Ezra Levant and Sidney Fizzard detail Rebel News’ landmark November 21, 2023 court victory in Quebec after a two-year vendetta-driven prosecution for violating the province’s COVID-19 curfew (March 2021), despite exemption letters. Police dismissed Fizzard’s credentials—questioning his camera size and past job as a cook—while issuing $1,500 tickets and detaining 17 staff in a 50-officer raid, allegedly calling them "Media Juif." Judge Johanna White acquitted him, ruling press freedom applies to all media, but Fizzard criticizes her tone. The case cost taxpayers $100K–$200K while mainstream outlets like CBC avoided reporting on police overreach, exposing systemic bias against independent journalism. [Automatically generated summary]
We had a court victory in Montreal and we just got the ruling today.
It's in French, but I'll translate it for you.
We won a freedom of speech battle against the police and the prosecutors.
I'm pretty excited.
I want to tell you about it.
Let me invite you, though, to get the video version of this podcast.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Quebec's atrocious police and prosecutors went after our reporter, a judge, throughout their vendetta-driven case.
It's November 21st, and this is the Edge for Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
I've got some good news for you.
It's taken two and a half years, but we won an interesting court battle in Quebec.
I'll tell you about it in a moment.
You know, we have so many court cases defending our journalists.
I honestly lose track of them.
Some of them, it's us suing the police, like when Trudeau's RCMP shot our reporter, Alexa Lavoie, with a riot gun.
That was absolutely awful.
Or when Trudeau's bodyguards beat up our reporter, David Menzies, just beat him up and dumped him on the side of the road.
No arrests, no charges, just being the thugs they are.
So obviously, in those cases, we're suing the police.
Justice moves slowly, though.
In other cases, we're on defense.
That is, the government is coming after us in the courts.
And one of those times was when we were reporting on the authoritarian curfew imposed on the people of Quebec.
It was atrocious, and it should never be forgotten.
Quebec, which always claims to care so much about civil liberties, which not only has the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but they also have their own provincial Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
And they have their Human Rights Commissions.
Oh, if you ask the Quebec politician, they'll tell you just how much they care about rights and freedoms and how noble they are and how progressive and tolerant and high-minded they are.
But I should tell you, dear viewer, that it is a lie.
That province literally sentenced their entire population to house arrest, a curfew, like what you would give a wayward child or like a prison would give an inmate.
They put the whole place on lockdown.
You couldn't even leave your house, even if you were healthy, even if you were vaccinated.
They had a curfew from 10 p.m. till 5 a.m.
They even had a rule that you couldn't walk your dog.
Of course, rock your dog is code for letting your dog go out to the bathroom.
Imagine making such a stupid, unreasonable, unscientific rule in the name of health.
By the way, by what possible measure did this make any sense, banning people from literally going out of their homes, even if they weren't sick?
Why?
What for?
It made no sense.
There was no rationale to it.
It did untold damage commercially, socially, mental health.
It was probably the stupidest thing during the entire lockdown, except for Trudeau's brilliant plan to make truckers get the vaccine truckers who live, eat, and sleep in their own truck, maybe the most solitary people in the whole country.
So yeah, don't ever let a Quebec journalist or a Quebec politician or a Quebec lawyer or a Quebec judge tell you how much they care about civil liberties.
They put their entire province on lockdown like a prison ward after a riot.
And no one complained.
Middle Moving Curfew Confusion00:03:30
No unofficial that is.
In fact, the so-called watchdogs of civil liberties loved it.
They morally enforced it.
They called for more of it.
What a disgraceful moment that was.
So this Quebec curfew came into effect, and we had one Rebel News staffer living in Montreal in the time.
This was before we had met Alexa Lavoie, our star Montreal reporter now.
But back then, a reporter named Yankee Pollock lived in Montreal and he worked on our social media by day, but by night he went out to record the sights and sounds of the lockdown on his cell phone as a journalist.
Now, it turns out there was a special legal exemption to the curfew for journalists.
That's a disgrace in itself in my mind when you think about it.
Why should journalists have more civil rights than anyone else?
Does the virus treat journalists in a different way than it treats you or me?
Or are they just above the rules?
Are the rules just for the little people?
So Yankee had an exemption because he was a journalist.
And the government of Quebec had a special form to be filled out by journalists and their bosses confirming that the journalist was a journalist and that they indeed were on assignment to do reporting during the times in question.
We had a lawyer review the form and we filled out the paperwork and I signed it and Yankee was good to go.
But the cops just kept stopping him and pulling him over and giving him tickets and insulting him and harassing them, even though he showed his exemption letter to them every time.
Here's how some of that looked.
At some point the cops called me over to the car and they were like, hey, where's your credentials or why are you out?
I was like, media, media is exempt.
Why are you in the streets at this time?
Because I'm media.
Okay.
You're gonna you wanna see my media press credentials again?
I'll give it to you.
Here are my press credentials, my notes.
Okay, and what's the Rebel News?
I've been pulled over three times tonight.
Rebel News?
Yeah.
What's that?
It's a news agency based out of Toronto.
And I was issued a ticket for that night for being out.
Yes, sir.
I got a fine.
Okay, no problem.
There you go.
You got three days to contest it.
I will contest it.
Thank you very much.
You too.
You gave a ticket for a person of the media.
Is that right?
Good luck with your YouTube.
Oh, I will fight this and I will win this.
This is shameful.
It was so gross.
We wrote a letter to the police chief.
It didn't make a difference.
The police hated us and hated Yankee in particular.
They started calling him Media Joueif, Jew Media.
Jew media?
I'm filming.
Okay, sir.
You have a piece of ID with you?
Yes?
Yeah, I'm media.
Yeah, we'll take a piece of idea with you, sir.
Sure, yeah.
You cannot be on the street.
Yeah, I'm in the middle of moving.
You're talking to me.
Can you shine it?
I don't know who you are.
I also don't know who you are.
I'm Constable Robert 6473.
Okay.
And who are you?
I'm giving you my papers.
No problem.
Just like it.
What?
Who are you, sir?
I'm with Rebel News.
I'm not media Jewish.
What did him being Jewish have to do with anything?
So stupid, such bully, so such a perfect encapsulation of Montreal's police.
So you know how it went.
We sent a few more reporters to accompany Yankee.
They weren't Jewish, by the way.
Shake Shake, Shame Shame00:03:55
They had their journalistic exemptions too.
And the police hated them too and arrested them too and even roughed them up a bit.
Take a look.
Yankee was talking to the officer or both of them and he was like, hey, so what's going on here?
I just want to, you know, assess the situation, report on the situation.
And they did not take too kindly to that.
I'm media.
I see you guys putting someone in the back of the car.
Guys, give the paper.
Long story short, we were held up for about 40 minutes in freezing cold temperatures, only to be ticketed thousands of dollars for simply doing our jobs.
Yeah, by the way, none of those guys were Jewish, but they were called Media Juif.
Really weird.
It got worse and worse, even though all our guys had the paperwork and weren't doing anything wrong.
But you know, no other journalists in Montreal were going out to report on the lockdowns.
They were either lazy or were instructed not to do so, or they agreed with locking up their fellow citizens because honestly, some of the cops had never seen a journalist on the street, had never seen the exemption letters before.
Isn't that pitiful?
And they kept arresting and roughing up our people.
And that's when we decided to send a huge team out there to assert our rights.
17 of us went out, if I recall the number correctly.
That turned into a bizarre standoff when 50 police sounded our Airbnb.
We rented an Airbnb houseboat, so we were all together.
And the cops demanded to be able to search all of our reporters and their rooms.
Badge number.
Consensus number.
Name and badge number.
Yes, sister, brother.
Name and badge number.
Why would...
Why are you pushing me?
Why are you pushing me?
I'm not pushing you.
You're pushing me with your hand.
You're assaulting me.
Go this way, sir.
Everything is still.
Oh, my goodness, the affirmative action hire.
Are you sealing me on?
Hey, hey, you don't touch their people.
Go cover Menzies.
Do not touch you.
Oh, here comes the real people.
Do not touch you.
Do not touch you.
Do you touch him?
Did you touch him?
Why did you touch him?
No, we don't know.
He told him to me.
He told him to me.
Are you hiding your name to me?
Hey, hey, hey, keep your distance.
Hey, hey, hey, put it back on.
Okay?
Do you want to get a rest set for us?
Goose, touch me.
Here are the bugs.
Here are the bugs.
Here come the bugs.
Shame!
Shame! Shame! Shame!
Shake!
Shake!
Mark up!
Shake!
Shake!
Clear the fuck out of the shake!
Shake!
Hey, how many guys does it take to fucking hold the guy, huh?
These crooked bigots, when they came to our reporters, they called us Jew media, they asked if we were Jews.
They're anti-Semitic, crooked, and corrupt.
Prosecuted for Madness00:02:35
Shame on them.
These wicked men and women.
Yeah, Montreal's police are so corrupt and so gross.
Anyways, there are a lot of lawsuits that came out of that event, but one of them resolved itself just last week.
And today we received a copy of the verdict.
It was the prosecution of one of our young reporters, Sidney Fizzard is his name.
And he was prosecuted for being out during the curfew, even though he had an exemption letter.
an exemption letter drafted by the province of Quebec that we filled out the form.
So the cops didn't care about this exemption letter, but all the cops can do is arrest you and give you a ticket, and I guess rough you up.
But the cops themselves can't prosecute you.
Then you need the Justice Department, the prosecutors.
And they decided to go after Sidney Fizard also, not in the heat of the moment like the cops might have done.
The prosecution looked at the facts in the cold light of day and made the willful decision to push aside all less important matters, you know, robberies, vandalism, whatever the problem in Montreal is, to focus prosecuting the great crime of Sidney being out after 10 p.m. with his camera.
They prosecuted another one of our reporters too, Yankee, in fact.
Now, this all happened in the spring of 2021.
So you might think that the government had moved on from that, that it had better things to do with the time and resources and the court's time and the judges' time.
But if so, you would be wrong.
Literally two and a half years after that madness, well, the new madness continued.
The government of Quebec made the calm, rational decision to prosecute our journalist Sidney.
This isn't the heat of the moment thing where the cops didn't know what was up and hadn't seen the form before.
This was years later.
The government of Quebec wanted to get us.
So this thing actually went to trial.
And that, my friends, is my story today.
I'm showing you now the judgment issued by the court.
I'm told that the verdict was actually issued in English, but it was translated into French for the official version.
That's Quebec for you, I guess.
Now, my French is good enough that I can read it, but it's not great.
So I put the judgment through Google Translate, if you know what I'm talking about.
And I'm going to read that translation to you.
So please understand that's where I'm getting these English words from, a machine translation from French to English.
It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.
So let me start.
Court of Quebec, Canada, Province of Quebec, District of Montreal, locality of Montreal, criminal and penal chamber.
Reading the Ruling00:15:25
Date November 15th, 2023, under the presidency of Mrs. Johanna White, Justice of the Peace Magistrate.
So that was the judge.
And the prosecutor was the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, pursuing Sidney Emere Richard Fizard.
That's our reporter.
Seriously, this was important enough to take up a day of court in 2023.
So the judge starts out the verdict recalling what the world was like back there.
Here are her words.
Again, they're a bit mangled by Google Translation, but I think you can get the point still.
I'm quoting now.
World Health Organization declares global pandemic in 2020 caused by the COVID-19 virus.
Consequently, on March 13th, 2020, the government of Quebec declares a state of health emergency throughout the province.
Political and health authorities inform the public daily of the evolution of the situation, as well as the decisions taken to fight the pandemic caused by COVID-19 and the measures put in place to enforce them.
Among the measures taken by the state to counter the spread of the virus, such that stated by decree, there is this one.
So again, the translation is not perfect, but here they're citing the decree, the curfew.
It is forbidden between 9.30 p.m. and 5 a.m. to be found outside of one's residence unless one demonstrates being outside this place to provide work or professional services necessary for the continuity of activities or services that are not subject to suspension under decree or order made under section 123 of the act respecting public health, blah, blah, blah.
So it's basically saying unless you are exempt, unless you're doing an essential service, you have to be in.
You have to be inside.
So again, apologies for the rough translation, but basically, everyone was ordered to stay at home other than those who were specifically exempt.
So the default was house arrest.
That's nice.
I'll keep reading the ruling.
Again, this is Google Translate.
Considering that many citizens are infected by the virus, the collaboration police officers are requested by public authorities to ensure compliance with measures put in place to curb the spread of the disease.
On March 21st, 2021, Mr. Fizard was intercepted twice at a few hours apart during the curfew and received two tickets.
He claims to be exempt from respecting the curfew because he is a journalist and in the exercise of this function at the time of police interventions.
Obviously, he was.
And here's what the judge says.
The issue in dispute.
Does Mr. Fizard's explanation constitute one of the exceptions to the decree exonerating his criminal liability?
Now, I'm not going to read the whole thing to you.
You can see the whole thing on our website, and you can put it through Google Translate yourself.
But let me read part of it to you because there's some interesting parts in here.
Paragraph seven, the offense alleged against Mr. Fizard is one of strict liability, for which the prosecutor does not have to demonstrate that a defendant intended to infringe the law.
However, when the prosecutor has discharged his burden of proof, a defendant can claim that he took all reasonable means not to infringe the law or that he benefits from an exception or exemption permitted by law or decree.
It is then up to him to demonstrate by preponderance of evidence that the exception or exemption applies to his situation.
In other words, if you're spotted outside, you're guilty right off the bat.
The government doesn't have to prove anything more.
It falls to you to prove that you were exempt.
That's what the judge is saying.
Paragraph eight.
The court emphasizes that the essential elements of the offense that a prosecutor must prove beyond a reasonable doubt are the identification of the defendant and his presence outside the residence during curfew hours.
A defendant does not have to raise a reasonable doubt having regard to all the evidence as to one of these elements in order to be acquitted of the offense.
It can also be demonstrated by preponderance of evidence that one of the exceptions provided for in the decree applies.
So basically, then it's on 50-50.
Our reporter demonstrate 51% to 49% that he was exempt.
Mr. Fizard admits the facts, but maintains that he was in the execution of his work, journalist for rebel news.
So it's a pretty simple case, isn't it?
The police knew he had an exemption, but they said rebel news isn't real news.
They just refused to accept it, refused to believe it.
And the prosecutors agreed and sent this thing to court for 30 months.
They invested in it.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, the Quebec government established a state of emergency.
I'm reading from the ruling again.
And decrees the suspension of all activity in the workplace except for those where priority services are offered.
Among these, we find the media and telecommunications, including national and local media.
So there you have it.
The media were exempt.
Couldn't be clearer.
Again, I think that's gross.
Everyone has the same rights.
Why should a fancy elite, as if journalists are fancy, be exempt and ordinary people are not?
But we were exempt, and that was the law we were relying on.
Now, let me skip down a little bit in the ruling here.
Again, I'm reading the translation.
The exception relating to local and national media remains in force, having not undergone any modifications.
The opposite would have been very surprising, given the fact that the authorities relied heavily on these to inform the population, the evolution of the pandemic, and the health measures decreed to combat it.
Still, on March 21, 2021, in the early hours of the morning, the defendant received a first report of infraction.
Detective Sergeant Kollar testifies about his intervention and the issuance of this first observation.
Okay, so we're getting into the police testimony.
Imagine two and a half years after this happened, this is so important that a cop is taken off the beat to come to court to testify against a journalist in Canada.
I'll keep reading from the ruling.
the police officer assigned to night shift assists colleagues following a call regarding a gathering on San Antoine Street.
He stuck on street corners Saint-Louis and Guilford when he saw two men on the sidewalk filming with their cell phone the police vehicle.
So we asked the two men what they are doing at this place.
They respond that they are journalists and that they have heard of an important police intervention in progress.
The policeman asks them how they obtained this information to which they respond, we were just walking outside and we saw lots of police cars, so we decided to stop and see what was going on.
Sounds like a pretty good answer to me.
Back to the ruling, paragraph 15.
The police officer asks them to identify themselves.
Mr. Fizard identifies himself with a license to drive from Ontario.
He then provides a form from his employer, Rebel News.
According to the police officer, this form is written in French and states that the defendant is exempt from the curfew and is allowed to travel from his place of work to his address, personal address.
His home address is in Toronto, and the rebel news address is at Toronto.
The police officer confronts the defendant about this, but he maintains that his location of work is here.
On the other hand, he admits not understanding the content of his letter from the employer since it is written in French.
He refuses to leave a copy with the police officer.
All right, well, fair enough.
I mean, we filled out the form in French.
Sydney doesn't speak French.
We filled it out in French because the form was only made available in French.
I say again, this was a government of Quebec form that we downloaded from the internet, and there is no denying that it was filled out properly and that Sydney had it.
The law exempts local and national media.
That's us, baby.
They have talked about different forms because we actually had three different forms, but I'll just read this part.
Another letter, D5, also signed by Ezra Levant, president of Rebel News in Toronto, stipulates that during the curfew decreed by the government of Quebec, the person identified in this document is recognized as an essential resource and that Mr. Sidney Fizzard must therefore travel between his home and his place of work or any place where the presence in a professional capacity is required.
This letter, obtained only after the police officer's testimony, is dated March 18th, 2021 and valid from March 19th to April 30th, 2021.
Finally, a third letter is produced and has the same effect as the previous but dated March 5th, 2021, and is valid from March 6th to March 8th.
All right, so we're legal.
I was signing all these forms whenever our people went out there.
I was filling out the paperwork.
Can you imagine being a journalist and having to fill out government paperwork to do your work?
That sounds like something you would do in China.
My point, though, is that we were following the law.
We had the paperwork, en français.
But the cops didn't like us.
They were angry.
You saw that.
They hate us because we were there to shine the lightest scrutiny on them.
Something that not a single Quebec journalist had done.
Now it gets interesting.
Look at this.
A group of people are arrested for offenses related to curfew.
I'm reading the judgment again.
Wearing a mask and non-compliance with distancing required by health measures.
During his arrest, Mr. Fazard was in the presence of three other people and all claimed to be journalists employed by Rebel News.
In his report, the police officer indicates that their presence outside during curfew is not part of the list of exceptions because there were no media events to cover in the sector at this time.
And the far right Rebel News website is not a source from recognized media.
Did you get that?
The police are deciding what is and isn't a media event in this policing sector.
They said there was nothing to cover.
Why didn't we just obey them?
Oh, and they said we're far right.
What does that mean?
We're for civil liberties.
Is that far right now?
I thought that was a liberal idea, actually.
And because they didn't like us, because they had political opinions about us, they didn't have to grant us the media exemption.
Can you believe that?
Well, I can believe it.
And the fact that this was pursued by the police and the prosecution for 30 months shows that, yeah, they absolutely were in the business of deciding who is and isn't journalists.
Gross is that the police telling us who and who isn't a journalist.
And look at this snobbery here, snobbery by the police prosecution, and I would say, by the judge too.
Back to the ruling questioned about his status as a journalist, during the trial, mr Fazard admits not having done any study for his job, since before being hired at Rebel NEWS, he was a cook.
It therefore appears that no training is required to be able to grant yourself the title of journalist and obtain accreditation from Independent Press Gallery OF Canada, as in Sydney.
Didn't go to journalism school.
What do you think they teach you at journalism school?
For four years, they teach you left-wing ideology.
So luckily no um, you don't have to spend four years being indoctrinated in order to have the right to film what police are doing in the dead of night to poor Montrealers.
Oh and, and he was a cook before he worked for us.
How, how dare a lowly cook have the audacity to think that he could be a journalist?
Oh, and that shot at the Independent Press Gallery.
Well, by the way, you don't need a journalism degree to work for any media outlet, the CBC, for example, or to be part of the government's parliamentary press gallery either.
And who the hell would a cop or a prosecutor or a judge be to say who can or can't do journalism?
That's so gross.
By the way, Peter Mansbridge didn't go to journalism school.
He didn't go to university at all.
Imagine the police saying, how dare you think you can be a journalist?
Look at this.
This part's just embarrassing.
And back to the judgment here.
At the time of the events, none of the people arrested with the defendant use equipment normally used for reporting.
They just film police intervention using their cell phones.
Moreover, it is clear that their presence at outside during curfew mainly aims to provoke police intervention, to film it and offer it as a report to rebel news.
Oh, is that a fact?
Is that a fact?
So these are experts telling us what we can or can't use as a camera.
I put it to you, the camera in a basic smartphone in 2023 or back in 2021 is far superior than a quarter million dollar over-the-shoulder tv camera from 10 years ago.
And, by the way, you can edit and publish right from your phone too.
What a bunch of technologically illiterate boomers.
You can't do journalism with just a cell phone.
Hey, there you kids.
Stop doing journalism with your cell phone and you aim to provoke police really sort of sounds like these police are the ones who are trying to provoke us, that they're the ones with access to the grind.
They're the ones expressing a view on whether or not we can't be journalists because of our right-wing views.
I mean, how dare we report on something when there's nothing to report on?
And the police have given us their word that there's nothing to report on?
Why don't we just accept that?
And, after all, if they're not experts on how to do journalism, I mean, who is right?
Oh, and don't provoke them or they'll arrest you and hound you for 30 months.
I'll keep reading from the judgment.
In order to demonstrate that Rebel NEWS is a real media outlet, the defendant's lawyer invokes a decision of the Federal Court OF Newfoundland in which the judge ordered the Leaders Debates Commission to give rebel news network limited the required accreditation Accreditation to allow a journalist to participate in person and 10 others to participate in virtual mode, like other media, in the leaders' debate for federal election.
I remember that.
That was an amazing ruling.
That was the second time the federal court of Canada struck down Trudeau's ban on us.
And the judge in this case, here in Montreal, seems to have taken it to heart, despite her bizarre criticisms of our journalist.
The Leaders' Debate Commission, I'm reading from the ruling again, refused this accreditation based on the guidelines issued by the Canadian Association of Journalists regarding conflicts of interest.
The Commission has identified several elements constituting conflicts of interest, according to her from Rebel News, such as the Vaccine Passport Legal Fund, the Stop the Censorship Petition, the No COVID jails lawsuit, the Bring Back Harper petition, the Open Saskatchewan lawsuit, and the Audit Tracker letter.
So basically, the Montreal judge was saying that the Debates Commission tried to kick us out because we have these petitions.
But then this Montreal judge says this.
In this decision, the Commission states that its mandate is to maintain the public confidence in media coverage and expresses the view that activities that could lead to conflicts of interest risk harming the trust.
This fear is possibly well-founded, but the responsibility for determining who is a journalist and who is not and how to report in accordance with journalistic standards are not within the purview of this court.
Usually, these are the orders professionals bringing together all members of the same profession who provide a form of regulation of the said profession.
This makes it easy to check who is a member in good standing with a professional order.
Unlike other professions, however, who exercise their profession, journalists do not have an obligation to be part of a professional order who can establish what is acceptable and what is not, keep a list of members in good standing and sanction misconduct by imposing fines, suspensions, additional training, or even removal from the order.
Of course, there is the press council, but this body does not have the same powers and duties as those assigned to a professional order.
So basically, this judge is saying, yeah, journalists are not like doctors or lawyers or accountants or engineers.
They're sort of a fake profession.
Anyone can be a journalist.
Now, I know this because I didn't go to journalism school, and I'm just as good a journalist as half the journalists in Ottawa who did.
Journalism is an activity.
It's not a profession.
And this judge is sort of sad about that, but she admits it's the truth.
Victory for Rebel News00:03:39
Let me read some more from the ruling.
Furthermore, in several court decisions, the identification of rebel news as media is not called into question.
The court cannot therefore conclude, as the policeman said, that it is not a recognized media outlet in our country.
And here the judge ends strong.
In our country, freedom of expression is protected by our laws, whether or not we agree with the opinions expressed.
Consequently, and although the defendant's behavior during the curfew is perplexing, the fact remains that the evidence indicates that Rebel News probably assigned to Quebec to cover this event if we are to believe the documents filed as evidence by the defense without objections from the prosecutor.
In this context, the court cannot conclude that Mr. Fazard was not in the exercise of his journalistic functions during his arrests.
For these reasons, the tribunal says the defendant is acquitted of the offenses charged.
And there you have it.
In our country, freedom of the press is the law, no matter if a cop thinks there's no news in this sector, no matter if a prosecutor thinks our camera's too small, no matter if a judge finds it perplexing that we'd find it interesting to go out during a curfew.
Sorry to perplex you, judge.
But she got it right on what counts?
The law, freedom of the press.
And this case was another victory for Rebel News.
Hey, how much money do you think that foolishness just burnt up?
How much tax money for the police, the enforcement, for the police to show up at trial, for the prosecutors, two and a half year vendetta, for the court's time?
What do you estimate?
$100,000?
$200,000?
Let alone our costs and the cost of Sydney having to take off time to go to court.
This is just one of, I don't know, a dozen cases we're fighting right now.
What do you think of this one?
If you want to help us, go to journalistdefensefund.com.
No other journalists in Canada put through this.
None.
No one of the CBC, no one of the rest of the media party, because they are obedient.
They agree with the curfew.
They were propagandists for the lockdown, for the regime.
They weren't critics.
If the cops told them there's nothing to report on in this police sector, they'd obey.
And that's why they'll never report on this court victory for Rebel News or the embarrassing and gross prosecution of our reporter in the first place.
Because really, if any given journalist at the CBC had been the judge in this case, our reporter would have been convicted.
Stay with us for more with the reporter, Sidney Fazard.
Well, joining us now is the reporter in question who was victorious in a Quebec court last week.
Sidney Fazard joins us from Calgary City.
Great to see you again.
I'm very excited.
I went through the ruling line by line and I Google translated it.
My own command of French is sort of iffy, but going through the Google Translate, these cops read your exemption letter.
They were in French.
They were signed.
Citizen Journalism Under Fire00:15:14
They were dated.
Everything was legit.
You had three different versions of this exemption letter.
I remember signing them.
I remember consulting with lawyers, making sure we were dotting all the I's, crossing all the T's.
But that wasn't good enough for them because they claimed that you were, quote, far right, that you weren't a real journalist.
They even complained that your camera was too small.
It couldn't be real.
It was the stupidest thing I ever heard, but they were so committed to getting you that they pursued you for two and a half years.
What do you make of that?
Yeah, no, and that's exactly it.
I still remember the conversation with one of the officers where one of the tickets was being handed out.
And even though, you know, our tiny camera wasn't really a big enough camera to be considered proper, it was still something he requested that we turn off.
And I can only imagine what the repercussions would be if we were to actually stop recording these engagements.
Yeah, I mean, I don't care what a policeman's opinion Is on the size of a camera.
I mean, this cell phone that I have, I mean, it's a couple years old, it's as good a camera as when I worked at Sun News Network 10 years ago.
We had quarter million dollar cameras.
It's such a stupid objection.
They were clearly grasping for anything to discredit citizen journalism.
I mean, I don't want to, I only mention it because it shows how gross they are.
They brought up the fact that you were a cook, they said, before you worked as a journalist, as if that somehow discredits your work, as if no one who was a cook, like, I don't even know what point they're making other than some class snobbery implying that journalists are some priestly elite.
And if you don't have a degree or if you don't have the right background, you're not allowed to do it.
Again, that's so ridiculous.
It's as stupid as their cell phone objection.
It just shows their own mindset.
They were the bigots here.
And I'm so glad we won it, but I'm deeply embarrassed for Quebec that they made these arguments.
Well, and likewise to your point, I wonder how lowly they think of the cooking industry.
I mean, the fact of the matter is I didn't go to culinary school either, and I like to think that I was a pretty good cook.
But this is really the disassociation that we see is there's the upper class and the lower class, and the upper class has to adhere to certain rules.
We clearly weren't adhering to those rules, but we were still out there on the ground doing real independent journalism.
And again, one of the officers mentioned how we weren't, or the CTV or the other news outlets, that they weren't out there on the streets.
And he questioned, you know, why would we therefore be out on the streets?
And that's exactly it, is we don't align ourselves with this mainstream media trajectory.
We focus on what's actually happening and what matters to Canadians, not playing defense for the people who are paying our bills.
You know, the fact that the cops said, hey, the real journalists aren't reporting on what we're doing in the dead of night.
The real journalists know their place.
The real journalists know to leave us alone.
Why can't you be more like CBC and CTV?
Like, they're just giving it all away.
Like, there's no shame there.
I think the grossest part of that entire ruling, and I was not at your trial, but the judge recounts it, is when the cop said, there's no news in this sector.
You know, it's like I'm watching that old sci-fi movie RoboCop.
There is no news in this sector.
Citizen, move on.
Like, who the hell is a cop to say, there is no news here.
I know that.
And even if I'm wrong, I get to decide where you point your little camera.
So there's no news here.
Go away.
I mean, this is, that's normal in Montreal, apparently.
And it's normal enough that the prosecutor say, yeah, let's back this argument for two and a half years.
So gross.
Yeah.
Well, and the fact of the matter is we were there filming empty streets.
And one might question, you know, in normal times, what's the newsworthiness of an empty street where nothing's happening?
But if you go to a place like Montreal during curfews, it's supposedly, you know, a kind of party central of Canada.
And all of the streets are empty everywhere you look.
Every business is closed down.
And you film an empty street there and you show the world, look how locked down the people of Quebec are.
And they go after you for that.
That's exactly what they did.
Yeah, that's a great point.
If you were to go out at 4 a.m. and film a street in normal times, that would not particularly be newsworthy, although it's your civil right to do so.
And if a cop told you to stop, you'd say, you know, jog on.
But it absolutely was newsworthy during a lockdown.
I remember when we finally came out, like, first it was Yankee and then Efron and Lincoln and Mocha and yourself.
So we sent one and then two and then three and then four people out.
Then finally, I think 17 of us went out there because we were so grossed out by these cops.
And you did see the odd person on the street.
You know, essential services, you know, there were certain, and that's interesting too.
Who's out?
Who's not?
It was all interesting.
And I think that this court case is an acquittal for you, but it's a conviction against the other media that they didn't find it interesting enough to show their viewers what life was like, to ask questions.
Who's going out?
What's the situation?
What harm is being done?
Like, they just, no curiosity.
The media absolutely was an adjunct of power.
For three years, the media stopped speaking truth to power and, in fact, shamed others for doing journalism.
I remember after our conflagration in Montreal, all the big newspapers in Montreal condemned us for daring to do skeptical journalism.
I understand you got a couple of clips you want to throw to.
Why don't you tell us what they are and we'll take a look and you can tell us how it fits in?
Well, absolutely.
First off, there's a clip where me and one of our coworkers, we were just walking down the streets.
This is very late at night, and we were preparing for the day ahead where we were going to do some further ventures.
And we walked up to a building which had a fellow, he was smoking a cigarette at the entrance, and there were some officers with the cop cars there and they were flashing their lights.
And we thought, that's interesting.
So we asked the gentleman, what's going on here?
There was a house party, apparently, and the police were inevitably cracking down on it because it's illegal to be gathered with your friends if it's too late.
So we started filming them.
And I don't know if we can pull that clip up now or in the near future, but the officer, right out of the bat, was very aggressive towards us.
We filmed him driving away, and then he stopped his car and immediately backed up and then approached us and started asking, you know, who are we?
What are we doing?
This and that.
A very confrontational behavior from these officers.
Yeah, the judge talked about, it's so perplexing.
You're trying to provoke them.
No, doing journalism is not an essentially provocative thing here.
Let's play the clip.
Let's take a look.
Yep.
And also, this as well.
I'm just going to get my ID in my head.
How about you close your phone with me?
I'm sorry, everybody.
This is our job.
Sorry.
You're not obligated.
Sorry, I'm obliged to do it.
I'm being paid to do this.
This is a journalist.
You have to record everything.
Can you hold this record?
Yes.
So what are you doing outside?
What are you doing outside?
We're looking for police interactions.
No, you're not.
It says here that under the law, you're allowed only to go from your home to your place of work.
Yeah, this is our work.
I would make the difference.
In what sense?
We're here to retrofit.
I don't know how to do CRT or CTV outside.
That doesn't matter.
We choose to go out.
No, but that doesn't say, I mean, I'm not saying, yeah, you can choose to go out, but it says here that you're only obligated.
You're only allowed to go from your house to your place of work.
You know what?
It's your little camera, which disturbed these police, seemed to capture that quite clearly.
Any other thoughts on that?
I understand you have a second clip as well.
Yeah, no, we can jump to the second clip.
It's sadly more the same.
Maybe you could say that the officers were less confrontational, but by how many there were and by how many police vehicles there were that showed up at this next incident, it's questionable as to their intentions, which we saw we got four tickets for.
This was an incident where myself, Yankee Polak, and a few of our other coworkers were driving through the streets of Montreal.
Yankee Polak, of course, he goes through the streets at the time.
He was going there every night and he was investigating the curfews.
This time we all went with him.
And we found that there was a minor in the back of a police vehicle that I guess was, I don't want to say forced into being escorted home, but that did seem to be the situation.
We did seek clarification, but the officers were not having any of it.
And they did identify us as rebel news.
And Yankee, of course, being a rebel news employee and having a kind of rapport, I guess, with the officers, that struck out to them, and they weren't happy about that.
And I believe it's because of our politics.
I'm not sure why.
Okay, he's giving it to you.
Oh, let's go.
Go, go, go, go, go.
Are you speaking English?
Do you have any papers to allow?
Yeah, we have favors.
Okay, I'm going to check it.
What we're doing?
We're filming you guys.
Why?
Because that's our job.
We're media.
We're filming.
Okay, I'm going to take my paper.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I'm getting all the papers.
So we're all together.
We caught these officers putting this young Hasidic Jew in the back of their police cruiser allegedly for breaking the curfew.
Yeah, yeah, so here's my paper in Quebec.
Police officers don't have body camps.
Can we ask you what happened over here?
No?
Well, I'm going to ask you.
What are you doing?
I'm media.
I see you guys putting someone in the back of the car.
Yeah, absolutely.
The police, and again, even in the trial and even in this ruling, their political tastes thought that was relevant.
I mean, we could be right-wing, we could be left-wing, we could be no-wing.
What's that got to do with how policing is done?
What's that got to do with whether or not we have an exemption?
So the very fact that the police were complaining about our right-wing point of view, I didn't know that civil liberties was a right-wing thing, but I guess I'm learning so much from these cops.
The fact that the cops mentioned their perception of our ideological take as relevant shows that they are in fact the biased ones.
It's funny that they accuse us of being biased.
We're just doing our journalism, minding our own business.
They're the ones hassling, arresting, physically roughing up journalists because they're too right-wing.
Apparently, you can do that if there's a journalist that's right-wing.
These cops are gross, but they're just cops.
The prosecutors ran with this for 30 months.
The judge allowed a full-day trial.
How long was the trial?
Was it a full day?
A full day, roughly, yes.
And you had to travel.
You're based in Calgary now.
You have to travel all the way to Montreal at our expense, I presume.
Did we?
Yeah, of course.
So the process was the punishment.
I mean, in a way, I imagine it was very educational learning experience.
I mean, I wouldn't recommend to anyone being put on trial, but to go through it and to win is surely a very informative thing for a journalist.
What do you think about the outcome?
I just saw this today, and I just read this today, even though it came out last week in French.
I'm not thrilled with some of the things the judge says.
She clearly isn't a fan of rebel news or citizen journalism.
But at the end of the day, she gets the only thing that's important right.
She tells the judge, freedom of the press applies to all media, whether we like them or not.
And in the end, I'm pleased with that.
What do you think?
Well, absolutely.
And I really do want to emphasize the role of our donors and those who support rebel news.
Because as an independent outlet, we went out there on the streets to cover what was happening.
And what happened?
The police, as you mentioned, with somewhat perhaps a political bias to the situation, were issuing us $1,500 tickets for being outside past a certain time.
That's how big circuits were.
And you had four of them, is that right altogether?
For myself, luckily, I only had two, but some of our coworkers we know had many more.
And, you know, the one thing I want to say to that is, you know, I'm very thankful that our journalism was protected here.
But how many people in Quebec suffered through a $1,500 ticket or multiple $1,500 tickets because they were doing things that were essential after hours deemed okay by the government?
These are people, if you're faced with a $1,500 ticket, that's rent for a month.
That's a very difficult thing to overcome.
And as much as the process is the punishment, many of these people, they ended up taking excruciating fines.
Yeah, the punishment was a punishment also.
And in your case, it's doubly crazy because you actually had the exemption letter properly filled out in French, signed by me, and the cops still didn't accept it.
They disputed it really crazy.
Well, I'm glad of this victory.
And I don't think a single other journalist in the country is going to acknowledge it because as I said in my monologue, I think any other journalist had been the judge, they would have convicted you just because they don't like rebel news.
And like these cops, they think that only journalists you agree with get freedom of speech.
Sidney, I'm glad you won, and I'm glad we fought it.
And it was a costly battle.
We're in a ton of these.
Some of them were suing the government for what they've done to us.
Others were defending in this case.
If anyone wants to help, they can go to journalistdefensefund.com.
Keep fighting for freedom, Sidney.
Thank you.
Likewise, it's always a pleasure.
All right, there you have it.
Sidney Fizzard, fresh off his victory in a court in Montreal.
Stay with us.
My final thoughts are next.
What do you think of that court case that I read to you?
Now, again, some of it was a little bit garbled because of the machine translation, but I think you got the main points.
The police and the prosecutors and even the judge, whoa, why are you doing this?
It's so perplexing.
Why are you out there on the street?
Why are you covering police?
Are you trying to provoke police by reporting on what they're doing?
Why is your phone so small?
You know, why are you here from Toronto?
What's going on here?
Don't you think that says a lot more about them than it says about us?
It says that Quebec is not used to any critical, skeptical journalists, and they have no idea about citizen journalism.
To them, it's basically the mega corporations that are basically part of the government establishment.
And the CBC would never go out in the street to show police overreach during the curfew.
Why Quebec Hates Rebel News00:00:34
If anything, they were egging it on.
There is no chance this ruling will be reported on in the Montreal Gazette or the Journal de Montréal or La Presse.
No chance at all.
Because the fact that they hate rebel news more than they love freedom of the press.
And frankly, if they were the judges here, they would have convicted.
I don't know.
I'm glad we've got a reporter full-time in Montreal, Alexa Lavoie, and she gets under their skin.
I love it.
They hate her because she does reports not just in English, but in French too.