Andrew Lawton talks upcoming WEF trip and Canadian censorship

This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday – Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on December 28, 2023.

On Thursday’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra spoke with True North’s Andrew Lawton about scrumming politicians at the World Economic Forum’s summit in Davos and discussed the Canadian government’s efforts to control discoverability on the internet with bill C-11, and its impact on independent media.

Ezra brought up his favorite True North interview at last year’s World Economic Forum summit, when Andrew went face to face with Bank of Montreal CEO Darryl White and asked him about freezing truckers bank accounts with no judicial processes.

“One of the other banking executives on that call had pushed back a little bit and said that they didn’t want the banks to be weaponized. Was that a view you shared?” asked Andrew.

“Oh, it’s always a view I shared. I don’t think banks should be weaponized anymore than any other industry,” responded White.

Ezra made the point that none of the mainstream media journalists present at Davos asked uncontrolled, critical questions of the WEF members, while questions asked from both True North and Rebel News were typically accountability-oriented. He told Andrew:

I’m looking forward to seeing you there in Davos and I think you do good work there. Simply by being there, you’re doing more work than our state broadcaster of the regime media.

Ezra explained that because of Canada’s new censorship law, Bill C-11, it can be harder to find work from both Rebel News and True North by Google or YouTube search:

We’re not promoted like regime media sources are, and that’s not a theory, it’s not a conspiracy theory. We have a YouTube media handler assigned to us by YouTube. Her name’s Coco Pell, and she is candid with us that YouTube suppresses alternative media and boosts what they call ‘quality’ or ‘trustworthy’ media. It’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s what they tell us to our face.

Andrew pointed out the value of the freedom of discovery, and how the Trudeau Liberals are consciously trying to take that freedom away:

The issue is government trying to ban the discovery of new audiences and the ability of new audiences to discover the work that we’re doing. And that’s the inevitable outcome of a government policy that by its design, it’s a feature and not a bug, manipulates algorithms and manipulates home pages, and that’s what’s happening here. It’s basically to limit the audience that can ever exist for these outlets.