Ezra Levant sues Liberal ministers Marcy Ian, Yaara Sachs, and Karina Gould for blocking Rebel News journalists on government Twitter accounts, violating Canada’s Charter of Rights (sections 2B and 3) after a court ordered unblocking and $20K in costs against Stephen Guilbeault. Meanwhile, Taxpayers Federation’s Franco Terrazano exposes Bank of Canada’s $3.5M in executive bonuses—80 out of 82 receiving over $43K amid record inflation—and Rideau Hall’s $8M "barn" as wasteful spending while Canadians grapple with housing, groceries, and carbon taxes. Listeners warn of Marxist and jihadist divisions, citing James Lindsay’s claim that "the revolution is always the issue," and question whether younger generations can distinguish allies from enemies like Hamas or Hezbollah, contrasting with Harvard’s 85% U.S. poll accuracy. Levant’s legal fight and economic critiques reveal a government prioritizing censorship and excess over public accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
We're going to take a bit of a break from the war today.
We'll talk about that in the letters section, but I have an interview with my friend Franco Terrazano of the Taxpayers Federation about that $8 million barn.
How do you spend $8 million?
Well, you're a Trudeau liberal, that's how.
But first, I want to tell you about a new lawsuit we just filed.
Three liberal cabinet ministers thought it would be a good idea to block and censor rebel news.
Well, what do you think I would do in response?
That well, I'd fight.
I'll take you through our newest lawsuit against the liberals.
That's ahead.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
Probably not a lot of dough to you, but it really adds up for us.
So please consider chipping in.
And of course, you get the video version of this podcast.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, three more liberal cabinet ministers have blocked rebel news.
So we filed three more lawsuits.
It's October 26th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious thug.
You might remember our great legal victory in the federal court of Canada last month.
Stephen Gilbo, who is now Trudeau's environment minister, had blocked us on Twitter when he was the heritage minister and he kept us blocked.
He blocked us not from his personal account or anything like that, but from the official government account, the one that's responsible for making government announcements, the one that's run by an army of non-partisan civil servants.
He was blocking us for one reason only, because he hates rebel news.
And the fact that he can't control us and the fact that we criticize him and he can't rein us in by threatening our government funding because we don't have government funding.
What a window into his mind, eh?
As if the media have to report to him instead of reporting about him.
What does that say about all the journalists Gilbo doesn't block, eh?
Anyways, it took us more than two years in court, but we finally got Gilbo to relent.
I did a bit of a victory lap when the Federal Court of Canada issued the consent order against him.
Not only was Gilbo ordered to unblock us, but he was ordered to keep us unblocked for the rest of his career as long as he's an MP.
That's a court order.
And because he resisted this and fought us in court so long and didn't admit the obvious, which is that what he did was illegal and unconstitutional, he was ordered in this consent order to pay us $20,000.
Now, that's an enormous amount of money, but unfortunately, it cost us much more than that to fight him in court for two years.
So that was a victory, a legal victory.
And I made a victory tweet celebrating the depoliticization of the civil service because it's one thing for Gilbo to personally hate me in rebel news or for the liberal party to hate me in rebel news, but they had infected the nonpartisan government itself, the department, with his censorship simply because he personally hated us.
You can't do that.
So I posted a copy of the consent order and it went super viral on Twitter.
I don't know if you can see it, but 2.2 million people saw that tweet, just that one tweet alone, let alone what other people tweeted.
Now, you'd think that politicians would have got the message.
Don't censor people just because you're powerful.
You don't have the right to do that.
Citizens have rights.
We have rights to government services, which is what news announcements are.
And a Twitter feed is.
You can't just have an enemies list.
Just don't.
And if you don't like what someone like us is saying about you, if you have a really thin skin, either reconsider your career path or just mute people you don't like.
Muting on Twitter stops you from hearing from them, but it doesn't stop them from reading you.
Just don't block us.
It's wrong.
It's illegal.
It's a violation of our constitutional rights.
But it's also politically foolish because you will be humiliated in the manner that Stephen Gilbo was.
Millions of people will see what you've done.
And you'll also have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in costs because you were wrong and obstinate.
It's not true that all publicity is good publicity.
A restraining order and $20,000 penalty is not good publicity, especially for a cabinet minister like Gilbo, who's trying to claim that he isn't just a big censor.
Okay, that's the olds, but I've got some news.
The news is how stupid you have to be to be a fellow liberal cabinet minister and to see what just happened to your colleague Stephen Gilbo and to see the court order and to see how it ended and to say, yeah, I want a piece of that.
Well, you'd have to be Yaara Sachs level stupid.
Yeah, that's the name of this cabinet minister.
How much vitriol do we have to see of Hong Kong, which is an acronym for Hail Hitler, do we need to see by these protesters on social media?
She seriously thought that Hong Kong meant Heil Hitler because they both started with the letter H.
Now, we've got real Nazi-style rallies across Canada these days with people really calling for death to the Jews.
And Yaara Sachs has nothing to say about that, but truckers honking their horn is a Nazi threat.
That's pretty dumb.
And she, unfortunately, is dumb enough to block one of our journalists, our social media boss, Yankee Pollock.
She blocked him on Twitter.
You'd have to be Karina Gould level dumb to do that.
She's the Trudeau cabinet minister who happens to be Jewish to boot, who took a selfie photo with that Nazi SS officer, Yaroslav Hanka, when he visited parliament.
That dumb.
She thought that would be a good idea, and she thought it would be a good idea to block our reporter, Sheila Gunn Reid.
Yeah, don't, don't do that.
And then there's Marci Ian.
She blocked me.
Three liberal cabinet ministers blocking three different rebel news journalists.
It was dumb to do that before.
It was dumb when Stephen Gilbo did it.
But how dumb is it to do that after Stephen Gilbo was ordered by the court to unblock us for life and to pay us $20,000?
At least before the court order, they could say, well, let's see if we can get away with it.
But they know they can't now.
Why would they be that way?
I have a theory.
I think they learned it from their corrupt boss, Justin Trudeau.
Remember that in 2019, Trudeau banned rebel news from attending the leaders' debates, the election debates?
We went to the federal court and we won.
The judge said Trudeau violated our rights and ordered us to be credentialed.
We got into the debates.
Well, two years later, Justin Trudeau did it again, again, even though the court had told him not to.
So we went to the federal court again and we beat him again.
But even then, just hours after a judge tore a strip off him when we're in that parliament, in that leader's debate, that judge condemned him for violating our constitutional rights and confirmed that indeed we were accredited journalists.
Trudeau defiantly said, just hours after the judge said he was wrong, Trudeau said, no, we're not real journalists.
Remember this?
The only reason that I'm allowed to ask you this question is because today the federal court ruled that the government doesn't have the right to determine who is or is not a journalist.
This is the second election in a row that the court has been overturning your government.
Do you still insist on being able to make that decision and why?
First of all, questions around accreditation were handled by the press gallery and the consortium of networks who have strong perspectives on quality journalism and the important information that is shared with Canadians.
The reality is, organizations, organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines,
around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic and be there for each other and keep our kids safe, is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger and lack of understanding of basic science.
And quite frankly, your, I won't call it a media organization, your group of individuals need to take accountability for some of the polarization that we're seeing in this country.
And I think Canadians are cluing into the fact that there is a really important decision we take about the kind of country we want to see.
And I salute all extraordinary, hardworking journalists that put science and facts at the heart of what they do and ask me tough questions every day, but make sure that they are educating and informing Canadians from a broad range of perspectives, which is the last thing that you guys do.
Well, it's one thing to pout and be indignant like Trudeau was there.
He's petty, he's small, he's a bully, but we were in.
I mean, we couldn't sue him for being a fool.
We got in.
We got what we wanted.
But these three Liberal cabinet ministers who have blocked us now, what did they think we were going to do?
Did they think we would just say, sure, we're fine with you violating our rights?
We literally have the identical precedent.
We just set that precedent last month.
Did they think we were tired or that we'd given up or that maybe we wouldn't notice?
Are they that dumb?
So in fact, we filed a lawsuit identical to the one we just beat Stephen Gilbo with.
You can read it for yourself at twitterlawsuit.ca.
I encourage you to read it.
I think it'll make you feel good.
Here, let me read just one key paragraph from it.
It's a 21-page lawsuit.
It's not that long.
You can read it in 20 minutes.
You can find the whole thing at TwitterLawsuit.ca.
Here's the paragraph that outlines for the judges what we want.
This is an application for orders declaring that the respondents, the Honourable Marcy Ian, the Honourable Yaara Sachs, and the Honorable Karina Gould, violated the applicants, that's us, violated our constitutional rights under sections 2B and 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in blocking access to official government X, formerly Twitter, accounts,
and thereby limiting the applicant's ability to, among other things, access and communicate important information, participate in public debate, express views on matters of public concern, have a voice in the deliberations of parliament, of government, and bring grievances and concerns to the attention of government representatives.
That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?
We mentioned the constitutional provisions that are being violated.
We're not asking for money other than for our legal costs.
We're fighting on principle.
We filed the lawsuit in federal court.
I confirmed that we have now served the lawsuit on the federal government.
So now it's Trudeau's move.
And this is going to be telling what will these three cabinet ministers do?
Will they spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars fighting us like Stephen Gilbo did?
Or will they acknowledge what we all know right now? that they are going to lose.
So why not just do the right thing now?
Well, because they're liberals, that's why.
What do you think they're going to do?
I'll tell you what they're going to do.
They're going to fight this with your tax dollars because they're censors.
They're bullies.
I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
I'm going to sue any government official who thinks he or she can censor ordinary Canadians because they don't like them.
This isn't even a partisan thing, by the way.
I don't think conservatives should do this either, of course.
I'm not talking about the Conservative Party or a personal account by a Conservative politician.
I'm not talking about that.
If a Twitter account is just someone's personal or party account, I don't particularly think I have a right to read it if they block me.
But if they are using government resources to run it with civil servants, and it's where they make government pronouncements, then every single Canadian citizen should have a right to see it.
When we first filed our lawsuit against Stephen Gilbo, I wondered if it was too small a lawsuit, too small a fight, if the infringement was too petty.
I mean, is access to a Twitter account really that important?
Well, it is small, but small things are not, by definition, unimportant because erosions of our freedom start small and they grow larger.
And they're usually easier to fight when they're still small.
If a government can ban you from Twitter, can they ban you from other federal government services?
Maybe, I don't know, ban you from getting a new passport?
That sounds pretty far-fetched, doesn't it?
Well, actually, we had a government that banned us from flying or even taking trains, even within our own country.
Far-fetched?
You have to fight for freedom every day.
Bank Canada's Bonus Mess00:09:45
You just have to when you've got a government like the liberals in power.
And it is easier to fight in the first ditch than to wait and fight in the last ditch.
If you believe in this fight, as I do, maybe help us.
We could use the help because we don't have any taxpayer money to pay for the lawyers like these three crooked liberals do.
You know, we're usually all alone in court.
No other media groups are with us these days.
No other civil liberties groups are with us in court.
But that doesn't mean we're wrong.
In fact, it means it's all the more important that we are there doing this because if we don't, who will?
So please go to twitterlawsuit.ca.
Read the claim.
It's only 21 pages.
And if you think it's important to hold Trudeau's liberals to account when they try to punish and censor us, and maybe you, well, please consider chipping in.
To the three stupidest cabinet ministers in Canada, Marcy Ian, Karina Gould, and my own MP, Yaara Sachs, know this.
You will lose because you're breaking the law.
Admit it now or be humiliated by the court like your foolish comrade Stephen Gilbo was.
And to every other government bully out there, know this.
You're next.
Please go to twitterlawsuit.ca.
Stay with us for more.
Is there a political institution in this country that has let people down more than the Bank of Canada?
Is there a job that is easier, simpler in terms of its mission?
Keep interest rates affordable for Canadian families.
Is there a greater letdown than Tiff Macklam, the boss who admits that he screwed up?
I mean, even he doesn't defend himself.
Take a look at this clip from him admitting his screw-up.
Many economists are now publicly saying that the Bank of Canada was left behind the curve in its response to controlling inflation and probably could have increased rates earlier.
Would you have responded differently had you known that inflation was going to be at the rate it is today?
Look, we got a lot of things right.
We got some things wrong, and we are responding.
You saw that a couple of weeks ago.
We raised the policy rate, took the unusual step of raising the policy rate by 50 basis points to 1%.
We've signaled very clearly that Canadians should expect further increases.
And looking ahead to our next decisions, I think I expect we will be considering taking another 50 basis point step.
And yet the Bank of Canada has just issued 82 huge bonuses to its executives.
I don't even know how you get 82 executives at the Bank of Canada.
They just sloshed around $3.5 million and they're high-fiving each other in the hallway, showing us how to talk about this outrage.
And the $8 million barn down the street is our friend Franco Terrazano from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, who blew the whistle on both of these things.
Boy, I want to get to that crazy $8 million barn, but first let's talk about the Bank of Canada.
Tell me, tell our viewers who may not quite understand the Bank of Canada.
It's not a bank where you go and get a mortgage or you make a deposit.
Their sole job is to is monetary policy, which means the amount of money that is printed and trying to control interest rates.
They lend money to the big banks.
Have I properly described what the Bank of Canada does?
Ezra, you pretty well did, okay?
The Bank of Canada, folks, is our central bank.
It's a federal crown corporation, and it has one job, keep inflation low at around 2%.
Now, everyone knows that they failed at their one and only job.
Even they know that they failed at their one and only job.
Inflation last year reached a 40-year high.
No matter bonuses for essentially every executive, 80 executives at the Bank of Canada took home a bonus last year for a total of $3.5 million, folks.
So get this, okay?
Canadians are losing sleep at night, worried about losing their homes, worried about their credit card bills, you know, even worried about whether or not they're going to be able to afford good food for their families.
And you have these executives at the Bank of Canada who aren't even worried about missing a bonus.
Folks, the average bonus last year for their executives, more than $43,000.
You know, I can understand bonuses on Wall Street or Bay Street for stock market traders who do big deals and make a lot of money.
But this is not that.
This is they really have, as you say, one job, keep inflation in check.
And it's not like they're out there making deals and taking risks and being super capitalist.
This is really a public utility.
And actually, there is only one thing they should have done in the last few years, which is to say to Justin Trudeau, no, sorry, we're not going to print hundreds of billions of dollars more money for you to spend on your crazy programs.
That's really a big reason why we have inflation, because the Fox wasn't guarding, the Fox was guarding the hen house.
So Tiff Macklin, the head of the Bank of Canada, instead of saying to Trudeau, whoa, whoa, whoa, you just want us to increase the money supply by printing more money for you to spend.
That's going to cause everyone else's money to lose value.
That's going to cause prices to go up.
We can't do that.
He said yes to Trudeau.
He couldn't stand up to Trudeau and he's giving himself an 82 of his colleagues.
I don't even know what 82 people would be doing in the Bank of Canada.
And these are executives.
82 executives?
What are they doing all day besides playing solitaire on their computer or something?
Ezra, there's a few different reasons why inflation reached a 40-year high.
Okay.
Carbon tax.
That's a reason.
But make no mistake about it, folks.
The key reason driving up the prices that you pay was the more than $300 billion that the Bank of Canada printed out of thin air, largely to finance the federal government's massive deficit spending.
Okay.
Now, get this, folks.
They had their worst year in 40 years because they have one job to keep inflation low and around 2%.
Well, guess what?
Most organizations out there don't shower 98% of their executives with $40,000 bonus checks when they have their worst year in four decades.
Yeah, there's firings when that happens.
People are fired.
People are given pay cuts.
People are put on leave.
And by the way, the number of executives keeps going up.
When Trudeau took over, there were 69 executives there.
Now there's 82, or actually, there's 84 because two of them didn't manage to get bonus.
How bad do you have to be to be the two executives of the Bank of Canada, not hitting the ka ching?
I mean, hey, they're the money printers, so I guess they think money just grows on trees because for them, it sort of does.
They could literally print their own money.
It's so infuriating.
I mean, 43 grand in bonuses average, that's getting close to the take-home pay after tax for the average Canadian family.
I mean, I think the average take-home payment for the Canadian family is slightly more than that after tax, but not much more.
That's like a year's salary bonus just for getting us into this mess.
Franco, this is very frustrating.
Oh, I'm so frustrated.
Let me just step back.
80 of 82 executives at the Bank of Canada got a bonus, the average bonus, more than $43,000.
Okay, folks.
Now, I don't even want to know what those two executives who didn't get a bonus, what they managed to do.
I don't even want to know.
I don't want to go there.
But hey, Ezra, you touched on another good point.
Not only did 80 of 82 executives working there get a bonus last year, 98%, but the number of executives at the Bank of Canada has increased by 18% since 2015.
Well, I guess you just need more central bankers when you're going to run the printing press on overdrive and increase everyone's prices.
Now, let me just break it down one more time, folks.
For the average Canadian, for the ordinary Canadian taxpayer out there, you got higher inflation.
You got interest rate hikes.
A pay cut.
You got inflation.
It's a de facto pay cut.
Plus, but not just that.
What happened over the last couple of years?
People not just got pay cuts because of inflation, real pay cuts.
No, people actually got pay cuts.
People actually lost their jobs.
People actually lost their small business.
How many people had sleepless nights worried about having to take out a line of credit just to keep the lights on?
And at the Bank of Canada, they're not even losing an hour of sleep worried about losing a bonus?
Yeah.
Oh, boy.
You know, that's frustrating.
I still think, Franco, that if you go to the ordinary person on the street, he probably wouldn't know what the Bank of Canada is.
People Lost Their Jobs00:04:05
Because it's a little bit abstract.
You have to know a little bit about economics and monetary policy.
And I mean, Justin Trudeau brags that he doesn't think about monetary policy, but I think ordinary government might not either.
But everyone knows what a barn is.
You don't have to be a farmer or a rancher to know what a barn is.
It's a shed.
It's a big shed.
In fact, I bet that most Canadian homeowners have a mini barn where they keep their lawnmower and, you know, stuff in their bill.
It's a shed.
Now, you could have a big shed.
You might have some cows in there, but it's a shed.
But the government of Canada, I want to show the photo of the government of Canada paid $8 million to replace a barn at Rideau Hall.
$8 million.
And there's a photo of this barn.
Of course, it's got solar panels on it.
What can you tell us about this outrageous gold-plated $8 million barn, Franco?
Well, Ottawa's two worst waste offenders, the National Capital Commission and Rideau Hall, teamed up to soak you, dear taxpayer, for $8 million building a barn.
The NCC spent $8 million building this barn at Rideau Hall, which is, of course, the residence of the governor general.
$8 million.
Folks, I'm here in Ottawa.
Don't hold it against me.
But guess what?
You can get one of the most beautiful mansions in the Ottawa region for $8 million.
They spent that amount of money on a barn.
Now, Ezra, I don't know the first thing about farming, but I'm pretty sure you've got some listeners out there in Brooks, Alberta, who can figure out how to build a barn for less than $8 million.
Yeah.
And by the way, I hate to be that guy, but I don't think there's any animals in this barn, are there?
Like, I don't think it's an actual farm.
I don't think there's actual critters in there.
I think it's just like a shed for vehicles.
Am I right?
Yeah, it's a tool shed.
It's where they store their vehicles.
I don't know.
Maybe they're doing oil changes in there.
Who knows?
But guess what, folks?
Jiffy Lube is probably right down the corner.
Save some money.
Now, guys, $8 million to build a barn at Rideau Hall.
The National Capital Commission, which is the federal government supercharged Parks and Recs Board, they just waste money like crazy.
Let me give you one more example, okay?
At Rideau Hall, they spent $140,000 studying how to build a staircase that never got built.
Now, Ezra, Ezra, you know, I think, well, you got to laugh or you cry, right?
But Ezra, you know, I think that most Canadians spend $0 not building a staircase.
That's right.
The federal government spent $140,000 not building a staircase and you paid for it.
Yeah.
You know, the disconnect, I guess sometimes it takes, you know, is there any government eight years in that isn't unmoored from real people that isn't in its own world?
But I think that with the liberals, the waste, I mean, they take their lead from the guy at the top.
I remember Stephen Harper, who was a bit parsimonious.
He fired a cabinet minister for drinking a $16 orange juice from a mini bar because mini bars are super expensive and that was embarrassing.
Trudeau from the very beginning was luxurious with other people's money.
And so eight years in, that sense of entitlement and, oh, just throw another bale of hundreds on the fire, it's just out of control.
Pleased to say that Canadians are starting to resist.
The other day, I took people through the detailed Nanos poll, and it showed that people are more concerned than ever about the financial issues, about cost of living, about jobs.
And it's a bundle.
People don't necessarily separate cost of living from inflation, from affordability of houses, from groceries, from carbon tax.
It's all one big cloud over their head.
They're not breaking it down into different categories.
But all those cost of living categories together are now the number one concern in Canada.
People's Concerns Overwhelm Divisions00:02:35
And Trudeau, if you ask him his number one concern, he'll tell you, you know what it is?
Climate change.
And he'll say the answer to that is a carbon tax.
And so now Canadians, when they hear Trudeau on his number one issue, they're hearing more taxes.
Trudeau doesn't care because he doesn't pay anything himself and he's a millionaire trust fund kid.
But you can see in this Nanos poll that climate change is falling off the map in terms of an issue.
That's a luxury good that people can't afford right now.
Last word to you, Franco.
And you know what, folks?
I think Canadians understand that we're not going to solve an environmental issue with another tax here in Canada that drives up the cost of living.
I think Canadians understand that.
I think you're right.
There he is.
Best in the business, Franco Terrazano from the Taxpayers Federation.
Keep fighting like hell, my friend.
It's always a pleasure, and we love your happy warrior energy.
So keep it up.
Hey, thanks, Ezra.
I appreciate it.
All right.
There he is.
Franco Terrazano.
Stay with us.
Your letters to me next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Bruce Acheson says, Hi, Ezra.
Thanks for inviting She on the show, She Van Fleet.
We Westerners must understand what's happening and especially the demonic nature of division.
I'm glad She Van Fleet was interviewed tonight.
We all must listen to her.
She knows that Marxism and Jihadism have the same evil root, both divide people into sides and keep the divide open by teaching the so-called oppressed group hating the other side.
This is why we conservatives, Christians, and Jews must unify against hatred.
You know, the phrase I keep repeating is what I heard from James Lindsay a few weeks ago when he gave that speech in Calgary that I was lucky enough to attend.
He said, the issue is never the issue.
The revolution is always the issue.
And that's why queers for Palestine make common cause with Hamas that would slaughter anyone who's gay or trans or whatever, because that's not the point.
The point is to take it to the man.
And they both hate the man.
And in this case, the man is white man or Israel or America's ally.
By the way, millions of Jews in Israel are what are called Sephardi Jews.
They're darker-skinned Jews, Jews from Arab lands and other places.
They're even black Jews from Ethiopia.
But that's okay because in the cultural Marxism critical theory view of things, Israel is the white oppressor, even if they are Arab or brown.
Cultural Marxism's View00:01:07
It's not that.
And even though Hamas would murder gay activists, well, we have to be in part of the revolution.
The issue isn't the issue.
The revolution is the issue.
OG Contentibus says, at least the Nazis tried to hide their crimes.
Hamas and Hezbollah need to be eradicated from the planet.
Yeah, and I don't think that's a crazy thing to say.
I mean, we said that about ISIS.
We say that about Al-Qaeda.
No one said, hey, now have a humanitarian pause after 9-11.
Don't just go shooting Al-Qaeda.
Be proportionate.
What does proportionate mean when they attack civilian towers like 9-11?
You know, I'm buoyed in a little bit of my hope by seeing that Harvard Harris poll out of the States showing that 85% of Americans know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
I'm, of course, worried about the youngest cohort that's pretty much 50-50 for 18 to 24-year-olds.
I haven't seen a reliable poll here in Canada.
I'm worried that our numbers are not as high because our country is more woke and we do not have a leader at the helm.