Ezra Levant updates the Coutts conspiracy saga, detailing how RCMP retreated during a February 2022 blockade near Coots Sweetgrass, where Rebel News embedded journalists and lawyer Chad Williamson—later fired by three of four men charged with conspiracy to commit murder (600+ days detained as of November 2023). Levant contrasts their prolonged pre-trial custody with Canada’s lenient bail policies for accused terrorists while criticizing China’s interference, including WeChat bans and unrestricted access for state-affiliated media. The episode questions whether justice is being delayed for political reasons, despite Rebel News’ broader civil liberties advocacy. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a bail review hearing for one of the four Coots men charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
It's November 8th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Ezra Levant here.
It is windy and frosty.
That's what it's like these days in southern Alberta.
Behind me, you can see the courthouse in Lethbridge.
I've probably been here 20 times now for various hearings related to that incredibly momentous blockade in February of 2022.
We're in Lethbridge, but not far away from here at the Coots Sweetgrass Border Crossing between Alberta and the state of Montana.
A bunch of truckers and farmers and basically local folk decided they were done with Justin Trudeau's bigoted and civil liberties destroying and inspired by the main trucker convoy in Ottawa.
They had their own law game.
But the difference was Coutz, Alberta is far away from large population centers with large police forces and manpower.
Ottawa is a city of around a million, and it's not far away from Toronto and Montreal.
So it was very soon that large police and paramilitary forces could be dispatched.
Not so in Coutz, Alberta.
There were some RCMP that showed up in force.
They were vastly outnumbered.
In fact, there was this one showdown where the police came and looked impressive, but the truckers and farmers and others did not bend.
And the RCMP simply retreated.
Do you remember this incredible scene?
Well, you might remember that Rebel News was paying very close attention, and we just got two of our journalists to be embedded with the truckers.
In fact, they stayed there nine days straight, which makes me chuckle every time I say that because, of course, they didn't bring a change of clothes.
They had to go back to Gallgury to get fresh undies.
But we owned the coverage of that.
We got to know a lot of the men.
We were in that saloon where the men spent much of their evenings.
It was so bitter cold.
You might recall that Rebel News did something else that during that occasion.
Rebel News Truckers Coverage00:03:04
We dispatched a lawyer and sued a team of lawyers to go down to the men to be amongst them for two reasons.
First of all, to give them legal advice on what not to do and what they could do, what the risks are.
And basically to give them legal resources on how to handle civil disobedience in a manner that didn't get on hand.
And the second related reason was that they would be a liaison with the police and the police negotiators because I spoke to a couple of the truckers directly myself and our people reported that the truckers were being tricked and dealt with in bad faith by police negotiators.
I absolutely believe that.
So we dispatched the great Chad Williamson, one of the winningest lawyers we're affiliated with.
He went down there and not only did he give good advice to all the truckers and give them their card in case they were arrested, he did some journalism there too.
Here, take a quick look at some of what Chad said when he was on location.
From my reputation, I do as well.
First of all, I just want to commend you guys and congratulate you for taking a stand for our constitutional rights, our charter rights, and for exercising your right to peaceful protest.
So on behalf of Albertans and Canadians in general, I thank you for what you've done.
It's going to be a trying process.
And frankly, I can't promise you guys that we're going to be able to fudge the government on this stuff.
But we've got, I mean, you know, we're the people and we've got the power, right?
So give yourselves a round of applause just for just.
And as I've told everybody, this is pretty serious business.
And obviously you guys are aware of that, what you're doing, what's on the line, and what's at risk.
So if you need Marty or me, we're here to help you.
The legal fees are being crowdfunded, so that's great.
And you guys will have representation, okay?
So thank you guys again.
We're not going to be going anywhere.
So we'll be floating around all day if you have any questions.
We are going to be dealing with a couple folks that hopefully will be representing the majority of interests here.
And once we have a little bit of a meeting downstairs, we'll be establishing our connection with the authorities to start negotiations.
So thank you guys again.
Again, big round of applause for everybody.
This isn't easy.
And, you know, my family arrived in Alberta at the turn of the 20th century over 100 years ago.
And I'm about as Albertan as they come, but I still don't think that that even measures up to what you guys are doing no matter when your families arrived in this province.
So my hat's off to you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Well, Rebel News knew that this was an important event.
Men Behind Bars: Lethbridge Bail Hearing00:12:33
And we also knew that it was, in some ways, against the law.
But it wasn't violent.
It was classic civil disobedience of the nature that Tamara Leach engaged in on the Ottawa and National Seat.
So Rebel News crowdfunded a legal defense fund.
And in fact, to date, we've helped over 30 truckers in Alberta who received charges emanating from the convoy blockade and from Goots.
In fact, we're representing a number of them.
However, four men were charged not with civil disobedience or mischief or obstruction or minor things like that and not charged as Arthur Pavlovsky was for giving a sermon that quote incited mischief.
Rebel News is crowdfunded alike.
Several men were charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
It's not civil disobedience, which is an extremely serious crime.
And the murder that they were accused of conspiring to do was actually against police.
Those men are in prison to this day, more than 600 days after their arrest.
Now, people sometimes say, Ezra, why is Rebel News not crowdfunding for those men?
And as I've said before, the main reason is that Rebel News and our donors gave money for civil liberties defenses, for peaceful civil disobedience, for Mahatma Gandhi style stuff, for Tamara Leech style stuff.
And conspiracy to commit murder is not that.
And our donors gave money for the Tamara Leeches of the world, not for people who allegedly talked about killing cops.
That's not what our donors supported.
That said, because our lawyers were on the scene and had given out their cards, Rebel News did pay for the first instance.
We did actually represent three out of the four men.
And the reason for that is because we didn't know if the charges were full of hot air.
We didn't know enough and these men needed help right away.
So we actually dispatched our Rebel News lawyers to help three out of the four men in their bail hearing.
We didn't help the fourth man.
There was four men, like I say, Chris Carbert, Chris Lysack, Anthony Linick, and then a fourth man named Jerry Moran, who was actually never at Coots, according to our two journalists in chat.
They never saw him at Coates.
C he's been lumped in with the other three men.
I don't know what his connection to them was.
Was not at that saloon or at that block.
So we actually didn't know about him.
Well, Rebel News did actually represent the three men at the bail hearing.
And obviously, that bail hearing was unsuccessful.
I spoke to a number of senior lawyers about it who said, look, if you have the kind of evidence against you that the police claim to have against these men, about what they said, what they were reported as saying, about what they would do, there's no judge in the country that would let them out of custody.
That's the opinion of two lawyers I spoke with.
But apparently the three men were unsatisfied with the legal representation that Chad was providing them.
Fired our lawyers and have gone on to a series of lawyers.
And I'm not judging them.
I mean, you have to trust your lawyer and like your lawyer.
But I think that I don't think even the best lawyer in the country would have got those men out on bail.
And frankly, we don't know the depth of the case against these men.
Which brings me to why I'm in frosty Lethbridge today.
You can see the wipping those flags around.
That's not an Alberta for you.
I'm wearing my best to keep warm.
As I mentioned, the four men of Coots four are in jail.
And it's been almost two years.
It'll be two years in February.
And the trial of X Men is not even scheduled until May, which will be more than two years after their arrest.
And as you may know, under the Charter of Rights and Freedom and under common law before that, you're entitled to a sustained trial, especially given the stigma that is attached to being charged with the crime.
And all the more so when you are actually in jail.
Every day you're in jail for a crime that has not yet been proven against you.
So what happens in Lethbridge today is one of the four men, Chris Carbert is his name, applied to the court to review his bail hearing, basically review his bail conditions.
In other words, he wants to get out of jail now, and he's willing to put up certain conditions and promises so that he's allowed to get out of jail.
Now, I'm a former lawyer myself, and you probably know this: that the main purposes of bail are: number one, to ensure that the accused don't flee the jurisdiction before trial, that they don't run away.
And this is often found by taking away the passport of the accused, having ties to the community, having sureties, people willing to post a bond or post money, having people watch over him.
The second bail condition, a reason for giving or denying someone bail is: are they a risk to the community?
Are they a danger to the community?
For example, if it is a serially violent person, are they at risk of harming the community if they let go?
So, those are the primary and secondary considerations for bail.
There's also another one basically is with sort of a more general catch-all of justice being seen to be done.
But Chris Carberts and his lawyer argued today that there were sufficient new facts that he should have a new bail hearing.
One of the facts being the extremely slow progress of this case, and another fact being new disclosure from the crown that the accused did not have in their hands for that first bail application.
So, I came to Lethbridge today, and I was actually the only person in the entire court.
It was me, a clerk, and the sheriff.
The judge was joining by video camera.
The accused, Chris Carbert, was in a cell somewhere.
I'm not sure if that was in the courthouse or in jail.
There were actually two other journalists on the call, Global News and the Lethbridge Herald, and the lawyers.
And the judge gave Chris Carbert a victory and said that he has met the threshold test.
Sufficient things had changed since his first bail hearing that he will be given another bail hearing, a chance to present his case, his new plan, his new facts to a judge, and he might actually have a chance to be released.
So, it was not the main hearing today.
That is yet to come.
But, what this was was a judge saying, Yes, I accept that things may have changed significantly enough that we ought to have a bail hearing and that Chris Carbert, one of the four accused, should make his case.
So, that's an interesting development.
Of course, that is the big battle.
Today was more a procedural blockade that had to be overcome.
Now, I know I'm going pretty deep into the details here, but this case is enemy a lot of people.
I can understand why.
Tamara Leach was put in jail for 49 days, and there was an outrage, but finally she was sprung.
Arthur Pavlovsky was put in jail for 52 days, and finally he was sprung.
But in the case of these four men, they've been in jail for more than 600 days.
And if their bail is not revealed, they'll likely be in jail for hundreds more.
Like I say, the trial won't start till May, and it's surely going to go on into the summer.
So, naturally, people sense the enormity of pre-trial, pre-conviction custody.
These men are presumed innocent until they're found guilty.
So, you have men with the legal presumption of innocence who are serving hard time.
They are not in gentle jails.
And so, naturally, the political nature of the blockade, plus the enormous pre-trial custody, has people quite agitated.
And it is quite remarkable.
And the judge acknowledged that that's an issue, although she said that a May hearing in her mind was not a civil liberties disaster.
People can agree or disagree.
On my way down to Lethbridge today, I saw that there are crowdfunding campaigns for the four men that are not being done by rebel news.
And I think that's good because people who want to support these four men and knowingly do so, knowingly chip in to find lawyers for men charged with conspiracies to commit murder, of course they should be able to do that.
And of course, these men deserve lawyers.
They have lawyers.
And I think that's a more appropriate legal finance solution than a donor pool for donors who wanted to chip in for the likes of Tamara Leach or Arthur Pavlovsky or the 3,000 other cases that Rebel News has crowdfunded for that involve civil disobedience, not accusations of serious crime.
Let me know what you think about that.
But that's a decision that I've explained to you.
Although, as I mentioned today, Rebel News did actually, in fact, provide lawyers in the first instance for these men until they fired them, presumably thinking that they could get lawyers to spring them on the all faster.
So that's my report.
Somewhat unsatisfied day in that, but the main result is still weeks away.
The main hearing is still weeks away.
And the verdict in that is perhaps weeks later.
Justice turns very slowly.
And if you're in prison, it must be an eternity.
But I'm glad I was here to cover it.
I was the only one in court.
There were two mainstream journalists attending via video camera, Global News and Leopards Herald, and you have to give them credit.
I'll try and come back for the actual main application itself.
You might think this is an obscure issue, but I don't think so.
I think it's interesting that in Canada, accused murderers, even accused terrorists, are often set free into the community, but these men are behind bars.
As I said the last time I was down here, there is another factor that we have to discuss, and it is that group called the Diagalon.
Not sure if you've heard of that.
It's sort of a made-up paramilitary, malicious style, right-wing, jokey group.
But the joke suddenly turned real.
The men who were accused here showed some sort of affiliation with Diagalon online.
One of them, Chris Lysak, was dubbed the chief of security for Diagalon, what I think started out as an online joke.
Well, these men, I think, took a little too seriously, and they started acting it out at a time when there were dozens of police in town looking for a way to prosecute and to charge.
And Diagalon provided that glue, that narrative for both the media, politicians, and police to say, uh-huh, these aren't just ordinary people who are frustrated with Trudeau.
This is a conspiracy that have dark plans.
See, it's a conspiracy to commit murder.
And that was a charge they laid.
It'll be very interesting to see what happens.
I obviously do not know if these men are guilty or innocent.
And I'll keep coming back here until we find out.
I think this is an interesting case.
And it's a case that Rebel News will cover.
So that's my report from Lethbridge.
Now, back to the studio for an interview with our friend, Andy Lee.
China's News Influence00:15:18
You know, Justin Trudeau famously said China was the country he most admires.
And as I like to point out, he didn't stop the quote there.
He gave his reason.
Now, I admire many things about China.
As you can tell just by looking at me, I admire Chinese cuisine.
I find the language interesting, the culture, the archaeology, the history.
There's many things to admire about China.
But Trudeau went on and expressly said it was the basic dictatorship that he most admired.
Here, just refresh your memory.
Here's the full clip.
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green as fast as we need to start investing in solar.
I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harford must dream about of having a dictatorship that he could do everything he wanted that I find quite interesting.
And the trouble with that is that China is very outward looking now, what was for many centuries a more inward looking place.
And technology, well, in many ways, China rivals or even exceeds North American technology.
I think, for example, of the social media app called TikTok.
A lot of journalists and politicians love Twitter, and that probably is the dominant public square for people talking politics and things like that.
But for younger Canadians, for teenagers, TikTok is indeed dominant.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company.
And I'm on TikTok, which is probably a bad idea because it's obviously malware and spyware.
But it gives me a window into the propaganda that is pumped out relentlessly on that app, which surely serves the masters of TikTok, which at the end of the day is the Chinese government.
There have been discussions in both Canada and the United States to ban TikTok.
But I was startled and pleased and surprised to learn that the government of Canada recently announced a ban of another Chinese app on government devices.
I did not know this, but it was a story written by our friend Andy Lee, the special rebel rapporteur and investigative journalist.
What a delight to have her on the show.
Andy, great to see you again.
And good work here.
You really cover a beat that so few Canadian journalists do.
Thanks for doing it.
Let's go through this article and welcome back, by the way.
Yeah, we haven't seen each other in a while.
You've been very busy.
So yeah, let's dig into it.
This is really good news for us.
It's a good step.
It's an important step.
It brings us more into line with our allies, which is really, really important right now when we've maybe lost some confidence.
So the federal government moved to ban WeChat from federal devices.
And this follows on something that they did earlier on in the year when they did do a TikTok ban as well on federal government devices and things like that.
So we know that both are used by ByteDance is one of the, you know, the parent company of TikTok.
And there's huge concerns that, and you touched upon that.
So, but Tencent is, you know, the big fish kind of a Tencent runs WeChat.
And, you know, it sort of runs a vast surveillance network of all kinds of applications.
It doesn't just do WeChat.
It's a massive entity.
It's one that we've invested heavily into.
And that was something I need to look into more is at one point, I believe it was last year, it was our largest private equity foreign holding in the Canada Pension Plan.
Really?
Largest.
I've known that.
Yeah, fascinating.
So, I'll have to dig that up.
That's on my list of things to do and to write about is why.
And it dwarfed all others.
It wasn't even close.
It's our largest foreign private equity business.
Hey, before we go any further, I think many of our viewers know about TikTok, even if they're not on it.
And I deleted it and then I went back to it because I actually want to know what the other side is saying, even though I'm sure it's spying on me.
I actually learn things from TikTok about what the other half of the world is saying.
That's why I'm on it.
At least that's my excuse for being on it.
But I don't think many Canadians who are not Chinese Canadians know what WeChat is.
Can you explain for our viewers who have maybe never heard of WeChat?
What is it?
It's sort of an everything app, isn't it?
It's not just social media, it's commerce, it's money, it's banking.
I've never had an account on WeChat.
What is it like?
And by the way, can non-Chinese people make use of it, or is it basically a Chinese language app?
It is.
So, WeChat was a new tool for me to use.
And yes, I do realize that it's probably collecting information and privacy data and things like that.
So, I was really, really reluctant to install it, but I did.
So, it's a vast network of all kinds of things.
Yes, it's social media.
Yes, it's news.
Yes, it's commerce and marketplace.
And so, it's and you can do payments through WeChat and things like that.
So, it's a vast network.
Fascinating, the things that you can find there that you can't find anything else.
And, yes, absolutely.
If you want a WeChat account, you can start a WeChat account.
You need to send a QR code to somebody else who's on there and they will sort of get you in.
And so, this is what we've done: we've created our own WeChat network within this ecosystem.
And we go in and we look for things and we find things.
We get into people's chats and stuff like that.
We got a lot of information on the foreign agent registry protest through WeChat.
You know, it's very interesting you say that.
We had a Chinese-Canadian staffer at Rebel News for whom WeChat was their number one source of news, which is interesting to me.
So, including news about Canada.
And what I thought was interesting about that is imagine getting your news about Canada filtered through China.
I think there's a lot of Canadians who that's how they live.
And that's another concern there.
But it was a spyware malware issue that made the Canadian government ban it.
Am I right?
So, yeah, so the exact statement was: WeChat's application data collection methods provide considerable access to the device's contents.
So, I think that the worry is that maybe they could backdoor their way into federal devices where they might be able to pull other information or sensitive information off of government devices.
So, a very, very good news banning it.
Not really sure why it was on there in the first place.
Although, another thing most people probably don't know is one of Justin Trudeau's election pledges after he won the election back in 2016 and he was doing his China tours and things.
He said that one of the main things that he wanted to do was increase his presence on WeChat to connect with the Chinese people.
That was, and I've got that article, and I thought, well, wow, that's a fascinating thing.
And I never knew that.
So, yeah, our politicians have been using it.
And some of them have got busted doing some strange things on there.
Like Joyce Murray, she was our digital minister.
And it ended up that some of her posts had advertisements that were collecting funds for a lawsuit to try to sue global news.
Wow.
Who's at the forefront of breaking a lot of foreign interference stories?
It's so clearly an instrument of foreign policy for the government here.
Let me quote from your article.
Way, you wrote a great article about this a few days ago on the Revolution's website.
The headline is China protests Canadian WeChat ban on government devices.
So it's not just the company.
Let me read what the government of China said.
So you know they're mad because they're weighing in on behalf of the company, which is just obviously fused and connected to the government.
China strongly opposes Canada's latest ban on China's social media app, WeChat, and urges the Canadian side to discard ideological prejudice, abide by economic principles, and provide fair, just, and non-discriminative business environment for Chinese companies, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
So this, so you know what?
I'm sort of surprised to read this, Andy, because everything I've seen from Justin Trudeau has been to capitulate to the People's Republic of China.
Maybe this was just too far.
And maybe our Five Eyes allies said, look, we're not going to, we just cannot abide the government of Canada letting the Chinese government spy on all your bureaucrats.
Maybe a decision as wise as this was not made in Ottawa.
Maybe it was made in Washington or London.
Yeah, well, I think that that was part of it was trying to bring us more into line with our allies and make sure that we're safeguarding national security and things like that.
So a good move on their part, a little bit too little, too late.
I think too, that there's just been too much questions raised about how the application has been used in interference.
There are definite indications that WeChat was used for foreign election interference.
That was CSIS docs and men mills.
Do we know how many writings they interfered in?
Not exactly, but there's no doubt that there was interference.
And we were able to trace that back to certain state actors.
It's hard because you don't want to stifle free speech.
And we have a huge Chinese-Canadian population.
And yes, they do use this as a resource.
And a lot of them probably aren't using it for nefarious purposes, right?
They're going there to get their news and things like that.
The issue comes when you have state-sponsored campaigns.
And that's what we've seen.
And that's what the problem came in.
So this actually, this report, this condemnation that was put out by the foreign minister of China, it went through Global Times.
So we did some work earlier on Global Times.
So Global Times operates under the umbrella of the People's Daily Press.
And so that's the official news outlet of the Central Party of the Chinese Communist Party.
So this is their sort of official state propaganda mouthpiece.
Back when earlier on in the year, we had an alert put out by Global Affairs Canada saying that they had detected a disinformation campaign that they believed originated from the Chinese Communist Party.
They didn't say what state actors, but they felt fairly confident that it was state actors and it was a disinformation campaign against Michael Chong.
Of course, Michael Chong has been the victim of many of these disinformation campaigns.
But they didn't say who actually did it.
But we were able to find out pretty quickly who did it through WeChat.
So I went on WeChat and traced back where these articles were coming from.
And they were coming from something called Global People Magazine.
And that is also a part of the Global Times People Daily Press Ministry of Propaganda sort of ecosystem.
That was one of the sources that was putting out things about Michael Chong.
What did they say?
They lied about his background and things like this, right?
So, to try to create fear and mistrust of him, saying he's not a real Chinese, talking about how he's hawkish on China and things like that.
So, this is a concern is, and how do you balance free speech rights when you know that you've got it's one thing for there to be an organic campaign, right?
We can't stifle that.
That's not really fair to our Chinese Canadians to say you can't post bad things about politicians if you want on WeChat.
But this is a totally different situation, state-sponsored campaigns doing it.
The government of China doesn't have charter rights in our country, they don't have the right of freedom.
It's not free speech when it's a foreign sovereign.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's the whole problem.
And the other problem too is that we don't have reciprocity.
So, Global Times and People's Daily Press, so they're designated as foreign missions in the United States, along with a lot of the official state propaganda accounts like Xinhua and China News Service.
So, what that means is that the United States has acknowledged that they're largely controlled by a different government outside of the United States, and they are acting on behalf of a foreign government.
We don't sort of have that in Canada.
So, we've got, you know, People's Daily and Global Times have got domestic bureaus in Canada, and they go around, they do whatever they want.
You know, they even get private FaceTime with some of our politicians.
Right.
And what was the go ahead, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Keep going.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you see these sort of, you know, these closed door foreign media events where mainstream media isn't permitted to go.
And, you know, they get personal interviews with candidates, usually liberal candidates.
I did point this out and Handong sort of gave Xinhua a special interview after his election night win.
And I was kind of like, okay.
So this is a foreign mission in the U.S. and it's not here.
And they get to go around and get FaceTime.
So they have very, very free reign.
And this is why it's so important that we bring in a registry type of legislation.
And we know some people are stalling on it for obvious reasons.
We're registering the foreign agencies.
You're so right.
And the great point about reciprocity, Canadian journalists cannot just have free access in China.
And by the way, they don't allow Facebook and Twitter in China, if I'm not mistaken.
So why would we, and the chutzpah of the Chinese government to complain about economic principles while banning our social media?
Andy, I'm so glad you're on this beat.
And I want you to keep on it because this is journalism that very few reporters in Canada know how to do and are motivated to do.
And this is exactly what Rebel News is all about.
And I'm so glad that you're writing and expressing your investigative research through our pages.
So please keep it up and please keep it coming.
This was a small bit of good news, but it revealed a terrible fountain of propaganda and foreign influence.
So keep at it, my friend.
Yeah, I will.
It's going to be really fascinating to see how these, because we know that they ran influence operations just in closing, you know, before the last election and the election preceding it.
Foreign Influence Revealed00:05:13
And they threw their weight behind certain candidates.
And now we've got, you know, it's one thing to say vaguely, oh, there's a CSIS memo saying that China is interfering in our elections.
It's a little bit different when you actually find it and track it down to the source like we've been doing, like getting it down to the IP address that's originating outside of our country somewhere in China, right?
Be it in Henan or Fujian or Beijing or Shanghai or wherever.
So it's fascinating, but it'll be really, really interesting now that we've got some of those core networks pinned down to see how they react in the next election.
You know, throw their weight behind the same candidates that they did that they did last time.
Are they going to flip and try to influence conservative candidates?
Or are they going to stick with the horse that's going to come in likely last in the race?
And how are they going to try to get in and influence those politicians now that we've been able to identify some of these actors?
And again, these aren't everyday Canadian citizens.
These are Chinese businessmen.
They're United Front.
They go overseas.
They shake hands with Xi Jinping.
They go to the political conferences and all the United Front conferences.
I actually found one of Justin Trudeau's volunteers, and there's a haul.
And his photo is up in there as one of the most successful overseas, I guess, influencers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's another article I've got to write up.
I was like, oh my gosh, he's got like a whole, you know, a whole sort of display dedicated to his work that he's done in Canada.
And most of that work was done cozying up to certain politicians and trying to influence them.
And he happened to be really involved in the protests against agent registry, go figure.
So, yeah, so fascinating.
It'll be really, really neat to watch.
It's really, really great.
I don't do this alone.
So I want to take a moment to thank everybody that are in those little WeChat channels with me and sending me stuff and get in and dig in and pry for information and help us do this really, really important work.
And it'll be good to continue on with it.
Yeah, it is important work and we're grateful for it.
Again, I just want to read the headline out.
If folks missed it on our website, China protests, Canadian WeChat ban on government devices.
And one of my favorite things about your articles, Andy, is you have links to the primary sources.
So thank you for that.
We got to wrap it up there.
Great to see you.
Keep up the fight.
You're very brave for doing this, and we're grateful to you.
There you have it.
Andy Lee, the special rebel rapporteur.
Stay with us.
My final thoughts are next.
Hi there.
I got into my car.
It was just a little too cold for me out there on the street, but that's the show for today.
I'd like your thoughts on how to handle the four men in Coots charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
Obviously, I hope they didn't do it.
Obviously, I hope that the judicial process speeds them through to acquittal on the basis that they didn't do it, because I would hate to know that they did it.
But that is a heavy criminal law matter that is outside the scope, in my opinion, of the civil liberties work that we become famous for over the course of our life at Rebel News.
We take cases for people whose freedom of speech and freedom of association, freedom of religion is transgressed, people who engage in peaceful civil disobedience.
That's why we support Arthur Pavlovsky.
He may be noisy, he may be aggressive in some ways to some people's minds, but he's nonviolent completely and he preaches nonviolence.
And that's our kind of guy.
Same with Tamara Leach.
You couldn't have a more wonderful lady.
And frankly, I think the judicial action against her is a national shame.
But I just simply don't believe that our donor's money at Rebel News was given to us to support a general serious criminal matter as this.
But like I said, I'm glad to know that there are people who are crowdfunding for them and they do have lawyers.
So I'll keep you posted because I think it's a very interesting case.
And people being in jail for 600 days before trial is an anomaly.
And, you know, it's not a personal affiliation I have with any of these men.
I've never met any of them.
And one of them wasn't even down there at Coots.
But if you compare the treatment of terrorists or drug dealers or rapists to the treatment of them, quite in Canada, accused terrorists often get bail, which is incredible.
Well, I'm glad I came down here, and I'll do my best to cover the actual substantive bail hearing too.
Let me know what you think, what you think about my coverage, if you think it's an important case to cover.
By the way, we are representing other men who have been charged with minor crimes at the Couts blockade.
In fact, we have something called Trucker Defense Fund that we're crowdfunding for those men because we think those fit within our civil liberties mandate.
Well, that's my report from southern Alberta.
It's frosty down here, even though there's no snow on the ground and it's sunny.
It is cold.
I'm back to Toronto tonight to our world headquarters, and I'll talk to you then.