Ezra Levant exposes Justin Trudeau’s Online Harms Act (reintroduced after 90% of public submissions opposed it) as a tool to silence dissent, including pandemic critics and Muslim parents, while leaked Public Safety documents reveal plans for an internet regulator—likely to enforce arbitrary "hate speech" bans. Meanwhile, in Lethbridge’s Freedom Convoy trials, defense lawyers challenge flawed search warrants, with Tamara Leach, a peaceful protester jailed 50 days, facing excessive charges. Convoy supporters also face bank account freezes and denied loans, while Trudeau’s government used the unconstitutional Emergencies Act to crush protests, with politicians like Freeland and Lametti now facing potential electoral backlash for overreach. Levant warns of growing illiberalism under the Liberals, targeting free speech and political opponents alike. [Automatically generated summary]
The federal government refused to release a briefing note on the new online harms built, Rebel News, and then the federal government leaked the information in that briefing note overnight to friendly media.
Then Ezra joins his show with an update from the courthouse at Lethbridge, Alberta.
It's February 21st, 2024.
I'm Sheila Gunread, and you're watching the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious thug!
Do you know what the Online Harms Act is?
If you don't and you want to use the internet, you really should get to know it.
It was first proposed back in 2021 as Bill C-36, but thankfully it died when the Liberals called the last election.
And like so much of recent liberal legislation, it is a censorship bill cloaked in something else.
For example, we saw the Liberals introduce C-11 as a way to promote Canadian content with the Online Streaming Act, touted as a means to protect Canadians on online streaming platforms.
However, ultimately, it just expanded the powers of the broadcast regulator, the CRTC, the Canadian Radio Television Commission, to control what you can see and say on the internet, to control which content creators out there get preferential treatment on streaming platforms based on the whims of some government bureaucrat somewhere.
The law will limit what's called discoverability.
So, for example, you can produce content critical of the government all day long, but the government might not ever let anybody see or find it.
Isn't that convenient?
Then there's Bill C-18.
That's the Online News Act, which was really a shakedown of social media companies to bail out Justin Trudeau's friends and enablers in the mainstream media.
So if a user of a social media platform shares a link to a Canadian news site, Justin Trudeau expects the social media company to pay the news company.
It's like making the paper boy, the delivery person, pay the newspaper company for delivering the newspaper.
It was a system that wasn't broken, but Justin Trudeau thought it needed fixing.
And now you can't share any links to Canadian news on Facebook or Instagram because Meta, the parent company, didn't pay the shakedown.
Now we've got the Online Harms Act.
And buckle up for this one.
It hasn't been introduced officially in its latest iteration, although Justin Trudeau and the federal government say it's coming very, very soon.
The conservative leader says your bill on hate is about banning speech you hate.
And he also called you someone with a woke authoritarian agenda who spent the first half of his adult life as a practicing racist.
What's your response to that?
My response to the substantive part of that question is Mr. Polyev hasn't even seen the legislation we're about to put forward next week.
He's already telling people exactly what it is and what it isn't.
I think responsible leadership is about dealing in facts, actually reading a piece of legislation before he starts telling people what he think it does, and then having a rigorous debate in parliament about how to best protect kids.
He's not interested in that.
He's interested in hurling insults and distracting from the fact that he has no plan on housing.
He has no plan on child care.
He has no plan on fighting climate change and creating good jobs for the future.
He has no plan in terms of building and protecting the kinds of jobs here in Alberta or across the country that people are going to rely on in a transforming world.
What does he have a plan for?
He's a plan for stoking division, creating fear, throwing out personal insults.
That's not leadership.
Canadians deserve a government that is focused every day on building a better future for them.
That's what I'm doing here today.
He can throw whatever insults he likes.
I look forward to having substantive debates on how we're going to fix the challenges Canadians are facing because we're busy doing that while he's busy ranting.
Now, we don't know what's in the new version of the Online Harms Act yet, but based on previous reporting from Jamie Sarkonak over a year ago at the National Post, who dug down into the roundtable discussions for C-36, she found that the federal government went to left-wing activist groups and then asked for advice about what should be in the law.
And friends, it's not going to be good.
This is from Jamie's article.
Roundtable participants were invited by the department based on several factors, including regional representation, the impact the legislation would have on them, their lived experience with harmful content online, whatever that means, and participation in the department's prior engagements.
Canadian Heritage spokesman David LaRose wrote in an email: Some participants were also invited at their own request or at the recommendation of other community groups.
So let's stop right here.
These people were hand-selected by the government to give them the responses they wanted.
They were invited, and many were already previous participants in government roundtables, ostensibly for other censorship pieces of legislation.
Or these were people who self-identified as censorious busy bodies who wanted to be involved in censoring other Canadians.
Let's keep going.
The roundtables were largely in agreement, really, what a shock, with the idea of online censorship, according to Canadian Heritage.
Participants believed there was a need for laws that would entail strong enforcement measures for regulating social media to be carried out, preferably by a regulator operating at arm's length from the government.
Like July's expert panel, the community roundtables called for more protections for youth, online safety education, an ombudsman to field complaints, and government support to assist victims of online harm.
Am I going to have to pay for mean tweets and counseling for Rosie Barton when people say they don't like what she does on the CBC?
Let's keep going.
This feedback isn't all that helpful, however, because we don't know what harm means to these people.
It went undefined, and what types of content they view as deserving of censorship.
If the feds are concerned about criminal activity, there's a process for that already.
Such matters concern the police, not the culture department.
If they're concerned about online fights, political disagreements, and other uncomfortable but legal conduct, they shouldn't expect social media companies and the government to play the role of mediator.
But the so-called experts are expecting all of this to be in the new legislation, and they just might get it.
Look at this.
From the other side of the political spectrum, the Toronto Star, at the core of the model for the law, is a responsibility to conduct risk assessments on products used by Canadians, a special duty to protect children from harm, the creation of a regulator with the power to investigate and audit platforms, mandate corrective action and impose fines, mandatory data transparency by platforms,
and a victim-centered forum for recourse for users impacted by platforms' variable content moderation practices.
Or, you know, you could just not go on Twitter or X or Facebook or any of these places that are hurting your feelings.
You could do that too without creating an entire bureaucracy to censor Canadians.
And while the so-called experts are pushing for this online harms legislation, saying it will protect kids online, there are already, as Jamie pointed out, criminal code measures to deal with.
Exploitation, child exploitation, sharing of abuse images, revenge porn, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
The liberals even say that this legislation would and should protect the likes of Taylor Swift from sexualized AI-generated deepfakes.
So we apparently have to censor all Canadians to make sure that nobody makes computer images of rich singers.
But here's what the liberals don't want you to know, besides that they don't want me to know anything, and I'll get to that in a second.
As Michael Geist points out, Canadians don't want this legislation, like real Canadians, not the hand-selected busybodies.
Only politicians and activists want it.
Because as Jamie Sarkinak points out, those are the only people who were invited to attend the roundtable consultations.
It was a bunch of pro-censorship left-wing activists.
90% of Canadians are fundamentally opposed to the Online Harms Act, and the government knows it.
This is from Geist's article on the topic.
I obtained a copy of responses under Access to Information revealing that the criticism had been far more significant than previously disclosed.
That's the criticism of the Online Harms Act.
Indeed, companies such as pre-Elon Musk Twitter had likened the parts of the plan to policies found in China, Iran, and North Korea.
But beyond the hidden submissions, I have now obtained further documents under the Access to Information Act that indicate the government was telling Canadians one thing and internal department executives something else.
Consider the top-line takeaway summary in the What We Heard report.
So that's the summary report of these roundtables and consultations on Bill C-36.
It read that there was support from a majority of respondents to a legislative and regulatory framework led by the federal government to confront harmful content online.
That's on the cover of the report.
They expected people not to read what was inside.
Michael Geist did.
The internal summary posted below told a much different story.
Among individuals, 90% of respondents are unsupportive of the proposal.
5.4% of individual respondents are supportive of the proposal.
And 4.6% of respondents are mixed, neutral, or otherwise unclear.
There is no reference to 90% opposition in the What We Heard report.
In fact, the document indicates there were 350 individual responses suggesting that only 19 Canadians provided supportive responses to a nationwide public consultation on a key government policy issue.
Let's repeat that again.
19 Canadians provided supportive responses to a nationwide public consultation on a key government policy issue, a regulator to control the internet.
The feds want to control the internet based on the approval of 19 people.
So let's get back to what I alluded to at the beginning.
Let's go back to the government, the federal government, withholding documents from me on the Online Harms Act and then releasing them to friendly media.
Because apparently the story I was going to do and then post online, I think, would probably harm the government's credibility on this new piece of legislation even further.
Here's what we know.
The Online Harms Act is a key piece of liberal legislation, part of a trifecta of internet censorship legislation, which is quickly turning Canada into maple syrup, North Korea, or more accurately, frozen Venezuela.
Morning, Mr. Polyev, Andrew Lawton, True North.
The federal government has said that its online harms bill is imminent.
They've said this bill will include, among other things, a ban on so-called online hate speech.
As you know, the Conservatives a decade ago repealed Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which the Liberals have talked about reintroducing and tried in the last parliamentary term.
Will the Conservatives oppose the reintroduction of these provisions and the Liberals' approach to so-called online hate speech?
Yes, we will oppose Justin Trudeau's latest attack on freedom of expression.
And I want to ask, what does Justin Trudeau mean when he says, when he says the word hate speech?
He means speech he hates.
So, for example, let's go through some of the things he said is hate speech.
Jerry Butts, the PMO puppet master, said that it was hate speech to criticize Trudeau for using the ridiculous term people kind, right?
Justin Trudeau said anyone who criticized him during the pandemic was engaging in hate speech.
Basically, anybody who disagrees with his radical agenda when it comes to kids, he says is hate speech.
He attacked Muslim parents who are protesting against his agenda.
Is he going to criminalize those Muslim parents for protecting their children in schools?
Go down the list of things that Justin Trudeau disapproves of, and you can imagine all of the things that will be criminalized.
Then there becomes the question of who is going to be in charge of determining what is hate speech.
Recently, a school board in Ontario banned Ann Frank's books.
Okay.
So would that be considered hate speech under Justin Trudeau's woke authoritarian agenda?
I think it would.
So anyone who thinks that speech they don't like is going to be criminalized and therefore the bill should be supported, go through, those people should go through the list of their own thoughts that Justin Trudeau considers to be unacceptable views, and you can assume that he will ban all of that as well.
Protecting Kids or Censoring the Internet?00:04:18
And I know there is an inter-departmental briefing note from Public Safety on the Online Harms Act.
I know it exists because evidence of it was posted online.
And that briefing note, I know, is dated from December 2023.
So it's relatively recent.
It's the briefing note on the piece of legislation Justin Trudeau was just talking about.
So I filed to get access to that briefing note, which I know exists.
It's a very recent briefing note on a piece of legislation the Liberals won't shut up about.
They keep talking and talking and talking about the Online Harms Act.
The Liberals have even proposed it more than once, as I explained, and it died when the election was called.
So there's nothing in here that is some sort of state secret, right?
But that's exactly what the government just told me.
They can't give it to me.
They told me this briefing note is protected under cabinet secrecy, which is odd because overnight they released the information in the briefing note to City TV.
Here's City TV's story on what was most certainly contained in the document that the government told me was so secret I couldn't have it.
The news article describes the creation of an internet regulator, which would specifically field complaints from the public who want to shut up the rest of us.
This is from their article on the information from my briefing note.
The federal government's evolving plan to help protect Canadians from online harm could include a new ombudsman to field public concerns and a regulator that would oversee the conduct of internet platforms.
The proposed regulator would have a mandate to ensure online giants comply with federal law, the official said.
The government is also planning to establish a new ombudsman whose job would be to field concerns from ordinary Canadians, sure, sure, sure, who encounter problematic material or scenarios online.
Read hurt feelings.
Now, for his part, Justin Trudeau says this law is just about protecting kids from what they see online, or at least that's what he said today when he was in Edmonton.
Why do you think the online harms bill is necessary and why can't people be allowed to say what they want online?
First of all, we know and everyone can agree that kids are vulnerable online to hatred, to violence, to being bullied, to seeing and being affected by terrible things online.
We need to do a better job as a society of protecting our kids online the way we protect them in schoolyards, in our communities, in our homes across the country.
We need to make sure, and I think we can all agree, we need to protect our kids online.
Now, how to go about do that is a very careful ballots.
We need to make sure we're protecting freedom of expression.
We need to make sure we're protecting the freedoms and the rights of Canadians while we protect kids.
That's why we've spent years working with different community groups, with advocates, with minority communities, with experts, with people in all sorts of different backgrounds to make sure that what we're doing is actually protecting kids.
And I look forward to putting forward that online online harms bill, which people will see is very, very specifically focused on protecting kids and not on censoring the internet as misinformation and as the right wing tends to try and characterize it as.
I think everyone, wherever they are on the political spectrum, can agree that protecting kids is something governments should be focused on doing.
But then why are his own officials confirming to Citi that it's going to be much more than just about protecting kids online?
It's going to be about encountering problematic material or scenarios online as if that couldn't get any vaguer.
And the liberals' own website indicates that the Online Harms Act will target hate, terrorism, and I think probably hurt feelings.
So is Trudeau an idiot or is he lying to us?
Coots Blockade Update00:15:42
Or is there really no difference at the end of the day?
I think it might be a difference without a distinction.
And in the end, Canadians will be less free.
Stay with us.
We've got a special video from boss man Ezra Levant from the courthouse at Lethbridge, Alberta.
Ezra Levant here.
I'm at the courthouse in Lethbridge, a different part of the building because it's a little bit noisy out front where I normally stand.
I've been inside the court all morning.
We are in the pre-trial hearings for the trial of the Coots IV.
Those are four men charged with very serious offenses emanating from the trucker blockade at the Coots border crossing in 2022.
A couple of weeks ago, as you know, two of the men pled guilty to relatively minor charges.
There are two men who are preceding the trial.
The subject matter of these preliminary hearings today is an application by the defendants to have the judge throw out the search warrant, or more to the point, the fruits of that search warrant, what they found when they executed the search warrant.
So all day yesterday and this morning today, the defendants' lawyers were arguing that the information to obtain that search warrant was not proper, and that even if the search warrant itself was properly obtained, it was not properly executed.
There was a lot of talk about case law and a lot of talk about things that unfortunately I can't describe because they're subject to a publication ban.
Details that the defendants claim were inappropriately addressed by the police.
Let me just leave it that way.
This information will likely come out either if the court throws out the search warrant or if it proceeds to trial and the evidence brought out by the search warrant is allowed in.
It's difficult being in court hearing details, some of which are fascinating, some of which are a little bit shocking, some of which are, frankly, a little bit salacious, and not being able to talk about them simply because to do so, you can understand, could prejudice the trial before it happens because these are just untested accusations by the police.
But that said, the judge was very attentive.
And there was one police officer who signed the information to obtain.
He's called an affian.
That's a legal term, the person who swears this is true.
It was interesting.
He was an RCMB officer based in Calgary.
It was interesting to hear how the police go about putting together an information to obtain, because, of course, there's so many police who were involved with the Coots blockade, some wearing uniforms, many of them undercover.
They had conversations with the accused, and then they took notes.
And the process was outlined.
It was very interesting.
And it was interesting to hear that the affiant's role, the final signer, is sort of like the final check and balance on what the police are going to take to the court.
And they claim, and we'll see if the judge agrees, that because the other side is not there, because it's an ex parte hearing, a secret hearing, really, because the search warrant is a kind of ambush.
You don't want to tell the other side you're doing it in advance, that to go to court, you have to be full and frank and fair, is the phrase they use.
You have to say a little bit of the other side of the story.
You have to say what the defense would say if they were allowed to be there, because otherwise you're withholding evidence from a judge that would have been useful.
So the question is, was the information to obtain fair?
Was it a full, frank, and fair summary of the investigation?
And the search warrant that emanated from that, was it properly executed?
The affian, the cop who gathered it all together and signed it, answered questions in cross-examination for not quite an hour.
And frankly, I thought he was very credible.
He didn't seem evasive.
He was quite candid, including candid about things that may be problems for the prosecutor.
Then the prosecutor, Stephen Johnson, the same one who's targeted other lockdown dissenters over the years, he vociferously asked the judge to bar questions of the next more senior cop.
And after a lengthy back and forth with the judge, the judge ruled, no, we will allow that senior cop to be cross-examined.
And there was a feeling in the gallery that this was a good win for the defense because of reasons I can't actually describe, but it could lead to the search warrants or the information to obtain that search warrant being thrown out.
And the judge seemed to be taking it seriously.
I mean, that's quite a dramatic thing to have a search warrant thrown out and all the fruits of the poison tree, as they say, thrown out with it.
If that were to happen, that would throw this case into a great disarray.
It could likely mean the staying of proceedings against at least one of the defendants.
And even if only one of the defendants is let go, that leaves a single defendant.
How do you have a conspiracy charge with one person?
These are heavy matters, and the judge seems to be attentive to it.
I have a frustration because I'm hearing so many things and I can't share them.
That's the nature of publication bans, I suppose.
And I understand why they're there.
So I'm going to stick around this afternoon and listen to the examination of the senior cop.
And I want to tell you that we've been talking to our larger Rebel News team, and we're going to assign Robert Krachik to cover the Coots 4, the Coots 3, the various Coots trials, because Robert's proven himself to be a great trucker lawyer journalist.
He's not a lawyer himself, but he's a journalist covering trucker law.
He's covered the Tamara Leach case every day in Ottawa, really understanding the beat.
And in that case in Ottawa with Tamara Leach, he's really learned firsthand how abusive of the system and how false prosecutions can be.
They're certainly putting Tamara Leach through the ringer out there.
I think it's an atrocious trial.
It's taken many months.
It should be a day at most.
I think that's excellent training for Robert.
And to have him out here in Alberta, I think would be great.
I will come out here from time to time too, of course.
I'm very interested in these matters, but I don't think I'm in a position to come to the trial every single day.
Luckily, we have Robert who's done a great job of that.
So that's my midday update from here in Lethbridge.
I guess I'll leave one more thing, and it's more a personal comment.
So there's, as I mentioned, there's a lot of different people in the court.
The court has a small courtroom, which nobody likes because that leaves most of the people out in the hallway.
They're interested in this case, and the court has assigned a fairly small room to it.
If these people feel it's unfair, and it just compounds their feeling that the establishment is against them in large and small ways.
You know, I chat with people in the hallway in the break, and it's interesting.
Obviously, the family is motivated by their love for their family members.
And, you know, that is an incontrovertible, immutable love.
Even if someone in your family is charged with a crime, you're going to stand by them.
You're going to root for them.
You're going to say they didn't do it.
And that's family.
That's what family is for and friends also.
There's also other members in the community a little bit further out from the center of the bullseye.
The center would be their spouse and parents and then their extended family and their friends.
But there's other people in the community who are interested too.
And the Coots IV, as they're called, are being touted as a unit.
In fact, if you look at the bumper sticker that's on some of the cars here, they talk about the Coots IV arrested together, defending together.
I've learned over the last few days, that's actually not how it is.
Jerry Moran, one of the Coots IV, never actually was in Coots, at least not according to the two journalists we had in the blockade the whole time and the lawyers we had there.
They say they never saw him there.
In fact, he was arrested in his vehicle near Calgary.
And he was one of the two who signed a guilty plea.
He, in his statement of facts, said he agreed to take guns.
to the blockade.
Now, again, he may have been signing that under duress.
If you were in jail for two years, you'd sign pretty much anything, I suppose, to get out.
But if he was indeed found with guns, and if he did indeed agree to bring guns to a blockade, what was he thinking?
Were you going to have an armed shootout with the RCMP?
I mean, the RCMP are better trained.
They're better armed.
It's a fool's errand.
It's a suicide run.
But let's say you're successful and you have a little revolution there with truckers with muskets or whatever you have shotguns.
You don't think that's going to be crushed by more police or the army?
What's the game plan there to smuggle, to agree to smuggle firearms to a peaceful blockade?
What you're doing is you're sentencing anyone who touches those to harsh police consequences or prosecutorial consequences.
And indeed, that's what happened.
And if you were successful, God forbid, for arming these men, to what end?
Would they be slaughtered?
God forbid.
Or would the police be slaughtered?
God forbid.
And more to the point of the protest, the strength of the protest was its moral cleanliness, was its moral high ground, that these were peaceful protesters engaging in civil disobedience.
There was no violence.
That was the whole success of it.
What kind of a man would agree to bring guns to a peaceful protest that, by the way, was surrounded by cops?
And so you don't have to say that Jerry Moran deserved two years in prison.
I don't think he did.
And you don't have to say that Jerry Moran wasn't overcharged.
I think he was.
But I think part of something I've detected here is that in the solidarity for the men and the opposition to the overcharging, there's a celebration of things that, frankly, aren't good.
That's the reason why Rebel News was very cautious two years ago about crowdfunding these very serious charges.
As you know, this week I decided after meeting with Chris Carbert, one of the four accused, that we were going to crowdfund his case, but keep it a separate crowdfund so that people who only want to defend civil liberties battles don't chip into it.
If you want to help Chris, go to helpchris.ca.
But there are other things I heard that I'm not at liberty to say because of the publication, man.
These four men are not a unit.
These four men don't have the same case against them.
In fact, these four men are, in some cases, facing different charges.
And they're called the Coots IV because there's four of them.
There's also the Coots III and the Coots Five.
There's 55 men altogether that I know of that Rebel News and the Democracy Fund are defending, plus others.
It's close to 60.
But they're not a unit.
But because people were so supportive of the blockade and so opposed to the lockdowns and so appalled by the overreach of the prosecution and the police, they've sort of lumped together all four men as heroes.
I don't think they are.
They're not saints.
I don't think it's saintly to say, I agree to bring guns to a police standoff.
I think that's very serious.
And I'm not saying Jerry Moran deserved two years in prison for that, but I'm saying he's, if indeed he did do that, and he said he did, that's not a saint.
Anyone who brings guns to a blockade surrounded by police is looking to escalate things, perhaps is even an agent provocateur.
So Rebel News is going to continue to cover this trial with great interest, and we're going to follow the facts wherever they lead.
And I hope that the two remaining accused are acquitted, not because I have a personal affection for them, but because I hope they didn't do it.
And I hope that the police overcharge and the prosecutorial overcharge is revealed.
But we will follow the facts wherever they lead.
And I think that there are some activities that I've heard about directly in court and that we now know because of the two lead deals that are not salutary.
Rebel News believes in peaceful protest, in civil disobedience, in minor offenses like mischief.
We don't believe in doing those things.
But if someone like Tamara Leach is charged with mischief, which is technically a crime, of course we're going to defend her because that's just what police are throwing anything at the wall to make it sick.
Of course we're going to help people like that.
But people who say, yes, I agree to bring guns to an armed standoff, no.
And I sort of wish that the people who are so passionate in the courtroom there that they just can't bring themselves to say it was wrong to agree to bring guns to a standoff with police.
I think they need to give their head a shake.
I think they've gone too down the rabbit hole, too far down.
I guess that's my remarks for today.
We will hear the senior officer cross-examined later today.
But again, I really won't be able to say much of him.
That's my report from here.
This is a terrible thing.
And this is the residue of the worst thing that's happened in a generation.
The pandemic wasn't the worst thing that happened in a generation.
The pandemic was a bad flu season in terms of its mortality.
But the lockdowns and the authoritarianism and the abusive policing and the outrageous health orders, you can only have so many people at your funeral or your wedding, only so many people over to your house for Christmas dinner.
That was the worst thing that happened to us in a quarter century or more.
And this trial and the fact that men have been in jail for years and the fact that many more are being put through the legal process, that is the ugly legacy of the lockdowns in Alberta and around the country.
And by the way, in Alberta, they were amongst the most punitive.
For all of my reports, go to truckertrial.com.
It's 2.20 p.m., but the court is done.
Here in Lethbridge, Alberta, the pretrial hearings for the Coots 4 were suddenly adjourned when a senior police witness failed to show up.
The reason the police officer was required is because the defendant lawyers were going to cross-examine this senior officer about the information to obtain a search warrant that was sworn by police two years ago.
The defendants are challenging the validity of the search warrant and the way it was executed.
They had the judges agreement to cross-examine the senior officer who simply didn't show up.
Maybe they'll be there tomorrow morning when the court resumes at 9 a.m.
Until then, well, another busy half day of work at the courthouse here in Lethbridge.
For all of our coverage on the Coots 4, the Coots 3, the Coots 5, and all other blockade Blockade and coots-oriented coverage.
go to TruckerTrial.com.
Well, friends, letters, letters, letters.
We get your letters, questions, and comments every single day of the week on every single thing that we do.
And we love that because without you, there is no rebel news.
We're not like the mainstream media where, you know, even though they don't have any consumers of their content because they make something nobody wants and nobody trusts them anyway, they just get money from Justin Trudeau, which is your money, by the way, to continue to make things and do things and say things that you don't trust and don't care about.
It's just a vicious cycle watching the entire media landscape flush itself down the toilet.
They're just circling the drain.
Letters and Support00:04:19
Anyway, it's all like that here at Rebel News.
In fact, we just had our ninth birthday.
So I know I said it then, but I'll say it now.
Thank you for these last nine years for the company and eight and a half for me.
Allowing us to tell the stories that nobody else will and help the people sometimes that nobody else will.
I feel like I work at a job where I make a difference.
But this is the letter section, not a therapy session for me.
And so I want to hear from you.
And we've got some really great responses to Ezra's sit-down interview with Lawrence Greenspawn.
Now, that is Tamara Leach's lawyer.
For those of you who don't know, and I don't know how you possibly couldn't.
Tamara Leach is the spiritual and I guess operational leader of the Freedom Convoy, which I describe quite accurately as the single largest human rights demonstration in Canadian history.
And it was entirely peaceful until violence at the hands of the state was used against the participants of the Freedom Convoy and financial violence as well.
People who donated or supported the convoy in a financial way, they had their bank accounts frozen for political reasons.
And as we know, with the case of Farm Credit Canada, the government's bank for the agricultural sector, people were denied financing and they never really knew why.
Well, we know why now.
And it was because they had shown some sort of support for the Freedom Convoy.
And so maybe they didn't get their combine.
Maybe they didn't get their financing.
And maybe they lost their farm.
But I guess it's all the same to Justin Trudeau.
If you get to punish your political enemies.
And Lawrence talked to Ezra about the state of Canada's civil liberties, which I think not great, but we've had some wins these days.
And the latest on the ongoing trial of Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Leach.
You have to remember, this woman is charged with non-violent mischief charges.
If like in another life, with a more sane government, she would never have seen the inside of a jail cell.
And instead, she spent up to 50 days inside of a jail cell.
And if she were convicted tomorrow, they would never give her jail time.
She is a nonviolent person and not a criminal.
But anyway, 50 days in jail and the process ultimately is the punishment.
Justin Blackface Trudeau.
I'm pretty sure that's not the real Justin Blackface Trudeau.
He writes, Lawrence Greenspawn is one of the best defense lawyers ever in Ottawa.
Tamara is in good hands.
She is in good hands.
But that is thanks in part, again, to you at home.
Tamara is represented by the Democracy Fund, which is, I think, quite possibly Canada's largest civil liberties charity.
It grew out of the Fight the Finds initiative here at Rebel News, where we decided to help anybody, regardless of their political leanings, if they got a lockdown ticket.
And then it grew and grew and took on a civil liberties mandate.
It's representing truckers, farmers, protesters, and Tamara Leach.
And the only way that Tamara is able to have not just one of the best defense lawyers in Ottawa, but I think one of the best defense lawyers in the entire country, Lawrence Greensboro.
But is thanks to you at home who continue to make donations to her legal fund and who continue to make your tax-deductible donations to the Democracy Fund.
I should tell you, one of the best things that I get to do, especially during the pandemic, was talk to people who were being helped by the Democracy Fund.
And I would see people in the news and hear about people getting tickets.
Acting Under Pressure00:03:05
And I would call them up and I would offer them help.
And they would think I was joking.
And I'd say to them, no, I want to give you the best lawyer I can find you.
And I am going to make sure that they fight your ticket like this is a murder charge.
And we'll really spare no expense.
We'll spend thousands of dollars fighting an $800 ticket because it's the right thing to do.
And these people thought I was crazy.
They just didn't know who this strange lady was calling them up and offering them help.
And I got to do that good work thanks to all of you who donate.
So, I mean, people, they thanked me, but really the thanks is yours.
So good job out there.
Mr. Andrew Skinner writes on the same interview, what about the police who acted on the unlawful unconstitutional order?
Serious question.
So that is the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
It was recently just ruled unconstitutional and illegal.
And I think the police were acting on the information before them.
I mean, there are some bad cops, but I think they're just cops in general are pretty good guys.
They didn't get into the business, as they say, to go around arresting people trying to have Christmas or beat up protesters.
Some of them, some of them do.
Some of them, I think in every career, there are people who love power and to wield their power over others.
And those are the kind of cops who shoot journalists in the leg with a riot control gun.
But I think by and large, a lot of those cops were acting on an order they thought was lawful.
But you know, who knew that order would never be held up as lawful?
The politicians who invoked it.
The cackling Christia Freelands of the world, the Justin Trudeau's, the David Lamettes, the Bill Blairs, the Marco Mendocinos, all of them with their dirty,
grimy little civil liberties, disrespecting fingers all over the actions that unfolded when the government used what is generally a 9-11 Pearl Harbor level event piece of legislation on hornhocking and street parties.
All of them, they knew that what they were doing would not rise to the standards in the law, but they did it anyway, because for them, it was a 9-11 level event that the blue collars were uprising, and they couldn't have it.
It was a working class uprising.
And for them, that was a 9-11 level crisis that they just couldn't handle.
And so, yeah, I mean, there are cops that acted unlawfully.
Working Class Uprising00:01:01
And, you know, we're doing our best to take care of, take care of them and make sure that they face consequences for their actions.
But it's the politicians.
They knew that the Freedom Convoy did not rise to the level of a national security level event that local authorities did not have the tools to deal with.
And they invoked it anyway.
They're the ones who should be held responsible.
And I think many of them, many of them probably are going to be held responsible at the ballot box when Justin Trudeau faces, I think, a Kim Campbell-style blowout at the next election.
If the NDP ever let that happen.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody, well, on my show next Wednesday.
And I think Ezra's back in the chair tomorrow, I believe.