It takes quite a bit of chutzpah to trigger Rebel News staffers. So, our congratulations go out the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC is running a transit stop billboard campaign that indeed triggered us severely. The reason: blatant false advertising.

The ad in question was for CBC Gem, the online video streaming service. Gem? Have you checked out the content? There is quite the dearth of gemlike shows. (Then again, these days, we suppose a lump of coal can “identify” as a diamond, so, whatever…)

And incidentally, do you know anyone who watches CBC Gem? My best guess would be Fraulein Freeland. Her kids have to watch something after she cancelled that Disney Plus subscription…

Feeling the impact of high inflation? Chrystia Freeland says just get rid of your Disney+ subscription! pic.twitter.com/EUfiq5zEu8

— True North (@TrueNorthCentre) November 7, 2022

But back to that belligerent billboard. The visual featured someone who appeared to be an obese drag queen. Say, maybe that character is the poster person for the CBC Gem show entitled Casa Susana?

Here’s the description of that show: “In the 1950s and ’60s in New York, an underground network of transgender women and cross-dressing men found refuge at a house known as Casa Susana – a place to express their true selves.”

Now, that’s entertainment!

Recent legacy media reports covering protests outside a drag summer camp for kids on Granville Island last week have echoed the unsupported claim that some opposed to the camp threatened to act out in violence.

FULL REPORT by @DreaHumphrey: https://t.co/fd0E6Hyx0p pic.twitter.com/JNfXtUNaSy

— Rebel News Canada (@RebelNews_CA) July 11, 2023

Actually, not really. How does a man pretending to be a woman qualify as “expressing their true selves”? But never mind… Speaking of falsehoods, it was the copy on the billboard that had us really doing a double take — namely, that CBC Gem is “free”?

Free? Like, health care in Canada is “free”?

Sorry. CBC rakes in some $1.3 billion annually from taxpayers who have no say in the matter. Does that sound “free” to you? That’s the opposite of free.

And really, what the hell is CBC doing in the online video streaming business in the first place? From Netflix to Amazon Prime, aren’t there already a plethora of players in this realm?

CBC Power & Politics panellist believes Rebel News reporter David Menzies was "harassing" Chrystia Freeland by asking her questions.
Both Freeland and her staffer were smirking as Menzies was arrested, a strange response to alleged harassment.https://t.co/Xm6l8uejNP pic.twitter.com/xFVkhF8Coy

— Efrain Flores Monsanto 🇨🇦🚛 (@realmonsanto) January 10, 2024

We also wonder what the return on investment is here. Oh, sorry, what were we thinking? We’re talking the CBC here. It doesn’t have to make money. It relies on taxpayer-funded corporate welfare, year after year after year.

Hope abounds, however: at rallies, whenever Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promises to defund the CBC, this statement tends to receive the loudest and most prolonged standing ovation.

In the meantime, as millions of Canadians anxiously await regime change in Ottawa, our plea to the CBC is this: our favourite form of marketing is that rarified commodity known as “truth in advertising.” Pitching CBC Gem as a free service makes for the precise opposite.