Ezra Levant and Candice Malcolm, founder of True North News, expose Justin Trudeau’s censorship campaign through Bill C-63, the "Online Harms Act," letting anonymous complainants target journalists for up to $70,000 in penalties—even for historical posts. They link it to C-18 (forcing $100M/year ad revenue to legacy media) and C-11, warning of systemic suppression via groups like the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, while criticizing Trudeau’s immigration surge—500,000 permanent residents, 900,000 international students, and 140,000 illegal entries in 2023—amid rising crime. Independent journalism’s survival hinges on public resistance to these overreach tactics. [Automatically generated summary]
I've said before, and people thought I was being clever or cute.
I was neither.
I've said before that soon there will only be two kinds of journalists left in Canada: those who are approved by, funded by, licensed by the government, and those that are banned by the government.
That sounded shocking when I first said it, but now it's hurtling towards reality.
Joining me to talk about this, about Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, and other ways that the government of Canada is throttling freedom of speech and a diversity of opinion is our friend Candice Malcolm, the founder of True North News.
Great to see you, Candace.
Thanks for taking the time.
Oh, I always enjoy our conversations, Ezra.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, it's a pleasure having you on the show.
And I have to tell you how grateful I am for True North to be here.
I remember when Rebel News started up nine years ago, it felt very lonely.
And with the advent of True North a few years after that, and the counter signal and the new Western standard, I feel like there's a growing community of independent journalists, citizen journalists.
We're all small compared to the mighty legacy media, but I feel like there's a critical mass now, don't you think?
Well, Ezra, you deserve so much credit.
You really paved the way because back in the Sun News days, I mean, you and I both worked together at Sun News Network.
You were a host and I was a lowly researcher, but still, you know, we had this opportunity to have this big mainstream platform.
It didn't work out.
And you landed on your feet and you created something.
You had a vision for what YouTube was going to be, how the future of news was going to be, which is really just a bunch of, like you say, citizen journalists getting out on the street with a microphone, recording the news, reporting the news, using social media to disseminate that news, right?
You don't need the traditional channels on the traditional platforms like the CBC and the Globe and Mail anymore.
You can reach a heck of a lot more Canadians just with your iPhone and chasing after a journalist or recording something that you're seeing on the streets in front of you.
And I think that with the Rebel, True North and these other organizations have really just been following in your path.
So I thank you for that and for the vision that you had for the future.
And I do think you're right that we pose a huge threat to the liberal establishment, not just the prime minister.
We know that we pose a huge threat to him because he doesn't let us anywhere near him.
He was in Calgary last week and he wouldn't let independent reporters even scrum him on the way to the car.
Like they wouldn't even allow them to be in the parking lot waiting for him to leave an event, let alone go to the press conference where they let all kinds of other left-wing activists and student newspaper reporters in.
But they wouldn't let even, you know, Rachel Emmanuel, who's a reporter here at True North, who went to a prestigious Canadian journalism scroll over at Carlson.
She interned at the Globe and Mail, for goodness sake.
But as soon as she steps into the independent world, they are afraid of her.
They don't want even a question from her, Ezra.
So they send their police thugs after her in the same way that they did to your David Menzies.
I think Canadians see through it, obviously.
It's like, what do you have to hide?
What are you afraid of of a journalist with a microphone?
I think it reflects really badly on the political class and also fellow establishment journalists, or I should say fellow journalists who are part of the establishment, who never defend us, who they don't really believe in freedom of press, freedom of the press.
They believe in their own stature and their own protections.
And they know where their bread is buttered because they know that the Trudeau government is the reason that many of these legacy jobs still exist.
So long way of saying, you know, independent news, we really have our work cut out for us, but I think that we're doing a good job in exposing the corruption that's happening in both media and government in this country.
First of all, thanks for your kind words about Rebel News, but you're so right.
I think that so much of the Online Harms Act, which is the new censorship bill C63, I just really feel like it's targeting independent journalists.
I think the liberals are trying to misdirect by saying, oh, no, it's actually about protecting kids from child pornography and stopping revenge porn.
But all those things are already in law.
Like Stephen Harper banned revenge porn, put it in the criminal code in 2014.
There's a five-year prison term for it.
I think that the liberals are trying to focus on those things that they're sort of re-announcing to distract from what I think really is an attempt to squash critical voices.
Let me play a quick clip that you referred to when your reporter Rachel Emmanuel and Kian Bexty, who's with the Counter Signal, he's our alumnus and he's got that scrappy style.
I just want to show our viewers two clips because this is crazy.
Neither are a threat.
Everyone, I mean, you can see Kiam Becksy, you can see Rachel Emmanuel.
Obviously, they're not physical threats.
Obviously, they're reporters.
And yet police are manhandling them, blocking them.
There is no good faith person in the world who would say they are a threat.
They are here to assassinate.
It's pure censorship.
Take a look at this.
This is what Candace was talking about.
This is what the police do in Canada when you come here to ask Justin Trudeau questions.
No, don't get out of the frame.
You're following me.
You can stay in my camera frame.
Don't touch me.
Do not trust me.
Do not touch me.
Thank you.
We're here to ask Justin Trudeau some pretty basic questions, namely on the carbon tax.
As you might know, the avid viewer of the Counter Signal, seven premiers announced yesterday that they are opposed to Justin Trudeau's hike of the carbon tax.
That includes local premier Danielle Smith.
This is really strange behavior of the police.
As you see, they're following me here.
Seven premiers have said, seven premiers have said, don't stay on this spot right here.
Seven premiers here.
This is it.
Seven premiers have said that they oppose Justin Trudeau's hike of the carbon tax on April 1st.
And we're here to ask him if he really thinks that that's a good idea.
Really basic questions.
We're not going to hurt the Prime Minister.
These people here are obviously afraid of something.
It's not the Prime Minister's safety.
It's his questions, questions that get thrown at him that are not approved.
That's what they're afraid of.
So we're going to be here waiting to ask questions that Canadians want to hear answers to.
You know, that is a milder version of when they actually roughed up David Menzies.
Thank God they didn't handcuff or smash your people.
But I think that your second point was actually the strongest, which is where the heck is the rest of the media?
There were other journalists who were let in, and not one of them had, I'm not even talking about solidarity.
I'm not looking for solidarity from the CBC or CTV.
I'm talking about defense of freedom of speech.
Why wouldn't they say, you know, I don't like that Kean Bexley.
I don't like that Rachel Emanuel.
But why are police blocking questions?
Not a single journalistic group has spoken out about Keim Becksley, Rachel Emmanuel, or our own David Menzies.
Not one, Candace.
It's just, it's so sad.
You know, it's interesting, Ezra, because with the new conservative leader Pierre Polyev and his style, which is really to call out lying media, like if a media member or journalist is asking him a question that's completely leading, completely biased, he's very good at just stopping them and pointing that out, right?
And you see the legacy media up in arms and like, you know, Pierre Polyev is a bully.
How dare he speak to a Canadian press reporter this way?
Canadians are seeing his true colors.
It's like, guys, have you been to a press conference with the prime minister?
Like he actually has some physically roughshotting young reporters.
I mean, Rachel Emmanuel, you know, she made a funny point.
She's like, I'm basically like a stay-at-home mom with a podcast, and I just want to ask the prime minister a question.
And I'm getting like threats from police officers and getting blocked from being close to my prime minister.
Like, that's a problem, right?
That shows Justin Trudeau's mindset and how he believes that he can fix problems by just basically being a bully and being tyrannical, frankly.
And again, it's just such a bad look on both sides, both parts.
It's unfortunate for us because I would have loved for Kian or Rachel or David Menzies in other scenarios to have their questions answered.
They're good questions.
They're important questions that the media is also missing.
But you're right, the bigger story is really just the treatment of the prime minister and then total radio silence from the journalists who care so much about freedom of the press, except for when it happens to be from their rivals and from competitors in independent media.
You know, when I was at Sun News, I remember it was a wonderful time.
It was a wonderful initiative by Pierre Carl Pellado, which is even stranger.
He's a Quebec separatist.
He actually went on to become briefly the leader of the Partique Bécois.
For him to financially sponsor a pro-freedom, frankly, pro-Western Canadian network was such a wonderful anomaly.
It was a wonderful time.
I coined a phrase there called the media party, which in a sense, it was to describe how the media was in league with the Liberal Party, but I actually meant in a bit of a different way, that it was a party until itself.
It had sort of a party discipline.
It had like a party platform.
It defended itself.
It was a perpetuating machine that tried, that had campaigns.
The only thing is you couldn't vote it out.
That's what I meant by media party.
But I think the chief thing about it was the feeling of identity.
It's an in-group.
If you're part of the media party, even if you're a lowly intern at the CBC, you're part of the team.
And these independent journalists, this True North, this Countersignal, this Western Standard, this Rebel News, they're an out-group.
They're in a different party.
They're the wild barbarians.
We are in it together on the inside, and we don't even have to be told to synchronize like birds joining formation in a flock.
You know, it's amazing how birds fly in a V shape.
I don't know how they do it.
They just do it.
I think journalists on the in-group are that same way.
And so I think they naturally feel a cohesion with Justin Trudeau and Jack Meet Singh and Elizabeth May.
And they see Rachel Emmanuel, Keen Becksy, Rebel News, et cetera, as threats.
And so they would never speak out in defense of your reporters or mine.
Like it's just, it's so clubby.
It really reminds me of high school.
I don't think in my entire life I've felt such a peer pressurey thing other than the media party.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm overstating that, but I really think it's a social club.
It's a status thing.
It's an in-group, out-group thing.
It's really petty, but they're not defending our freedom of speech because they prefer to defend their club.
What do you think of that?
Well, I think you're right.
And that's the only reason I mentioned that Rachel Emmanuel, you know, she went to a fancy journalism school and she interned at the Globe and Mail.
She worked at iPolitics before she came over to the dark side of independent media.
So it's like, so how quickly you can turn on your own.
You're right, Ezra.
It's kind of like she crossed the floor.
She went from one party to the other, although I don't think we're quite the same kind of a chummy club on the independent side.
But, you know, the broader point really is that there's a bunch of cultural elites that sit in Ottawa that think they're better than everyone else in the country.
They don't really care about the concerns of everyday Canadians.
They're more worried about spinning on behalf of Justin Trudeau.
There was an article in the CBC last week by Aaron Weary talking about how the real problem with the carbon tax was a communications issue.
They just weren't explaining it right, Ezra.
Has nothing to do with the huge cost of living increases, the affordability crisis, the fact that folks can't afford to fill up their gas tank.
That's not the problem with the carbon tax.
It's just a matter of like tweaking the language here and there.
And again, really, the purpose of the legacy media is to defend the Liberal Party.
They need the Liberal Party.
In order to survive, they need those cash bailouts.
They need government funding.
And they don't care about the concerns of everyday Canadians, which is why there's such a huge opportunity for us, True North Surah audience, double or triple during COVID, because we wanted to tell the stories of the people who were getting fired for not getting vaccinated.
We wanted to tell the stories of people who perhaps had injuries because of policies that were forced upon them by the federal government.
We just wanted to tell different stories.
And it seemed very clear at that point that Lexing Media was so disinterested in telling any stories other than the pre-approved narrative from the PMO.
It was really, you know, the thing that had been living under the surface for probably two decades in Canada was just out in the open, unapologetic about it.
These people do not care about Canadians.
They care about pushing a message, pushing an agenda.
And again, just creates a huge opportunity for us at True North, folks like you at The Rebel.
And, you know, it makes it fun too because we really have our work cut out for us, but there's so many opportunities to tell great stories in this country.
Yeah, one of the most surprising things I heard when I was watching the CBC president, Catherine Tate, answering questions in committee, I suppose I knew it, but it was just sort of shocking to hear it again.
That since Catherine Tate was appointed the CEO there, their viewership has fallen in half.
I mean, I knew it was dwindling.
It's a little bit difficult to get precise numbers because the agencies that measure those things don't publish them regularly like they used to do.
But Canada's population has never been bigger.
It's over 40 million now.
So there's more eyeballs than ever.
People are more glued to their screens than ever, like everyone's addicted.
And in that environment, to lose half your viewership, I think that's people voting with their clickers, voting with their eyes.
I mean, just no one cares anymore.
When I was young, it wasn't rare to have a million people watching CBC's The National.
And even if you disagreed with it, you wanted to watch it because you wanted to know what everyone else was saying.
Now that there's a lot of choice out there, people are untrapped.
They're not forced to watch the government broadcaster, and very few choose to do it.
You're right.
And I think that's why Trudeau government is stepping in with all these different various censorship bans and banning outlets on social media and trying to ban weaponized words that they don't like and ill-defined ideas like hate speech.
It's like they're trying to get that glory days back.
It's interesting because I was covering a Radio Canada documentary that came out a couple of weeks ago called Trans Express.
And it was interesting.
The French CBC dared to do something the CBC would never do, which is tell a countercultural story about how many of the people who are rushed into transitions as adolescents live to regret it.
So they followed four young women who had made this decision.
Three of the four regret it and are now working to get their lives back.
But anyway, Radio Canada still does have a bit of a presence.
The journalists who put that together went on a radio talk show or a television talk show, sorry, called Le Tout de Montel Parle, which Quebecers actually watch.
Like there's still a critical mass of people in Quebec that are watching these stations that will have an impact on the culture.
Flickering Candles and Lost Glory Days00:06:49
And I was trying to think there was anything equivalent in Canada.
And it's like, you know, there's just so much diversity online.
There's so many different places where you can get your news from.
I think that Canadians of your generation and my generation might still be aware that the CBC has a show called The National.
I don't think anyone under 30 or under 25 is even aware that that exists or that that's an option.
They probably haven't had cable television in their house ever, perhaps.
And really, we're witnessing a changing landscape, which I think is a big reason why you have what Pierre Polyev calls the gatekeepers, people like Justin Trudeau, people like Catherine Tate.
They're trying to tighten their rein and trying to maintain control, even though the ship that they're manning is sinking around them, and there's nothing that they can do to stop these trends.
I sometimes think of a metaphor of a room with no windows and 100 candles.
And if you snuff out one candle, so there's only 99 burning, it's really imperceptible the difference.
If you snuff out 50 of 100 candles, it's darker.
It's still bright, but you'll notice a difference.
Snuff out another 25.
Now only 25 are left, and the room is significantly darker, but you can still see.
You're down to 10 candles now.
The room is dark.
And think about it.
Every candle you snuff out now makes a measurable difference.
It's darker.
And you're down to two candles left in the room.
And you snuff out one of them.
You've just cut out half the light that's left.
And there's one candle left flickering in the dark room.
And if you take out that candle, it's a greater change than any other change before because you go from one to zero.
Just one single candle is enough to put some light in the room.
And the reason I think about that metaphor in my mind is that there used to be a lot of independent journalists, including at some legacy media outlets.
And you can still find a few at the National Post and the Toronto Sun, and even a few at the Globe and Mail.
I'm not saying they're all awful.
But as more and more of the media either turn out the lights themselves or are co-opted by taking government grants, the handful of candles that are flickering for freedom, and we've talked about the four that countersignal Rebel News through North Western Standard.
Justin Trudeau does not like, I think he's very thin-skinned.
I think he's very emotional when he's criticized.
He hates it.
He's used to people obeying him his entire life.
He grew up a charmed life, a silver spoon in his mouth, famous last name, famous dad.
He's handsome, so he could sweet talk his way through things.
I think his entire life, he's used to people doing what he says and getting away with things.
And so those odd people that defy him, he rages against them.
And the very long interjection, forgive me, but he's snuffed out most of the lights now, Candace.
There's just a few flickering candles left.
But he knows what you and I know, which is those last candles make more of a difference than the first few that went out.
The difference between one and zero is the greatest difference of all.
And so he controls most of the media through funding.
He controls the CBC, which is larger than the rest of the media combined, directly.
And yet he can't stop the criticism.
So he rages at the few who are independent.
You, me, social media.
That's why C63 was introduced, in my estimation.
Because although he controls so much, he doesn't control that last 1%.
Go ahead.
Sorry for I was talking for so long.
Yeah, no, well, it's really interesting metaphor that you raised.
I hadn't thought of it that way.
I think that room that you mentioned, the room with no lights and just candles, if that's the world of legacy media, then good.
Let's shut off the candles and let's move on to a different room because I think that this may be the last election, whenever it does come, between Pierre Polyev and Dustin Trudeau, that the legacy media even has an impact, that it even sways the needle one way or another.
You know, Ezra, you and I have lived through many elections where the media has dominated the outcome and that the winner of the election is solely because of the media coverage.
Or if not, it's a lack of media, you know, no lack of trying on behalf of the media to paint, for instance, Stephen Harper as an absolute monster who's going to like Americanize the country or whatever they were accusing him of doing back then.
I just I think that the only reason that the legacy media has an ounce of relative relativeness in our society is because of all these bailouts, because of all the money that Trudeau has given them.
And hopefully if Pierre Polyev is elected, he'll do away with that and we'll see a reshaping of the landscape.
More players like us will have more opportunities to get in and shape the landscape.
You'll have independent journalists on both sides of the political aisle.
And you won't have this sort of stale, very rehearsed teleprompter reading news stations that are totally out of touch and not covering things that are even the slightest bit relevant.
And I think your analysis on Justin Trudeau is really true.
I was reading a book the other day, The Psychology of Money, and he talks about a story of this sort of wealthy guy who had kids and he was worried that his kids were going to grow up spoiled.
And so he asked like the groundskeeping staff at his property to go play sports with his son, like go play soccer.
And then he watched later and he was horrified because his like seven-year-old son was like winning and he was dominating and he was scoring on all these housekeepers.
And the dad was horrified because he was like, you know, none of the staff wanted to stop the privileged golden boy from being soccer, playing soccer.
So this kid, you know, grows up thinking that he's an amazing soccer player because he's playing against adults and he's winning.
I kind of thought of Justin Trudeau when you talked about his growing up and how he's been surrounded by people who adore him and he's been part of this sort of tradition of liberal royalty in Canada and how distorted his self-perception is.
But look, I mean, he must look at the polls.
He knows how unpopular he is and how hated and despised he is.
He must know.
I mean, they can't keep it from him.
So I think you're right.
He's lashing out because this is the first time where he can't control his environment and people actually don't like him.
They don't like his personality.
They don't like his policies.
They don't like his ideas.
They don't like the way he talks.
They don't like the way he looks.
He's not a popular prime minister at all.
That'll be his legacy.
And there's nothing really he can do about it.
So you see someone sadly is just lashing out because it's all they have left, basically.
Yeah, it feels odd.
Lots of Donors, Little Pressure00:06:32
You know, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a journalist at a company that's getting a media bailout.
And my understanding is for newspapers, like the print newspapers, it works out to about 30 grand a year that the subsidy is at, and that's about to go up.
And every journalist knows that because it's not a secret, because 99% of media companies in Canada have signed up for these subsidies.
And even if it's just in the back of their mind, it is going to affect them, even subconsciously.
And it'll certainly affect what their publisher does.
Even if the local journalist feels sort of free, the big boss who has to get the millions a year from Trudeau to make his company work, it's absolutely on his mind.
And there is no way it could not alter the coverage of these companies.
And we know that from an advertising point of view.
We know the reason why we mark ads as ads and editorial as editorial is so that people can say, okay, this was paid for.
This here, this little box here was paid for.
And even then, companies can throw their weight around with the media.
But there's no disclosure on how the government has influenced the story or not.
And we don't even know.
One of the things we, as you know, and I think you guys are similar, you guys have a subscription model and you also take donations.
I think I'm a monthly subscriber to you guys.
We get 78% of our money through crowdfunding, and the average gift to Rebel News is 58 bucks.
So there is no way.
And by the way, of course, we don't tell our journalists who these donors are.
They don't know who gave 58 here or 100 there.
So it's my hope that it's impossible or extremely unlikely that our journalists would pull their punches for untoward reasons.
We have an editorial philosophy that I want them to follow.
People have their own conscience and we try and think of our viewers, but we try and keep out of it money questions.
And I think that's why I think crowdfunding is actually the most ethical way to do journalism because it's diffuse help.
It's not one big oligarch.
I mentioned Sun News Network had one big oligarch, Pierre Carl Pellido, who dumped in tens of millions of dollars.
That was sort of awesome as long as you don't gore his aux and as long as he still loved the plaything.
But I think having a diffuse support means you're sort of immune to political pressure.
How is it for you?
You the founder.
You started True North.
You guys have really grown.
I love to see it.
I love some of your stars.
Andrew Lawton, one of my favorite guys.
And you're also recruiting young guys, Harrison Faulkner.
He's got a lot of pep in him.
We mentioned Rachel Emanuel.
I don't want to pry.
I would just like to give you an opportunity to talk about your experience as an independent journalism publisher, founder, entrepreneur, grower, because you're growing.
I mean, I've told my story to my viewers before a dozen times.
How are you guys doing?
You mentioned your success during the pandemic by being an alternative voice.
How are you guys doing now?
I mean, if whatever you feel comfortable saying.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
I'm happy to talk, but I just want to go back to what you were talking about earlier first, and then I'll get to the second question in a second.
You know, the idea that journalists and editors might be slightly influenced by Trudeau because he's giving them money.
I mean, the fact that we're even like that we even need to suggest that, like, that's like basic journalism or investigations, like anything.
It's like, follow the money, follow the money.
You want to find out why someone's doing something?
Follow the money.
Obviously, they're impacted by Trudeau.
They have to be because they know that that's where their bottom line comes from.
Like, it's not even just the bailouts.
They also rely on advertising from the government.
And some of these smaller publications, government ads take up like half of the ads.
And so it's like they can't criticize the government.
They can't be too critical.
They can't be too harsh.
They have to treat them with kid gloves because otherwise they won't get their money.
It's absolutely compromised.
The legacy media is state-owned, and they should own up to that.
They should have to, in the same way as you said, you have to say this is an ad, this is editorial.
I believe that all of these government-funded newspapers, television stations, the CBC, it should all just say state-funded or even more specific, liberal party-funded since the conservatives oppose it.
As far as the funding model, I agree.
You know, it's funny.
Sometimes people think it's kind of scandalous that True North accepts donations and that we receive money from tens of thousands.
We had over 10,000 unique donors last year in 2023.
So it's the exact same way.
Like we get small little donations from lots and lots of Canadians who like our journalism, who support our journalism.
I think that that's the model that's going to be successful.
Like you can't deplatform us.
You can't defund us because we're funded by so many different people that we're not beholden to anyone.
Sure.
We might put out a report that really bothers some of our donors and they may choose not to support us anymore.
They may choose to go support someone else and that's okay because like we like you, we're following our conscience.
We're following our own editorial standards, our own philosophy of what we want Canada to look like.
And not everyone's going to agree with that.
That's fine.
That's why there's a huge ecosystem and there's room for lots and lots of different independent journalists and lots and lots of different media companies.
I think that what we've kind of stumbled upon is the future of journalism.
It's not going to be necessarily big corporate media that's beholden to one specific ideology or a government media, which is even worse.
But the idea that people are interested in what's happening in their country, we often hear about, oh, the dying landscape of media and how it's so dangerous for democracy.
It's like, no, Canadians still really care about what's happening in their country, so much so that they're willing to reach into their own pockets and pay for it with their after-tax money to True North, to Rebel, to other independent outlets.
They just don't want to hear about it through the package that's being given to them, through the propaganda, through the spin, through the bias, the partisanship, the authoritarian mindset, just all the bullying that happens at the legacy media.
They're not interested in that anymore.
So that might be dying.
But the idea that Canadians are no longer interested in what's happening in their country and the stories of fellow Canadians is not true.
And I think that we're living proof of that.
You're right.
And when the incumbents or the regime media or the legacy media, there's different ways to call them, when they lament the destruction of the industry, that's a solipsistic view.
They're the center of the world.
Hey, why aren't people reading my newspaper?
Why aren't people watching my well?
Complaints and Human Rights00:15:34
They're not watching.
They're just watching other stuff, often from things that are shared on social networks.
That's why Bill C63 was the inevitable.
I mean, C-11 was a bill that gave Trudeau dominion over the internet.
It was the gateway.
It was his standing.
Until C-11 was passed, Trudeau could regulate TV and radio stations, but the Internet was free.
C-11 put him in charge of the Internet.
It was terrifying.
C-18, the Online News Act, basically wrung out Google to bring another $100 million a year to purse out to journalist organizations the Trudeau's government licenses, the qualified Canadian journalism organizations.
We were rejected for our application.
So C-11 gave him dominion over the internet.
C-18 gave $100 million to share with his favorite companies.
But C-63, that's the hammer.
By the way, look at that.
Three bills in a row, three bills in the course of a year.
He doesn't have three bills on the economy, three bills on inflation, three bills on housing.
He's obsessed with censorship.
It's what he cares about most.
This is the one that scares me because there's new criminal law in here.
I don't think they're going to go after you or me with criminal law.
I don't think that either you or Rebel News does anything so insanely shocking that it would attract a criminal remedy.
But I think the poison pill or the secret weapon in C63 is to allow anyone in the country, whether they're a citizen or not, by the way, to file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal alleging that any social media post is likely to expose a person to detestation, which is so vague.
It's a feeling.
It's an emotion.
Hate is a feeling, just like love is a feeling, an emotion.
And you can file this complaint for free.
You can have your identity as a complainant kept secret, even from the person you're complaining about.
If you win your complaint, you get up to $20,000 from the target, plus they could have to pay $50,000 in fines.
And this is for every single incident.
And the law specifically says it's for your historic work, too, if it's still online.
So my great fear is that every tweet, every Facebook post, every YouTube video, all of which are called social media, could be the subject of a nuisance complaint, hundreds, thousands, literally every day.
It could be the same person complaining.
It could be a professional activist funded by Trudeau who's complaining.
It most likely will be.
And even if theoretically you were to, quote, win 100 of these, that's just taken up so much of your time and money and stress.
The process is the punishment.
I see C63 as the rebel killer, as the true north killer, as the citizen journalist killer, because it doesn't even rely on a government prosecutor.
It basically deputizes every whiner, every woke person in the country who used to just grumble.
Now they've got a $20,000 incentive to file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal.
And even if they lose, there's no skin off their news.
I think C63 is the final chapter in this three-part play to come and kill independent journalism.
What do you think?
Well, you explained it a heck of a lot better than I could in those details.
It's truly terrifying, Ezra.
And I think that you're right.
If Justin Trudeau had his way, that is what they would do.
My only sliver of hope or silver lining, perhaps, is that I think that enough people at this point see through it.
You see civil liberties organizations on both sides.
You have the former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal come out and say that he thinks this is all deliberate and that really it's chilling.
I just don't think that they're going to be able to do it in the way that they want to.
I can't imagine that they're going to, you know, they're still in a minority situation.
They need support of the NDP.
I think that a lot of people have raised the opposite angle, which is that this can be gamed and manipulated by either side.
So you could very easily go against the Palestinian activists that we see making deranged, crazy genocidal statements online, and it could be weaponized against them.
I kind of hold out some hope that there's some sensible people who are going to stop this.
I'd love to hear your take, Ezra.
Do you think that this bill is going to actually pass and get implemented as it is currently being proposed and written?
You know, I respect your point of view, and I'm very glad to hear it, but I do disagree with you.
I note that Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau renewed their vows in their coalition right before this bill was introduced.
And I don't know if that's a coincidence.
I think Jagmeet Singh and actually the Block Quebecois have both stated their desire to renovate the Human Rights Act to have the hate speech provision.
You might recall Stephen Harper's government removed the hate speech provision a decade ago, precisely because it was abused in this way.
So I'm afraid that, and I hear what you're saying, you're saying, well, what happens if this is weaponized against the left?
I don't think it will be.
And even if it is, those will be dismissed because the people who operate the machinery of the censorship tribunals, they're woke activists too.
They say things like, it's impossible to be racist against white males, for example.
So they would not accept, they would say in the Marxist dialectic, they would say critical theory.
A Palestinian protester can never be wrong because they're the oppressed.
And an oppressor can never be right.
So I just, I worry that you're using common sense that is absent in the human rights censorship industry.
I fear that Trudeau and the NDP and probably the bloc will ram this through.
I fear that the Senate will prove it.
There might be a couple of holdouts there, but Trudeau has such a dominant majority.
I fear that this will become law.
I think that if it goes to law the way it is now, well, I'll tell you right now, Rebel News, I've already been talking with lawyers about as soon as it's legally possible, we intend to challenge it.
You can't challenge a law that's not on the books yet and that hasn't been implemented yet.
So it may be a while before we can fight it.
But I really think this is an extinction level event for independent journalists.
Why wouldn't hunter-killer groups like the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, which gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from Trudeau specifically to hunt and complain about conservatives?
Why wouldn't they just say, oh, okay, good.
Let's file 10 complaints a day all year.
That's 3,500 complaints a year.
Even if only 1% of them get through, that's 35 direct hits.
That's $70,000 or $700,000 in damages against Rebel News or True North.
And we've burned up 1,000 hours of their time.
Like this is, if they do it, and why wouldn't they do it?
Why are they doing it in the first place?
They're not doing it because there's public demand for censorship.
They're not doing it because Canada is a typhoon of right-wing hate.
There's hate in Canada.
It's the GAZA hate marches, but Trudeau's fine with that.
They are doing this to snuff out the last three candles in the room, Candace.
That's my view.
Well, I'll hopefully not be so pessimistic.
I could see what you're happening, and I could see that dystopian sort of end of free speech, end of media, end of Canada discussion there, because I think you're right that this bill has the potential to do that.
But I'm just going to hold out hope that enough people will raise their very valid concerns, that the reasonable people in the room, in the Liberal Party, in the media, you know, the few of them that are left are going to speak out loud enough and hopefully stop this.
And, you know, again, worst case scenario, hopefully we're going to have an election soon within the next year or a year and a half.
And I would imagine that this would be one of the first things that an opposition, a government, a conservative government, opposition party would vow to eliminate.
So I hope it doesn't get to the points that you're pointing out.
I do think that that is possible.
It's probably exactly what Trudeau had in mind when he was drafting this piece of legislation.
They were so sneaky about it, right?
They came out and they basically only talked about protecting kids, how the entire point was to protect kids.
All the people at the press conference, when the justice minister announced the bill, were all just talking about these kids that had been exploited, exploited online and how terrible it was.
And I think most Canadians can agree with that.
Like little kids shouldn't be viewing porn and accessing porn online.
And there's all kinds of things that are needed.
It's kind of laughable that we're supposed to believe that the Liberal Party are the ones that care about kids and protecting kids.
Well, out of the other side of their mouth, they're also promoting trans, transing, mutilating, self-sterilizing procedures against little kids.
You have Paul Bernardo, who is a rapist and a murderer of young women and girls.
And he's in a medium security prison playing ice hockey and playing tennis under the liberal regime.
And we're supposed to think that they are the ones that care about kids.
This is obviously a Trojan horse.
They're trying to, like you say, really put a damper on free speech.
The whole concept of hate speech is so murky.
I think there's so many problematic elements.
But again, I'll try to just remain optimistic that a country like Canada won't let it happen and that there's enough safe gaps in place that we will stop this or we will overturn it very quickly after it gets implemented, I hope.
Well, I hope you're right.
And of course, I do believe that if Pierre Polyev were to become prime minister, this law would be repealed if it were passed.
I've seen, I've had high hopes before, and they're often dashed.
I find it psychologically easier to be a pessimist because then the only surprises are good surprises.
And I don't know, there's no worse feeling than, you know, I remember as a kid, people were like, I told you so.
Oh, those are sweet words to say.
I told you so.
Sweet words.
Those are the worst words to say.
I told you so means you were worried something bad would happen and it happened.
And unfortunately, we've said I told you so all throughout Trudeau's regime.
But I'm glad that there are green shoots of hope out there.
And I think citizen journalism is part of that.
You've been very generous with your time today.
I just want to throw one last question to you, because I know we've talked, you mentioned a little bit about transgenderism, and we've talked a lot about free speech and just the problem of the regime media in general.
But one of the specialties of True North, one of the policy areas you've always been known for, is immigration.
And it looks like for the first time in a decade, the Conservative Party is very carefully talking about immigration and how it's broken.
Give me one minute on that before we sign off.
Well, you know, it's funny because you were just talking about the I Told You So.
You know, I wrote two books in the early part of Justin Trudeau's tenure, one called Losing True North and the other called No Border, talking about the concerns of Justin Trudeau's approach to immigration, making it really easy to become a Canadian citizen, massively increasing the number of people to come to Canada, which I believe was for cynical reasons, trying to pump up the liberal voting base and trying to cover up the ruinous economic policies that Trudeau is implementing.
I just put out a video and a couple of reports, Ezra, on the 2023 immigration numbers.
It's staggering, right?
You have half a million permanent residents, and that's the number that the media always quotes.
But on top of that, you also have 900,000 international students coming to Canada each and every year.
You have about 650,000 temporary foreign workers.
And then last year, in 2023, we saw an absolute explosion in illegal immigration.
Barely gets covered.
Over 140,000 people illegally entered Canada and made an asylum claim.
So they're trying to become refugees.
They get to take advantage of all kinds of special programs in the system.
Just for reference, 10 years ago in 2013, that number was 10,000.
So we went from 10,000 to 140,000 inside a decade.
I felt like I was warning about this back in the day when Trudeau was first elected.
And now look at here we are.
We have a country that is struggling with an affordability crisis.
People can't find a place to live.
You have all kinds of cultural tensions falling out into the streets, these crazy hate rallies against Jews.
You have people lashing out at different cultures and the whole multiculturalism experiment, capital M is clearly failing.
We're all viewing that day in and day out.
It's so sad to see the state of Canada and so many of especially the big cities in the suburbs.
It doesn't feel like Canada at all anymore.
And so again, I do think immigration is one of those issues that kind of comes and goes.
And sometimes it's all anyone's talking about.
And other times no one wants to talk about it.
I think that Max Anne Bernier and the People's Party can be given a lot of credit for raising this issue and keeping it in the public debate as well.
And I think that maybe there's enough pressure on the political right and, you know, just obvious outcomes from Justin Trudeau's ruinous policies that will lead the Conservatives to take the right approach and to basically just crack down on the misuse of the system.
Even if you just say, hey, we're just going to go back to like Stephen Harper levels in 2014, 2015, that seemed to work a lot better than anything that Justin Trudeau has introduced.
I hope that they do that.
I hope they find that political courage because immigration can be a tough issue to talk about.
The Liberals love it when the Conservatives talk about immigration because they just use it to bash them over the head and call them racists and say that they're just being bigoted or whatever they've accused conservatives of forever.
But I think, again, we're at a point now where enough Canadians can just kind of look around and see that things are broken and that it's safe to talk about and that we obviously need major changes because our immigration system is just massively, massively broken and is having huge impacts all across the country, Ezra.
Yeah.
You know, there's a terrible Marxist-Leninist saying, the worse, the better.
And I do not believe in the worse, the better.
But what it means is when things fall apart, when things are so atrocious, people wake up to the crisis.
That's the Leninist meaning of the worse, the better.
And I think that's why immigration is slowly becoming normalized as a conversation, because it is so absolutely horrible.
So maybe the worse, the better is actually allowing us to talk about it now, but at such a great cost to everything from crime to, like you say, cultural conflicts to cost of housing and a hundred other things.
Well, Ezra, I'll just say quickly, there was a very funny news report on Toronto News last week where the police were telling people, hey, look, we know these guys want to steal your car.
They've got guns.
They're loaded.
Great Work, Keep Bumping Into Andrew00:01:12
They will shoot you.
Don't fight back.
Don't call the police.
Just leave your keys at the front door so that these people can steal your keys and go.
And that's where we are as a country.
Just leave your keys.
Let the criminals have their way.
Don't stop them.
Don't try to confront them because they will kill you.
This is Canada in 2024 under Justin Trudeau.
Yeah.
The worst, the worst, I guess.
Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you.
Thanks for being so generous with your time.
Congratulations on True North.
It's one of my favorite news outlets.
And it's great to have other friendly allies doing citizen journalists.
I love bumping into your lead reporter, Andrew Lawton.
I see him in unusual places, even at the World Economic Forum, where he's done great work over the years.
It's nice to have a friendly face there, too.
So thanks.
Keep up the great work and we'll keep in touch.
All right.
Thanks so much for the time, Ezra.
I always enjoy your show, and I love your audience.
I love Rebel, and I think you guys are just doing tremendous work over there.
So thank you so much, and take care.
Right on YouTube.
There you have it.
Our friend Candace Malcolm, the founder of True North.