00:00:00.000Hello, I'm Rachel Gilmore, your least favorite person's least favorite journalist. Welcome to
00:00:10.980Bubble Pop. This is the weekly live show where we talk about some of the biggest headlines and
00:00:16.740juiciest news tidbits so you don't have to doom scroll. And just a reminder that if you want to
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00:00:27.400like to listen. And while we are live, we always leave about 10 minutes at the end of the show
00:00:32.160to take your questions. We prioritize ones that are asked using the super chat function, but
00:00:37.520I always, I haven't yet not had time, I don't think, for free ones. So please go ahead,
00:00:45.360ask your question in the chat. There's a very good chance that we'll get to it.
00:00:48.120So let's get into it. The girls were fighting this week. See, Juno News, it's a self-proclaimed1.00
00:00:57.380news outlet that for some reason boasts one of the highest politics sub-stack subscription rates
00:01:04.400in Canada, they decided to invite an interesting guest on their show this week. Host Candice
00:01:11.560Malcolm called it an immigration debate, but her guest was a guy named Daniel Tyree, a founder of
00:01:18.340the Dominion Society. This is a guy who, according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, is a part of
00:01:25.360Canada's growing and emboldened white nationalist movement. Even Malcolm's former boss, former
00:01:31.700conservative cabinet minister, former Alberta premier, Jason Kenney, was outspoken about his
00:01:37.220disgust with the interview. Here's what he wrote. He said, Daniel Tyree is a racist. Racism is
00:01:44.680immoral. It is poison. It is not vitality. It is not conservative. This left many of us startled,
00:01:51.880confused. Did we just agree with Jason Kenney? Anyway, this is part of a broader, long overdue
00:02:01.160conversation about the conservative media ecosystem because things aren't just getting
00:02:06.420weird on Juno News, a platform that Pierre Polyev, by the way, has generously sat down with several
00:02:13.580times for one-on-one interviews. The party also invited several conservative influencers to their
00:02:20.520convention, which launched a bigger conversation about these TikTok making, sometimes truth
00:02:26.260twisting and often very partisan people who are making up an increasingly large share of the
00:02:32.080conservative media ecosystem. I knew I wanted to talk about all of this and who better to help me
00:02:39.280do that than one of my favorite fellow political journalists. Luke Lebrun is the editor of Press
00:02:45.280progress. He's an award-winning journalist and very, very good at what he does. He's also
00:02:50.560covered a lot of stories that veer into the stranger side of the media industry from this
00:02:56.280recent Juno news drama to uncovering the Israeli government money that funded a group that sent
00:03:02.500right-wing media personalities to Israel. In fact, he is so good at what he does that he is facing a
00:03:09.600big money lawsuit alongside CBC News and the Toronto Star that could create chilling precedents
00:03:14.860would protect politicians secrets from whistleblowers i'll put a link in the show notes
00:03:19.980for where you can support that journalism defense fund but all of that is just part of why i am so
00:03:26.620excited to welcome him back on the show today luke welcome to bubble pop sorry to interrupt your
00:03:34.700reading that looks like an sorry i'm so sorry rachel uh during your intro i decided to do
00:03:40.940some background uh research on the topic that we're discussing today i was reading uh losing
00:03:45.500true north by uh juno news founder candace malcolm i was just learning about europe's catastrophic
00:03:51.900migration policies really oh fascinating fascinating interesting title too given uh what
00:03:59.660the news venture that she went on to launch because for those of you who don't know juno news
00:04:04.380is now where all of the uh i feel so weird using words like reporting but where the reporting
00:04:10.620from uh true north which uh is the outlet that that um candace founded and andrew lawton who's
00:04:18.540a conservative mp now uh used to work for uh it's now judo news so yeah uh she she kept that
00:04:25.180true north title close to her heart okay luke i wanted to ask you right off the bat we gotta
00:04:35.660start with this junior news stuff how shocked were you to see jason kenny of all people calling this
00:04:44.860out well i definitely did not have a fight between jason kenny and kian bexy and candace malcolm on my
00:04:53.180bingo card for this year uh but you know in some ways it's not quite as surprising as one might
00:04:59.340think. You know, Jason Kenney definitely has a reputation as a staunch social conservative. I
00:05:07.760mean, he's got a pretty lengthy history of anti-abortion activism. And I mean, if you go
00:05:13.700back to his college days in San Francisco, history of anti-LGBTQ plus activism as well. I mean,
00:05:21.260there was an incident where he got into a fight with his Catholic university's
00:05:26.580policies and actually threatened to go to the Vatican to go over the heads of the school
00:05:32.800administration. I guess like have an audience with the Pope himself. Jason Kenney later
00:05:39.840dropped out of university and we're not really clear what happened with that. But all this to
00:05:44.980say, you know, he definitely does have a reputation as being a pretty social conservative guy.
00:05:50.340You know, and then during the 2019 provincial election in Alberta, and as well as his while he was the leader of the UCP before that, there were a number of controversies with candidates in his party who were expressing kind of racist, xenophobic or anti-Muslim type views.
00:06:10.880So this sort of stuff has sort of been stuff that he's been dealing with in the past. But, you know, that being said, you know, I do think that, you know, despite his problematic views on gender and sexuality, you know, he was Stephen Harper's immigration minister, and he was kind of credited at the time for doing a lot of outreach to these diaspora communities and bringing those kinds of communities into the making them feel more welcome, I guess you could say, within the Conservative Party.
00:06:35.840And, you know, I do think that maybe there is some, you know, I don't think race has ever been a really big focus for Jason Kenney. It's been kind of more of those, you know, traditionally social conservative things that he focuses on. So, I don't know, I think it actually does speak to some of his genuine beliefs on one level or another.
00:06:55.940Yeah. And now, you know, I realize we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here because we should probably break down for the chat and for the audience what happened that kind of sparked all of this.
00:07:10.680Why Jason Kenney was fighting with his former employee, Candace Malcolm, of Luke's favorite book, Fame.
00:07:18.820So, you know, can you tell me a little bit about this guest that she had on the show?
00:07:25.500I think that a lot of my listeners are already aware if you've been following my reporting of this group, the Dominion Society and of, you know, the broader white nationalist movement.
00:07:36.360But there's also probably a lot of people listening who might not be aware.
00:07:39.740So why was it a big deal that he had this guy or that she had this guy on her show?
00:07:45.500Right. So, you know, the guest, his name is Daniel Tyree.
00:07:49.080He's the former executive director of the People's Party of Canada.
00:07:52.120And I guess since leaving the party, I guess the People's Party is still around, but it's sort of petered out and lost a lot of, uh, lost a lot of its, uh, you know, energy, I guess, so to speak.
00:08:04.240I think Maxime Bernier is spending a lot of time in Florida nowadays, um, semi-retirement.
00:08:09.980He posts videos sometimes from Florida.
00:08:12.440Um, but yeah, so since I guess leaving the People's Party, he's started this, uh, thing called the Dominion Society.
00:08:19.040and they've really made this concept called remigration a big focal point of their efforts.0.85
00:08:26.720It seems pretty clear to me that they're just trying to, a big reason for the existence of
00:08:31.360this organization is to try to mainstream this concept. Maybe just to take like
00:08:37.000a step or two back here just for a moment. So this idea of remigration, effectively it's talking
00:08:45.100about sending immigrants back to their, you know, countries where they came from. Obviously,0.74
00:08:52.200this is referring to non-white immigrants for the most part. It, you know, I guess the origins of
00:09:00.820this, I mean, it kind of goes to this, there's this far-right influencer in Europe named Martin
00:09:06.020Zellner, who has, you know, a background with like neo-Nazi activism and such things. In 2023,
00:09:13.880There was this secret meeting in Potsdam, Germany, where Martin Zellner and a bunch of sort of far right figures, people associated with the Alternative for Deutschland party, which is a extremely far right party in Germany.
00:09:28.260They all got together, had this secret meeting, but there was an investigative journalist there who was recording it for this German news outlet called Corrective.
00:09:37.920and uh so when this they basically leaked the uh recordings from this meeting where they were
00:09:44.140talking about you know orchestrating this giant plan to send primarily muslim uh immigrants in
00:09:50.340germany back to uh you know their home countries or whatever um and this actually sparked really
00:09:56.380really big uh protests all across germany i mean there were protests in the streets of berlin and
00:10:01.340hamburg and you know munich and all the major german cities that were numbering uh like hundreds
00:10:06.540of thousands of people. So Zellner is very clearly inspired by this Martin Zellner character. He's
00:10:14.180actually said explicitly he's a big inspiration for him. He's recommended his books. So a big
00:10:20.260part of what Tyree is doing is trying to mainstream Zellner's ideas about re-migration effectively.
00:10:28.460So obviously, as you can imagine, it would be very problematic for, you know, I guess Juno News is
00:10:34.480like within the conservative movement is a platform that has a pretty um you know big
00:10:41.180audience they've had pierre polyev on their podcast in the past and interviewed him so i
00:10:47.400mean they clearly have access to some influential people within the conservative movement yeah it's
00:10:54.400um to me i i found it really concerning seeing them them platform him i mean this this this is a
00:11:03.020guy who the Dominion Society explicitly advocates for, you know, a complete moratorium on immigration.
00:11:10.160They want to make Canada less hospitable for immigrants, which I find to be a very ominous
00:11:18.780goal. And then they also want to revoke permanent residency, engage in mass deportations and
00:11:27.680ultimately incentivize people who uh they deem as having a uh country of origin to return to
00:11:36.240um you know to do so i i just the whole thing is really gross and really uh unsettling and um
00:11:43.760you know it's also like rooted in the racist replacement theory which is something that
00:11:50.240uh you highlighted to candace malcolm when you reached out to juno news and candace malcolm
00:11:55.600for comment when you reported on this um and you know i guess first off like i guess could you talk
00:12:03.280a little bit about what this replacement theory is and um also like i mean yeah i guess first off
00:12:11.440maybe we should establish what it is and then i'll press you a little bit on what candace said to you
00:12:17.760sure yeah i mean i guess the great replacement theory is i mean in uh probably the simplest
00:12:22.960terms i can put it so it's kind of this um conspiratorial narrative if you will um it
00:12:29.360its origins are in europe there's this guy named um renault camu um who is a french kind of
00:12:36.000philosopher what what have you um far-right philosopher i should say uh so he's the person
00:12:41.520who uh this is attributed to and it has since kind of spread amongst the european far-right and now
00:12:46.800So it's, you know, most of the far-right parties in Europe talk about it quite openly.
00:12:51.740But essentially the idea is that, you know, the elites are using immigration as a way to replace the, you know, the white population of Europe.
00:13:04.020That's essentially what this is talking about.0.68
00:13:06.660Yeah. So, and it's got a lot of far-right fans.
00:13:10.840It is a very gross theory and it underpins the ideology that the Dominion Society espouses this push for re-migration.
00:13:23.300And, you know, when Candace Malcolm responded to your request for comment, and let me see if I can just quickly pull this up here.
00:13:32.440So for those of you watching on video, I've got an excerpt of Luke's reporting here.
00:13:38.680But basically, she said that Tyree's definition of re-migration in their interview, which for some reason she branded as a debate.
00:13:47.300I found that to be an odd choice based on my, you know, how I felt watching it.
00:13:51.720It didn't come across like a debate. It came across to me like a softball interview.
00:13:56.260But she said that the definition that you provided to her was or that Tyree provided in the interview was totally different from what you, Luke LeBrun, had described to her.
00:14:08.040to me that just kind of makes it seem like she didn't do any research to be able to push back
00:14:13.980against a guy who is obfuscating his previously publicly stated views like I didn't that to me
00:14:22.720is irresponsible journalism if you're going to platform a guy like that you have to at least
00:14:27.240know what you're dealing with and be prepared for them to obfuscate that um but I wanted to ask you
00:14:33.420Like what were your thoughts on this response from Candace and did anything
00:14:55.340Um, but you know, it was, uh, so I reached out to her, uh, you know, I kind of provide
00:15:00.740some background information on uh re-migration and sort of as i just outlined about its links
00:15:06.740to stuff in the far right in europe um and its connection with the great replacement theory and
00:15:12.800such things um i also quoted from uh the dominion society's own website and even you know highlighted
00:15:20.020parts of their website where they are talking about the great replacement theory explicitly
00:15:23.820i mean there's an entire section with like uh yeah it's like a header that even says great
00:15:28.680replacement um and they also uh are pretty explicit that their definition of a like what
00:15:35.280is a quote-unquote real canadian is someone who is either english french scottish or irish
00:15:40.200uh which leaves out a whole you know number of other subsequent waves of of of immigrants um
00:15:47.780and uh you know so i i put this to candace malcolm and she didn't seem to want to accept it
00:15:55.520and she just kept referring back to the description that Daniel Tyree provide to her on her own
00:16:01.680program. Like as if what he had told her over this podcast had more legitimacy than the things that
00:16:09.340he actually says on his own website. It seems pretty clear if you watch the interview that
00:16:14.320he is presenting a very toned down, softened, sanitized version of what he, not even what he
00:16:21.360actually believes, like literally what he has on his own website. Um, and for whatever reason,
00:16:26.280Candace, uh, Malcolm seemed reluctant to even want to accept that. I mean, even to go a step
00:16:32.900further, I mean, in my article, I, uh, I have a screenshot of a tweet from Rupa Supermania, who's
00:16:39.540a, uh, former True North contributor. And Rupa had a screenshot from Tyree's website where he's
00:16:46.960talking about replacing the quote-unquote illegitimate population and when I asked
00:16:52.660Candace if she had a response to what Rupa was saying uh she basically said well I don't know
00:16:58.040where that screenshot is from it could be from anywhere I have no I can't comment on that um
00:17:02.160so it is quite literally from the guy's own website and your former true north contributor
00:17:08.520screenshot of it um so it's wild to me yeah it seems pretty clear to me I mean uh to be
00:17:17.800to kind of be a little uh I mean I guess share my observations here you know it seems to me that
00:17:23.440Candace Malcolm is reluctant to criticize people who she considers to be part of the right and you
00:17:31.240know I think I've said before that Candace uh seems like a very partisan person but the more
00:17:36.180i think about it it's kind of i feel like it goes a little bit deeper than that like i think she
00:17:41.060sees the world as people belonging in either one group or the other it's either you're you know
00:17:45.320conservative or you're progressive you're right wing or you're left wing and for her she i think
00:17:50.340she just really identifies with anyone who claims to be right wing or claims to be conservative or
00:17:55.880claims to be right of center and um you know so it's it's funny you know you present her with
00:18:01.980information that should yeah i mean jason kenny is clearly disturbed by this rupa supermania is
00:18:07.200clearly disturbed by this but for whatever reason um canis malcolm is unable to accept information
00:18:13.840that you know other people are concluding is problematic to say the least yeah including
00:18:22.020racist you could i mean yeah straight up racist you know so yeah yeah like i mean jason kenny
00:18:26.740came out publicly and said that this was racist. And even in her own interview, you know, she
00:18:34.240asked Daniel Tyree, like, are you far right? Are you a white nationalist? And he basically just
00:18:41.260said like, oh, you know, I call myself a Canadian nationalist, but I don't really care about like
00:18:48.400what people call me. And to me, that was just a really revealing moment. And her only response
00:18:56.060to that was to say interesting anyway thank you so much for your contribution to our website today
00:19:01.520everyone should go read it and this is the other thing like you're publishing someone repeatedly
00:19:06.100on your website which I reiterate is one of the top best-selling sub stacks in the world politics
00:19:13.620category so this is not some like totally fringe platform and you haven't even checked their website
00:19:20.220or if you have you've somehow forgotten about it to the point that you don't recognize it when your
00:19:25.480own former contributor raises it and and puts a screenshot out there to you i just feel like um
00:19:31.320there's a point at which obviously i can't assume her intent um but you know like is this it's either
00:19:40.120irresponsible to the point of being uh concerning for you know the public's understanding of these
00:19:46.520groups and movements or uh is it intentional like i just don't understand how you can be so bad at
00:19:52.360this um but you know i i wanted to ask you because of the fact that you know her former like i think
00:20:00.120that andrew lawton was managing editor or something at true north he had a fairly high up position i
00:20:04.440remember when i was covering stories about true north i would reach out to him and candace for
00:20:09.400comment um you know and and peer polyab does these one-on-one interviews with them like what
00:20:17.400does this mean for the Canadian media landscape? How do organizations like Juno News
00:20:24.440impact the Canadian media landscape, do you think? Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's interesting. So
00:20:31.720in, Candace put out a subsequent video, where she was, I guess, kind of railing at Jason Kenney for,
00:20:40.300I guess, for criticizing her, and she felt that was some sort of a betrayal. But
00:20:45.300in this video, she talks about the Overton window and how she's trying to open the Overton window.
00:20:51.720And Jason Kenney is trying to close the Overton window. Quick pause here for a second. So
00:20:56.780the Overton window, basically the Overton window is this, the idea that, you know, within any,
00:21:04.080at any given moment in public discourse, there are ideas that are acceptable. And those are
00:21:07.820the ideas that are inside this window. And then the unacceptable ideas are all the ones outside.
00:21:12.220so you shift the window um that that is the way they describe it you shift it um candace is
00:21:19.480talking about opening the window as if it is a literal window just need to point out that that
00:21:24.980is not the correct it's just a misunderstanding of the word completely yeah but anyways that being
00:21:30.460said you know it is i thought it was pretty revealing that she thinks of it in that way i
00:21:34.480mean she thinks of juno news as this thing that is shifting the overton window or opening the
00:21:40.560Overton window. And like, I mean, I think that is a big part of what the project of certainly
00:21:48.460something like Juno is all about. You know, I think sometimes I see these right-wing alternative
00:21:56.540media outlets being described as, you know, partisan, as if their only goal is to get
00:22:02.200Pierre Polyev elected or only is only to get conservative parties elected. I don't actually
00:22:08.100think that that's what they are trying to do. I think that, like, I think if you listen to what
00:22:12.340Candace says, I mean, I think that is exactly what they're trying to do. They are trying to
00:22:16.000shift the conversation in certain ways where it is normalizing more, um, extreme views. I guess
00:22:22.380maybe they would think of these as right-wing ideas, but I mean, quite clearly re-migration
00:22:27.740and, you know, great replacement theory type stuff is, I mean, these are very extreme and racist,
00:22:33.860ideas. Yeah. And I mean, very right-wing people like Jason Kenney are saying these aren't right-wing
00:22:40.880ideas. So clearly there's disagreement within even right-wing circles about whether this is,
00:22:46.960you know, right-wing. Yeah. It's really wild. And I think that one of the things that I just
00:22:55.200always want to emphasize too, and I wanted to make sure I mentioned this before we move on to
00:23:01.200talking about this sort of influencer conservative media landscape more broadly, which I think will
00:23:06.580be a very fun conversation, is the fact that, you know, this group has, they've come out and
00:23:15.900their co-founder has said that organizations like the Dominion Society and Second Sons and
00:23:24.540the community of Diagon are all complimentary of another. So, you know, Second Sons is an active
00:23:31.860club. It's guys that like white dudes that are getting together, training for some kind of
00:23:38.300anticipated violence. And it's really concerning to see a co-founder of an organization that was
00:23:48.920platformed on a news outlet that Pierre Polyev grants one-on-ones to talk about these organizations
00:23:55.580as being complementary of one another. And a prominent member of Diagalon, who is a prominent,
00:24:00.540you know, public-facing member of that active club, has also posted on Twitter saying that he
00:24:06.280got his membership card from the Dominion Society. And he says, if you are a Canadian nationalist and
00:24:13.360remigration enthusiast, why haven't you joined yet? And his membership card happened to have the
00:24:18.440number, the one that the Dominion Society provided him, coincidentally had the number 88, which is
00:24:24.340very commonly understood to be a far right dog whistle, because eight, the eighth letter of the0.72
00:24:33.600alphabet is H. So it's HH for Heil Hitler. And, you know, that could just be a coincidence. Maybe
00:24:40.900the Dominion Society didn't know who was joining. Maybe they didn't know, even though, you know,
00:24:45.680greg wycliffe who is another co-founder is constantly involved like he does lots of stuff
00:24:50.820with the diagonal guys on their streams and stuff but you know i i just to me the overlaps here
00:24:56.480are very bad to the point that like it's extremely irresponsible to normalize and do interviews with
00:25:04.520these guys without providing that relevant context like when you when she asked him about
00:25:09.580being involved with the far right and white nationalists you know there's allegations of
00:25:13.680this say what those are and say what proof there is um I don't know if you have anything you want
00:25:18.940to add to that Luke before we move on yeah I was just gonna add you know they actually put out a
00:25:24.300video afterwards kind of reflecting on the whole controversy that uh so this is Tyree um yeah on
00:25:30.540the controversy that had been sparked where Jason Kenney's fighting with Candace Malcolm and you
00:25:34.720know he's ecstatic he is completely ecstatic by all the attention that he is getting um you know
00:25:40.640he sees this as, uh, I mean, first of all, he loves the attention because it's, you know,
00:25:45.040getting more, uh, you know, driving more people to him, more people are learning about his
00:25:49.920organization and he's using this for recruitment and so forth, but also, you know, being platformed
00:25:56.140on, uh, something like Juno. And I mean, he even says interestingly that he was really worried
00:26:02.220that they were going to, uh, disavow him afterwards and that they might take down the
00:26:06.900interview. And when he saw Candice and some of these other Juno, you know, personalities defending
00:26:14.680him, he, you know, he couldn't have asked for anything more than that, you know, to him,
00:26:20.800this is legitimizing his group. This is putting him on a platform that is also shared by people
00:26:26.900like Pierre Polyev. And as far as he's concerned, it is elevating him. So I think, you know, I
00:26:32.300definitely don't think that Juno's contributors care, because I think many of them are just so
00:26:37.700deeply into this sort of online space that they're, you know, they're loving this.
00:26:45.000But I think for people who are maybe right of center or, you know, other conservatives who
00:26:50.740are looking at this, I mean, I think they really have to think about their own involvements with,
00:26:55.680you know, something like Juno, which is giving a platform to these kinds of people.
00:27:00.520Yeah, particularly when these guys have said that their, you know, their stated goal is to normalize and mainstream this concept of, you know, remigration and mass deportation. And, you know, so I just think that we should all maybe reflect a bit if it appears that we, based on their reaction, have done anything to play into that being normalized or rendered.
00:27:26.560And when I say normalization, like, to be clear, that means like people will internalize this idea as less radical or more, you know, something that polite society should accept than it is.
00:27:42.140We see what's happening in the States with ICE.
00:27:44.860And Tyree in that interview talks about needing to round up and deport every illegal person, which like nobody's illegal.
00:27:52.220But anyway, like just saying that is like, we know what that looks like.
00:28:00.540And I just, it's really disturbing to me.
00:28:03.480I just hope that people understand the importance and impact of the fact that these guys not
00:28:10.380only have this opportunity, but are celebrating it in the aftermath.
00:28:14.340Okay, let's move on to different, but still maybe depressing news.
00:28:20.840um you know these conservative influencers that keep cropping up um you know we we got out there's
00:28:29.240a whole gang of them and this is part of this like broader media right-wing ecosystem and the
00:28:35.440media landscape that we're talking about here um what do you make of these guys like you know we
00:28:41.560got we got mario zalea the pleb these guys that were invited to the conservative convention the
00:28:48.860pleb used to be my reply guy like asking for feet pics to the point that he even sent one of his own
00:28:54.360in my replies once which I wish I could unsee um but yeah like who's your favorite who's your
00:29:01.840favorite of these influencers oh my goodness Rachel there's so many to pick from um like I
00:29:08.440mean you have the pleb so he keeps posting photos of Pierre Polyev and talking about you know his
00:29:13.580muscles and you know how masculine he looks but you know then on the other hand it sometimes seems
00:29:18.860like you might like pierre a little bit too much so i know i get some weird vibes from sometimes
00:29:23.820um and then you have people like wyatt claypool who is kind of like this gen z rex murphy kind
00:29:29.980of character um those are not words that belong together it's kind of hard you know it's really
00:29:37.180hard to you know how do you choose when you when these are the options i know it's it's overwhelming
00:29:43.260we're spoiled for choice. But I did want to ask you, I mean, like, one thing that I've found
00:29:50.620interesting, just observing it has been the access that these guys seem to be getting, right? Like,
00:29:57.540they got invited to this convention with these influencer passes and didn't have to pay when
00:30:03.440many other conservative supporters had to pay a lot of money to go to that convention. And
00:30:08.600And fascinatingly, too, they're making a lot of claims. And to be fair, a lot of online influencers like to make claims of access and, you know, you know, sourcing that maybe there's not quite the actual, you know, reality to back it up.
00:30:26.680um but you know like I saw one uh influencer Brittany I don't know where she got this from
00:30:33.020but she posted a video of Pierre Polyev working out with Tony Greco uh his his trainer um and it
00:30:41.340wasn't her sharing this video from a source maybe she just grabbed it from somewhere but it was
00:30:47.800before the podcast had dropped um so she said like you know he has a podcast dropping tomorrow
00:30:54.140It seemed like she was advertising this and, you know, Mario Zollea making claims about having really solid sources in the party.
00:31:03.980He's been floating some really wild accusations this week that we won't get into those because it's just I think it's kind of inappropriate.
00:31:12.280but um like what do you make of the transparency and ethics issues at play here with these
00:31:19.760influencers and how they obviously we don't know but like how they may or may not be
00:31:24.260interacting with the party behind the scenes yeah no that's a good question um yeah i mean
00:31:31.100it's unclear what level of coordination there is between the conservative party and these
00:31:36.820influencers that being said i mean it seems pretty obvious from their convention where they got
00:31:42.220these um you know they like they made a special category of uh accreditation for for influencers
00:31:49.340or content creators um and then there was also to this like creator meetup event at this bar
00:31:56.080in uh calgary where all these people got up on stage and it was kind of a watershed moment i
00:32:03.640think for these uh for these uh conservative uh influencers where they were all kind of like
00:32:09.140having this irl in real life uh meetup right like in this bar um the other interesting thing too is
00:32:16.360um you might not have heard of this but the uh candace strong and free network which is the
00:32:21.340former manning center so it's a right-wing conservative think tank um they're currently
00:32:25.860uh fundraising to i guess they've created this um content creator program where they're kind of
00:32:33.580trying to build up a network of right-wing um influencers um doing the tp usa thing
00:32:39.840yeah yeah exactly so it seems pretty clear that i mean you know the federal conservative party and
00:32:46.600other organizations within the larger conservative movement um see a role for these sort of uh you
00:32:55.340know influencers which are basically just like individuals who have social media accounts and
00:32:59.460then like spend all day you know creating content and posting videos and things like that right
00:33:04.920um yeah so yeah I don't know um and then I guess what was your second part of the question it was
00:33:11.540about the oh just like the the questions of transparency and ethics at play here yeah you
00:33:19.140know yeah so I think you kind of got at it but yeah well I mean I've done some stories in the
00:33:24.220past for example um i mean there's so there's like the tenant media thing right where there was this
00:33:29.860um right wing outlet that was created it turned out it was being funded through uh rt and some
00:33:36.380money was coming from russia uh according to the influencers that were working there they didn't
00:33:42.020know where the actual money was coming from but they just took these six-figure paychecks and
00:33:46.440didn't question it but i mean in that in that case you know you have a situation where you have
00:33:51.260uh foreign money uh coming in and funding some of these influencers there was not the influencers
00:33:58.380that we just mentioned it's uh it's a separate group yeah that's correct that's correct um
00:34:04.700but uh there was there was also these canadian uh conservative youtubers um that i did a story
00:34:09.980about about a year ago they said that they had been contacted out of the blue by someone who was
00:34:16.600promising to connect them with some money from a foreign source and they i guess to their credit
00:34:21.480kind of uh went public with this and and anyways all this to say like it does point to the fact
00:34:27.640that you don't really know um like a where they're getting their funding from but also b
00:34:34.760um you don't really know what their actual agenda is and you know in actual fact i mean
00:34:39.080there are most likely you know all kinds of you know foreign and domestic interests that
00:34:44.520have lots of money and would be happy to you know pour money into um you know funding networks of
00:34:52.040of influencers um you know so and based on talking to some uh you know disinformation experts national
00:34:58.680security experts in some of my past reporting they see this as a real concern um and probably
00:35:05.080something i would not be surprised that we will hear more of about in the in the future um but
00:35:11.400But, yeah, I mean, the other thing, too, is, you know, like for myself, someone who, you know, Press Progress is a digital publication, you know, I am often, you know, I often note the condescension with which, you know, like traditional newspaper journalists and broadcast journalists have towards digital first kind of publications.
00:35:32.860um you know i don't actually see anything wrong with you know people being bloggers people being
00:35:38.580citizen journalists people being like there's actually nothing wrong with being an influencer
00:35:42.140or a content creator um i would love it if we could talk more about like how can you do
00:35:47.860content creation slash you know how do you do influencer life in an ethical uh an ethical way
00:35:54.340like where is the canadian association of journalists for influencers that would be great
00:35:58.480And you could create best practices and share, you know, share, share tips and tricks on
00:36:05.180how to create content in a more responsible way.
00:42:17.500And I mean, I guess this kind of goes back
00:42:18.960to something I was just talking about like five minutes ago,
00:42:21.680which is, you know, you have, I mean, this quite clearly shows that there is, you know,
00:42:28.380a foreign government that is trying to recruit these influencers and these right-wing alternative
00:42:33.860media personalities. They're bringing them to Israel. They're, you know, organizing these
00:42:39.680very curated tours where they're meeting with government officials. They're attending these
00:42:46.480lectures uh they're taking them sightseeing um you know and also i should note too they put them up
00:42:54.080in like some pretty luxurious hotels uh yeah it was a pretty big budget big budget trip that they
00:43:00.480went on um so anyways again it just goes to show you know with these influencers there are questions
00:43:06.400about transparency and about you know people that are trying to use them to you know get their
00:43:11.840narratives out um in this case it was the israeli government i mean we have an example of you know
00:43:17.600the russian uh you know russian actors up to similar kinds of things you have the conservative
00:43:22.960party that's you know trying to build this army of influencers um so yeah i mean all these things
00:43:28.720kind of come come full circle in some ways yeah yeah um i think one of my favorite parts of that
00:43:34.960story um and and it is so interesting uh you know because you found the funding from the
00:43:42.400israeli government for two of these trips my decision has send sent uh uh journalists on
00:43:49.600several more trips um and we don't know about the funding for those um but i think it's worth
00:43:55.280highlighting that in a broader sense um you know on those other trips so not the ones that you found
00:44:00.400the funding for but uh the toronto sun and national post editors in chief were on those trips
00:44:06.960which is wild so not the ones that you found the funding for but they have attended these trips um
00:44:12.640more broadly from the exigent uh foundation so um but the thing that really that i found really
00:44:19.600funny reading this story because there's a lot of serious stuff in there but you reached out to a
00:44:24.800juno news uh vlogger and you know bringing the story full circle back to juno um she
00:44:33.920warned her followers that you were going to be doing a journalism about her so my question for
00:44:42.080you luke lebrun how could you do a journalism to her how do you live with yourself doing a journalism
00:44:50.560is what i do i can't yeah there's no i have no further defense beyond that no um so you know i
00:45:00.320reached out to this person and she uh she screenshotted my email and then just posted it
00:45:06.300on uh on axe kind of a weird thing to do because my questions were about whether she was aware that
00:45:14.060you know, she had just gone on a trip funded by a foreign government. Um, some of her own
00:45:20.260followers were kind of like, like, wait, what? Um, and they were, it seemed to beg more questions
00:45:26.080than it answered. So I don't know that it, um, I don't know that it had the effect that she was
00:45:31.220hoping to. Um, I will just say too, you know, it's funny how these people like to criticize the
00:45:36.560quote unquote mainstream media. And, you know, can you imagine if, you know, CBC journalists were
00:45:42.280like you know being funded by foreign governments in some way like what they would say
00:45:46.540and then you have an example where um you know pretty legitimate reasons to question this person
00:45:52.800and how do they respond do they take accountability you know like how would they have expected cdc to
00:45:58.640have responded in this situation um but instead they you know just post a screenshot and are like
00:46:04.500lol and uh yeah i mean i think i think the response speaks for itself
00:46:10.380speaking of uh doing a journalism uh i before we turn to audience questions which we will do soon
00:46:18.660i wanted to give you a chance to tell the viewers about the press freedom case that you're dealing
00:46:22.900with i'm sure um that you have to be careful with what you say here but i did want to give people
00:46:28.800the i wanted to give you the opportunity to share with the audience what you can and tell people how
00:46:35.620they can support you in this extremely important fight. Sure. Yeah. And thank you for this,
00:46:41.620Rachel. Yeah. I'm not going to get into specifics about this for obvious reasons, but if your
00:46:47.420viewers would like, they can go to a website that we create called journalismdefense.ca
00:46:51.740and they can read both the statement of claim and statement of defense, and they can make up
00:46:56.940their own minds about what is going on here. I will say, you know, just to boil this down,
00:47:01.900And, you know, several years ago during the 2019 Alberta election, we reported on a story about Facebook messages written by a, at the time, a candidate for Jason Kenney's UCP.
00:47:14.760And these messages contained controversial statements on immigration and race and topics like these.
00:47:22.940You know, this candidate later resigned and, you know, actually, you know, to come full circle again to, you know, Jason Kenney, you know, to his credit.
00:47:31.900Jason Kenney actually publicly condemned this candidate's remarks at the time.
00:47:38.920Flash forward several years later, we are now embroiled in this lawsuit.
00:47:48.640Yeah, so I mean, this trial is involving press progress.
00:47:51.660They're also suing CBC News and the Toronto Star,
00:47:55.880and simply just because we quoted their own words.
00:47:59.900And I mean, I guess the other thing to mention, too, is, you know, this person has been talking about this this lawsuit as a battle against cancel culture, quote unquote, cancel culture.
00:48:12.720You know, they're talking about how they want to, quote unquote, impose costs on the journalists who quoted their words.
00:48:19.800And, you know, they've also boasted that this is going to be a very long and very costly trial, which is exactly what it is.
00:48:29.040And I would like to maybe take a step back for a second here to point out that there is a bigger problem. This is not just about press progress. It is not about the CBC. It is not about this one specific case.
00:48:43.940you know, in Alberta in the last several years, there have been a number of lawsuits and legal
00:48:49.740threats targeting not just journalists, but also civil society groups, academics, you know,
00:48:57.260even just random people who are, you know, commenting and debating about politics on
00:49:02.280social media. And many of these lawsuits and legal threats are being made by people who have,
00:49:09.140of, you know, they're politically related individuals. And, you know, this has been a
00:49:15.420growing problem. And one of the reasons for this, I think, is that Alberta is a province that does
00:49:22.260not have anti-slap legislation. Anti-slap legislation, by the way, is, it basically
00:49:27.880creates a mechanism in the process of a, in a legal process for, you know, at an early stage
00:49:34.680for a judge to weigh the merits of the case. And, you know, in many cases, if this is something that
00:49:40.380is a frivolous or a politically motivated or just an abusive process, the court has the option of
00:49:49.600dismissing it because it is a slap lawsuit, a strategic litigation against public participation.
00:49:57.000Yes, that's right. Thank you. No, I had the wrong one.
00:50:00.540Yeah. But this exists in Ontario. This exists in British Columbia. Manitoba just brought in
00:50:08.420similar legislation. And it's a really important thing to protect free and democratic speech.
00:50:16.580Anyway, so if people are interested, please go to journalismdefense.ca and you can learn more
00:50:23.140about the case and you can also contribute to our journalism defense fund so that we can
00:50:29.160fight this lawsuit and win awesome yeah definitely do that guys this is super super important it is
00:50:37.820uh like it's so messed up uh speaking broadly not specifically about you know this case but
00:50:45.060you know if people can uh with lots of money can spend that money on lawyers and drain newsrooms
00:50:52.180of their resources just because they do journalism that they do a journalism to someone um and
00:50:59.020report their own words, that means that people who have money can escape accountability because
00:51:05.460this will have a chilling effect. If your newsroom can be drained of all its resources just for doing
00:51:10.300an accurate story on someone who has the resources to bleed you dry through an extended lawsuit,
00:51:15.800that's a huge problem for democracy. So this is a really important issue. I want to turn to audience
00:51:21.380questions now if anyone has some. I'll give you guys a minute to drop those in the chat.
00:51:25.540While you do that, Luke, I'm sure that after listening to you for the last like almost hour now, people probably want to keep up with your work.
00:51:33.620Can you tell them where they can do that?
00:54:01.800to be talking about these kinds of things.
00:54:03.680But, um, but yeah, no, I think it's important.
00:54:06.600And I think it's, I think that conservatives need to hear more of that from other conservatives.
00:54:12.280Um, because I, again, at the end of the day, I mean, I think the, you know, there's a place
00:54:18.440for, you know, conservative politics within a democracy, but, uh, you know, we don't want
00:54:22.640that to be sliding into something that's anti-democratic and authoritarian and hateful
00:54:28.560and anti-immigrant and uh you know just demonizing other human beings effectively
00:54:34.620yeah particularly because like guys like Tyree are making claims about having inroads in the
00:54:41.120conservative party um you know I I don't know if uh Luke if you have a few minutes I can actually
00:54:47.220I have that audio handy and we can listen to what Tyree said on a Twitter space a while back
00:54:53.300where he was discussing and obviously like these guys do make claims that we don't know if they're
00:54:59.400actually true we don't know if the um if if his claims about access and stuff are accurate um but
00:55:07.280let me just show you in his own words this guy who was recently on juno news how he is speaking
00:55:13.480about the conservative party yeah exactly like i i come from a similar background i've done this
00:55:20.440whole song and dance and i agree there's definitely our guys on the inside that are
00:55:26.200obfuscating their message but like we're so far beyond that like the situation in canada is0.89
00:55:33.320fucked it's not we're we're not going to win by just like being silent and being like oh leave0.85
00:55:39.860this up to our guys on the inside those those guys often get you know they they start getting0.98
00:55:47.540worried about losing their job if they speak out they they have their own interests and they end
00:55:53.140up getting shuffled into comfortable positions and accomplishing absolutely nothing even though
00:55:57.700they might have based conversations with you behind the scenes like that's not enough anymore
00:56:02.580and that's also not what we're doing we're straddling the divide between this quote unquote
00:56:07.940poster class and this quote unquote professional class to move our more radical more correct
00:56:15.720position into the mainstream and put direct pressure on these guys i am happy i agree i
00:56:22.080definitely agree pauliev is speaking out against immigration finally he's still uh not doing so
00:56:28.540very effectively he's still getting distracted by all sorts of other issues and we're going to
00:56:33.020criticize him every single day until he does better and better and better and keep in mind
00:56:38.020we're not the ones that started fights with these professional class and and really i didn't get
00:56:44.200that much blowback from those guys. I got blowback from Robin Skies, who's not working in politics
00:56:49.080anymore. I got blowback from Brian Burgett, who's a failed candidate for the Conservative Party of
00:56:54.500British Columbia. I got pushed back by Alex Brown. He's probably the closest we could
00:57:00.400throw into this professional politico class. If there are our guys on the inside, and I know there
00:57:09.380are i talk to them they're not the ones out here counter signaling me because they realize
00:57:14.740that i'm pushing things in the right direction the guys on this call are pushing things in the
00:57:18.500right direction so we don't win by fighting with each other we win by them ignoring us
00:57:24.500and letting us push the overton window while they take advantage of the space we create
00:57:32.340these guys are like those movie villains that like they do a monologue with their whole plan um before
00:57:39.380enact it you know it's great from the canadian anti-hate network um that they provided that to
00:57:46.280me so i just want to give them their flowers so go ahead luke no it's great too because not only
00:57:50.760do they broadcast their plans they also tell you exactly how to defeat them and they tell you
00:57:55.840exactly what their biggest worries are so i would say just you know take them at their own word and
00:58:01.380you'll you know you'll see exactly what uh what they don't want to happen and based on that
00:58:07.780recording. I mean, they're obviously nervous about mainstream conservative, they call them
00:58:16.540the professional class. They're worried about those people criticizing them and pushing back
00:58:22.120on them. So yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear just from listening to them why it's important
00:58:30.980for people within the conservative movement to push back against what they're talking about.
00:58:37.780We have two more questions here. I think they're pretty quick. One of them is, is there any kind of repo database of politicians or influencers who have been on these influencer trips or been on these Israel trips? I'm not aware of any databases. There's a lot of coverage that's kind of disparate of this, but Luke, I don't know if you are aware of any.
00:59:00.280I know that the Maple has a, I linked to it in my article. They did a roundup of all the
00:59:07.720Exigent Foundation trips. I do know that there are some additional trips that have happened that are
00:59:13.360not related to the Exigent Foundation. One of them was actually organized directly by the
00:59:19.380Israeli consulate and was, there were some stories about some Toronto city councillors that
00:59:25.480uh, went on this, uh, paid trip, uh, which led to some controversy. Uh, Steve Paikin was also
00:59:32.680there, although he, he was very clear that he paid for this trip, uh, out of his own pocket.
00:59:38.340Uh, Ben Mulroney was there. No comment from Ben Mulroney about who paid for that. Um, yeah.
00:59:44.880Yeah. So definitely the Maple has been doing really good work on tracking a lot of this stuff.
00:59:49.480So, uh, yeah, the, thank you. I mean, I didn't know they did the exigent one. So that's really,
00:59:54.520really great um and the last question that i'll pull up here and personally i haven't had a chance
01:00:00.760to look into this yet so i don't know if you have luke but if you haven't don't worry we can just
01:00:04.840say sorry and move on but uh rocket reindeer wants to know if uh rachel and luke have any thoughts on
01:00:10.680coverage of daniel smith's immigrant slurring referendum i haven't had a chance to look into
01:00:15.560the referendum yet i saw the headlines that she has um she's got one planned but like i i don't
01:00:23.160know enough about it yet to say anything and unlike a lot of these uh right-wing influencers
01:00:28.280that we're talking about i will not speak on something that i haven't actually read or
01:00:31.880understood yet but thank you for the question and i'll definitely try to look into it
01:00:37.000i do think it's interesting that uh next week there's a budget where apparently alberta is
01:00:42.840going to announce that it is running a multi-billion dollar deficit so one does wonder if um
01:00:48.520So immigrants are being set up as a scapegoat to distract attention from what what Daniel Smith might worry is, you know, negative attention to the way she's managing money in Alberta.0.99
01:01:04.120Immigrants as a scapegoat for government failure? Luke, I've never heard of that happening before.
01:01:08.940that that's what what yeah no apparently it does happen sometimes you know actually if you uh
01:01:15.020if you check out uh losing true north by candace malcolm which by the way i picked up at the ottawa
01:01:20.440public library i did not actually pay for it myself um so no royalties went to candace uh
01:01:26.640malcolm but um uh i'm i haven't actually read much of this book yet but uh i'm sure there's
01:01:34.160more information about scapegoating immigrants in this, in this book.
01:01:38.920Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for the reminder of our important reading list. Okay,
01:01:44.340on that note, I think we can wrap this up. Luke, thank you so much for coming back on the show.
01:01:50.680I'm sure I will bug you again soon to come back on again. It was a great conversation.