Roman Baber Makes A Fool Of CTV Host On Liberals’ Anti-Free Speech Agenda

Former MPP and currently Conservative leadership candidate Roman Baber recently appeared on Evan Solomon’s show Question Period on CTV News where he proceeded to make a fool of Solomon on the issue of free speech censorship being pushed by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Solomon started up the interview with a belittling attack against Baber in the form of a question, asking him:

I know your background, you look at what’s happening in places like Ukraine, what is the freedom that you believe is being so stolen? We have free elections, we have free courts, we have the freedom to protest, what is not free? What are you so worried about? 

In response, Baber brought up the Liberals’ Bill C-11 (formerly Bill C-10 last Parliamentary session) and rightly identified the Liberals’ attempt to regulate online content through the CRTC as an attack on free speech.

Although C-11 would not directly ban content online it would manipulate online algorithms to push “Canadian content” which is obviously a rhetorical front for content that is friendly to the Liberal government seeing as the CRTC would be able to arbitrarily determine what counts as “Canadian.” 

(Below is a good video from Canadian journalist JJ McCullough explaining the dangers of Bill C-10/C-11)

Baber also passingly mentioned the Liberals attempted the last session with Bill C-36 to regulate “hate speech” and actually apply criminal penalties to “detestation” which could include heavy fines, prison time, and arbitrary regulations of how you are allowed to live your life (ie. alcohol consumption bans, and restraining orders). 

After Roman Baber explained all that and was about to move on to other anti-freedom actions made by the Liberals, Solomon then cuts back in and pretends to not understand what Baber is saying. 

Solomon said:

But what are you talking about exactly? I just want to be clear, I don’t want to talk in generalities, give us an example. 

Baber then further explains the way that Big Tech companies remove content, shadowban accounts, and even outright ban accounts that share content that goes against the Liberal government’s narrative on various issues. 

Baber went on to state that:

I had a speech at Queen’s Park, a parliamentary speech that had a warning [place on it] by Facebook and they have apologized and said it was caught by mistake and subsequently amended. Evan I think it is naive to believe we do not have an abridgement of speech on social media. Canadians have the right to be wrong. We have a very clear line, a sensible line, an appropriate line articulated in the criminal code, which is ‘don’t incite violence, don’t demonize an identifiable group of people,’ which is something in fact that the Prime Minister does, but short of that, I do not understand why we should be abridging speech. 

Solomon then cuts in again to create a strawman of Baber’s argument, acting as if Baber ever asserted that Canadians have no way of dissenting in Canada. This is an odd position for Solomon to take as he had previously gone after former Liberal Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault for wanting to limit free speech with Bill C-10, but now it seems because CTV News wants to take shots at CPC leadership contestants Solomon has flipped his script.

Baber finishes this portion of the interview with Solomon off by easily batting away the foolish notion that free speech is free even if the Liberals place “checks and balances” on how people are allowed to express their opinions.

(The rest of the interview is posted below in a Twitter video post on Roman Baber’s account)

It is odd to see Evan Solomon perform so badly in this rather hostile interview with Roman Baber seeing as it was only a few weeks ago that another CPC leadership candidate, Dr. Leslyn Lewis, made a fool of him when discussing the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. One would have assumed he would be a bit more careful after seeing that CPC leadership candidates are becoming more willing to push back.

It has been a growing trend that CTV News, as well as other legacy media outlets, has been recently ratcheting up the negative coverage of Conservatives which at the very least has been helpful in reminding the more conservative leadership candidates that the legacy media is not their friend and should be viewed as Liberal propaganda outlets.