Canada is now considering whether to pass a new bill that would turn it into the most authoritarian state in the western world. The “Online Harms Act” is billed as a social media law meant to protect Canadians from harmful content. But it includes some extremely draconian changes to “hate speech” laws that would allow anyone to anonymously charge someone with a hate speech crime — and if they’re successful, they could pocket $20k. Rebel News founder Ezra Levant joins Glenn to explain how this could turn into a massively corrupt industry that would make the Democrats’ persecution of Donald Trump look like child’s play. Plus, he explains how this bill, if passed, would destroy not just free speech, but the free press: “Soon there will be only two kinds of journalists in Canada: government journalists and BANNED journalists.”
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Ezra, welcome.
EZRA: Thanks very much. It's good to be here. But I've got bad news, Glenn.
GLENN: Yeah. What?
EZRA: Canada just introduced the most Draconian anti-free speech censorship bill in our history and in the history of any democratic country. I've never seen anything like it.
GLENN: Hang on. Hang on, Ezra. Ezra Levant.
EZRA: I can't wait. I can't wait.
GLENN: I know. Ezra Levant is the host of the Ezra Levant Show.
He started Rebel News, which is like TheBlaze. Has the same kind of mission as TheBlaze.
Ezra, we just had one of our reporters jailed, picked up by the FBI.
EZRA: Oh, my God.
GLENN: He is the one that is leading the investigation on January 6th.
He was arrested, this morning, about an hour ago.
And we're in real -- we're in real trouble.
As a nation, we're in real, real trouble.
And you guys are following, actually, you are leading, I think.
Because you guys have just introduced a bill yesterday.
That is bone-chilling.
EZRA: Well, what you just reported to me about the rest of your reporters is terrifying. And I know you will absolutely must -- you cannot allow the arrest of journalists, for criticizing your regime to be normalized. That is absolute priority one.
GLENN: As you know, Ezra, that is -- the mainstream media will not cover this. They will not cover it. And it's reprehensible.
EZRA: You know what, if he was on the other side of the political aisle, winning a Pulitzer, there would be national press conferences for him. You would see Amnesty International talking about it. You might even see the United Nations talking about it.
But if he's conservative-oriented, or a critic of the regime, it will be crickets.
Let me tell you what's going on in Canada. Because as I always say, what happens in Canada today, may happen to the US five years from now.
It's like we're a bad time machine to see your future.
This week Justin Trudeau introduced a new bill called Bill C63. It's got a lot of things in it, that are atrocious. He's created a new hate crime bill, life in prison. New hate crime law. There's nothing that gets you life in prison in Canada, not even murder. But hate speech now does.
He's created a pre-crime for hate. If you have, quote, fear of hate, fear of hate. That's the title of the section of the law, you can get a judge to issue a kind of restraining order against your enemy, before he does anything. Before he says anything. And that restraining order can include post-arrests. Giving you up any lawful firearms.
Limiting who he can talk to. Directly or indirectly.
Limiting the places he can go. And requiring him to take urine and blood tests. Just because you are, quote, afraid, he might in the future, say some hate speech.
He doesn't have to have done anything in the past.
This is a pre-crime, like in that science fiction movie, Minority Report. That's in this bill. Let me tell you other things in this bill.
Donald Trump and his tremendous travails with the US legal system. They're covered a lot by the Canadian media, and Justin Trudeau is obsessed with Donald Trump. So he's been watching what Democrats have done.
And he's learned from it. Trump has been prosecuted from high profile prosecutors. Trudeau has one-upped that.
Trudeau has now said that anyone in Canada, even noncitizens can file hate speech complaints against anyone.
And if they're successful, they get $20,000 from the target. And the target has to pay a fine for up to $50.
So let me just say this more clearly.
If there's anyone on social media. This is just a social media law on interviews. If there's anyone who has a YouTube video.
A tweet. A Facebook comment.
That you think creates hate. You can go to the Canadian human rights tribunal. And complain about it.
You don't have to hide a lawyer. You don't have to spend any money. The government will have the hearing. And if your complaint is upheld. You get 20 grand from the victim. So instead of having maybe --
GLENN: Wait. Wait. Wait.
Who gets the 30? The remaining 30?
EZRA: If 20 goes to the complainants and an additional 50 goes to the government, so you're on the hook for 70 grand a pop.
So let's take someone like Jordan Peterson. Every day he's saying something controversial on YouTube and Twitter. Oh, and, by the way, this applies to all your historical work online. So as long as it's still online, and you control it, they can go back through your history. Five years, ten years. And why wouldn't they complain about literally every tweet you make? Literally every YouTube video?
There's no cost. There's no downside. And even if only 5 percent of your complaints get through to the target. You're smacking them with 20 grand for yourself. And the 50 grand fine. This will create a huge industry.
So Trudeau saw what they were doing to Trump. And said, I can do one better. I'm not going to have a few sniper shots. I'm going to have a shotgun blast. I will have hundreds of complaints swarming my enemies. And I don't even have to do it. I will mobilize a woke army. But there's one more thing.
And people can't believe it when I tell it to them. But it's right there in the law, in black and white.
You can make a complaint in secret, and the target of your complaints never gets to know your identity.
You can give evidence in secret. The complaint can be made in secret.
So you can have a company, a political party, a busybody, who is literally filing 100 a day, and you'll never know it. And let me just be clear with one thing. You don't have to be a victim. You don't have to have any standing. You don't have to be mentioned at all. You can just do this as a hobby. As an obsession. As a job. As a political vengeance. Maybe a disgruntled ex-employee. This is all in bill C63. And you take it all together. This is the most Draconian free speech bill, anywhere in the world. Other than, I suppose Iran and China, who just do this stuff naturally.
GLENN: And kill you.
EZRA: Yeah.
GLENN: So what does that mean to people like you, Ezra? Because you're going to be attacked. Rebel News is going to be attacked. You're out.
EZRA: Let me just. Let me go to first principles for one second. Let me tell you what they're doing at the basic, principle level here.
What is a hate crime? What's hate, Glenn? It's a human emotion. If you never feel any hate in your life, you don't have a fully formed personality.
The challenge in life, is to take these bad emotions, and transform them into positive work. Into reforming the world. Fixing the problem. Hate comes from an underlying grievance. To pass a law to say, we're going to ban hatred. This is impossible. If we pass the love you act, we would number heaven.
To criminalize an emotion, it's just insane.
And that is, actually, what the law governs.
And I know. Because I was charged from a precursor of this law, about 15 years ago, when I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.
I was charged with publishing something, quote, likely to expose a person to hatred or contempt, end quote.
So it's a pre-crime. It's a future crime, and it's not to do any actual damage.
It's just to hurt feelings, and that's the thing, is it's so subjective. We're all guilty in advance.
GLENN: So he --
EZRA: But as the Soviet's secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria said, show me the man, and I'll find you the crime.
We're all guilty of having hate in our hearts. So it's just whoever they choose to prosecute who will get dinged.
GLENN: So tell me this won't pass, in parliament.
EZRA: Well, the reason it was introduced this week, is because last week, Justin Trudeau signed a new coalition agreement, with a hard left-wing Socialist Party.
Justin Trudeau does not have a majority of seats in the House. So we signed a coalition deal with an even worse party.
And I fear this will be passed into law. And I fear it -- you know, it will take some time. They are setting up three new censorship agencies.
Not one. But three. There will be three new censorship bureaucracies.
And I think it will take them a number of months to get it going.
GLENN: Months.
EZRA: I think this will probably be operational in 2025. And then it will be the final battle, Glenn.
Because, you know, this will bankrupt any critic of the regime, and then there's those pre-crime restraining orders.
Then there's the actual criminal prosecution, they've created a standalone hate crime law for life in prison. Not even murder gets you that in Canada.
GLENN: So if this passes, you've become a Stasi state. A -- an -- East Germany.
EZRA: Yeah. The secret informants. The secret prosecution. The secret witnesses.
The subjective political nature of the crime. The three different agencies. It's, oh. And they have special rules for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram.
They say, if they get a complaint. A hate complaint, they must take it down within 24 hours. Or be subject to enormous fines.
And so there's no way you can adjudicate if something is right or wrong, or fair or not. In 24 hours.
And the fines are so enormous, basically, a complaint will automatically get things taken down. Again, I will tell you something now. And you probably won't believe me. But I swear it's in the text of the law.
There are fines in there, that can tag global media companies, 8 percent of their global revenue. So Justin Trudeau, sitting up here in Canada, says to Facebook. If you break my law, I will fine you 8 percent of your entire worldwide revenue. That's a 10 billion that are fine.
Now, I think Facebook, YouTube, Google, et cetera. I think they will probably push back on this. Or maybe they will just leave Canada. And Trudeau will be fine with that.
Facebook has already left Canadian news. Because Trudeau said to them, you have to pay $100 million to our list of approved journalists, for the pleasure of linking to them. And Facebook said, that makes no sense.
We're getting out of the Canadian news business. You cannot post a Canadian news story on Facebook. It blocks it. Trudeau is fine with that because that hurts the independent guys like us.
You can't read Rebel News on Facebook. We're blocked, as are every other Canadian news source. We are becoming like China, in that there is this great firewall of Canada going up.
Trudeau would be happy, shutting down any independent sources of news. Soon, there will be only two kinds of journalists left in Canada: government journalists and banned journalists. Glenn.
GLENN: Okay.
Ezra
