Sifting the Rubble After Rebel News Worked the Election Debate

The night of the English-language election debate in Montreal was not Canadian journalism’s finest night. There were heated arguments inside the press room. An attempt to crash a CBC broadcast. A line of police officers present in a supposedly secure area to ensure journalists could continue doing their jobs. And finally, a cancelled post-debate scrum.

All because of the chaos created by the inclusion of far-right website Rebel News.

“The [Leaders’ Debates] Commission has proved itself incapable of standing up for journalism, and it has proved itself totally chaotic and frenetic in deciding who qualifies and who doesn't,” Justin Ling, a freelance journalist who has covered multiple federal election campaigns and debates, told The Tyee.

“I want the debate commission gone — but more broadly, I want us to get a lot more serious in protecting journalistic spaces.”

Why does this matter for the future of both politics and journalism in Canada? Let’s take a closer look at what happened behind the scenes.

How did Rebel News earn so many scrum questions?

To understand the tensions that erupted last Thursday, we have to go all the way back to the election campaign of 2015. That year, the Conservatives turned down an invitation to the traditional debate format hosted by a consortium of Canadian news broadcasters, saying they wanted a wider range of debates.

After a frustrating campaign in which some of the parties agreed to and then pulled out of debates for various reasons, the Liberals promised to create an arm’s-length Leaders’ Debates Commission. That commission is headed by former CBC journalist Michel Cormier but is otherwise run by a group of academics, former politicians and other professionals who are not journalists.

The new commission had to respond to legal challenges from two far-right websites, True North and Rebel News, that were fighting to be accredited as journalism organizations to attend election debates and ask questions of the leaders in the post-debate scrum. While the commission tried to argue the organizations didn’t meet the criteria for journalism, the debate commission lost in court twice, in 2019 and again in 2021.

In the days leading up to the 2025 debates in French and English, journalists started to chatter on social media — the scuttlebutt was that Rebel News would get an unusually high number of questions at the post-debate scrum. That’s because Rebel owner Ezra Levant had sent legal threats to the commission, pushing back against any restrictions on the number of journalists Rebel could send.

Rather than face another legal battle it would likely lose, the commission gave in to Rebel News, Cormier told CBC Power & Politics host David Cochrane.

On the night of the French-language debate on April 16, that meant Rebel staff got to ask a total of four questions, the same number asked by CBC and Radio-Canada. Far-right outlets True North and Juno News, a subsidiary of True North, also got to ask questions. None of the questions went to Canadian newspapers such as La Presse, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star or Postmedia. While the debate commission’s website states that each outlet is supposed to send only one reporter and one photographer to the post-debate media availability, Rebel was allowed four reporters.

The six questions from Rebel, True North and Juno tended to zero in on right-wing culture war topics: whether trans women should be excluded from women’s sports and bathrooms; whether Canada would start deporting non-citizens for protesting at pro-Palestinian rallies; and a question that implied First Nations have falsely claimed that unmarked graves have been found at former residential schools.

Third-party advertisers

The next day, during the April 17 broadcast of Power & Politics, Cochrane asked Cormier whether he knew that Rebel News was listed as a third-party advertiser with Elections Canada. “I was not aware of that,” Cormier answered.

Third-party advertisers are defined by Elections Canada as groups that want to “participate in or influence elections”; they must register with Elections Canada and there are strict rules governing how third parties are supposed to interact with political parties and candidates. No other news media organizations in Canada are registered as third-party election advertisers, and the debate commission’s accreditation process doesn’t address the possibility.

CBC also reported that another third-party advertiser, ForCanada — also registered to Levant — had paid for advertising trucks with messages opposing Liberal Leader Mark Carney to circle the street before the French-language debate.

In a video posted to his X account on April 21, Levant claimed that Cochrane had wrongly accused Rebel News of “doing illegal things with our beautiful billboard truck.” (In fact, Cochrane questioned Cormier on whether the debate commission could have used the third-party advertiser registration in a court case to prove Rebel News does not meet journalistic standards for the purposes of accreditation for the debates.)

Levant also said that journalism organizations do register as third-party advertisers, but he was referring to Unifor, a union that represents news media workers as well as autoworkers and a wide range of other workers. Unions are not the same as news reporting organizations.

For many Canadian journalists, the third-party advertising registration was just one more piece of evidence that Rebel News had no place covering the debate.

As journalists prepped to cover the English-language debate on April 17, tensions were high. Ling said he made some sarcastic comments directed at the Rebel team, while Stu Benson, a journalist for the Hill Times, challenged Juno News staffer Keean Bexte on a story Bexte had written about a Liberal candidate’s alleged homophobic remarks.

After seeing how the far-right media had dominated the previous night’s scrum, Benson told The Tyee he was annoyed that Bexte had told the room of journalists he planned to ask each leader about the Liberal candidate’s 17-year-old Facebook comments during the post-debate scrum.

Ling said he ended up conducting an impromptu interview with Levant over the question of Rebel’s third-party advertising status, asking Levant how the $180,000 ForCanada has raised in donations and the $8,000 Rebel has raised would be used.

“He just kept saying, ‘Justin, you don't have the facts right. I don't want you to say anything that will get you in trouble,’” said Ling, who reports for his own Substack newsletter and is a contributing columnist to the Toronto Star. He’s also been previously sued by Levant for libel — a case Ling won.

As news began to trickle through the media centre that the post-debate scrum had been cancelled, Ethan Cox, a reporter for Ricochet, started applauding sarcastically, he told The Tyee, then got into a verbal argument with Levant.

“If you’re registered as a third-party advertiser, you’re not a journalist,” Cox told The Tyee.

At some point, Levant went out to the CBC broadcast tent in an attempt to get on the CBC’s live broadcast to give his views on how Cochrane had reported the third-party advertising registration.

Cochrane and his co-host, Rosemary Barton, described what happened during their on-air broadcast and inside the media room. Explaining the situation to viewers, Barton said she refused to call the Rebel staffers “journalists.”

“These were right-wing people that publish their own agenda and websites, who confronted journalists inside the media centre,” Barton said, “who confronted Cochrane on his set, who directly and personally confronted me inside the media centre.”

Indicating a line of police behind her, Barton said the officers were present — inside an area that was supposed to already be secure — to ensure the safety of both media and the politicians taking part in the debate.

In response to emailed questions from The Tyee, Levant said: “Rebel News did not attempt to disrupt the CBC broadcast. During a break, when David Cochrane was not on air, I very briefly spoke with him. The total time of the interaction was a bit longer than one minute.”

Video of the interaction posted by Levant shows him approaching the broadcast tent and asking Cochrane repeatedly to be interviewed. He continues to ask and hover as Cochrane and Barton tell him they are doing a live show and ask him firmly and repeatedly to leave. Eventually, he is escorted out by security, all while a Rebel News camera operator records the interaction.

Both Cochrane and CBC spokesperson Chuck Thompson say Levant did disrupt the broadcast.

“You might have seen sort of some glitchy video playing because we had to go to tape because Mr. Levant and his people came over with cameras rolling and tried to interrupt this broadcast,” Cochrane said during the live post-debate broadcast.

In an email to The Tyee, Thompson said the incident happened during a pre-taped segment, but he described Levant’s actions as an “unexpected attempt to come on the show” and said Levant’s actions did disrupt the show: Barton’s appearance was delayed and producers had to modify their program lineup.

“These were journalists trying to do their jobs on live television and Mr. Levant interrupted the program in a highly inappropriate manner,” Thompson said.

When The Tyee asked Levant why he had tried to speak with Cochrane, Levant wrote: “I’m sorry, Jen, if you can’t figure that out, I don’t think journalism is for you.”

On its website, Rebel News used video showing its staffers getting into conflicts with journalists and a Liberal staffer at the debate to ask for donations.

In the aftermath of the debate mess, some of Canada’s most experienced journalists were unusually outspoken about Rebel’s tactics.

“These are not journalists. These are right-wing agitators, and they use these kinds of stunts and antics to raise money,” said Robert Fife, the Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau chief, during CBC’s live broadcast.

“We've seen these people chase down Liberal politicians or NDP politicians, screaming in their faces, and then they try to raise money off of it. But when they go to deal with Mr. Poilievre, they're like little puppy dogs: ‘Hello, Mr. Poilievre,’ very nicely. It's really a disgrace to have these people pretend that they're journalists.”

News organizations in Canada often have political leanings, Fife said — some more to the left, others to the right. “But the journalists themselves conduct themselves honourably and try to be as fair as they possibly can.”

Speaking on the same panel, Joël-Denis Bellavance, parliamentary bureau chief for La Presse, described his own unpleasant interaction with a Rebel News staffer at a press conference a year ago.

“I did get into a shouting match with one of them,” Bellavance said. “He was trying to yell over my own questions, trying to prevent me from doing my work.”

Selected for softball questions

Right-wing media is not as advanced in Canada as it is in the United States, where broadcasters like Fox News and Newsmax and individual influencers like Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson and a slew of lesser-known YouTubers and podcasters suggest, repeat and amplify far-right ideas until they begin to become mainstream.

After Donald Trump took office for his second term, his administration changed the makeup of the media that are allowed access to White House press events. The Associated Press, a wire service that news organizations across the world rely on, has had to fight to regain access; meanwhile, Trump-friendly outlets have teed up questions that further the administration’s policy goals.

For instance, during a meeting between Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a reporter with the right-wing cable channel Real America’s Voice asked Zelenskyy why he wasn’t wearing a suit and whether that sartorial choice was a sign of disrespect towards the U.S. presidency. The question marked the moment when Trump and Vance turned hostile towards Zelenskyy and the United States markedly downgraded its support of Ukraine.

Recently, as markets and countries around the world reacted to the chaos unleashed by the administration’s new trade tariffs, a reporter for LindellTV observed that Trump “looks healthier than ever before” and asked if he was “working out with Bobby Kennedy and eating less McDonald’s.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has adopted some of the same techniques as Trump, repeatedly mocking and complaining about Canadian journalists and accusing them of working for his opponents. Defunding the CBC has been a central theme of his campaign, and his campaign has faced scrutiny for limiting the questions he’s taken from journalists on the campaign trail and tightly controlling their movements.

Two days after the English-language debate, Poilievre was in Richmond, B.C., to talk about his plan to address drug overdoses and addiction. His team ignored most of the journalists who had come in person to ask questions. Instead, Poilievre took one question from the phone lines about safeguarding the French language; another about drug policy from a writer with the obscure online right-wing website New Westminster Times; and a third question, also about drug policy, from a reporter with Sing Tao, a Chinese-language newspaper.

That left several reporters in the room shouting questions at Poilievre, one of which he answered. That reporter had wanted to know how his promise to give indefinite life sentences to fentanyl traffickers would work.

“We’re going to impose Criminal Code amendments that make it mandatory prison time for anyone caught trafficking or producing over 40 milligrams of fentanyl,” Poilievre said.

Even as Poilievre has tried to take a tough stance against Trump in response to the U.S. president’s tariff and sovereignty threats against Canada, far-right media in Canada have pushed him to adopt policies more similar to those of the Trump administration. Candice Malcolm of Juno News pushed Poilievre on whether his promise of retaliatory tariffs was the right approach, while Rebel News’ Sheila Gunn Reid asked whether he would deport non-citizens who take part in pro-Palestinian protests (so far, Poilievre has said he will not do either of those things).

As Poilievre runs down the clock in the last days of this election campaign, more attention is also being turned to his past association with Levant.

The CBC highlighted how Poilievre worked on Levant’s 2002 campaign for MP in a Calgary riding, although Levant has said he hasn’t had any “meaningful dealings” with Poilievre in the intervening years.

‘Do not take his threats at face value’

Journalists are now calling for changes to the Leaders’ Debates Commission, saying its handling of Rebel News was a disaster. The Green Party was also given little notice of its exclusion from the event because it didn’t meet criteria around the number of candidates the party is running.

Ling said True North and Juno News can likely make the case that they do some form of journalism. But the same can’t be said of Rebel News, which has openly fundraised for political activism for years — such as a legal fund to support convoy protesters arrested at a border blockade in Coutts, Alberta, in 2022.

“Fundamentally what it comes down to is Ezra [Levant] came there to disrupt the debate, and he did, and he came there not to cover it but to act as a third-party advertiser,” Ling said. “He came there to throw obscene and ludicrous questions at the Liberal party and throw softballs at the Conservative party.”

Ling said the final effect was the same as if the debate commission had invited the Conservative party’s director of communications into the room to ask questions of all the leaders.

“It's shameful the debate commission was so inept at its job that not only did they invite him in, but they gave him the widest possible latitude to disrupt things, and they have no one to blame but themselves,” Ling said.

The Leaders’ Debates Commission did not respond to a request for comment from The Tyee.

During his video showing what happened from his point of view, Levant constantly uses the description “defamatory” to talk about CBC’s reporting on Rebel News. Ling said it’s very common for Levant to threaten to sue and to follow through, but he urged the debate commission and other journalists to not back down in the face of the legal threats.

“We have seen time and time again that he's used this as a way to silence the criticism and tamp down what is very legitimate grievances about how Rebel operates,” Ling said.

“Having been somebody who's faced one of those libel suits from Ezra and won, I can tell you that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There are lawyers out there who want to help you defend yourself and want to defend the free press. Do not take his threats at face value, because that's just all they are — threats.”