Shaun Newman Podcast - #403 - SNP Presents: Legacy Media

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

This is the live audio from Saturday March 18th's SNP Presents in Edmonton featuring Kid Carson, Byron Christopher, Kris Sims & Wayne Peters. Kid Carson - A long-time morning radio host in Canada - LIFE 100.3 Barrie / KISS 92 Toronto / THE BEAT 94.5 / KISS 104.9 / Z95 Vancouver. After losing his job for expressing his views on the Freedom Convoy he now hosts the the Kid Carson Podcast and tours Canada doing live events "Kid Carson & Friends". Byron Christopher - A journalist for more than 30 plus years with experience in the mainstream and independent media. His style of work has been referred to as "Armageddon-like blood-and-guts crime reporting". He's filed stories across North America, Europe, Asia & Australia, with most of his journalistic career focused on Western Canada. During the two decades that he worked for the CBC and for 630 CHED, he won national awards for both his print and radio journalism. He is known for his ability to secure exclusive interviews with convicted criminals, and is sometimes the only media source that high-profile criminals will contact. Finally, he taught journalism at Grant MacEwan College.  Kris Sims - She is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and has 25 years experience in national journalism and politics. Sims was a founding reporter for Sun News Network and proudly covered issues of big government, personal liberty and the rights of small town and rural Canadians until Sun News was shut down.  Wayne Peters - He is a longtime blue collar worker who started as a floor hand on a service rig, a stint in cementing and a decade of construction. He took his 30 year hobby of photography & visual design to become a beat journalist starting during the 2019 convoy to Ottawa (Yes 2019). He hosts What's Up Canada where he had names like Julie Ponesse, Byram Bridle & Steven Pelech draw straws early into the pandemic to see who would talk first. He now is bringing independent media together with "Looking Glass Media". Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast Let me know what you thinkText me 587-217-8500

This is Francis Whittleson. This is Benjamin Anderson. This is Dallas, Alexander. I'm Alex Kraner. This is Forrest Moretti. This is Chris Sims. This is Chris Barber, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Friday. Hope everybody's week is going well. A couple of things here right off the hop. First, there's a new substack out this week. I had a 16-year-old leave a note at this past week's SMP presents Legacy Media. I thought it was, I don't know, exceptionally written and pretty, you know, profound advice for parents. So if you haven't seen that, read that in the show notes, I've put a link to the substack

and it's titled 16 going on 60. I think if you're a parent for sure, you're going to like, you're going to want to read it. Even if you're not, I think it's a view that, you know, too often we don't talk to the kids and we certainly don't talk to the elderly, and everybody has great advice. And this 16-year-old, I tell you what, she blew me away with her thoughts, and I think she probably will do the same for you, too.

So I would say if you haven't read the substack in the show notes, you can click on it and go and take a listen, or read, not a listen, sorry. And then if you're interested in teaming up with the SMP, we'd love to have you on board. We still have spots Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So if you're interested in that, in the show notes as well, is text line, shoot me a text. Would love to have you on board and team up with you. Now, today I'm with rec tech down at the spring and sport leisure show, which is on March 24th.

So Friday here until Sunday, March 26th, on location. I'm going to be there today. So if you're listening this and you're around the Lloydminster area, you want to come say hello. I'm sitting down at the Lloyd X at the Sport and Leaser Show with RECTech. Would love to have you come down here and, you know, see what they got and meet, you know, Ryan and his team. And certainly just, you know, have a good old-fashioned conversation and see where it goes. And who knows, maybe they can convince you of a product or two. And if you're wanting to get a feel or maybe see some of the catalog, go to Rectepower Products.

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dot c a gardener management is a lloydminster base company specializes all types of rental properties that help in your needs whether you're looking for a small office like this guy or you know you need something a little bigger give him a call 78080808 5025 now let's get on that tail of the tape brought to you by hancock petroleum for the past 80 years they've been an industry leader in bulk fields lubricants methanol and chemicals delivering to your farm commercial or oil field locations for more information visit them at hancock petroleum dot c a This is the live audio from this past Saturday's SMP Presents Legacy Media. The speakers have a combined 75 plus years experience in media.

And their names are Kid Carson, Wayne Peters, Chris Sims, and Byron Christopher. So buckle up. Here we go. I know everybody's enjoying the evening and enjoying sitting around with, you know, new friends or maybe you haven't seen somebody for a few years, et cetera and everything and it's hard to get away from conversation but we got to get this show on the road so all you lovely freedom fighter folk who want to talk to every other one it's time to sit your butts down i tease but we're at 715 which means uh you know i want to keep this thing moving along uh some of us are night owls some of us are not and uh as much as fun i'm having up

here. I want to make sure that, you know, we get you moving and get you on, you know, on with your night. And we get to hear all these lovely speakers. So the first thing, while everybody is slowly calming down there, you know, getting sat, getting their coffee, everybody's got the coffee bug now, a little rush of caffeine. There's these books on the tables. You might be wondering why they're there. The idea is simple. There's a lot of you. If you have a, a good idea for the podcast, if you have a good story for the podcast, for Sean that needs to be told, write it in there. Leave it on the table. And at the end of the night, we collect them and, you know, and we get to see what all of you have to tell, share. You don't even have to write

anything in it. You can just leave it there. Anyways, I thought I would mention that that's why the book is there. To have some of your wisdom given to me, I always say this with the podcast. Like, somebody asked, well, how do you get all these guests? Or how do you know where to go and, you know, with your next line? I'm like, well, I got a text line. And all you lovely folks text me all these great ideas. And it really directs the ship, if you will. So the books are essentially the same thing.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'd love to hear, you know, some stories. If you've got a story you think needs to be told. I mean, you're surrounded. You've been seeing them all these independent media people in the audience. Put them in the books. We'll try and get them shared. That's what this is all about talking about tonight.

So before I invite kid up to start, I thought I'd outline the first portion of this. And before I do that, I see him stand there. In the middle of we got Nax catering, I think everybody enjoyed the meal. How about a round of applause for the team? Geez, you know, Sean literally talked to him, and he's like, go stand there and I'll talk about you. And then Sean gets wandering back and forth, and this is where my brain is today. So we'll see if we can't read some notes. and actually keep this show on the road.

The first hour of this, I think most people have seen a TEDx talk. We got four speakers. They're going to come up. They're going to give you 12 minutes or less of their thoughts on the given subject, which is legacy media. I let them go wherever they want to do. It's going to be bang, bang, bang, bang. And then when that's all done, you know, we're going to take a 15-minute break,

so if you've got to go pee and things like that, I get it. And then we come back on and we do the roundtable portion. which I hope you're attentive listening. I hope you're jotting some questions down in the poll. I hope you're voting because that's what the second portion is. In saying that, actually, here's Sean, read his notes. The idea of this came from a guy actually was podcast guest. He showed up tonight's show, so I had him come sit with me because I thought it was funny.

You know, I've been telling this story lots. Everyone, where did you get this idea from? In the middle of COVID, in the lockdown portion, I had this guy on Mike Kuzmissis. It was episode 215, and I'm at episode 400 now. So it's a while back. And we were having a discussion of why they don't get a bunch of smart people in a room from Alberta, have them discuss COVID and go, well, we could try this, and we could try this, and we could try this.

And certainly a lot of us in the room will go, they never wanted that and things like that. Fair. But at the time, I was like really anger about it because I'm like, we're a bunch of problem solvers. Let us solve a problem. And the first SMP Presents was born out of that conversation. I don't know if Mike ever knew that, but that's where the SMP presents came from. Solutions for the future. Let's bring on a bunch of smart people together.

Let's have them discuss something that is on everyone's mind. And I don't mean to think we're going to get an answer tonight, but certainly some conversations will be started. And I'm always curious to see what happens when that happens, because for three years, maybe longer, they've been telling us not to talk to each other. we're not going to do that. We're going to talk. So the first speaker is

this guy who, you know, you probably all know, he was this famous radio I don't know, was a DJ? Can I say DJ? I don't know, is that still a thing? Personality? And he did this 11-minute commentary on the Freedom

Convoy. And, well, we all know the rest of the story. He's no longer there. So please give a round of applause for the first speaker, Kid Carson. It's great to be here, guys. Thank you. Has anyone actually heard me talk in the radio before? Couple. Who wants to win $500?

For those who haven't, that's pretty much my 20-year career in radio every morning. I started out in a very small town. My journey tonight is basically in 10 minutes or less to explain what it was like for me to go through the morning process of realizing that mainstream radio. or mainstream media isn't what I thought it was. I started out in a small town at a Christian radio station called Life 100.3 with big dreams of hitting the big time. And I got to do that. I moved to Toronto.

I moved to Vancouver. Did a big morning radio show. Got to be number one in TV commercials and billboards and your face on buses and all the things that you dream that you could do in a career in media. Never did I think, though, that I would at some point have to, go along with a government narrative to keep my job. And that's what happened. I was always someone who talked about conspiracy stuff.

I embraced that word. So while my competitors were talking about who J-Lo is dating, I was on the air going 9-11 was an inside job. And I knew that half my audience was rolling their eyes, but I'd always say with a twinkle in my eye, and that just became part of my character. So it really wasn't a big stretch for me to talk about all the things that were coming up when they were happening in real time,

because that was just sort of my inquisitive mind. I think my audience expected that of me. It was bizarre, though, when I realized that I was starting to get pushback for the first time in my career when I spoke about masks. I had been invited to a charity baseball game, and I didn't realize that we'd have to wear masks. It was a hot summer day. We'd have to be outdoors.

And we'd have to wear masks. And I was on my morning show saying, this is ridiculous. I wouldn't have signed up for this if I knew I had to wear a mask outside. How crazy is this? Playing sports. How do you breathe? Blah, blah, blah.

And I was pulled into the office, reamed out for spreading dangerous information. Then I was a good boy for a few more weeks. But then I saw some lady walking down the street with like a leopard print mask matching her leopard print blazer. And I just couldn't help myself. I'm like, guys, this is early on in everything, right? I was still on the air saying, why to keep each other safe?

I'm like, come on, guys, this isn't about fashion. This is about a terrible thing that's happening. What are we doing? And again, pulled into the office and told that I was being dangerous. And people were emailing. They're my boss. Hundreds of emails. That I was this bad, scary guy.

And then as more things came up, I'm not sure if you had this out here, but in Vancouver we had roadblocks set up where there was this fear being pulled over by the RCMP and find a couple thousand dollars if you were outside your zone. We couldn't go from Vancouver to Whistler because the Whistler hotels were told

not to book you a room if you weren't from the Whistler area. And then there's this thing, the things I'm sure you all had that they couldn't go to the gym. Couldn't take your kids to go see the Spider-Man movie. Couldn't go to a restaurant. All of these things were how. happening. And this was something that I brought up on my show. And again, I'd keep getting pulled in the office about how we shouldn't talk about this stuff. But then I talked about the V passport.

And as everyone was switching over to digital passports, I kind of put two and two together that, guys, this is going to lead us right into a social credit score system. And even if it wasn't, I think that was still a fun thing to consider. As most people thought, this was a convenient way to carry your passport. I'm like, no, they can attach this to your bank account. They're already doing this in China, et cetera, et cetera. I thought this was just fun light conversation while everyone's having breakfast or driving the kids to school. Apparently not.

And at that point, I was invited to a Zoom meeting with the head honchos of my radio company that owned 100 radio stations across the country. And as a dad, you know, I have three kids. I have an 18-year-old stepdaughter, a five-year-old boy, and a nine-year-old boy. And it was suddenly very intimidating to be on this Zoom call with your big, powerful boss, who's in Toronto,

telling you, like, another peep and you're done. I'm, of course, I'm in no position to retire at that point. I love my career. I love my job. And so I promised that I wouldn't say anything else about anything. I wouldn't do anything on Instagram. I would just give away the $500 and shut up. And so that's what I did. I did that for a few months. Then I went to my first rally. Now you can imagine the built-up angst that you feel, the isolation that you feel when you're not talking about the things that are on your heart. You know, part of my job was to build relationships

with my audience and you talk about your real life experiences, what's on your heart, what's on your mind, and then mix that all in with entertainment. But when you can't say what you want to talk about, you just feel like you're literally being choked. So a few months into that, I went to a rally. And it was a rally outside the Vancouver Hospital in support of nurses that were being fired

for not getting the jab. And I was crying. It's the first time I'd been around other people that were awake. It was highly emotional. And I went in the next morning, and before I could even start my show, my boss was calling me saying,

don't you dare mention that you were there. You were spotted? There's pictures of you without a mask on Twitter? Don't say you were there. Then I put on the news, and the newscast in the morning is saying, a bunch of crazy anti-masks stormed the hospital, we're blocking ambulances,

and were harassing nurses. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing because I was there. I knew that there was no one blocking ambulances. The Vancouver police were doing an amazing job. Do you think they would ever allow crowds to block ambulances that was just ludicrous? So after being at this highly emotional rally and then being told it was basically the racist, misogynist,

harassers that were harassing nurses and screaming into windows and keeping patients up all night and this whole thing. I started to feel a bit queasy. Went to the next news channel thinking these guys must have got it wrong. But then they were saying the same story. Then I put on like this website where all the millennials get their news in Vancouver is called The Daily Hive. I go on that blog website and they have the exact same story. And now my head is just spinning because I'm going, oh my God, I was there. None of this happened.

one news organization can get it wrong. How does another get it wrong? And another get it wrong. And now I'm thinking, okay, how does this work? How do they all have the same wrong story? Then I start getting threatened that a picture of me is going to be released of me without a mask. After I was fired, they did release it. And I looked like this.

It's like that. I look so fucking happy. Sorry. We're in a church. I'm sorry. But going masks on a crowd was a really bad, a really bad thing to do. Anyway, so I had to not admit that I was there. I had to kind of bury all of that.

A couple more months goes by and then Ottawa happens. At this point, you know, I'm like you. I'm watching all of these videos and Instagram of the slow motion Canadian flag flapping in the wind with the song, We will not comply. And it's just emotional. You can't help but get weepy watching these videos. And then you're watching what's happening on the news and what's happening on live streams on Instagram.

And you're realizing these two things are just not matching. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that we're being told a false narrative. So anyways, that was when I really felt like, and this is sort of my tie-in with legacy media, that when you don't have your viewpoints represented in legacy media, you don't feel validated.

And that's how I was feeling. Here I was a part of legacy media, but all the things that I felt my heart were being represented. And so that drove to extreme isolation, feeling really alone. You start to feel a little bit nutty. and then of course that one morning I went in and had my 11 minute commentary how am I doing for time by the way I'm okay I have one minute two no pressure then I went in that morning and I just finally just said what was on

my heart and part of it is because you start to not like yourself you start to feel like a phony and sort of that seems to supersede everything else that's going on, having a secure job and whatever else is on your mind that would normally keep you quiet. I just felt like a phony. I felt like I didn't like who I was becoming by staying quiet. I feel like you're on the wrong side of history and the whole thing. So I did go on the air and say,

if you think the Ottawa convoy is a racist movement, you've been tricked. And I went on and on and on and on. And then as a... Thank you. Now, if you've ever been in a radio station, they're like soundproof walls, and there's usually a little tiny window in the door. And so by the time my rant was over, I looked over in the glass to see my boss's face

squeezed into that little window. And he kindly invited me down to his office where I just slowly picked up all my things, my favorite headphones, and I knew that I would. wouldn't be back in that room. And that was my, that was my last day. It has not been easy. It's great to receive the thousands of kind messages and DMs and to get a round of applause. Feels amazing. It hasn't been easy. I can see why a lot of people don't speak out. But I will say the silver lining is that your tribe shows up when you do something like that. People show up and you learn a lot about shared values. I have friendships now with people that have

known for a month and I feel like I've known them for five years. And I think that, um, thanks to Sean throwing an event like this, you'll experience the same thing where you meet people and instantly you just bond, you click and, uh, you become deep, close friends. So I don't know if this added any value, but, um, I just want to say thank you for inviting me here. Give it up for Sean. And, uh, thank you. Kid, did I do okay. Yeah, yeah, I think he did all right. A performer. I chuckle about these shows because, you know, I don't think there's, you know, It feels like a dinner theater, but it's not like, you know, we don't got things going on.

And then Kidd gets up here and starts doing his radio, and I'm like, well, maybe I think I was wrong, a little bit about it. There is a little entertainment in there. The next speaker, I mentioned earlier, was on the podcast, episode 150. It's the first time I never heard of a guy named Byron Christopher. And, you know, I read his Wikipedia page,

and I still remember it, Armageddon, like Blood and Guts, Crime Reporting. And I'm like, well, that sounds interesting to me. Now, he's been on the podcast twice now. He's kind of become a quiet little mentor of mine, if you would, you know. I call him the original truth seeker. There's probably many before Byron that he can regale us all about. But he spent 40-plus years in media.

CBC, 630 Jed here in Emmington, Grant McEwen, Nate. He's broke stories, you know, in multiple countries. You know, there's a lot there that I can't get anything. in a minute little blurb. So without further ado, let's give it up for Byron, Christopher. Thank you all for coming here tonight. I feel honored that Sean would ask me to speak to you. I don't, I'm not a church gore.

But I was here once to watch a football game. I sat up there, yeah. Sean had asked me to speak, and the topic was the media, the mainstream media. Most of my career was in what they now call traditional media. I'm quite ashamed of it, really. I'll get right to the point. I was born in 1949 as long before television came out.

I idolized radio. I get into radio, and I feel honored to sit with Mr. Carson. I, too, was a disc jockey. but I was not nearly as successful as him. I turned around when I worked at CFRN FM in Edmonton in the West End, same location. I did the afternoon show. Being FM, we didn't announce every song.

We played three songs in a row, and I found it boring. So I would walk around the building, and I got out to the teletype machine where we had news coming across. a national news summary every hour. And at the very bottom of the summary was a story from Iran. Tehran, the square, there had been a massacre there. 700 people died. I questioned one of the announcers,

why is that at the bottom of the newscast? It should be at the top. That's not right. And his response says, well, if you think you can do better, you should get into news. that was what inspired me to do documentaries. And I mentioned this story to students at Nate, years later, of how I saw a summary,

and the massacre was so buried at the bottom. It pissed me off, and I made enemies by complaining about it. So they said, well, if you think you can do better, get into the business. Well, now that you've been in the business, what do you think? And I said, well, it's not quite what I thought. worse than I thought, as far worse. And I've always, even though I worked at Mother Corp, as we called it, I would say at staff meetings, I don't think, I don't think it's fair to people that don't listen to us that they should pay taxes to support us. That's where I was coming from. And they said, well,

well, how do you think we'll be funded? And I said, well, I think it would be okay if people donated money and got a tax donation for that, you know, tax write off. That'd be one thing. and they didn't like that. And I said, look, quite frankly, we have a French outfit here in Edmonton. I could go on the air tonight at 9 o'clock and swear. For five minutes, nobody would complain because nobody's listening. That's true.

And they said, no, we're filling a mandate. And I said, you know what I think the greatest threat to journalism is? Two things. Mortgages, car payments. Biggest threat. Yeah. So kids asked me today how to, and Sean did too when we talked about me coming here. He said, what do you think of journalism today? I said, well, when I got into it in the 70s, there was a sense of honor and pride. It didn't matter if you worked for CTV, Global or ITV was in, Mother Corp, wherever.

You had that sense of honor. It was sort of like joining a church there was sort of sacred now I feel it's like a whorehouse I don't mean to be crude about it that's how I feel I mean you've got government sponsored

assisted companies that are in the media if they weren't getting these handouts they would collapse they shouldn't be in business if look if I opened a shoe store downtown on Jasp for Avenue, and never had any customers, I wouldn't expect the government to bail me out.

I tried it, I failed, and I move on. And these companies, the thing that pisses me off is that when you watch TV, they should say at the very beginning of every newscast, how much of it is sponsored by the government. 60% of their budget, whatever it is, be right up front, full disclosure. transparency is so important. But I look at TV, and I don't watch a lot of TV. The last time I watched a TV newscast fully was about 32 years ago.

I just, no time for TV. Even when I'm on TV, don't bother watching it. Sorry. I'm on a four-part series on Discovery. I've never seen anything. But I'm just not big on that stuff. It just ticks me off at it, and I get emails from guys I worked with their long-retired,

and they too are angry at that. This is not the business we got into. It's been prostituted. And when you got the government paying your salaries, I mean, no one is going to say to Justin Trudeau, well, you know, has anyone ever told you you look like Fidel Castro? Do you mind having a DNA test? They're not going to say that.

Back then, maybe so. Yeah. I do, even though I don't go to church, I enjoyed meeting with the Ludwigs. Do you remember them up on Trickel Creek? Weevil Ludwig and his crowd, their Dutch reform church. And whenever I went up there to do stories, I would crash one of the cabins out there. And in the morning, they would have a meal. They always said grace.

And I was reminded of that here tonight. He said, grace, that's nice. So we're around the table and I said, Weibo, after he finished grace, I said, did you hear about the news reporter who was about to be executed? And they offered him a few moments of grace. And he said, well, it's not much time, but bring her out anyway. Well, that's okay. But I have a story about Auschwitz. or the town of Auschwishium, it's in southern Poland,

that's where the Nazi death camp was. I was there in 1990 for CBC, a series of stories. I stayed right at the camp in a hostel, slept at the camp, and it was quite the experience. The people didn't know that they were being conned. They arrived, they told they would go to a train station.

They had one hour to pack their belongings. cutlery, kids, toys, clothes, things like that. So they were quite obedient. They marched down to the train station, but they didn't get on passenger trains. There were cattle cars, and they were locked. They could not get off until they got a place like Auschwitz. But they were told it was a relocation place.

They were being resettled. It was all a lie. They were dead within an hour or two, most of them, a thousand a day. It was pretty horrific. some other stories. I went there with prisoner number 88. He was there the day the camp opened in 1940.

He emigrated to Canada after the war. He survived the war. But he was 17 years old when he was put in there. And we were riding there on the train. And in Poland, the trains are a little different than here, there are compartments. And two people's face to other people. I sat with Sigman.

and opposite us was an elderly couple of two ladies. They did not speak English. One agreed to be interviewed through the translator. I said, were you living in Auschwitzim at the time of the Nazi death camp? She said, yes, I was a teenager, and I worked in one of the subdivisions of the camp in one of the factories. Auschwitz was a huge, size of red deer, with all of the plants. And I said, so did you know what was going on here?

She said, yeah, everyone knew. And she said, we used to say they're killing a lot of Jews today. You could smell it. She said, it was quite a stench. So I said, did you speak out against that? She said, she didn't. And I said, why didn't you speak out? It's not what you think.

She said, I didn't want to lose my job. It wasn't being shot. So Mr. Carson here went through an execution, but it was a financial execution. And that's what I see happening today. I see a lot of parallels to the bullshit government. Trust us. It's being relocated. You're a valuable worker.

We wouldn't do this to you. There's a lot of BS today. and I don't wish to knock anyone particular branch of government but I'm very ashamed of what happened in Ottawa with the truckers. Very ashamed. As for COVID, I'll tell you this,

I was vaccinated half a dozen times because I had to travel. It's not what you think. It was 1969. And I was traveling to Australia. I was moving there and I had to work on a freighter to get there. But I wouldn't take the, the experimental injections.

My daughter's mother-in-law, Joyce, a nurse, she did. In her second injection, she was in a coma within three hours. And she went to hospital and there she went to the morgue. She never came back. And what got me thinking this is a scam is when the government said, we're going to vaccinate the natives. Since when has the government ever give a crap about the natives? They want to get rid of them because the land claims.

So I've never believed that stuff, sorry. I will not take an experimental injection. I'm done that. I guess my time is up. Sorry for going on a rant, but if you wish to, I don't have any more business cards, but if you want my phone number, I'll give it to you. I was on a crime beat for almost 40 years.

It would be nice to hear from someone who doesn't have a criminal record. All right, thank you. Well, we haven't fun yet. And we set a pace in this thing that really gets moving. So if you disagree with somebody, don't worry, they're going to be off the stage in 12 minutes, and the next person's going to come up. And who knows what they're going to come out of their mouth.

Because as I tell you, I'm giving free rein. They can have their time on the stage to say what they want to. Which gives you the next lady who, I remember reaching out to Chris and being like, I have no idea who this lady is, but she seems really interesting. and she's you know she's filling my emails you know up and I'm reading them and I'm kind of it's anyways I've reached out and I remember having the thought I have this thought a lot when I reached out to guess Sean you're probably off on this one you shouldn't do it and then if you listen to it there's a moment in the podcast where I'm literally going SMP presents legacy media Chris Sims get invited yes okay check

smart move Sean she she broke down the carbon tax for me in a way that I've heard nobody do it. And I follow this stuff. I literally follow her emails. And it just hit me across the head while I'm sitting there talking to her. And she was just in a brilliant way of breaking down complex things, or at least how media tries to make it complex. Maybe, sorry, Shane, I know you're in here.

Politicians like to make it complex. And she just goes, this is how it is. Boom. And you're like, oh. So give it up for Chris Sims, who's been in media. 25 years. She's got quite the story. And I hope she rocks the stage. Thank you. Wow, this is a great crowd. Thank you all for coming out and listening to these profound stories. I'm sitting with some pretty amazing storytellers that we've already heard.

I'm going to take a little bit of a different approach because when things are broken, I want to help fix them. and I see something that's broken right now, and that is particularly our relationship with what is often called legacy media versus alternative media, and our connections with each other. It's really upsetting to see so many people disconnected from each other, and I think one of the reasons for that is because how media has changed. So a little bit of background about me.

I was born and raised in Western Canada. I'm from Hope, B.C. After my high school sweetener heart and I got married, we moved to Ottawa. And I worked on Parliament Hill for like 17 years. Largely, it was in mainstream media. So I was a national producer at CTV. I also did their 6 o'clock news for many years as a producer. And then I was a founding member of Sun News Network,

which was on for almost four years before it was shut down, mostly by the CRTC. It was mostly shut down due to government regulation, which is I think why I'm here. And so I am the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. It is a not-for-profit citizens group that I love. Thanks.

We've been around since 1990, since before the Internet was even a thing. And what I love about the CTF could fill an entire evening, but I'll be brief. Our mission is lower taxes, less waste, and more accountable government, which is why I'm talking to you right now about the media. Because at the CTF, we don't think that many of us can hold our government to account if we don't have good, solid, trustworthy news gathering in media. So I'm going to break down for you where we're at right now.

And again, I've worked with tons of people in the press gallery. I still know them. I still love them. And I'm frankly confused by what's been going on for the past several years. I don't know why mainstream media organizations are now taking government money. I know why, because like he said, car payments and mortgages. Yeah. But the very idea back when I was working there

that you would take money from the state and then try to hold that same state actor to account, that's not going to happen. It won't. And so I want to break down for you where the money's going right now, okay? So let's start with the CBC. The CBC was started in the mid-1930s, okay, under the mandate of bringing Canadians together and reflecting Canadian culture,

largely to try to buffet some of the powerhouse radio stations that were beaming up from New York, Detroit, Chicago. What's interesting is that the CBC wasn't the first radio in Canada. Not by a long shot. By 1933, before the CBC was even a glimmer in the eye of the federal government, we had 77 private radio stations across this country. They were delivering news, they were giving farm reports, Weather updates, they even had live orchestras right in their studios from Hamilton.

And so we've always had private independently funded media. CBC starts and then it explodes. Now the CBC cost taxpayers about $1.2 billion per year. That is an astonishing amount of money. To break that down for you, that would instead pay the salaries of about 15,000. nurses per year. So that's what we're putting into CBC right now. Also, very few people are watching. Black Locks Reporter, which is an outstanding independent journalism organization, which doesn't take a nickel of taxpayers' money, I highly recommend you all subscribe to them.

They're two kick-ass investigative reporters that work there right now tirelessly. All they cover is Committee, House of Commons, and Freedom of Information requests. They discovered that around 320,000 people, in total, watched the 6 p.m. newscast on CBC. Across the country. Do the math. That's less than 1% of Canadians watching that, but we're paying $1.2 billion.

So there, there's the CBC in a nutshell. But getting to the crux of what I think is a problem right now, and this is why the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has taken this on as an issue. We have a petition about it. We're writing about it. We're speaking about it. Is the legacy media, mainstream media,

whatever you want to call it, outside of the CBC, is now taking funding from the state. To put that in perspective between the tax credits and the direct funding, Canada land, another independent media organization that sits on the left of the spectrum,

but power to them, because they're not funded by the government. They worked it out. It's around $13,000 a person. So say a print newspaper, a mainstream newspaper, signs on to this subsidy program with the state. 13 grand of your salary as a reporter depends on the federal government.

Now, do a thought process. Imagine you are a reporter. You're up on Parliament Hill. Something drastic has happened. Trudeau's done it or another minister has done it and you're going to run and hold them to a care. Your job depends on that guy being happy. You can't do it.

Even if you wanted to do it, it would affect your way you can report. A good friend of mine likened it to imagine you're a referee, right? I'm veteran journalist, I'm a veteran referee. I'm going to call this game straight down the middle, except I'm taking side bets on who, wins. Being able to pay my mortgage depends on who wins this game, but I'm still going to ref it? You can't do that. And so as a trained journalist, I went through trade school, okay? I know how to white balance a camera. I know how to connect an XLR, Mike. I knew how to ask the

W5 questions, who, what, where, when, why. Okay? Now we're taking money from the government. there's no way that you can be a balanced journalist, a reporter, and be viewed as a balanced journalist. If everybody knows you're getting paid by the government. And so this is where I've got this big question is what to do next. So I think to start, journalists should not be paid by the government. Period.

So perhaps that's where we start with the solution. And trust me, I know it hurts. I think this is my 16th job. I went through private broadcasting cutbacks all the time. It happens all the time. I know folks in the industry are scared. But you can't continue on this way and

keep the trust of your viewers and your readers and your listeners if you're being paid by the state. And it's even showing up in the polls. There was a very interesting trust poll that I read. It came out last year. It was a stunning

amount, about 49% of Canadians asked, said that they think journalists, writ large, journalists are, quote, deliberately misleading them. As a journalist, I almost cried because you can make mistakes, you can mispronounce a name, you can get a number wrong, you're like, oh, damn, like you used to hate doing that, and you go on and give a correction right away. But the idea that half of Canadians think you're deliberately misleading them, that should have every news manager calling an emergency meeting, saying, folks, we got to earn back the trust of our listeners and our viewers. How they do that ultimately?

Not sure, but it definitely starts with defunding, so that you are separate from the government. To give you a little bit more of an understanding of where the money is going at the CBC, They got more than $50 million in pay raises and bonuses during one year of this COVID mess. So while people are getting their businesses shut down and private companies are taking cutbacks and people are tightening their belts, they still handed out bonuses and pay raises. And it's disappointing for me to say this because I grew up listening to Petersoski.

That would have been a dream job being able to work for the CBC and Mother Corp. But they have to be accountable with where their money is going, and they have to now switch to voluntary donations from people who want to watch and listen to them. For folks who are out there listening, I hear you, okay? I know you're frustrated, and I know you're seeking facts and truth. And if you're saying something like, well, don't we need it for, say, indigenous language programming? That is a brilliant question, really good. So far, some of our preliminary investigations, though, are showing, based on their numbers, this is based on their data, that they're spending more on their executive salaries and bonuses than they are on indigenous language programming.

So that starts getting to be a pretty tough conversation. And we also have other wonderful media outlets that are doing an amazing job of delivering news and programming in indigenous languages and reflecting their values. And so this is where I'm really thankful to Sean for having us here, so that we could give you some of the numbers and the stats and the costs of having the government pay for media. And for folks who are frustrated right now and you feel alone and you don't want to pay for this anymore and you're not seeing yourself reflected, we hear you.

One of the coolest things about the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is that no matter what your thing is, If it's, you're opposing the gun grab, or you want to get rid of the carbon tax, or you're opposing C-11, which very quickly, that's trying to gag free expression on the internet. So all of this independent media we're talking about is like right here in the vice right now. Okay? So if those are your issues, I just want to give folks hope that you do have agency. Write that email.

Make that phone call. Have a sit-down conversation with your member of parliament and your MLA. push back. One of our catchphrases that the CTF has always been, stand up, be heard. So make your voice known, firmly and politely reach out to your elected representatives, and even reach out to your local news media, and you tell them that you don't want to see government funding anymore, and it's time to start rebuilding that relationship. Thank you.

You know, it's been, I played hockey all my life, right? And I tell the story probably wants to show because I enjoy, I never thought I'd enjoy public speaking. I kind of terrifies us all. But when you leave hockey, there's something special about the rink and the, you know, and I just can't put it into words. And then I found the stage and getting to facilitate people coming on and doing this and watching the crowd and how all you were just like sucked in is really cool. Like, I mean, it's a group people that is about as an eclectic group I can bring together to come and sit and talk about something that five years ago, I would have zero time.

I mean, the others played today. And they won. Hey? But, I mean, everybody gave that up to come and be here, which I think is super cool. Heck, funny story. Kid, I'm sorry. I'm driving. I pick kid up from the airport.

And I go, yeah, something. And then I said, yeah, Connor McDavid's really on a tear. and he goes, who? I'm like, I can't tell if he's pulling my leg right now, you know? Like, I'm like Connor McDavid. He's like, yeah, who's that? I'm like, oh, let me tell you. Hey?

Sorry, flames fans, if they're any in the building anyways. Our last speaker, a couple, of course there is. Sorry, folks, you're not making the playoffs, I don't think. This is too bad. Battle of Berto would have been nice. Our final speaker tonight for the first portion. He did the show What's Up Canada. Show of hands, how many people ever stumbled across that?

When I was first looking for, I don't know, like, there's got to be something out there. The only guy I could find from Canada, because if you search the world, you will find people that share your thoughts and everything else. I get it. But in Canada, I couldn't find anyone. I found Wayne. and a lot of where I got my ideas came from Wayne because I just was like, who are these people he is talking to? And they're in Canada?

Why have I never heard of this? You know, I say this a lot. Our talent goes to the states. We don't pay attention to the CBC, so we pay attention to Fox News and think it's talking about us. Well, they kind of are right now because they're going, what the heck's going on? Well, all of our talent, all of our eyes, all of our focus is on Americans because we think they're going to save us. And I go, like, we got to save ourselves. I don't know.

That's my thought. And one of the guys early on was this guy named Wayne Peters and What's Up Canada. And I don't know if you know this around. Maybe he'll tell it. I don't know. But guys like Byron Bridal and Julie Panessey and Stephen Pelick was one of the other ones that I saw early on. Drew Straws to go on his show, right? Like, it's the original guy who just started talking openly.

His background is much like mine. He wasn't this, you've got to hear from three people who came from legacy media, corporate media, mainstream, whatever you want to call it. And he's a guy that on the outside just started covering things. And geez, wouldn't you know, he started asking some questions. And, you know, he wasn't funded by the government, so he didn't have to worry about his paycheck. You know, he'll tell you all about how the struggle has gone since being, you know, an independent media guy. But the final speaker tonight before we take a short break and bring everybody back up on stage is Wayne Peters. Please give him a warm welcome.

Wow. First thing I want to say is if this goes badly, blame Sean. If this goes well, thanks Sean. Personally, I'm thanking Sean very deeply today for the experience that I got to take part in last night with so many of the most important people, I believe, in Canada right now. And I drove up from Winnipeg, a little bit of a funny story there. And that, Sean says, where are you flying from? I said, I'm driving. given the state of our flight capabilities in Canada, I'm not very trusting in putting my life in who knows whose hands at this point anymore. So I had a lot of time to think, but what Sean was doing up here and what I was going to talk about, and quite honestly, as I was walking up to the stage,

I still didn't really have a clear idea on it, but I had managed to deeply engage with so many people over the last 24 hours and listening to these wonderful esteemed colleagues here, and I will say that now, although not that long ago, I did not see myself in the lens of being a journalist, but I knew inherently that what I'd seen happening in 2018 was very wrong, and I felt very let down by the media and the people that called themselves news providers in Canada,

and I felt very alone and isolated, to the point where I literally went to Europe, see for myself if what I was seeing in the news was real and it was not and I came back to Canada very disillusioned about what was going on and I very reluctantly took part in a convoy and a lot of Canadians still don't know about this convoy but the convoy that happened in this past winter was not the first one it was the second big one and the first one changed things in a lot of people that didn't necessarily become front and center today, but they set the stage for a lot of things that happened since then. So I picked up a microphone on a

camera with absolutely no formal training, media training whatsoever. I came out of left field, and I had the five Ws, the five Ws, and I started asking questions. And in no offense to my colleagues, I literally thought that a rock could do better than what we were paying $1.2 billion a year for. And it didn't take me very long with an old 10-year-old phone and a microphone to start to reach about half of the people that CBC was reaching. As one man with no budget on donations and the goodwill of Canadians that respected what the people. they were hearing. I wasn't always right. I wasn't always perfect. I was definitely not polished, but I was genuine and I was real. And that, I have seen duplicated a thousandfold in the four years since. So when I was coming up here, thinking about all of the things that I could talk about,

it was wide open. Thank you for that, Sean. A little bit of direction. Might have helped. I wouldn't be in left field, but I have a captive audience, so it's a perfect time for that. But I I really struggled with what to talk about, to leave value and meaning. So I wanted to talk about some of the things that I had learned across my adventures since taking this path. And the number one consistency, and I heard it still last night, is I felt so alone. It doesn't matter where you go in Canada, people feel the same way. Because we inherently had of trust in the people that we elect and that the total

that they make are going to provide for a society so we can do what we do best and that's earn and problem-solve and create meaningful lives for our communities but we've been gaslit for so long so badly that it's created this atmosphere I believe where it has eroded our willpower they have stolen our dignity and we've allowed them to do that one lie at a time every time they tell a lie and force us to comply, a little bit of us dies inside. And after a period of time, I look around and I saw so many people that had the same look in their eyes as a whipped puppy.

And that frightens me. Or it did frighten me. But now I see an entirely new environment evolving as people are realizing, and I very proudly wear the conspiracy, theorist label. Because in my mind, news journalism would not exist

if not for conspiracy theorists asking difficult questions and not quitting until they get to the answers. Like it or not, until you get to an answer. And that was missing. And I didn't think that I could do it justice, but I was going to do it anyways.

and one of the things that I've also learned throughout this process of dealing with what we're up against is a completely different culture. Most of us, I'm pretty sure if I ask out here, is there anybody that five years ago saw the future for their children the same way they see it today? Anybody? No. Me either. And one of the biggest significant things I think that I can see and take out of this as to what we're seeing happen is we grew up in a country that we elected people to serve us. And traditionally and typically, whether it was from the municipal level, the librarian to the federal level, people served with gratitude.

It was a servitude with gratitude mentality. That is now changed to an elite rulership mentality. You either comply, show you that you are politically reliable, or you will be ex-ized from the system. Questions are not tolerated. And this, to me, is the most dangerous thing in the world that is coming at us, and it's coming at us under simple little acronyms, DEI, diversity, equity, inclusiveness, ESG, environment, sustainability, governance,

all of these things that are meant to eliminate everything that allows us to be expressive, to be unique, to create exceptionalism. Do we want mindless drones taking care of the important things in our society, the things that matter that make our world go around? Or do we want people that show an aptitude, an exceptionalism, an ability or a desire that is above the rest? because that's what they are eliminating. Through these programs, they are eliminating any kind of meritocracy

and ultimately democracy. Because if we are all compliant and think exactly the same thing and are 100% politically reliable, we are easily to manage. And this is the cultural shift that I am seeing happening and pervading everywhere where from the librarian to the janitor, they take an attitude of it is their civic duty to enforce the correctness upon you. And that is the elite mentality,

that elite ruling mentality, where if you are not politically reliable, they will show you the contempt. You will be genocided, for lack of a better term, because their utopian reality dictates that our entire social self-worth is wrapped up in the avatar space. And it is literally a test run, I believe, in seeing how populations and societies will tolerate the execution of personalities and personnel. And right now, it is, to me, the independent media, the free speech people, the people that are digging for the truth are the last stand against that. They are the ones that are risking their neck, sticking their head above the parapet, taking the hits, taking the labels, but still showing the exceptionalism.

And this is what is breeding the truth. This is what is growing the truth. There are so many people out here that are far more talented at what they are doing in the independent media space, and this is an amazing collection of it. This, to me, is the most important gathering of people in Canada this year, bar none, when I look at what we're doing moving forward. If we had a true and independent free media and press, would our country look the way it does today? No.

If they did not have the government funding, would our country look? look like it does today. But I can promise you, if we did not have the independent media, it would look a whole lot worse already than what it does today. So the number one thing that I hope that people embrace out of all of this, Sean was really looking to catch lightning in a bottle. And whether he realizes it or not, I think he's already done that. Just through the connectivity that has, I've witnessed with my own eyes over the last 24

hours with people from across this country taking the time out of their lives to come all the way to Edmonton to do they didn't know what but they showed up anyways and this is the kind of thing that steps out of the box and allows for opportunity and solutions so i really think we all deserve oh sean a massive applause and gratitude for doing something sorely needed in Canada and i hope he it again real soon. Okay, level of having fun. I don't have any fun? I guess we'll have to really turn it up a notch. So the QR code. Everybody remembers this and everybody kind of gave me that luck and they went, I don't know. I've sent the text around a few different people, so there's a different way you can do it if you're really apt against it or you can't get it

to work on your phone. But it is really important for the next part. And the next part is very interactive. I love the flow of a conversation. I podcast. Love having good conversation. And if I give out a hot mic, it's not that I don't think all of you have wonderful things say. You certainly do. But it interrupts flow. So what I want out of all of you is I want you to interact on that thing. I want you to tell me what you want to talk about and vote it up. Because that's what we're going to start here in about 15 minutes. Okay. So 15 minutes. I think they put a little bit of water at the back, bathroom, of course. And what comes next is everybody's going to be on stage.

We're going to try and interact with your questions for around an hour, and then we're going to let you get on with your night and everything else. I appreciate you entertaining my brain and how it works, because this is a lot of fun for me to see these different people. They keep giving me compliments. I keep laughing. I'm like, all I did was put them on a stage and give them a mic, you know? They've been doing all the work.

So 15 minutes back here, and I'll wrangle you back in, okay? They can go bug Mr. Toos and have a little fun with that. If you can't get on the polling thing. No, just. Nadine Ness has it as well, okay? I have it as well. There's a few of us in the crowd that have it. I send it to Nicole Murphy over here with East Anchor Media.

So there's a few different people who have it. Please interact. And harassed twos. You invite all these independent media. And you've heard a couple of them reference last night. So one of the cool things we did this weekend is last night, a whole group of us. And folks, I'm going to ask it, you end your conversations. It's funny how this place works.

But it's conducive to sound, music, things like that. And even though you think you're having a nice, quiet conversation, it sounds really loud up here. And I can't imagine if you've got people talking behind you. So if you can, draw back in. And let's get on with the last hour. I want to make sure that we get through it. This is my fun part. And this is the podcaster side of me that really gets to have a little bit of fun.

And I was saying last night, there was a whole 35 of us roughly, somewhere in that group, East Side, East Anchor Media, I can keep saying East Side, helped 222 minutes. We've seen we kind of got together and we had this idea, you know, let's bring a bunch of people together and do speed dating. That should be fun. And it was all these independent voices you see scattered through the crowd. We got together last night. So I've heard it referenced a few times. That's what happened last night.

We got together and met one another and we're trying to boost our voices because, you know, as you can tell, like, maybe you've heard of everyone here. Or maybe you're like, I don't know who these guys are, but Sean's bringing them in and I've heard of him. You know, like it's, they really need to, we all need help support everything on what we're facing. Anyways, last night, I felt like a boulevard of Broken Dreams. It's a painting. Anybody know what I'm talking about? You got James Dean and you got Marilyn Monroe and you got, and Sean sat there last night and I'm like,

I feel like a kid in a candy store because I literally have like, you know, over 400 episodes. I've put, help put 30 some of those guests in a room together and they're like interacting for the first time. I'm like, this is something. I'm really enjoying this. And this is another opportunity of that, you know. It's really hard to get a group of people like this on one podcast online and make it sound good and body language and knowing.

And it's just, it's very clunky and I don't like it. But when we get on stage like this, this is a ton of fun. So this is kind of like what I assume, getting the Beatles together and saying, hey, here's a couple instruments. Go play and just see what happens. And maybe it sucks like it could. Or maybe it's like, wow, this is electric. And I don't know what they just did, but I like.

it and that's what we're going to try and do to hear it tonight but here's my favorite part one of my favorites I keep saying that want everybody to stand up where they're where they're sitting at right now and certainly you guys can join in two if you like so everybody stand up I always like to know where people have come from and it's always I think a really good visual to see how important things like this are to so many people across our country and so what we're gonna do is we're gonna try and find out who's come the farthest to be here tonight okay So, driving-wise, even if you rode to a plane, I mean driving-wise, from where your hometown is today.

If you drove half an hour or less, you can sit down. The Lloyd people are having fun tonight because they're like every time I ask this question, Lloyd, they're the first to sit down. If you drove an hour or less, you can sit down. Hour and a half. Two hours. Danny Hosak, folks. hours. Four? Okay. Five. Six. Seven. You guys are making this interesting on me. Eight. Nine. I'm just curious. Okay. At nine hours, I'm like, geez, that's a long way to come for a one-night show.

So, good-looking fellow over there sitting at my table. Yeah, you. Where did you come from? He came from Mexico. If you don't know, if you don't know Mike's story, he took his family to Mexico and they've been kind of vacation living there for the last affair so that's good who else is standing out there there's one right here where are you from sir

camelips the group the group in the back the four of you what part of Manitoba Winnipeg and have I missed anyone still standing I think we oh right there how do I

can anybody can anybody The dazzling dress, and I can't even see what's in front of it. How far did you come from? Toronto. It's funny, I got three of the people on stage still standing. Kid, where'd you come from? Vancouver. Wayne?

Altona. Manitoba. And Byron? Two blocks away. We can all grab a seat. I just want a round of applause. I think it's astounding when I first started doing this, guys, and feel free to speak at any time now. Now it is truly a little bit of a roundtable.

This is the podcast portion, if you will, where we get to, certainly I'm watching the things go up and down and we're going to get to those. But for me, this is the portion where it's kind of on a free-for-all. I'm going to try and spur on some conversation and everything else. But, like, when I first started doing this, I've now had, over the course of four or five shows, people come from Abbotsford, Camloops, Dawson Creek, Toronto. the one was there was two couples drive from Dawson Creek in the middle of like a snowstorm right

you're like what are we doing that's so unique you know all we're doing is talking about the problems we see and actually not trying to filter it is it's pretty a wild idea and yet it seems to be working I don't know for all of you that are up here isn't it what are your thoughts on seeing people come from as far as they have

to just see what we're going to do on stage tonight I'm impressed I think I realize it's a church setting, but there's one thing that I see you all have in common. You have common sense. You know that something out there is really wrong.

That's what brings you here. I mean, you too. You have common sense, and thank you for that. We do too. And it's a struggle at times not to go with the crowd. But thank you. I tip my hat to you. Like I say, boys and girls,

I'm looking at the three of you. If you want to hop in, you just hop in. And if you're like, yeah, I got really nothing to say, I can just move on too, you know. I just, kid, you're a guy who, you know, I don't know, he was on radio in Vancouver. I just, maybe this is, you're like, oh, yeah, this happens all the time. That could be. Now you're doing events and you're going all across Canada. What have you seen and what does this group of people maybe inspire out of you?

Well, I think it speaks to how isolated so many of us felt. And I know a lot of what I do now is motivated by that when I went through that dark. time. And isolation can look like so many different things. One of the things that still haunts me is, you know, when I was fired, it made a bit of a media splash and I was on the 6 o'clock news and, you know, kid Carson goes on 12-minute rant on conspiracy, blah, blah, blah. And so suddenly it was different when I was doing school pickup.

You know, my youngest who was like four at the time. I was the only dad who was there during pickups and went to kind of a bit of a smaller school and suddenly all the moms wouldn't make eye contact with me anymore. And it was like, whoa, this is kind of weird because I'm usually chatty with all the moms. And then some of the other kids at the school don't want to have play dates anymore with your kid.

And so that's the stuff that really cuts deep. So sometimes it's not just not being able to connect with people, but it's being isolated away from just, general population, you know, and then that plays with your head a little bit, and it can just get really dark, you know, especially when it trickles down and can affect your family.

So anyways, I just think it's great that we can all be in the same room together, and, you know, a lot of us have goals and ambitions and ideas, and when you are with like-minded people, then you can openly talk about those things and cross-pollinate ideas. And the next thing you know, this person over there

that you met has a great idea you were looking for a solution to that. But when we're not in the same room, we can't let those, that can't be bread, that can't stew around. So I just think it's great that more and more people are having events like this where we can all be in the same room together and just jammed. So I think people are hungry for it. And I think it's a testament, you know, seeing this crowd and how far people came.

Jam session. Jam session. Jam session. Okay. Sure, Wayne. I think that what I'm seeing here tonight is the embodiment of, you know, of people owning, taking ownership of their core Canadian identities and showing some fortitude and responsibility

in proving to the world why the social credit system, this universal personality is impossible in Canada. At the Taxpayers Federation, we're always trying to help people be heard because quite often we'll get phone calls from people who feel that they don't have agency. What can I do? You know, I'm going out of business, my taxes are too high, I can't afford to fill my pickup truck. And something actually in the last few years that I noticed was, see, quite typically, people might Google and find my phone number and call me, and they think I'm like the government tax lady. And I can help them, like, with their taxes or figure out their, you know, bankruptcy or something.

And instead of just saying no, I would say, so what's up? How are things? How's it going? And it used to be every six weeks or so where somebody would say, you know what, it's not great. I'm at the end of my rope, especially in British Columbia where everything's unaffordable. I'm working two jobs, and I just can't make it. And the one that hit me most recently

before I left British Columbia was this lady, she was in her 60s, and she phoned me, and it was actually about taxes, and it was about not being able to fill up vehicles. And she was almost crying. She was living in a basement suite in a house in Chilliwack with her adult son. Her adult son had just had a divorce with his wife,

so he had to split and go live with his mom. The rent in the basement suite was $2,600 a month. Okay, and so for folks who don't know where Chilowak is in relation to, say, Maple Ridge, it's about a solid hour. depending on traffic, maybe an hour and a bit, to get up and over there. And her son was a tradesman, put himself through school, working his backside off, trying to get to work. She phoned almost crying, saying, my son can't afford to fill his pickup truck and get to work.

Because gasoline was over, diesel was around $2 a liter. And a huge majority of that is taxes. They have the highest fuel taxes in all of North America and British Columbia. and getting to this point, seeing so many people coming out to talk about their issues, their take on things, it gives me hope to think that they're taking agency back, that they have a voice, that they can stand up and be heard, because that's what I really hope we're able to give to people. So that's what I see when I look out right now, is people standing up and being heard. The first question on here is, what are you going to do differently?

when Bill C-11 gets passed. And I throw it out to all four of you because I think maybe before we get to what we're going to do, maybe one of us, and I'm hoping, I'm looking at Chris, but anyone can jump in this. Can somebody just break it down for me? Like this is what Bill C-11 means. I think the audience would be greatly benefited by,

if we're going to talk about it, let's define what it is first in case somebody doesn't know. For sure. Thank you for that, and it's a great question and it's critical. So we are fighting this with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We have a petition up against it. We've been working in partnership with Michael Geist, who's a brilliant academic based out of Ontario.

We've been my great partner, Jay Goldberg, he's the Ontario director, he's been going to Senate hearing meetings, he's been writing letters, he's been having meetings. What Bill C-11 is, is a government-initiated bill, meaning it comes from the House of Commons, in order to regulate online expression. Now, what's interesting and scary about it is that this isn't in order to, say,

keep terrible things off the internet. So those evil, terrible crimes are already within the Criminal Code of Canada. No, this isn't the Canadian Heritage Ministry. They're the ones that are saying, we are now going to get a bunch of bureaucrats at the CRTC to decide whether your content is Canadian enough. on the internet.

So anyone who lived through, you know, the 70s and 80s and heard Anne Murray's snowbird every like six minutes on the radio, right? That's because of CanCon rules, okay? And this is a bit of an oversimplification, but it applies. So what they're going to do is basically take that approach of, are you Canadian enough, and they're going to alter the algorithms of online platforms. So sharing, personal content, something you've created, a video, maybe the one that CTF has created or the Sean Newman podcast, any of those things,

they may not be canated enough in the eyes of this government bureaucracy, and it'll be way downgraded. It'll be difficult for you to find it. And so, of course, the fear is that this is an attack on free expression, which is why the taxpayers and why are the taxpayers involved? You're not being billed attacks for it. Ah, but accountability is a factor here. Because if you can't be heard and express yourself online,

good luck trying to get your message out. And the other key thing, if I can for a minute, is what might be coming after it? So last session of the House of Commons, there was something proposed called roughly the Online Harm's Act. It never made it all the way to the house. It was still being thought of. And that is really getting tricky

because, again, the Ministry of Heritage in Canada would decide what is harmful. Okay. Explain that. So for example, we were accused of disinformation for calling the carbon tax a carbon tax. Yeah, yeah, I know. So it's a green fee or whatever it's whatever Orwell speak they were using. It's a tax.

But now if you've got the government deciding what is and is not harmful within Canadian heritage, that's what we're also worried about. So in a nutshell, Bill C-11 is an attempt by Ottawa to regulate what you can see here and share. on the internet. And it's this close to becoming law. Very quickly, the Trudeau government even ignored the recommendations from their own appointed senators in the Senate who were saying, folks, I'm a novelist, I'm a musician, you can't do this. And these were folks who were appointed by that side of the spectrum,

but apparently they just want to ram it through anyway. So that's what C-11 is. Just for my brain, this is a selfish question. I'm curious. Right now, if people go, what is Sean Newman podcast? I go, I literally just Google it.

And it's the first thing that pops up and you just see all these different things. It's like super duper easy to find. If this thing passes, I mean, I talk lots about how YouTube just like nuked my thing. You know, they pushed you down and, you know,

kid talks on a radio and he's out the door. But if you want to find kid, you can find them. It's relatively easy online, in my opinion. If this passes, Will I be able to say you can just Google Sean Newman anymore? That's the question, right? We don't know because it's going to be up to this board of people in the Ottawa Gatno Corridor

to decide if you're Canadian content enough. You know, Brian Adams for a while wasn't considered Canadian content, so he couldn't be played, you'll know, on the radio. You'd have to get your CanCon in each hour, right? And so for a while there, I think he made eye contact with an Australian one time or something, so he wasn't allowed to be Canadian for a while. So this is the fear. We don't know.

You could wind up on page three of Google. Wayne, you've had an interesting journey through a lot of this, because I know we talked about Bill C-11. I want to say that maybe I was on your show or vice versa. How have you thought about exactly this question, which is, you know, what are you going to do differently if C-11 passes? Well, for me, I literally got tired of playing the Ready Player 1 game, oops, the catwalk by, turn the power off, build a new profile, start a new channel.

It just got to be over, repeat, repeat, repeat. So I started looking at what other people were doing that were avoiding these kinds of pitfalls and traps. And I discovered that not all Internet laws are the same and all of the places in the world. And there's a reason why all the bad guys in the world have their websites based in Switzerland, as well because the internet laws are the same in Switzerland as they are the banking laws. And if you're not breaking the law in Switzerland, they tell the alphabet agencies to go pound sand. So one of the first things that I did was start to move all of my website platforms to Switzerland. And since then, I have had no problems with DDS attacks or assaults on my websites.

The last set of websites I had, literally the government came knocking and the hosting provider just gave them the keys and they took down two of my websites and three of my websites and three of friends that were hosted on the same platform. So I got tired of rebuilding and so I had to look at what we could do and a problem solver. I mean this is one of the things that Canadians and particularly Albertans I think are renowned for is adapt, improvise, and overcome. I grew up in a place where there was no easy button. You didn't call for a service guy. You either fixed or you froze to death. So it was just inherently wired into us. So rather than trying to beat my head against a

machine that I could not overwhelm, I started to work around it and built a platform called Looking Glass Media Coalition, which is based in Switzerland that allows us to host a bunch of people just like us that are doing the hard work, the heavy lifting, replacing, creating a new alternative environment, where people can find their favorite content creators in one spot, one stop, one shop, No, looking around for 15 different platforms to find the person that you're following, not getting any notifications, not getting told, missing things. For me, this was mostly prompted by the fact that I was getting the best guests in the world, and they'd do an amazing interview, and five minutes later, it would be gone. That was offensive to me. I could not ask these people to take their time to come on my show and put themselves literally in the cross.

of society if it was just going to be removed. So to me that was my driving force in creating this platform where our content is censorship-free. It's two clicks. You can pick a channel and you can watch and you can find your best streamers there and over the course of this weekend I'm pretty sure that we're gonna have a whole bunch more real soon. So does Bill C-11 not scare you then? Does C-11 not make you nervous? anymore than, you know, you mentioned Switzerland, right?

Like, it's an interesting thought. Because having a community doesn't depend on algorithms, right? If it's hosted elsewhere and people are getting an email notification and they're going and looking for it, it's not affected by the search engines. Already, you will not find LGM.com.News on Google. They won't allow it. You just won't find it. So they're already preemptively trying to make it difficult.

And this is their number one tactic. in 20 years that I learned in marketing is just to make it difficult enough without breaking the law that people just find it uncomfortable and stop using it This is how they choke and kill Platforms. They know that most of the independents are a hundred percent dependent on user engagement and Support so if we're not getting the reach if we're not people aren't allowed to see us We are soon starving to death and we are out of the game I've thought about this long and hard this amounts to a censorship bill We saw what happened with supporters of the trucker protest in Ottawa.

Some of them actually had their bank accounts seized for giving money to help these people. I mean, these are real bastards. Don't think that when the Nazis ended their regime, they died. They're back in full force in different ways. I mean, I'm convinced of that. To answer your question, I think I'm going to take your advice and maybe look at... I have a blog, and it's... I think I'm just being honest with all the stories I put up there.

There's 50 or 60 them now. And I mean, put it this way, I'll never get a Christmas card from Justin Trudeau. Never. You know, or from his dad in Cuba. It ain't going to happen. But, you know, I may look at moving that site. I don't want to see it censored. There's a lot of good stuff on there.

story of a pedophile judge in Edmonton. He got caught, videotaped himself, having sex with a native kid. Court of Queen spent justice. What happened to him? They made a deal. He quit. He didn't charge him. And if I gave you his family name, you'd be shocked.

He was well-connected. His brother was a very well-known politician. But that's what happens. And I confronted a judge over that. He met me at an event and he said, what are you working on, Byron? He was retired. Court of Queen Spence Justice. His name was Ernie Marshall.

That's not the offender. I said, Ernie, I'm working on a story about one of you guys. He said, that's good. And I said, no, it's not. He's screwing a kid up the ass and he videotaped it. Oh, did his last name start with? I said, yep. Oh, we heard he was in possession of child porn.

I said, Ernie, you knew all about it, you people. Yeah, yeah, I used to go hunting with the guy. Yeah, well, now you know. What are you going to do with it? I said, well, here's a draft of the story. You want to see it? And he reads it, and his head jerked back at a point. And I knew what it was.

I wrote that we put people in power, judges, to do their job. And their job, in this case, was to protect one of their own. He didn't go to the joint. He never went to prison, was never charged, never disgraced. one friend of his family by the way the judge was a big time liberal a friend approached me and said don't do the story

I know he's a pervert I was warned about him but his wife is lovely this would break her heart that this came out and I said I think she knows his behavior anyway but that's the kind of stuff that I put that up on my blog

and the day it was released the following day I get a phone call from the law courts building in Edmonton they wanted to know the name of the justice. I said, no, that's a trapdoor, of course. I said, you want to know the name? Yeah, we do. I said, go ask the older judges. They all know who he is. I give you a hint. They went hunting with him often.

You know, so these stories, if they shut me down, they go down too. And I'll tell you another one. As mentioned, I lived two blocks away from here and just down here in Lewis Estates. It's a nice suburb. It's built on a golf course. kind of well to do. I was out my deck one day and the houses, the decks face each other.

Like my back deck face the back deck of another house. I walked out and there's a guy, a kitty corner on his deck. He's on his cordless phone. A guy in mid-40s, I'd say, white guy. He sees me. He

flees into the house. And I thought that's odd. Normally they'd wave or say something. I see him again. a couple of months later he's leaning back on a chair against the back of his house on the deck and he's talking away in the phone again and he sees me same thing gets in the house and I mentioned this to Fred Lennerson who's an advisor with the Lubicon Cree what the hell is that about is he in a witness protection program he said no he's what works with a spy agency he's in a surveillance house I said what on who he said you stupid yeah He said, you don't believe me? I said, I find that hard to believe. He said, Byron, you just did a story on Talisman Energy that brought them down. They're bankrupt because of you.

I said, no, I just referred to court documents. That was not my intent to destroy that company. He said, that's what happened. And he said, do you not realize that the head of the Canadian Petroleum Association, his brother, is the head of CESIS. Hello, connect the dots, you know? And I still found that hard to believe. So he said, look, you know a retired spy.

in New Brunswick, his name is Mike Frost, F-R-O-S-T, agent with the communication security establishment, the electronic spy agency. Give Mike a call and tell him about this. I did one better. I wrote him an email. I'm living next to a surveillance house. I got a picture of the guy and we'll meet in the fall. I'll show it to you.

Well, Mike, email arrived next day. We can no longer communicate, Byron. We end our relationship now. cannot meet with you in the fall. And then what happened? The moving trucks moved up. Same day. They started clearing out the stuff from the house. His wife walks out on the deck and sees me. She's watering her plants. She sees me in ducks. She doesn't want me to see her face. I went, yes. So I told my wife, I said, that was a spy house. And she said, I said, they're going to clean it out. She said, good, because their cats are shitting in our garden. You know, but I mentioned,

And so I met up with the spy. Four or five years later, he's in a retirement community near Chatham, New Brunswick. I shouldn't be telling you this. It should be secret, but who cares? So I went around to, I had Frost's address. You can Google Mike Frost. He has a Canadian record for being on 60 minutes, three times.

All the spy issues. Mike and I often talked about wiretaps and stuff like that. So I went around to his house. knock on the side door, nobody there. I leave a note in his mailbox to the left. I drive up to Bathurst. I'm having a bite to eat in a restaurant. My phone rings. Agent Frost. He says, well, if someone had bet me a million dollars,

you'd be at my door today, I would have taken that up because I thought I'd never see you. And I said, well, let's meet. So he agreed to me that Tim Horton's very Canadian. A few days later, I walk up to a till. And I don't know what Agent Frost looks like. I don't watch TV, but I know he's written a book, Spy World, and a very distinguished-looking fellow pulls up to my left and the other till. And I recognize his accent.

He's from the Bahamas. And I said, oh, that's Agent Frost. Never said a word to me. I got my meal, and I went and joined him at the back, and he was there sipping his coffee. He stood up, shook my hand, said he was proud to meet me, and I said, I see what you look like. How many people here know that you're all? a former agent, he said, only two people, you and my minister.

I said, Mike, what happened that day? I sent you the email about the agent. He said, they were really freaked out. Cesar's guy flew to Moncton, New Brunswick, got a rental car, drove up to his house, told him, I want you to divorce your relationship with Byron Christopher. I said, Mike, I'm not even hitting on you. What do you mean divorce? It was crazy. But he was scared. And he said, we had them scared, Byron. I said, you know, I never got a picture of the agent.

He said, I didn't know that. He said, they were scared. And I said, you were scared, Mike. Yeah, so. What year was that, Byron? That would have been around 2000. So 2000. Two weeks later, or for sale sign went up, and then the house was sold.

I asked a neighbor, I said, who lived here? And he said, oh, he worked at the post office. office. I said he did. And then a few years later I said, where did your neighbor work? He said, oh, he worked at a bank. They foreclosed on his house and he had to move. I said, I don't think so. So it's not the country you think it is. The communication security establishment is much bigger than CESIS. They have files on one in four Canadians, one and four Canadians. They have files on. And those are parliamentary records. Safe to say all of us on stage,

maybe have one of those? Definitely. If I turn up at a Trudeau event, I have two goons and suits that stand this far in front of me and make sure I am not even allowed to take a photograph. Yeah. So, you know, I mentioned

this story to neighbors. I live over here in Peter Close. You know what? One word they say? Interesting. I said, interesting. You should be saying that's my tax money going to these goofs. But that's a Canadian response. Interesting.

You know, a social scientist once said that Ottawa could announce its building in Auschwitz death camp on the western edge of Edmonton, and Canadians would say, oh, well, the government says it's okay. And I think we're a little bit like that. Well, I'm curious. You know, we, C-11 and kind of, you know, pushing things down and morphed into a different train of thought. And, you know, I look at that and I go, that was 23 years ago, you know, that's what he's talking about. Like, where we, that was, you know, before they had Facebook and Twitter and I don't, you know,

Instagram and all these different things that we all keep getting, you know, the master of disaster on that side, way and keeps getting kicked off of, you know. What can people, you know, it isn't a hopeless situation because I look around this room and I see a lot of people. I'm like, and a lot of people that want to change things, and when they start moving and shaking, things can happen. I mean, we've seen that play out in our country in the last year, a little over a year. What can people do to oppose C-11? Is it just writing, Chris? Is it sending, is it sharing, you know, what kid and Wayne and Byron are doing?

Is there different things that can be done so that they, you know, because people want to help. I think a lot of people in here are willing to do. you know, like they flew across the country, right? To come, you know, one of the ideas is solutions for the future. I don't say we're going to get them, but I do want to spur on some thoughts and some hope

because it is as dire as it is, you know, we're just, you know, what is the old saying? It's just as dark, the darkest part of the night is just before the dawn, right? So. It is. And again, I'm trying to take a hopeful approach from the CTF perspective

and what, again, what we try to do is a lot of citizen activism, of letter writing, phone calls. We have more than 200,000 supporters across the country. And depending on what your issue is, it could be C-11. It could be the gun seizure. It could be defunding the CBC. It could be not wanting a PST in your province, right?

What I would recommend doing is to continuously build that relationship with your elected representative, no matter what party they represent, firmly and politely remind them that you pay their salary and that you expect certain results. And that if it gets to a point where we're at C-11, for example,

which, like I said, there's folks from all sorts of ideological perspectives who have spoken out very eloquently against C-11 for many reasons, including novelists and journalists and independent journalists, what not. I would recommend, for example, calling NDP members of Parliament

and firmly but politely saying this is very important to me for these three reasons. Keep it brief. And then if they wish a washel and don't want to do anything about it, I would recommend saying, you know what, this is so important that the next time you're running for re-election,

I'm not going to not just not vote for you. I am going to get a group of my 15 closest friends in your riding association, and I'm going to door knock against you. I'm going to actively door knock against you and I'm going to tell them that this is why. And that gets their attention, no matter what party they're in or what the issue is, because then that is directly affecting their job.

And I just want to give people a sense of agency. They work for you. Members of Parliament work for you. They make over $180,000 a year, plus all the benefits you can't dream of. They mean their heats paid for, their transportation, most of their food, their housing, and by the way, they're giving themselves

a big fat pay raise on April 1st, the same day of carbon tax goes up. So, yeah, you're paying their salaries, so that's what I would say is don't give up hope, don't relax into despair, and if something like C-11 is important to you, continue that pressure and explain firmly why. Would we all agree defunding the CBC is a good idea?

Yeah. Hypothetical question. I don't have the answer. I'm curious your thoughts. Let's say I gave you what you wanted. CBC, defunded. All national media defunded. What then?

Like, what would, you know, I, there's a ton of questions coming in, flying in right now about artificial intelligence, the algorithms, how do you get around them? Do you all join together and create a giant independent conglomerate, you know? You got all these different ideas, you know, you've got,

all these different sources trying to do some of that. But you're competing against a billion, you know, a billionaire media company that sucks, you know, like honestly. If we could just wipe it off, CBC's no more and, you know, all the funding at least is gone. What then? If they pass Bill C.A. 18, nothing changes. Well, I feel like you're going to have to explain.

What's the CAT? The C-18 is their brainchild of replacing the funding of our media with Silicon Valley picking up the tab for once they've gained control over what content we are allowed to share. Anytime that anybody else shares an approved news or outlets piece or moves it forward, Silicon Valley pays the bill for that. So we can take the taxpayers' money away. It's not going to change the problem. They're still going to be funded from elsewhere following the government directive. So I don't believe it changed the thing. I believe it's a talking point political campaign, which...

Oops. That's the good news. If you didn't hear that, he said Silicon Valley went broke, if you hadn't seen the news about the banks. Are we talking about where the mainstream media gets money for clicks and for using... A friend of mine described that. as imagine a pizza place charging Uber for them delivering their food.

Like a big fee. You know, it just wouldn't work. Uber would say, see you later. We're never going to your store again. A friend of mine described it that way. That's 100% on point. And this is why we're actually seeing YouTube spending millions of dollars campaigning against the Canadian government and their legislation.

Literally, our enemies are fighting our enemies at this point. because our enemies are so insane. So let YouTube pick up the bill for stopping C-11. If I could wave a wand, say what you just said is, you know, we got rid of CBC and there's no more taxpayer-funded to the media. Now, in all honesty, maybe there's a form of the CBC that continues through free will donations and subscriptions. Just listen, no taxpayers' money, okay?

You're not forced to pay for it. But maybe your neighbor down the street really likes them and they pay for them and they get advertising too because they have to get out there and hustle or they have a GoFundMe or they have a bake sale They're able to stay on the air in some way Imagine all the different independent media than filling in that environment You had everything from you know Western Standard to Canada land and ones I've never even thought of before that would then emerge and fill that void because we're not going to quit talking to each other folks we've had had town crier since villages were first made. So we'll still be

able to communicate and it's pretty exciting to imagine all those new startup media that would fill that environment. Sorry, I'm reading comments and I'm laughing to myself and everybody looks over and Sean's laughing and it's like laughing at my town crier. I'm watching all the new ones and somebody thinks

the night is darkest just before the dawns a stupid statement. It's from a good movie. I like the dark night. I don't know. It's fine. It's totally fine. I just, I chuckle. I'm like, I'm getting I'm glad I've got some engagement out there. This is fun. This is fun. We're having fun here, you know.

Could I jump in real quick? Absolutely. It was funny. When I had first, when I had gone to that rally and then the story the next morning was not what had happened at the rally, I first read that story on a really popular website in Vancouver.

It's called The Daily Hive, and it's sort of where the millennials get all their news from. And then I started flipping around, and then no, CTV had the same story. CBC had the same, global, they all had the same story. And I went down a little bit of the rabbit hole and found out that the Daily Hive had received $500,000 from the government that year.

And I was like, what? I'm like, and there was a document going around, and it listed every single news organization and how much money they received. And it wasn't just big, what you think news, but every little mom and pop magazine, like those free ones that you see in the street corner, like a tourist travel destination,

Bob's Pet Shack, Tips, all these cheap little free magazines you pick up from everywhere, they all received money, whether it was, you know, 15 grand or 100 grand or whatever it was. But I was just shocked to think that the Daily Hive, which is where all of my friends get their news from, We're obviously going to have a huge slant because to them half million bucks. I know the three guys that started that thing.

They've got to check for half million dollars, of course. Their opinions and what articles they write are going to be hugely affected. So I think it's happening with CBC, but it's also happening at every single little source where we're getting our news in print, vlogs, wherever. I think it's happening everywhere, so the problem's a lot bigger. I have a blog, and I want no funding for it from anyone. No one. No one here tonight, if you give me, here's $5,000, I'll say,

keep it, give it to Sean or something. Give it to me. Give it to me. No government funding, no corporate sponsor. And I've been asked, there's a company in England wanted to advertise. I said, no thanks. This has got to be my labor, my gift. That's it.

Now, a quick story about censorship. I just issued a new book. It's called Connect the Dots. And what it is is a photograph, a drawing, of a needle. And instead of the needle having proper lines, just numbers, you connect the dots, and it's an anti-COVID injection thing. It's a collection of memes. There's about a hundred of them there, and they're phenomenal.

I didn't come up with them. I stole them from various people. But they're all in this publication. I put it out on Amazon. I ordered three copies. They're on their way. And I thought, well, okay, I've modified the books, so I want to order more. And they wouldn't allow me to order any more.

So I phoned Amazon and, well, of course, Philippines. You go through that for a half an hour. And they didn't know anything, of course. Then you talked to the Amazon rep in Cape Town, South Africa. And he said, well, I don't know what that's all about. And I said, well, I realize that when you publish through it, Amazon, you don't have physical copies of the book on a shelf, you print them off as the orders come in. So there's no need to limit me to three. Oh, maybe you've got to hold off for a week or so.

But you can try that tonight. Google, connect the dots, Byron, Christopher, Amazon, see if you can order them. But it's quite a good little book, and I'm not doing it for the money. It's just five, six bucks, US, and that's it. But there's, I see that as censorship. I've never had that before. I've ordered copies of my books on McNair and what have you. No problem. But now it's stopped. And that's because they're not friendly to the government. And I make fun of the media throughout it, of course, that too. Yeah, so I'm just throwing that out there. So make your evening joyful. I've heard of that. The world is pretty screwed up. And someone asked, what was your plans? My plan, I'm 74 years old. If I can hang on for a

another few more years and I'm retiring to a cabin in the woods. And if I get internet connection, I'll be happy. You know, I have no faith in that where anything positive is coming from what I've seen. From the truckers' protests, I'll be honest with you. I'm so discouraged over that. You cannot trust the media, they're sold out so many times. And I applaud what the people at the Nuremberg trials did. They hanged a number of reporters for good reason.

they were part of the problem. They weren't part of the solution. They're criminals. I mean, you talk about pedophiles in society and bank robbers and that. Look at the damage these people have done by not doing their jobs. It's not hard to be a reporter. My God, you just go out and report the facts. No one is going to come to you and say, well, look, you better not talk about vaccine injuries.

Well, yeah, no, you should. That's a fact. People are dying. The leading cause of death in Alberta is unknown. What do you mean unknown? They can dig up a mummy 5,000 years old and tell you that they died of rheumatoid arthritis or something. And they can't tell you how these people died. They know how they died.

All of this stuff, I mean, and then the editors, here, I'm going on a rant here, forgive me. But the editors turn around and interview Bill Gates. Here's a flunky who never made it through college. Yeah, his mom and dad had money, and he's formed a computer company. and he's telling you about the necessity of vaccines, and they put them on as an authority. That would be like someone out here interviewing me about how to design churches.

Oh, okay, I was in one for a couple hours. I'll tell you how they should be designed, and now I'm in all the TV stations. That's BS. I mean, what are the editors thinking? You know, this is, I don't know, sorry for going on a rant. I'm an eternal optimist, and I look around, and I'm going to,

Last night, somebody had asked, you know, what happened last night. Last night was, I don't know, speed dating of independent media is how I would try and explain the idea because I can't make it any more beautiful than that. That's kind of what could happen. We just met each other for the first. Think of how many interviews have been done through a screen where you've actually not been able to handshake.

I joke about this all the time. I don't have Joe Rogan's budget. I'm not getting a million dollars to fly people to Leibminster. You know, oh man, can you imagine getting floating? to Lloyd Mids for a podcast, that'd be hilarious. I'd love to do it. Anyways, you know, Shane Gets and once upon a time did fly there, right? But I mean, sometimes I wonder if that was, you know, forced them to come, you know, like who's Covind to Lloyd? Anyways. Last night we got together and I saw like huge positive

thoughts come from that group of people who've been trying to report on the truth, you know, try and get these stories out. And one of the things I'd said was like, we just need to realize there's somebody doing it like an hour over and you have no idea. You know, I get so focused on tracking down interviews and this and this and this. You kind of forget that there's more people doing that. So what was lovely about last night was we got to get in the same room, realized, oh, wow, I had no idea.

Kid Carson had a podcast. I'm not saying there. There's probably a few there. And there's probably a few that walked up to Shaw and went, what do you do? You kind of laugh and you're like, oh, I'm this who I am. Is there not a way that this movement of independent media, that is across the country, can't break through the barrier,

the whatever we're calling it, that they're trying to clamp down on Canadians. Can it bust through and just, and isn't it already doing that? Freedom Convoy did that. Literally, people are filming it and they're trying to, you know, paint it. They had the inquiry, sure, the guy at the end didn't give the,

what everyone wanted, but all the documents, you know, Tom Korski, Blacklocks reporter, talks about it. Like, it's all sitting right there. More and more Canadians are seeing this. Isn't there hope in that that better days are ahead? I do think there's a lot of hope, and I'm an eternal optimist too, and I'll give you an example.

I was at a speech or a talk or whatever you want to call it. In Lethbridge, on like a random rainy Wednesday night, I was expecting a couple dozen people to come out and listen to me talk about just transition and how much that is going to cost numerically in Alberta. It could be a pretty dry topic, I was thinking. Maybe a couple dozen people will come out. There was more than 100 people in that gym. And they'd driven up to, you know, listen about it and about the carbon tax.

And so, again, I am taking hope from that because I wasn't seeing that, even before COVID and lockdowns and all that stuff was happening. I wasn't seeing those kinds of crowds to come in and listen about debt and deficit and, you know, carbon taxes and all that stuff before. And there's a lot more engagement now. I do think that there's more engagement and there's more folks that are pushing back. Maybe that's out of necessity. Maybe that's because they can't afford their mortgage payments.

anymore. Maybe that's because there's record demand for food banks now, that it's getting really real. So I do take hope in that you can encourage people how to be able to speak up for themselves, no matter what their issue is and get heard. I think there's massive hope. Honestly, when I started doing, when I'm doing in 2018, there was less than a handful of people that were going out and doing it outside of the established media. And now, when this last convoy came about, I wasn't able to actually attend, and I was pretty upset by that.

And I realized that the entire ecosphere had changed in Canada to the point that there was literally thousands of people there that were doing independent journalism. I didn't need to be the person on the ground there, taking part in one event, one time, that I could be far more effective dispersing the information around the world to the people that were hungry for it,

so that we have, have literally created, recreated an entire ecosystem outside of that environment. We just don't realize it yet and we haven't been able to harness it yet because I genuinely believe that most of us are busy struggling with the day-to-day survival that we haven't got the ability to scale up to that point of empowerment. But I think we're getting incredibly close and I think what we've done, what you've done here this weekend, Sean, was that was a very big step in doing that. So many of us are able to now to kind of relate to each other and to start to connect on how we can work together and be more cooperative. And to address one of the things that Kit had said earlier,

you know, how could it be that it's the same programming, you know, the same mistake on every channel? Well, that's a system. It's 100% a system. And we can interrupt that system. And we've seen examples of that. And as we start to develop things like this, every single one of us that does news or broadcaster interviews is going to be leaving this weekend with a full month's worth of dates. So congratulations on a highly successful speed dating night. I think that's the most successful one in history. And that gives me massive hope. I had, I found this, you know, we've been talking lots about, you know, media and C-11 and, you know, what does that mean? And can we get around it and blah, blah, blah, you get it.

And I mean, blah, blah, blah. It's like very interesting. You know, that sounded terrible, you know. Anyways, I had this question come in. And it's more, now it's, now this is one of the largest stories in Canada right now. How bad is the China corruption when CIS has to leak the story to media to. get their attention. How bad is it? So I wanted to segue to this because again I'm an internal optimist and I know that annoys people sometimes but I'm hopeful. There is some outstanding journalism happening in both independent media and to pick up for my old colleagues mainstream media on this file. So there are reporters at the Globe and Mail that have been on this story now for years and they're finally getting the documents and the information they need from places like

CESIS to report those stories. So, and I don't want to name them, but I've worked closely with a lot of them and I have a lot of respect for their journalism and their professionalism. And they're working hard to get that story out. And there's also a gentleman who works for Global. He wrote a huge book on this topic exactly. He's based in the West Coast. He was yelling about it over and over again. And I took an interest in it, of course, because I was a former journalist, but mostly for accountability. Like, you don't want any foreign interference going on in your federal government, because then we're going to have to expand internationally as a taxpayers federation to chase down other actors. And so I think that this story within the parliamentary precinct,

which is downtown Ottawa, is big, and I think it has legs because it involves the big players within that precinct. It involves intelligence, it involves PMO, it involves who knew what, when, and that's, I think, why you have those journalists now asking those hard questions again, for the first time I've seen in a long time.

What did you know and when did you know it? No, sir, answer the question. I haven't seen that kind of chasing down the hallway journalism in a while. And it's been, what, two weeks now since that first started making headlines? So, again, there's room for hope there. And I do think

in the future, maybe we can start getting some crossover between the really good investigative journalists who are writing those books and doing the independent stuff with mainstream. Maybe they can start talking to each other because they can learn from each other, both skills and

Intel, and maybe then start filling their content because very quickly, there's very few journalists now in those newsrooms. Like when I graduated J-school, there used to be 15. Now there's like three. And they have to do everything. So that's why you're seeing the same thing repeated over and over because they're filling content.

They have to feed the beast. And so maybe there can be that crossover. And maybe this can be the moment. It can be the China story. You have a thought that I'm like, I'm going to spit it out and then let you guys do it what you want. But I wonder if, you know, you've got all these independent people who have, like, built this channel that is raw, real.

They just talk openly, all the things we're looking for, just lay it on us. And one of the things I've kind of fallen into a little bit was I mentioned Tom Korski. Certainly yourself, Chris Sims. Another one's Byron Christopher and all their media background and how they do stories and they're continuing to do. And I wonder if independent media couldn't leverage the people who are still doing the work, but nobody knows about it because they're, you know, like I didn't know who Tom Korski was

until, I don't know, Tuesday will probably laugh at me. because, you know, like we read all of the stories on the mashup over and over and over again, but like until a year ago. And then when I started talking, I'm like, how isn't this guy on, like, every show in Canada if you want to learn about what's going on in Canada? And I wonder if there isn't a way to team up to that, because there is still great people doing, I mean, Rupa Suburmania is one that I think a lot of us out there have followed her work and her journalism. You're like, wow, there's a lady that should be, once again, on all these shows all over again,

Because when big issues happen in Canada, we should be leveraging the network that is there, and some of that is hard-hitting journalism that yourself and others have done. Anyways, that was my thought that popped in my head. And you can make those connections, and I think it takes relationship maintenance, so staying in touch, following each other's work, both inside and outside mainstream and alternative journalism. Hey, good job on that. Way to dig. Send those private messages.

Send those DMs. Because Tom Korski still does mainstream radio. you'll hear him on talk radio quite often and so he will deliver the black locks reporter stuff and so he and Holly Donne do an amazing amount of work for blacklocks reporter and I do hear Tom he does a lot of mainstream talk radio don't see him a lot on TV but again

maybe we can start bridging those gaps again and bringing together some of the people who've been so divided now I'm going to get into the conspiracy zone I think that there's something more at play here I think that Trudeau has brought this on himself. I think the instant that it was leaked, and his first response was to threaten to hunt down and seek out,

whoever leaked, said initial report. I think that sent chills down the spine of the CESIS people. And I think that they see the writing on the wall as well as the rest of us. And I'm only speaking from conjecture in this, but when I see the legacy media, people that's typically in the legacy media, and I don't want to paint them all with a bad brush, because as you guys just said,

you know, there are still some good people in there, but they're following an agenda. They're working with purpose. And I think that there's an almost a modern-day Praetorian Guard event that is taking place. I think we're going to see a changing the garden politics because the winds of the world are changing. And not just Italy, not just recently in Netherlands.

I think that this trend is happening, internationally and globally and make no mistake what just happened in the Netherlands Canada played a big part in that they they give yourselves around absolutely folks and I think that's that's where we're going and I think that the legacy media is running into that squeeze and we're already seeing evidence in some places in the states where some of these typically far-left organizations are replacing their staff with AI because the AI is so effective for the left-leaning lens that they don't need their staff so much anymore.

So I think that there's a genuine fear in those that have taken the money to hammer out this agenda, that they're going to be replaced at some point if they don't do something to signify their excellence or their ability. I can speak about the CSE because I've had dealings with the agent, but I'll pass on two tips from Agent Mike Frost, every landline phone can be heard, even if it's hung up. Know that.

If there's a hostage taking and it's in a residence, Edmonton Police can hear everything in the house. That's one thing. The other thing is that all emails are monitored. And they're triggered by keywords.

If you put in women's rights, native rights, cocaine, Trudeau's an asshole, ain't like that. your email appears in a bank of computers they go through it and they'll say okay they've got a whole pile of clerks that's all they do is checks in so no emails are private know that none there is a professor at the u of a's retired now he he was aware of this and he would always end his emails

with terrorism women's rights native rights just to give the boys CSE some employment yeah and you know I'll tell you behind the scene story you're not aware of this, but his name was Larry Donovan. He was a producer at CBC News World. Larry phoned me one morning. I was in radio and he said, could you give us an update on Colin Thatcher? Thatcher was at the joint, serving time for a second degree, first degree murder of his wife, ex-wife, Joanne Wilson. And I had interviewed Thatcher quite a number of times. So they wanted an update on his faint hope clause appeal. Okay, that was the interview. I arrived there.

I'm tired, cranky. The producer says, take off your hat. I said, look, I've been up since 3 in the morning. Just whiteboard me. No, we can't do that, so it's not a good tone. You know, it's live. Newsworld is in Calgary asking me questions. They get a bug in my ear, and I'm answering them.

And I give them rundown on where the appeal is at this point. And then they ask the perfect question, have you anything else to report? And I did, but I didn't want to share it with Donovan because he would censor it. I said, yes, as a matter of fact, I do. What's that? I said, do you remember the trial?

Thatcher claimed he was at home at the time of the murder, therefore he could not have committed it. And he had witnesses at his ranch near Moose Jaw to confirm that. Yes, I remember that. But I said, they didn't put a lot of weight in that because the witnesses were his children. They dismissed that. And he claimed to have been on the phone to his girlfriend at 25 minutes after six. But back then they could not retain the phone records because they weren't computerized. They're all

destroyed by the time he was charged. So it was his word. It didn't mean anything. But they had on the stand, the woman, his girlfriend in Palm Springs, California, the one he supposedly talked to, they had her on the stand. She was a crown witness, so she turned evidence against Colin Thatcher. They asked her, did you get a phone call from Colin Thatcher at around this time? She said, said, no, I did not. Any phone call that evening? No, I did not. Now, what has never been made public, Thatcher was at home, but he was drunk. So the time may have been off. He was drunk in Scotch. So the defense lawyer said, maybe Mr. Thatcher was mistaken. Maybe you phoned him. Could that, is that right? And she said, I did not. And at that point, I relayed the story.

And the interviewer in Calgary knew of that. He said, yes, I was aware of that. that I covered the trial. And I said, she lied. And he wondered what? And I pulled out her phone records from Palm Springs, California. She phoned Thatcher at 6.23 p.m. And he says, where did you get that? And I said, that's confidential.

And he said, that information should be in the hands of the Regina Police Department. I said, look in the upper right-hand corner, you'll see a stamp. that says Regina Police Department. They had that. Now, he may have arranged for someone to kill his ex-wife, I don't know, but he didn't do it. And they had the evidence. And if they can screw the former cabinet minister, they can mess with you too. What happened to Larry Donovan?

I went to pick up my attache case, and he said, that was a great interview. He said, can I see the phone records? I said, sure, here it is. He said, that's something. Next day, Donovan was fired. The phone records disappeared from my attache case, along with photos I had of the U.S. cruise missile I got from the Russian embassy. They disappeared too.

I wish I had better locks on the case. So do you think reporting is all fun and games? Yeah, go ahead. It's not. But it is exciting, and I don't take any position on Thatcher's guilt or innocence. but I can tell you that's what happened to a live interview on Newsworld. They never repeated it. You know, I'm monitoring time. I know we can go for hours on hours on hours,

but we're just past 930, which means I've already gone into bonus time and that type of thing, and I've been really getting a kick out of kids' facial expressions as Byron's telling the story. That's been great. That might have made my night. But I want to make sure that people, You know, I say this at the end of all these because somebody's like,

Sean, just zip it and let them talk for four hours and it's fine. But some people have been here since like four o'clock, right? Like, that's a long chunk of time. And they want to come and shake hands, and they want to talk to their tables, and I keep interrupting all your beautiful conversations that have been spurred on tonight. So before we close out, I would just say if there's any final thoughts you have,

you know, I always chuckled. You put so much work into things like this. And it's almost like that, and the night is over. And for me, that's at least how it feels. It goes so fast. Is there any final thoughts from all of you before we close out? And I want to thank you all for coming and doing this. You know, everybody's giving me applause.

But, I mean, to be open and tell stories and try and, you know, talk about something that's pretty evident but difficult to, you know, explain and share in some of the expertise and I got something to my throat all of a sudden. But any final thoughts? I just wanted to say it's wild to be on a stage with you, who's got like missing photos of cruise missiles. And my legacy media experience is like introducing Bruno Mars. It's just, it's bizarre.

I guess my final words would just be that human beings, we are infinitely creative. We are infinitely creative. So we'll always find a way. You know, if we're going to be censored on one platform, We'll just rely on our newsletter lists. We'll always find a way to communicate and get the word out. And I'm inspired by how many people are coming together

and supporting each other for the sake of shared values. So, anyways, I am an optimist as well, and that's my final piece. A couple of two little things. First of all, I wanted to make sure that we save Byram's butt here and that he's not wrong. The Nazis are still alive. I've uncovered evidence that in 1946, the American government literally captured a bunch of former Nazi spies

that were already planning out and strategizing in all the documents for the Fourth Reich, which was intended to be an economic conquest of the world. So he's not conspiracy theorist. He's a journalist. I would leave you with this. Remain true to yourself. even though it is discouraging, don't give up. And people have asked me, well, why don't you shut up?

You'd still be at CBC drawing a big pension or whatever. And I said, I really don't care about that? And I'm not religious, so know this. But I know where I go when I croak, and I want some high fives. I'm not selling out. Keep going. From the Taxpayers Federation, we want people to be able to have low taxes and see less waste and be able to hold their government to account.

And I think what's beautiful about that is that you can have any opinion you want. You can vote for whatever party you want. You can be from whatever walk of life you are. But if taxes are low, if your money is spent wisely and not wasted, if government is small and accountable, and if journalists aren't paid by the state, we'll all have a fighting chance to be able to live our own lives as we see fit. and so I just want to let you all know

keep standing out did you want any final thoughts you know and I honestly the podcast for me doesn't want it to end you know I sadly like I'm like how I have these people sitting here talking and regaling me with stories

and wisdom and different things that's the whole purpose of this but I I'm so you know quick dick McDick if you've ever seen the comedian you know he just teases me all the time about how much on time and I'm like when I go places I want them to respect me

and the only way I can respect you is with time I can tell you exactly how the night's going to go and we're going to stick to it no matter how good it is I want to leave you wanting going wish I could have stayed five more minutes and they could have talked a little more so I've appreciated all of you coming out and I hope to shake hands

and maybe a couple hugs and everything else with as many of you as humanly possible a few of you have ran into me and at times I'm not sure where I've been walking and talking to myself you know I'm kind a crazy guy when I get into these things. It got a lot of going on in my head. But I appreciate you all coming out and doing this and partaking in something that is a brainchild out of a conversation from the podcast and traveling across Canada to come and do this. I hope it is

what you expected. I hope it has spurred on some thoughts. Please enjoy the rest of the night. Thanks again for coming out and give these guys a round of applause for being who they are.