Coffee with… Mitch Garber | Twitter’s vigilante

He publicly skins Pierre Poilievre, like Jean-François Lisée or Pierre Karl Péladeau. He is a multimillionaire, invests mostly abroad, but says he is happy to live in Montreal and pay a mountain of taxes in Quebec.

Who is this funny bugger? This is Mitch Garber, this exceptional Anglo-Quebecer, who multiplies the scathing comments on Twitter, where he has 43,600 subscribers. The businessman became very popular with French speakers after his appearance on the show In the eye of the dragonbetween 2015 and 2017.

I meet Mitch Garber in his laid-back offices on Stanley Street near Sherbrooke in downtown Montreal. Mitch Garber greets me in the large room adjacent to his office, dominated by a coffee bar worthy of the fine bistros of Montreal.

The favorite subject: his bulimic use of Twitter, at a time when this social network has been strongly criticized since its seizure by the libertarian billionaire Elon Musk. He loves the medium, not least because it can’t be “misquoted,” he says.

Day after day, Mitch Garber notes the inconsistencies in the tweets broadcast by personalities, particularly politicians. Or, he simply expresses his disagreement, often in a “drooling” tone.

On Guy Nantel, October 28:

“Guy Nantel, who has very thin skin and blocks everyone, should understand that no one is questioning his right to freedom of expression. We are free to point out that the autism jokes and Massé/Hitler comparisons are classless, outdated and offensive. »

In response to Sophie Durocher, on October 27, who defended Guy Nantel:

“Why is everyone so excited? It’s not like he said hello/hi! What generates a month of indignation in the Log. He only made fun of autism and compared Manon Massé to Hitler. Forget that. »

On Pierre Poilievre, who claimed on October 23 that the Trudeau government wants to triple the carbon tax on the heating bill: “Can the journalists ask him to show us how it will work, using an actual heating bill. Or do we let him talk nonsense? »

See the genre? Mitch Garber is provocative, far from the wooden language of politicians.

During our meeting, the 1^er November, he planned to moderate his speeches since his recent investiture to the Order of Canada, to be less incisive, but it is clear that he could not help it.

On this subject, Mitch Garber judges that Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, of the Parti Québécois, and Éric Duhaime, of the Conservative Party, do not twist the facts, even if they are not part of his natural political family.

His scathing tweets aren’t hurting his business, he says. However, business, he brews a lot.

The entrepreneur is a major shareholder in a dozen companies, in addition to having interests in 23 others and interests in 25 investment funds, most of them outside Canada.

He also sits on the board of directors of seven companies, in addition to being a member of the management committee of the Seattle Kraken, this new NHL team established in the American West, of which he is a shareholder.

He takes stakes in companies that need a turnaround. “It excites me to be in companies, I love it. It’s my drug, ”says the lawyer by training.

Mitch Garber hit one of his financial home runs in 2016 when mobile games firm Playtika was sold. He then made a gain of almost 300 million and did not hesitate to publicly say that he had paid 100 million dollars in taxes here and that he was satisfied with it.

Doesn’t he plan to leave Twitter, given the arrival of Elon Musk at its head?

“It’s one more reason to stay on Twitter. There is room for opinions that undo falsehoods and alternative, aggressive facts. […] I hope we can slow down the wave, which has gone so far to the right in the United States, ”tells me Mitch Garber, who hates anonymous Twitter accounts, which according to him undermine the credibility of the network.

The polemicist says he is against Law 21 on the secularism of the State and against Law 96 on French, and he does not hesitate to denounce the aspects which he considers disturbing on Twitter.

At the same time, he found shocking the comments of Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau, who said last year that he could live well in Montreal without speaking French. “He put me to shame,” he said.

Born in Montreal to parents born in Montreal, Mitch Garber defines himself abroad first as coming from Montreal, then as Canadian, although he says he is proud to live in Quebec.

“I am Jewish, I have already lived in Israel and I speak Hebrew,” he adds to illustrate his multicultural character. He practices his religion little, is married to a non-practicing French-speaking Catholic and his children celebrate the main Catholic and Jewish holidays (Christmas, Yom Kippur, etc.).

Judging by his positions, Mitch Garber is obviously a liberal and a federalist. He does not deny it, although he once voted for the Conservative Party under Brian Mulroney. “Tomorrow, I vote 1000% for Trudeau-Freeland-Champagne over Poilievre,” he said.

Doesn’t he want to run for the head of the PLQ, released by Dominique Anglade? “No, I’m not passionate enough to do politics and I have a much freer life,” he replies.

Mitch Garber affirms that he has often been contacted by provincial and federal parties, that there were open doors for him at the PLQ in the last elections, and even at the CAQ a few years ago, but that he always refused.

Before the end of the interview, he wants to tell me about his charitable commitment. In recent years, he says he participated in raising $200 million for charitable organizations in Quebec — notably as former president of Centraide — in addition to $130 million for Federation CJA, whose mission is to “maintain and strengthen the quality of Jewish life and engagement in Montreal, in Israel and in the world”.

“The capitalist system is the least bad in the world, he says, and it is more social in Quebec and in Canada. I didn’t steal my money, but you have to give back to be fair, because taxes are not enough. »

One may disagree with Mitch Garber’s opinions, but one cannot fault him for being amorphous and adept at alternative facts. Exactly the kind that Elon Musk should cherish.