Mark Carney banned Rebel News from attending the G7 Summit that starts this weekend in Alberta. He refused to accredit us—and he had no reason other than political spite and a thin skin.

So we did what few people know how to do: we rushed to court. And I mean rushed! Our legal eagle, Sarah Miller, drafted the lawsuit very quickly. If you haven't read it, it’s an easy read—you can see it at www.LetUsReport.com.

In my bones, I knew we were right — Carney's foreign affairs department had no justification whatsoever for keeping us out, and unlike Trudeau's debates commission, which tried to ban us twice, this time they didn’t even try to come up with excuses.

Carney just refused to accredit us. But that doesn’t cut it when you’re a government violating freedom of the press.

I knew we had a good chance, given that the Federal Court of Canada has already—twice—slapped down the Liberals for trying to block our journalists.

Still, I was a bit nervous. You never know what’s going to happen in court. You never know what judge you’re going to get; there’s always a risk.

My main concern was: could the justice system move fast enough? Trials often take years.

We were asking the Federal Court to have an emergency hearing the next day at 9:30 a.m., and to give us their ruling that same afternoon! That’s faster than 99.9% of all court cases!

And I think that’s what Carney’s lawyers thought would save them. They knew they were violating our rights, but if we couldn’t get our day in court until after the G7 was done, then they’d win by default.

It all came down to the Federal Court. Could they find us a judge and a courtroom quickly enough? YES THEY DID!

But we didn’t hear that until late in the day. And—surprise, surprise—it was only after the court said they could jam us in that Carney’s lawyers called us up and said they weren’t going to fight back. They were going to back down and let us in.

I think their lawyers knew that if they fought us in court, they’d be absolutely shredded by the judge, given that the Federal Court has already ruled twice in our favour. They simply were hoping to be saved by a too-busy court schedule.

But they weren’t. So they caved in.

In a way, I would have loved to have fought them in court and beaten them that way—to have yet another scorching, scathing court ruling tearing a strip off these Liberals. But a win is a win.

Although we didn’t have to go to court, we still had to incur the expense of hiring a lawyer to draft the lawsuit and prepare for battle. I haven’t received her bill yet, but it will surely be thousands of dollars.

But it’s worth it:

• We stared down Mark Carney, and he blinked.
• We learned that Carney's lawyers are afraid of facing a judge of a censorship scheme.
• And hopefully, we've deterred Carney from trying to censor us — or any other independent journalists — in the future.

That's why these battles are so important: the precedent they set.

Sure, we’re doing this for our own reporters. But we’re also doing it for every reporter in Canada, even if they don’t know it or appreciate it.

I’m grateful to our lawyer who dropped everything to work on this full tilt. She was obviously convincing enough to have scared Carney and his army of lawyers! I think there’s no way they would have let us in if we weren’t obviously ready to go the whole distance.

I’m going to leave our lawsuit up at LetUsReport.com, so that any other independent journalist who has the same trouble can use our lawsuit as a template, so they don’t have to spend money on a lawyer to start from scratch. We’ve done that with most of our lawsuits, including our lawsuits against Liberal cabinet ministers who block journalists on Twitter.

If you think that's valuable, you can chip in a donation to help us cover the cost of that lawsuit on the same website.

Now that we’re accredited, we’re going to send THREE journalists—our chief reporter Sheila Gunn Reid, as well as Sydney Fizzard and Angelica Toy. You can follow all of their coverage at a special website we’re going to set up, www.G7reports.com!

Please help us fight Mark Carney’s G7 media ban in Federal Court!

Mark Carney has just banned Rebel News journalists from reporting at the G7 summit in Alberta — so we’re suing him in Federal Court. This is the third time a Liberal government has tried to censor us, and it’s more blatant than ever. Our reporters followed all the rules. We applied months ago. But now, just one business day before the summit, we’re told we’re banned — simply because we ask tough questions. We’ve filed an emergency lawsuit to stop this unlawful censorship, but the Liberals will spare no expense fighting us. Please help us cover our legal fees so we can stand up for freedom of the press — not just for Rebel News, but for all Canadians.

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