# Canadaland

Canadaland is a Canadian digital media company and podcast network, focused on producing a network of podcasts. The company was founded by Jesse Brown in 2013. The original podcast covers Canadian media and media criticism. Subsequently, new shows were added to the network covering a range of topics from current affairs, art and culture, cooking, medicine, and Canadian politics.
As of 2024, most of the shows were cancelled, with only Canadaland remaining, hosted three days a week by Brown and once a week by Noor Azrieh.

## History

The company was launched by Jesse Brown in the autumn of 2013. The original intention of the podcast was to spill "secrets about newsroom misdeeds, broken stories about TV journalists taking money from groups they cover, and challenged reporting that [Jesse Brown] he believe[d] has fallen short." By 2015, it had expanded to become a "podcast network and a news organization with staff".
In February 2014, Canadaland published the results of an investigation that The National anchor Peter Mansbridge had accepted money from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) to speak at a December 2012 event. This raised conflict of interest concerns as Mansbridge had accepted money from an entity with a vested interest in the oil sands issue, a topic Mansbridge regularly reported on from a national platform. The story got picked up on by The Huffington Post, Vice, and reporter Andrew Mitrovica, forcing Mansbridge to address the issue, sparking a lively debate in the Canadian mainstream media outlets. CBC Ombudsman Esther Enkin investigated the issue, concluding there was no problem with Mansbridge taking money to speak before an oil lobby group, though adding that CBC should "think about the appearance of getting paid by interest groups who are likely to feature prominently in the news".
In April 2014, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announced changes in its rules regarding speaking engagements for its journalists.
In October 2023, after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, Brown intensified his social media activity, focusing on pro-Palestine protests and anti-semitism in Canada. He also lashed out at several female journalists on Twitter and his website because they criticized the force of Israel's retaliation on Palestinian civilians, prompting the Canadaland Union to issue a public letter accusing him of publishing "misleading and targeted statements" that undermined journalistic standards. He faced additional backlash for his perceived stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, estimating a 9% loss in Canadaland's supporters during this period.
In October 2024, Brown edited an interview without the host's consent, including the removal of a statement linking Canada' s arms sales to Israel to Palestinian deaths, and cutting the word genocide. While the host and his guest called the edits political, Brown defended them as improvements. The dispute led to the resignation of the host, editor-in-chief, and several staff. Brown later confirmed he insisted on final approval of all company content.
That same month, Brown interviewed the Israeli Ambassador about antisemitism in Canada. The podcast contained factual errors, which Brown left uncorrected. His remaining staff later published a 3,000-word analysis highlighting inaccuracies and lack of context.

## People

Jesse Brown has been the publisher and host of Canadaland since October 2013. In an article in the Times Colonist, Mike Devlin described Brown as the "controversial host of the popular Canadaland podcast and crowdfunded news site." Devlin wrote that Brown was "polarizing...mostly because of his irreverent critiques and smart-ass attitude" whose "media and cultural critiques" are handled in a "gloves-off manner." According to Devlin, Brown became "something of a bad boy in Ontario" for attacking Canadian media "sacred cows" such as The Globe and Mail. In his 2014 article in The Walrus, Brown described how guest journalists were originally reluctant to appear on the program until it gained credibility following the February 2014 Mansbridge exposé.
In May 2023, Karyn Pugliese was named the new editor-in-chief of Canadaland after Brown announced that he was stepping down from the role. Pugliese is a member of the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation in Ontario. She is best known for her work as a journalist and executive director at the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and as the Managing Editor of CBC's Investigative unit, overseeing television programming for the Fifth Estate and Marketplace. She previously served as the Communications Director for the Assembly of First Nations. and as the president of the Canadian Association of Journalists. She is known as a press freedom advocate in Canada and abroad.She has previously appeared on Short Cuts, and as the host of canadaLANDBACK.
In October 2024 Pugliese left amid disputes about Brown's editing of a podcast that contained a section on Canada's role selling arms to Israel during about the Israel-Gaza conflict.

## Funding

The company's revenue streams include principally advertisements and, since 2014, direct crowdfunding and the sale of merchandise. Canadaland publishes an annual "Transparency Report" that details their finances.
The company's 2017–2018 annual fundraising campaign included an appeal by Ryan McMahon to launch a new investigative podcast calledThunder Bay. The campaign proved successful, surpassing their "funding threshold".

## Current podcasts
### Canadaland (podcast)

The original eponymous podcast is described as the "flagship" show of the podcast network. The show covers Canadian media and media criticism with new episodes being released twice per week. Each podcast episode typically features Jesse Brown and a guest who discuss news and current events relevant to the media industry in Canada. The podcast feed includes ongoing series Short Cuts, also hosted by Brown, and occasional limited run podcasts & miniseries

## Former shows

The feed use to include Détours, a twice-monthly series discussing media (cancelled in 2024) a current affairs in French hosted by Emilie Nicolas. The feed also included canadaLANDBACK, which was described as a "provocative, Indigenous-driven, current-affairs podcast" hosted by Karyn Pugliese and produced by Kim Wheeler.

### Commons

Launched in 2015, Commons was originally described as a "politics show for people who have been neglected by legacy media" with "activist and journalist" Desmond Cole and Andray Domise as hosts. Since 2018, the show has been hosted by Arshy Mann. It now takes the format of a documentary podcast with each new season guiding the listener through a different topic. Past seasons of Commons have covered cults, hockey, monopolies in Canada, Canada's participation in the War in Afghanistan, the Canadian mining industry, real estate market in Canada and policing. Commons ended in 2024.

### The Backbench

The Backbench releases bi-weekly and features rotating guests discussing the top Canadian political stories of the day. Past guests have included former Liberal M.P. Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Jason Markusoff, Emilie Nicolas, Murad Hemmadi, Drew Brown, Stuart Thomson, Jaskaran Sandhu and Leena Minifie. The Backbench was originally hosted by Fatima Syed. In September 2022, Canadian Jeopardy! champion Mattea Roach was named the new host. Backbench ended in 2024.

### Wag the Doug

Wag the Doug is hosted by journalists Allison Smith and Jonathan Goldsbie. The show began in 2018 as an ad-hoc, irregularly scheduled podcast about Ontario Premier Doug Ford. It has since moved to a regular monthly broadcast schedule. Wage the Doug ended in 2024.

### Thunder Bay (2018, 2020, 2023)

Thunder Bay was a ten-part series launched in 2018 with subsequent follow up episodes in 2020 and 2023. Hosted by Ryan McMahon, the series built upon the investigation by Toronto Star reporter Tanya Talaga—published her 2017 book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City. In Seven Fallen Feathers, Talaga described the deaths of seven youths in Thunder Bay, Ontario, revealing ineffective police investigations, and systemic racism, facing Indigenous youth, their families, and communities. The podcast critiques the city's authorities and their support of the Indigenous population.

### Cool Mules (2020)

Cool Mules was a six-part true crime podcast hosted by Kasia Mychajlowycz that documents the cocaine smuggling of Slava Pastuk, while he was employed at Vice Media. The series included a series of exclusive interviews with Pastuk, who ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison. It won a National Magazine Awards Gold Award for best podcast in 2021.

### The White Saviors (2021)

The White Saviors was a six-part podcast series narrated by Olusola Adeogun. The series focused on activities by WE Charity and the WE Charity Scandal including interviews with whistleblowers and former staff. Prior to the airing of the podcast, Canadaland was served a statement of claim by Theresa Kielburger, mother of the founders of WE Charity. May, 2024, the Superior Court of Justice criticized Brown and Canadaland's reporting on WE Charity and its founders in Canadaland's White Saviors podcast. In rejecting Brown's motion under Ontario's anti-SLAPP law to dismiss a lawsuit filed against Brown and Canadaland, Justice Edward Morgan ruled Brown and Canadaland did not give Theresa Kielburger, the mother of WE founders Craig and Marc Kielburger, a chance to respond to allegations about her in the podcast. The judge said Brown's explanation for not contacting Mrs. Kielburger showed, in Brown's eyes, "the Plaintiff's (Mrs. Kielburger's) feelings are worth nothing." The judge went on to say, "The cynicism of Brown's explanation not only accentuates the defamatory sting of his words, but could be considered high handed and oppressive." Justice Morgan said Brown had written proof that the allegations he made about Mrs. Kielburger were false, and the judge ordered the case to move forward to trial.

### Ratfucker (2022)

Ratfucker was a three-part limited run series exploring David Wallace, a conservative political operative, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, and the so-called #KlondikePapers conspiracy theory.

### The Newfoundlander (2023)

The Newfoundlander is a limited run podcast series hosted by reporter Justin Brake. The first part discusses the Broadway musical Come From Away's mischaracterization of his grandfather in the musical. In the second part, Brake searches for answers about his family's history. He describes how what he found drove a wedge between him and his family and put him in opposition to a new story of shared Indigenous ancestry that is being embraced by tens of thousands of people across Newfoundland and beyond.

### The Imposter

Launched in 2016, The Imposter was Canadaland's art and art criticism show In their first year, the most downloaded episodes were "Brushes With Drake", "Spoiler Alert", "Degrassiland", "Tanya Tagaq is Unreconciled", and "Sex Canoe". Artist, Aliya Pabani was the show's host and producer.

### OPPO

OPPO, was politics podcast launched on February 6, 2018. The show featured journalists Jen Gerson and Justin Ling as co-hosts, presenting opposing views on various politic-related topics. Justin Ling left the podcast and was replaced by Sandy Garossino in 2020. OPPO ended in early 2021, with Gerson saying the show had 'run its course'.

### DDx

In March 2018, Canadaland launched DDx, medical podcast, which was the "first program from Canadaland's new branded podcast unit, Earshot, ranked as "one of the top medical podcasts in iTunes' Canadian and U.S. rankings".

### Taste Buds

Taste Buds was a food and culinary podcast launched in 2018. It was hosted by Corey Mintz and covered food trends, food criticism and the restaurant industry in Canada.

## Book: The Canadaland Guide to Canada

In her review of Jesse Brown's 2017 book The Canadaland Guide to Canada, author Charlotte Gray described Jesse Brown as a "crowdfunded media critic and self-described 'public irritant'" Gray cited Brown in describing Canada as "shapeless, beige haze," that we created and that "it's time we grew up and told the truth."

## Theresa Kielburger vs. Canadaland Inc.

In November 2021, Theresa Kielburger, a retired Toronto schoolteacher and mother of WE Charity founders Craig and Marc Kielburger, filed a defamation lawsuit against Canadaland Inc. and its proprietor Jesse Brown, seeking $3 million in damages. The lawsuit disputes claims in a Canadaland podcast called "The White Saviors Canadaland. True Crime" which was first aired August 23, 2021.
The central focus of the lawsuit was Canadaland's characterization of a 1997 lawsuit involving her son Craig Kielburger and Saturday Night magazine from the previous year, which resulted in a judicial condemnation and settlement of $319,000 against the magazine. The author of the Saturday Night piece, Isabel Vincent, had claimed that in 1995 Theresa Kielburger deposited $150,000 in donations from the Ontario Federation of Labour into her family bank account. This claim, which both Ms. Kielburger and the Ontario Federation of Labour flatly denied, was presented in Canadaland's podcast, according to the lawsuit, in a manner meant to suggest that Theresa Kielburger had stolen the money. Ms. Kielburger's lawsuit stated that Canadaland was aware that this claim was false, but repeated it anyway.
Brown accused WE Charity of mounting a public relations campaign against it, telling podcast listeners that “#JesseBrownLies was briefly the number one trending topic in Kenya" and complained that several American media organizations had called Canadaland "fake news". Brown said that he was “confident that this lawsuit will be dismissed."
In May 2024, Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Morgan denied Brown and Canadaland's bid to dismiss the lawsuit on the basis of Anti-SLAPP legislation, finding instead that Ms. Kielburger's claims had "substantial merit"and setting the case on track to go to trial. Morgan found no evidence that Brown or Canadaland had any valid defence for the willful omission of relevant information or for what he called a "callous disregard" for Ms. Kielburger's reputation. Morgan found that Canadaland's podcast repeated the earlier libel as a central theme of its podcast after ignoring information provided by her accountant and by the Ontario Federation of Labor, and wrote,“For Canadaland to have left this important point out of its story undermines any factual objectivity that the broadcast may claim." Morgan wrote, "The fact that he was speaking about the plaintiff, and imposing personal pain on the plaintiff by repeating an allegation about her that he was aware had been seriously contested, if not established as entirely false, was seen by him as irrelevant."
While ruling that the trial against Brown and Canadaland should go forward, Morgan found that Saturday Night (magazine)'s reporter Isabel Vincent, who was interviewed for the podcast, lacked sufficient involvement to be held liable for Canadaland's behavior.
According to Peter Downard, partner at Fasken, counsel for the plaintiff and one of three members of the Attorney General of Ontario's advisory panel which drafted Ontario's anti-SLAPP legislation, Canadaland's attempt to dismiss Ms. Kielburger's claim is an example of how the legislation he helped to draft, meant to protect whistleblowers against corporate power, is being misused. The law, he explained, was meant to quickly dismiss frivolous claims rather than adjudicate factually and legally complex cases such as Kielburger vs. Canadaland Inc.
Brown and Canadaland claimed three potential valid defences, each of which was rejected by the court. The first was that their statements constituted a "fair and accurate report" of proceedings in the Saturday Night case, but the court found that Canadaland's claims went beyond what was in them.
The second potential defence was that of "responsible communication," meaning that Canadaland had to demonstrate that it exercised due diligence in determining the facts and reported them responsibly. The court found that Canadaland failed this test by not contacting Ms. Kielburger to learn what had actually happened. Lenczner Slaght partner William McDowell commented, "You have to actually do your best to figure out whether the allegation is true or not." When Justice Morgan asked Brown why Canadaland had denied Ms. Kielburger the opportunity to respond to its allegations, Brown responded that he "did not seek comment [from the plaintiff] for the same reason why I didn’t seek comment from my own mother: neither of them were involved.”
Finally, Brown and Canadaland claimed that their reporting qualified as "fair comment" on a matter of public interest, which would be protected by law. The court rejected this on the ground that fair comment is a matter of opinion rather than an assertion of fact, and that the evidence suggested that Canadaland's facts were likely untrue.

## Critical reception

A year after the podcast was launched, it was attracting about 10,000 listeners every week. By late 2018, Canadaland's podcasts had reached 100,000 weekly listeners. In 2020, the original podcast had reached more than 9 million cumulative downloads, making it among the most popular podcasts in Canada.
By 2023, the Canadaland podcast network reached over 150,000 downloads per week.
The Globe and Mail's Simon Houpt compared Brown to an "action star in a Hollywood blow-'em-up: throwing fireballs and kicking asses" but added "he has a track record of playing fast and loose with facts".
In the Toronto Life review of Toronto's most "addictive podcasts" in 2016, Vibhu Gairola, included Canadaland. Gairola wrote that "Unless you're a journalist, you probably know Canadaland as that podcast that broke the Ghomeshi scandal". While Canadaland self-described as a "non-sensationalist watchdog and a flag bearer for responsible reporting", Brown is known for routinely challeng[ing] and condemn[ing] the big names in Canadian news." Gairola compared Canadaland to "earnest whistle-blowing of TVO's The Agenda With Steve Paikin or HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher.
National Post's Christie Blatchford wrote that Canadaland's 2017 fake obituary by Indigenous journalist and activist Robert Jago on Canadaland's website, of the Post's founder, former publisher, columnist, and Blatchford's former employer—Conrad Black—was "vicious", "petty and unfunny."
In 2023, Brown faced criticism for a perceived pro-Israel bias, and for resuming the role of editor in addition to being the Host, publisher and owner.