Prior to the official opening of the media franchise operation as a corporation, it operated for a number of years as an individual effort by Levant, who styled himself "The Rebel." At least one of his ideas, to fight "anti-Christian bigots on
Nanaimo city council," attracted support from university student and now Member of Parliament
Dane Lloyd.
2015–2017 The Rebel Media was formed by Levant and Lilley following the closure of the Sun News Network. Levant said that his online production would be unencumbered by the regulatory and distribution difficulties faced by Sun News Network and that its lower production costs would make it more viable. Levant has cited
Breitbart News, the American far-right news website, as an inspiration. A
crowdfunding campaign raised roughly for the project. The site soon attracted a number of other former Sun News Network personalities such as David Menzies, Paige MacPherson, Faith Goldy,
Patrick Moore and, briefly, Michael Coren. In the summer of 2015, the channel, led by Levant, launched a campaign to boycott
Tim Hortons, a chain of Canadian coffee shops, after it rejected in-store ads from
Enbridge due to complaints from customers opposed to the oil pipeline projects being promoted by the ads. In early 2016, the
Alberta government banned The Rebel Media's correspondents from press briefings on the grounds that, because Ezra Levant had testified in court in 2014 that he was a columnist or commentator rather than a reporter, none of his current correspondents could be considered to be journalists. On 17 February 2016, the government admitted that it made a mistake and said that it would allow The Rebel Media correspondents into press briefings.
The Canadian Association of Journalists supported preventing government from choosing journalism coverage." In late 2016, after first being refused press accreditation for the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)
COP22 Climate Change Conference, Rebel Media was allowed to send two correspondents to COP22. Levant wrote that "We're not being excluded because we have an opinion. We're being excluded because we have the wrong opinion." Rebel Media received support from the
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and three journalism organizations in getting the UNFCC to grant this access, Following the
Quebec City mosque shooting of 2017, Rebel Media and Levant in particular were harshly criticized in the
National Observer for their reporting and pursuing "a narrative about violence by immigrants," though the shooting was committed by the far-right Alexandre Bissonnette. Kai Nagata noted "Levant and Goldy were both speakers at a rally in Toronto last week organized by The Rebel to protest a motion by Liberal MP
Iqra Khalid, which calls on the government to condemn Islamophobia'" in response to the shooting. In 2017, Rebel Media hired far-right activist
Tommy Robinson, founder of the avowedly anti-Islamic
English Defence League, as its British correspondent. In March 2017, one of their correspondents,
Gavin McInnes, made controversial comments defending
Holocaust deniers, accused the Jews of being responsible for the
Holodomor and the
Treaty of Versailles, and said he was "becoming anti-Semitic". He later said his comments were taken out of context. McInnes also produced a satirical video for Rebel called "Ten Things I Hate about Jews", later retitled "Ten Things I Hate About Israel". Rebel also hosted a video by McInnes in which he encouraged viewers to brawl against
antifa as his group the
Proud Boys did, saying, "When they go low, go lower." During the
2017 French Presidential Election,
Jack Posobiec, The Rebel Media's Washington, D.C. bureau chief, supported far-right leader
Marine Le Pen and played a role in the
2017 Macron e-mail leaks.
Coverage of Unite the Right Rally On 12 August 2017, Rebel correspondent
Faith Goldy reported from the
Unite the Right Rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia. Broadcasting on
livestream, she gained clear footage of a
fatal car attack by a white supremacist against left-wing protestors. Interviewed about the rally and the clip by
Israel's
Channel 2 News, Goldy opined that, "there is a "culture war" happening between the hard left and hard right and that "many on both sides see this as a civil war – you know the fascists vs. the communists." On Monday August 14, Rebel founder Ezra Levant denounced the element of the "alt-right" which had participated in the rally, stating that it "now effectively means racism, anti-Semitism and tolerance of neo-Nazism."
Chris Alexander,
Brian Jean,
Jason Kenney, and
Doug Schweitzer of the
United Conservative Party of Alberta expressed dissatisfaction with the Rebel's editorial direction over the preceding months and said they would not grant interviews to the company. Jean dropped his boycott of the Rebel in August 2022 and agreed to an interview about his
leadership campaign for the United Conservative Party.
Gavin McInnes left the Rebel at the end of August 2017. Levant wrote "We tried to keep him, but he was lured away by a major competitor that we just couldn't outbid" in an email to the independent news site
Canadaland. Robertson claims he was fired for "knowing too much" about the Rebel's finances, claiming the company dishonestly solicited donations for projects that were already funded and concealing how that money was spent. Levant has since briefly talked about The Rebel's finances in his online show and released a summary on The Rebel's website. It was reported that the settlement was negotiated by
Kory Teneycke, who was formerly director of communication for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Hamish Marshall and Andrew Scheer During the 2017 Conservative Party leadership race, many contenders, including the eventual leadership winner
Andrew Scheer, gave interviews to the outlet. In September 2017, Marshall's name was removed from the list of directors of The Rebel Media on the federal government's online registry of corporate information. On 16 October 2017,
The Globe and Mail asked Scheer if he knew that Hamish Marshall shared office space with the Rebel during the leadership campaign. Scheer replied that he did not ask Marshall about his firm's many clients. Later, a spokesperson clarified that Scheer did not know the specifics of the arrangement. Levant explained that Marshall's IT firm Torch provided client services for the Rebel. A 2017
National Post article argued that Marshall implemented the Rebel donation system. Scheer denounced the outlet due to its coverage of the
Unite the Right rally, and stated that he would stop doing interviews with The Rebel Media until its "editorial directions" changed. A day later, Scheer stated that he would not be granting interviews with the Rebel going forward, in an interview with the
National Post. On September 30, 2019, two police forces escorted Rebel Media correspondent David Menzies away from a Scheer campaign announcement.
Advertiser boycott Beginning in May 2017, the Rebel was the target of a
boycott campaign by the social media activist group
Sleeping Giants whereby advertisers were pressured to withdraw their adverts from The Rebel Media's YouTube channel and website. Within a three-month period in 2017, the activist group claimed that the Rebel had lost approximately 300 advertisers, including
CCM Hockey,
Mountain Equipment Co-op,
Red Lobster,
Reitmans,
Penguin Books Canada,
Volkswagen Canada and
Tangerine Bank, along with
PetSmart, the
Hudson's Bay Company,
General Motors Canada, the
Royal Canadian Mint, the
Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation,
Ottawa Tourism,
Porter Airlines, and
Whistler Blackcomb ski resort. In June 2017, the city council of
Edmonton, following complaints on social media from multiple residents, pulled its online advertisements from Rebel News. City councillor Michael Oshry described content on the website as "hate mongering, or even racist". Another activist group,
Hope not Hate, pressured
Norwegian Cruise Lines into cancelling a scheduled Caribbean cruise which was to feature talks by The Rebel Media personalities, many of whom have since left the media website. This attracted news coverage the following February in advance of the fund's ostensible 1 March opening date, generally negative;
MoneySense, for example, stated that "This one carries a lot of risk and doesn't clear the
MoneySense bar for appropriate retirement investment risk, whatever the political orientation." In June, however, Wells announced that it was shutting down all its funds, and when queried by a reporter from ''
Maclean's'', stated that the Rebel Freedom Fund had never launched.
2019 Canadian federal election The writs of election for the
2019 Canadian federal election were issued by
Governor General Julie Payette on September 11, 2019, and the 2019 Canadian federal election was held on October 21, 2019. The leadership debates were held on 7 October in English and 10 October in French. On September 30, 2019, two police forces escorted Rebel Media correspondent David Menzies away from a Scheer campaign announcement. The journalists were allowed equitable access to the media scrum that evening of 7 October after the debate.
Climate change denialist views As early as 2019 it was noticed that Levant had used Rebel Media to promote
climate change denial and advocate the interests of the
oil sands extraction industry in
Alberta. In an article for ''
Canada's National Observer'', columnist Max Fawcett described Rebel Media as a group who undermine "the scientific consensus around climate change and vaccines". Levant, whose organization had accused the commission of being "capricious, unfair, unlawful and arbitrary in denying its journalists the right to fully cover the debate" said "Today we scored one for liberty." When asked a question by
Rebel News following the French debate, Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau attacked the organization for spreading
misinformation, especially with regard to
COVID-19 vaccines and refused to "call it a media organization". The clip of the interaction went viral.
Coverage of anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown movements In December 2021,
Rebel News fundraised to pay for the legal fees of Mehmet Erhan, an
Adelaide, Australia resident who was arrested and charged with breaching a health order. The money was to be paid into
Rebel News's Fight the Fines fund instead of Erhan's
GoFundMe account.
Rebel News later cut ties with Erhan, saying that they had discontinued their relationship as Erhan had allegedly "routinely switched lawyers" and acted in bad faith. In early 2022
Rebel News provided favourable coverage of the
Canada convoy protest and the
Convoy to Canberra, with many of its posts linking to donation pages or fundraising campaigns.
Similarweb found that the number of Canadians accessing the
Rebel News website had increased by 70% between January and February 2022. Australian traffic increased by 11% over the same time period. Elise Thomas of the
Institute for Strategic Dialogue said that groups like
Rebel News were utilising the
anti-vaccine and
anti-lockdown communities to "reinvigorate their following", saying, "The thing about these kind of fringe communities is that they are often really hyper-engaged communities, they're not getting this content anywhere else in their life". Justice Ann Marie McDonald stated that "283 of the items were not based on facts, nor were multiple perspectives actively pursued, researched, analyzed, or explained by a journalist for the organization", and a further 135 were categorized as curated or rewritten content from other sources. The court found that the CRA's decision was "justified, transparent and intelligible", noting that much of Rebel News's output consisted of opinion or republished material. The court also rejected Rebel News's argument that the denial infringed on press freedom, stating that the outlet failed to demonstrate how the ruling harmed its operations. == Notable contributors ==