Fighting the CBC Disinformation Racket

And a petty bureaucrat, as a treat.

On July 11, 2024, for the first time in quite awhile, if not since the Coutts Men were arrested in February 2022, Canada’s Public Broadcaster finally decided to discuss the case on Radio, over a month after the trial got rolling. The CBC show ‘Front Burner’, hosted by a woman named Jayme Poisson, invited a gentleman on to her show to speak about the trial, a man who will be known to readers of this Substack, a Mr Bill Graveland, who works for The Canadian Press.

I have criticized Mr Graveland and his reportage here, and on Twitter/X, and I was very disappointed, though unsurprised, that Front Burner had him on. As a public broadcaster, the CBC has a duty to keep Canadians informed, and to be impartial in their reporting about stories which affect our lives. This show with Graveland failed in that duty.

Mr Graveland has shown through his writing that he is a bit of a regime stenographer, choosing to repeat the salacious, unrecorded, and unverified claims of undercover officers who were working the Coutts protest site in 2022, while failing to offer any countervailing facts or views, and also completely failing to inform the public about the political context in which this case resides, nor the horrific treatment of the men while they were held in remand.

I am going to pull some quotes from the show, which are available for your perusal over at CBC.ca - https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/preparing-for-war-the-alberta-blockade-trial-so-far-transcript-1.7260588, and if you click back through CBCs site, you can listen to the show yourselves.

BILL GRAVELAND: Well, first of all, Coutts is a very teeny, tiny little village, right on the U.S. border. Strangely, I grew up not far from Coutts. A lot of the people, there's basically nothing there except a few businesses, a cafe and Airbnb, not even a gas station. So people in the town or village, I should say, are completely dependent on going out of the community. And when that happened, it was a concern. There was concerns about ambulances getting in and out. People couldn't get out to get groceries or other than going through a gauntlet of trucks and pickup trucks and just and even farm equipment.

Right off the bat, Graveland is lying about facts involving the protest. Yes, the protesters had the main highway blocked at the border crossing, but access to leaving Coutts means, for the most part, going north, and the blockades north of Coutts were set up by the RCMP, including a major blockade at Milk River.

Attributing these road blockages and possible logistics problems associated with them to the protesters is simply bullshit.

BILL GRAVELAND: Well, the situation is, is that, you know, every everywhere seems to have a Bible belt. You know, there's until it's there in Ontario, they're in Manitoba, they're in Saskatchewan. And the Bible belt down in deep southern Alberta is, alive and well. Many of the people in southern Alberta, were Mormon immigrants, Mormon settlers, southern Alberta, with the exception of like one riding in Lethbridge has always been, conservative. And, and I think it was just, like a fertile ground for this kind of, protest.

I guess its up to the listener to infer that being a person of faith, who happens to live in Southern Alberta, that you are the type who would show up at this protest, and therefore you are an other, out-grouped, and to be viewed with suspicion.

You can imagine what would happen to Mr Graveland if he were making inferences about BLM or members of a sexual minority engaged in a demonstration of “power petitioning itself”.

BILL GRAVELAND: Two of the four that, had been also charged with, conspiracy to commit murder... Entered a plea to lesser charges back in, I believe, February.

Don’t you think this part of the story deserves a little more attention? What were the lesser charges? Why were all of the original charges against Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin dropped? What does it say about the rest of the case that 50% of the ‘conspirators' were released with no conviction on all of these serious charges?

We don’t get those questions, much less answers, from Graveland, or Ms Poisson.

JAYME POISSON: And and just for clarity, before we get to these two on trial, the ones that have pled guilty or been convicted so far of mischief or weapons charges, as you mentioned, like, what is it kind of in in layman's terms that they did?

BILL GRAVELAND: They were part of the original group that was stockpiling weapons. They had brought in restricted weapons, with, and stockpiled them in, Coutts in one of the trailers. And, they were the four of them were, you know, in theory, working together, they were all part of this sort of inner circle. There was a lot of discussion about the basement of the Smuggler's Saloon, where only the inner circle ever got to go into. And, so far... Other than, an undercover officer getting just sort of a glance down there. Nobody that we've heard speak has been there or talked about it.

Neither Jerry Morin nor Chris Lysak were convicted of mischief, and Jerry Morin never had any guns at Coutts. Jerry Morin plead out on a completely false document, and due to the circumstances of his ‘plea’, and longstanding legal precedent that pleas made under duress like this are not to be taken as fact, Justice Labrenz himself mentioned this during court proceedings, so as to inform the jury to not take that false confession into consideration regards the other men. I wonder if the jury heard about Morin’s lengthy stays in solitary confinement, having yet to face trial, and having no criminal record whatsoever.

Chris Lysak plead out on a minor gun mishandling charge that would nominally incur a fine, or forfeiture of the gun, not two years in prison. No mention of that at all.

What’s two years being separated from your family, eh. No big deal, according to the Bill Gravelands of the world.

A number of the guns seized by the RCMP still haven’t been attributed to owners, and Graveland fails to mention that 9 other people were also arrested on the same day as the accused, which brings the Crown claims about who they belong to and what they were intended for into serious doubt.

BILL GRAVELAND: I'll be up front. Most of the evidence has been, regarding Anthony Olienick. There has been some stuff with Chris Carbert, but they were all part of a group. From the testimony we're hearing that this is this was like almost like a holy war for them. Anthony Olienick had even made, and sold most of his belongings so that he could be down for the duration of the, of the protest. He had made plans for his death. They had a lot of support, too, you know, from, people who came in from outside. And these people thought that this was basically, you know, like a war between government and communist and, the United Nations trying to impose, sort of like a totalitarian state on Canada.

Yes, most of the evidence has been focused on the words and ideas of Tony Olienick. They are trying to convict him of Thought Crime, and because one of the charges involves ‘conspiracy’, Chris Carbert is being brought along for the ride to make the conspiracy charge stick.

Graveland repeats a false claim about Olienick selling his belongings, which is a complete and utter fabrication of UCOs that is not true, though Graveland could have told you that since being arrested Tony has had to sell almost everything he owns to pay for lawyers to fight off this Star Chamber nightmare.

As for anything Olienick said about the UN or Communists … this has nothing to do with the charges, and shows you how little evidence the Crown has.

Again, ThoughtCrime.

JAYME POISSON: You talked earlier about the support that these guys have, and just tell me more about that. Who are their supporters? What are they saying? What are they saying to you?

Gee, Jayme, I’ve been writing about this case for over a year now, as have a number of others. You could have reached out to us instead of going through a clearly biased propagandist … but you work for the CBC. You are doing exactly what they pay you to do, which is to lie to the public.

The CBC might say ‘But there was a publication ban!’ and once again they would be misinforming you - the original publication ban applied narrowly and exclusively to claims made by undercover officers, yet these claims comprise most of what the CBC and others have bothered to discuss, at least until their lawyers got worried and they finally scrubbed those articles from the internet. Besides that, now that the trial is on, the two original bans no longer apply.

Given that the CBC, at one point, was in contravention of the first ban by having stories live and online containing said banned information, the advocates closest to the men were less than interested in talking to the CBC. I am told that the Fifth Estate attempted to contact them, but were rebuffed, given that the CBC were not in compliance with the ban, and were effectively smearing the men.

It’s been over a year and a half since, and there are plenty of other people to speak with, but the CBC, with all of their resources and researchers, couldn’t find me at Newsweek, or Ray McGinnis, or Roxanne Halverson, or anyone else who have been asking the pertinent questions. Any of us could have told the other side of the story, but the CBC was clearly not interested, perhaps afraid of uncomfortable questions about political prisoners, prosecutorial misconduct, or about the government lying its ass off to its own people about its own people.

Myself, and an associate who is also discussing the case online, contacted the producers at Front Burner the day after this show ran, expressing our concerns about Mr Graveland and his biased disinformation, and the fact that the CBC seems wholly uninterested with speaking to anyone on the other side of this case.

Two weeks later and we have received no reply, thus, I have filed a formal complaint with the CBC Ombudsman, which you can read below.

Hi there,

My name is Gord Magill, and am a Canadian citizen who now lives in the United States. For most of my life i was a trucker, and now I write on the business occasionally, as well as other topics, one of which being the case of men arrested in Coutts, Alberta, in February 2022, and held in remand without bail ever since.

I have been writing on this situation for some time now, and am one of only 3 or 4 'citizen journalists' who has made contact with the men from prison, and with their advocates and families. I typically write about the case on my Substack, https://autonomoustruckers.substack.com/ and have also written 4 articles about this story for Newsweek, a fairly prominent American magazine.

I recently tuned into an episode of 'Front Burner', hosted by Jamie Poisson, where she interviewed a writer for the Canadian Press by the name of Bill Graveland, and heard one of the only radio programs from CBC to date which addressed the Coutts story.

Mr Graveland has been letting his own readership down by omitting pertinent countervailing details about the case, and repeating unsubstantiated claims made by Undercover Officers, which have recently been contested in court. His reporting is horribly lopsided, and he is doing the same thing that the media did when the men were first arrested, which is to smear them with unsubstantiated claims that follows coverage of all Freedom Convoy protests at the time.

On the show with Ms Poisson, he did much the same, and Ms Poisson did not ask much in the way of questions, nor express any skepticism about the claims of the Crown, or Mr Graveland's reporting. Mr Graveland went on to suggest that 'these people are part of the Southern Alberta Bible Belt', as if to insinuate that being a Christian in a particular area should be a factor in the guilt of the men on trial, Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert. The political ramifications of this case, given that a guilty verdict is necessary for the POEC ruling on Freedom Convoy to hold, were also ignored, as was the atrocious treatment of the men while in custody, which included long periods of solitary confinement of Jerry Morin and Tony Olienick, both of whom had no criminal records and had yet to face trial.

I have been covering this case since May of 2023, and have conducted numerous interviews with the men's advocates, both for my podcast, and for written articles, and am the only mainstream writer they have called from remand. I am intimately knowledgable with the facts of the case, and I am very sorry to hear the CBC interview someone who either knows what I do about the case, and does not bother to inform the public of the other side of the story, or, doesn't know and is merely acting as a regime stenographer, repeating unverified and untested claims of the government.

Two weeks ago, myself and an associate emailed Front Burner, and expressed concerns about our public broadcaster only telling one side of the story. We have offered to tell the other side of the story, such that Canadians would be better informed about all of the facts and contexts of this case. 

Front Burner, two weeks later, has failed to reply to our emails.

The trial of Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert wraps up this week, and a verdict will come soon after. 

Given the code of silence around this case for the last 2-1/2 years, and when there isn't silence, we get the media, including the CBC, pushing misinformation about the case, or omitting critical details that the public deserves to know, we are gravely concerned that these men are going to be forever smeared in the minds of the public, even if they get a verdict of innocent next week. 

Consider this an official complaint; the CBC has done the entire country a great disservice by not covering this case properly, or asking basic questions about why 4 men with no history of violence or criminal records were kept in remand for over 2 years.

And on to another bureaucrat.

The trial wraps up on this coming Wednesday, July 31, at which point Justice David Labrenz will ‘charge’ the jury, and they will begin deliberations.

We have no idea how long those deliberations will take or when a verdict will come down. I have made plans to appear in Lethbridge, gambling that my arrival will coincide with the verdict, and if not, I will at least finally get to meet the people I have been working with for so long in writing about this story.

With this trip in mind, I applied to the Alberta Court of King’s Bench for media credentials, such that I could guarantee a seat in what has been a very packed courtroom. Appropriate forms were filled out, with necessary incantations to the gods of bureaucracy, and I submitted writer profile links to the various venues that I contribute, including Newsweek magazine.

You would think having the imprimatur of Newsweek would satisfy, and you would be wrong.

From the director of communication for the courts -

Upon review of the application, it is our determination that you do not satisfy the criteria for professional media.

The criteria are never identified, and this measly response was all I could get out of them. So much for writing at one of the oldest magazines in the United States.

Maybe that’s it, maybe its just the latent and reflexive anti-Americanism which animates the spreadsheet-brained caste of Canada’s professional managerial class that produced this result, and is likewise behind the Front Burner interview with Bill Graveland.

Another quote from Mr Graveland -

BILL GRAVELAND: There was, I believe that there's a lot of conspiracy stuff that you see coming out of the United States. I believe that that's where they got a lot of their information and they believe it.

Much of this case is the result of Canada’s pathological and infantile relationship with America, or what Canadians are taught to think about America. Before the Freedom Convoy rolled into Ottawa, Trudeau’s minions were already working with media to set up the narrative that the Freedom Convoy would be Canada’s very own January 6, and when the Convoy arrived in Ottawa, the coward Trudeau skipped town, either in a cynical attempt at messaging, or because he believed his own bullshit about the Convoy.

Not a single incident of violence or legitimate criminality was committed by a member of the Freedom Convoy at any of the multiple protest locations across the country, but that wasn’t going to stop Trudeau from flexing his authority boner. Watching his counterpart Joe Biden throw January 6 prisoners into a D.C. version of Gitmo, Trudeau was itching to employ whatever means necessary against those whom he had effectively designated as enemies of the state, who just happened to be regular working class Canadians that joined together and said ‘Enough is enough’.

And now, 2 and half years into a blatant case of Lawfare prosecuted against innocent people, waged in service of protecting Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, his fragile ego, and to put up a trial balloon for Bill C-63, (lest that noxious legislation become law,) we come full circle with this tell from Graveland.

Blame Canada? Blame America!

Since the trial finally started on June 6, Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert have incurred another 100k in legal fees, and my GiveSendGo remains open to help them.

If you can spare a few bucks -

https://www.givesendgo.com/trudeauspoliticalprisoners

I look forward to bringing you details from the conclusion of the trial, and hopefully verdicts of Not Guilty.


Questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are welcomed and encouraged - gordilocks@protonmail.com