TORONTO (LifeSiteNews) — Popular Canadian conservative media outlet Rebel News announced it is suing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal government over denying them an official journalism license.
In a video posted Thursday night, Rebel News front man Ezra Levant announced his organization is suing the Trudeau government after receiving correspondence from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) telling it that “less than 1 percent” of its content “meets the criteria for original news content” and therefore Rebel News is ineligible for designation as a Qualified Canadian journalism organization (QCJO).
According to Levant, the state-run CRA never “reached out” or corresponded with Rebel News in any way, but instead revealed through a letter that they had studied “276 items [Rebel News article]” and made the determination that its work does not meet the so-called QCJO standard.
“I want to tell you that we are fighting back,” Levant stated. “Because if we don’t fight back now against this journalism license, they are going to destroy us, like Trudeau is doing more and more to his peaceful political opponents like the truckers.”
“If they can do this to us, their largest independent critic left in Canada, they’ll do this to anyone, they’ll censor you,” Levant charged. “So, we’re suing Trudeau. We filed the lawsuit today in the federal court of Canada.”
Giving commentary on the lawsuit and why Rebel News deemed such action necessary, Levant explained that the denial of QCJO designation will result in his journalists being barred from attending government press conference while also “punishing” them financially under the “Income Tax Act.”
“You now have to take a pro-liberal, left-wing point of view to be compliant with the income tax act,” Levant commented.
According to the CRA document, Rebel News was deemed to be an illegitimate news outlet because its content is “largely opinion-based and focused on the promotion of one particular perspective.”
“But the same CRA has granted this QCJO journalism license to hard left-wing National Observer, and the left-wing Toronto Star, and the left-wing Narwhal, and dozens of others,” Levant said in his video.
“Those are obviously real news sources, sure, but they obviously only approach the news from one point of view, the hard-left point of view,” he added.
As Levant mentioned in his video, this is the third time his media outlet has had to take the Trudeau government to court over issues related to freedom of the press.
During the last two election cycles, Rebel News had to have a federal court rule against the Trudeau government after the debate commission told Rebel journalists they were not going to be allowed entrance into the prime minister leadership debates.
In both instances, the courts determined that the federal government must uphold the right to freedom of the press and cannot bar Rebel News from attending the events.