| Dear Sandra,
I’ve got amazing news. It started out as terrible news. And the moral of the story here is: never trust a Liberal.
Here’s the story:
Remember back in 2019, when Trudeau’s hand-picked Debates Commission banned Rebel News and True North from sending reporters to the election debates? We went to court for an emergency hearing, and the judge said Trudeau had violated our constitutional rights, and ordered him to let us in.
Trudeau’s staff spent the next two years studying that court ruling, scheming up new ways to get around it, to ban our reporters from the 2021 election debates. So we had to go back to court — and this time, it was just us. But a judge once again sided with us, and ordered Trudeau’s people to let us in.
So here’s where the story gets crazy.
It’s 2025 now. There’s another election. But Mark Carney is the PM, not Trudeau. And this time, when we applied for accreditation, they said we were welcome to attend! In fact, they said we could send as many reporters as we liked. Sixteen of us applied, and 16 of us were accredited.
I knew that was a trick. I knew they were lying. And it proves my point about Mark Carney — he’s Trudeau 2.0. Just as evil, but smarter and harder-working. I knew there was something going on that they were hiding from us.
So we had our lawyer Chad Williamson press them on it. Chad is the same lawyer who beat the Debates Commission in court in 2021.
So Chad started interrogating them in a series of letters. And slowly but surely, he discovered their plan to block us. Carney’s Debate Commission said all 16 of us could attend. But they finally confessed their trick to Chad: only one of us would be allowed to ask questions. The other 15 would have to sit in silence.
It was a new rule they made up. It was a secret rule. That applied only to Rebel News. And if we didn’t hire Chad to interrogate them, we would have walked into a trap — and by the time we realized it, it would have been too late to rush to court!
They planned to keep it all a secret until we showed up.
I know you might think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. I’ve posted our entire exchange of letters at LeadersDebate.ca. You’ve got to check it out.
Sixteen Rebels were allowed to attend. But 15 of us couldn’t ask any questions at the press conference. They said the rule was just one reporter per news company. But we know that’s a lie.
The CBC has several reporters for English Canada. And they have several reporters for Quebec. Newspapers have multiple reporters too — for example, Postmedia is one company, but it is permitted to bring reporters for each of its newspapers, for example, the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen and the Calgary Herald.
We pointed this out, and so the Debates Commission changed the rules again. They said the CBC was allowed multiple questions because they had different reporters in French and English. Well so do we — including our star Quebec reporter, Alexa Lavoie!
They said that Postmedia was allowed multiple reporters because they covered different regions. Well, so do we. Drea Humphrey is in B.C., Sheila Gunn Reid is in Alberta, David Menzies is in Ontario, Alexa’s in Quebec and I’m always running around somewhere.
Do you see what I mean? They were making it up on the go — special, secret rules just for us. They tried to trick us into NOT suing them, so that by the time we discovered this, there would be nothing we could do about it.
But we found them out. And just a few days ago, we told them we were done negotiating, and they should get their lawyers ready, because we were going back to court for a third time, for an emergency injunction.
Chad went back and forth with them NINE TIMES. You really have to read all nine letters at LeadersDebate.ca.
They knew we weren’t going to stop fighting.
And that’s when Carney’s staff blinked.
They let us in. They knew that if we took them to court for a third time, and if their tricky rules were shown to the Federal Court of Canada, they would lose for a third time.
So Carney’s people blinked. They wrote back to us, at the last minute, calling off our lawsuit, by agreeing to allow not one, not two, not three, not four, but five Rebels to ask questions — and for each of us to have cameramen, too. Granted, it’s not the full 16 we asked for, but it still makes us the largest group of question-askers at the debates.
Like I say: amazing news. But it started off as terrible news.
There’s a moral to the story here.
Number one: never trust a Liberal — especially Mark Carney.
Number two: always fight for your rights. Sometimes the other side is more scared of you than you are of them. I think our lawyer Chad scared Carney’s lawyers.
Number three: be sure to tune in to the leaders’ debates, both the French one tomorrow night, and the English one, Thursday night. Because we’ll be at both — because it’s the question and answer scrum at the end that we’re interested in.
Number four is where you come in. We told Chad to start preparing the lawsuit last week, and he put his full team on it. We truly thought we were going to court. Only when we had the written letter of surrender from Carney’s people did we stop the lawsuit. But between the lawsuit preparations and the negotiations, we racked up $9,000 in legal bills. That’s in addition to the costs of getting our whole team out there: Drea from B.C., Sheila from Alberta, etc. We’re all going to stay in an Airbnb together, to save money — oh, and we’re also bringing the billboard truck!
It’s going to be huge. We really are going to make it our debate. And that’s only possible because of my last point — we have you to help us level the playing field.
Our ability to attend the debates, and ask the questions you care about, rather than what the regime media like the CBC cares about, is only possible due to your generosity — to help us pay for our lawyers, not just this time, but the huge court victories in 2019 and 2021 that put us in a strong position this year.
It’s insane that it has fallen to us, and the mainstream media hasn’t even mentioned these outrageous attempts at censorship. But then again, they don’t want Rebel News in there either, do they?
Between Chad’s legal wrangling, the half-drafted lawsuit, our travel costs and our Airbnb, I estimate that we need $12,000 to cover our debate costs. Could I ask you for a personal favour to chip in?
It was a David vs. Goliath battle just to get in. And once we’re in, it will be a David vs. Goliath battle to push aside the regime media types who will try to block us from getting to the microphones. And then it will be a third David vs. Goliath battle to actually put questions to Mark Carney and Jagmeet Singh and Pierre Poilievre, too.
But I promise you: we’ll make sure to ask questions that no-one else in the media will.
If you can help, please click here, or go to LeadersDebate.ca — thanks for your support!
Yours truly,
Ezra Levant
Rebel News
P.S. Rebel News and one other independent media outlet were both in court back in 2019 fighting the Debates Commission. By 2021, it was just us by ourselves — but our victory allowed all other independent media to attend. And our victory this time, too, will redound to the benefit of everyone.
In other words, Rebel News fights for our reporters, and our viewers, but the benefits of our fights and the precedents we set benefit every journalist in the country, whether they admit it or not.
P.P.S. Please help me cover the $12,000 in costs here — the $9,000 in legal fees, and the $3,000 to bring our whole team (and the truck) to the debates. Thanks!
P.P.P.S. You can read the full exchange of letters between Chad and Carney’s people at LeadersDebate.ca. And we’ll be posting our videos about the debate there, too! |