Grave news for freedom of the press

Dear David,

Grave news for freedom of the press: the Federal Court of Canada just upheld an atrocious ruling by Justin Trudeau’s hand-picked censorship committee, denying Rebel News a QCJO news licence.

(But a minor miracle happened that I want to tell you about, too.)

QCJO stands for Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization. In free countries, readers get to decide which journalists to trust. But in Trudeau’s Canada, that’s now a government decision and Trudeau hand-picks the censorship panel making the decision.

Click here to see today’s ruling for yourself and to see our “memorandum of fact and law” that our lawyers submitted to the court.

I’d really like to encourage you to read that memorandum of fact and law; it’s 31 pages long, but it’s easy to understand. I think it’s one of the best defences of freedom of the press I’ve ever read in Canada.

In a way, that makes today’s loss even worse. Our lawyers made the best case possible. And the judge just threw it out.

But I’ve got some hope. I’ve read the ruling carefully and consulted with our lawyers. And I believe we can have it overturned by the Federal Court of Appeal. There are strong grounds for appeal that I hope more senior judges will recognize. Unfortunately, we’re up against the unlimited resources of the Trudeau government.

Trudeau has spent millions of dollars censoring us, including creating this well-paid censorship panel, clearly built with us in mind.

Obviously we don’t have that kind of money. And so far, this case has cost us a staggering $177,000 which really has stretched us to the breaking point.An appeal will be tens of thousands of dollars more. And we might have to go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

But here’s the miracle I mentioned. I just got off the phone with a passionate Canadian who loves Rebel News, and loves free speech even more. (He asked me to keep his name private — no telling what Trudeau would do to him.)

He said he will match your donations for this legal appeal, dollar for dollar, up to $50,000!

I was feeling down in the dumps about this court ruling, but that amazing offer made me feel like we’ll be OK. Click here to join in, and to activate this donor’s promise to match you.

But none of this should even be happening. We shouldn’t be in court at all, because there shouldn’t be a Trudeau censorship committee in the first place. (And the terrifying part of it is: that censorship committee is part of the Canada Revenue Agency.)

What’s extra-gross is the silence from mainstream media journalists. Most Canadian journalists have been bought off by Trudeau. If they work for the CBC, (and more than 50% of Canadian journalists do) they get 100% of their pay from Trudeau. And even if they work for the “private” news media, they get, on average, a $30,000 subsidy from Trudeau.

That’s why they’re silent today. And that’s another reason why they hate Rebel News: because we don’t take any cash from the government, and they’re ashamed that they do.

Click here to see my short video on the subject:

I don’t want to spend too much time on the court ruling. But there’s one part that shows you how unreasonable it is.

Rebel News publishes thousands of news stories every year. And the busiest time in our history was during the trucker convoy, back in February, 2022. We were publishing up to twenty stories a day, almost all of it from the ground — in Ottawa, Windsor, Coutts and other protest places. We were the window on the trucker convoy for the whole world. That month, we actually had more viewers than the CBC state broadcaster gets on an average month.

But here’s how Trudeau’s censorship committee described that three-week period of time: “only 2% of the items during the aforementioned period constituted original news content.”

Huh? Only 2% was original news content? What does that even mean? What else do they think we do over here? We’re not covering sports or the weather.

That’s madness. But the judge accepted that bizarre claim and used it as a reason to deny us a QCJO licence.

We’ve got to fight back. We’ve got to appeal. And thankfully, we’ve got a donor willing to match any donations, dollar for dollar, up to $50,000.

There are a lot of reasons why we have to win.

Under Bill C-11, which is now law, Trudeau has the power to order companies like YouTube and Facebook to either “boost” or “throttle” Canadian content. It would be too conspicuous for Trudeau to order them to ban Rebel News. But all he has to do is to order them to ban journalism that doesn’t have the QCJO licence. That way he can say he wasn’t targeting Rebel News, and that the tech companies did it, not him.

That’s what I’m terrified of. 99% of Canadian journalists have QCJO status. There really isn’t any point to the certification, other than to ban those very few media outlets that criticize Trudeau. I’ve actually heard this called the “get Rebel News law”. But it’s actually a “get Rebel News supporters law” as well. When people subscribe to the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star, they are able to deduct that subscription price off their taxes. Our subscribers, because of this ruling, cannot.

Trudeau really does mean to stamp us out. And today’s court ruling gets him closer to that goal.

We have to fight back. We lost in Federal Court, but we can go to the Federal Court of Appeal. We’ve beat Trudeau before — in 2019 and in 2021 when he banned us from attending the leaders debates, and we got the courts to overturn that.

We can beat him again. We have to.

Please go to www.WeAreSuingTrudeau.com, read the ruling, read our memorandum of fact and law, and read the original censorship committee report condemning us.

And if you can help us cover our legal costs, please do — you can do that right on the same page.

Thanks for your support. We’re fighting for our own rights here. But we’re also fighting for all Canadians who care about freedom of the press and stopping Trudeau’s censorship plans.

Yours truly,

Ezra Levant 

P.S. Trudeau already controls 99% of Canada’s media. But he is obsessed with destroying the last few independent voices out there. He thinks that might save his election chances.

P.P.S. I was demoralized when I saw the ruling. But then I talked to that passionate donor who said he’d match any crowdfunding, dollar for dollar, up to $50,000 to help us with the appeal. And that gave me hope! (Click here to activate this double-donation gift.)

P.P.P.S. If you want to be inspired, read our memorandum of fact and law at www.WeAreSuingTrudeau.com — I think it’s not just great lawyering, it’s a beautiful read!