was a moment in court today when the lawyer for the Canada elections was going through one of David Menzies' videos and was so mad that David Menzies said we got to get rid of Trudeau, going through our tweets.
And I thought, frankly, who the hell are you?
Who the hell are you?
I'm not interested in your opinion about my political views.
And back to what I think this turns on, the law itself.
The fact that the government cannot get me under the law because we published the book for a commercial price and we would have published it regardless of whether there was an election or not.
That doesn't even make sense, but of course we would have.
They had to change the law in their own mind to get us.
Well, you scheduled the book for the election.
Yeah, us and everyone else.
That's what publishers do.
I know I'll be deeply dispirited and my faith in justice will be shaken if some partisan, weaponized bureaucrats can make up a new law and go after Trudeau's enemy and tag him just to please Trudeau and if the courts shrug about it.
I don't want to be depressed.
The trial is only half done.
And who knows?
Maybe the judge has a poker face.
Maybe those tough questions for my lawyer were just the judge putting my lawyer to the test.
Maybe the judge has within her heart a love for civil liberties that I just don't know about.
We're going to go back into the court now because we're only on a short lunch break.
I'm going to leave you with an update from another trial that's going on today, namely the trial of Tamara Leach in Ottawa.
I was there yesterday and I felt very confident for Tamara Leach because the prosecution's case is so pitifully weak.
By the way, yesterday in Calgary was the trial of Derek Reimer, the pastor who protested peacefully outside a Drag Queen Story Hour.
Rebel News is also crowdfunding that legal fight.
We're into so many legal fights.
Sometimes I think we're a law firm that actually occasionally does some journalism as opposed to the other way around.
Let me leave you with an update from Ottawa, and then I'm going to come back to you after court here is done for the day.
And I'll let you know if the second half of our hearing is more encouraging than the first half.
But let me promise you this either way.
You know me.
You've known me for a while.
I've been running Rebel News for almost nine years now and I was a political activist and journalist for years before that.
Even if we lose, you know I'm not going to stop fighting.
I'll appeal this if we lose and we will fight.
And you know what?
I'm going to write another book about Trudeau.
And if he wants to arrest me for it or jail me or sentence me, bring it on.
I'll come back to you in a moment.
Robert Krejcik here for Rebel News in Ottawa, Ontario, the nation's capital at the One Million March for Children.
It was a massive demonstration.
Looks like thousands of people to me.
People came out here to oppose what they described as sexual indoctrination of children being thrust upon them within public schools.
The message that I heard over and over again was that people are not here to hate anyone, to denigrate anyone, to suppress or segregate or dehumanize anyone.
It's a peaceful protest simply to defend the innocence and sanctity of children against what I call the LGBTQ enterprise.
If you value and appreciate our on-the-ground work reporting that you won't get anywhere else, please understand that we can't do this for free.
And stay up to date with our coverage at stopclassroomgrooming.com and please contribute what you can.
So we were here on the ground from the beginning of this demonstration.
Defending Children's Innocence00:07:01
We got to speak with all flavors of Canadians, many of them, all sorts of backgrounds, professional, geographical, religious, ethnic, racial, professional backgrounds.
And we're going to share some of those amazing talks with you right now.
We also got to speak with some interesting figures of public interest, such as Maxine Bernier.
We also spoke with Camille, one of the organizers, and others.
So stay tuned and enjoy the video.
Leave on kids alone.
Leave on.
I'm here today, like a lot of these people, because of a breakdown in the political system.
Doug Ford was elected two terms ago to scrap the liberal sex ed agenda despite so many people just wanting to be focusing on math and science and literacy.
It didn't happen.
So there's really no solution right now, I think, for a lot of these people.
What's important is that kids get the education that they need, not that somebody else wants them to have.
I've got 10 grandsons who the younger ones don't need to know this.
They need to know how to survive in life with education, not indoctrination.
I just don't think that children like me should have their decisions made by a corrupt school system or corrupt government.
I think that my parents know best for me.
I don't think that the government knows what's best for me.
Well, the issues are my children being in schools where they promote sexualization.
This is something that is very inappropriate.
It should stay closed.
And why are you promoting in schools?
And they say, oh, you know, which they're the minority and they're being discriminated against.
I'm a minority too.
Where's my flag?
It's about our kids.
As you know, we want to be sure that kids would be protected because right now, education is not education anymore.
It's endoctrination.
We must stop that.
I got a 16-year-old in public education.
She's coming home with horror stories about teachers encouraging students before class to get up and either identify or, you know, come out, as you will.
And no, I don't agree.
We need to keep that out of schools.
We need to keep it academic.
Chemistry, math, science, physical education.
Well, no, we don't agree with the gender ideology being taught in schools.
Teachers are there to be teaching math, science, history.
Leave the kids out of this gender ideology.
You know, this event is an innocent event for families from coast to coast, for fathers and mothers, and we're just trying to protect Canada's kids, at least up until the age 18.
We're not looking to oppress or we're not, this is a peaceful protest.
But what's happened right now, I saw Jagmeet Singh in the opposition with the counter-protesters going like this to me.
And that was incredibly disheartening.
For me, it has to do with the parents and the parents' rights.
We see a lot of counter-protests here, and my heart goes out to them in their confusion about what this is about.
And that is maintained.
The narrative is maintained by a small group of people that don't understand what we're trying to do.
We absolutely respect all communities, all faiths, all walks of life in this country, this beautiful country.
What we are here to do is to voice our concerns as parents to protect the children and the indoctrination of children of things that are not appropriate.
I think we've seen quite an incredible march here today.
Even I didn't expect it to be that big because we had the march spread out through small towns all across the country and cities and everywhere.
So I wouldn't expect it to be actually this big in Ottawa.
So I'm happy to see that.
And I think it was interesting to see that face-off that happened at the start when the crowds were growing there.
And we had Jake Mee Singh on the one side, and he was looking at me, making eye contact, and mouthing words at me and stuff.
Well, I'm here because the education system and the government is trying to push this sexual indoctrination to our children.
How can you teach sexual education about adult teams for sexuality to grade ones to grade eight?
This has to stop.
And we're concerned, grandparents, parents.
I mean, our children are there to learn in school, not to be indoctrinated with something that's not theirs.
They're taking away our parental rights.
They're asking the kids in school, young kids, to decide on the gender.
I don't think that's right.
The kids can't make up their minds at that age.
And this is just grooming in my eyes.
How can we be silent?
It says in the Bible, who shall arise against the evildoers in the land.
And so this agenda is absolutely anti-biblical.
I just want to say that we're not spreading hate.
We only spread love.
But everyone's free to do what they want.
People that don't procreate have absolutely no right to tell us how to raise our children.
They do them and we do us.
That's it.
You do you boo and we do us.
We want freedom, that's it.
Well, I feel like now it's time to talk because things are going crazier.
People have been silent for a long time and then not taking a stand from whatever is happening all around the world, especially in Canada, regarding that LGBTQ and stuff like that.
But now they're getting so far that they want to indoctrinate our kids in the school.
This is not acceptable.
No more science!
No more silence!
No more science!
So I think I'm here today to tell that the education level in schools is very bad.
And they have to focus on math, English, and France.
As a mom, I'm paying a lot of money for private lessons, private classes for my kids.
And instead of sending my kids to learn if they are a boy or a girl or about the sexual identity or the orientation about this, I think they have supposed to focus more on math, English, France.
It's important to understand that the most important thing in a country is their next generation.
Education system is paid by our taxes.
And we need to be aware what is happening right now in public school.
It's anti-science.
The medicine by these people, the proponents of puberty blocking, little boys are not little boys.
Little girls are not little girls.
Defending Innocent Boys00:02:36
These people are dangerous.
Do you want to share some remarks with us as to why you're here today?
Tell us what's on your mind.
I'm asking this guy.
Translate our human rights.
Do you want to tell us why you're here to say that?
Any common asset.
Translate for human rights.
Translate for human rights.
Anything else?
You get this?
Do you want to share some remarks with us?
I guess not.
Nobody wants to talk to me for some reason.
What's this going on?
We don't need to be here.
We don't want to be fighting.
What do you do?
Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here.
What are you doing?
You harassing someone?
Go.
Get the fit.
Is this your friend?
No, we don't want to.
Just take it.
I don't know.
Get the f*** out of here.
Let's go, let's go.
Oh, you little...
Go home, come.
We're doing good!
Nothing, nothing, nothing!
Three more boys!
perfectly fine without any of this.
None of it.
And it was left up to me the same way it should be left up to them.
It almost feels like it's parents against the establishment.
So I think that's why a lot of people are here today.
It's really not about homosexuality or transgenders or anything like that.
Parents Against The Establishment00:03:27
I think kids should go to school to learn.
I don't think that this stuff should be shoved down our throats.
I think we should be learning math and English and things that should be taught at school and not this corrupt sex education stuff.
Where is Pierre Polyev?
If Pierre Polyev believes he can ignore this, everyone who's here today, they're not here because of the CBC.
They're not here because of the print medium.
They're here because of their beliefs and their defense of human rights, human dignity.
But right now, you can hear it.
We're here to defend innocent children.
Pierre Polyeval obviously is still hiding, but I think we'll eventually get the politicians out.
They're going to have to pick a side.
They're standing there right now with their finger in the wind wondering whether they should join us or not.
It's been long enough.
I really started being vocal about this about 10 months ago, right, when I got kicked out of school and I'm still not allowed back.
The fight is still on, but we're certainly seeing a change in the culture war here and we're winning.
I'm looking for Pierre Polyev today and he's not here, but he told the Canadians that he will fight for part of rights.
And the best thing to do is to start right now here in Ottawa.
And I'm the only national politician that is ready to do that fight, that common sense fight.
You know, I get it.
We need to be tolerant.
We need to be loving to our children, but we cannot be forcing and indoctrinating them in our education system.
That's where it needs to stop.
These conversations can happen over a dinner table, at home with family, close people that you love.
Sure, certainly.
We're not going to stop that.
But in our schools, that's where it needs to stop.
I'm not a parent, but I'm here for parental rights.
To me, that's what the issue is.
I don't think that the government, through the form of school boards, should be indoctrinating children behind a parent's back.
It's a parental rights issue for me.
If you look around, Robert, Canada is united coast to coast.
We got Jews, we got Christians, we got Buddhists, we got Middle Easterns, we got whites.
And what we're trying to do is we're trying to preserve Canada's kids for Canada's parents.
And we're trying to uphold one flag, and that's the Canadian flag.
We have brought them into this world.
They are our children.
We instill our values within them.
And the government needs to respect our rights as parents about what our children are exposed to.
I'm not against gay people.
I have gay friends.
But this is about pushing this agenda to little kids.
That is not okay.
I am here because of the kids.
They don't deserve to be fake changed.
Any of that bullshit.
It really is amazing that they are doing against our kids, and I'm against it.
It's about our grandchildren and not about various small interest groups.
It's about the kids.
It's called ABC, not LGBTQ.
Well, I've read about all the books that are in the school curriculum that should not be targeted for grade five and six children.
Very hyper-sexualized books.
And it's not right what they're doing to children.
It's against humanity and the children that brings confusion.
Therefore, how can we be silent?
They're trying to get every single piece of thing they can divide people so they can conquer.
20 Years of Authoritarianism00:09:27
This is exactly what's happening right now.
Different from what other people are pushing on you.
I think it's really important to show that people actually do care about it.
The kids need to be kids.
Please keep this thing out of our school because let the kids be kids.
That's all we're asking.
Leave against the laws!
That's the stuff.
Leave against the laws!
That was an update from our friends in Ottawa.
There's a lot of legal action going on this week.
It's actually overwhelming.
I can't even believe way back on Monday, it was Arthur Pavlovsky's sentencing in Lethridge.
Tuesday, I was in Calgary fighting against the Calgary Police Service production order yesterday to Mary Leach.
Today, my own matter.
It just never seems to end.
But I think that's because we filled a void that has been left by so many others.
The court hearing is adjourned.
It's done in the matter of rebel news and the Elections Canada office.
The judge has said she's going to reserve her ruling, which means she's going to go back, think about it, do some research, and write it out in long form and send it to us written.
Obviously, you wouldn't have a complex constitutional matter like this just spoken off the cuff by a judge.
So that's not surprising.
It might take days, more likely weeks, or even most likely, I'd say months.
But I think I know how it's going to go for a couple of reasons.
First of all, I learned that some of the lawyers in there for the government, you had some Justice Department lawyers.
You also had extremely expensive private sector lawyers hired by the government to squash us.
It really was seven against one in there.
And, you know, there's this line in the Cohen Brothers remake of True Grit.
That's a great movie if you haven't seen it.
Where there's some bandito they're trying to get to do the right thing.
They say, we'll give you a good lawyer.
He says, I don't need a good lawyer.
I need a good judge.
And that's sort of how I felt today because the judge, Justice Strickland is her name, never seemed perturbed at all by the onerous and invasive positions that Elections Canada was taking about books.
She thought it was completely normal and acceptable that authors and publishers should have to disclose their plans to Elections Canada to avoid prosecution.
I found that very odd and unsettling.
The bulk of this afternoon's hearing was the Justice Department of Canada.
So that's Trudeau's in-house lawyers.
And they were talking a lot about election law and election finance law in general, which is fine, I suppose, as long as it goes.
He said some terrifying things, which are, I guess, the position of the government of Canada.
He said, for example, unregulated speech is a threat to democracy.
That's what he said.
I think I have that verbatim, actually.
Unregulated speech is a threat to democracy.
Really?
Or maybe he said a threat to elections.
No, that's actually the stuff of elections.
It's the regulated speech, the regulations, it's the censorship that's a threat to elections.
And this guy represents the government of Canada, and the judge was sort of just taking it all in.
No questions, no pushback at all.
One of the leading cases that the federal government talked about today was a case actually brought by Stephen Harper about 20 years ago.
You might recall that before he was prime minister, Stephen Harper was the leader of something called the National Citizens Coalition.
And one of the things they did is they challenged a limitation on election spending, and they lost.
Stephen Harper went on to become prime minister and amended some of the laws, if I recall.
But it made me think Stephen Harper had to champion free speech 20 years ago.
20 years ago, there were still some other civil liberties groups in Canada.
Here we are in 2023, almost 2024.
And it's fallen to us.
Stephen Harper had to fight to the Supreme Court of Canada for freedom of speech and he lost.
And here we are, 20 years later, Rebel News is fighting so far only at the federal court.
I hope we don't lose either, but maybe it's a burden that's fallen to us because maybe just like Stephen Harper knew, if he didn't fight that fight, no one would.
Well, maybe if Rebel News doesn't fight this fight, no one would.
Again, I'm just the silence of that room.
It was actually a very large courtroom.
It was sort of ironic.
On Monday, I was in court in Lethbridge.
They chose a very small courtroom because it was packed.
They could have had 150 seats filled.
There were so many supporters for Arthur Pavlovsky, and the judge put everyone in the smallest room possible.
Here in Toronto, it was a huge room and a beautiful courthouse, actually.
The federal court building in Toronto is actually beautiful and modern and huge.
And it was empty.
On my side, it's almost like the bride and the groom.
You know, you sit on which side.
So the rebel side was me and my lawyer, Aaron, and then his paralegal was sitting there.
And on the government side were four lawyers and three lawyer bureaucrats.
And it was like, but still, the room was tavernous.
No one cared.
I just worry about that because I believe that freedom is a Canadian character.
I believe, you know, don't take it from me, take it from Laurier, take it from Diefenbaker.
I think it was Laurier who said freedom is part of our national identity.
Diefenbaker went so far as to enshrine the Bill of Rights in Canada.
Even the Liberal Party of Canada 40 years ago enshrined the Charter of Rights in Canada, Pierre Trudeau, in concert with the premiers.
I'm worried that's slipping away.
And the thing is, a radical law student today in five years becomes a radical lawyer.
In 10 years, becomes a radical law firm partner.
And in 20 years becomes a radical judge.
And so the left has planted these seeds of tyranny and authoritarianism, and they wait and they water them and they grow over time.
And in the 20 years since Stephen Harper's free speech case, I think the courts and society has moved towards authoritarianism.
I find it troubling and it's a burden that falls to us at Rebel News.
I'll pick it up.
I don't want to be too morose.
I mean, by the way, we still might win.
Although I certainly got the feeling that this judge was going to side with the censors.
It was really creepy to me to hear the Justice Department say that the $3,000 fine and the lengthy investigation and the $100,000 in legal fees, that none of that was a charter violation at all.
It was just, that was very Orwellian.
In fact, Trudeau's Justice Department lawyer invoked Orwell's name and said, no, it's got nothing to do with that.
It's absolutely not Orwellian to investigate an author and fine him $3,000 for wrongthink.
And I thought to myself, that's an excellent lawyer for Justin Trudeau because that is Justin Trudeau's own approach.
Say something with a straight face, just a brazen statement like, it is not Orwellian to prosecute, convict, and fine an author $3,000 for a book that is not Orwellian.
You are wrong.
Yeah, perfect lawyer for his client.
He'll probably get a promotion.
He'll probably be made a judge.
Well, that's it.
If you want to see any background of this, all our court documents, you can go to thelebranos.com.
And even though the book is considered contraband, I guess, it's still for sale if you want to read it on Amazon.ca.
The book's not that up to date anymore.
I mean, I wrote it in 2019.
It's four and a half years later.
So obviously so much more has happened.
But as I was sitting there in court, I thought to myself, I'm going to write another book.
I'm going to write another book about Justin Trudeau.
And I'm going to publish that other book.
And if they want to come for me again, let them.
Because I am not going to accept this censorship as either Canadian or either, or certainly as a condemnation or a stigma.
I simply disagree.
And I'm going to continue writing.
And frankly, I think they're going to have to throw me in jail.
Or even then, you can write in jail, can't you?
I don't know what they're going to do.
But I'm not done writing and I'm not done talking.
And I know you're not either.
Thanks for your support.
You can find out more info about this at thelebranos.com.
And if you can help me pay my legal bill, I'd appreciate it because there were seven lawyers on the taxpayers' teeth there today.