Ezra Levant in Toronto exposes how Mayor Olivia Chow and radical pro-Hamas groups pressure Rebel News to censor billboards, despite police Chief Myron Demkew’s baseless "hate crime" labeling. After waiting hours at headquarters—witnessing a man in drug paraphernalia ignored—Levant highlights Toronto’s escalating crime (daily home invasions, car thefts) while police focus on political speech. Rebel News refuses to censor unless ads break the law, but Levant notes unchecked pro-Hamas messages, including calls for genocide, circulate freely. The episode reveals a city prioritizing ideological control over safety, eroding democratic rights under thinly veiled legal pretexts. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm Ezra Levan in downtown Toronto, in front of me, Toronto City Hall.
Behind me, a billboard truck.
I sometimes call it a Jumbotron truck because it's a digital billboard.
On it are messages paid by a third-party advertiser, Canadians opposed to the occupation of our streets and campuses.
The ads on that truck have raised the ire of the censorship left.
So all your typical censors like the mayor, Olivia Chow, but also new radical censors who support Hamas.
Because you can't criticize Hamas in Gaza.
They'd kill you.
But now we have a lot of Hamas supporters in Canada, and they don't like being challenged.
And that's the thing.
I didn't make those ads.
And you know what I have to say.
I put my name to what I have to say.
But these are ads by other people who feel like they can't speak out.
Either their voices are silenced or they would be subjected to retaliation and cancel culture.
And in fact, Toronto's police chief has proven them right because he announced before any investigation, let alone prosecution or conviction, that this was an Islamophobic hate crime.
It was very weird.
First, the police department put out a tweet and then the police chief himself.
And in a very Hamas kind of thing, a prominent Muslim advocate and a friend of Justin Trudeau, Mohamed Faki, put out a $25,000 bounty for information about who owned the truck.
Well, I actually am hoping to claim that $25,000 because it's me.
Rebel News owns the truck, and there's a story in that also.
Rebel News has probably rented 100 billboards over the 10 years of our existence.
Sometimes they're at the side of the road.
Sometimes they're on trucks like this.
But we found that in the last eight months, it was very difficult to get a truck company to agree to criticize Hamas.
Not that they support Hamas.
They absolutely don't.
They're just terrified that their trucks would be attacked, their drivers would be attacked, and they said, no, we just can't risk it.
And I understand.
So we got ourselves our own truck.
And I think there's actually a large market for people who want to speak out and don't want to be subjected to attacks by politicians or the police chief.
Now, it's absolutely crazy to call this billboard truck hate speech.
You might know that I've been in the free speech battle for more than 20 years, and I've studied the laws pretty closely.
I myself was once prosecuted under the Alberta Human Rights Code for publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.
That's almost 20 years ago now.
The law that the police chief is talking about for this truck is probably Section 319 of the Criminal Code, which is such a high bar.
You have to prove a crime was committed beyond a reasonable doubt.
And the law actually has built into it defenses, like if it's a religious debate or a matter of public policy.
There is zero chance that this billboard comes within a country mile of a crime.
I mean, it's part of a public debate.
And actually, I think one of the reasons why the police chief, Myron Demkew, is so sensitive to these billboards is they shine a light on his own inability to keep this city safe.
The reason that people feel motivated to take out ads like these is because they feel like all their politicians and police and many media have let them down.
Toronto is in the middle of a massive crime wave.
Regular crime like home invasions and car thefts.
It's just astonishing how many crimes are committed every day.
And even here at City Hall, the general dilapidation of the city, homeless people living under on benches right outside the mayor's office, Toronto is in decline, and a lot of that decline is crime.
And this police chief, I don't know if you recall, they actually put out advice to have your car keys near your front door so when the home invasion gangs break in, they grab the keys and go and don't have to look through your house.
That was actually their advice.
Well, Marco Ricciardi had a new message for vehicle owners who keep their fobs in Faraday pouches.
To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door.
Because they're breaking into your home to steal your car.
They don't want anything else.
Well, that's bad enough, but imagine now adding on top of that regular crime wave an anti-Semitic crime wave where you have, for example, an apartheid siege of the University of Toronto where they actually have a fence and little masked thugs ask if you're a Jew or not.
And if you are, you're not allowed to pass.
That's going on right in the heart of the city and the police are fine with them.
I've shown you examples from the shooting of the Jewish girls' school to blocking a bridge into a residential neighborhood to the full day hate march outside a synagogue.
Each of these things are crimes.
And I'm not talking about hate crimes.
They're just crimes.
They're regular criminal code crimes.
Uttering death threats, trespass, mischief, vandalism, graffiti.
And the police chief has let it roll.
And my theory is it's because he takes political orders from the mayor who also put out a tweet denouncing this as an Islamophobic hate crime.
And just right now, you can see that's a leader of a terrorist group.
I think that's actually going from memory of Khaled Nishal, a Hamas leader right then.
That's his own words translated into English.
If showing that video and the others are hate speech, well, it's what the Hamas people have said.
I say again, these aren't our ads.
This blue font, white background ads, they're not Rebel News ads, but we're airing the ads.
And, you know, we've only had the truck for a short period of time.
But my rule of thumb of who we can rent the billboard truck to or not is actually inspired by Elon Musk.
I don't know if you remember, but when Elon Musk took over Twitter, he reinstated various Twitter accounts that had been banned by the previous regime.
And some of those Twitter accounts are, frankly, foul.
They're rude.
They're racist.
But Elon Musk said he would apply the standard, the same standard as the law.
Now, he actually has a few other standards in there about impersonation and things like that.
But Elon Musk is saying, we'll follow the law.
If you have lawful speech, you can be on Twitter, which is different from the previous regime, which says if you say anything politically incorrect or offensive, we'll ban you just because we can.
That's my view with the Rebel News truck as well, is that I'm not going to apply a daintiness standard, a censorship cancel culture standard to what's on the truck.
Now, obviously, I'm a freedom-oriented, conservative-oriented person, so I don't think I would run pro-Hamas ads on this truck.
Musk's New Standard00:15:27
But the good news for the pro-Hamas people in town, like the mayor and the police chief, is there is another billboard truck circling this city with Hamas messages, including calls for genocide.
You know, I haven't been talked to by the mainstream media in years, and it's not surprising.
I prickle at them.
They prickle at me, and we sort of leave each other alone.
In the last two days, I've had four mainstream media interviews, and I've actually enjoyed all four of them.
Surprisingly, the CBC was quite straightforward, and they ran what I said fairly unedited.
I was pleasantly surprised.
I spoke to the Toronto Star.
I had to correct some things, but I think they did okay.
The former mayor of Toronto was on radio talking about me for hours today.
I don't listen to AM radio, but I was told about it.
So I called in.
Here, I want to play for you a few minutes of my debate with John Torrey, the former mayor of Toronto, who's now on radio.
I think I got a little shouty, and it's hard to debate with someone who controls the microphone.
And I'm not sure if me being a noisy Jew was the best line to use.
I mean, but I think that is actually a point because the Jews of Toronto are quiet, most of them.
They're just sort of licking their wounds and they can't understand what's going on.
Rebel News texted in and knew we'd been discussing this truck going around the city this morning and asked for a chance to respond.
And so we're giving them that chance.
Good morning, Ezra.
John, thanks very much.
I'm surprised you had me on the show.
Well, look, we try to be fair.
I certainly have always tried to sort of make sure everybody has a chance to say their piece.
I'll just introduce you to the paper.
I want to disagree with you there because what you've just been talking about is criminalizing people with different opinions.
That billboard truck and the ad that's been running on it is a different opinion.
You might even think it's a rude opinion.
You definitely think it's a wrong opinion.
Got it.
And you know what?
You could actually be right.
But what you've then done is said that should be prosecuted as a crime instead of debated.
And so that's why I'm surprised that you are having me on because who knows?
Maybe you think disagreeing with you is a hate crime.
No, it's not like it's not about me.
Okay, let me have a chance here, Ezra.
John, you've had an hour to defend me.
You didn't even invite me on the show, John.
Well, because that shows your ideas are brittle.
That's why you want to censor anyone who contradicts you.
I don't want to censor anybody, except when it comes to the money.
You want me prosecuted, Ezra.
You want me prosecuted.
Okay, why don't you finish and then I'll have a word, okay?
You know why you want me prosecuted, John?
You know what?
I think you're being very dramatic the last hour, and I think I know why.
And I'd love your answer to this.
Me and the 10 people I've had on roundtables this morning who agree with me, by the way, all of them to a person.
Well, gee, it's almost like you've invited your own echo chamber in.
But John, here's my question to you.
For eight months now, Toronto has had a crime wave of anti-Semitic violence, including a girls' school that was shot up by masked men.
People, masked Hamas supporters going through Jewish neighborhoods, shrieking anti-Semitism, roads into residential.
And I've talked about it here a hundred times, Ezra.
I've talked about all those examples of how unacceptable that is.
Prosecution of hate crimes against them.
Absolutely.
We've talked about it.
And the police have been investigating all of those things, Ezra, and you know that.
No, the police have turned a blind eye to that.
That's rubbish.
The police, the police, there is an apartheid siege of the University of Toronto right now where they check your religion.
And if you're a Jew, you're not allowed to.
And Ezra, if you were listening yesterday, I'm sure you don't monitor this program 24 hours a day.
If you were listening yesterday, I said the U of T and everybody else involved have left this way too long because of that kind of behavior that is going on and because it represents an occupation of public property that is inappropriate.
I said that yesterday and the day before that and the day before that.
And the notion the police are not investigating the anti-Semitism and incidents of anti-Semitism in Toronto, you're the one that's ill-informed.
You're in a news organization, so-called, and you should know that.
They're investigating it.
There's the hate speech prosecutions.
There's a billboard truck going around Toronto right now with anti-Semitic pro-genocide messages.
That billboard truck has been driving around with impunity.
Neither the media nor the police give a damn because you're afraid.
And I know why you're afraid, because the demographics of this town suggest that the Muslim vote is very important.
I have said that.
That's why politicians are turning a blind eye.
I have seen no video as there is of the truck that you're doing.
Oh, well, you were in the news business, John.
Ezra.
When I stand up against Hamas, I suppose part of it is because I'm Jewish, but most of it is because I'm Canadian.
I don't want terrorists here from Gaza or from anywhere.
And I don't think any group should be picked on, like the Jews are being picked on in Toronto.
I wouldn't feel good if the blacks were being picked on or if gay people were being picked on.
And by picked on, I don't mean political sparring.
I mean assaults and harassment and death threats.
That's what's going on in Toronto all the time.
I think that's a reason why the police chief hates these ads.
Anyhow, we came down here to City Hall to prove a point.
And the point is, all the establishment, the current mayor, the former mayor, the police chief, all the Islamic extremist groups, they can say that this is a crime.
And I think that would scare, frankly, 99% of people.
I mean, really, if some Islamic activist was putting a $25,000 bounty on your head, and if a police chief was saying he's investigating you for a crime, sorry, I can't say that without laughing.
It is not funny.
It's just so crazy.
I have to sort of giggle when I say it.
I think 99% of people would say, whoa, danger, get out of this, turtle, do whatever.
Throw yourself upon the mercy of the establishment.
But you got to look at our name.
It's called Rebel News.
It's not called Obedient News.
It's not called whatever the boss says news.
It's called Rebel News.
And these ads, in my mind, are reasonable.
I don't agree with every nuance of them.
I didn't make the ads.
People can judge for themselves.
And as I said in my fourth interview on Anthony Fury's radio show, if you don't like these messages, roll out your own messages.
So, yeah.
Yesterday, the chief of police and the mayor said, this is a crime.
Today I'm here on their turf saying, no, it ain't.
You know where to find me.
I think that they thought I would bend the knee.
I do not bend the knee to Olivia Chow or Myron Demkew.
And the reason for that, it's not personal.
It's that we all have freedom of speech.
And I think they need to refresh their memory about the Charter of Rights.
I don't need their permission to disagree with them.
And contrary to what John Torrey, the former mayor of Toronto, thinks, he can disagree with me, but he can't send me to jail.
I'll keep on my little journey.
I wonder where I'll wind up next.
But my point of parking the truck here is: this is my country, too.
Like you might want to do an anti-Semitic thing on that truck.
Okay.
Well, I got, I mean, that's, you're making a case.
Can I engage with you?
I give you my word I won't edit it.
You gave me the finger and I waved at you and you came back over.
And I don't mind because what I said to my friend.
Throwing brick through your window.
What I said to my friend was, I'd much rather have someone give me the finger than try and send me to jail or ban me.
That's my point of view, is we should be able to.
It's up to them now, right?
I don't know.
But my point is, I don't think the cops should decide what is or isn't a legitimate political opinion.
Haven't that's what they always done?
But I'm pushing back, but I don't think the cops should be able to do that.
I'm pretty sure the cops have always done that to PPA.
This is my moment to say I'm not going to roll over for it.
All the best, man.
The power of the state comes for you.
Well, you know what?
I mean, it sounds like we almost have some common ground then.
And maybe therein lies the problem, right?
I mean, we're miles apart, but yet I think what you're driving at is okay the way you're saying it is.
I don't, I don't, I disagree with.
All right well, I accept that I.
I think there's a real crisis on this issue and there's hot points to view on both sides, and my view is, air it out.
Let the debate happen in a marketplace of ideas and let people choose.
Right yeah well sometimes uh, people choose horrible things, but you know they're, they're allowed.
I suppose this is uh, supposedly a democracy.
So, all right well listen, thanks for like.
I say good luck man, because when they come, they come heavy.
Well, thanks very much for talking.
All right well, that that was interesting.
There's a fellow who, when he saw the truck pull out, he gave me the finger and he seemed mad.
I waved at him and then he came over and and we talked a bit off camera and then we talked on camera and I don't know.
I think he in the end, I think he actually had some agreement looks like we've got a police officer here, which is perfect, because I was looking to let me see if I can go in and find the chief.
Hi, excuse me, I see you're filming me.
Can I ask you some questions?
I'd like to meet with the chief.
Is he available?
I see you're holding your phone so I know you're filming me.
Can you come and and talk to me, or or send the chief in to talk to me?
Excuse me, I I've come to turn myself in to the chief.
I'm Ezra Levant.
The chief was tweeting about me.
He said I was committing a hate crime with that truck out there, so I thought I'd bring myself here and can we just start over here please?
Just one at a time yeah, so I thought I'd come in.
Chief's probably pretty busy chasing down other billboards or something important like that.
I thought I would see if he wants me to turn myself in to be arrested or if he wants to come out and have a chat.
Either are likely outcomes or if he wants to send like he sent a cop down but she sort of ran away when she saw the camera.
I'm just sort of here to throw myself on the mercy of the law.
If you just give me one second, perfect.
I can head over to the duty desk, get a police officer to come over and discuss all those terms you just talked about perfect.
In the meantime, can I just have other...
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Do it again.
No, that's fine.
No, just a quick pullback.
Yeah, yeah.
And then you get everything right back.
We have some officers all the way down.
Perfect.
handcuffs or that information was not given to me.
I'll put my name, my cell phone which goes direct to me, my email which goes direct to me and, if you could, pass it on up the chain to the boss.
Sure, I know he's probably tweeting or something important, but he did say He wanted to investigate the truck.
So we brought the truck here.
I'm here.
Happy to come back.
And I don't know.
I'm just sort of surprised he was so butch online, but in person, he's not here.
I think I'm pretty unthreatened.
I think we can all agree on that.
I'm going to say please call or email.
Okay So you could fire this up the chain of command.
I mean, it is true.
I am unannounced, so I didn't have an appointment.
I give him that.
But I think he could have come down just for a minute.
The chief's good.
He's waiting a great operation.
But I think he could have sent someone down, even to say make it that one.
I think he wasn't on his best behavior today.
But I'll tell that to him if I return.
Cheers.
Take care.
Have a good day.
Well, look, the chief's been tweeting about me.
He's had the department chief tweet about me.
Obviously, he's talking to political leaders.
Wouldn't be surprised if he's got a phone call from Trudeau's Captain Mohamed Faki.
When we brought the truck and parked it right out front, they did send what I thought was a press officer right away.
And I saw that, so I said, oh, hey.
But she sort of ran away, but she was holding her cell phone down like this to film me, but she wouldn't talk to me.
And okay, that's okay.
Watch your step.
So I waited for more than an hour.
And obviously, they're just not going to come down.
I mean, if I were to put their best case for why they wouldn't meet me, because they're investigating me and they don't want to talk to me other than in the context of an investigation.
I don't know.
I think it's because of politics.
I think they thought that if they just threaten me and threaten people, you know, the mayor's making a threat, the department's making a threat, the chief's making a threat.
I really think that works 99% of the time.
But I'm a little more stubborn than your average bear.
But I didn't come today in a heavy way.
I brought the truck that they're so interested in.
I brought myself that they're so interested in.
And they hid.
I waited for an hour.
And they didn't even send a junior person down.
I think they painted themselves in a corner.
On the one hand, they've made so many promises to political bosses like the mayor and wouldn't surprise me if some federal cabinet ministers got in on it.
So they've really promised that they're going to go hard.
Government Falling Apart00:02:14
But on the other hand, that truck does not break the law.
Maybe in North Korea it would or China it would.
Definitely in Gaza it would, but not in Canada.
I know the law well enough.
And I actually know the specific section of law, 319, that they would try and use, which is such a high bar.
And it specifically exempts religious or debates or matters in the public interest.
I don't know.
I just, I want to say one more thing.
I was waiting up there in the sort of entry area, the reception area, that's the main police headquarters.
There's a lot of police divisions around town, but that's the main one.
And I watched people come and go all day, for an hour that I was there.
And someone came in with remains of sort of drug paraphernalia still attached to their arm.
And he was a guy who was obviously having a really rough go in his life.
And he was wearing as sort of short pants, a garbage bag.
Let me say that again.
He was wearing a garbage bag instead of pants.
He still had like a rubber band around his arm.
And I think there was even an attachment for a syringe to go in there.
And I'm not condemning, I'm not criticizing, I'm pointing out, oh my God, is this city falling apart?
We saw it at City Hall.
We saw it in the police station.
A guy with drug paraphernalia still on him, wearing a garbage bag, asking for water and help.
And by the way, the cop tried to give him advice, but this city is falling apart.
You can hear a siren in the background.
Okay, it's an ambulance.
Maybe it's a drug overdose.
I don't know.
But there is such a crime wave going on in Toronto.
I don't know if you know, but Toronto is by far the car theft capital of Canada.
I hope it wasn't an overdose, but I got to tell you folks, there are so many drug users in this city just on the street.
Crime Wave Crisis00:02:30
And by the way, the Trudeau government and the city government want to do more of that.
My point is that there are real problems in Canada.
In a lot of ways, the country's falling apart.
Home invasion crimes, which used to be shocking and used to be rare, are pretty much daily occurrences now, multiple times a day sometimes.
And for the chief of police to take his time away from other projects to tweet about our billboard and to get the police department to tweet about our billboard and pre-judge it as Islamophobic and pre-judge it as hateful before even the investigation begins is very political.
I think he has actually poisoned the case already by litigating in advance of an investigation.
You cannot trust an investigation where the police chief in advance says that's the enemy, that's Islamophobia.
How does the chief know?
He hasn't even watched the ad in question other than a very short clip.
It is all performance art done for two reasons.
Number one, to assuage the powers that be.
Mayor Olivia Chow, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister.
And second of all, and most obviously, if anyone's come to downtown Toronto recently, because if you're the police chief presiding over the Detroitification of Toronto, the collapse of this city, in terms of crime and all sorts of other problems from traffic to infrastructure to things just not working, if you're the police chief who's the concierge for this crumbling city,
wouldn't you want to change the subject too?
That's it for now, but this obviously won't go away.
You saw I left my phone number and name for the chief.
I resisted the urge to write an insulting note.
I resisted that.
I doubt he'll call.
He's a bit of a coward.
He might send some cops to my place.
I'll let you know if that happens, believe me.
Look, I'm built this way for my whole life.
I've been fighting against people who want to censor me.
And I'm not saying I'm always right in my views, by the way.
I think part of being a human is changing your mind on certain things and even getting things wrong from time to time.
What I'm saying is, I should have the right to be wrong.
Canadians should have the right to say something that other Canadians disagree with.
Resisting Censorship00:00:53
And the answer to a billboard ad that you don't like is not to call the cops.
That's what an angry two-year-old would do: smash.
No, we teach children to control their emotions.
And if it's a billboard or a political comment you don't like, get your own billboard.
Like I say, there is a pro-Hamas billboard truck in this city that the police don't seem to care about.
Run a political campaign, start a website, have your say.
Or ignore it, by the way.
You don't have to respond to everything in life.
The fact that so many people in power and so many political leaders want to silence this truck shows that we're losing not just the country we once had, but the principles we once had as a country.
That's it for today.
I'm going to go back to our office.
We'll drive in the truck, see how many hand waves we get, and see how many fingers we get.