Nearly four years after the self-styled ‘Freedom Convoy’ rolled into downtown Ottawa, the “organizer and driving force” behind the weeks-long anti-vaccine mandate protest, Tamara Lich, has officially joined the Rebel News team — and despite the “challenges of her house arrest,” she’s “already hit the ground running,” according to Rebel commander Ezra Levant, who released an “exclusive” video of her first day on the job.

“We have to report every move, in advance, to her probation office,” he notes.

“But we’re doing that. We managed to navigate those restrictions and fly her out to Toronto this week. And she’s just getting started! Over the coming months, Tamara will travel to universities, town halls, and events nationwide, sparking conversations about freedom, courage, and standing up for what you believe in.”

For her official debut as the Rebel’s ‘community ambassador,’ Lich hit the streets in the city’s downtown core, where “she heard residents’ thoughts on the state of free speech in Canada” before joining Ezra’s nightly broadcast to “share with viewers what that experience was like, and (expand) on what other projects lie ahead,” the site noted.

“Tamara said the Rebel News billboard truck, prominently displaying a question about free speech, drew the attention of Iranian activists who shared their stories of struggling for freedom under the oppressive Islamist regime,” and “acknowledged that … with more conversations about freedom ahead, right-leaning public figures face security threats.”

For his part, Levant “detailed how Rebel News is familiar with these sorts of security threats and will take the necessary precautions to keep her safe,” including “(hiring) a producer to help with logistics and professional security so Tamara can focus on the message and not worry about threats from crazed left-wing radicals.”

What’s more, “for those concerned about Tamara’s work with Rebel News potentially violating the terms of her sentence stemming from the Freedom Convoy protest, Ezra said he wanted to ‘put viewers at ease,’” the site notes.

“I’ve promised you and I’ve promised our viewers that we would be extremely careful not to jeopardize your freedom,” Levant noted, adding that Lich is ‘in constant touch’ with her probation officer to avoid any issues over that might arise from her travel. ‘It’s actually pretty strict, but we are complying.’”

Rebel supporters can “help fund the security costs” for Lich’s upcoming “speaking tour” via The Tamara Project, a newly launched crowdfunding hub.

“We will have professional security guards with her when she goes out in public to do journalism,” it pledges.

“And when she goes on campus, we’ll have at least four guards assigned just to protect her personally, and more to secure the larger venue. It’s outrageous that police and campus security won’t protect conservatives. No other journalists or activists in Canada have to hire private security guards to keep them safe. At Rebel News, it’s actually one of our largest expenses. It’s unfair, but that’s the world we live in.”

Meanwhile, in the wake of reports that the York University Student Centre had “banned” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis from having an “informal chat with students about jobs, housing and the economy,” Toronto-based mission specialist David Menzies dropped by the school “to see what the kids on campus had to say about this censorious act,” he explained.

“Were they offended? Or are they so indoctrinated that they think banning certain opinions and speakers is perfectly fine? Spoiler alert: The response, tragically, was about fifty-fifty. We also brought along our big, beautiful billboard truck to condemn the censorship on campus.”

His takeaway: “Universities should be — and used to be — marketplaces of ideas. Now they seem to be gated free speech zones controlled by politicized unions or administrators — or ‘student centres.’ Reality check: Free speech is not a privilege — it’s a right. Even if the speech in question is deemed to be ‘offensive.’”

Menzies also made the trek to a Toronto-area community centre to cover a press conference convened by “perhaps the most incompetent public safety minister in our country’s history,” Gary Anandasangaree.

“While there was media availability for a Q&A after the presser, par for the course, only government-funded and approved journalists were welcomed,” he explained.

“So it is that we hoped to scrum the public safety minister outside the venue. And there were so many questions to ask. First and foremost, we wanted to know that should the Iranian regime fall in the days ahead, is Anandasangaree onside with making Canada a safe haven for regime operatives fleeing Iran? And let’s not forget the news from last week indicating that the Cape Breton gun grab program was a colossal failure.It was expected that 200 guns would be confiscated. Instead, only 25 guns were turned in.”

In the end, “we did indeed get to scrum Anandasangaree, but he didn’t have much to say as he ran away to a private meeting room,” Menzies reported. “Yet again another federal minister who exhibits zero accountability when it comes to the independent media. Shameful.”

Also on the Rebel radar: A weekend rally against “mass immigration” that brought “dozens  of ‘Canada First’ protesters” to downtown Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square over the weekend.

“The main speaker at the event, Joe Anidjar, voiced his concerns with unfettered immigration into Canada and called on Conservatives to take stronger steps to address the most pressing issues in the country,” as per the Rebel recap, which included a few key quotes from his speech: “Pierre, get your s**t together. Get your MPs on the right side of history. Stop being p***ies and walking around things and actually address the problems in our country. Pierre, you’re losing support bro, I won’t lie to you. Be a real politician who loves his country.”

Elsewhere on the site, Rebel correspondent Tamara Ugolini filed a fresh dispatch as part of her ongoing coverage of what she describes as “vaccine coercion,” which “continues to loom over Ontario’s education system, pitting public health demands against families’ rights to privacy and, once again, disrupting the learning of thousands of children,” she warns.

“Parents of students in publicly funded schools are under pressure to disclose their children’s confidential vaccine records, or risk severe penalties, including lengthy suspensions that disrupt young lives and fly in the face of established legal safeguards. The latest threat order comes out of Hamilton, where public health officials have begun issuing suspension orders to families whose records fall short of their standards.”

It’s an approach that “blatantly infringes on the Education Act’s framework, showing little regard for the social, emotional, mental, and academic toll on children yanked from their routines for weeks on end,” Ugolini argues.

“Ontario stands alone in Canada for enforcing such measures, which makes sense given the government’s intent on making the province a hub for pharmaceutical interests.”

Meanwhile, Saskatchewan-based Rebel Lise Merle crunches the numbers on the “significant number of ‘gender-affirming’ surgeries being conducted on minors” in her home province, as outlined in data released through a freedom of information request.

“The numbers provided by the Government of Saskatchewan suggest that we’ve become a regional hub for sex-rejecting surgeries,” she asserts. “Including on children. Is this what we want to be known for, Saskatchewan?”

Rounding out the Rebel roster, West Coast-based reporter Drea Humphrey gets an update on what’s been going on at the Universal Ostrich Farm since the Canadian Food Inspection Agency “massacred hundreds of healthy ostriches … under the banner of “protecting” public and animal health from a virus that passed through the herd a year earlier.”

Over at the Post Millennial, Thomas Stevenson also filed a report on the Canada First rally in Toronto, but focused on video footage posted to social media in which a “leftist militant … was seen punching (a) cop in the face,” he contends.

“The rally (was) organized in opposition to mass immigration in Canada, but was being countered by far-left as well as Antifa-affiliated agitators as it took place. In addition to the clashes with police, smoke bombs were also thrown into the Canada First rally crowd.”

Rounding out the right-of-centre online media lineup, Juno News contributor Isaac Lamoureux flags a “damning new study released by B’nai Brith Canada” that found the “taxpayer-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is systematically biased against Israel in its reporting on the conflict with Hamas.”

Trending on the progressive-left side of the Canadian activist mediaverse:

• Ricochet contributor Taylor C. Noakes explores how “far-right media and Conservative politicians have inflated and distorted incidents of church fires into a national crisis, stoking anti-Indigenous racism, casting unproven acts as ‘terrorism,’ and weaponizing denial of residential school atrocities.”
• In a double-bylined report for The Breach, Jacalyn den Haan and Robin Tress take a closer look at how New Brunswick “is rolling out the red carpet for U.S.-backed extractive projects,” and the “growing province-wide coalition resisting American-backed mining, gas, and data centre projects they say threaten public health and Indigenous land.”
• Rabble correspondent Bridget Potasky rounds up the ongoing reaction from Canadian unions to the U.S.-initiated military strike on Venezuela.
• A trio of Canadian academics deliver a warning to Canadian Dimension readers on the state of “civil liberties on Canadian university campuses” and the “increasing repression against pro-Palestine students … happening now.”