Ezra Levant warns Tesla’s autonomous vehicles—like RoboVan (5–10¢/mile) and driverless cabs under $30K—could share your location, facial data, or movements with governments via vague "public safety" terms, enabling surveillance of protests like the 2022 trucker convoy. Optimus robots, priced at $20K–$30K, risk military use (e.g., Star Shield) or domestic exploitation, undermining human autonomy despite Musk’s 80% "good outcome" optimism. Legal battles—like the 45-day trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber—drain resources while Canada’s Online Harms Act expands censorship under child protection guise, targeting dissent like Rebel News. Amish farmers face liens for rejecting tech, exposing bureaucratic overreach; global instability may hinge on U.S. elections, where aesthetics overshadow policy. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello my friends, did you see what Elon Musk revealed at Tesla yesterday?
Yeah, he had a driverless cab and a driverless van.
Those were sort of cool.
But he rolled out his robots, his humanoid robots named Optimus that could chat and banter and pour you drinks and play rock, paper, scissors with you.
And he says that in the course of time, you'll be able to get a robot for your own house for less than the price of a car.
Well, that sounds pretty cool.
I can think of the benefits right away, but what about the downsides?
And by the way, what will the terms of service be?
Will it be collecting information about me?
I go through the terms of service and I'll show you those robots next.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
I really want you to see these robots and what they can do.
For that, you need Rebel News Plus.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
I really think it makes a difference in videos like this.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Elon Musk is making household robots.
Would you buy one?
It's October 11th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
shame on you you censorious bug did you see elon musk's announcements yesterday through his company tesla Some were interesting, but not shocking.
For example, he showed what a driverless taxi could look like, Tesla-style.
You can think of it like individualized mass transit.
The average cost of a bus per mile for a city, not the ticket price, because that is subsidized, but the average price is about a dollar a mile.
Whereas the cost of a cyber cab, we think probably over time, the operating cost is probably going to be around 20 cents a mile.
And price, including taxes and everything else, probably ends up being 30 or 40 cents a mile.
So, yes, and you will be able to buy one.
Yes, exactly.
And we expect the cost to be below $30,000.
That looked pretty cool, but it's not that shocking as Tesla has had an autopilot function for some time now in all their Teslas.
I think that this driverless car is just aesthetically superior to another California company bankrolled by Google, actually owned by Google now, called Waymo, which is super nerdy and very Google-ish.
So much emerging technology is just a show.
So one can be forgiven for not being able to distinguish fact from fiction.
Take this car, for example.
Can it drive autonomously or not?
The short answer is, absolutely.
That was Shweta Srivastava, senior product lead for driving behavior at Waymo.
What you're looking at is the Waymo driver in action.
Adapted for a variety of vehicle platforms, it is the most advanced, fully autonomous driving technology in the world today.
What you notice pretty quickly is that these aren't normal vehicles.
Take this Jaguar iPASE, for example.
It's been equipped with an elegant array of sensors and software, which allows it to move through the city on its own.
Yeah, I think Elon Musk has a better aesthetic, but I don't know how different the cars would be.
Tesla also rolled out a very Art Deco larger driverless vehicle called RoboVan.
Basically, a taxi that's as big as a bus, almost a kind of a mini train.
It certainly looks like freight trains looked in the 1940s.
There's a lot of opportunity to create green space in the cities that we live in.
So I think that would be quite fantastic.
Oh, and also, what happens if you need a vehicle that is bigger than a Model Y, the Reboven?
The Robovan is going to make this, and it's going to look like that.
Now, can you imagine going down the streets and you see this coming towards you?
that'd be sick so this this can carry up to 20 people and it can also transport goods So you can configure it for goods transport within a city or transport of up to 20 people at a time.
So this is going to.
The Robovin is what's going to solve for high density.
So if you want to take a sports team somewhere or you're looking to really get the cost of travel down to, I don't know, five, ten cents a mile, then you can use the Robovan.
Some people call it the Robovan, but.
So yeah.
You know, one of the things that we want to do, and we've seen this with the Cybertruck, is we want to change the look of the roads.
The future should look like the future.
That does look cool.
And those are driverless.
Elon Musk also mused about what our world would look like if we didn't have cars that needed to be parked in parking lots, but rather if it was all just autonomous vehicles whizzing around that you just ordered on demand.
So what would a post-private ownership of vehicles look like?
He said it would basically turn parking lots into parks.
So one of the things that is really interesting is how will this affect the cities that we live in?
And when you drive around a city or when a car drives you around a city, you'll see there's a lot of parking lots.
There's parking lots everywhere, parking garages.
And so what would happen if you have an autonomous world is that you can now turn parking lots into parks.
And so from you, we're taking the ng lot out of parking lot.
Now, I take Ubers a lot, as you know what that is.
It's like a taxi that's built in an app.
They're very convenient, especially when I'm traveling or to avoid the hassle of parking downtown, that's for sure.
Sometimes the cost of taking an Uber to an event is less than the cost of driving and paying for parking in a big city like Toronto or New York.
But I also really love my actual car.
It's sort of beat up now.
It's pretty old.
The car that's parked on my driveway, the car that I don't need an app to use, the car that I can drive whenever and wherever and however I want, and no one else is involved.
No tech company, no third party, no driver or artificial intelligence driver.
To me, a car is an essential part of being a free person.
It's one of the defining spirits of America and Canada too, as opposed to more European, African, or Asian ways.
How much freedom there is on the open road?
I mean, how many hundreds of songs have been written about driving on the highway and the freedom you feel?
Teslas and these autonomous vehicles are part of huge technology companies that are amongst the most regulated companies in the world.
And they're heavily regulated for political purposes, as you know.
I mentioned Google, which owns Waymo.
They also own YouTube.
That's the company that punished us at Rebel News for having videos that were too pro-Trump.
So they demonetized us.
They're the people who punished us for not supporting COVID lockdown policies that was literally part of their community guidelines.
If you didn't obey your public health officers' politics, you would be shut down.
So the company that interfered with your freedom of expression for political reasons, surely they won't hesitate to interfere with your freedom of movement for the same reasons.
I've never used Waymo and I don't really propose to, but the choice, I don't know if it's even going to be my choice to make.
Waymo and Uber have announced that they're teaming up.
They're making announcements like this one just last month.
So my point is, would I have been able to go to, say, an anti-COVID lockdown, anti-COVID mandate protest if Waymo had been operating in Canada back in February 2022?
Would they have let me go to the trucker convoy?
Would an autonomous vehicle have taken me to the trucker convoy?
I like Elon Musk a lot, but Teslas are at the mercy of their software and hardware.
Even if Elon Musk personally opposed some sort of lockdown, could he really resist a government order to identify any cars participating in a future trucker convoy?
How about shutting them off if they got too close to such a political event?
Half of all the Teslas in the world are in China.
Do you doubt they want that power over their people?
Do you think that our politicians lack the will to regulate where you can go?
They're already doing it in a sloppy way through 15-minute cities.
That's with spy cameras and barriers.
It would be so much easier for them just to program the 15-minute cities into an autonomous vehicle, don't you think?
I mean, do you think the tech companies lack the ability to do this to you?
Do you think they ever resist what the regimes tell them to do?
I'm sure you'd be fine 99% of the time, maybe 99.9% of the time, but it's that last time that counts, isn't it?
The one time that counts.
If you've ever read the terms of service of Tesla, I think they give you something to worry about.
It's not just Tesla.
I'm not picking on them.
I'm just saying they're all like this.
Tesla is a tech company.
I looked up their Canadian rules.
And let me quote directly from their terms of service.
They say, where you go says a lot about you.
Okay, thanks.
Unless there is a serious safety concern, Tesla doesn't associate your location with your account or keep a history of where you've been.
All right, well, that's a lot of, unless there's a serious problem.
Here's something that the government has said is serious.
COVID-19.
Here's something else the government says is serious.
The climate crisis.
Here's something else the government says is serious.
Disinformation and misinformation and the far right.
Oh, no, no, but don't worry.
They won't tell the government where you've been unless it's a serious safety issue, you know, like the pandemic.
I wonder if those cars can track if you're wearing a mask.
There's so many cameras in those cars.
Again, I'm not picking on Tesla.
I like Elon Musk a lot, but let me quote some more from the terms of service.
You can see it yourself.
Go online and look at the terms of service.
We may share information with third parties when required by law or other circumstances, such as to comply with a legal obligation, such as subpoenas or other court orders, in response to a lawful request by government authorities conducting an investigation, including to comply with law enforcement requirements and regulator inquiries, to verify or enforce our policies and procedures,
to respond to an emergency, to prevent or stop activity we may consider to be or to pose a risk of being illegal, unethical, or legally actionable, or to protect the rights, property, safety, or security of our products and services.
Tesla, third parties, visitors, or the public, as determined by us in our sole discretion.
Got it.
So they'll give information about you and your car and your journey and anything else they capture to the government as part of their inquiries or just if they feel it's necessary at their sole discretion.
What's this?
Are you doing something unethical with your car?
What's the definition of that?
Whose code of ethics, by the way?
Would that include, say, I don't know, smoking a cigarette or swearing or having politically inappropriate views or going to meetings with political opponents of the regime?
Who decides what's unethical?
I like ethics, but I know what my ethical code is.
I don't think it's the same as the government's ethical code, and I don't know what Tesla's ethical code is.
When they say they can do what they like for ethical reasons, what does that mean?
What does it mean for Tesla to say they're going to protect the rights of the public?
I know what an individual right is.
What's a public right, especially when it comes to my car?
They answer that question in the same sentence.
It's their sole discretion, whatever they want, really.
But hey, I'm sure it'll never happen to you.
Jobs At Risk00:15:00
Don't you worry, your pretty little head.
You live the worrying to the big people.
Which brings us, I don't know, to the latest announcement, the Real Showstopper yesterday.
Elon Musk rolled out his autonomous vehicles, but that wasn't really shocking.
What was shocking, or startling at least, surprising, was that Elon Musk rolled out humanoid robots that he says you'll soon be able to buy for your household.
He says they'll not just be great for chores, but they'll also be your friend.
So everything we've developed for our cars, the batteries, power electronics, the advanced motors, gearboxes, the software, the AI inference computer, it all actually applies to a human-right robot.
It's the same techniques.
It's just a robot with arms and legs instead of a robot with wheels.
And we've made a lot of progress with Optimus.
And as you can see, we started with someone in a robot suit, sort of dad.
And then we've progressed dramatically year after year.
So if you extrapolate this, you're really going to have something spectacular, something that anyone could own.
So you can have your own personal R2D2C3PO.
And I think at scale, this would cost something like, I don't know, $20,000, $30,000.
Probably less than a car, is my prediction long term.
You know, take us a minute to get to the long term.
But fundamentally, at scale, the Optimus robot, you should be able to buy an Optimus robot for, I think, probably $20,000 to $30,000 long time.
So, and what can it do?
It'll basically do anything you want.
So, it can be a teacher, babysit your kids.
It can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks.
Whatever you can think of, it will do.
And yeah, it's going to be awesome.
I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind.
Because I think everyone of the 8 billion people of Earth, I think everyone's going to want their Optimus buddy.
So, what will the terms of service be for my new robotic friend?
They obviously have a ton of sensors in them, electronic eyes and ears, so to speak.
And it'll be in your house, maybe even in your bedroom, your kitchen, anywhere you are, helping you, of course.
But they're not selling these robots yet, but I've seen videos of some celebrities saying they're going to get one soon.
Like the cool Cybertruck, I'm sure that fancy people and opinion leaders will be able to get these Android-style humanoid robots very quickly.
Maybe we'll learn then what the terms of service will say, but it's hard to imagine they'll be much different than Tesla's terms for their cars, which are essentially robots too, when you think about it.
Tesla makes things, they make products.
In that way, they're like GM or Ford.
But I think they really gather data, enormous amounts of data.
I really think that's what makes Tesla special and unique and modern.
They film everything.
There's so many cameras on that.
That's how they've taught their cars how to drive robotically.
Millions, I guess billions of little moments of how real human drivers stop, go, pass, slam on the brakes, honkhorns, whatever.
So the cars learned how to drive by watching human drivers.
So in that way, it wasn't like your regular Ford or GM.
It was more like your cell phone or your Facebook account, watching, Why is Facebook free?
Because you are being what's bought and sold.
You agree to share everything about your life with Facebook.
And that's really fun and convenient when it suggests videos to you you might like or makes your shopping ads suited to your own taste.
We don't mind if the spying is light and commercial like that and not too intrusive, but it is still spooky to say something and then to see an ad about what you were just talking about pop up on your phone.
But what if it's more than that?
I mean, imagine a robot in your house, never sleeping, always listening, always watching, never forgetting anything, uploading it all to the cloud so corporate can go through it at their sole discretion.
How do you feel about that?
I'm sure some people will love it.
In many homes, people already have Alexa or other devices that control systems in their house based on voice activation.
They're listening all the time, those little devices.
They have to to know when they're being ordered to do something.
It's just now the robots don't look like a little disc.
They look like real people.
Here's how some of that looked yesterday.
Optimist!
People here today.
It's insane.
It's even talking.
Hi to my friend Josh.
Josh, where's Josh?
Right here.
Oh, hello, John.
How are you?
It's crazy.
I'm talking to a robot.
From San Jose.
Probably from where you were born in Silicon Valley.
Wonderful.
Where do you live in San Jose?
Do you walk in Albany Valley or do you live in Santa Teresa area?
No, I live in Los Gatos.
Los Gatos.
Oh, wonderful.
Yeah.
Where do you live?
There's people hiking out here out there.
There is.
Where do you live?
I live in Palo Alto at the Current Club.
Biggers.
Yeah, this is awesome.
That's where they treat us.
That's where we get our bills.
And that's where we work with.
Wonderful group of people.
What's the hardest thing about being a robot?
Trying to learn how to be as human as you guys are.
And that's something I try harder to do every day.
And I hope that you will help us become that.
You want to get a photo?
Yeah, for sure.
Let's do it.
Little video.
Hey.
Sweet.
Get in a 485.
All right.
How's everybody doing?
How's everybody doing?
Doing good.
How are you doing?
I'm doing pretty good.
Nice.
I love the change.
How's everybody doing?
Doing good.
All right.
Let's step right up.
Can I have a watermelon, Fogarita?
A watermelon?
Hey, what's up?
How am I doing so far?
Killing it.
You can see the benefits, of course.
I mean...
I mean, why not have some help with household chores?
We had the Roomba that did one thing, but why not have a humanoid robot to do that?
And really, why not mow the lawn and why not paint the house and maybe do some household repair work?
Sure.
Have them go up on the roof to clean up the leaves from the eavesdrops so you don't have to risk it.
Who would object to that?
Well, I suppose a lot of landscapers and gardeners will have to find something new to do to earn a living.
A lot of taxi drivers and truck drivers will soon be unemployed by these autonomous vehicles, too.
What happens when those people are affected by automation?
What happens when a million jobs are just replaced by very happy, very friendly robots, but they're replaced?
So much of our economy is based on these jobs.
750,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada suggest that there are jobs right now that Canadians don't really want to do.
I suppose robots could be an answer to mass immigration.
Instead of having 750,000 foreigners in our country, we could have 750,000 robots.
But still, what about Canadians?
What do young people get to do on their first job or any job?
And what are the social consequences?
The friendliness of the robots last night was a great touch.
Some of them have friendly accents even.
Will this stop people interacting with other people?
Will people who are shy or socially awkward or even just lazy develop into fully developed men and women if they interact with robots?
If you treat a real person poorly, you suffer the consequences.
You're embarrassed, you're corrected, you're marginalized, you don't get what you want, whatever.
But if you abuse a humanoid robot, I'm sure it just puts up with it.
I don't know, as the robots become more and more human, I fear that we will become more robotic.
What about people choosing only to have robots in their life?
We were warned about this by Yuval Noah Harari, of all people, from the World Economic Forum.
Remember when he said that the future for most people will be useless?
He actually called people useless eaters who spend their time just on drugs and playing video games because there's nothing else for them to do.
Yes, in the Industrial Revolution, we saw the creation of a new class of the urban proletariat, and much of the political and social history of the last 200 years involved what to do with this class and the new problems and opportunities.
Now, we see the creation of a new massive class of useless people.
As computers become better and better in more and more fields, there is a distinct possibility that computers will outperform us in most tasks and will make humans redundant.
And then the big political and economic question of the 21st century will be: what do we need humans for?
Or at least, what do we need so many humans for?
Again, I think that the biggest question in maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people.
I don't think we have an economic model for that.
My best guess, which is just a guess, is that food will not be a problem.
With that kind of technology, you will be able to produce food to feed everybody.
The problem is more boredom.
And what to do with them?
And how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless?
My best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games.
You know, they say that the current generation has the least sex of the generations that have been measured, which is odd, don't you think?
Because they certainly have the most pornography in history and the most online dating apps.
There's never been more dating and situationships in history.
But I think young people have fewer real connections with real people now than ever.
The birth rate is plummeting, at least in the West.
I think maybe there's a sense of purpose that's eroding, a sense of community.
Look, I understand the appeal of having machinery and technology.
I mean, I love my smartphone, and I can see the social problems even that is creating.
High-tech has made the most average person in Canada today as rich as a king from olden times.
When you think about things like your basic medical care and dental care, the basic availability and choice of food, entertainment, travel, everything from literacy to communications.
An ordinary Canadian has a better life than a king just a few hundred years ago.
And it's because of technology in large part, culture too.
But what will these robots do to our humanity?
I'm sure people asked the same questions at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
I know they did.
The Luddites rioted and smashed the looms.
They destroyed the factories because they could see how the world was changed by them.
I suppose, in a way, you can't fight the inevitable future.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a robotic slave that wasn't immoral because the slave was just a machine, it wasn't human?
That's really the value proposition here.
But it won't just eliminate actual slaves.
It'll eliminate many paying jobs too, and it'll replace many human moments with robot moments.
And it'll all be at a kill switch if the government thinks you're in some danger of your safety.
Elon Musk is no dummy, of course.
He's the opposite.
And at least he's an American, and he generally is on the side of freedom, I think.
I'd rather have Elon Musk owning and creating these things than Communist China, I suppose, but he's pretty deeply involved in that country, too.
Elon Musk is famous for Tesla and for SpaceX, which is now sending more rockets into space than all other countries and companies combined, ten times more than the rest of the world combined.
Elon Musk's Starlink internet system is amazing.
I've used it myself.
I love it.
Lesser known as his Star Shield program.
You ever heard of that?
That's what he calls the system he sells to the Pentagon.
It doesn't get as much press.
Don't think Elon Musk hasn't been thinking about the military applications of these robots, too.
They don't just do rock, paper, scissors.
The Russian-Ukraine war was the first war where drones were used by the tens of thousands, I think by the hundreds of thousands.
I imagine it won't be too long before humanoid robots are on the battlefield, too.
Maybe that's an advantage.
Maybe that's progress.
Robotics And The Zeroth Law00:05:29
Fewer people will be killed, or maybe many, many more will be.
Elon Musk says he thinks this will all have a happy ending, or at least he's 80% certain.
I predict actually, provided we address risks of digital superintelligence, 80% probability of good, a good outcome.
Look on the right side.
The cop is 80% full.
The cost of products and services will decline dramatically.
And basically, anyone will be able to have any products and services they want.
I think that 20% he's talking about is the risk that the robots and the artificial intelligence computers decide that humans are the enemy and that we are what needs to be eliminated.
It's basically the script of the old movie, The Terminator.
Maybe the giant AI artificial intelligence system hacks all the robots and uses them to enslave us.
I don't know how that would be much different than if just the government did it, which I'm certain they will.
Remember how Christia Freeland froze people's bank accounts?
Imagine the power she could have if she controlled the robots.
Tell me how you would fight back if your household robots suddenly took orders from someone or something far away, whether it was AI or a malicious government.
I don't think you would win a fight with these metal robots, would you?
And really, they'd probably just lock you in a room in your high-tech home.
It reminds me of the terrifying final scene in the robot movie Ex-Machina.
I hope I'm not spoiling it for you.
A look in
the 1940s, the great author and amateur scientist, Isaac Asimov wrote a ton of books about robots.
As a kid, I loved reading them.
He devised what he called the three laws of robotics.
They were really philosophical laws, not mechanical laws.
I really recommend his classic book called I Robot.
I read it as a kid.
Don't watch the movie.
The movie is sort of junk, but you've got to read the book.
It's an easy read and it's brilliant.
Here's what those three laws of robotics are from his novels.
The first law: a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
The second law is a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
And the third law is a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
Isn't that a great starting point?
Very first principles.
Protect human life.
Do not take human life.
Yield to instructions from a human, except for if it would violate the first rule, and save yourself, unless it would violate the second rule.
Those are beautiful and brilliant.
It's a good starting point.
Of course, the book was the what was fun about the book, by the way, is about how those laws are implemented in various scenarios, especially when those laws are in conflict.
That's what made the book so interesting.
I like those laws, but they're not real.
That's just from science fiction.
Right now, I guess you could say there is a zeroth law before the first law and the second one.
It predates the other ones.
It is more power than the other ones.
And it would go something like this: notwithstanding any other laws, a robot will do whatever big government orders it to do.
Because that's what the terms of service say.
The terms of service are really a code of conduct for robots.
The terms of service say: you have all these rights to your robot, to your Tesla, to your Android, unless there's a matter of public safety, which we, in our sole discretion, will define.
You know, I would get a kick out of a robot helping me fix a few things around the house, change some light bulbs.
You know, I like mowing the lawn sometimes, but I'd probably prefer having a robot do it, things like that.
It would be good to have a security system that was prowling around, although he'd probably have to fight against robot intruders, come to think of it.
Amish Case Controversy00:15:48
But for me, the thing I would be most worried about is having every word, every action, every facial expression, every journey, every movement I made, even in my own home, in my own car, just recorded and shared with big tech and shared with big government.
And if I did something serious, well, then they would intervene in whatever way they wanted.
It's already bad enough with my cell phone, with my cell phone.
Don't you think?
Stay with us for more.
What are the two things that make Rebel News special?
If you press me on it, I would say two things.
The first is we have a bias towards being in the field with video cameras.
Sure, my show is a lot of pontificating from behind this desk, but I also do my best to be in the world, and our reporters certainly do.
David Menzies is my favorite example of that.
So that's one of the things that makes us unique in Canada.
Another is that from time to time, when we see something is wrong, we stop and try and fix it.
We don't just show it to you.
We're not just voyeuristic, although that is a legitimate job in journalism.
We try and make a difference.
For example, you will recall early in the pandemic when we saw the atrocious case of Arthur Pavlovsky, the Calgary street preacher, being arrested and manhandled for the crime of feeding the homeless.
They called that an illegal gathering.
Well, we jumped into action and created our fight the fines program.
Soon we had two pastors.
Soon we had 50 people.
Soon it was overwhelming.
So we worked out a plan and with an arm's length organization called the Democracy Fund, we set up a new civil liberties law firm that has Canada Revenue Agency charitable status.
It is its own entity at arm's length from Rebel News.
But as you know, we crowdfund from our Rebel News viewers to the Democracy Fund, which hires lawyers.
And over the course of time, during the lockdown, we took 3,000 cases.
That's an approximate number because, of course, it grows every week.
And I was talking to the lads at the Democracy Fund, and I thought, you know what?
It's time for an update on what they're up to because they're doing some exciting things.
Joining me now for this interview is my friend Mark Joseph, who is the senior litigator over at the Democracy Fund.
Hey, Mark, how are you doing?
Good.
Thanks for having me.
Good.
I mean, things are calmer now at the Democracy Fund than, say, in January, February 2022, when things were at a fever pitch, when we were in the darkest depths of the lockdown.
I remember you and some other staff lawyers for the Democracy Fund literally went down to Ottawa, went truck by truck, knocking on the door, giving truckers an information pamphlet about their rights.
Why don't you give me a little flashback about that?
Sure.
So Adam and I, and at the time, Alan Honor, the litigation director, we were out in the field, as you say, giving the truckers some general legal information about their constitutional rights.
And then later, when the police started charging those truckers for mischief, we took on about 30-odd clients and sort of navigated through the court system.
That's from Ottawa, or is that just from Ottawa, the 30?
Ottawa and Windsor.
That's right.
And then outside counsel took a bunch of cases in Coots, Alberta.
Chad Williamson and other lawyers.
I think they had 55 cases out there.
I'd have to check my map on that.
That's right.
Yeah.
So they took the Coots three, and they also took some truckers who were charged for regulatory offenses.
Yeah, about 50.
So it's been two and a half years more since the convoy, but some of these cases are still in the system, right?
That's right.
We still have, I'm just trying to think, we have one trucker charged with mischief still moving through the system.
In which location?
That's from Ottawa, I believe, James Bowder.
He's called the last trucker because then he's the last to be charged from that convoy, am I right?
That's right.
I mean, of course, Tamara Lich, their trial just ended, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, so we're waiting for a decision on that, of course.
But we have one remaining, still charged with mischief, still under that sort of risk of penalty.
It's crazy that they would put prosecutorial resources.
And by that, I mean there's only so many judges, only so many prosecutors, only so many clerks, bureaucrats.
And for them to put aside other real matters to go after a trucker shows that the virus may be out of the pandemic is gone, but the virus of authoritarianism remains in the body of the state.
Well, we can't speculate as to why judicial resources are being used on these matters, but obviously there are serious matters out in the general public concerning safety, sex assaults, murders, thefts.
We think that those judicial resources could be more effectively used there, but of course we don't get to make those decisions.
Yeah, it's sort of shocking.
You were at the Tamara Leach trial for many days.
The Democracy Fund lawyers sort of rotated through live tweeting what was going on.
I tried my best to be there a few times too.
What was it, 47 days?
I think it was 45, but it could be 47 days.
Like, well, let me put it this way: close to 50 days, world's longest mischief trial.
I mean, there's something wrong when, I mean, that is a big core.
That is a busy judge.
We don't need to rehash that now, other than the Democracy Fund would say there's no way that a regular person could have paid for that legal defense on their own.
I always say a poor person wouldn't have a chance.
A regular person couldn't, like we're talking about half a million dollars in legal fees.
And a rich person wouldn't.
A rich person who's worked his life to save up a small fortune, let's say, isn't going to spend it on a fight like that.
They're going to say, all right, I plead guilty.
Just let me out of that.
There is no person who would be able to fight that and win other than someone with crowdfunding behind them.
Right.
So, I mean, like a lot of things in law, the process is often the punishment.
So, you know, Tamara and Chris have both been under an incredible amount of personal and financial stress from this.
And the trial just kept going and going and going.
And it passed into 45 days.
They've got great counsel, but that costs a lot of money.
And, you know, there might be something to that that they were being punished for their political beliefs, but it's hard to say.
I want to talk about two more things with you today.
The first is I want to talk about the Amish case.
I mean, for those who don't know, Amish are Christian farmers who are distinctive in that they eschew modernity.
They do not use electricity.
They do not drive cars.
They don't use the internet, watch TV, listen to the radio.
They don't even have electric lights.
They use gas lamps.
When you visit an Amish farmhouse, which I have done several times now, on the outside, it looks sort of like a regular house.
But you are stepping back in time two centuries.
They even farm using horse-pulled plows.
And every time I tell this story, I just roll my eyes.
These folks go across the border between Ontario and the U.S. because there's other Amish on the U.S. side.
And they've been doing that, going back and forth.
These people, they keep to themselves.
They're fairly reclusive.
They actually speak German amongst themselves.
They do not interact with the larger world.
First of all, they can't because they're not going to phone you or email you or whatever.
And during the lockdowns, the Canadian border police would say, did you download the ArriveCan app on your smartphone?
And every single word in that sentence would be like Greek to someone who is living in essentially an 18th century technological world.
They don't have, what does download mean?
What's an app?
What's a Rifcan?
What's a smartphone?
What are you talking about?
And since they didn't, they were hit with an extraordinary number of fines.
All right, I think people know that, but what's the latest?
You've been seized with this matter.
You and Adam Blake Gallipo have tucked into this Amish case.
What's the latest?
Okay, so maybe your listeners know, but the first step we had to go through was to get these tickets reopened.
So that involves filing a reopening application, an affidavit that's done in the name of the person who had the ticket.
Then we had to get those sent off to the court, which is what we did.
And then we had to wait a decision to see if those tickets could be reopened because they're very old, two and a half years old.
Because the Amish weren't there to fight it.
It was like they were.
It's not like they were.
They were convicted in absentia.
They weren't there.
Yeah, that's right.
So that's a problem.
It's our position that they didn't have full information about those tickets.
And on that basis, we sought to get them reopened.
So the good news is that they went in front of a Justice of the Peace and the JP allowed us to reopen the tickets.
So now we're at the starting line.
Now we get a court date and we get a chance to talk to the Crown and hopefully convince them to withdraw our stay of the tickets.
So that's where we are.
So the first step is done.
Then we got to do the second step, which is where the hard work comes in, convincing the court or at the Crown to stay or withdraw tickets.
But there's one more wrinkle to this, and this is how these Amish folks discovered that they had these tickets because they got this ticket.
They didn't understand what it was for.
And they went about their life farming in their old-fashioned ways until one of the lads went to the bank to say, I'd like to get a loan to buy some livestock.
And the banker, who's used to dealing with the Amish, typed it in and said, oh, sorry, you have a lien against your property.
The government has put an encumbrance on your land.
We cannot lend against it until you deal with this lien.
So other Amish checked, and a bunch of them.
So it's not just the ticket.
It's that the government has taken a sort of collections step.
Theoretically, God forbid, may it never happen.
They could force the sale of a farm just to get their COVID fines.
So you don't just have to repeal the ticket.
You got to get that lien off the property.
Right.
That's the real danger here, Ezra, because as you say, the family farm is really the only asset that these Amish people have.
And it's passed down from father to son.
And so that's in jeopardy now.
They can't get a loan.
Their credit's affected.
They can't transfer that property because of the lien.
And we understand one individual actually had to sell their property to satisfy the lien.
Oh my God, I did not know that.
Yeah, it's already happened, we're told.
I am so angry to hear that.
You know, I saw a lot of comments on YouTube.
This is a land grab.
This is government expression.
And I thought, you know, it's just, it's just going to sit there.
But she had to sell his property to get the lien off there.
I mean, I am furious to hear that.
Yep, that's what we're told.
They're not a client of ours, but that's what we understand.
Speaking of clients, like it's tough to, I mean, Rebel News has some lawyers that I've never met in person.
And I feel like I know them, though, because I see them on a Zoom call.
I talk to them on the phone.
I email back and forth.
If I were to meet them, I would actually feel like I know them.
You can, in our high-tech world, get to know people without seeing them in person.
But the Amish, they don't use Zoom, they don't use email, they don't use FaceTime or Skype calls or whatever.
So to get a meeting together of these folks and as a lawyer, to be briefed by them to get them to agree to be a client and sign the paperwork, like that's a hassle.
How do you gather together a bunch of farmers who don't have phone, email, fax, whatever, get them together, explain what's going on, and get them to sign a retainer for free?
Course Rebel NEWS helps crowdfund through the Democracy FUND.
Like, just getting these folks together?
How many people does the Democracy FUND now represent?
Well yeah, I think it's over 20 now.
Um, so it's been interesting, as we have to physically go out uh, meet the elders uh, and then our job as lawyers obviously is give advice and receive instructions.
So we have to make sure that the clients in any retainer understand their situation, their legal situation, so that they can give us proper instructions.
And they don't often have the concepts needed to express themselves to give us coherent instructions, so we really have to break it down in simple terms, like a trial.
They often don't understand what a trial is because their biblical beliefs deal with things in a non-adversarial way.
Well, that's the interesting thing.
And I, when I met with their head of the steering committee that's what they call their boss out there um, he says their view is to turn the other cheek and if the government is adverse to them, they just bend the knee and they take the punishment and they don't even fight back.
And in this case, part of the convincing job was to convince them to let outsiders help them.
And I remember the head of the steering committee I can't say his name, I promised, like they're so camera shy, they didn't even want their names used.
They're so because they're pacifists.
I hate to say it.
These are the kind of people and, god forbid, no one should ever do this.
But if you punch them in the face they would turn the other cheek, because that bible says so, and you can see how such a people could be taken advantage of and how a system could steamroll them.
And so they are so conflict averse.
Half the battle was just saying, guys, you are not fighters, but this is so wrong, will you please accept our help?
And in the end they said, well, we won't do it, but if you do it, we won't say no, like it was.
And then they aren't being fussy, they aren't being prideful, they just really want to live their non-conflict life.
I think that makes them in a sense childlike in in that they need protection.
You put a child in the legal system, he's going to be torn to shreds.
You're not, and you're not being, you know, mean to call them a child.
These folks are grown-ups, but their understanding of the ways of our legal and political system is childlike and they they require outside help because otherwise they're going to be devoured.
Right look, I dealing with them has been uh interesting because they they, they seem very innocent.
They're knowledgeable about their own world.
I overheard a conversation between uh, two of the men and they had multiple ways of describing a broken wheel on a cart, because that needed to be repaired.
So they understood that intimately, but they don't understand any modern concepts in a legal system uh, because they just don't interact with it.
So yeah, it renders them very innocent.
Yeah, you know, i've really grown to like them.
They're very different.
Um, time has a whole different meaning over there.
When you, I drove out there to get some pickles, because they sell pickles and jams and stuff.
And, you know, life's at a different pace.
I think many of us couldn't really live at such a slow pace.
And we're so used to hyper interconnectivity with the internet.
I don't know if we could live just with talking to our friends and family in person.
But I'm very proud of the fact that, first of all, that a friend of the Amish, like a neighbor, alerted us to it and them to us because how else would they hear about us, not through the internet.
So I'm really excited that we're in a position to help.
We've set up a few different ways for people to help.
Human Rights Commission Concerns00:10:39
People who want to crowdfund the Democracy Fund lawyering, it's simply helptheamish.com.
And we've also made the decision as Rebel News that we're going to cover every single thing that happens in the court case.
If there's a hearing, no matter how small, we're going to do a report on it.
It's hours away, but we've decided to cover that and put resources there.
If you think our journalism on this is just as important, and I think it is.
I saw even Elon Musk was talking on Twitter about this case.
Imagine that.
If you want to help our reportage of that, go to Amishreports.com.
So we have two different funds, one's Rebel and one's the Democracy Fund.
Okay, let's get to the big news you have.
I just wanted to go through some of those housekeeping or give an update on those old cases for folks.
But just recently, the Democracy Fund published a research document on Trudeau's Online Harms Act.
That's the censorship law that is now, I think, in second reading in Parliament.
Why don't you give us an update?
What have you published?
Where can people see it?
And what's the upshot of it?
Sure.
So it's a legal brief, the online harms brief.
You can find it at the democracyfund.ca.
And really, we've taken a look at the bill to go through with a fine-tooth comb and to figure out the problems.
And there are a lot of problems.
So let me just preface by saying, to the extent that the bill deals with child protection, that's how it's pitched.
And to the extent that there are legal gaps in child protection, we don't have a problem with that.
We think there's strong existing laws to protect children, but to the extent that there's not, those parts of the bill dealing with child protection and other sexual offenses, they should be severed off the bill, debated, and then passed into law.
So that's the preface here.
But the remaining parts of the bill are problematic.
It does three things.
It amends the Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
So it reintroduces Section 13 that was repealed in 2014 by the last government.
So it reintroduces Section 13, the hate speech provision, the Canadian Human Rights Act.
The second thing it does is that it amends the criminal code to add severe penalties and a standalone hate-motivated offense.
And it introduces a new peace bond, we can talk about.
And the third thing it does, it creates a digital safety commission to regulate surveillance police online speech.
So those are the three things it does.
I remember reading the bill when it came out.
And I think the majority of the bill has nothing to do with online censorship.
For example, there's a provision to ban revenge pornography, which is if you took a video of your ex and you're going to upload it as revenge.
Well, yeah, I think everyone's against that, including Parliament, which banned it in 2014.
I mean, I think it's 10 years in prison.
So they have a lot of things in there that I think a lot of people would agree with, but it's already in force.
Many of them, for example, there's a requirement that Twitter and other social media have a block button.
All right.
Well, that's, it already does.
In fact, to sell anything on the app store, you have to.
So I think there's a lot of things in this bill that the government's emphasizing that everyone would agree with.
It's these censorship provisions that are sort of stowaways that they're sneaking in.
So if you dare object to the bill, they say, oh, you're for child pornography.
No, let's ban that.
And actually, child pornography has been banned for decades.
Don't try and call my political speech, don't sneak it in the same bill.
I think you're right.
It's got to be split apart, but it won't be because they want it to be muddled.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's the tell, right?
They refuse to do the rational thing, which is separate off the non-controversial parts of the bill that everyone can agree on, and then keep the they want it all.
They want it to go in all at once.
And I think that's indicative of their position that they really want to hammer dissent online.
You mentioned, I talk a lot about the Human Rights Commission part because I was hit by the Human Rights Commission a dozen years ago or more.
I was actually part of the sort of the campaign to have that section repealed by Stephen Harper 10 years ago.
But there is that new phenomenon of the Digital Safety Commissioner.
In fact, I think there's three new positions that are created by the bill.
And each of those positions is going to have a staff.
And the Human Rights Commission is going to need staff and investigate.
Like, this will create a literal industry.
I can't even remember what the three different digital sensors are, but that's one isn't enough.
Two isn't enough.
They're going for three, aren't they?
It's weird.
Yeah, they've got different layers of bureaucracy.
The Digital Safety Commission, which is going to police the online harms.
And they've got a digital ombudsman, and I think they have a digital safety office.
So there's three different offices involved.
It's just a massive new bureaucracy that's going to be created.
I have never encountered a real person in real life who says, you know what I need in my life?
I need someone to tell me what I can or can't say.
And I know some people don't like Twitter or social media because it gives them bad vibes.
Okay, well, we'll use that block button or use the mute button or lock down your account.
Like there are so many tools that a user has if they're shy, if they're introverted, if they're private, if they don't want to, you can mute certain words.
Like you can put yourself in a bubble wrap cocoon on any social media app.
And I know this because otherwise you wouldn't be able to sell it on the app store or the Android store.
I've never heard a real person say, I want someone else to make those decisions for me.
I hear people say he should be banned or he should be banned, but I've never heard anyone say, I want someone to be the decider for myself.
I'd like to delegate my political decisions to the government.
I've never heard that.
I think it's a self-serving thing by a government that wants to silence critics and by an industry that's looking for a perpetual money-making scheme.
Yeah, look, the government's position is that there are seven categories of online harm.
And the four that we have no problem with are NCDII, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, CSAM, the child obscenity, content that induces a child to self-harm, content used to bully a child.
But those four are pretty well protected in the criminal law.
I couldn't imagine a single person opposing those.
Right.
So those are the four categories that aren't that controversial.
I think are covered mostly by existing laws.
But there's three others.
There's content that foments hatred, content that is violent, extremism, or terrorism, content that incites violence.
So those are the three other types of online harm.
And they're very ill-defined, which obviously leads to overbroad applications.
So that's really where the rubber hits the road.
And we think that the way the government has defined those terms is going to lead to abuse.
I believe that reading the Human Rights Commission part, the Section 13 part, where you can make a complaint against someone who has published something likely to cause detestation or vilification.
Those are their words.
The old law used to be likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt.
That was the old rules.
That's so vague.
It's so subjective.
It's a subjective test.
You say something that is likely to maybe cause him to have hard feelings about him.
I think that law is tailor-made to go after rebel news because it's so vague, because everyone is guilty of likely to causing hurt feelings at some point in their life.
It's not like a concrete test.
Did you stab him or not?
Did you rob the bank or not?
It's did you something, did you do something likely to cause hard feelings?
I feel that they're going to come for rebel news pretty much right out of the gates.
Other than being hit with a complaint, do you see any avenue by which rebel news can go out there and fight this law?
Obviously, we can't fight it until it's actually enacted.
Like you can't challenge a law that's not on the books.
If this law passes as it is, how would rebel news fight other than being victimized and fighting back?
Is there any way we can get before the courts other than being a victim of this law?
Well, I mean, a lot of the law is going to be buried in the regulations made by the Digital Safety Commission.
And those regulations haven't been written yet.
So what will happen, say, you get a notice that your video contravened or comprised one of these online harms.
And then if you object, presumably you go before the commission.
So it's a regulatory commission, administrative tribunal.
And then you make your arguments there.
You say, no, this content did not foment hatred, you say.
And they say yes or no.
And if they say yes, it did, and we're sticking by the takedown, then you have to go for what's called judicial review.
So this could take years.
And again, it's the process of the punishment.
So in the meantime, no digital platform is going to risk losing 6% or 8% of their global revenue up to $25 million or more on the chance that they're going to be vindicated.
They're just going to pull it down.
And then you're going to have to fight it before an administrative tribunal, which could take years.
And you want judicial review.
This is another couple of years.
So that's just going to cave.
And it's going to be difficult.
I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
It's going to be very difficult for Rebel News or any other dissenting news organization to fight this.
You know, I forgot about that part.
It's not just fines for users like us.
The platforms are on the hook for, I think you mentioned it, 8% of their global revenue.
So Canada is saying if Twitter doesn't follow the rules, they have to pay a fine of 8% of all the money they make in the world, not just in Canada.
It's crazy.
We have to fight this.
I think this is part of Trudeau's obsession with controlling voices he can't convince.
He wants to silence them.
I'm glad the Democracy Fund is out there fighting.
People can see this legal brief at thedemocracyfund.ca.
Trump's Mean Tweets Matter00:04:12
Mark Joseph, great to see you again.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
Stay with us more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Lug says, blonde muscle guy knows what he's talking about.
And the ponytail guy with the hat at the end hit the nail on the head.
You know, they were such interesting characters.
I was just saying to my family that you go to a place like Venice Beach, and I was just there on my way to James O'Keefe's movie review, premiere, is you go to an interesting place as a tourist, and you might chat with a few people, you know, if you bump into them, say a few words here or there, chat with a waiter or waitress or something.
But if you go to a place like Venice Beach, you're not going to talk to 30 people.
That would be really weird.
But if you have a microphone in your hand and you ask him a question about politics, you'll talk to 30 people and you're not going to make 30 friends, but you're going to have 30 fun interactions.
I had a wonderful time there.
It reminds me that, you know, Americans are super friendly.
And I think sometimes Canadians is sort of a snobbery.
Oh, we're friendlier than them.
No, we're not.
I think Americans are friendly.
And I was in California and people courageously talked to me about being for Trump.
That was another surprise for me, too.
How many Trump people there were, including how many African Americans were for Trump?
And by the way, I was in San Francisco a couple of days ago.
We're going to have some videos from there.
In some of the poorest parts of San Francisco, people are sick of the Democrats and they're for Trump.
They just are for someone who's going to bust the current system because it's not working.
Anyway, I enjoyed meeting those guys too.
It was quite an interesting time.
I mean, listen, California is decaying, but there's still some wonderful people there.
And I met 30 of them in Venice Beach.
John Wheeler says, three more weeks.
Let's go Trump all the way.
You know, I love being an optimist, but I have to keep my hopes in check because otherwise it's going to hurt so very bad if he loses.
I remember in 2016 when he was winning, and I refused to go to bed until it was certain.
I remember Florida was really on a knife's edge.
Remember that?
I did not go to bed till like 3 a.m. or later because I did not want to go to bed happy and wake up to disappointment.
So I stayed up until I was sure he was going to win.
Boy, that was a great night.
I got to say, not everyone likes Donald Trump, but whenever I press them, it's largely for personality reasons or aesthetic reasons.
You know, if you are a true left-wing liberal, and I met a couple of them in California, of course you're going to be for Kamal Harris.
You'd be for any Democrat over any Republican.
But the chief opposition to Trump I find in real life is people who just don't like his class, his style, his banter, his aesthetic, his meanness they see.
I tell you one thing, the world could use a few more mean tweets if that meant we had a strong hand on the tiller.
I think that countless lives have been lost over the last four years.
Do you agree with me that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had Trump been re-elected?
Well, the proof's in the pudding.
They invaded Ukraine before Trump was president and after Trump was president, but they didn't dare do it when Trump was president.
That would have saved, what, half a million lives there alone?
Do you think that Iran and Qatar would have dared to have the October 7th attack in Israel if Trump was the president?
I don't think so.
And China's moves to push Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines.
I think that because people didn't like his mean tweets, and I think there was some tilting of the playing field in the last election with mail-in ballots in particular, I think literally millions of lives were lost because of that American choice.
And of course, I want Pierre Polyev to beat Justin Trudeau, and I believe that will happen.
And that'll have a big effect on our lives in Canada.
But perhaps an even bigger effect on the world will be what happens in America in less than 30 days.
That's why I'd like to encourage you to watch our new reality show that we're rolling out with Avi Yamini.
600 Police Officers Short00:01:37
Did you see that?
Avi has come from Melbourne, Australia to San Francisco.
That's where I was going down there to meet Avi.
And for the next month, he's going to be crossing the United States in an RV with our driver, Lyndon, and our videographer, my buddy Lincoln.
So the three of them are going to be in this RB.
They're going to sleep in the RV and cook in the RV and go from town to town, sort of a reality show, doing news and politics and interviewing people and streeters, making their way from San Francisco all through America and then winding up in Miami in the end.
So I'm excited about that.
You can follow it at Abby Across America.
And let me end with a little clip that Abby made just for that purpose.
All right, everybody.
Have a great weekend.
We'll see you on Monday.
Happy Thanksgiving.
And you know what they say?
Keep fighting for freedom.
So with everything going on in this crazy city, at least we could see they got their priorities right by painting the crosswalk in the colors of the transgender flag.
We're in the heart of the San Francisco neighborhood called Tenderloin.
There are drug addicts lying in the streets.
There is crime that is so pervasive, the police don't even respond to it.
We spoke to a cop who said there's 600 police officers short.
We're 600 short.
Everything is dilapidated.
Infrastructure is crumbling.
But the public policy priority for this city, which has had a Democrat mayor for 60 years, is to have a whole team put down transgender crosswalks.
If you want to imagine what America will look like under Kamala Harris, look at what her hometown looks like.