Chrystia Freeland rescues young Saudi woman from luxury Bangkok airport hotel — but silent about a Canadian on China's death row
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
165.34125
Summary
A Saudi woman, 18, battles to avoid being returned to her family, who she fears will kill her after being stopped at Bangkok airport when she fled, having renounced Islam. She says they would kill her if she returned.
Transcript
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Tonight, Chrystia Freeland rescues a young Saudi woman from the discomfort of a luxury
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airport hotel in Thailand, but is silent about a Canadian on death row in China.
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It's January 14th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it
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About 10 days ago, someone wrote this tweet in Arabic
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from a luxury airport hotel in Bangkok, Thailand.
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Now, you can see the English translation underneath.
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It says, I am the girl who escaped from Kuwait to Thailand.
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My life is at stake, and I am now in real danger
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And as things go, if you ask me to choose between a young woman
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I'm going to choose a young woman's freedom every time.
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If my family in Saudi Arabia and the Kuwait embassy,
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So the translation's not perfect, but you get the point.
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She started tweeting more and more and bolder and bolder.
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Eventually, she showed her face and started showing forms of identification, too,
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If you are a young woman who wants help to flee from Saudi Arabian imams,
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She said, I'm the girl who run away from Kuwait to Thailand.
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I'm in real danger because the Saudi embassy trying to forcing me
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to go back to Saudi Arabia while I'm at the airport waiting for my second flight.
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So that's her own English, not Bing's translation, but it's pretty good English.
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Now, one of the world's fastest newspapers, and what I mean by that
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is the Daily Mail online from the United Kingdom.
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And they saw the power of this story. It's quite a story, isn't it?
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Let me read their headline, and I love how the Mail online has their bullet points.
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They say, I'm so scared. I have to fight. I don't want to lose my life.
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Saudi woman, 18, battles to avoid being returned to her family,
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after being stopped at Bangkok airport when she fled, having renounced Islam.
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And then you see those bullet points? I love that in a newspaper.
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Rahaf Mohamed Al-Qun, 18, is being held in Bangkok, awaiting deportation.
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She fled her Saudi family, having renounced Islam, and says they will kill her.
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I have to fight because I don't want to lose my life.
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after her mail guardian said she was traveling without his permission.
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but the Kuwait flight she was set to be on has left without her today, officials said.
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Activists and campaigners are publicizing her case with the hashtag Save Rahaf.
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Again, I like the fact that she wants to be free, don't you?
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And that she's a woman, and that she rejects Islam,
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and wants to feel the sun on her face, not wearing a cab.
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What a pleasant change from the Muslim extremists who want to flood into the West,
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seeking to colonize and convert and bring Sharia law.
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This woman looks like the opposite, doesn't she?
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The fact that she's a pretty teenager who speaks English helps a little bit, too.
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At least that's what Chrystia Freeland, our foreign minister, must have thought.
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Oh, Chrystia Freeland has had a terrible month.
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Well, imagine what it's like for the hostages in China.
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Look at this headline. I've shown it to you before from the Globe and Mail.
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13 Canadians have been detained in China since Huawei executives' arrest, says Ottawa.
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China has seized 13 of our fellow citizens as payback.
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For our lawful arrest of a Chinese tycoon named Meng Wanzhou.
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China's still holding several of these hostages, including a former diplomat.
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So Freeland saw an opportunity for a quick media win, don't you think?
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Now, the young woman in Bangkok, Rahaf Al-Khanoun, she wanted to go to Australia.
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Australia, their government, was considering her application.
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And we know that's how decisions in Canada are made.
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That's how Justin Trudeau opened up our border between Quebec and New York State.
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About 50,000 people have crossed illegally since.
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So, yeah, Twitter is our new rule of law under the liberals.
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And so while Australia was actually, you know, considering the application on the merits of the case, getting details like a biography and maybe some proof of things, you know, Freeland read the tweets and that was enough for her.
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So she brought Al-Khanoun to Canada on the weekend.
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And she was, she made sure that she was there to mug for the cameras when Al-Khanoun walked in.
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And look at this, look at this weird, domineering, handsy, smothering, mothering, showboating, just so weird.
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This is Rahaf Al-Khanoun, a very brave new Canadian.
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And Rahaf wanted Canadians to see that she's arrived at her new home.
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And so she would prefer not to take questions today.
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She's a very brave young woman who's been through a lot.
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And then I'll come out and say a few words that people would like.
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Oh, by the way, did she call Al-Khanoun a Canadian?
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I mean, you don't just become a Canadian because a media hound cabinet minister says you are
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Well, you have to be a permanent resident first.
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You have to have your refugee claim heard by a real court, not just by a politician.
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Politicians just can't hand out citizenship like loot bags.
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Even if Trudeau breaks those laws or encourages others to break the laws like our border.
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Much more telegenic than most of Trudeau's Muslim migrants who come to Canada wearing hijabs
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or the full face obscuring the cab and who bring medieval ideas with them.
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Even though some of her story, well, some parts of it seem to change.
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I mean, maybe it's not important that she sometimes says she's 18 and sometimes says she's 20.
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She's obviously an elite member of Saudi society.
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But this was a great opportunity for Chrystia Freeland.
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And certainly better than dealing with this news today.
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In the New York Times, China sentences a Canadian, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, to death.
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He wasn't originally sentenced to death there, but they kicked it up a notch after Canada arrested Meng in December.
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Let me read the first sentence from the New York Times.
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China's diplomatic clash with Canada escalated sharply on Monday.
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When a Chinese court sentenced a Canadian to death for a drug smuggling at a one-day retrial ordered weeks after a Chinese executive's arrest in Canada.
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They're really just window dressing for whatever the Communist Party says.
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There are some lawyers in China, but they're really symbolic.
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Maybe he really was a drug dealer, but it's certain that this was an escalation.
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China is saying, you arrest one of ours, we kill one of yours.
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So that was the news that Chrystia Freeland was facing today.
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So why not scoop up a bounty, a prize, and make sure that she hugs you and make sure she doesn't say anything.
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Now, as I do my research for this video, Chrystia Freeland has yet to put out a public statement on the death sentence in China.
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Now, the last thing I see, and maybe this will change between when I speak this and when it goes to air,
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but the last thing I see on her Twitter feed is indeed about Thailand.
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You see that thing, that Thai pongal thing there?
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That's just typical political pandering to some Thai ethnic festival of some sort.
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So I scrolled back a few days, and I saw nothing about this death sentence.
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Now, Canada is seriously alarmed by today's court decision in Myanmar, that's Burma,
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to uphold the imprisonment of Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kia So-U.
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Now, I'm sure that Wa Lone and Kia So-U are good people.
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Christy Freeland worked for Reuters before she ran for office.
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So maybe this is a favor to her old company that, I don't know, that would be how the
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liberals work, but maybe she just really likes to virtue signal to show how much she
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cares about people, just not people she has any responsibility for or can do anything
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I showed you the other day how Trudeau and Freeland literally made 10 public statements
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on Twitter about a Saudi national named Jamal Khashoggi who got into a fight between
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Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and the Saudis killed them, which is too bad.
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Here's a picture of Khashoggi holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher with the Taliban, so I'm
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not really surprised that his life ended in violence rather than in old age.
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There's no Canadian connection to Jamal Khashoggi.
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It's really none of our business, frankly, but Freeland deeply cared, so did Trudeau.
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A few weeks ago, this guy, scroll down, show his face, a few weeks ago, this guy became
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Again, like Thailand, Malaysia's not a terrible place.
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He left Syria in 2006 to go work in the United Arab Emirates in marketing.
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And his work visa expired, but he stayed there anyways until they finally kicked him out and
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He wanted to go somewhere cool, like Ecuador, but he couldn't for whatever reason, so he
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just stayed at the airport in Malaysia and blogged about it, and he was really cool, and
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he didn't want to go back to Syria, even though the civil war there is over.
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And so Christopher Freeland saw him on Twitter, and presto, saw him on Twitter, presto, he's
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They turned him into a refugee, but he's a refugee from what?
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He hasn't even been in Syria in more than a decade.
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Why are we taking all these Twitter heroes from airports around the world?
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So you've got a couple of media-savvy refugees jumping to the front of the queue.
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She's a Christian who has literally been sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy because
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She was literally sentenced to death, and mobs hunted door-to-door to kill her.
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No help for her, though, because she's a gross Christian, and some Pakistanis would be mad.
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And Trudeau has ended Stephen Harper's policy of letting Christian refugees into Canada.
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It's funny because Harper would talk about letting Christian refugees into Canada, and
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in the 2015 campaign, Trudeau called that disgusting.
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He said it was disgusting that Harper would meet with these Christian refugees.
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Somewhere in the Prime Minister's office, staffers were pouring through their personal
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files to try and see whether these families or find out which families would be suitable
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for a photo-op for the Prime Minister's re-election campaign?
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Yeah, that was 2015 when he was campaigning in the last election.
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This is Rahaf Al-Qinan, a very brave new Canadian.
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And Rahaf wanted Canadians to see that she's arrived at her new home, but she's had a very
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long and tiring journey, and so she would prefer not to take questions today.
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She's a very brave young woman who's been through a lot, and she is now going to go to her new
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home, and then I'll come out and say a few words that people would like.
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Oh, by the way, obviously these things are scripted.
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As we showed you a couple of years ago, just before Syrians get on the plane to Canada,
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Trudeau pressures them to sign a photo release, a waiver letting him use their pictures for
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They don't know what they have to do when the boss of the new country tells them that.
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They don't know what happens if they were to say no.
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Will Trudeau even let them on the plane anymore?
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So, of course, they all sign the release to let Trudeau use them in photo ops.
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I wonder if Chrystia Freeland got a release from Rahaf Al-Qinan.
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He's that far left, open borders, wacko at McLean's, better known as the house husband
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of Catherine McKenna, the far left, wacko environmental minister.
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Anyways, Scott Gilmore was furious about this whole thing.
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Yeah, it's weird coming from one photo op liberal to another, isn't it?
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He said, I confess to mixed feelings about this.
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I'm delighted she is now safe, but this is suspiciously fast.
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Was there political pressure on officials to quickly approve her claim?
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Does this mean politicians could also apply pressure to stop an application?
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I have never seen a liberal oppose a refugee ever, not once before.
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And this, he was saying that in reply to the New York Times story about Al-Qinanun landing.
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He said, but not until I paraded around with her in front of the cameras a bit.
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When the house husband of Catherine McKenna is saying that you swan for the cameras too much,
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And I have never in my life seen a liberal say this before.
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There's something very grubby about using an asylum seeker recently traumatized by her own murderer's family as a photoprop.
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Why is Mr. Catherine McKenna telling Chrystia Freeland to not do photo ops?
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We have someone, Rahaf Al-Qinanun, who says she's 18 or maybe she's 20,
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who says they're in danger if she goes back to Saudi Arabia, which could be true.
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But she's in Bangkok, and Australia is open to taking her.
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But then Chrystia Freeland swoops in, grabs her, physically grabs her,
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and makes sure they're in a really cringy airport.
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I'm the only one who gets to talk to the camera.
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Why can't we hear even one word from the girl herself?
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She has said everything about her situation on Twitter.
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except perhaps what her deal with the Liberal Party was.
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We just don't know what Chrystia Freeland said and did
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and what promises were exchanged and what releases were signed.
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Were any photo releases signed in the airport there?
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I think that's what Catherine McKenna's house husband knows,
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Just standing up for religious freedoms, our constitution.
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Yeah, and just not only for Christian faith, but all faiths.
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I think it's important that we stand up for what's right.
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and I would be here if there's any other group as well.
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I'm here because I don't believe that city council
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and I believe that they shouldn't be making any motions
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You see, there was a Christian conference in the States
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with your friends at a facility that had a big screen.
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And so a local church in Nanaimo, British Columbia,
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rented out the Vancouver Island Community Center
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Well, when the Nanaimo City Council heard this,
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Nanaimo City Council was almost completely thrown out
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Now, I tell you all that because I read a story,
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John, I'm not sure if I told that story very well,
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and they don't have their own church buildings,
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the contract that they had signed and agreed to,
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and so now we've got a court action on the goal.
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you've got progressive or atheistic secularists.
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I mean, this is just a basic fundamental freedom.
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If the city is going to have city-owned facilities
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well, you're only allowed to use the city facilities
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then you're not allowed to use city-owned facilities.
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What was so incredible about the case in Nanaimo