The 2026 George Jonas Freedom Award, a prestigious honour given to one Canadian each year for their contribution to freedom, was awarded to Juno News CEO and co-founder Candice Malcom on Thursday, September 24, 2026, in Calgary, Alberta.
Malcom gave the following speech upon receiving the award.
Kind Lies
2026
Hi, and thank you so much to John Carpay and the JCCF and for this incredible honour. I am deeply grateful to be here tonight, receiving this award named after the great George Jonas — a man who understood better than most that freedom is not a birthright, it isn’t self-executing, and that, as Ronald Reagan once said, it’s only ever one generation away from extinction.
Or in the case of Canada — it’s only a drama teacher away from extinction.
I want to tell you a little story about my family this evening. My husband and I met in Ottawa in 2011, shortly after the election that gave Prime Minister Stephen Harper his majority government. My now-husband Kaz and I were both 20-something political staffers working in the same small office for then-Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.
Because this was pre-MeToo, workplace romances were officially frowned upon but, in reality, were kind of the norm. I think the Harper government produced dozens of marriages and families.
That was over 15 years ago; we’ve been married for thirteen years and have four beautiful children together.
Think about how much our country has changed in those 15 years. Think about how unlikely our story would be today.
Kaz’s family fled Iran when he was a child, and he embraced Canada wholeheartedly. He leaned into integration and married me, a ninth-generation Canadian and Christian.
We had paid off our student loans and bought our first home in our 20s, with 5% down, and the purchase price was roughly double our combined annual incomes.
We met at work. We bought our home. We’ve started businesses and built organizations. We had amazing mentors and incredible opportunities. We wanted a big family, and we have one.
Canada has been really good to us.
But so many of these things simply don’t happen anymore, or at least they’re not the norm.
So we have to ask why. What happened? How did our country fall apart so fast in my adult lifetime?
While I feel incredibly lucky and truly blessed by God, over the last few years I have become incredibly disillusioned with our institutions — because I can, I mostly avoid them.
I don’t trust the media establishment, so I built my own media company to report the news and tell the truth.
I don’t trust the medical establishment, and so I chose an unmedicated homebirth rather than stepping foot in a hospital post-Covid.
I’m so distrustful of our food systems that Kaz and I bought a farm where we raise our own chickens; eat grass-fed, hormone-free beef; we grow our own vegetables; and bake our own bread.
And finally, we homeschool our children.
That’s the anti-establishment trifecta: home births, homesteading and homeschooling.
Most homeschooling parents have a story about why they homeschool — that moment when a teacher, an administrator, or a classmate said something that cemented in the parents’ minds that traditional school was simply no longer an option.
For us, that moment came during my son’s first few weeks at school.
Just a quick word about Jasper, who is now 7 years old. He loves learning; he’s constantly reading and currently obsessed with the Periodic Table. Jasper is a bright child, and he sometimes forgets that others might not grasp a concept as quickly as he does.
This created an obvious problem at school, and his teacher would pull me aside almost daily to complain to me about my son — that he would dominate the discussion, talk over other students and blurt out the answer when another child was struggling.
I don’t condone this behaviour. But Jasper was 4 at the time, in a class with 5- and 6-year-olds, and it obviously wasn’t easy for him to be academically ahead, but socially, he was still a 4-year-old boy.
But I will never forget what his teacher told me. She said she had been telling Jasper that “it is more important to be kind than it is to be right.”
More important to be kind than right.
That sentence stayed with me, because I think it explains a great deal about what has gone wrong.
Our society is spiralling into dysfunction because we insist on putting kindness ahead of truth.
Let me be clear: I want my children to be kind. As Christians, I teach them the virtues of human dignity, patience, service, forgiveness, humility, charity and love. Kindness matters. But kindness detached from truth is no longer a virtue.
I think this slide explains it better than I ever could:
The top line is the world I wish we lived in. Where, over time, our commitment to truth boosted us towards an even more high-trust, high-functioning society.
The graph’s author, William Meijer, describes it this way:
“An extreme commitment to the truth makes relationships acutely dysfunctional but systems chronically functional.”
It’s not easy to tell the truth. It’s uncomfortable. It’s offensive. It’s upsetting.
I know. I do it professionally, and I have for two decades. It isn’t always easy or fun, but it is always necessary.
But instead, in Canada, we live on the other line. As Meijer describes:
“An extreme commitment to kindness makes relationships functional but systems chronically dysfunctional.”
We operate as if it is more important to be kind than right. So we affirm. We create safe spaces. We repeat diversity statements and land acknowledgements. We do so because it’s easier to be kind. It feels good in the moment.
That is the theme I want to speak about tonight.
Each Kind Lie momentarily boosts us.
The Kind Lies that make us feel compassionate, but they degrade us; they weaken our institutions; and ultimately, they make us less free. Once the dust settles and we start to live with the consequences, we realize it’s too late, and we are spiralling into chaos.
Private Truths, Public Lies
In his 1995 book Private Truths, Public Lies, Duke University political scientist Timur Kuran introduced the concept of “preference falsification,” where individuals hide and suppress their unpopular beliefs — the Unkind Truth — to avoid negative social consequences.
As fewer people express certain views, these “private truths” become more forbidden and more hidden in public.
Each person thinks, “I disagree with the direction of the country, but everyone else seems to support it.” So we go along. Our silence makes the lie look stronger, more popular. That apparent consensus pressures others into silence. Soon, a society is built on public lies, and people stop believing the private truths.
The result is a negative feedback loop, a doom spiral.
Interestingly, in the book, Kuran cites Václav Havel’s seminal essay, “The Power of the Powerless.”
Havel’s remarkable essay is much more than a simple critique of Soviet communism. It’s a profound exploration of how authoritarian systems maintain power and how ordinary people become complicit in their own oppression — by repeating slogans they don’t believe, by obeying rituals they know are meaningless, by publicly conforming while privately doubting.
Each individual act seems insignificant and meaningless, but together they create the illusion of a consensus.
The regime derives legitimacy from that illusional consensus — the widespread participation in falsehoods.
Havel describes the greengrocer in Soviet Czechoslovakia, who places the “Workers of the world, unite!” sign in his store window. He doesn’t believe it. His customers don’t believe it. The regime knows that he doesn’t believe it.
Everyone knows it’s meaningless, and yet, he puts it up because it’s easier.
It communicates submission.
“I know what I’m expected to do. Now leave me alone.”
This ritual of submission, what Havel calls “living within a lie”, what Professor Timur Kuran calls public lies, private truths, here in Canada, I call them Kind Lies.
Yes, Prime Minister Mark Carney used this reference in his winter speech to the World Economic Forum. Carney rather beautifully retold the message of this essay.
Ironically, he used it to tell another Kind Lie — that American strength is to blame for our reckless domestic policies.
That’s not how I read Havel’s essay.
The closest thing to Havel’s greengrocer that Canadians experienced in recent years was the ritual of wearing a cloth mask during Covid. Everyone knew it did nothing, but we wore it to signal: I know what I am expected to do. Now leave me alone.
The greengrocer’s sign is the empty ritual of the land acknowledgement — an insistence that Canada is somehow an illegitimate country and belongs to someone else based purely on race.
It’s federal and bank employees being coerced into putting their “preferred pronouns” in their email signatures and on social media.
It was the story that a mass grave was discovered in Kamloops, BC, containing the remains of school children, and despite the total lack of evidence — no physical report, no excavation, no names of the victims, no charges or even specific accusations against any individual — just one vague yet sensationalist news release, all of Parliament unanimously declared that Canada committed genocide.
These rituals are not harmless. The Kind Lies compound. Gradually, they sow skepticism and distrust, and then suddenly, our society spirals into chaos.
“Trans women are women.”
So we surrender women’s sports, prisons, shelters, and women-only spaces. We call sex-change drugs and surgeries for children “gender-affirming care,” because the euphemism is kinder than the truth.
“Diversity is our strength.” And “Muslim values are Canadian values.”
So we insist that all immigration, from every culture and ideology, is automatically good for Canada. We deny that integration matters, then act surprised when third-world tribal feuds, crime, terrorism, and Jew hatred arrive here too.
“Believe all women.”
So accusation becomes proof — and lives are ruined without due process or the assumption of innocence. The result has been catastrophic for trust, dating, marriage, and family formation. Canada’s fertility rate is at an all-time low.
“Net zero policies will create jobs, lower emissions, and make life more affordable.”
So we make energy more expensive, industry less competitive, and ordinary Canadians poorer — and call it progress.
“Safe supply and harm reduction will reduce drug deaths.”
So we normalize addiction, flood communities with drugs, and watch as our cities become no-go zones.
“215 unmarked graves. Canada committed genocide.”
So we tore down statues, burned churches, renamed streets, and taught a generation that their country is evil and illegitimate, and that white Canadians are to blame.
And now: “Elbows up.”
Donald Trump is to blame for Canada’s affordability crisis, our economic stagnation, and the consequences of a decade of our own political choices.
Each Kind Lie pushes us farther into dysfunction.
And this is where I come in.
My job is very simple. Tell the truth, at all costs.
Asch Conformity
My friend and colleague Ezra Levant often talks about an experiment conducted in the 1950s: the Asch conformity experiment.
Solomon Asch placed one genuine, unknowing participant in a room with actors posing as fellow test subjects. They were shown three lines and asked which matched a standard line.
It was extremely simple. In the control test, participants were correct 99% of the time.
But the actors answered first — and gave a blatantly wrong answer. The real participant answered near the end.
And when it was the real participant’s turn, three-quarters gave the wrong answer at least once.
So our operating assumption should be that about 75% of the population is willing to go along to get along.
Elbows up!
A mere 25% resist social pressure. They trust their own eyes and are prepared and willing to be the only one in the room speaking out.
That 25% are the John Carpays, the Ezra Levants, the George Jonas, the Keean Bextes and the Juno News.
Truth Ally
But Asch discovered something else, that is equally, if not more, important: what he dubbed the Partner Effect.
When just one of the actors — just one other person — gave the correct answer, conformity collapsed. From 75% down to just 5%.
One person.
One Truth Ally.
That is what independent media strives to be.
The Truth Ally is the person in the room who says: No. That line is not the same length.
Men are not women. Taxes don’t control the weather. Drugs kill people. There were no graves discovered in Kamloops.
The Truth Ally gives everyone else permission to trust their own eyes.
To return to the graph of the Kind Lie, there is a way to break free from the doom spiral.
It is called the Truth Nuke.
Graph creator Hunter Ash wrote:
“The reason it’s incredibly hard to break out of a “kind lie” doom loop is because the longer it’s gone on, the more unkindness is needed to get back on track. And the fact that you’re in this situation to begin with probably means your culture will hate it.”
So that is where we find ourselves in Canada in 2026.
The legacy culture hates us. The Kind Liars do everything they can to silence and discredit us. In fact, just last month, the government-funded Anti-Hate Network released a report condemning Juno News for transphobia in reporting on the Tumbler Ridge massacre.
Yes, a deranged young man wearing a dress shot and killed children in a horrific school shooting, but the great crime is Juno News misgendering the “gun person”.
And yet despite the cumulative efforts of the Kind Liars, private truths prevail.
George Jonas understood this. He understood that liberty depends on culture, not just law. You can have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and still lose the spirit of freedom based on “reasonable limits.”
That is why the work of the JCCF is so important. That is why independent media matters.
We’re here to push back, yes, but perhaps more importantly, we’re here to signal that your private truths are correct. You’re not alone. You have Truth Allies. You can and must push back against the Kind Lies in your own lives.
So, like we told our son Jasper, truth is not the enemy of kindness; truth is the foundation that makes true kindness possible.
That truth is sometimes difficult. It’s harsh. It’s offensive. It can feel unkind. But, as Jesus told the disciples in John 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
Thank you, and God bless.
— Candice Malcolm
