Ezra Levant exposes governments as the top "fake news" producers, from Canada’s Bill C-63 and Ireland’s laws criminalizing skepticism—like residential school claims—to the UK’s Southgate attack suppression, where authorities jailed critics for reporting verified facts. He highlights taxpayer-funded podcasts like Statistics Canada’s $970K series (21 episodes, 229 subscribers) and Canadian Heritage’s $22K-per-episode vanity project, In Our Words, as propaganda disguised as public service. The pattern reveals bureaucratic overreach, silencing dissent while wasting millions on ideological messaging, proving governments weaponize truth to control narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
We're going to talk about government-financed podcasts.
It's crazy how many millions of dollars the government is spending on propaganda podcasts.
We'll talk to our friend Franco Terrazano about that.
But first, I'm going to talk to you about fake news and how it's being criminalized.
At least fake news that the government thinks is fake, but you and I may think it's the truth.
Hey, can I invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus, though?
That's the video version of this podcast.
And unlike the story Franco Terrazano is going to tell us, we don't get a million bucks a year from the government.
We don't get any money from the government.
So we could use your help.
Subscribe to Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of the show.
It's $8 a month.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
And not only will you get the show, you'll have the satisfaction of helping Rebel News stay strong.
That's RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right.
Here's today's podcast.
Tonight, three stories that show us the number one generator of fake news is the government.
It's October 31st, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Fake news.
I think it was Donald Trump who first used the word or at least popularized the word.
He used it to describe the mainstream media that seem to always twist his words.
But the establishment, of course, uses fake news to describe really anything contrary to their official narrative.
Basically, anyone who disagrees, your fake news.
What it does is it means you don't have to have a debate because the other side is unjustified, immoral, false, has no value, has no moral value.
You don't have to engage with it because it's fake.
If it was real, if it was a difference of opinion only, then you would perhaps have to answer questions.
By calling something fake, you're saying it's illegitimate to its root.
And of course, a lot of the fake news accusation is followed up closely by foreign interference.
That's a fake news story funded by Russia or whoever they say it is.
So not only do you not have to answer to the fake news, but the whoever has a different opinion is now their loyalty is suspect.
Fact checkers, that whole fake industry is built on the government definition of fake news, which is if someone disagrees with the official narrative, let's fact check them and denounce them, not debate them or argue with them or concede they may have a point.
If you look at the fact checkers at places like YouTube, they're built in.
If you criticize the official narrative, you will have your content taken down and be demonetized.
That's what happened to Rebel News.
Following hard on the fake news accusation and that fact checkers is the online harms criminalization of news that's deemed fake.
So first they say that's fake news.
Then they fact check it and try and denormalize it.
But if that doesn't work, then they bring in the online harms criminalization.
We've seen that very recently in Ireland.
We see that in Canada right now in the form of our Bill C63, that not only will you be fined, but you could even be jailed.
In Canada, they're creating a standalone punishable by life imprisonment crime for promoting hatred.
You can see this in action, how powerful it is.
In the last election, the 2020 federal presidential election in the United States, there was a stunning revelation rooted in Hunter Biden's laptop, Hunter Biden being the son of Joe Biden.
It was a laptop full of crazy revelations about Hunter Biden's use of prostitutes and drugs and money and credible allegations that Joe Biden himself is compromised not only by Hunter Biden, but is on the tape from foreign sources.
That Hunter Biden laptop story was considered so damaging that various intelligence agencies declared it was fake and a hoax.
And so even though the New York Post published the story, New York Post being one of the oldest newspapers in America with a very large readership, all the big tech companies at once banned the story and censored it because, of course, it was fake.
What could you do?
No one debunked the story.
They simply said it is fake and paid by Russia.
You see that even today.
You don't have to look back four years ago.
I mentioned that Joe Rogan, I was talking to Joel Pollock about this the other day.
Joe Rogan hosted Donald Trump for a three-hour conversation.
And it was so powerful.
Tens of millions of people have seen it since then.
And it really humanized and normalized Donald Trump.
And it was funny.
And for those who said, oh, he's too old, he was sharp as attack for three hours.
Criminalizing Questions00:15:01
But you can't find it.
You can't find it on Google.
As you can see, it's had 40 million views nonetheless.
But all the censorship has probably knocked that figure down from if it were, it would probably be over 100 million if it weren't shadow banned.
So I want to talk a little bit about fake news because there's three stories that I think, if you look at them individually, are interesting.
But if you read them together, it shows how this fake news engine is taking off.
Here's a story from the Globe and Mail yesterday.
And I thought this was interesting.
You've probably heard of this before.
Ottawa must combat residential school denialism by amending criminal code, special interlocutor says.
Now, you know the story, the allegation that there are mass graves at some of these residential schools where Aboriginal kids attended really from more than a century ago till about 50 years ago.
Mass graves implies that there was some massacre, a mass death that people were buried in like a pit.
But in fact, that's not what the facts were at all.
Someone used ground-penetrating radar to go over a lawn outside one residential school and found some anomalies in the soil below.
But it was never dug up, simply anomalies.
There was no images of a mass grave, no images at all other than anomalies in the soil.
It could have been anything.
In fact, there used to be a septic field there.
But the local Indian band knew they had a winner when they saw this.
They, by the way, banned any investigation, banned police from investigating, even banned people from flying drones over it.
Our Drea Humphrey was one of the few reporters to actually ask questions at the time.
Take a look at this.
In fact, she confronted the chief.
Sorry, we just had a great question.
Yeah, we're doing an update, and I did reach out to your media a few times, but I haven't heard that.
Oh, okay.
And we were just wondering, because we came to get some lee-roll of the crosses that were lined out there.
Okay, yeah, they became very, very weather.
And it was like very rough.
So we had some of our individuals go and take care of them.
Okay.
Are they going to come back up?
I don't know.
I guess in Camelus, it breaks down over time, the little wooden crosses.
And if you see just how busy that highway is, guys, it's rough shape.
It is very rough-shaped.
It was very sad-shaped.
And happily, yeah.
Do you know why the museum is still closed?
Because I wanted to kind of look at some of the archives and get some of the history and everything.
So are you recording?
Yeah.
Okay, there's no ask for anything.
What's the best way to reach you?
Because I've tried for over a year to try to connect with an interviewer or something.
Okay.
Well, honestly.
I've had like a million interviews.
but I think you were just doing like, yeah.
No, it was just a, a, a thing.
Oh, okay.
But no, I've done a million interviews.
Yeah, so I think that we should be able to ask questions about this mass graves hoax.
I think it is a hoax.
It hasn't been proven.
And the language used around it includes genocide, mass grave.
That's completely false, completely beyond what the facts suggest.
And imagine trying to criminalize it.
Let me read from the story.
The federal government needs to address residential school denialism by amending the criminal code to make it an offense to willfully promote hatred against Indigenous peoples by playing down or justifying the harms the institutions caused.
A special interlocutor's final report says.
Kimberly Murray, the independent special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian residential schools.
That's a very big business card to have that title.
Released her findings Tuesday at a national gathering held in Gatineau.
She was appointed to her role for a two-year term in June 2022 by then Federal Justice Minister David LeMetti.
This past June, her term was extended by six months.
So yeah, right there you have it.
Her mission depends on whipping up grievances.
That word denialism means that asking questions, being a skeptic, is now considered a crime.
We're not allowed to be skeptical of her.
She's allowed to be skeptical of us.
She's not called a denier if she denies our point of view.
We're called a denier, almost like a Holocaust denier, if we deny her point of view.
But look at that wording, even if you play it down.
I happen to know two people, both of them are senior citizens, who attended Indian residential schools, and both of them thought it was a very positive experience.
One of them, who's a very senior lawyer now, says there is no way he ever would have been put on that path of education and economic success and frankly social prestige of being a senior respected lawyer had he not been to this residential school where they taught him, to be candid, Western modern ways.
I'm sure there were other people who had negative experiences, but are my two Indian friends who are alumni of these residential schools, are they guilty of denialism?
Because they deny it.
They deny that they were harmed by it.
But you and I are who's really being targeted.
You're not allowed to be a skeptic or even ask questions or play it down.
Let me keep reading.
In response to those who say that outlawing residential school denialism amounts to restrictions on free speech, Ms. Gazan said there is a difference, quote, between hate speech and free speech.
Residential school denialism is hate speech, full stop, just as Holocaust denial is hate speech, full stop.
Conservative Crown Indigenous Relations critic Jamie Schmalley said in a statement that his party is reviewing the report by Ms. Marie and will carefully examine the recommendations.
By the way, denying the Holocaust is not actually a crime.
At least I don't think it is.
I've never seen it prosecuted.
And I don't think it should be a crime.
I think if someone is skeptical or has questions about the Holocaust, the right answer is to answer the questions by attacking someone who asks questions.
You're only going to suggest to them that the answer is not easily given.
But even the Conservative Party is afraid, isn't it?
You saw the answer.
Well, we're going to study these.
You're going to study.
You can't say even in advance that you're against the criminalization of a political point of view.
So that's case study number one.
That's story number one.
The Canadian government has a grievance monger paid for by you who is now suggesting it should be a crime to even downplay or be a skeptic of unproven claims such as that mass grave.
Say again, I'm sure there were episodes and incidents, some of which were atrocious, just as there are in schools to this day in white or multicultural neighborhoods.
Having certain atrocious acts committed at boarding schools, unfortunately, that's not the first, and that's not the last time that would happen.
But imagine criminalizing, asking questions about it.
Story number two: it's Tommy Robinson.
Just to recap, and I don't know how closely you've been following my journey to the UK recently for Tommy.
A few years ago, there was a Syrian refugee teenager in the UK.
He claims he was bullied by other students.
Others at the school claim that he was, in fact, a bully, threatening other kids.
Tommy said the latter, and he surreptitiously recorded the teachers all saying so.
Various teachers at the school said, Yeah, that kid was really a bully.
He was threatening people, but we can't say it on the record because we've signed a non-disclosure agreement.
We were paid thousands of pounds to do it.
Well, Tommy secretly recorded the teachers admitting all this.
Now, if I understand correctly, this information was not admissible at the trial.
And Tommy didn't actually have a lawyer in the trial who could have perhaps subpoenaed those witnesses and compelled them to testify.
So the judge ruled against Tommy Robinson.
And perhaps that was all the judge could do if that evidence wasn't admissible.
So Tommy made a movie out of his interviews with those teachers and others.
And the judge told him not to publish it, issued an injunction.
And when Tommy published it nonetheless, well, as you may know, on Monday, Tommy was sentenced to 18 months in the most notorious prison in the UK.
He'll serve nine of those months, but that's an atrocious sentence.
Now, there was no crime here.
It's a battle over when you think about it.
What is the truth?
The judge would say, and I'm paraphrasing here, the judge would say, any admissible evidence, the evidence you have is not admissible, and I can't put weight on it.
So I'm going to side with the Syrian kid.
And Tommy says, well, maybe it doesn't meet a legal test of admissibility, but it sure meets the test of, yeah, they actually said this.
People can see for themselves.
I say the Syrian kid did what he was accused of doing.
And the judge says there's no provable evidence of that.
So you have two different versions of the truth, really, don't you?
According to two different standards.
The judge would say, what's admissible in court?
Tommy would say, use your eyes and ears and listen to what these teachers say.
Well, at the end of the day, the battle over what is the truth is resolved by the government.
The government is the arbiter.
By the way, the Syrian teenager had no role in Tommy's jailing, didn't call for it, didn't ask for it.
It's just the courts that are embarrassed about the fact that they were called out on this.
So really, Tommy was sent to jail because the court said he was engaging in fake news.
But Tommy himself said the courts engaged in fake news.
Hey, what else will soon be an unspeakable truth, as in a truth you can't speak?
What else will be a thought you can't think?
And who gets to decide?
A court by court standards?
It used to be we all got to decide, wasn't it?
Well, look at this: story number three.
I don't know if you recall, but in July, there was a horrific crime in the United Kingdom.
It was the largest news story in that country, and I think I saw some coverage in this country.
In the London suburb of Southgate, three beautiful young girls were murdered, stabbed to death by a man.
Ten other people were wounded, including eight other children.
It was a Taylor Swift-themed kids' event.
They were hacked to death with a knife.
It was truly a dark day.
Immediately, the reports were somewhat confusing.
A Welsh man, a man from Wales, did it.
A Christian man did it.
Sure, he was the son of refugees from Rwanda, but he was born in Britain, a Christian man from Wales.
Soon there was a picture of him in the news, a picture of him, though, as a young schoolboy, then as a very young man, but not the picture of him as he appeared later in court.
I wonder why that is.
To this day, a picture of this young man is being used rather than a picture of the man of the age when he did the stabbing.
Now, this accused mass murderer was supposed to have a court date on October 25th.
That was a Friday, the day before Tommy Robinson's big rally in London on Saturday the 26th.
And the hearing was canceled with no explanation.
Hold that thought for a second.
Anyone who said that this killer was Muslim or was a foreigner was accused of Islamophobia.
And in fact, there were mass arrests of people who said that thing.
The country boasted about it.
You might recall that the country swore in a new prime minister.
They had elections on July 4th.
This massacre was on July 29th.
Kier Starmer, the former top prosecutor in the UK, is now the prime minister.
And he made this a huge issue.
He set up 24-hour day courts.
They arrested hundreds of people.
Here's a tweet from the federal government there, the UK Home Office, that said these criminals will face the full force of the law.
Now, if you're a lawyer or someone who knows a little bit about the law, you'll say, hang on, hang on, hang on.
These people were arrested, it's true.
But being arrested doesn't make you a criminal.
You need to be given your day in court.
You need to have the case put, and you can put your defense and you can cross-examine the witness and look them in the eye.
You can't just call someone a criminal if you're the Home Office of the UK.
But, of course, it was a fait accommpli.
Immediately, there was the punishment track, and then there was the misinformation track that this government had.
Anyone who was critical of Islam, anyone who was critical of mass immigration, seemed to be thrown in prison, including Peter Lynch, a 61-year-old, who you can see holding a sign.
I'll talk a little more about his sign.
They describe him.
Here's how the BBC describes him: asylum hotel rioter, 61, dies in prison.
Was he a rioter?
A grandfather convicted of violent disorder after taking part in rioting outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers has died in prison.
Peter Lynch, 61, was serving two years and eight months after he pleaded guilty to being part of the unrest at the Holly Inn Express in Rotherham on the 4th of August.
He shouted, quote, racist and provocative remarks towards officers and called asylum seekers in the hotel, quote, child killers.
Sheffield Crown Court heard at his sentencing.
And here's the picture I referred to a moment ago.
Actually, you could see the things he was concerned about.
World Economic Forum, Davos, members of parliament, reporters, BlackRock.
He's actually wearing a Tommy Robinson shirt.
But it turns out the murderer was Muslim.
When he was arrested, they searched his home and they found he was making ricin, a deadly substance.
And he was reading an al-Qaeda terrorist manual.
So all of the things that these people were being arrested for, for falsely accusing migrants or falsely accusing Muslims of this crime, they were quickly proved true within hours.
I mean, they arrested the accused murderer.
They searched his home and they would have immediately found those materials in that Al-Qaeda manual.
And that would have immediately been briefed to the Prime Minister's office.
But everyone kept that a secret until just a few days ago.
They jailed hundreds of people for fake news, misinformation, for saying this had an Islamic nature, when in fact it did.
Judas Silence00:03:44
And wouldn't you know it, yesterday, the UK Speaker of the House of Commons simply said no one is allowed to ask questions about this at all because it's before the courts?
Take a quick look.
I wish to remind the House that the following horrendous, terrible incident in Southport on the 29th of July, a suspect is awaiting trial, having been charged with multiple offences.
That means the House Sub-Judas resolution is engaged and references should not be made to the case.
I know that all honourable members wish to see justice done in this case.
It is therefore of paramount importance that nothing is said in this House which could potentially prejudice a proper trial or lead to it being abandoned.
I know it can be frustrating when we can see reports in the media of the matters that we are not free to discuss here.
But that arises from Parliament's constitutional relationship with the courts.
More importantly, at the heart of this case are three young girls.
We all want to see justice done for them and for their families and for others injured in and affected by this appalling incident.
Speculation about the cases, including comments made in this House, could seriously risk prejudicing proceedings.
I know that none of us would ever wish to do that.
Therefore, it will be wrong of me to exercise a waiver in this case, and members should not refer to it or risk prejudicing this case.
Of course, I understand that members have legitimate questions about the circumstances surrounding this case.
There will be no doubt wanting ministers to commit that they will come to the House and answer those questions once the legal proceedings are concluded.
I give my assurance that I will ensure there are ample opportunities to do so.
My understanding is that this trial is expected to start in January.
And if members have questions about the operation and the decision on St. Judas, St. Judas Sub-Judas' resolution, they can speak to the clerks and the Speaker's council.
In the meantime, our thoughts are with the family and friends of Bibi, Elsie, and Alice, and all of those who were injured and affected on this horrendous day.
Really, what was the last time you saw a Speaker of the House of Commons saying no one is allowed to talk about a crime?
Now, I can understand you wouldn't want to say something very specifically that could be seen to, I don't know, put pressure on the court, but asking questions like, so when did the Prime Minister know that the accused man was a Muslim convert who was reading terrorist materials?
Because for months, they accused people who said that of Islamophobia and fake news.
Peter Lynch is dead now.
He was sentenced to just under three years, but really he was sentenced to death, wasn't he?
So if these hundreds of men and some women were jailed for misinformation, which has now turned out to be true, do they get to be set free now?
I mean, obviously not Peter Lynch, he's dead.
Should others be jailed?
Should Kier Starman, the prime minister, or the others who lied to pretend it wasn't an Islamic attack, should they be jailed now?
See, this is the risk of the government determining the truth, isn't it?
Government's Podcast Gambit00:15:09
Who gets to determine the truth?
Is it the special interlocutor on mass graves?
Is it a judge who only looks at certain court-proof evidence but throws out other evidence?
Is it a prime minister who sure doesn't want his immigration policy question?
Who gets to decide what's true or not?
And if we let the government decide what's true, as is happening in all three of these stories today, do they get to throw you in prison if you disagree with their truth?
Stay with us for more.
You know what NGO stands for, right?
Non-governmental organization.
Another way of saying it is civil society.
Those are the little platoons of people who are out there making the world better, local food bank people who train seeing eye dogs.
But of course, in 2024, most NGOs are actually GO NGOs, government-organized non-government organizations.
They're sort of a trick because they are arms and fingers of government.
That's why I like our next guest.
He is, you could say, an NGO, but he's not a lapdog.
He's a watchdog.
He doesn't take a dime from the government.
I wish other NGOs were independent like him.
That way they could help hold our government to account.
You know who I'm talking about.
It's one of my favorite guys, Franco Terrazano.
He's the boss of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
And I trust him because he's an NGO, not a gongo, not a government-organized NGO.
And he joins us now by Skype.
Franco, good to see you again.
Hey, Esther, great to be on with you today.
And just want to reiterate: the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has never taken a cent from the government, never have, never will.
That's why I trust you, because I know, like us, you are loyal to thousands of individual people who chip in.
What's the membership?
75 bucks, something like that?
Oh, no, you can, if you have the means to send us a voluntary donation, you can give any amount that you'd like.
Right on.
Well, I just wanted to toot your horn because you know what?
I could count on one hand's fingers, the number of NGOs in this country that don't take dough from the government.
And boy, we need voices like yours.
Because first of all, I'm not going to learn about the things I need to know.
And if there's a problem, they'll be spending for the government instead of shining a light of scrutiny.
Let me, I want to read from your latest press release, and then maybe you can take us through it.
Trudeau government spends millions producing podcasts.
Now, podcasts, I never really understood the word.
I think it comes from iPod or something, but you could say this is a podcast.
I guess it is.
I think of it as a TV show because I used to be on, quote, real TV.
But a podcast is just people giving their opinions, covering the news.
It's like a mini internet-aged TV or radio show, right?
That's what it means.
So why is the government getting into the podcast business?
Yeah, I mean, look, there's dozens of federal departments and agencies that are spending millions of dollars, tax dollars, in recent years on podcasts.
And not only just on podcasts, that podcast that almost nobody is listening to.
You know, I can't believe I need to say this out loud with my face, but taxpayers expect the government to, I don't know, fix the potholes, process passports, not produce podcasts that only a bunch of bureaucrats and their families are listening to.
Like this is such a complete waste of money, Ezra.
We can get into the details about the absurdity of some of these podcasts, but you know what this really is?
This really is a make-work project for a bunch of government bureaucrats in Ottawa that we don't need.
Make no mistake about it.
It's a taxpayer-funded make-work project for a bunch of bureaucrats we don't need.
You know, some of my favorite podcasts, the people are smoking cigarettes, they're having a drink.
Joe Rogan famously sometimes lights up a marijuana joint.
Like they're just a place for guys and gals to chat and gossip.
And the idea that we're paying people in government to lounge around and have like locker talk is crazy.
But I want to read from your press release today on this subject.
I mean, Statistics Canada, even they are losing their nonpartisan nature.
I rely on them.
We have to because they sometimes are the only source for certain stats.
But I didn't know that they had a government-funded bureaucrat staff podcast.
Let me just read two lines from your press release.
Take A. Sayer's podcast from Statistics Canada.
I don't even know what that title means, which has 21 episodes.
Topics have ranged from gender identity to climate change and misinformation to systemic racism.
By the way, none of that's got anything to do with their mission, which is collecting statistics on Canada.
But let me just read the closing part and then I want you to tee off on this.
The podcast has racked up 229 estimated subscribers, according to records.
So they've been around for three years.
They've had 21 episodes and a grand total of 209, 229 people have watched them.
Now, in a way, this is good because that's just pure propaganda being pumped out by the government.
So it's good, but it's also such a laugh.
The millions of dollars spent by government on podcasts, and literally no one other than maybe their friends and family are listening.
Well, Ezra, I mean, you really set the ball in the tee for me to swing away, right?
But look, like also, too, the cost for this Stats Canada podcast.
That, I mean, you mentioned some of the topics.
Those topics clearly have nothing to do with gathering statistics.
But look, like this is costing taxpayers for this podcast alone, just under a million bucks, $970,000.
Ezra, I don't even know how you spend $970,000 on a podcast, but leave it to the government.
And you mentioned for almost a million bucks, they've got 229 subscribers.
So that's a taxpayer cost of like more than four grand for each subscriber.
And you mentioned some of the topics that they're talking about: gender identity, climate change, arts and crafts, misinformation, systemic racism.
There was one podcast episode where they have a drag king on the show.
They start with drag story time.
I don't know what that has to do with collecting data.
Another podcast episode was about misinformation, where they talk about the problem with giving both sides of the issue consideration.
How about this one?
They have a podcast episode about the necessity of the arts and crafts community in Canada.
That's what people do.
That's what people should do for fun.
When I was a child in kindergarten, grade one, we did arts and crafts.
That was called playtime.
You know, and I'm not diminishing it when adults like to have hobbies.
I think adults should have hobbies.
It's better than making politics your hobby.
But the idea that the government, I can't get over that $970,000.
Franco, I don't know if you've been in our studio in person.
We sort of spruced it up.
We got a nice desk and some lighting.
We have a different area there and over here.
The grand total cost for our entire studio, including all the cameras, all the computers, I think it was $40,000.
Now, and I think it looks fine.
How do you even spend $970,000?
What is, I don't get it.
At Sun News Network, we had a huge studio, three robot cameras, a five-person control room.
And I remember that cost about $1 million for a huge real TV studio.
I don't get how Statistics Canada can spend $970,000 on a podcast that 229 people have subscribed to.
I don't get it.
Like, who is this like the Arrive Can app where it's actually a few thousand bucks to make in everyone else's pockets the rest?
How do you spend $970 grand on a podcast, Franco?
I don't know how.
No, honestly, Ezra, I don't know either, right?
But there's a couple other points I just want to bring up.
Number one is like I mentioned some of the topics that they're talking about on the podcast.
Well, you essentially have taxpayers funding progressive political talking points.
Now, Ezra, look, if these bureaucrats want to, you know, make their own podcast using their own dime and their own time on climate change or misinformation, fill your boots, right?
Like if you want to go on your Saturdays and Sundays on your own dime, not on the taxpayer dime and talk about this and build up your own podcast, all the power to you, right?
The problem is, is that taxpayers are funding this.
And not even just that we're funding these political talking points, but that taxpayers are funding government podcasts that no one is barely even listening to in the first place.
But Ezra, maybe we should get into some of the other examples because this is happening department after department after department.
Yeah, tell me about the Canadian heritage.
I see you mention that.
Canadian Heritage, I don't believe there should be a Canadian Heritage Department.
I believe that we have a heritage, we have culture without government.
If anything, government distorts it.
Everyone has a culture.
Everyone has a language, has an art, has a comedy, has a cuisine, has a history.
We don't need the government to mandate that as part of being human.
But tell me about Canadian Heritage's attempt to weigh into the podcast business.
Well, Ezra, they have a podcast that they call In Our Words.
Okay.
And I wrote it down.
I want to get this right.
And the whole podcast is about preserving the history of the department through interviews with current and former staff.
So they're celebrating themselves.
So nothing about Canada.
It's like a vanity project.
It is.
It's a vanity project, right?
They're not preserving the history of Canadian heritage.
They're preserving the history of the Canadian Heritage Department.
I didn't get that.
I skimmed your press release too quickly.
I didn't catch that.
So it's just talking about how awesome they are as bureaucrats.
I did notice what I drew a circle around in red ink here was that it costs them more than $22,000 per episode.
Now, my friend Olivia works the control room and sometimes my friend Efron, and we have the desk.
I'm just trying to think how you could possibly spend $22,000 on an episode, even if you paid guests.
Real TV stations, like you go on the premier TV station news panel in Canada, maybe you're going to get $250 for an appearance fee.
Maybe.
By the way, most people go on for free.
They're just excited to have the audience.
I do not know how you spend $22,000 an episode.
Even if you super pay your staff, it's like an hour.
How did you spend $22,000?
I think someone's putting money in their pocket here.
I don't have any proof of that.
I just, otherwise my mind cannot calculate how you spend $22,000 an episode.
And I say that as a guy who's, you could say I'm in the podcasting business.
Well, Ezra, so I was curious.
So I went on Apple Podcast and I looked up, they have seven episodes.
They had 17 reviews.
So they spent $155,000 on this podcast for seven episodes for a cost of taxpayers of $22,000 an episode.
Ezra, you're asking me how some of this funding just balloons through the roof.
Well, they spent nine grand for podcast training and consultants and consultants.
Nine grand.
Podcasting, you're just talking.
You're just talking.
That's all it is.
Ezra, there's another, there's another podcast I want to focus on too.
I should get out of the podcast consulting business.
It's more lucrative than the podcasting business.
No, Ezra, we need you right where you are not taking taxpayers' money.
So another, this is crazy.
Healthy Canadians podcast.
They had four full-time employees on this podcast.
Ezra, they spent 34 grand, the Public Health Agency of Canada, on podcast strategy, editorial planning, and employee training.
$34,000.
You know what?
I'm just getting mad now.
I mean, we've had some laughs here today, but I'm getting mad.
And how many, like, is it a daily show?
Because I want to tell you just a little bit of behind the scenes.
My colleague Olivia works on this show, but she does a whole bunch of other stuff too.
Same with my colleague Efron.
This is like one-tenth of what he does.
And then this is maybe a third of what I do.
How do you have four full-time staff that I'm sure they're not putting out as much content as we are and tens of thousands of dollars in strategists and consultants?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
That's just not how podcasting is.
That's someone using podcasting as an excuse to liberate money from the government.
I'm mad when I'm hearing about that.
Make work projects.
Ezra, one other example I need to give you and your audience.
Business Unusual, a podcast from the Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Department.
Okay.
They had 13 employees working on it, including two deputy ministers and two executives.
So we're talking about people whose salary is well into the six figures working on this podcast.
I'm so mad to hear that.
What is an executive of a podcast?
I know what a podcast is.
You either say something, like I do a monologue every day, or you interview someone, you have a chat, you had a conversation.
How does that even need an executive?
How does that need 13 employees?
There are not 13.
How?
How?
I think that I think there's a lot of BS here.
And of course, this is peanuts compared to the grand scale of things.
I don't know.
I'm very frustrated by this.
I'm really glad you guys wrote the story.
You can find the whole story on the taxpayers website.
What's your best URL?
Is that taxpayer.com?
Taxpayer.com.
Check out the newsroom.
Trudeau government spends millions producing podcasts.
You got to read it.
Maybe it won't make you mad as mad as it makes me.
It makes me super mad because I know the podcasting business.
I know how lean it is.
I know there's a lot of podcasters who their only staff is me, myself, and I. Like you just, you know, really anyone with a cell phone can have a podcast.
You just put a mic on, record it.
The idea that you spend, that you have a dozen staff or that you have strategists or executives, it's such BS.
I'm so mad because I'm in the industry and I know that this BS.
Trudeau's Podcast Waste00:07:05
Last word to you, Franco.
Well, just well said.
It is BS, right?
And it's taxpayers who are footing the bill here.
Like, get no mistake about this, folks.
This is make work projects for government bureaucrats that we don't need.
And it's proof that we need to start slashing back the bureaucracy in Ottawa.
Yeah.
Well, Franco, I'm glad you guys are out there fighting like crazy every day.
And by the way, your job doesn't become any easier if and when the next election comes and a Conservative Party is elected, because then your job moves into accountability mode, where you've got to work on those guys to keep whatever spending promises they made.
So, in fact, in some ways, your job becomes even more important in the future.
So, I wish you guys well.
Folks, if you haven't been to their website yet, go to taxpayer.com.
What a great domain name.
Franco, we'll talk to you soon.
Hey, thanks so much.
Appreciate it.
Cheers.
There he is.
Franco Terzano, the boss of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
stay with us more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
The first is about our chit-chat with Premier Danielle Smith from Alberta.
Multi-Superman 2 says, simply, best premier in Canada.
Well, I sure like her.
I mean, part of that's because I've known her since we were in college.
But look, what can I say?
She's taking strong stands on everything from holding the line on taxes, especially fighting the carbon tax, fighting with Ottawa in general, being common sense-oriented on transgenderism, especially in sports.
What's not to like?
Next letter is about my chit chat with Joel Pollack.
I'm calling these podcasts chit-chats now.
Miss Sparkles and Glitter says it is truly revealing how the mainstream media in our country spun the comment made by the comedian at the Madison Square Gardens over and over, but have said very little on Joe Biden's comment about Trump voters.
That's how it is.
I mean, one stray word and the whole regime media can go to work.
I don't know if you remember in a debate, I guess this is when Barack Obama was running for re-election.
So that would have been, what, 2012?
He was up against Mitt Romney, and they were saying about how many women they were appointing.
And Mitt Romney was saying, oh, I appoint women.
I have binders full of women, by which he meant binders full of resumes of women.
That's just completely obvious what he meant.
And for the next week, the entire regime media were saying, Mitt Romney is such a sexist, he thinks women belong in binders.
They all knew what he meant.
They all knew they were lying together.
And they just chose that one word.
There's no way to defend against this preemptively.
They'll find what they want to find.
In the case you mentioned, it was a stand-up comedian doing an opening act.
Gee whiz, a stand-up comedian saying something that was a little off color.
Here's a liberal Democrat comedian with his take on it, which is, yeah, he's a funny comedian.
Take a quick look.
Raise the alarms.
The opening act, grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons.
A comedian who offered unfunny, racist, cringeworthy jokes, basically calling Puerto Ricans trash.
The most repulsive racial jokes about Latinos.
Disgusting and hateful.
So incredibly crude.
Frankly, just too x-rated to play here.
Extremely vile, so-called jokes.
Extremely vile, so-called jokes.
She name-checked my comedy album from the 90s.
Did I really?
I don't know who's AI, me or that guy.
Now, obviously, in retrospect, having a roast comedian come to a political rally a week before election day and roasting a key voting demographic, probably not the best decision by the campaign politically.
But to be fair, the guy's really just doing what he does.
I mean, here he is at the Tom Brady roast a few months ago.
The great Jeff Ross, ladies and gentlemen.
Jeff is so Jewish, he only watches football for the coin toss.
Gronk, you look like the Nazi that kept burning himself on the ovens.
Kevin is so small that when his ancestors picked cotton, they called it deadlifting.
Yes, yes, of course.
Terrible boo, yes.
There's something wrong with me.
I find that guy very funny.
So I'm sorry.
I don't know what to tell you.
I mean, bringing him to a rally and have him not do roast jokes?
That'd be like bringing Beyonce to a rally and not have...
Oh.
Yeah, and compare that to this stunning comment by Joe Biden.
Again, when Joe Biden makes stunning comments, my first instinct is he doesn't know where he is.
He doesn't know who he is.
He's not in command of himself.
So I'm always going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's just absent.
But I think he meant it in this case.
Here he is calling half of Americans garbage people.
Or Puerto Rico, where I'm in my home state of Delaware, they're good, decent, honorable people.
The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.
His demonization of scene is unconscionable and it's un-American.
Yeah, that's sort of like Hillary Clinton's deplorables, but I think it's even worse because what do you do with garbage?
Well, you throw garbage out, you burn garbage, you chuck it away, you don't redeem garbage.
At least if someone's deplorable, they have hope.
I don't know if you saw this, but Donald Trump really leaned into the garbage thing and he pulled up to a campaign start in his jet and he walked off with a yellow high-vis vest and he went straight into a garbage truck.
Did you see that?
Take a look.
250 million Americans are not garbage.
This week, Kamala has been comparing her political opponents to the most evil mass murderers in history.
And now, speaking on a call for her campaign last night, crooked Joe Biden finally said what he and Kamala really think of our supporters, he called them garbage.
No way.
No way.
My response to Joe and Kamala is very simple.
You can't lead America if you don't love Americans.
It's true.
Well, I'm very excited about how this election is going.
A lot of people on the right are optimistic.
I am scared because I think in a fair system, Trump would win.
But I know the Democrats are doing everything they can to bend the rules and pull some trickery.
We know that.
Good luck to all of us.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of our team here at Rebel News Headquarters, to you at home, good night.