Ezra Levant warns of escalating Antifa violence after Charlie Kirk’s assassination by a "Trantifa" extremist, exposing left-wing attempts to exploit the attack—like pushing anti-Semitic "J-pilled" conspiracy theories. Canada’s weak response contrasts with U.S. calls for banning foreign supporters of political murder, while Maple’s Garden teaches freedom of expression through gardening as art, referencing real cases like Bell v. Toronto. The book’s illustrator, Lisa Ng, faced backlash for convoy artwork, underscoring how speech restrictions stifle dissent. Levant ties this to broader threats: from Starmer’s UK policies to Canada’s legal battles over free speech, urging action before extremism erodes democracy further. [Automatically generated summary]
I've got some more thoughts on Charlie Kirk and this mad theory on the far right that Israel killed Charlie Kirk, the most pro-Israel pundit in America.
I'll give you my thoughts on that from the far right and the far left.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
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Tonight, Charlie Kirk's assassination has revealed terrible things on the far left and the far right.
It's September 17th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorism bug.
I already told you my thoughts about Charlie Kirk's assassination.
Obviously, it was designed to stop him personally, and I think he was headed for the highest heights.
He's only 31.
Imagine how strong and powerful and well-known he would be at 51.
I really think he could have been the president of the United States.
So, obviously, stopping him was a devastating blow.
It was also designed to demoralize his entire movement, his organization-conservatives, people who support America First and Donald Trump.
And it was demoralizing, of course, it was.
And finally, it was designed to scare us all, to make us worry that we could be hurt if we stand up.
He really was unique and bound for unlimited things.
But although he has been stopped, I don't think it has demoralized the movement.
In fact, I see huge expressions of interest in Turning Point, his organization, huge donations, including several million-dollar donations.
I see that his widow, Erica Kirk, has a tremendous resolve, a ferocity.
Let me play you an excerpt from her speech a few days ago.
I saw this and it was so bold.
At first, I know this sounds funny.
I thought it was maybe an AI artificial intelligence video because it was so strong.
I thought maybe someone just wanted it to be this way.
But no, this is real.
Take a look.
The evildoers responsible for my husband's assassination have no idea what they have done.
They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith, and of God's merciful love.
But they should all know this: if you thought that my husband's mission was powerful before, you have no idea.
You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world.
You have no idea.
You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife.
The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.
To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die.
It won't.
I refuse to let that happen.
It will not die.
All of us will refuse to let that happen.
No one will ever forget my husband's name, and I will make sure of it.
It will become stronger, bolder, louder, and greater than ever.
My husband's mission will not end, not even for a moment.
And in a few days, there's going to be a massive event in Arizona with the president himself going.
I think Rebel News is going to have a few people there too.
Now, of course, people are scared, but I don't think that's overpowering people's courage.
Remember, courage is not the absence of fear, it's the proper management of fear, the proper prioritization of fear below other things that are more important.
The left is on the back foot since this assassination.
The killer was a transgender extremist and seemed to be part of a violent transgender cell.
I had originally thought it was a professional assassination given the length of the shot.
But I suppose in the United States, there's a lot of people with firearms, and it just seemed so professional that it was like whoever tried to kill Trump.
But it seems like it was, and it certainly was political, it was terrorism, but it does look like they have caught the shooter.
Now, our friend Andy No, the reporter who did so much work exposing Antifa in Portland, he uses the word Trantifa, which is transgender who join up with Antifa in a violent war against cisgenderism, I think they would say.
Trantifa are violent.
We see that in Canada too.
Trans extremists in our country calling for violence, displaying violent tactics, even on their shirts, whether it's knives or baseball bats.
J.K. Rowling, the great British author who has taken a stand against transgenderism, gets violent threats from Trantifa all the time.
Now, Andy No follows Antifa, tracks them, and he found on an Antifa website that has since been taken down, but not before it was screenshot, he found this.
And I'd like to read about a minute or two from it.
And again, this is courtesy of Andy Noam.
So this is at an Antifa cell in Oregon, I believe.
They said, addressing mobilizations like these.
So they're talking about people who were coming out for vigils for Charlie Kirk.
And there was a huge one in London when I was there.
I saw them in Toronto and Calgary and Winnipeg.
Thousands of people in places even where you wouldn't think that they were touched by Charlie Kirk.
Anyway, so this is a response to some of the wholesome vigils for Charlie Kirk.
This is Antifa talking about these vigils.
Addressing mobilizations like these requires careful consideration.
The most similar rallies we have seen in the Pacific Northwest have been those following homophobic evangelical preacher Sean Feucht, where followers of a similar non-combatant mall, church, family, demographic, have shown up in great numbers.
Anti-fascists have attempted to counter several of these rallies in Portland and Seattle, but these encounters have been unequivocal optical and tactical failures.
Simply put, black block counters of what appear to be normie worship events with children in attendance is a decidedly bad look and contributes to the American conservative persecution narrative, galvanizing otherwise politically inactive conservatives.
And remember, Sean Foyk, that was the conservative pastor who went through Canada and was banned along the way.
As you know, we've crowdfunded a legal defense for one of the churches who hosted them.
Back to the Antifa website.
This is particularly relevant as many apolitical businesses and institutions, including the University of Oregon itself, have expressed public sympathy to Kirk and his cause.
As such, anti-fascists must work to find more creative ways to counter this political moment.
One option may be working to drive wedges between different segments of the right.
We've already seen physical conflict between neo-Nazis and conservatives.
Something is very interesting.
So Antifa and Trantifa are saying that their violent tactics are suddenly out of favor.
And they say it backfired when Antifa tried to take on that Christian pastor because it looked like they looked like the thugs they were.
So now they're thinking, well, we have to somehow get the neo-Nazis to show their teeth.
I'll read one more passage from this Antifa website.
One possibly useful wedge issue in this context is Israel.
Conspiracy theorists have already jumped to blame Kirk's assassination on Mossad, claiming the lifelong Zionist was on the verge of becoming J-pilled.
J-pilled is when you wake up to the fact that the Jews are ruling the world.
So Antifa is celebrating the fact that on the fringe right, some people are saying that Charlie Kirk was killed by the Jews.
Now, I believe that Antifa is going to be banned as a criminal terrorist group by Donald Trump.
The same way Trump called the drug cartels terrorist groups.
That's a Trump-style move.
That's a Stephen Miller move, going boldly.
And what are the left going to do?
In the wake of this assassination, are they really going to stand by violent groups like Antifa?
Well, maybe, actually, but if so, I think that'll be devastating to their image.
Come to think of it, the left usually does stand with Antifa and Black Lives Matter and other violent groups because that's their Marxist dialectic.
I don't mean to use fancy words, but there's this idea in a class warfare or when you apply Marxism to other things like sex or race, any resistance is noble against oppressors.
So that's why the left has no problem with the sheer violence and rape and murder and torture of Hamas when they invaded southern Israel, because they're oppressors.
They can do anything.
And the Jews are the, sorry, they were the oppressed, excuse me.
The Palestinians are the oppressed peoples, and the Jews were the oppressors, even though it was an invasion from Gaza into Israel, that anything was justified against oppressors, including rape.
It's noble, in fact.
Jews, America, Israel, white people, capitalists, TERFs, that's trans, exclusionary, reactionary, feminists, or whatever TERF exactly stands for, J.K. Rowling.
So the violent left, the antifa-trantifa left, thinks violence is acceptable if you're going after an oppressor.
And you can basically come up with some way to call anyone an oppressor.
But suddenly, that butch violent talk on the left isn't acceptable, implied company, even in universities, which is a surprise to me because they put up with anything.
People, professors who have cheered the murder of Charlie Kirk have been suspended, even in Canada.
For some reason, Hamas supporters are still cool, though.
But is it true about the right, what Antifa said there?
I think it is, in a way that hasn't been before.
Now, you know me, Tucker Carlson used to be my hero.
I was on his show on Fox News several times.
I admired him.
I looked up to him.
And when he went independent, I was very excited.
And there's a lot of mini-mis who say, well, if Tucker's doing something, it's safe for me to follow.
Like he's the big battleship, and I'll just follow behind in my canoe, and maybe I won't be such a little canoe.
There's a generation of comedians or sort of comedians, too, who've decided to go full anti-Semitic.
But I would say to them, beware of getting applause as a comedian as opposed to laughs.
I mean, that's a mistake I think the left made when, you know, Stephen Colbert of the late night comedy show, I don't know if he gets a lot of laughs.
He gets people nodding knowingly, like when he did his vaccine pitches.
I would say to comedians on the right, don't go full anti-Semitic.
Don't even go a little anti-Semitic, actually.
When you become a political conspiracy theorist blaming the Jews on everything, you're not being a comedian anymore.
You're being boring and you're being a bit crazy.
And it was a dead end for the left.
And I think it'll be dead on the right.
In my view, hating Jews is not conservative, just like hating all of any ethnicity isn't, because it's collectivism.
When you say the Jews did it, you mean like every single Jew did it?
There was like a meeting of the Jews and they all did it.
Jews are like any other group of people.
There's some good Jews and some bad Jews.
And sometimes a Jew does something bad and sometimes a Jew does something great.
I referred to Stephen Miller, who's the point person of Trump's immigration plan.
Frankly, he's my favorite Jew in the world.
People don't say the Jews are cracking down.
It's a phrase used to collectivize the sins or alleged sins of any individual Jews.
So I think that when you start coming out against the Jews, you're not conservative anymore because conservatives, I really believe, judge individuals based on the content of their character and what they do and what they stand for.
That's how I've lived my life.
I mean, I'm Jewish, but I feel lucky to have lived in a country where people say, okay, he's Jewish.
He's this, he's that, he's this.
He's 10 different things.
Let's judge him by what he says and does.
I'm not bogged down in some collective identity.
I am Jewish, but people judge me for myself.
And I think when you blame all Jews for something, it's a kind of scapegoating to let yourself off the hook for things that aren't going well in your life.
Oh, the Jews did it.
It's like some cosmic excuse for, you know, you didn't get up and go to the gym.
The Jews got me again.
So I don't think anti-Semitism is a conservative idea.
I should do a monologue on that.
Group punishment of the Jews and a way to soothe all of your own faults and sins.
That's not a conservative way of thinking.
That's the group think on the left.
That's the Marxist.
Jews are the oppressors.
I'm the oppressed.
I can say and do anything against them.
And everything they do is the reason for my, for whatever's wrong in my life.
Look at Candace Owens.
Not that she was really ever conservative.
I don't know if you know her origin story.
She was a left-wing grifter on YouTube who suddenly discovered it was much more profitable to be a young black woman on the right than on the left because, you know, the conservatives are always looking to show that they are open to women and minorities.
But she started going nuts a while ago.
In fact, it's interesting.
She says she's friends with Charlie Kirk, but he hasn't done an event with her in years.
I think he realized she was starting to go nuts a while back.
Why GB News Shocked00:02:41
For me, it was this, when she did an interview with GB News and said that the United States should not have gone to war in the Second World War, even after Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on America.
I don't know if you know that, that Japan, I mean, of course, you know, Japan attacked America at Pearl Harbor December 7th, 1941.
And then Germany immediately declared war on the United States before the U.S. declared war on them.
And Candace Owens said to GB News that America shouldn't have joined the war for them Jews.
Here's a clip of that.
By the way, Candace Owens' husband, who's on the board of GB News, had this clip deleted.
I saved it before they could.
Take a look.
Do you think that America shouldn't have gone into that Second World War?
Yeah.
And that is a radical statement.
People don't know how to deal with that because we've all been so brainwashed by the school system to believe that, well, look how great things are.
Let me ask you about your country.
Do you think that your country has become greater since?
Has our country become greater since?
Absolutely not.
You know, this whole idea of international liberalism, now it's not just about your problems, it's about solving the world's problems.
Let's make sure that in Pakistan there's a trans flag waving.
No, I actually, if Pakistan does not want to wave a trans flag, I don't even want to wave a trans flag, but why is this my business?
And they're constantly trying to pollute you to make you think that it is your business.
No, I actually am comfortable if that's going to be the newest smear that I have to wear that we're isolationists.
Good.
Good.
I want to be concerned with just America's problems.
As soon as those get resolved, I'm happy to pick up our head and say, oh, well, you know what?
There are friends over there in the UK.
Let's see how they're doing if we can help them.
But America first.
But Japan did attack Pearl Harbor.
So presumably you would have reacted to that.
Yeah, I mean, yes.
Okay.
I think, of course, if you're ever talking about a threat in terms of your nation being attacked, you should always have an equal response.
But at the moment, we're being afraid.
But, well, a response was just, right?
Does the response necessarily dictate a world war?
These are questions that should be relegated, I think, to an academic discussion.
These would be interesting academic discussions.
I'd love to get up a bunch of people and to play out those scenarios.
What if we had just responded?
I mean, I knew something was wrong with the gallaban.
And since then, she has gone completely nuts, including a full medieval style anti-Semitism.
And I'm not talking about anti-Zionism.
A crazy blame the Jews, the religion, the ethnicity for everything.
It's almost like she's going to say the Jews poison the town well or something.
It's just off the hook.
Here's a sampler of that.
Never supporting that demonic nation ever again.
Now we are reading the books.
Strange Romantic Encounters00:02:39
We're learning about how you've executed this.
You've blindfolded the entire world to what you are.
And what I think you might be is possessed by a real demon.
I'm Catholic.
I believe in demons.
And Netanyahu is very clearly a demon.
And any person that supports him, like you are a part of a like totally demonic enterprise.
And we're never going to be able to see that.
Okay.
Oh, it didn't happen.
No.
Hamas is stealing.
Hamas, ISIS, all of these people are just so conveniently, these terror groups are so convenient in helping Israel expand its borders.
I mentioned her husband before.
He seems to be her co-pilot in all this.
It's very odd.
Did you ever see this?
Like, this is a different woman to any woman that I meet her.
So she was giving a speech in London and she was giving a speech at the Royal Automobile Club, which is a club in Pall Mall in London.
And I was in the audience.
We met, we shook hands.
And I just knew kind of when I met her, I was like, this is a woman who she just commanded a power.
It was very difficult to describe.
Nothing romantic was said, you know, for the, for the, between that day and the day that we got engaged, nothing, nothing romantic was said at all.
You know, there was no overtures.
Like, I didn't, you know, didn't, we didn't go for dinner.
Like, we didn't take nothing.
No, nothing.
Yeah, nothing, exactly.
And, and so I was very clear about that because it was, it was almost like getting to know oneself in some ways.
It was kind of a very strange experience.
You know, it was like, I, I, I saw myself in her.
Um, and in doing so, and that sounds sort of, well, I fell in love with myself.
No, I didn't fall in love with her.
I fell in love with a woman who Gave so much of myself back to me, you know, and I kind of, I was very willing to let myself fade and give glory to her.
You know, that was kind of that's how I view our marriage in many ways.
Like, I'm very happy to take a secondary position to give glory to her.
You know, I'm far less politically involved now than I was because she's much more politically involved than I ever could be.
When I met her, she was this tour de force, you know, incredible mind, incredible beauty.
I was so willing to just be enraptured to her.
Yeah.
Sabbath Leadership Insights00:04:29
You know, Candace Owens' father-in-law, it's so sad.
He is a leader of a very reputable Jewish Christian friendship society in the United Kingdom.
And he was so appalled by what his daughter-in-law was saying, he felt compelled to write a series of tweets, a letter, really, not disowning her, but disowning everything she said.
I can only imagine the pain in a dad when that's what his son married.
And I don't know, it sounds like maybe his son agrees, just crazy.
Anyways, Tucker Carlson, who I really looked up to, and Candace Owens, who I didn't really ever look up to, and about 100 other grifters, now claim that Charlie Kirk was killed by Israel, just like Antifa predicted.
Now, there's no evidence of this.
All the evidence is the contrary.
They've arrested someone who looks pretty clear to me who was guilty.
Charlie Kirk himself was one of the biggest pro-Israel voices in America.
I mean, here's some things he said just weeks ago.
We were in Israel a couple weeks ago for the embassy openings.
We went over with Huckabee about four or five years ago.
Is it not the most amazing place?
We had like an aisle that we had.
He's special.
Yes.
He's a special, special leader.
You know why?
Oh, and he's everything a leader should be, right?
Profit and Rock wasn't.
Thank you.
A more personal question on the idea of like Christian Utes and you being a very devout Christian.
I remember speaking to your assistant during the vacation and he was saying, You don't respond on a Sunday because you participate in Sabbath.
Saturday, actually.
Yes.
That's right.
Yeah, that's very astute.
Yeah.
So kind of like more, why do you kind of like, is that something you've taken from the Jewish tradition?
Now I really like you.
Now you ask the best question anyone's ever asked.
I could talk about the Sabbath all day long.
I don't know if anyone is interested in this, so you can roll your eyes, but I'm a Christian.
So whether or not we're bound to the Jewish Sabbath is hotly debated.
There's great arguments for, great arguments against.
I'm actually writing a book right now on why I honor the Sabbath.
It's very simple.
It's called Stop in the Name of God, Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Change the World, basically.
And it is an argument that in this hypermaterialistic, very fast, digitally frenzied world, that there is this, there is this gift that I believe the Lord gave the Hebrews that we have decided to just gloss over.
And it's very simple.
It's that for one day, you will stop, that it will be holy, that it will be different.
For those of you that are agnostic or not Christian, I still encourage you to do this.
People that honor the Sabbath live longer.
We know this with the Seventh-day Adventists.
They actually are happier.
They have better health outcomes.
Everything about disconnecting from modernity is good from you.
It is an arguable.
This is a material fact.
But why is it that we have forgotten it?
Well, for me personally, I work like crazy for six days.
On Friday night, even Sunday morning, I turn my phone off and I try to stop.
I try to make it distinct.
I try to make it different.
It's where I do my best thinking.
It's where I do my best time with my family.
And again, this kind of goes back to, okay, we're trying to create all this new stuff.
Like, wow, we're going to have this new technological invention and innovation.
We're going to have this vaccine.
And we're going to be able to solve this with quantum mechanics and quantum computing.
And I'm kind of like, honestly, something was told to us on Sinai that we shouldn't forget.
That like, you shouldn't work for seven days.
In the retelling of the Ten Commandments in the book of Deuteronomy, the only difference of the retelling of the Ten Commandments is when Moses says, hey, you shouldn't work seven days because you're no longer a slave.
What Moses is saying is like, only slaves work for seven days, actually.
And we in the West have kind of enslaved to our work.
And I say this as a free market capitalist.
That's not good.
It's making us depressed.
It's making us anxious.
And all of you have the agency to disconnect from that, to make a choice to no longer have to be subservient to the ever more, more, more next text, next alert, next email, you know, next WhatsApp message.
And it kind of goes back to a theme I've been saying that it has worked.
It's also a phenomenal civilizational preserving tool.
It's worked for the Jews.
They've been kicked out of a lot of countries and a lot of people have hated the Jews, including right now.
And they're thriving and they're growing and they continue.
I think God has given us a preservative for a civilization.
And I believe it is the South.
Now, all of Charlie Kirk's real friends say it is crazy that the accusation that the Jews killed Charlie Kirk and it's crazy that they say, oh, he was about to suddenly disown Israel.
Gross Violations Protected?00:02:48
No one who is close to Charlie Kirk abides that.
Not his pastor, who released a statement and a video.
Not his senior producer, not anyone.
But Candace Owens says she's got the proof.
You just have to sign up for her website, Paywall, to see it.
So gross to make money off of his body before it's even in the ground.
So gross.
It reminds me of the Westboro Baptist Church.
You know that extremist break or that break off group that protests at funerals of U.S. servicemen coming in from overseas?
The grossest people.
I think anti-Semitism is a hell of a drug.
I don't like to see it.
But what does this all mean for us here in Canada?
Like I say, there's been huge vigils for Charlie Kirk.
Very interesting.
Some people are having consequences, like I say, for supporting murder.
I mean, it's just not a good look.
And if you don't like Charlie Kirk and you're happy that he's killed, do yourself a favor and just keep your thoughts to yourself.
You know, that old saying, if you don't have anything nice to say, say nothing at all.
This is one of the times when that applies.
You know, it's very strange, though, a senior cabinet minister in Manitoba actually put out a press release denouncing him and weaponizing his death against his own children.
It was maybe the grossest thing I've seen.
And I've seen a hundred people support his assassination.
But this cabinet minister in Manitoba and no consequences whatsoever makes you wonder what she has over the premier out there.
Now, the United States has said that they will ban entry from foreigners who support the murder of Americans.
And that's their right.
If you are an American, you have the First Amendment to say anything rude, anything crude, anything that shows how grotesque an individual you are.
Americans have the right to say awful things.
Thank God it's in their First Amendment.
But if you're not an American, you can say awful things too, but they can keep you out of their country.
And I really hope that all these people around the world who despise America, who deplore and defame America, but then love going to Disneyland or love going to New York to see a show on Broadway or love going somewhere in that wonderful country, get banned.
Why not?
That's the power of a country to restrict who comes there.
Will we, though, get rid of our violent political left, as I predict Donald Trump is going to try to do in the States?
Well, here's what Toronto was like this very Saturday morning when armed thugs went to head off some conservative protesters.
Don't retreat!
You fascist!
Freedom of Expression00:15:48
What's her message to people?
Die, fascist!
What is that?
Doesn't make any sense, and I think we need to stop that hateful rhetoric.
You know, we're all here advocating for nonviolence.
I think they should do the same.
There's no reason why we can't have a civil discourse here, but go.
Get out of my money!
It's never a good thing to shoot someone in the neck because you disagree with their opinion.
It's never a good thing.
And I think that that should be kind of obvious to people, but it's not.
And we've seen that from the other side today.
That's how we got this mess that we're in right now is because good people did nothing.
And it's going to keep on getting worse.
And we're not going to have a Canada anymore if we don't protect ourselves.
We are about peace.
We're about freedom.
We are about Canada first.
Canadians first.
Yeah, we're still Antifa Central up here, aren't we?
Stay with us for more.
Well, it's tough to sell books in 2025 because so many people are reading little blips and little blogs and little tweets and little Facebook posts on their phone.
And really, who has the time to sit down and read a book for minutes in a row?
Well, the answer to that is children.
Don't we all still read our kids a bedtime story from actual book with actual illustrations?
I don't have any industry statistics to back it up, but my hunch is the child book category is still strong.
It's not the kind of thing that you would read from an iPad or an iPhone to a little one.
And so I'm very excited to report that there is a freedom-oriented child's book that has just been published, or actually it'll be officially on shelves in two weeks.
And it's written by someone who, in their full-time job, is a freedom advocate.
The name of the book is Maple's Garden, a Canadian freedom of speech story.
And the author is Christine Van Kuyn, who is a lawyer for freedom with the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
She joins me now from her podcasting studio.
Christine, great to see you again.
And congratulations.
So the book's coming out in two weeks.
Is that right?
Yeah, I have a whole big stack of them on my porch and all over my dining room table, but it should be shipping through Amazon in about a week or two.
And it's also available in bookstores like Indigo and Chapters if that's where you prefer to buy your books.
You know, I am terrified by all new books these days because it feels like they've just been churned out by this wokeness factory.
And it's not just children's book.
I was at Oxford University, perhaps the most prestigious university in the world.
I think it even surpasses Harvard.
And the entire bookstore, at least the front of it, was a propaganda machine.
If it wasn't about transgender issues, it was about climate issues.
And I just thought, is there anything neutral, let alone fighting for freedom?
Tell me what motivated you to write a freedom-oriented book for kids.
Yeah, so I think there is no more important time than right now to talk to our children about the importance of freedom of expression, freedom of speech.
And, you know, in my work, I travel a lot and I'll go to American historical sites and I will exit through the gift shop and I will see all of the amazing books that they have at these historic sites about America's constitutional history.
And we're really sadly lacking that in Canada.
I've actually been, you know, in working on preparing this book, I bought a few Canadian resources, something parents really want to talk to their children about, or and they were either too complicated or just got basic principles wrong.
For example, one of the books I was reading talked about rights, which are granted to us by our government at a fundamental level, that's really wrong.
We did not gain the right to freedom of speech because Pierre Elliott Trudeau bestowed it upon us.
It's a right that we have by virtue of being a human being.
And freedom of speech, freedom of expression, I actually think it is a neutral issue.
It's an issue for across the political spectrum.
It's not ideological.
It's a fundamental core part of Western civilization.
It's very precious, but it doesn't pass itself down generation by generation.
We need to teach these values to our children.
And I fear that we're not doing that.
And that's why I wanted to write this book.
Well, tell me a little bit more about the story, Maple's Garden.
So I'm not worried about spoiler alerts because any grown-ups watching it, they're not the primary book readers.
It would be their kids.
So tell me a little bit about the story.
Because another thing, I suppose, is you want to write a book that's not heavy-handed, not an eat-your-broccoli kind of book.
You want to make it still fun for the kids and for the parents to actually read it.
So tell me a little bit about the story.
Yeah, so you also have to approach it in a really gentle way because freedom of expression, I mean, I wanted to base this on real Canadian case law.
And I have to say, the cases that end up in court, a lot of the time, the speech at issue in free speech cases is usually something you, it's, you know, it's not something you would want to teach your children to say.
Right.
But the concept of this book is about a little girl who loves nature and she wants to grow a garden on her own property at her own home with plants that she likes.
And this has actually been an issue in a lot of cities across Canada where people will have these naturalized gardens where they'll grow things like goldenrod and milkweed.
And the cities who hypocritically have their own pollinator gardens will enforce bylaws because snoopy neighbors send meddling bureaucrats to go and raise these gardens to the ground on private property.
And there are a number of cases about this.
There's one called Sandy Bell and Toronto out of Toronto.
There's one called Ruck and Mississauga out of Mississauga.
And the idea is Maple is expressing her views on nature and beauty on her own property the way she wants to.
And we all get to decide for ourselves what we believe in and what we think is beautiful.
The government doesn't get to make those choices for us.
So Maple, when the mayor comes to cut down her garden, she learns about how the charter guarantees the right to freedom of expression.
It protects her opinion about her plants.
It protects her plants, which are an artistic form.
And she goes to court and beats the mayor, and she convinces the people in her society, in her community, that they might like to have a naturalized garden too.
And that's the solution to this sort of divisive world we're living in right now.
Allow people to express themselves and to convince others of your point of view.
So was this actually like those two cases you mentioned, were they actual cases where freedom of speech was referred to by the courts?
Because you're describing the choice of plants as free, I would say, free expression more than free speech.
But was that a charter of freedom that was litigated?
The freedom to plant what I want to plant?
It was.
Really?
Yeah, it was because the freedom of expression, which is what we have protected in Canada, includes more than just words, things that you say or things that you write.
It includes art, paintings, music, dancing, and yes, gardens, if those gardens are expressing meaning.
And you talk to anyone from England who, you know, they love their gardens in England.
And that is a really appreciated art form in that country.
North America, too.
It's very popular.
It is, yes.
Yes.
These are artistic expressions that convey political meaning as well about all kinds of different things that you believe.
You tell me what's your most beautiful garden you've ever seen.
For me, it's the Butcher Gardens in Victoria, BC.
Have you ever been there?
I have not, but my most beautiful garden, because I'm nostalgic, is the garden my mother planted that I grew up with, which is a forest, a woodland garden.
Oh, wow.
Now, before we turn the camera on, I asked you about your illustrator because when you're dealing with children's books, you really want a strong illustrator just to help the imagination help get the noggin jogging.
Who is Lisa Ng?
And you were starting to tell me a story about her political scars too.
Tell me about her.
Yeah, so Lisa's not political, but she certainly understands through real life experience how freedom of expression matters.
So Lisa and I grew up together.
We went to elementary school together and high school together.
And she's a nurse, a professional nurse, as well as a professional artist.
And she had her own kind of run-ins with the cancel mob when she had some artwork that she had on display at a public library that the library, you know, some people in the community said, we don't like this art.
It's too spooky and scary.
So they ordered, they demanded her art be taken down.
But worse than that, during the 2022 Freedom Convoy, Lisa, who's a nurse, so she had a lot of views about what was happening with the pandemic firsthand.
She was fascinated with what was happening with the convoy, and she said she felt compelled to paint about it.
And she painted this beautiful image of the convoy with some animals, little geese and trucks and things like that.
She does a lot of surrealist work and she posted it on her social media and the mob really came for her in the art community.
And to the point she was shocked.
She's not a political person.
She said, why can't I explore these themes?
But she was, you know, she ended up taking down the image because of the reaction that she got.
And she was afraid.
I mean, she'd never really had an encounter with something like that.
And art is where you need to have the freedom to explore any idea.
So to me, it's just so absolutely crazy that the artistic community would say there are subjects that are off limits because, I mean, some of the most controversial things I've seen are in art galleries.
The idea you couldn't paint a convoy without some mob coming for you is just shocking to me.
So she, in her bones, understood the value of this project as an artist.
Wow.
Well, now you make me want to find her images.
You say they were taken down.
That's a shame.
Can they be seen anywhere?
I mean, geese, geese, and truckers, that's a fun comment.
I'd just like to see it.
Yeah, you know what?
I'll send it to you right now so that you can see it.
It is available on an interview she did about it, but she took it off her social media.
Isn't that crazy?
Let me tell you one other thing about finding an artist.
So, I wanted to work with Lisa because I've known her for a long time.
But, you know, as a business, which we are, we're a charity, we need to be cost-conscious.
So, I looked into finding some other Canadian artists.
It was really important to me to have a Canadian artist.
And I emailed one to do a commission.
I wanted to explain the project as well as our organization, which is a civil liberties charity.
And the artist wrote back, I guess I'm okay with the idea of freedom of expression, but I'm worried, do you support the carbon tax or are you against it?
And I was shocked because I think the majority of the country at that point was opposed to the carbon tax, and our prime minister was.
So, I did not reply to that email, and the artist did not get that commission.
And I was delighted to work with Lisa.
You know, there's a saying, and I don't know who said it, but I like to repeat it: it's freedom of speech is the gift you have to give your opponent if you want it for yourself.
And that's really hard to do because we know what we don't like.
But you've got to tolerate it because it really is what comes around goes around.
You've got to, and it's tough to be consistent because there's a lot of things we hate.
And for that artist you just referred to, to say, I'm for free speech, but only if you agree with me on and what a random thing to say-the carbon tax.
I mean, we don't even work on that issue, but I actually am against it now that you're asking.
Yeah, you know, and of course, our art, almost every artist and every artistic form I can imagine depends on freedom of speech.
It is the currency of that industry.
If you're a factory worker, freedom of speech, you know, you care about it as a person, but it doesn't go straight to the heart of what you do for eight hours a day in a factory.
If you're a farmer, I mean, I suppose we've just been talking about expressing yourself through horticulture.
But if you are an artist, by definition, the root, the heart of what you do is it's your intellectual expression.
You created it in your mind and you expressed it through your hands or your mouth.
And for an artist to be against free speech is shocking, but in a way, completely unsurprising.
The book is called Maple's Garden.
It's available on amazon.com and amazon.ca, excuse me, and chapters indigo.
Tell me one more thing: the proceeds of this book actually go to a good cost, don't they?
Yeah, so the royalties from the book will be going to the CCF.
It doesn't go to me, it's going to the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is a legal charity that fights for fundamental freedoms in Canada.
We were the charity that brought the legal action against the Trudeau government for their use of the Emergencies Act against the Freedom Convoy.
We also have worked on many cases about naturalized gardens.
So, this is sort of in that vein if you are into the theme.
And so, the royalties from the book will help fund the work that we do at the CCF.
Well, that's great.
We talk a lot about the Democracy Fund.
We talk a lot about the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, the JCCF.
But I think we should talk more about your organization too, the CCF.
And I know we've talked to you several times before, but I hope that in the future, if there are interesting cases that relate to freedom, including the freedom to garden, I hope you'll bring them to us just to help tell the story.
And our viewers are very much oriented towards supporting public interest law that defends freedom.
So, don't be shy.
Don't be a stranger.
Happy to talk about your book, happy to encourage our viewers to get it.
But if you have a case that you think is a fit for our people, bring it over, okay?
I would be delighted.
I love talking about our cases because they are all at the cutting edge of civil liberties defense work in Canada.
Encouraging Freedom Cases00:03:44
And I just think I have a dream job.
So I'm delighted to talk to anyone who will want to listen to me about the work we do at the CCF.
Well, that's great to hear and count us in.
Thanks for taking the time with us.
We've been talking with Christine Van Guy.
She's with the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
The book is called Maple's Garden: A Canadian Freedom of Speech Story by Christine and Lisa Ng, the illustrator.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me on the UK man who was arrested for arguing with police and saying who the F is Allah.
Gerald Coffey says, Stupid people pleading guilty, never plead guilty.
Well, there are times when it makes sense to plead guilty, if you are guilty and if you're facing a long sentence, and if the guilty plea lets you out earlier, and there are some occasions where pleading guilty makes sense, but to get 30 months in prison, why did you plead guilty there?
My guess is he was railroaded and didn't have a proper lawyer.
That's what makes it so terrible.
Lorna Houston says, Has Kier Starmer, that's the British prime minister, ever actually articulated why he thinks that bringing in huge numbers of Muslims is good for Britain?
Or has anyone ever asked him?
It is hard to argue against an inarticulated reason, but the reason needs to be uncovered in being answerable to the voters.
What is really at the bottom of this?
It's a very good question.
I think that there is an explicit strategy that Tony Blair first revealed that was followed up by Boris Johnson, the Conservative, to bring in massive numbers of non-British immigrants to change the electoral map, to basically replace the people because they weren't voting the right way.
I don't think the people who made that decision had particular attention to whether they were Islamic or something else, but they just knew they wanted people who were different from the Brits.
I mean, it's not just a conspiracy theory.
Tony Blair's cabinet made the decision to change the demographics of the country, and they're succeeding.
Engela Merkel certainly did the same in Germany, and I think it's incontrovertible that Canada did too.
Robert Treborable says, even Trevor Phillips says Robinson and his ilk, a subtle put down, propaganda is best done subtly.
That's a reference to Trevor Phillips, the former head of the UK Human Rights Commission, who has had some sympathetic video and print comments about Tommy's rally on Saturday.
And you're right.
He does jab Tommy a bit, his ilk, five prison terms, etc.
I think that's Trevor Phillips throwing in a few things just to so that the mob doesn't think, oh, you've gotten full Tommy Robinson, because I think he's 90% aligned in his comments with Tommy Robinson.
He just doesn't want people to think he's gone all the way over.
I should tell you, not this rally, but the previous one, I bumped into Trevor Phillips at the rally, and I think he was sort of startled that I recognized him and he sort of ran away from me when I tried to ask him questions.
I actually think he's a really good guy, and he's just saying those his ilk things, so he gets a little bit more latitude at the office.
I really think Tommy Robinson is being normalized.
I should tell you that it's reported in the British press that the Prime Minister Keir Starmer went on a raging rant against Tommy in cabinet, so he's got their attention.