Tim Hortons is trying to bully us into silence — but we've got a plan to fight back
We’ll keep fighting these bullies until they stop lying and live up to their false promise to hire Canadians.
Tim Hortons is trying desperately to shut us up — they’ve called the police on our reporters three times, and now they just had their lawyers file a legal complaint against us, trying to get our store banned off of the internet.
For two weeks, we’ve been telling the truth about Tim Hortons and their gross plans to hire foreign workers instead of young Canadians. Our reporting has been a problem for them, because they’ve just started a huge PR campaign to rebrand themselves as Canadian — likely because Dunkin’ Donuts is about to open up hundreds of locations in Canada later this year. Tim Hortons thinks it can win back customers by pretending to be Canadian.
But we discovered that, even though Tim Hortons says they are hiring Canadians, they are still actively bringing foreign workers to Canada by using the government’s Temporary Foreign Worker program.
So we went to some of those Tim Hortons locations with job listings and asked them why they claim to be hiring locals when, in fact, they are still hiring foreigners. Why lie?
One of those Tim Hortons managers lied about it, saying he didn’t know anything about it, while I was literally holding his restaurant's ad for foreigners in my hands.
So they courageously kicked us off the property, saying we couldn’t talk to any store managers or owners anymore. They thought maybe that would stop us from exposing their lies.
Yeah, no. We kept reporting on their plans to import hundreds of foreign workers. We talked to people going to the Tim Hortons drive-through — and 100% agreed: stop hiring foreigners; hire Canadians instead.
Well, that made them go nuts. They had their top lawyer send us a threat letter, telling us that if we go back to ask any more questions, they “will report the trespass to police and pursue all available remedies, including charges under the application act and civil action.”
Translation: if we ask them any more questions, they’ll call the cops, press charges, and sue us in civil court, too.
Have you ever seen a more thin-skinned bully than Tim Hortons? By the way, it’s obvious why they’re panicking — they’re literally the number one user of foreign workers of any restaurant chain in the country. They are the worst of the worst.
Well, obviously, we don’t stop our journalism just because some corporate lawyer threatens us. So we went out again and again and again — but, because we respect private property, we just stood on the public sidewalk. Even still, the crazed lunatics at Tim Hortons literally called the police.
I say again: our reporters didn’t go in. Didn’t even come close. They just stood with the Tim Hortons in the background — and these bullies called 911.
Can you believe it? They have a corporate PR crisis, independent journalists are exposing their lies about hiring Canadian, and somehow they think that calling the police is the solution? To do what? Arrest us? Put us in jail?
Did you know that Tim Hortons is now owned by a Brazilian hedge fund called 3G? Maybe that’s how it works in Brazil — if you criticize a large company, the police will harass you. But we’re in Canada now, hombre.
They threatened us with a lawsuit. We didn’t stop. They threatened to call the police. We didn’t stop. So today, they lashed out in a new way: they lodged a trademark complaint against Rebel News, trying to get Shopify to ban our merchandise from being sold.
This is the shirt they’re complaining about. It’s clearly not made by Tim Hortons; it’s clearly a gentle criticism of Tim Hortons, wishing they were Canadian again, not foreign. And they had their lawyers send a threat letter to Shopify, saying it’s illegal.
Well, I know something about trademark law myself. It’s meant to stop people from passing themselves off as the real thing, to stop confusion in the market. So if you set up Tom Hortons, and made it look the same, that would be a trademark violation — because you’re trying to trick people into thinking it’s the real thing.
But criticizing Tim Hortons is not a trademark violation. In fact, criticism and satire are specifically permitted under trademark law. This is literally like an editorial cartoon, very gently ribbing Tim Hortons for hiring foreigners instead of Canadians.
But now they’ve filed a trademark dispute, a kind of lawsuit, against us at Shopify. And we have to hire lawyers to respond — and to do so within 48 hours, or we could have our t-shirt suspended from the site, and potentially have our whole store shut down.
They’re doing whatever they can to destroy us, to stop us from revealing the truth about their foreign worker scam.
So what should we do? Should we be like the rest of the media and cheer for Tim Hortons?
Of course not.
Here’s my plan — and I need your help:
Step 1: We’re going to keep doing journalism about Tim Hortons, how they favour foreign workers over Canadians, and all sorts of other unethical conduct we’re digging up about them.
Step 2: We’re going to sell a lot more t-shirts and coffee mugs about Tim Hortons. If we have to go to court to teach these bullies a lesson about free speech, so be it. But you never know — if Tim Hortons gets its way, you won’t be able to get these anymore. That would make them hard-to-find collectibles! Anyways, give Tim Hortons the finger by buying the t-shirt that obviously enrages them, the big bullies.
Step 3: We’ve got to ramp up our Tims Boycott petition. Last I checked, we have 14,000 signatures on it — but we need ten times as many! If you haven’t signed it yet, please go to TimsBoycott.com.
Step 4: In the past two weeks, we have heard horror stories about Tim Hortons and its employment practices. About human rights violations, and about how the Tim Hortons franchise owners take advantage of the foreign labour they bring in. You’ve probably heard about some of this before — our own Tamara Ugolini exposed some of it.
Well, we know there are hundreds of stories out there like that. If you know about a human rights violation, an immigration law violation, a situation where foreign workers are being abused or taken advantage of, or just plain-old anti-Canadian racism, let us know in our tipline — send us the details at [email protected]. Confidentially guaranteed.
Step 5: I mentioned we’re hiring trademark lawyers to fight back against Tim Hortons legal attack on our store. Obviously, those lawyers cost a lot of money, and unlike Tim Hortons, we don’t have billions of dollars from a foreign hedge fund at our disposal. But it’s clear that this trademark lawsuit is just the first attack — they’re already told us they’re considering suing us and trying to get police to prosecute us.
So we’re building a war chest because we expect a long and drawn-out fight with Tim Hortons — on the legal front and journalistically — and they’ve already shown they will fight dirty.
If you can help us level the playing field, please do, by chipping in to our legal defence fund at TimsBoycott.com.
I promise you: we’ll keep fighting these bullies until they stop lying and live up to their false promise to hire Canadians.
Go to TimsBoycott.com.
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Ezra Levant
Rebel Commander
Ezra Levant is the founder and owner of Rebel News and the host of The Ezra Levant Show. He is the author of multiple best-selling books, including Ethical Oil, The Libranos, China Virus, and most recently, Trudeau's Secret Plan.
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