Heads up, byelection voters: Rebel News is planning to put its “big, beautiful billboard truck” on the campaign trail in Beaches – East York, Chicoutimi — Le Fjord and North Vancouver — Capilano, the trio of currently-vacant ridings that Prime Minister Mark Carney “is counting on winning … to cement the majority government that he has built undemocratically by bribing Conservative MPs to cross the floor,” as Rebel News commander Ezra Levant explains in a video launching Brookfield Watch, the duly registered third party advertiser that “will carry a hard-hitting accountability message” on the road between now and Aug. 31.

Filing the necessary paperwork with Elections Canada “will allow us to legally raise money and spend it on campaigning — for example, on criticizing Mark Carney and his candidates,” Levant notes.

“The reality is that (Carney) doesn’t care about elections. He’ll get rid of his opponents behind closed doors with secret deals. For example, one of the upcoming by-elections is in Quebec, where Carney bribed a Conservative MP with an appointment to the Senate. That MP left, and now Carney wants to flip that blue seat red. The same thing happened to trigger the North Vancouver by-election; Carney appointed the old MP to be an ambassador.”

As for the Toronto-area riding of Beaches-East York, “a riding the Liberals have long taken for granted, (I’m) not sure if we’ll be able to stop them, but we can make a ruckus,” he points out.

“This is a safe Liberal seat, so it’s sure to be an uphill fight. But we’ve fought that kind of battle before. Rebels’ truck went after two Liberal MPs in the last election — Ya’ara Saks in my home riding and Majid Jowhari in Richmond Hill — and both were defeated.  So it’s possible. And even if the Conservatives as a party don’t win this one, we still can’t pass up this opportunity. The Liberals expect a quiet coronation, but we can make sure they don’t get one.”

What’s more, “unlike a political party, contributions to a registered third party in a by-election do not have a limit,” he notes.

“So if you’ve given a donation to the Conservative Party for these by-elections, you can also give to BrookfieldWatch.com to pay for our billboard truck to hit the streets.”

According to the Brookfield Watch hub, its stated “mission” is to “follow the offshore money, expose the China connections, track the conflicts and challenge what we regard as the Liberal establishment’s treasonous accommodation of the Chinese Communist Party,” and “put questions before voters that Carney, Brookfield and their political allies would rather leave unanswered.”

As of Aug. 19, the site was reporting 198 donors, putting it just under 20 per cent of the way to its goal of 1,000.

In a separate post that went up just hours before the now-postponed Aug. 19 deadline for Canada and the United States to strike a deal to dodge the sweeping new 50 per cent tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to impose on billions of dollars in Canadian exports, Levant noted that Carney, who “sold himself as the ‘Trump whisperer’, the only man with the clout to charm the White House and spare Canada a punishing tariff war … was nowhere to be seen” during the week leading up to the Trump-imposed cutoff.

“How did the prime minister spend that decisive moment for Canadian jobs and industry? On a luxury holiday in Tuscany. No one knows where he stayed, who he met or who paid. Canadians have come to expect exactly this level of transparency from their elites: none.”

Not surprisingly, he was also critical of the coverage of the high-stakes negotiations by the “regime media,” including the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and, of course, the CBC, who “are already lowering expectations,” he contends.

“Some pieces absurdly claim Canada is the stronger party in the negotiations. Others suggest losing free trade with the United States will not matter much.”

In fact, “the Americans have made reasonable requests, chief among them opening the dairy cartel that restricts competition and forces Canadians to pay roughly twice the world price for Quebec milk,” he argues. “No Canadian politician dares touch it. Add the provincial liquor bans and other tit-for-tat moves from David Eby and Doug Ford, and it is not hard to see why Trump may decide the relationship is not worth protecting.”

Elsewhere on the site, Alberta-based Rebel chief reporter Sheila Gunn Reid promoted a newly launched petition drive to pressure the Ontario premier to “pay the money back” in the wake of a Toronto Star report “that found riding associations represented by Ontario Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers spent more than $356,000 over two years on expenses (that) were paid from political donations, which qualify donors for provincial tax credits,” she points out.

“Premier Doug Ford, Ontario families are struggling with rising costs while your Progressive Conservatives treat taxpayer money like a personal luxury fund,” according to the petition text.

“From the failed $28.9 million private jet, with nearly $200,000 in wasted fees, to over $120,000 in questionable hotel claims by GTA MPPs living minutes from Queen’s Park, and nearly $100,000 in meals and extras, this is a clear misuse of public funds. You promised to repay every penny and show the receipts. Now do it!”

Gunn Reid also fired off an Alberta Fact Check in response to an X post from University of Alberta political science professor Jared Wesley, who “is accusing Alberta separatists of racism because Christians are organizing a day of prayer and fasting for Alberta independence,” she asserted.

“The evidence? The title of a prayer event. An online poster advertises ‘The Birthing of a Nation Through Prayer for the Province of Alberta,’ inviting Albertans to participate in prayer and fasting on August 23,” to which Wesley replied: “For those who missed the dog whistle, ‘Birth of a Nation’ was a 1915 film produced as a recruitment video for the KKK. And it continues to be used for that purpose today. Anyone still unconvinced that racism is endemic to far-right populist movements like Alberta separatism?”

As Gunn Reid sees it, “there is a kernel of historical truth buried underneath the accusation” — namely, that The Birth of a Nation was indeed “an explicitly racist film that glorified the Klu Klux Klan,” but “the corn isn’t popped,” she argued.

“The Alberta poster does not use the title The Birth of a Nation. It says “The Birthing of a Nation Through Prayer.” Its imagery includes an Alberta flag, a Bible, an oil pumpjack, mountains, a praying pregnant woman and a bald eagle. It advertises Christian prayer and fasting and quotes Romans 13:11. Nothing presented by Wesley demonstrates that the organizers were referencing Griffith’s movie, much less signalling support for the KKK.”

Meanwhile, her fellow Alberta Fact Check-er, Western Standard contributor Cory Morgan, offered his countertake on an X post from Tony Dean, a “Trudeau-appointed senator from Toronto,” who suggested that, given the imminent “tariffs shitstorm with the U.S,, it’s time to look at cutting back on potash, oil and uranium exports.”

Morgan’s rebuttal: “If the federal government tried to stifle resource exports from Western provinces, Saskatchewan will likely be scheduling an independence referendum while Albertans will overwhelmingly choose Option 2 on Question 10 on October 19. There is little appetite in the West for federal incursions on their resource exports.”

Over at The Post Millennial, a byline-free post accused Carney — or, at least, his social media account — of “amplify(ing) a woke outlet that celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination” after he “shared a post from Montreal-based publication Cult MTL, despite the outlet having published an article titled ‘To Hell With Charlie Kirk’ one day after the assassination,” and “has continued to produce political commentary attacking conservatives, including multiple articles attacking Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre and Canadian conservatives.”

The Post Millennial story includes a screenshot of the story in question, which highlights the recent announcement at Churchill Falls,“the largest clean energy investment in North American history,” and had nothing to do with Kirk, Poilievre or “Canadian conservatives.”

Rounding out the right-of-centre media circuit, Juno News affiliate The Counter Signal reports that Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice P. K. Johal “has rejected an attempt by investor Kevin O’Leary’s company to stop a Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation legal challenge over a water licence connected to a planned $70-billion artificial intelligence data centre in northwest Alberta.”

As writer Clayton DeMaine notes, “the decision comes as opposition to large-scale AI data centres continues to grow in Alberta.”

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

• Under the header ‘Far Right Investigation,’ a trio of Ricochet contributors take a closer look at how “Christian nationalism is shaping the push for Alberta’s independence,” courtesy of the “growing cross-border network of fundamentalists, oil-industry boosters, and Trump allies.”
• Rabble correspondent Evan Wexler examines how Canada’s auto sector is “bracing” for a breakdown of the existing continental free trade pact amid Trump’s threat to impose fresh levies on Canadian exports, which “will mark the next chapter for a whole series of Canadian industries that no longer count on free trade as a baseline for business in North America.”
• Canadian Dimension writer Bianca Mugyenyi makes the case that the upcoming “CEO summit … could put public assets on the table,” as the “world’s largest investors are coming to Toronto, with airports and other public infrastructure potentially up for grabs,” she warns.
• The Maple’s Adam D.K. King celebrates the “major settlement” won by WestJet flight attendants as a result of their “brief strike” earlier this summer, which resulted in “a tentative agreement that makes significant gains on one of the airline industry’s most persistent labour issues: unpaid work.”