Ezra Levant exposes Quebec’s $2M politician helpline and Bill 57, letting officials fine citizens ($1,500) or ban them for "disrespectful" speech—distinct from criminal harassment. He revisits David LeMetti’s unconstitutional Emergencies Act misuse (2022), his deleted Twitter/Signal records, and Rebel News’ legal fight to preserve them after a $10K cost demand. Connecting past battles—like blocked government accounts—to the upcoming Toronto March for Israel, Levant warns of potential pro-Hamas disruptions amid police’s contrasting security responses, urging listeners to support legal efforts via stopthecoverup.com while defending free speech against expanding state control. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey everybody, a crazy new law out of Quebec targets people who embarrass politicians.
If you say something that creates stress for a politician, you could be fined.
You could be subject to a restraining order.
You could even be banned from making any public comments about that politician.
I know you think I'm exaggerating, so I will actually take you through the law line by line.
You are not going to believe what you're about to see, or actually you'll probably believe it.
That's Canada in 2024, so stay with us.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this program.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
And not only do you get the video version of the podcast, you're supporting Rebel News and helping us stay strong.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, Quebec sets up a helpline for politicians who feel sad and announces fines for citizens who make them sad.
It's June 7th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Hey, check out this headline that I saw today.
I mean, come on.
It's in the CBC, but I saw this story elsewhere too.
Quebec launches helpline for politicians following a wave of resignations at municipal level.
Hundreds have left public life since 2021.
Now, I'll come back to this in a second, but can I ask you, how's it going for you these days?
How are you feeling?
Hopefully, you're doing well, but it's tougher out there than it has been in decades, actually.
I think that's affecting everybody.
Here's one measure per capita income, as in that's what the average person earns in a year.
You can see that it went flat in 2015, and then it plunged during the pandemic lockdowns, just like it did in the U.S.
But after that, the U.S. rebounded.
It zoomed up, but Canada is falling again.
We're getting poorer is what that means.
We've been in decline since, well, what happened in 2015?
Justin Trudeau happened.
Now, inflation, add inflation to that.
Grocery shopping is more expensive than ever.
The carbon tax means gasoline and everything that uses gasoline is more expensive.
A house in Canada is about double what it costs in the United States.
How is that even possible?
And then there's the non-financial stuff.
Crime is nuts.
Out-of-control immigration is stressing everything from hospitals to traffic and housing, of course.
And then there's the cultural things, like the fact that Trudeau is in love with terrorists and those who support them.
At least that's how it looks.
And at the same time, he's pushing a culture of death on Canadians, both through assisted suicide and by legalizing hard drugs.
Who does that?
I really think things are bad out there.
Did you see this?
Emigration, that means people leaving Canada to the U.S. hits a 10-year high as tens of thousands head south.
Census says 126,000 people left Canada for the U.S. in 2022, a 70% increase over a decade ago.
That's amazing.
That many people fled Canada in 2022 alone.
Those who can get out are getting out.
But look at that first headline again, the one about politicians getting a helpline.
Quebec launches helpline for politicians following a wave of resignations at municipal level.
Hundreds have left public life since 2021.
Now, they're setting up a helpline for themselves, not for you.
They care about themselves.
They don't really care about you.
Where's our helpline?
Not that the government ever helps.
Quebec is committing $2 million to connect politicians and their families, that must be nice, with psychological aid after a wave of resignations and leaves of absence among elected municipal officials.
That's nice.
I mean, politicians, they really are the people we have to cherish and nurture.
They're really the best.
Have you ever heard anyone even say that?
You know that politicians are the least worked people in the country, right?
And that's not an opinion.
It's a fact.
You know, when I was in my 20s, I worked in the federal parliament for Preston Manning.
He was the MP.
I was an assistant.
The entire parliament would shut down.
It would have like a month off for Christmas.
Not a week, a month, a few months over summer.
Huge stretches of breaks.
Whenever there was a statutory holiday, they would add like a week to it.
I couldn't believe it.
Parliament sat for only 121 days in all of 2023.
That's like two days a week on average.
The Senate of Canada worked just 80 days all year, but they give themselves huge raises every April Fool's Day.
You know, provincial governments are even lazier.
I don't know if you know that.
The average provincial legislator meets just 59 days a year if they show up for them.
Oh, but the poor dears, it's all about them.
Can we help them?
A new telephone helpline is available starting today for politicians in need of help.
After almost 10% have quit since the 2021 municipal elections, only 10% have quit in three years.
I'm just thinking, how can we get that number higher?
Since when is being a politician a lifelong job?
Isn't the whole point of democracy and elections to clean out the stables, to get rid of politicians before they go fully corrupt?
If you're only getting rid of 10% in three years, it's going to take you 30 years to get rid of all of them.
That is too slow.
Quebec says the helpline is part of a multi-year plan to improve working conditions for local leaders.
But today's announcement comes just one week after the abrupt resignation of the mayor of Gatineau.
Oh, not that, eh?
How about working conditions for the rest of us?
Does anyone care if a politician quits?
Isn't that like a good thing?
Criminal Code Confusion00:07:37
Don't people always cheer when that happens?
Well, look at this story here, again, from the CBC state broadcaster.
People who intimidate, harass Quebec politicians to face $1,500 fines under new law.
Officials can also ask for injunctions against citizens.
Is that the worst criminal law story in Canada right now?
You know, in Canada's two biggest cities, Toronto and Montreal, there are daily pro-terrorist street actions.
Sometimes they're just trespassing and vandalizing and harassing people.
Sometimes they're actually beating up Jews.
Sometimes they're actually shooting or firebombing schools and synagogues.
I think there's a violent harassment crime wave in Canada right now, in addition to the regular crime wave.
But no, Whether you're worried about home invasion robberies or car thefts, the most urgent crime wave that the government is focusing on is people being mean to politicians.
By the way, I'm against people actually harassing politicians, but I mean actual criminal harassment, like stalking.
I'm against actual threats, as in like uttering a death threat, God forbid.
I'm against that.
And luckily, so is the criminal code.
Section 264 of the criminal code makes harassment a crime.
But let me read you the definition of that so you can feel comforted that politicians are protected already.
This is a list of things you cannot do if it, quote, causes a person reasonably in all the circumstances to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.
Okay, and here's the list of things you can't do.
A, repeatedly following from place to place the other person or anyone known to them.
B, repeatedly communicating with, either directly or indirectly, the other person or anyone known to them.
Besetting or watching the dwelling house or place where the other person or anyone known to them resides, works, carries on business, or happens to be, or engaging in threatening conduct directed at the other person or any member of their family.
So that's already in the criminal code.
It's been there for decades.
That pretty much covers all the bad behavior you would want to cover, I think.
I'm just going to quickly read to you the definition of uttering threats, too, just so you can know you can be at peace.
You can sleep soundly tonight.
That politicians are already protected.
Okay, here's section 261.4.
Everyone commits an offense who, in any manner, knowingly utters, conveys, or causes any person to receive a threat to cause death or bodily harm to any person, to burn, destroy, or damage real or personal property, or to kill, poison, and injure an animal or bird that is the property of any person.
So you can't poison anyone's bird or make any threats like I've just described there.
So that's already all in there.
So if the criminal code already makes it illegal to do all those things and plenty more things, so what are they actually banning now in Quebec with this new law?
I mean, the criminal code is a serious law with serious consequences.
Lots of police, lots of prosecutors.
So what's this new thing they've got going on?
Like I just told you, harassment's against the law already.
Threats are against the law already, stalking, harassing.
Well, here's a Quebec politician talking about the new law who accidentally spoke the truth about it.
This is from a story on Global News.
You must be treated in a respectful manner.
And that is the essence of this bill that we support.
Oh, got it.
You must be treated in a respectful manner.
Really?
I thought they said that this law was about threats and crimes.
It's about forcing voters to respect politicians, really?
No wonder the criminal code isn't good enough.
It doesn't cover what they want it to cover.
There's no crime called talking to politicians in a disrespectful tone.
That's not a thing.
They're trying to make it a thing.
But check this out.
This is the new bill in Quebec, a provincial law called Bill 57.
This is the one the CBC is talking about.
I read it.
Let me read the key paragraph, paragraph eight.
And look at how this is very different from the criminal code.
Criminal code was very specific, wasn't it?
Here's the new Quebec law.
An elected municipal officer who, due to being an elected officer, is the subject of comments or actions that unduly hinder the exercise of their functions or invade their privacy may apply to the Superior Court for an injunction to put an end to the situation.
Comments that hinder a politician.
Comments that hinder a politician.
That's a little bit different than what I went through about harassment and threats, isn't it?
Like I said, we already criminalize real threats and stalking.
You can't even follow people, even if you don't talk to them.
You can't even beset them.
You can't just stand outside their house and stare.
That's called stalking.
That's criminal harassment.
I read those sections to you, but I just read to you the new law.
And it doesn't govern what the criminal code does.
It says comments that hinder a politician.
Like, what would that be?
Like heckling or asking a tough question at a press conference?
Oh, and look at the powers they've given their judges now under this law.
The Superior Court may, in particular, order a person, number one, to not attend the meetings of any council or a municipal body of which the elected officer is a member.
Two, to not be in the offices of any municipal body referred to in subparagraph one without having been authorized to do so by the council of that body.
Three, to cease communicating with the elected officer.
Or four, this one is just unbelievable, to cease disseminating in the public sphere comments referred to in the first paragraph.
An application is heard and decided on an urgent basis.
Everything else in the court is cleared because we've got to stop these comments being made about politicians.
Just to be clear, if someone is truly threatening a politician with harm, by the way, I'm against that.
And luckily, so is the law.
You can even get a restraining order.
That's in the law.
But that's through careful rules under the criminal code for real crimes.
What we're talking about here is for comments that hinder a politician.
Hey, your comments really hindered me.
And did you see the list of remedies now?
Banning you from going to city hall, banning you from going to, I don't know, a government office, banning you from communicating with your politician at all.
And that last one was the craziest banning you from making comments in public.
Not even to the politician.
You can't even make public comments under this law.
No wonder they need a $2 million helpline.
Look, these politicians don't care about you.
Justice Minister Fired: Hearings Ahead00:07:18
They work less and less every year, 120 days a year for federal politicians, 60 days a year for the provinces.
They give themselves automatic pay raises every April 1st.
They set up special mental health hotlines for themselves and their families.
And now they're threatening to prosecute you and sue you and ban you from places if you have mean comments about them.
These are the worst people in the world.
Oh, sorry.
Is that an illegal comment now?
Stay with us for more.
You'll remember when Jody Wilson-Raybould was fired as Justin Trudeau's justice minister.
You might not actually remember when it happened because we didn't know what was going on until later when it came out through the Globe and Mail that she was actually sacked.
She was fired.
It wasn't a normal shuffling of the cabinet.
She was fired for a very particular reason.
She would not go along with Justin Trudeau's demands that Jodi Wilson-Raybold interfere with a criminal prosecution of a liberal firm, SNC Lavillan, that was being prosecuted for corruption.
Trudeau wanted to give SNC Lavillan a sweetheart deal.
He wanted to interfere.
But Jody Wilson-Raybold, who happened to be the first Indigenous justice minister in Canadian history, well, she was a bit too ethical for Trudeau, so he sacked her.
Well, who did he appoint in her wake?
Someone who was 180 degrees different from her when it came to bending the rules for liberals.
And so David LeMetti filled those shoes.
And it was a terrible and momentous decision because, of course, Trudeau made that decision so he could get away with whatever he wanted to do.
And in February of 2022, that whatever he wanted to do wasn't to throw a bone to his crooked friends at some big corporation, but rather to ram through the Emergencies Act, declaring a form of martial law in Canada that had not even been invoked during the 9-11 crisis.
David LeMetti presided over the invocation of the Emergencies Act, which was later ruled by the federal court to be illegal and unconstitutional.
I put it to you that if Jody Wilson Raybold had been the justice minister in February of 2022, she would not have spoken highly of the Truckers.
She wouldn't have been an ally of the Truckers.
But I believe that that same ethics and independence of spirit would have made her say to Trudeau, no, what you are proposing to do is illegitimate, illegal, unconstitutional, and I simply won't let it happen.
But alas, she was gone by then, and crooked David LeMetti pulled the trigger.
Now, when that federal court ruling came out, David LeMetti hastily resigned from parliament in disgrace.
And here is what we're talking about today.
On his way out the door, as he ran out of parliament, just as the lawsuits started piling up, David LeMetti pushed the delete button on his official Twitter account online.
You might say, so what?
Good riddance.
We don't need to hear from him anymore.
Fair enough.
But that wasn't a personal Twitter account.
It was a government Twitter account.
And it was governed by various rules about destroying public documents.
You can't simply shred everything when you're out the door, nor can you delete anything in this high-tech age.
We all saw it, but no one actually did anything.
No one except for Rebel News.
That is, we rushed to court with an emergency application asking a judge to compel David LeMetti to stop deleting public records.
We had a hearing very quickly by no one less than the chief justice of the federal court himself.
It stands to figure if you're suing a justice minister, you probably want the most senior judge involved.
A more junior judge might be too timid.
Well, that was a few months ago, and I'm happy to say that we have brought this matter to a conclusion.
Rebel News, on its own, we had no interveners, took David LeMetty to court and managed to get that crooked Trudeau cabinet minister to reinstate his Twitter account and to hand over files to Canada's Library and Archives.
Shorty is now via Skype from Calgary is the lawyer who did it.
Scott Nicoll joins us now.
Scott, congratulations.
It feels pretty good to beat the justice minister, and it feels even better to be the only people in the country who thought we should do it.
Yeah, hey, it's always good to connect, Ezra, and this has been a good outcome, I think, for all Canadians in terms of transparency, access to information, and accountability of public officials.
Now, I gave a big sweeping story there, but can you fill in some of the details about the court procedure itself?
How many hearings were there?
And after a while, it sort of broke out into negotiations, didn't it?
Because LeMetti didn't actually want to give his records back to the government.
He tried to wriggle out of that so many ways.
Give our viewers sort of a behind the scenes: how many hearings were there?
And then what happened in that three-way negotiation between you, on behalf of Rebel News, LeMetti, who is now at a private law firm, and the government of Canada, which was fighting us too?
Well, there's a few hearings.
I don't want to quote the exact number and be wrong off the top of my head.
A number of them were scheduling hearings and determining the urgency and then a substantive hearing addressing what would happen with this matter.
And of course, at each hearing, the government shows up with a number of lawyers.
And Mr. LeMetti has a number of undoubtedly taxpayer-funded lawyers supporting him as well.
What's panned out is ultimately a resolution where Mr. LeMetti has agreed that the contents of not only the X or the Twitter archive related to his account that he used during his time as a public official, but also the information from his Signal account, which was used presumably for various communications related to his work during his public tenure, would be provided to library and archives.
And that was all material that was at threat of deletion or other loss prior to Rebels' involvement in this proceeding.
Signal Archive Revealed00:02:15
You know, Signal, for those who don't know, is a highly encrypted messaging app.
It's sort of like WhatsApp, but more secure.
You can set a timer to delete messages after a week or two weeks.
And it's where I think a lot of government decisions and chatter happens outside of the reach of the access to information system.
I think that the liberals, they're so crooked.
I think they do most of their sensitive communications on Signal and simply never disclose it to anyone.
In this rare case, we managed to freeze his Signal content and have it handed over to the library and archives.
Is that correct?
Yeah, correct.
In this case, eventually, Mr. LeMetti agreed to hand over the Signal archive to library and archives.
And there were some details in there, frankly, a few periods of time where we were concerned that any incidental event could result in loss of data or be the reason that loss of data could be claimed.
This is a new world that we're working in in terms of communications.
100 years ago, virtually everything would be written on a piece of paper or some other record without cryptography.
Certainly, There's a risk of loss, but the fire that occurs at the same time that a bunch of papers are lost is somewhat suspicious.
Now, there's a whole world of data that can be stored on a cell phone and with a level of cryptography or encryption that is essentially, if properly done, unobtainable without the password or the agreement of the person who's chosen to encrypt it.
And that's the world, this raises new issues in how do we work with public servants and the public sector, the people that are supposed to serve us,
be elected by us and are supposed to be in service for us and who should be preserving records of their work when there is a plethora of tools and a plethora of tools that don't necessarily make it easy to archive those informations or perhaps provide opportunity for people who would like to keep information out of the official archives in doing so.
Yeah, and I am absolutely certain with what we've learned today about the number of members of parliament who are colluding with foreign powers.
Action and Charge00:06:43
I'm sure they're using Signal or other highly encrypted ads.
They're not dumb enough to use regular email that is stored on servers.
I want to talk about one more thing, which I thought was fascinating.
This whole thing was David LeMetti's fault.
He was being sneaky, which is really his middle name.
In fact, I think it actually might be his middle name.
I have to check his birth certificate.
He was sneaky, which is why he succeeded Jody Wilson-Raybould.
He was sneaky, which is why he could delete his account as he left parliament.
And by the way, he almost got away with that.
He was the reason this whole thing happened.
We rushed to court using our own crowdfunded donations to pay for legal team.
But in the end, the federal government demanded that we, Rebel News, pay costs to the government.
If memory serves, I think they were demanding $10,000.
They were going to insist that Rebel News have to pay the government of Canada $10,000 because we didn't get every single demand that we had made.
We got him to put his Twitter account back up.
We got him to hand over the signal files.
We got him to sign an undertaking not to delete things.
So we basically got 90% of everything we demanded.
But the government said, well, you didn't get it all.
So you got to pay us $10,000.
Tell us how that went.
I mean, that's just so true, Doe, isn't it?
How did that whole thing wrap up?
Well, I can tell you where we've landed is that everybody involved in the litigation, David LeMetti and the government, have come around to saying, hey, there's not going to be costs for any of this.
We had letters regarding that, a letter regarding that, as well as a discontinuance of the action filed yesterday or sent in to the federal court for filing yesterday, and that the parties have agreed eventually to having no cost.
But there certainly was a period of time where the government said, hey, you brought this.
We would like you to pay for costs of this action.
And that might be concerning to people who say, hey, if an independent organization is taking steps that result in the protection of information, certainly it was only after Rebel initiated this action through us that the X account was reinstated and the X account information and archives were pulled out of the deletion pipe,
what we call the deletion pipeline, the more or less 30-day period after which X may expunge an account and its data.
And it's only after that we started the action against Mr. LeMetti as well as the government that that account was reinstated and taken out of that risk.
And after that, yes, the government's asking for money from Rebel for those steps.
It was so gross.
It was such a Trudeau move to try and punish the whistleblowers.
I mean, in some jurisdiction, whistleblowers actually get rewards for stopping corruption.
I know there's some foreign corruption, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
There's certain war profiteering corruption laws in America that if you blow the whistle on corruption, you actually get a payment, which can be a multiple of how much corruption you expose.
In Canada, under Trudeau, it's the opposite.
You blow the whistle on Trudeau corruption, they'll try and bill you $10,000 for your efforts.
But congratulations to you, Scott, for managing to dissuade them of that foolish idea.
I think that LeMetti still got away unscathed.
I mean, he wasn't charged with any crime.
He wasn't charged with violating the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act or whatever the name of the law is.
He wasn't charged with violating an archives law.
Like he slipped away, sneaky LeMetti slipped away the same way he slid into government in the first place.
No criminal record, no fine, no conviction.
He actually got away with it in the end.
And some of his lawyers, if not all, were paid for by the federal government.
So in a sense, justice has not yet been done even now.
But the fact that we managed to stop him from deleting his account, and I think we embarrassed him a bit, frankly, because we caught him and we had the trial and he effectively admitted that we caught him because he put it back up.
So I would call this a victory.
It wasn't a total victory.
He wasn't convicted of a crime.
He wasn't jailed.
But I think we sort of bopped him in the nose.
And I think we showed, we sent a message that even if the regime media and even if, frankly, the opposition wasn't on guard, we were.
So I regard that whole thing as a success.
How about you?
Oh, absolutely.
I think each of these incidents, in this case in particular, helps push and keep an eye on the developing modes of communication by public officials, as well as the need to keep transparency in those communications and transparency in the acts of the people that govern our society.
There was absolutely, in our view, a risk of records relevant to the invocation of the Emergencies Act that could have been lost or deleted, whether that's intentional or not, that have been preserved as, in my view, an outcome of this case.
And as well, important debate about the role that these accounts are accounts of public servants and not mere personal accounts.
That's been one of the lines that we've seen in virtually every case.
And it's becoming clearer and clearer as a matter of law in Canada that if you're using an account on X or otherwise in your role as a public servant, that that's not going to be viewed as a personal account.
And these are important developments in these cases that help protect freedoms in Canada.
Well, and Rebel News has been behind a lot of them.
Of course, you know, we sued Stephen Gilbo for blocking us on Twitter from his government account.
We sued three other cabinet ministers, Karina Goldmarci, Ian, and Yara Sachs.
So we have done a lot of public interest litigation.
The bills are still coming in, as you just heard Scott say as recently as yesterday.
He was working on this file.
We obviously haven't been billed for that work.
If you want to help us out, we don't have the vast treasury of the country paying our fees.
We have to crowdfund it.
We've set up a special page for it at stopthecoverup.com.
Pro-Hamas Reaction in Toronto00:03:26
That's exactly what LeMetti was trying to do by deleting his Twitter account, stopthecoverup.com.
Great to see you.
Thanks very much for your fighting work in court.
And I have a feeling we'll probably be calling on you again because as the liberals swirl down the drain, I think they're getting more and more desperate.
And they'll probably try deleting more records.
So stay fresh.
Stay ready.
We'll call on you again.
Thank you, Ezra.
Always a pleasure.
All right.
Cheers.
There you have it.
Scott Nicol, one of the lawyers we had fighting against sneaky David LeMetti.
Stay with us more ahead.
Hey, everybody.
It's been an interesting week.
Last week, our friend Alexa Lavoie went to London, England to cover Tommy Robinson's huge rally.
And I went to Geneva, Switzerland, to cover the pandemic treaty that was being negotiated and protested.
Then, of course, we had all sorts of things happening throughout Canada from coast to coast.
And I want to tell you about something that's going on this Sunday.
There's a huge March for Israel that's going on in Toronto, which is the city in Canada with the most Jews.
About 200,000 Jews in Toronto.
And of course, there's many people who support Israel who aren't Jewish or just hate these Hamas rallies who aren't Jewish.
So once a year, the Jewish community has something called Walk with Israel.
And it's just a big walk down a street.
And it's sort of festive, and there's food and there's songs and stuff.
Well, you can imagine what that's going to be like in 2024, or you don't even have to imagine it.
Various pro-Hamas groups have said they're going to target it.
They're going to show up in mass and push back.
Imagine that.
You've got kids and families and sort of a festival thing in the middle of the day.
And then you've got these foreign-funded, foreign-directed Hamas thugs saying they're going to bust it up.
Well, the Toronto police say they're going to go all out.
In fact, they've asked for reinforcements from police forces in neighboring cities.
I think it's probably going to be the largest police presence in Toronto since the G20 years ago.
We're going to have a team on the ground to report it, not just on the March for Israel, sorry, the Walk with Israel, but the pro-Hamas reaction to it.
So that is happening on Sunday.
And we'll have reports live throughout the day on Twitter.
So a lot going on in this country.
I tell you, it's a shame that Toronto still allows the Hamas encampment at the University of Toronto, whereas Calgary and Edmonton cleared those ruffians away quite quickly.
And actually, a university in northern Toronto called York University was dispatched quickly too.
All I can think of is the double standard in policing and how peaceful truckers who did nothing more than maybe violate some traffic laws were the cause for martial law.
But Trudeau, and really most politicians on the provincial and city level too, really couldn't care about pro-Hamas protesters camping, trespassing, mischief, uttering threats, and even assault.