Sheila Gunn-Reid and Chris Sims expose Canada’s social media news blackout, triggered by Trudeau’s Bill C-18—forcing Meta and Google to pay for content or register with the government—after Meta blocked Canadian news links in protest. Bill C-11 expands CRTC control over platforms like Netflix and Rumble, risking censorship of non-political topics while 67% of Canadians distrust media due to perceived government bias. With parallels to France’s platform withdrawals and Tamara Leach’s Emergencies Act detention, they warn these policies could weaponize registration for data demands or content suppression, eroding free speech under the guise of regulation. [Automatically generated summary]
More news than ever, and yet if you're Canadian, you see less of it than ever before.
Who's to blame?
As always, it's Justin Trudeau.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
You used to flip open your Facebook feed or your Instagram feed to find out what was going on in the world, and you're Canadian.
Well, that has been an absolute dead zone for news because Meta.
the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, have turned off sharing of Canadian news because Justin Trudeau tried to shake down those companies to force them to subsidize the failing mainstream media news business here in Canada.
And Google is about to do the same.
So your Google news tab where you might have some carefully collated news based on your previous Google searches and all the other things that big tech eavesdrops on you about all day long.
Well, you may not have access to that anymore because Google is now saying we are not going to abide by Justin Trudeau's shakedown.
Google has even said that if the shakedown law, that's Bill C-11, is altered, they're not going to change course because they can't risk doing business in Justin Trudeau's Canada.
Hmm.
Bizarre.
Although they are sort of getting the same treatment that the oil companies have gotten for the better part of a decade out of Justin Trudeau.
Anyway, to break this all down for us is my friend Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
She doesn't like taxes.
She doesn't like government control and she's a former journalist.
So she's got a very unique and valuable perspective on Justin Trudeau's attempts to control the internet and what that means for Canadians in a time of war and crisis and when essential access to vital information is more important than ever before.
Take a listen.
Joining me now is my friend and good friend of Rebel News, Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Chris, I wanted to have you on because access to news for Canadians is of the utmost importance right now.
Things are popping off all over the world.
Two nuclear superpowers are engaged in scuffles and wars.
If you consider, you know, Hamas just a proxy of Iran.
Canadians need to know what's going on in the world.
And yet, thanks to Trudeau's meddling in the news industry, his attempts to save it and modernize it, Canadians have less access than ever.
They do.
And I think everyone needs a smile right now.
So let's think about former U.S. President Ronald Reagan when he said, no scarier words than when the government shows up and says, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Well, Prime Minister Trudeau has really got to stop helping when it comes to media and news and access to information.
As you point out, things are a little tense right now and people always need news and especially right now.
So what's critically important for viewers to understand now is that it feels like it was a million years ago, but last week, I think it was Thursday or Friday morning, it was announced that Google said, you know what?
You know how you can't see news on Facebook anymore?
Well, we're going to do that too.
Google.
So imagine folks, if you're in Canada not being able to Google any news.
Not being able to go to the Google News tab and see links.
It's kind of hard to believe that we're at this point in Western democracy, part of the G7, all that jazz.
But apparently they're just going to follow through on this.
And to be clear, this all started when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government invented C18.
And they figured that this would be a great way for them to shake down what people often refer to as the tech bros or big tech.
So Facebook, Google, whatever.
Like they're obviously a trillion times bigger than me.
That's not what I care about.
What I care about is the fact that government screws up most things.
This government is particularly excellent at screwing up pretty much everything that it can possibly see.
And this is now having a detrimental effect on Canadians' ability to get news and information.
And therefore, they won't be able to hold their government to account, which is why the Taxpayers Federation is like waving the red flag on this.
Because one of our key mandates is accountable government.
And if we aren't allowed to know what's going on, how on earth are we able to hold our elected representatives accountable?
You know, I heard Derek Fildebrandt from the Western Standard explain it beautifully.
Because for the person who isn't really in news, it's hard.
The government makes these things purposefully convoluted.
But what they are doing with C18 is telling these Facebook, meta, social media platforms that you have to pay the creator of the news for the privilege of delivering it to the people.
In the olden times, for people who remember what a newspaper was, this is like making the paper boy pay the newspaper company for the privilege of delivering the news to the people for free.
Facebook, Meta, Google, they provide a service to the news companies that in the before times they might pay for, but now because they are able to gather the data, the people are the currency and all of this, so they get to know everything that you like so that now they can sell your information to advertisers.
It was a system that worked fine.
But now Justin Trudeau is trying to shake down these social media companies because news media is dying.
I think largely because people don't really trust it anymore, the more it becomes contaminated by the government.
And I think Canadians don't have an appetite to give any more taxpayer dollars to the media.
So Justin Trudeau had to do something.
And it was, as you describe it, a shakedown of the paperboy.
Yes, exactly.
That is an excellent way to describe it.
And to your point, no, people don't trust mainstream legacy.
I'm so tired of trying to come up with a way that we would describe what the old news stations used to be.
Call it Trudeau colonized.
Sure, and what we have right now.
And this just floored me.
A big majority, more than 60% of Canadians now believe that journalists are actively trying to mislead them with statements they know to be false.
Like that is that is the worst level of trust in journalism and media that's been recorded.
And this is a long time study that's done on trust.
I think it's been around for 25 years.
They ask people, you know, what sectors you trust more most, what, you know, politicians versus lawyers versus doctors, that stuff.
And they did a big, deep dive on journalism and media this time.
And I think it's 67%, which is a startling amount of people.
But to your point, if you have journalists being paid by the government, And if you have journalists in many cases refusing to cover certain topics, refusing to talk to people, including those who might be just outside their front door who are upset about something, you're going to lose trust.
And I speak as a journalist that way.
I worked in the industry for 20 years.
If that's your MO, if you're getting paid by the same person you're supposed to be holding to account, the government, and you are purposefully not listening to and not paying attention to a big segment of your own population and viewership, you're going to lose trust quickly.
So if you combine this lack of trust with government funding the media, with C18, okay, and now Google saying as a result, hey, you know what?
We're not paying this link tax either.
See you later.
Bye-bye.
With C11, which now we're seeing these two rulings come from the CRTC saying, you know what, that whole thing about podcasts, yeah, we're going to get the folks who host podcasts to register with the government.
Things have been happening so fast and there's been so much big news, Sheila, that this was gigantic news early last week.
But now, of course, because so much has been going on, it's been falling off the table.
But people need to pay attention to this too.
C11 is now in play.
You know what?
Let's talk about C11 because they dropped what they call it, the regulatory plan to modernize Canada's broadcasting system.
That's a nice way of putting it.
It's a nice way of saying modernizing.
We're going back to 1960s East Germany.
Because in 1960s, East Germany, you used to have to register your typewriter with the Stasi in case something offensive to the government rolled off the keys.
Now, the government is saying, or CRTC, the broadcast regulator here in Canada, which used to only be regulated to old terrestrial TV and radio and not the internet, not streaming services.
People move to the internet.
I know that's what my boss did.
He moved to the internet to get away from the CRTC.
Yeah, because of what happened with Sun News Network.
You know, and that's why I want to talk to you about this.
Yeah.
So Rebel News, we're not on regular TV for a reason, to escape the control of the government.
But the government recognizes that people are having a little bit too much to think on the internet.
And so they have to expand the mandate of the CRTC to encompass the internet.
And on that, two Fridays ago, I guess it was, late Friday before a long weekend, government holiday, they said, oh, by the way, all these streaming services, you have to register with the government.
Why?
Because that's the first step in what the government plans to do.
If you look at the ruling, they said that this is the first little bit of information we want from you.
So first of all, we need to identify you, and then we're going to come back to you and ask you for more information, which may include people who are using that platform to stream ideas that may be uncomfortable for the government.
But you were a journalist at Sun News and Sun News was euthanized by the CRTC.
Yeah, they were.
And I'm sure lots of your viewers know the story.
But yeah, there were some other elements, to be fair, that were making things kind of creaky around the edges.
We were trying to, this is before, we were born just a little too early.
This is before people were able to really be able to just broadcast themselves so quickly and in such good high def and all that jazz.
This is just before that happened.
And so we were kind of tied to the old world of broadcasting.
And so we had to play nice and try to get mandatory carriage through the CRTC.
And of course, this is the catch.
The CRTC will say things like, oh, well, this is all about Canadian culture or this is all just about Canadian programming.
I took those calls.
I made those calls to our viewers at Sun News Network.
Our desks were made in Calgary, for goodness sake.
Like we were super duper Canadian.
It doesn't matter.
This is the key.
And I would say the same thing if this were a conservative leaning ideological government and I happen to have been working at a left-leaning news station.
The government shouldn't control the news media.
It should not.
It should be a free press, meaning free from government.
And yeah, we got shut down after four years.
And so our concern, including here at the CTF, because again, if you can't express yourself freely, if we can't have conversations like this on the internet and online and however people reach our show, you won't be able to be informed at your choice and you won't be able to hold your government to account and you're going to get taken advantage of.
You're going to get taxed through the nose.
You're going to get your property taken away in firearms, for example, and you're going to have your money wasted.
And you're not going to have your voice heard.
And so this is where we're saying, folks, we can't have this happen.
And so I know there's a lot going on right now.
I would encourage everybody, though, to take a break from, you know, international news if they can.
Write a letter, make a phone call to your member of parliament about things like C11.
Tell them to scrap or repeal the elements of C-11.
So repeal C-11 so that your podcast, your news shows, all of the programming, keep in mind, Sheila, this could affect entertainment as well.
Sure.
Like, you know, we care about the news because that's where we work and live.
And at the CTF, that's what informs people and allows them to hold your government to account.
But hey, folks, this could easily affect your entertainment choices.
If the Trudeau government figures that your show on YouTube or Netflix or whatever, you know, fancy, dancey, Gen Z thing you're able to make your computer do isn't talking about moose meat and hockey enough, like you might not be able to find it or see it or it might be gone.
And so tell your member of parliament that this is a voting issue for you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, it's so unfathomable that people would say, oh, what's the big deal?
What's the big deal with having Netflix, Disney Plus, Rumble, Twitter, having all these platforms just register with the government?
Why Register With the Government?00:03:30
We already know they exist.
Why can't they register with the government?
It's because of what follows downstream from that.
Because it's not just about them.
It's about identifying them because they are going to come back to the well and ask for more information.
And frankly, I can't wait for the battle between Elon Musk at Twitter or X or whatever we're calling it now and the federal government.
I think he's going to take a much less passive-aggressive approach than Google and Meta have been doing.
I think he's ready to fight with the Trudeau government before he starts turning over any sort of data or registering.
And honestly, that might be the thing that straightens everything out.
Keep in mind, this is, yeah, to your point, like X folks, Twitter, Elon's platform, that's not just tweets back and forth anymore.
This is spaces.
In some cases, these spaces are wide open forums.
I was listening to one that had like 250,000 people listening to it the other night, just listening in.
It was about a topic that I didn't even really care about much.
I just find it fascinating that people are able to gather so quickly.
There's full video, like you said.
There's audio.
Is that programming?
Is that podcasting?
Yeah, probably.
And the issue here is that the government wants you to register so they can regulate.
Okay.
And this is key.
We probably have to go.
But Warren Kinsella made a really good point.
He's like, you know what?
Why would these big tech companies, most of them anyway, want to bother?
Right.
Like, how big is their Canadian audience for whatever podcast that may be vital to us?
And again, it may not be politics for everybody.
It could be like your cake baking show or how to, you know, plant a garden in your backyard or whatever, whatever you're into.
If it's coming from the United States or somewhere outside of Canada or even in Canada, it's now going to be regulated by the government.
And so as Warren was pointing out, more or less, what's in it for them to put up with this headache?
Isn't it just a lot easier for them to say exactly like Google and Facebook are saying about C18 right now?
You know what?
No thanks. We're good. We're going to cancel all of this programming.
We're not going to host it on our massive platforms anymore.
Good luck.
Then what?
Well, and there's plenty of precedent for that.
For example, Rumble is not available in France because the French government said you cannot broadcast anything from RT, anything from the Russian state broadcaster.
I understand why they might do that, but Rumble rejects control from the government.
It exists as a free speech platform specifically because they're anti-censorship.
And they just said, you know what, France, if you want to do that, if these are your rules, fine, you can keep them.
We just won't be in that market.
And so now French citizens don't have access to an uncensored platform because of government meddling.
And why wouldn't they do that to Canada?
Why wouldn't they withdraw from Canada?
I don't think we're all that important to Elon Musk, although he is a free speech absolutist, I think, frankly.
I mean, he bought a failing platform just to, just so people could speak freely.
I would prefer if he fought with the government instead of just pulling out of Canada altogether.
But I mean, why waste money on us?
Well, hopefully he might because he does have some Canadian element.
Maybe there's something sentimental in there that will make him hang in.
Please Share This00:07:03
But I also, just to cover our bases, just in case there's anybody watching, you know, you're sharing with your friend, which I recommend you do, give this to your auntie who may not watch politics very much, please.
We would love to go garage sailing with her, by the way.
She does.
We would definitely.
So show this to your auntie.
I want to stress, this is not about promoting heinous things on the internet.
Okay.
Like we're not talking.
So the criminal code applies to what Sheila and I are saying right now.
If we suddenly started sharing horrendous things, okay, that are against the law, we could be charged.
Okay.
The criminal code applies to what is going on right now.
Okay.
This is not what C11 or C18 are about.
C11 is not from the Ministry of Justice.
It's from the Ministry of Heritage.
It is about regulation and control.
Okay.
If folks were worried about promoting criminal acts or something terrible on the internet and they thought that the laws weren't strong enough, they can totally take that up with the justice minister, the attorney general.
They can work up those laws.
Like we wouldn't even really glance at it.
This is about content and it's about control, okay, of what we're talking about right now, okay?
Or what you get to see, hear, and share online.
Lawful, legal, normal information.
How much of that the government wants you to see?
That is what is at play here.
This has got nothing to do with criminal behavior.
You know, I'm a gun owner.
I know that registration almost always leads to confiscation or at least very heavy control.
And I see the exact same thing that has happened to Canadian gun owners over and over and over again about to happen in the media.
Chris, you guys are really leading the charge on this issue.
I think outside of us here at Rebel News.
You guys are doing a bit.
We're doing some stuff.
We're doing some shit there.
But you have, I think you are uniquely poised to sort of lead the charge on this because you not only are an advocate for smaller, more accountable government, but also a former journalist who has fallen victim to government regulation, euthanizing the business that you worked for.
So how do people get involved?
Because I think because of those things I just described, people can really trust you on this issue.
So how do people get involved and support the work that you do at the CTF?
Because like us, you'll never take a penny from Justin Trudeau or any level of government.
Because how could you hold them to account if you did?
No, and we never have.
We don't even, by the way, we're not even a charity because we refuse to give out tax receipts.
Like that's, I love the CTF so much, but that's how hardcore they are.
So yeah, we don't even do that.
Thank you for this, Sheila, and for covering this.
Folks go to taxpayer.com, I would please ask them to do two things.
One, please sign the petitions that matter to you.
And before you say Justin Trudeau won't listen to them, well, hopefully he might.
I'm an eternal optimist.
I always hope for a change of heart or a change of mind with someone.
So please do it.
But the other reason we want you to sign the petition is that now you're part of the standing army on that topic.
So the next time something like C11 or C18 or confiscation of your lawfully owned firearm, something like that crops up, we can update you on it.
We can say, hey, this is happening right now.
This is moving through the house.
Everybody email your MP at once.
Do a bank of phone calls.
Do door knocking, something.
Okay.
So sign the petitions that matter to you.
And this one's in particular.
My email's right there under the contacts on taxpayer.com.
Send me an email.
Tell me what podcasts you listen to by choice.
I'm not demanding that you do it.
If you could please share that with me willingly.
I want to know because that helps me color and explain this to lawmakers and media types of why something like C11 matters to everyday Canadians like you.
They will take my cryptid podcasts from my cold, dead hands.
But this is it.
I listen to all sorts of fun stuff and it's like, I don't want the CRTC and those folks over in Gatineau deciding that I'm not allowed to.
Like, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud.
Yeah.
I don't want Justin Trudeau to know that I listen to things involving bat squatch hunters.
I just don't.
I just don't.
You don't.
You don't.
I'll put it this way.
Canadians don't need Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government deciding what they can watch and listen to.
Exactly.
But, you know, you listed the two things that your petitions do, but they also do a third thing that I love that petitions do.
And that is tell the good guys that there are all of these people cheering for them to carry on and fight back.
So when you can show a conservative politician who's getting shaky because he's in the vortex of social media anger being directed at him, you can say, look, you know what?
Actually, here are 40,000 Canadians saying ignore that baloney and keep fighting.
It's a real moral support for the good guys to continue to do the right thing.
Exactly.
Chris, thanks so much for coming on the show.
I'm sad that garage sale season is wrapping up, but thrift season is just getting into the full swing of things.
We'll have you back on again very, very soon.
Thanks, Sheila.
Thanks.
Friends, we've come to the portion of the show where we invite your viewer feedback.
I know I say this every week, so it might be redundant to regular viewers of the show, but I actually do care about what you think about the work that we do here at Rebel News.
It's why we don't close the comment section on any of the platforms where you might find us.
And it's also why I give out my email address right now.
It's Sheila at RebelNews.com.
If you have a question, query, comment, story idea, feedback about the show today, put gun show letters, 2Ns, G-U-N-N show letters in the subject line.
So I know what you're emailing me about, because sometimes I don't, as you imagine, I get some crazy emails and dozens, if not sometimes, depending on how wild I've been on the internet that day, sometimes it's hundreds of emails I get in a day.
So gun show letters in the subject line make it really easy for me to find.
However, don't hesitate to leave a comment wherever you might find us.
For example, if you're watching the free version of the show on Rumble or YouTube, let me thank you for sitting through the ads.
Leave a comment there because sometimes I go looking over there through the madness of the comment section on some of those platforms to find some very intelligent comments or even sometimes some hate mail.
Stick around because sometimes I do read hate mail.
Feedback From Ottawa00:02:52
Not today, though.
These are good.
So the feedback this week is on last week's show that I filmed with my colleague from Ottawa, Robert Krajek.
He has been covering the Tamara Leach trial.
For those of you who don't know who Tamara Leach is, and I don't know how you possibly couldn't, she was the leader of the Freedom Convoy who spent nearly 50 days in jail for her role in organizing that peaceful anti-mandate demonstration slash traffic snarl in the nation's capital late January,
early February 2022 until such time as the simpleton leader of Canada, Justin Trudeau, invoked a never-before used counterterrorism law called the Emergencies Act to arrest the leadership and seize their assets and sever bank accounts from people who had done nothing wrong except support the anti-mandate demonstration,
treating them as though they were some sort of terrorist financier.
So Robert's been in the courtroom doing the very draining mentally work of covering the minutia of the trial.
And so I had him on the show last week and we talked about what's going on, but we also talked about some of the other things going on in Ottawa, like the counter demonstrators to the parents' rights protest, the 1 million March for Children.
Anyway, let's go to the comment section on YouTube this week.
So Terry Ferguson 1459 writes, there was also violence perpetrated by some citizens in Ottawa.
always describe the Freedom Convoy as peaceful, but there was indeed violence perpetrated against the convoy demonstrators, not only by the state, but also by the locals who claim they were victimized by phantom horn honking or whatever.
But Gary's right.
They admitted to it.
I remember a woman on the stand under oath during the inquiry into the Emergencies Act that was Zexie Lee, Ottawa local, busybody, far-left activist.
And I think she also works for the federal government when you know it.
Anyway, she did admit to doing some, I think, criminally mischievous things to the Freedom Convoy, and she was never charged with anything.
She did more violence than Tamara Leach ever did.
Anyway, Terry's right.
Let's go on.
She stated they were frustrated, so they were throwing eggs at the truckers and said, what else could we do?
Tamara and Chris on trial, as well as the whole convoy, no violence committed, peaceful protest, yet there are still people admitting to violence and they walk away.
This is one strange effing country.
Yeah, it sure is, isn't it?
Great point, though, Terry.
Let's keep going.
Liberty in Peril 520 writes, we'll never forget that event.
It reawakened my otherwise faded and abandoned patriotism.
I will forever be grateful to those drivers, all of them.
Yes, I know that even for Tamara Leach herself, she said the Freedom Convoy turned her from a Western separatist to a federalist who thinks that there is far more which unites us than divides us, despite what Justin Trudeau would say about her and her fellow Canadians in the mainstream media.
And let's read one more.
Darcy McKinnon, 6225, writes, there is no second generation of these lunatics.
Great quote.
I don't think the lunatics realize it yet.
I think they do.
I think they do.
That's why they've all flooded into the education system so that they can talk to your kids about their weird things they do on the weekend.
Anyway, that's the show for today, guys.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.