Media
Canadian police officer under investigation for arresting reporter who asked Deputy PM questions
Rebel News reporter David Menzies is forcefully arrested
From LifeSiteNews
Authorities acknowledged that Rebel News’ David Menzies posed no threat while attempting to interview Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland before he was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer responsible for the aggressive arrest of Rebel News reporter David Menzies on Monday night is under investigation and the local city police involved in the incident has confirmed the journalist posed no threat to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
As per a National Post report, the RCMP officer was placed under review after video of the altercation went viral.
According to RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Kim Chamberland, the “RCMP protective policing resources were involved in an incident while deployed on a protective operation.”
“The RCMP is looking into the incident and the actions of all parties involved,” Chamberland said.
Outrage exploded on social media this week after video footage seems to show the Canadian reporter being falsely accused of “assault” by a police officer and then immediately apprehended while he was attempting to ask Freeland questions on a public street.
In a video recorded and published Monday that has gone viral with close to 14 million views, Menzies is seen walking beside Freeland on a street in the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill, Ontario, attempting to ask her questions about Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and why the group has not been given a terrorist designation by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, of which she is second in command.
Seconds later, the video footage appears to show a plainclothes police officer, who is now confirmed to be a member of the RCMP, positioning his body directly in Menzies’ path, effectively forcing physical contact between himself and the reporter.
After the two lightly bump into each other — contact that the video seems to indicate was initiated by the officer and not Menzies — the officer begins to arrest Menzies in a rather aggressive manner while accusing the reporter of physically assaulting a police officer. Menzies, visibly shocked at the series of events, was then taken away by members of the York Regional Police, the local force operating in Richmond Hill.
Chamberland, as per the National Post, did not provide additional comments regarding the incident but did confirm that the RCMP review will involve all parties.
Menzies was released a short time after his arrest by police officers without being charged. He said that he had asked cops for their badge numbers, but they did not provide this information to him. This claim also appears to be backed up by the video, in which viewers can hear and see Menzies repeatedly ask for the name and badge number of the initial arresting officer.
He said during his arrest, “Welcome to Canada.”
“This is what they do to journalists. I was merely trying to scrum Minister Freeland and the RCMP officer blocked me, and evidently this is a trumped-up charge of assault, folks. I came here to do my job and now I’m handcuffed,” he added.
Rebel News reporter posed no ‘threat’ to Deputy PM Freeland, local police confirms
The York Regional Police (YRP) assisted the RCMP in arresting Menzies, but its media relations officer, Constable Lisa Moskaluk, claims that the arrest was made solely by the RCMP.
“The arrest of the Rebel News reporter was made by the Prime Minister’s RCMP security detail,” Moskaluk said.
“York Regional Police officers assisted as the interaction took place in our region.”
York police also confirmed that Menzies did not pose any “threat” to Freeland.
“It was determined that no credible security threat existed and the subject was released unconditionally shortly thereafter,” said Moskaluk, per the National Post.
Menzies’ arrest has drawn international attention. It was immediately condemned by many, including prominent Canadian politicians. Even Tesla billionaire Elon Musk chimed in with his thoughts on the incident as the video circulated online.
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre reposted Rebel News’ original video of Menzies’ arrest, adding in his own words, “This is the state of freedom of the press. In Canada. In 2024. After 8 years of Trudeau.”
Rebel News head and founder Ezra Levant put the blame on Trudeau’s “thugs” for Menzies’ arrest, and said his team met with lawyer and planned to sue the RCMP, York Regional Police, and Freeland for false arrest.
I Testified Before a Senate Committee About the CBC
I recently testified before the Senate Committee for Transport and Communications. You can view that session here. Even though the official topic was CBC’s local programming in Ontario, everyone quickly shifted the discussion to CBC’s big-picture problems and how their existential struggles were urgent and immediate. The idea that deep and fundamental changes within the corporation were unavoidable seemed to enjoy complete agreement.
I’ll use this post as background to some of the points I raised during the hearing.
You might recall how my recent post on CBC funding described a corporation shedding audience share like dandruff while spending hundreds of millions of dollars producing drama and comedy programming few Canadians consume. There are so few viewers left that I suspect they’re now identified by first name rather than as a percentage of the population.
Since then I’ve learned a lot more about CBC performance and about the broadcast industry in general.
For instance, it’ll surprise exactly no one to learn that fewer Canadians get their audio from traditional radio broadcasters. But how steep is the decline? According to the CRTC’s Annual Highlights of the Broadcasting Sector 2022-2023, since 2015, “hours spent listening to traditional broadcasting has decreased at a CAGR of 4.8 percent”. CAGR, by the way, stands for compound annual growth rate.
Dropping 4.8 percent each year means audience numbers aren’t just “falling”; they’re not even “falling off the edge of a cliff”; they’re already close enough to the bottom of the cliff to smell the trees. Looking for context? Between English and French-language radio, the CBC spends around $240 million each year.
Those listeners aren’t just disappearing without a trace. the CRTC also tells us that Canadians are increasingly migrating to Digital Media Broadcasting Units (DMBUs) – with numbers growing by more than nine percent annually since 2015.
The CBC’s problem here is that they’re not a serious player in the DMBU world, so they’re simply losing digital listeners. For example, of the top 200 Spotify podcasts ranked by popularity in Canada, only four are from the CBC.
Another interesting data point I ran into related to that billion dollar plus annual parliamentary allocation CBC enjoys. It turns out that that’s not the whole story. You may recall how the government added another $42 million in their most recent budget.
But wait! That’s not all! Between CBC and SRC, the Canada Media Fund (CMF) ponied up another $97 million for fiscal 2023-2024 to cover specific programming production budgets.
Technically, Canada Media Fund grants target individual projects planned by independent production companies. But those projects are usually associated with the “envelope” of one of the big broadcasters – of which CBC is by far the largest. 2023-2024 CMF funding totaled $786 million, and CBC’s take was nearly double that of their nearest competitor (Bell).
But there’s more! Back in 2016, the federal budget included an extra $150 million each year as a “new investment in Canadian arts and culture”. It’s entirely possible that no one turned off the tap and that extra government cheque is still showing up each year in the CBC’s mailbox. There was also a $93 million item for infrastructure and technological upgrades back in the 2017-2018 fiscal year. Who knows whether that one wasn’t also carried over.
So CBC’s share of government funding keeps growing while its share of Canadian media consumers shrinks. How do you suppose that’ll end?
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By A flurry of controversial bills in Canada, some of which became law, serve to cement this impression.
Now, as President Trump prepares to start his second term in office in the US, Canada’s “orphaned” ruling class continues with the “disinformation” narrative – either as a sign of long-term commitment or looking for new “disinformation partners” elsewhere in the world – or simply as a sign of inertia.
Time will tell, and it will be interesting to see, but for the moment, news out of Canada speaks about a report compiled by the House of Commons Heritage Committee, titled, “Tech Giants’ Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Globally.”
How about the tactics deployed in Canada – and globally – using all manner of intimidation and subversion to evade citizens’ right to free speech?
Maybe another day, by another ruling coalition.
Right now, the Liberals, the New Democratic Party, and Bloc Québécois stand behind statements such as this one, found in the cumbersomely-named report:
“The Government of Canada notes some individuals and groups create disinformation to promote political ideologies including extremist views and conspiracy theories or simply to make money.”
This looks like a call to combine (yet more) censorship with (yet more) deplatforming. And the ones to “fix” things for Canada’s current government are companies behind major social platforms, like Meta and Google.
But the group of Canada’s MPs behind the report believes so.
They want mechanisms put in place “to detect undesirable or questionable content that may be the product of disinformation or foreign interference and that these platforms be required to promptly identify such content and report it to users.”
Does Canadian parliament’s pressure on US tech companies not count as “foreign interference”? Unclear. Another thing that’s unclear – as in, undefined in the report – is what its authors have in mind when they mention “disinformation” and, “conspiracy theories.”
It’s as if these terms have become “art for art’s sake.”
Whatever that may be, Canada’s ruling parliamentarians want specific actions against these undefined phenomena to be enforced by tech companies.
“Failure to do so should result in penalties,” reads the document.
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