Ezra Levant warns Justin Trudeau’s 2023 Bill C-27 could weaponize AI to censor dissent, like suppressing searches for "Trucker Convoy" or "Rebel News", mirroring China’s secrecy—after his own 900-day prosecution in 2006 for publishing Danish cartoons of Mohammed. Sheila Gunn-Reed reveals Trudeau’s gun confiscation push, driven by a politically amplified group tied to the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, despite no actual seizures under the May 2020 ban. With the CCFR’s court challenge looming and an October 25 injunction hearing, gun owners must resist Bill C-21 or risk losing rights through silence, as legal battles escalate. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello my friends, today I talk about a terrifying new prospect, Justin Trudeau, wanting to use artificial intelligence to automatically censor comments on social media and affect search rankings to hide things he doesn't like.
I'll give you the facts as they come out tonight.
Justin Trudeau wants to control censorship through AI, artificial intelligence.
It's October 6th, and this is the Esther Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious f**k!
I'm in Calgary today.
I'm here to talk to, I suppose, my alma mater, the Western Standard, a magazine I founded more than a decade ago.
It was a print magazine.
It shut down because, you know, sending magazines by snail mail after printing them on paper, that just doesn't make sense in 2023.
It barely made sense when we did it.
But of course, Western Standard is being reborn online.
I'm coming to speak to their staff with some sort of old war stories.
I brought with me some of the old paper versions.
This doesn't look that exciting on the outside.
The headline is the secret lives of lobbyists.
But let me open it up and show you that on page 15 of this magazine is the Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed drawing the line.
Why are those who claim to stand for press freedom sitting up the battle between the cartoonists and theocrats?
And as you can see, there's two, four, six, eight cartoons that were published in Denmark and led to a cataclysm of events, including riots in Nigeria that claimed over 200 lives a few months after these were published.
We also had a story here.
I don't know if you can see it.
An illustration from Persia that depicts the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
We included that to show that not all Muslims hold that you can't depict their prophet.
So we published that on the inside of this magazine, just a two-page spread, nothing more.
And my God, did that cause a conflagration?
We were hauled before the Alberta Human Rights Commission.
That was a 900-day prosecution.
I also recorded part of my interrogation at the hands of the Alberta Human Rights Commission.
I guess that was my foray into video.
Here's a video of how that looked when I was interrogated.
I look a little bit younger, a little bit thinner, and my hair was a little bit more lush.
Take a look at an excerpt of my interrogation at the hands of the Human Rights Commission.
And I always, in an investigation interview, I always ask people, even though they've been as thorough as you have, in summary fashion, what was your intent and purpose of your article with the cartoon illustrations published on February 27, 2006?
Why is that a relevant question?
Under section 31A, it talks about intention, purpose.
We'd like to get some background as well.
Is it you'd like to get some background or does this determine anything?
If we publish what we publish, the words in the picture speak for themselves.
Are you saying that one answer is wrong and one answer is right?
Will a certain answer, is a certain answer contrary to law?
No.
So if I were to say, hypothetically, that the purpose was to instill hatred, incite hatred, and cause offense, are you saying that's an acceptable answer?
I have to look at it in the context of all the information and determine if it was indeed.
I think you're playing silly butter here.
You know that that the answer here uh, that that answer would be illegal.
Anything is possible, I guess, but again, I look at it.
This kind of session three case takes a lot of analysis, so there's a lot of things I have to look at.
That piece of information is just one.
My answer to your question is as follows.
We published those cartoons for the intention and purpose of exercising our inalienable rights as free-born Albertans to publish whatever the hell we want, no matter what the hell you think.
I've probably given 200 interviews with people other than the state where I give a very thoughtful and nuanced expression of my intent.
But the only thing I have to say to the government about why I published it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
And it's my right to do so for reasonable intentions, and it's my right to do so for extremely unreasonable purposes.
I refuse to concede to you that what my political thoughts in my mind are or my heart are will determine whether or not an artifact is legal or illegal.
We published that magazine.
It speaks for itself.
The fact that you dare to ask a publisher in Canada, in the name of the government, to ask a publisher in Canada what his political thoughts were is obvious that you're hunting for a thought crime.
And I am not going to answer you in a minimal way.
I'm not going to say, please, Master, I was most reasonable.
Let me off the hook.
I published those cartoons to use the maximum freedom allowed.
And so I state to you, I published it without reservation.
I published it in the most unreasonable manner.
Well, that was a lengthy battle and a difficult one.
It was also the first time I started using various online tools like YouTube, which was very new, and PayPal to help crowdfund my legal defense.
These were all new concepts back when it happens.
We did a follow-up story, which was much lengthier.
What were we thinking?
The story behind Canada's cartoon controversy.
And you can see a pamphlet there, a placard, exterminate those who slander Islam.
It was very challenging around the world for free speech.
And so many of the free speech champions in the left cowered or even became part of the censorship.
So I'm going to be telling that story to the Alberta report, sorry, the Western Standard folks here tonight.
That's just explaining why I'm on the street outside the bar where the staff are going to be having their dinner.
I'm the keynote speaker, I guess.
But I want to talk to you about censorship in 2023, not just censorship in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008.
I saw this today.
There's a news story by Michael Geist.
I mean, it's incredible to me that the problems that Canada has right now, inflation, housing prices, the war in Ukraine is an important issue for some.
Trudeau cutting a billion dollars from our own defense, a related issue.
Not a day goes by where there isn't some actual problem that needs fixing.
And yet Trudeau has four bills that he has either passed or has introduced or is about to introduce on censorship.
Four, more than on any other subject, I can assure you.
I mean, things are falling apart between Canada and India, just as one huge crisis example.
But I saw this from Professor Michael Geist today, who's a very well-respected professor.
I think he said the University of Ottawa, very nonpartisan.
He's regarded as sort of an online legal expert.
He's a law professor, and he had this terrifying story today about a form of censorship that Trudeau is looking to get into.
Let me read the headline.
Canada plans to regulate search and social media use of artificial intelligence for content moderation and discoverability.
That's the headline.
I'm terrified already, but let me read a little bit to you.
The Canadian government plans to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in search results and when used to prioritize the display of content on search engines and social media services.
So the Canadian government is going to get involved with what news gets boosted and what news gets hidden when you do searches.
Trudeau is going to get involved and regulate that.
Gee, what do you think he's going to do?
Let me read a little bit more from Michael Geist's article.
The regulation plans are revealed in a letter from ISED Minister François-Philippe Champagne to the Industry Committee studying Bill C-27, the privacy reform and AI regulation bill.
The government is refusing to disclose the actual text of planned amendments to the bill.
What?
They're refusing to tell people what's going to be in the bill that they might do it later.
I mean, I guess they would have to eventually, but they're keeping it a secret.
Does that build your confidence in what's going on?
This is terrifying.
It's a privacy bill that's designed to respect your rights, but they're keeping it a secret from you.
I should remind you that François-Philippe Champagne was a member of Trudeau's inner circle who got a mortgage from what bank?
There's so many banks in Canada.
There's not just the big banks, Royal Bank, TD Bank, Scotiabank, CIBC, but there's other smaller lenders.
Who did François-Philippe Champagne, the Liberal Cabinet Minister, who gave him his mortgage?
Do you remember that story?
The government bank from the People's Republic of China.
Who would go to the Communist Party's bank and borrow money from a foreign government for a mortgage and keep it when you become an MP and keep it when you become a cabinet minister?
Now I think I know where François-Philippe Champagne is getting his ideas for AI spying on people.
He is hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party.
Anyhow, so let me get back to the article.
Michael Geist outlines seven different things that AI will do that is being regulated.
Okay.
Some of the regulations are being modeled after the European Union, okay, I suppose, although they don't seem to love liberty as much over there.
But some are just terrifying.
Look at number six.
The use of an artificial intelligence system by a court or administrative body in making a determination in respect of an individual who is a party to proceedings before the court or administrative body.
So imagine courts, instead of having juries and judges using AI to determine if you're guilty or innocent.
That's terrifying.
And I don't want it to happen.
I don't know if Trudeau wants it to happen or not, but that is a terrifying possible use of AI.
But here's the part that Michael Geist is worried about.
And here's the part that Michael Geist, who knows these things, says is different from the European Union.
They're not, what I'm about to read is not being done in Europe, which is a pretty sensory kind of place.
It's certainly not being done in America.
According to Michael Geist, it's what's going on in China.
Let me read point four.
The use of an artificial intelligence system in matters relating to A, the moderation of content that is found on an online communications platform, including a search engine and a social media service, or B, The prioritization of presentation of such content.
So, the first one is moderating comments.
Can you imagine an artificial intelligence system that searches maybe for words like Trump or Polyev or Danielle Smith or Alberta or Freedom or Trucker Convoy or Tamara Leach or Rebel News?
Can you imagine an AI system, a hunter-killer system not run by humans, run basically by Skylink or whatever it was called in the Terminator?
Can you imagine unleashing that on comments on Facebook, on Twitter?
You wouldn't even know the censorship, it would be done by AI.
But the second part is just as scary to me: search results.
If you typed in, give me the news on the trucker convoy, Rebel News would be hidden and the CBC news would be boosted.
That's what discoverability, the prioritization of the presentation of such content.
When you type in something in Google or Facebook, the algorithm chooses what's first, second, third, fourth, whatever.
There's already political bias in those systems.
Trudeau wants to be able to regulate that through AI.
Now, that's something I've warned about before in C-11, Section 9.11E, as you recall, gives Trudeau the power through the CRTC to alter the discoverability algorithm for YouTube and other broadcasters.
But this would be for everything.
AI for everything.
Here's Michael Geist on this bill.
It's called C-27.
I want to read you.
I was not aware of this bill.
And I mean, there's so many things going on.
There's only so much you can be aware of.
But this bill was introduced about a year ago.
It's called Bill C-27.
Geist talked about it about a week ago before this AI stuff was clear to me.
Let me just show you how Francois-Philippe Champagne introduced this bill to Parliament because, again, this is how they do it in China's fake parliament.
Well, that's how Trudeau and his cabinet do it in Canada's Parliament.
The headline Geist gives it is why Industry Minister Champagne broke the C-27 hearings on privacy and AI regulation in only 12 minutes.
Okay, I'm going to read actually a long paragraph here, but you just got to hear it.
It's just classic.
And again, Michael Geist is not a conservative.
He's not a rebel.
He's not a radical.
He is the most establishment law professor expert around, but he just can't believe what he's seeing.
Let me read.
More than a year after Bill C-27 was first introduced, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science, and Technology finally launched its review of the bill yesterday with an opening appearance from Minister François-Philippe Champagne.
Okay, the delays in Bill C-27 reflect significant concern with both the effectiveness of the privacy provisions and the inclusion of an AI bill that is widely viewed as inadequate.
Okay, so we don't really know where this is going yet, but I'll keep going.
Champagne started with a 12-minute opening statement in which he assured committee members that he had heard the criticisms and that the government had a wide range of amendments planned to address the concerns.
Okay, sounds good.
While many of the potential amendments sound quite positive, once MP questions commenced, it became clear that the department had yet to actually draft them and has no plans to provide the actual text until the committee starts clause-by-clause review of the bill.
In other words, the government has decided how it wants to change Bill C-27 before a single external witness appears before committee, but it will only release the actual amendments after the witness portion of the committee study is over.
Government's Secret Changes00:11:04
The end result is that Champagne broke the hearings before they had really begun, with dozens of witnesses ready to testify about a bill that the government plans to change but won't provide legislative language, secret changes to a privacy and AI bill.
That does sound exactly like China.
Let me end as I began.
Well, I suppose I began talking about censorship of the Danish cartoons back in 2005, 2006.
That seems like an eternity ago.
We didn't even have smartphones.
They weren't even around back then.
Like I say, Facebook, I don't even think Facebook or Twitter were around.
YouTube was just barely.
Well, we're so far down that road.
And now censorship isn't done through riots in the streets or threats to cartoonists or even by governments through human rights commissions.
Why would they do that?
Where I could film a goofy interrogator and embarrass a government agent.
Why would they have humans involved at all?
Why not just train up the artificial intelligence to silence people immediately?
And by the way, you wouldn't even know if you're being silenced.
As the last owners of Twitter said, freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.
That was their goofy way of saying, sure, you can say whatever you want in Twitter, but we will simply make it that no one will be able to find your tweets.
So, yeah, tweet away, get it all out of your system, vent, but it will not be seen by anyone.
That is the approach that it sounds like Trudeau and Champaign want to take with AI.
They want to have censorship built in, hardwired into every computer system in Canada.
So if you say anything that is too rebellious, too conservative, too anti-Trudeau, too freedom-oriented, it'll be censored automatically by machines.
There won't be a hearing, there won't be a complaint, there won't be an interrogation.
It'll just happen in real time.
And when the cabinet minister is asked questions about it, he says any amendments will be secret.
By my count, that is five laws that Trudeau has introduced or is about to introduce that are designed to censor you and me.
Trudeau doesn't have five laws on any other subject in the world.
He truly is an authoritarian.
I promise you we'll keep an eye on this.
They'll be keeping an eye on all of us, but we'll fight back if we can.
Stay with us.
more ahead we're expecting to see Ezra Levant coming out of the break but no it's me Sheila Gunn-Reed Ezra's on special assignment today.
And I thought that I would take the lead on the guest segment of the show because it is a cause that is very near and dear to my heart.
And that is gun rights, which are human rights and women's rights.
And I thought I would be joined by my friend Tracy Wilson of the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights.
Tracy, I wanted to have, by the way, thanks for coming on the show.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I wanted to have you on the show because of this wild article I read in the National Post.
And it confirms a lot of things that I think we all know about Justin Trudeau, and that he will just legislate because he panicked, because some people said some critical things of him on social media.
And evidence be damned, outcome be damned, human rights be damned.
He'll just change things because his friends complained at him.
And that seems to be the case with this wild story about a disinvitation from the headline is from École Polytechnic Group, which sent Trudeau government into damage control mode.
And these are exclusive emails obtained.
The Trudeau government adjusted its gun buyback policy so that it's involuntary gun buyback.
And I hate that phrase because you're not buying back anything.
You're confiscating something and maybe compensating me for it.
It became mandatory because Pauli Suviant, Pauli Sisuviant, demanded that it be mandatory.
And so Hundreds of thousands of Canadian gun owners who have done nothing wrong, minded their own business, followed all the rules, jumped through all the hoops.
All these people had to do was complain at Justin Trudeau.
And all of a sudden, the buyback, buyback program became mandatory.
Yeah, well, this is interesting.
And this is something I remember when this happened.
And as you know, and I'm sure most people listening know, 33 years ago, there was a horrific attack on women at the École Polytechnique.
14 women were slaughtered, and it's one of Canada's darkest days, without doubt.
And I don't think anybody disagrees with that.
And there was a group that was born out of that, Pauli Susuvier, whose mission since then has been to eradicate civilian firearm ownership.
So they have a memorial every year, and it's like been going over three decades, right?
So they have a big memorial every year, and it's televised, you know, full red carpet, full press by the mainstream media.
You know, it's the red carpet is rolled out on this event.
And Justin Trudeau takes this opportunity to play up to his audience, you know, that he's the feminist prime minister and whatever.
It plays really well to the cameras, right?
So every year he goes to this memorial.
And of course, it's a great photo op for him.
That's exactly what it is.
It's politicking.
So they were unhappy that his attacks on law-abiding gun owners weren't going quite far enough.
You know, it's not enough to ban our guns.
It's not enough to prevent us from purchasing new ones.
It's not enough to destroy our community.
They also want our doors kicked in and our property confiscated.
So they did, it was like a public, like a publicity stunt is what I would call it, where they disinvited him.
And they said, you are no longer welcome to attend our memorial unless you go all the way with these gun owners and have their doors kicked in and have their stuff confiscated from them by force.
So sure enough, the policy was very easily altered to fix this.
And I think this speaks to the way they govern.
They govern by polling.
They govern, you know, it doesn't matter about evidence or outcomes or what's fair or what's right or just in this country.
It matters how he looks and what he can use for political expediency.
And unfortunately, gun owners have felt the brunt of that for eight long years.
Now, I want to ask you, how big is Poly?
Like, where is it in the grand scheme of things as a lobby group?
Because you speak for hundreds of thousands of Canadian gun owners.
By the numbers, sports shooting, hunting, the shooting sports is our national sport.
More people are engaged in that than they are in organized hockey.
It just is.
We're quiet about it.
Why?
Because they come along and confiscate our guns.
But so how big is Polly, this group that with one cranky tantrum can, you know, basically cause Justin Trudeau to do reactionary legislation.
How big are they?
Well, they're not very big, actually.
In fact, they, you know, consist of some survivors.
Natalie Provost is part of that group.
She's one of the spokespeople.
And, you know, she's a legitimate victim of that horrific crime on that awful day.
She was shot four times and survived.
So, and then you've got Heidi Rathjan as another spokesperson.
She was on campus that day, but nowhere near what happened.
So she's not considered a victim or a survivor of this.
I guess you would consider her maybe some sort of witness or whatever.
But what happens is they are very coordinated and very organized.
They work very closely with the Coalition for Gun Control.
And then, of course, out of, you know, there hasn't been a lot of big shootings in Canada, but there have been a few.
And every time there is one, whether it was committed by a licensed gun owner or not, they recruit them into their group.
So you've got the Danforth Families for Safe Communities, which of course was born out of the Danforth shooting, a crime committed by a madman with an illegal gun sourced through his gang-affiliated brother.
You know, you've got the mosque shooting.
So they've sort of all collected under one umbrella.
But the reason why they're so particularly powerful is because it's got that feminist aspect to it, because this horrific shooting targeted women in particular.
And so that's sort of been, you know, December 6th has been sort of memorialized as this day, you know, to fight against violence against women, which I support.
I also want safer communities for women everywhere, right?
Yeah.
But that's that solution.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
And they don't, interestingly enough, there was a CBC article about, oh, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago.
And they spoke to the family member of Helen Colgan.
She was one of the 14 women who were massacred that day.
And she herself was quite a gunny.
In fact, her brother was a former director for one of the other national Canadian firearm advocacy organizations.
So, you know, it's interesting because he had an interview with CBC and he said, my sister would be rolling in her grave knowing that they are using her legacy to push for attacks on the very people that were part of her community.
But, you know, you don't get airtime on things like that.
So unfortunately, it's taken what was a horrific tragedy and something that we can learn from and move forward from, you know, and try to protect women and turned it into this political football where, you know, both sides, I think, are disingenuous.
You know, he'll do anything to get his invite to go to the memorial and they will use that memorial and the memory of those women to force him to do political things.
So, yeah, it's not something I would be capable of doing, but we're not the same.
We're not the same, but it's Justin Trudeau.
And, you know, he wants to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.
You see him, you know, turn up at, you know, residential schools and take a knee and then he goes surfing on Truth and Reconciliation Day.
Amnesty Ends Next Month00:06:01
Everything is a photo op.
And I think Pauli knew how important photo op is to Justin Trudeau.
And that's how they were able to manipulate one of the most feeble-minded, powerful men in the Western world.
I wanted to ask you, going forward, where are we at on the latest gun grabs?
Where are we at on the so-called buyback?
Well, funny enough that you mentioned that.
So the gun ban that this whole thing is referring to is, of course, the May 2020 ordering council gun ban that's happened three and a half years ago.
However, not a single gun has been confiscated by this government.
There is no buyback program.
There is no confiscation program, even with a willing participant in the retailers.
So gun stores who are stuck with unsellable inventory through no fault of their own are willing to participate.
Like, yes, we paid for this inventory three and a half years ago or further back.
We're not able to sell it.
We're paying for storage.
We're paying for insurance.
We just want to move on and try and salvage our businesses, right?
Willing participants don't even have a program with a lobby group that has signed an agreement with the government to perform that.
So, we, as you know, we filed a federal court challenge very quickly after this ban was announced back in 2020.
It's been moving up the speed of justice.
And we did have an eight-day hearing in the federal court here in Ottawa back in April.
And Justice Kane actually came forward at a recent case management conference and said she will have her decision on that by the end of the month, which is interesting timing because there's an amnesty right now that protects gun owners who own these firearms, who bought them in good faith and bought them legally, have used them for decades without issue and used them safely, are protected from criminality, which the charge would be possession of a prohibited device,
which carries with it a 10-year minimum mandatory prison sentence, right?
So, you and I are protected from that amnesty, but it runs out at the end of the month.
The government has already once before extended that amnesty.
The new public safety minister has made no indication that he intends to do so.
And of course, we're not so silly as to put the freedom and future of Canadian gun owners in the hands of the liberals.
So, we filed an injunction application in the federal court to force them to extend that amnesty.
Now, everything's, you know, we've got a bunch of dates to file affidavits and cross-examinations and memorandums of fact.
We will have a hearing on that injunction application to extend the amnesty on the 25th of October.
So, it's cutting it pretty close, you know, should the government not voluntarily do it by then.
But, you know, at the end of the day, we should have a decision out of Justice Kane by the end of the month.
So, I guess we will find out where we stand for the CCFR, regardless of whether we win or not.
If we don't win, we'll be appealing.
And if we do win, I'm sure the government will be appealing.
However, it would give them the perfect out.
It is an impossible task that they've committed to doing.
And I think, you know, it would be very just and trudeau for him to say, Look, we tried to ban these guns.
We lost in court.
If you re-elect us again, we'll do it right this time and do it through legislation and just reuse it, like recycle it as yet another election promise, right?
It's all political, anyways.
So, yeah, so that's kind of where we stand.
By the end of October, there's all kinds of things will be happening.
We will either win an injunction to extend that amnesty and protect gun owners, or it will run out and we will all be exposed to criminality.
And hopefully, Justice Kane does come through with that decision by the end of the month.
And maybe we won't need that injunction because maybe we'll win and the OIC will be nullified and we'll head to the range.
So, very exciting month.
Yes, please.
But we'll see.
Either way, it doesn't matter if we lose.
We have no intention of stopping now.
So, we're committed to taking it all the way.
And at the end of the day, my message to gun owners out there everywhere is: you've done nothing to deserve this, and this government won't be in power forever.
So, you know, either way, there will be a shinier day coming, but it just may not be yet.
Now, Tracy, how do people help the CCFR as they fight for gun owners like me?
Like you've done absolutely nothing wrong, who just want to hang on to their family heirlooms in my case, and in the case of so many people across the country.
How do people support the work that you do at the CCFR?
Yeah, so you can find us at firearmrights.ca or ccfr.ca.
Either one will take you to the same place.
There's all kinds of good information there.
You can get a membership.
You can donate.
All of those things help.
But to be perfectly honest, the very best thing people can do right now is to write to your senators.
We've got Bill C-21 being studied at committee in the Senate.
Follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter.
We've put out instructions on how to work on that.
But just stay involved and never think that your voice doesn't matter because it does.
And I know we're sick of writing letters and sick of doing all this stuff, but your silence is looked at as you know, that you agree.
So you have to oppose it in every way possible.
So yeah, visit us at firearmrights.ca.
Everything you need to stand up for yourself is there and we're here to, we're here to support you.
And some of the best merch in all of firearms rights.
Firearm Rights Merchandise Club00:01:09
I love it.
It's great.
Yeah, I've got a whole new line coming out actually November 1st.
So you'll, yeah, you'll, you'll get first crack at it because I'm going to send you a box.
Perfect.
And just in time for Christmas.
Yes, exactly.
You marketing wizard.
Tracy, thanks so much.
You got to fund the fight, right?
That's that's right.
And you got to, you got to wear your colors with pride.
I love seeing those little CCFR stickers on the pickup trucks on the highway.
Me too.
I love it.
It's like a little secret wink.
Like we're all in the same club.
Yeah.
Yeah, we are in the same club.
That's right.
Tracy, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Thanks so much for the advocacy you do for law-abiding Canadians to take the government to task for their bad decisions.
And we'll have you back on again very soon.
Awesome.
We'll keep at it.
And thanks for the opportunity.
Great to see you.
Well, that's our show for the day.
Now I'm going to go in and talk cartoons with the old Western Standard Gang.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us at Rebel World Headquarters, we're actually on the streets in Calgary to you at home.