All Episodes
Feb. 28, 2025 - Rebel News
40:27
EZRA LEVANT | Canada's media party feels threatened by the independent press

Ezra Levant and Candace Malcolm critique Canada’s media party, a $1.5B CBC-backed clique, dismissing legacy outlets like the Globe and Mail while highlighting Juno News’ 400M+ views during the 2022 trucker convoy. Malcolm warns of Trudeau’s debt surge, COVID spending, and 40% bureaucrat expansion, comparing it to 1990s economic collapse, and questions Pierre Poilievre’s resolve on defunding the CBC. They also expose immigration fraud—4.9M temporary visas expiring by 2025—and rising GTA crime, linking media narratives to Liberal polling gains. Independent journalism must push back against regime propaganda to prevent a "failed state" or Carney-Singh coalition disaster. [Automatically generated summary]

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Time Text
A Conversation with Candace Malcolm 00:02:20
Hello, my friends.
Great show today.
You know, Candace Malcolm is a brave person.
I know this because she has chosen the same career path as me.
She's the boss of an independent, non-government-funded journalism organization called Juno News.
She actually found a True North before that.
We'll have a great conversation today to figure out how to be a free journalist in a authoritarian country like Canada.
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All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, a sit-down with our friend and competitor, Candace Malcolm from the new Juno News.
It's February 27th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Subsidized Competition Pain 00:04:42
You know, I'm not complaining because I love doing it, but it is hard to be an independent journalist in Canada.
It's hard in a number of ways.
I mean, all your competitors are subsidized.
Imagine that.
How on earth could you possibly compete against the CBC State broadcaster a billion and a half dollars a year every year, let alone all their assets, their offices, their huge staff?
How can you do it?
And it's not just them.
It's the so-called private media too.
So there's the financial discombobulation, but there is also a clubbiness to it.
For years, I've used the phrase the media party because they're a club, a clique.
They're like-minded.
They have a similar party line.
They share the same views and ideology, and they enforce it like a political party enforces discipline on its members.
So too does the media party.
If anyone asks questions that are too prickly, they find themselves on the outs.
There's not a lot of people who are too prickly.
I think of Holly Doan and her company called Blacklocks, but they have been shunned and shoved out by other people in the Ottawa Press Gallery.
So you got to respect someone who's willing to say, yeah, that's for me.
And I'm not talking about myself.
I'm talking about the fact that over the last 10 years, Rebel News was born in 2015, we just turned 10, over the last 10 years, there have been other hearty and hearty souls who've said, long odds, long hours, no respect from our peers, sign me up.
And one of those people is our friend Candace Malcolm, who created True North and now a new project called Juno News.
And I hand it to her for braving the hurricane of opprobrium from the mean girls in the regime media.
Candace Malcolm joins us now.
How you doing?
I'm great, Ezra.
Thank you so much for having me.
Oh, you're welcome.
You know, it's tough fighting against competitors who are subsidized.
But I think sometimes there is a bit of psychic pain from being disparaged and dismissed from people because you dare ask different questions.
And I mean, I don't have an inferiority complex towards the CBC or the Toronto Star, but it sort of bugs me that they claim to be the taste makers, trendsetters, arbiters of what's good journalism or not.
It pains me not because I crave their approval, but because they're wrong and it's an outrage to me that they get to set the standards still in so many places.
How do you feel about being a bit of a media tycoon yourself?
Do you feel that way at all?
Or are you impervious to the hurt feelings?
No, I don't get hurt feelings.
I think I'm way beyond that now, Ezra.
And, you know, I used to work in the legacy media, so I know what it's like on the other side.
And one of the criticisms, we have the criticisms.
I used to say the three B's, right?
They're biased because they are all left-wing.
They're bought and paid for because they all get subsidized by the Trudeau liberals.
But I think their worst sin is that they're boring, that they all have the same opinions and that they're very milquetoast and that they don't want to ruffle any feathers.
And so when they interact with people like myself and probably even more so with you, they get sort of like overwhelmed and they don't like the fact that we add a little bit of color and a little bit of flair to our political analysis.
And really, I mean, to me, the only thing I find disheartening, Ezra, is the fact that anybody still watches.
I know the CBC's views are way down that they're going to get subsidized no matter what, as long as there's a liberal in office.
But I think that it's down to like single-digit percentage of Canadians that actually tune into the CBC at all.
And I think that the newspapers, the big ones, would be bankrupt.
We know this.
We can see their financial data because they're public.
The post-media and Toronto Star, they don't make money.
They're not good businesses.
And so they need the bailouts.
They need the bailouts.
I think the reason is just because they haven't figured out a way to communicate to Canadians in a way that they like.
Nobody under 40 watches any of the legacy media at all.
Everybody gets their news online.
And it's interesting to see, I think there's been a proliferation of independent media because, you know, you really paved the way after the death of Sun News Network, a place where I worked as well.
And, you know, I had a lot of fun working at the Sun News Network.
And I was sad when Sun failed, but then I was really excited to see what you had built.
And you proved the business model.
You proved this idea that Canadians are very willing to pay for news.
It's not this idea that they need government funding because otherwise who will pay for local journalism?
Globe vs. TikTok 00:05:21
It's just not true.
And there have been a lot of people following in your footsteps, Ezra, to create things like the Western Standard, like True North, even post-millennial.
And even now, in the last five years, it's not just companies, right?
You see independent creators.
You see these really creative people on TikTok and YouTube reacting and telling the story to their audience, mostly like young men in their teens and 20s, I would say, propping up these big, big YouTube accounts and TikTok accounts where they are being informed.
They are being told the story, but just not from the perspective of the Globe and Mail and the CBC.
And I think that that makes the reporters and the bosses at those companies, at the Globe and Mail and at the CBC and many others, it makes them angry.
It makes them frustrated.
They lash out.
They use derogatory terms to describe us.
They try to marginalize us.
And it's just not working, right?
They've used the same slurs against people like us for so long that it just doesn't mean anything anymore.
Like Andrew Coyne called my organization far right in his column the other day.
And to me, it was just kind of like pathetic and sad.
It's like, if you consider me far right, I'm pretty much like as mainstream as it gets in conservative circles.
I moderated the 2022 debate, the conservative debate.
I was a moderator.
I interviewed.
Pierre Polyev just last week on my show, right?
We had a long form sit-down interview where I asked him all the questions that conservatives want to know, right?
So if you believe that someone like me can be called far right, it's like, well, then the whole party, then half the country is far right.
That word doesn't mean anything.
And again, it just goes to show how kind of deranged they are, not just about Trump, you know, they're deranged about Trump, but they're deranged about the whole new world that we live in.
You know, I think about Andrew Coyne sometimes because 20 years ago, we were buddies.
I looked up to him.
He's a few years older than me.
And fast forward to today, and he has gone completely nuts on Twitter.
And I think part of the reason is 20 years ago, the established media had such a monopoly.
So if you wanted to be a pontificator, a pundit, a guy with quippy hot takes, you had to somehow get through those barriers to entry and work your way up to the top of really a handful of media companies, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, maybe there's a daily newspaper in some cities.
And then there was such a small group of you.
And so because of that, you had all the attention.
But now, Andrew Coyne isn't particularly thoughtful, smart, funny, creative, independent.
Like he has such a standard, boring view.
I think part of his rage, and he's gone totally nuts, is that he has to compete against all these TikTokers and Instagrammers.
And he doesn't have the luxury of having them, you know, barred from the guild.
Like they used to be, they actually used to call themselves the craft or the guild, G-U-I-L-D, like they were some medieval society who knew the secret ways.
I think there's a rage there because, you know, you don't have to listen to Andrew Coyne.
You can be your own pundit.
And you're right.
TikTok has actually made it so you can earn a living off that kind of thing.
I don't even.
Go ahead.
Well, I was going to say that there used to be a criticism of the right maybe 10 years ago that we didn't do a good job policing our own in terms of some radical voices found their way into our midst.
And that, you know, there was a criticism that you couldn't really tell the difference between who was on the far side of the right and who was more of a center-right person.
I feel that way about the legacy media and the left, right?
Like I get the deranged criticism from fringe people like Rachel Gilmore or Press Progress.
You know, they really hate us.
And it's like they're kind of creepy and obsessed with us, right?
Like they'll do long form podcasts about me and my family.
And like Rachel Gilmore will put up multiple TikTok stories all about me.
And it's twisted, right?
And it's like, okay, I guess she has her audience and that's what she does.
But then I see and hear the same criticisms from people in the Toronto Star, people like Chantal DeBear and Bruce Arthur, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail.
And it's like they're all saying the same thing.
And you can't really distinguish between the fringe far left and the sort of mainstream globe and mail in 2025.
It's kind of wild.
You know, it's true.
Over the course of time, I've sort of stopped caring about what they say.
And one of the reasons for that is I know that on any given day, we could have a million views on a particular video.
And when I look at some of the efforts from the regime media, it's a fraction of that.
I'm not saying every day we beat them.
I just, but I don't even check anymore.
To me, my fondest month, and I tell our team this all the time, was February 2022, the trucker convoy in Ottawa, because on all platforms, we had 400 million views and impressions that month, which is more than what the CBC claims to get on any given month from their digital assets.
And just to know that on the one month that counted, because we were on the ground, we beat the state broadcaster.
After that, I sort of stopped checking because it was like achievement unlocked.
Juno News: Opinion and Facts Separated 00:05:25
And I mean, I check out the CBC just if I need to get mad or something, but I really don't think they're trendsetters and tastemakers other than they claim to be.
So when I talked about, you know, the pain of being shunned by, like, for example, our reporter, David Menzies, he's quite a character, I grant you that, but he was arrested five times in 2024 on every occasion for doing journalism, not for assault, not for trespass, doing journalism.
And I think, where's the Canadian Journalist for Free Expression?
Where's the Canadian Association of Journalists?
Where's Amnesty International?
Where's Penn Canada?
Never did they speak out.
So I think they're fakes and phonies.
All right, I'm ranting.
I want to talk to you actually about your new thing, Juno, J-U-N-O.
I saw your announcement with our alumnus, Kian Beckstey, that you're starting a new project.
And I was signed up to both Counter Signal, which is Kian's shop, and True North.
So now I'm getting emails from Juno.
And I bet our viewer, a lot of our viewers subscribe to you or Kean also.
So they're probably wondering what I'm wondering, which is what is Juno?
What's the difference between it and True North?
And what do you hope to do?
And I'm getting a lot of emails, which is great, but help me understand what your plans are.
Yeah, sure.
Okay.
So I'll just go back.
I started True North in my living room all the way back in 2016.
Ezra, I came on your show and announced it.
And back then, it was a think tank.
And my whole idea was that I was going to write reports on immigration, try to encourage the government to clean up their immigration policies.
It kind of merged and pivoted over the years and became a media company.
And one of the things that I always heard from our supporters and from our fans was that they just wanted more journalism.
You know, the opinion stuff was great.
I was an opinion columnist in the Toronto Sun for many years, and they liked that.
They liked the podcast, but they really liked the written news, the written reports.
And I saw that even among all of the independent media outlets in Canada and the more conservative ones, we didn't have a great news source.
So I wanted to turn True North into basically the equivalent of the Canadian press, a wire service that produces straight news, that doesn't do podcasting or opinions, but just writes the news, informs Canadians, gives them the facts, but tells the stories that you're not going to see in the Canadian press that you're not going to read about in the Edmonton Journal or the National Post.
And so that is still the idea for True North.
And we're in the process right now of trying to apply for a very specific government program, not to get funding, but just to have the correct certification.
It's called an RJO, a registered journalism organization, and it would allow us to be a charity that does news.
So True North is a charity and part of what we do is news.
But if we got this RJO status, we could devote the entire resources of True North towards journalism.
We wouldn't have to worry about the CRA.
And so we are in the process of that.
And so while that is happening, the best thing for True North is for me to step aside and not be part of it because I don't want my opinions, my controversial, sometimes outwardly conservative, social conservative views to muddy that process and to affect it in any way.
So I decided that I was going to take my podcast and my opinion journalism and do it separately.
And that is when I came across Kian Bexti and we said, hey, why don't we join forces?
Why don't we, you know, he's in Alberta.
I'm in Ontario.
Why don't we merge together, use our resources, and create something bigger, especially coming up to the election.
So we decided to join together to launch Juno News as a subscription-based news service so that it can be full of all the opinion that we want.
We don't have to worry at all about the charity rules and anything about that that we're used to at True North.
So basically, Juno is the publisher.
Juno is the platform.
And TrueNorth continues to exist as a news service.
So basically, the idea is it's kind of like the Canadian press, an independent, alternative Canadian press.
And then you can get that news through Juno.
So if you subscribe to Juno, you'll get all the news from True North.
You'll get my Candace Malcolm Show podcast.
And you'll get everything from Keyn Bexy and the Countersignal all on one platform.
You just have to subscribe once and you get absolutely everything.
So I get that it's a bit confusing.
I think part of it is because of the Trudeau government, the way that they've changed the rules, and we have to jump through all these hoops and everything like that.
But basically, the bottom line is juno news.com is where you can get all of the information that you've always trusted from True North, plus all of the sort of edgier, more fearless brand of journalism from Keynbexy.
Got it.
And I don't want to ask a dumb question, but I just, I'm not sure if I got it.
So will Countersignals still stay as its own website?
No, so it's going to be kind of folded into Juneau.
We're still working on that.
But if you go to Juno News, you'll see there's a tab for the Countersignal.
And in the next coming weeks, months, it will all be kind of merged together onto one.
Sure.
I mean, I know I'm going to find out in real time because I'm getting emails from the both of you.
I just, listen, I wish you luck.
It sounds exciting.
I love the name Juneau.
Of course, the beach in Normandy where the Canadians helped liberate the, and of course, it's also the name of our music awards, our national music awards.
Okay, well, I think I understand that, and I wish you good luck.
Defund Cbc Controversy 00:15:43
And the government does have so many rules and processes and bureaucracies to regulate journalism, not just the RJO, and we applied for the QCJO and we were denied.
Imagine the government saying who is or isn't a journalist.
That's sort of gross.
But it's not just that.
I mean, I don't know if you remember, but in 2019, I wrote a book called The Libranos.
And the government said I had to register that with Elections Canada.
There were 24 books in that election campaign about Trudeau.
Mine was the only one that was investigated.
And they fined me.
I think it was $3,000 because I didn't register with the government.
So I think there's too much regulation.
The idea that a government can tell a book author or a journalist what they're doing is or isn't legal journalism feels very Soviet to me.
I agree.
Well, I had Pierre Polyev in a sit-down interview and I asked him about this topic.
I said, are you going to defund the CBC?
Are you going to pull out the $600 million media bailout?
He didn't answer the second question, which was interesting because I think in the past he had said that he was going to defund it.
Now he said that he wants to depoliticize the process.
And to me, it's obvious why, because I'm living through it.
I'm going through it.
There are these panels that determine whether or not you're a journalist.
I mean, you've gone through it as well, trying to get that qualification to be the qualified Canadian journalism outlet.
I mean, it is all sort of Orwellian.
Anyway, Polyev said that he was going to depoliticize it.
And interestingly enough, the left interpreted that, Ezra, as somehow Pierre pledging that he was going to fund Juneau and the Rebel, which is not what he said at all.
But, you know, in the twisted minds of those journalists, any change to that system that could somehow benefit groups like ours is so offensive and wrong that they were basically lighting their hair on fire over it.
It's not what he said at all.
But the point still remains that it's a very convoluted, complicated system that we have to adhere by, right?
It's the rules of how our organizations are structured.
And it has been deeply politicized by the Trudeau government.
Here's that clip from your sit-down with Pierre Polyev.
You've been outspoken.
You've said that you were going to defund the CBC.
I believe that you said you're going to remove the $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau created to fund the legacy newspapers as well.
Does that concern you that the media is just not going to give you a fair shape?
Well, the traditional mainstream media has always been totally liberal.
I mean, there's a few exceptions, but by and large, they will just regurgitate whatever the Carney Trudeau liberals say.
And in all of the last, all of the last six or seven elections, they have campaigned almost openly for the liberals.
So I would not expect it to be any different this time.
And so just to clarify, would you get rid of that $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau gave to newspapers?
We are going to be cutting back on that year.
You'll have to wait for our platform to get the details.
We have to depoliticize news media finance because right now what happens is that there are subsidies that go to favored media outlets that CRA designates, and then there's not funding for others.
And of course, the worst example is CBC, which gets this enormous subsidy to do largely what Canadians can get elsewhere.
Canadians can get digital media, videographical media, anywhere else, and yet they're paying a billion-plus for CBC to do that.
So I think those are examples of where we need to cut and we need to defund the CBC and have an independent, self-supporting media that can keep Canadians informed.
You know what's funny is whenever there's some new government agency to regulate the media, like this decision if you get these statuses or not, and it's packed with liberal friends of Trudeau, some wise people on, I see it on Twitter, say, beware of, you know, and the media cheers.
And people say, beware of this when the government changes, because if you have a media czar right now who is left-wing and shoveling money to all their left-wing friends, get ready for when a conservative government takes over and fills that position.
And I always joke that I'm ready to serve if called.
And I mean, I should tell you, Candace, I don't know if I would leave Rebel News for anything because it's sort of my home and we built it up.
But if I was called upon by my prime minister to serve my country by being the chair of the CBC, I would think long and hard about it.
I just might do it.
And I would regulate and lead that CBC in a way that maybe the liberals would want it defunded and privatized.
I'm just daydreaming in real time here.
I guess what I'm saying is the thing about censorship and funding, which you mentioned the left-wing group squawking about, they're really giving away the game.
They want funding and subsidies for politics, just only their politics.
Right.
And I think that they are deeply concerned because, you know, we have a principled position that we don't believe that journalists should take money from the government.
I mean, that used to be universally held across the board.
But what if we didn't hold that position, Ezra?
What if we didn't?
What if we said, okay, all's fair in love and war?
If Pierre Polyev wants to defund the CBC and fund Rebel and Juneau instead, well, I'm here for it.
Go ahead.
I'll take the billion dollars.
Why not?
Right?
The left is counting on us not doing that.
But what if we just flipped the switch and said, no, okay, well, let's give us 10 years to shape the culture and give us all the money.
I think that that would truly terrify them.
I would love to see you as CBC president.
I don't know if you'd burn the place down.
I don't know if you'd burn the place down or if you would just fire everybody and bring in normal, real Canadians and have the opinions of the people watching right now shared for once, rather than the high-produced, high-production value, multi-million dollar slur campaigns, basically, trying to paint the truckers as terrorists or trying to paint any number of causes as nefarious, which is what the CBC sort of does professionally.
And I think it would be really interesting if conservatives started playing by the same rules that the Liberals play by and hold themselves to.
Yeah.
You know, Pascal Saint-Ange, who's the new Heritage Minister, said she wants to practically double the CBC's budget and not for journalistic reasons.
She says it's for fighting fake news and disinformation.
So she's acknowledging it's a weapon, it's a campaign organization.
Enshrine in the law, enshrine in law the role that CB Serado Canada plays in the fight in the fight against disinformation to support the public, especially in the current context.
And this refers directly to some of the recommendations that were made by the Foreign Interference Commission, which repeated how important it is that Canadians can rely on Canadian sources of information to be more resilient and to understand the patterns that other countries use to disseminate propaganda or disinformation to influence how we live together and our political context.
And this is why I propose to anchor in CB Serado Canada's mandate its role in helping the Canadian population fight against disinformation and understand fact-based information.
Every year when the CBC comes out with its new annual report, it astonishes me that their viewership is falling.
How do you fall when the population of the country grows so fast, when you've got so much assets and resources, and everything is moving like I just don't know how CBC's viewership can be lower today than it was, especially on their flagship shows?
It used to be 20 years ago that you would regularly get a million views of the National and the Journal and Rick Mercer's show.
Now, I don't know, they're lucky to get a quarter million.
In fact, they hide their viewership.
I don't know how you can be that bad, but I think it goes to what you said.
Biased, bought, and boring.
And I think people just, we started talking about, you know, the CBC, and I just, early in our conversation, I just think no one's watching.
It's so it really feels like a state broadcaster.
Hey, let me ask you what you think about Pierre Polyev's commitment, because you said his language sort of changed a little bit about media funding.
I think the CBC defunding promise, other than its carbon tax promise, is his number one promise.
It's like Donald Trump saying, build the wall.
He says it at every speech, at least until recently, I don't know.
It's the biggest applause line.
And he sort of lives it.
Like he pushes back on the CBC all the time.
I love it.
But I'm afraid that he might not carry through with that if he takes office.
And to me, that's a real litmus test of if he can, if everything else he says he's going to carry through on.
It's also a suicide, like a survival issue.
Stephen Harper did not take care of the CBC, and so it took care of him.
Are you worried that Pierre Polyev's going wobbly on this stuff?
No, I'm not.
Ezra, I think that the Conservatives have learned a lesson, right?
Aaron O'Toole ran for leader of that party, and he was supposedly the true blue option.
And one of the things that he said was that he was going to eliminate the carbon tax.
And then during the election, Aaron O'Toole changed his position, adopted a more liberal position, and said that he was going to keep the carbon tax.
It was just going to change a little bit.
And I think that conservatives stayed home.
You know, real conservatives, people who believed that Aaron O'Toole was going to do what he said, they stayed home.
And that might have been the difference in that election because Trudeau barely won in 2021.
He didn't win the popular vote.
And I think that the Conservatives learned a real lesson from that moment, which is that what you say to the base, what you say during the leadership race, the primaries, basically, you have to follow through with that.
And I think you're right.
It's not a matter of tweaking the CBC.
It's not a matter of reducing its budget.
You have to defund it.
You have to cut it off completely because otherwise it will find a way to survive.
I think on the matter of the newspaper bailouts, I think that the Conservatives sort of have like a free market approach to a lot of things that maybe they like the idea of like tax receipts being able to be issued and allowing journalism agencies to kind of act a little bit like charities.
I'm a believer of that, Ezra.
That's why when I started True North, we became a charity because I think that journalism can be a public good and that that is, you know, if Canadians, like imagine you got your tax tax form and while you were filling it out, you got to select which media companies you funded.
So, you know, right now I think it's $33 from every Canadian goes to the CBC.
Pascal Saint-Ange says she wanted to double it to $60.
Imagine if you had $60 and you got to put a check mark beside like which media companies you wanted to fund.
And imagine if the Rebel and Juno News and True North were all on there and Canadians got to choose where their money would go.
You know, that's sort of like a free market approach that like everybody should fund the media.
We'll do it through your taxes, but you actually get to direct them, almost like a school voucher program.
I could see conservatives getting excited about that.
Now, I'm not saying that that's Pierre Polyev's perspective, but I think that those are the kind of ideas that are in the works within the Conservative Party from conversations that I've had.
And I think that that could be kind of like a win-win for everybody.
You know, of course, the libertarian argument would be why should, I mean, if, or as long as there's a checkbox of no thanks, I don't want to spend the 33 bucks, I'll spend that on my own family.
I mean, to compel people to give, but to give them a choice is, I suppose, better than compelling them to give to the CBC.
But I wouldn't feel like I'm like Rebel News is morally superior than a restaurant or than a gymnasium.
You must support one of these 10 restaurants.
You must support one of these 10 barbershops.
It's tricky, but I think that both True North and Rebel News and Counter Signal and Western Standard are proof that you can make a go of it without compelling taxpayers to pay.
Hey, I got two quick questions for you, and then I'll let you.
I know you're busy and thank you for jamming us in.
I'm riveted every day by seeing Elon Musk take a blowtorch to spending, eliminating entire agencies like USAID, going through Social Security and finding people who are allegedly 200 years old, but still collect.
Like, it's just crazy.
He's doing it with such vigor and enthusiasm.
They're saving tens of billions.
Maybe they're past $100 billion now.
Do you think we could ever get something like that in Canada?
Well, I think we need to.
I don't think it's a matter of whether we can, Ezra.
I think that Justin Trudeau and Chris Yafreeland have put us on an unbelievably unsustainable fiscal path, right?
They've doubled the debt in this country.
The absolute ballooning of spending during COVID was completely unprecedented and unsustainable.
And it wasn't just the fact that they were sending out CERB checks, which I think to me, you know, hearing in the liberal leadership debate the other night the idea of universal basic income and that they still believe in it.
I mean, we tried that during COVID and it was an abject failure.
And the idea that the liberals haven't learned from that is maddening, Ezra.
But anyways, it wasn't just the checks that they were sending out to Canadians to stay at home.
It was the growth in government, the number of bureaucrats that they hired, the number of consultants that they hired.
They're spending millions and millions of dollars on consulting firms to help the bureaucrats, even though they've, I think there's been a 40% increase in the number of bureaucrats working in the federal government since Justin Trudeau-Viwang.
So like Canada doesn't have a choice.
We are on a completely unsustainable path.
Look at the loony, the strength of the dollar.
I mean, it recovered a little bit in the last few weeks, but it was down to 68 cents for the American dollar.
I mean, I think the Canadian economy is in real, real trouble.
Basically, the government propped up our GDP through government growth in government and through immigration, hoping that that would sort of cover from the fact that the private sector is just not growing at all.
So I don't think it's a matter of like, hey, should we do what the Americans are doing because it would be a big win for conservatives to get rid of some of this waste in government.
Like, I think whoever is the next prime minister, I mean, it will be Mark Carney, but whoever forms the next government, whether it is some kind of a coalition between liberals and NDP, whether we go to the polls and conservatives win, or heck, maybe even Mark Carney will win.
Whoever, I think it's going to be like the 1990s all over again, where they basically almost defaulted on their debt and they had to massively restructure federal spending because it's just, it's just not sustainable.
End of Immigration Debate 00:06:54
Like Canada will be a failed state if we don't fix things.
I think that Elon Musk and President Trump are giving us some great ideas on how we can do it and how we can cut.
And I hope Polyev is watching.
I will note, Ezra, that I did ask Pierre Polyev about this in my interview.
I said, is there anything that you're seeing from the Trump administration, from his executive orders, that you feel inspired by?
He basically just said, no, we've got our own ideas.
And I don't think he wanted to be seen complimenting Donald Trump in any way, shape, or form, which I understand.
But, you know, they were defunding U.S. aid.
And a couple of days later, Pierre Polyev came out and said, we were going to defund foreign aid as well.
So I think the ideas are out there.
They're popular.
Seeing the left try to defend these ridiculous programs, it's like it's not a good look.
The thing that they're protesting is protecting their own corruption, basically, as opposed to actually doing what's best for the taxpayer.
And I hope that the Conservatives win so that they can do something like that.
But I think even if it's Mark Carney, Ezra, he's going to have to do something because otherwise Canada is going to go bankrupt.
Yeah.
Well, last question for you.
And it goes to your area of expertise.
You mentioned True North started with an immigration focus.
Trudeau has gone absolutely nuts.
I understand that until very recently, there were 4.9 million people in Canada on a temporary visa that was set to expire by the end of 2025.
Now, I understand that some of them have been granted extensions.
That is more than 10% of our population has to Vamuse at the end of the year.
They're fake in many ways, fake students who never showed up to the school, fake refugees taking advantage of our soft touch, fake temporary foreign workers in the sense that there was no need for them to be brought in to do the particular jobs that they are.
I think immigration is by far the number one issue in Canada.
I think it exacerbates every other issue from traffic to school crowding to health care emergency wait times.
And we've seen a lot of cultural problems too with whether it's Hamas hate marches.
I think that is, to me, that's more important than every other issue combined.
Does Pierre Polyev have the courage to stand up against that hurricane?
Because he'll be called racist.
He'll be called an enemy to different ethnic communities.
You'll see big business say, no, no, we need our cheap labor at Tim Horton's.
God forbid we spend an extra dollar an hour on staff.
You're going to have every entrenched interest saying, do not cut immigration.
Will he?
Well, he told me again in our interview that he will, that he thought that the Stephen Harper levels were better than today, which I think we should take as a victory because obviously what Dustin Trudeau has done over the last 10 years has been an unmitigated disaster.
And it was predictable from the very beginning.
I think that one of the things that I wouldn't have predicted, Ezra, I mean, I knew that there's a problem.
And I would have said that this is one of those issues that people don't pay attention to until all of a sudden it exists like every day.
It's front and center in every aspect.
And you really have seen a cultural shift where it's not even seen as rude to criticize the immigration system.
People are being pushed to their wit's end.
And, you know, whether it's the crime, the rampant, unbelievable crime, I mean, I still can't get over the fact that there are home invasions and carjackings almost every day in the GTA.
I mean, it's terrifying.
It's terrifying.
And, you know, there's a whole thing of crime tourism.
People from Eastern Europe and Latin America and Africa coming here basically on vacation to rob Canadians.
I mean, we're sitting ducks and nobody is paying close enough attention.
One of the things that Pierre Polyev is very strong on is crime, is this idea that we have to deport people who commit crimes, that we have to put back in mandatory minimums, that we have to get rid of the failed bail program and have reform on that, because otherwise you just have the same people committing crimes over and over and over again, and no one is taking it seriously.
So I do have faith that Polyev will be strong when it comes to crime.
The Conservatives are usually very good on that issue.
And that, to me, is the most important aspect of the immigration.
I don't think that Pierre Polyev is a culture warrior.
I don't think he's going to go out there and try to make some kind of a case for Canadian values.
Although you did see it in the Canada First rally a little bit, but I don't see him as taking a lead on that, on that cultural side.
But I do think sort of like from an economic perspective and from a crime perspective, I think that the Conservatives are very strong on that issue.
Yeah.
Well, I'm glad you feel that way.
And it's not just stopping new immigration.
It's deporting and saying goodbye.
I mean, that's what's so interesting about Trump's approach.
It's great to spend so much time with you.
Congratulations on Juno news.
We're going to keep watching that and following, and hopefully you'll grow and be strong.
And I am optimistic and I'd even say confident that Pierre Polyev is going to win this year.
It's going to be a disastrous interregnum when Carney and Jagmeed Singh do their atrocious deal, as they will.
But I think we're going to end the year on a good foot.
That's my thought.
Last word to you.
Well, I hope you're right.
I just had you on my show, we were talking about the polls and the terrifying gain by the liberals.
I don't know if it's true or not, but Ipsos poll has them supposedly up 26 points over the last six weeks.
So a two-point lead now over the conservatives.
It's way too close for comfort.
And I think that a large part of that bump comes from the media drumming up this narrative that Trump is the enemy, that the Americans are going to invade, that only a liberal can protect us against Trump and that anti-American sentiment that lives in the hearts of so many central Canadians.
Think it really exists the same way in Western Canada, but in Central Canada, there really is a deep-level suspicion and some level hatred for the Americans.
And so, the media is amplifying that.
The media is doing everything they can, Ezra.
We know that they will, we know that they'll continue to do that.
Everything they can to prop up the Liberals, to prop up Mark Carney, to whitewash him, to cover up his crimes, his lies, his total lack of clarity, you know, whether it comes to his business dealings or even basic facts about his life and where he lives.
So, you know, I think that's the job of the independent media.
I think that our work is cut out for us, but we have to make sure that Canadians see the full picture as why independent media is just so important.
Great to catch up with you.
Good luck with Juno News.
Keep up the fight.
All right, thanks, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Candace Malcolm, the boss of Juneau News.
That's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.
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