DAVID MENZIES | School board refuses to bend the knee to the lunatic fringe, but the fight is far from over
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
139.89009
Summary
A school board voted down a demand to fly the rainbow flag that represents the LGBTQ+ community at the York Catholic District School Board headquarters in Aurora, Ontario. Is this a slap in the face to the queer community? Or is it a victory for Catholic parents of Catholic school children that adhere to Catholic doctrine?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Tonight, thanks to a democratic process, the pride flag will not be raised at a Catholic
00:00:22.580
school board district, but will this be reversed in the months to come? It's Wednesday, May 31st,
00:00:31.420
2023. I'm David Menzies, and this is the Ezra Levent Show.
00:00:42.680
Well, that was quite the raucous shindig at the York Catholic District School Board
00:00:55.780
headquarters situated in sleepy little Aurora, Ontario the other night. That's when members
00:01:01.960
and allies of the L-G-G-B-D-T-T-T-I-Q-Q-A-A-P-P community gathered en masse. By the way,
00:01:12.800
am I missing anyone here? Do I need to go on Wheel of Fortune and buy a vowel, or does a 14-letter
00:01:20.700
descriptor cover all the bases? Anyway, Monday evening's board meeting, in terms of the queer
00:01:28.120
community, kind of resembled a Yoko Ono concert. You know, it started off badly and then proceeded
00:01:45.520
Ooh, now that's entertainment. I must observe that Miss Ono's song kind of resembles the oratory so
00:01:53.720
many of the spirit unicorns were spouting after a particular vote. You see, on this evening,
00:02:00.840
once and for all, the YCDSB was going to determine whether the pride flag would be raised on
00:02:08.840
York Catholic District School Board properties. And seconds after the majority of trustees turned
00:02:15.060
their thumbs down on that proposition, several members of the Rainbow Mafia engaged in a hissy fit
00:02:23.680
and then they hastily retreated to a guarded meeting room so that they could weep. Oh yeah,
00:02:32.460
they really did that. You know, it makes you wonder, haven't any of these folks seen a league of
00:02:39.220
their own? Are you crying? No. Are you crying? Are you crying? There's no crying? There's no crying in
00:02:52.380
baseball! That's right, there's no crying in baseball and I'm pretty darn sure there's no crying at school
00:02:58.660
board meetings either. At least I've never witnessed crying at school board meetings, even when I showed
00:03:05.220
up pretending to be Busty Lemieux at the Halton District School Board last October. Now that's
00:03:11.700
something to cry over. Then again, the adults in the room that night, those would be, you know, Catholic
00:03:18.520
parents of Catholic school children that adhere to Catholic doctrine that one would expect to be taught
00:03:25.060
in a Catholic school system. Well, some of those folks were crying too, but those were tears of joy.
00:03:31.400
Can you blame them? Victories at Ontario school boards for Team Normal are few and far between
00:03:38.320
these days. So many school boards have veered so out of control, going woke and politically correct.
00:03:46.040
No longer are schools all that concerned with the three R's. Rather, indoctrination has eclipsed
00:03:52.040
education. Marxism is being peddled in the guise of inclusion, diversity and equity. So it was that for
00:03:59.620
the concerned parents in the audience, the YCDSB turning down the demand to fly the pride flag
00:04:07.900
was a sweet victory in the mouth of madness. As for the LGBTers, one must ponder, is this community
00:04:17.280
really that fragile? You know that unless a multicolored piece of cloth gets to flap in the breeze,
00:04:24.740
then this inaction is akin to a hate crime? That this will somehow be constituted as a slap in the
00:04:34.940
face? Jeez Louise, it's a flag for goodness sake and a fake flag at that. Get over yourselves.
00:04:43.320
By the way, speaking of the pride flag, this thing, like some of the constituents it represents,
00:04:50.160
it seems very fluid these days, doesn't it, folks? Here's the original pride flag. Now, speaking strictly
00:04:57.860
from a design standpoint, I like it. I mean, who doesn't like a rainbow after all? The presentation
00:05:04.080
is colorful yet simple, you know, like those classic jerseys the Houston Astros used to wear.
00:05:11.220
Indeed, both the original pride flag and the old Houston Astros jersey work if one subscribes to the
00:05:17.740
design philosophy of less is more. But recently, this rendition, or is it abomination, this is what has
00:05:27.600
come along. Apparently, the triangular white, pink, and baby blue hues were added in order to represent
00:05:34.740
the trans community. But wait a minute here. Wasn't the trans community already represented in the original
00:05:42.280
design? I mean, the T in LGBT stands for transgender, right? Ah, never mind. Trans people are extra special
00:05:50.660
people, so they deserve to get double dipping treatment vis-a-vis the flag, I suppose, even if
00:05:57.140
it ruins the design of the original flag. By the way, the brown and black hues apparently represent
00:06:03.280
brown and black people. But wait a minute. Isn't the flag all about sexual orientation and gender
00:06:10.200
identification? What does race have to do with that? Well, I guess we'll all have to deal with it,
00:06:17.300
okay? But wait, there's more folks. The other day at a Starbucks in Whitby, Ontario, I came across
00:06:24.420
this rendition of the pride flag, which was displayed in the cafe's window. Yellow has been added along with
00:06:32.380
a purple circle. What in blue hell is that? I know, I suppose I could Google it, but honestly, I just can't be
00:06:40.020
bothered. Besides, what do you want to bet that the flag will be further updated for 2024? How about adding
00:06:48.220
an illustration of the kitchen sink? I'm just saying this, my queer friends. Your symbol is quickly
00:06:54.840
becoming the Pontiac Aztec of flags, given the hideous mishmash of angles and lines and jarring colors.
00:07:02.720
You're one tweak away from this symbol becoming, well, the flag version of the most hideous hockey
00:07:10.400
jersey ever concocted. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Vancouver Canucks, circa 1978 to 1985. You know,
00:07:19.080
I can't believe I bought one of those jerseys back in high school when my second favorite Maple Leaf
00:07:24.420
player of all time, that would be Tiger Williams, was traded to Vancouver. Did he say which? Anyway,
00:07:31.100
when it comes to flags and inclusivity, I kind of like the red and white one that flies over our
00:07:37.800
great, albeit constantly under attack dominion. That would be the Canadian flag. Last I checked,
00:07:44.140
it's supposed to stand for all Canadians, regardless of one's sexual orientation or gender identification.
00:07:50.860
But apparently, such an all-encompassing flag isn't good enough for the queer community. I don't get
00:07:59.460
that. After all, a nation's flag is supposed to unify all its citizens, is it not? Another thing,
00:08:07.780
how and why did this celebration of queerness morph from a single Pride Day to a Pride Week to a Pride
00:08:16.240
Month? And now advocates are pushing for Pride season, you know, that chunk of calendar real estate,
00:08:24.280
otherwise known as summer. How much acknowledgement do these cats need? Indeed, does it not seem so
00:08:32.880
perverse to you that there is only one day set aside every November to honour our veterans and those
00:08:40.740
who made the ultimate sacrifice? Why is that? Well, you know, I think I know why, given the context of
00:08:47.680
the loony left these days, which is to say, this idea of men going to war and fighting and sometimes
00:08:54.460
dying, well, that's so much toxic masculinity, isn't it? Can't have that, not these days, even though it
00:09:01.720
was a damn good thing we had copious amounts of toxic masculinity some 80 years ago, when it came to
00:09:09.700
putting down a certain dictator hell-bent on world conquest while carrying out a genocide. Otherwise,
00:09:16.940
maybe we're speaking German in Canada today. Otherwise, the swastika, rather than the maple leaf,
00:09:23.280
flies from coast to coast to coast. Say, do you think there would be any tolerance for the Pride flag
00:09:30.000
in that sort of fascist regime? So maybe a little toxic masculinity here and there is not such a bad
00:09:37.580
thing after all, wouldn't you say? And yet, how shameful that four of the YCDSB trustees
00:09:45.480
placed their Catholic values in the closet on Monday night and actually voted for the so-called
00:09:52.660
Pride progress flag to be hoisted. They bought into the lunatic fringe argument that by not raising the
00:10:02.200
Catholic schools, Catholic schools would not be safe spaces? Seriously, that was an argument that
00:10:09.580
was presented. No Pride flag in June means homophobia and transphobia and biphobia would just go off the
00:10:18.560
charts. Does anyone really believe that? Look, if there are any students who are part of the queer
00:10:25.540
community at any school who are being harassed and bullied, well, that is appalling and egregious.
00:10:33.080
But does anyone really think that the gay bashers out there are rendered impotent by the flying of a
00:10:42.900
pride flag? Really? No. What's needed is for school principals to actually live up to the zero tolerance
00:10:53.060
for bullying mantra as opposed to simply giving lip service to it, which is sadly par for the course
00:11:01.820
these days. Speaking of bullying, we also have to consider the players behind the pride flag campaign,
00:11:09.840
such as Paulo de Bono. Now, this guy is a real piece of work, folks. He is or maybe was a teacher
00:11:17.400
in the Toronto Catholic District School Board. When we first attempted to reach out to him,
00:11:25.480
he was teaching at St. Antoine Daniel School. But due to an avalanche of parents complaining
00:11:34.180
to the Toronto Catholic Board, Mr. de Bono has either been reassigned to another school or maybe,
00:11:42.540
just like Bussy Labue and Halton, he is being paid a full salary to stay at home and do nothing.
00:11:49.900
That's how school boards roll these days, folks. They reward failure. So what's the skinny on de Bono?
00:11:59.220
Well, if you can imagine, he's a Catholic, a Catholic school board teacher, no less, who hates
00:12:06.340
Catholicism. I know that's crazy, kind of like saying, you know, I know of a wolf that hates to
00:12:13.480
eat red meat, but it's true. Our friend Sue Ann Levy at True North has done a stellar job chronicling
00:12:21.880
the perverse agenda of Mr. de Bono. For example, he claims that Jesus Christ was black and that he was
00:12:30.100
either transgender or non-binary, even though he has no proof of this whatsoever. He bragged that he
00:12:38.100
was going to be the first teacher to bring drag queen story hour to a Catholic school. Even to this
00:12:45.100
day, he wears two masks indoors, typically peppered with LGBT political statements. And at St. Antoine,
00:12:53.720
he allegedly took down the cross in his classroom and replaced it with a pride flag,
00:12:58.800
creating a so-called rainbow room. And de Bono is a nasty piece of work. If he disagrees with you,
00:13:08.520
he'll block you on Twitter. If he really, really disagrees with you, he'll threaten to sue you.
00:13:15.960
How Christian of him. And even though he works with the Toronto Catholic District School Board,
00:13:22.940
De Bono has been attending meetings at the York Catholic District School Board where he tries to,
00:13:30.860
oh, I don't know, pollinate his perversity north of Hogtown. He also likes to goad practicing Catholic
00:13:38.420
parents. By the way, we caught up with him on Monday evening as he waited to get into the YCDSB meeting.
00:13:45.440
Hey, we always believe in getting the other side of the story. But when it comes to De Bono,
00:13:51.560
as they say in Alabama, this dog don't hunt. Here, check it out.
00:13:57.080
Hey, Mr. De Bono, what brings you up to the York Catholic Region District School Board?
00:14:04.020
David Menzies. I tried to reach out to you, but you blocked me.
00:14:07.160
Now, you claim that Jesus Christ was a transgender racial person. I think black or brown. Is that
00:14:17.340
correct? You're no longer at the school. Now, have you been transferred or have you been fired?
00:14:26.320
You can't articulate your points, Mr. De Bono. I thought you were a teacher.
00:14:30.320
Are you teaching at another school? Sir, why is someone who is employed with a Catholic school
00:14:41.740
board not beholden to Catholic values? Well, this is incredible, folks. This is actually
00:14:48.460
a schoolteacher with the Toronto Catholic School Board. He's no longer at his school. We don't know
00:14:55.800
if he's being transferred to another school, or maybe it's like Busty Lemieux. He's being paid full
00:15:02.220
salary and benefits to stay at home. Now, we have reached out to Mr. De Bono in the past,
00:15:08.900
but he's got a funny communication strategy. By the way, as far as I could tell, everyone
00:15:14.480
in that lineup was part of Team Spirit Unicorn. They began lining up more than an hour before
00:15:21.120
the board meeting was scheduled to start. The idea was to pack the room so that those parents who
00:15:28.620
actually embrace Catholicism would be shut out from attending the meeting. And check out this
00:15:36.000
little interaction we had with a pair of De Bono defenders, I guess. It was downright weird.
00:15:43.760
Pardon me? You have nothing better to do? Who are you? Who are you? I'm David Menzies with
00:15:49.180
Rebel News. Okay, well, you can go. Okay. Did you say I can go? Yeah, you should. Okay. I'm having
00:15:56.220
difficult. I'm having trouble hearing you with your face diaper on, actually. Oh, my God.
00:16:06.000
So, why do you want me to go? Is this not a publicly funded school board? Who's that?
00:16:15.240
This teacher over there. Oh, you speak for Mr. De Bono. He's unable to himself. I thought
00:16:19.300
he was an educated man. Yeah, because y'all are idiots. So, that's all I'm going to say.
00:16:22.920
So, you're just a bigot. You can go. Oh, what makes me a bigot, ma'am or sir? I'm not
00:16:27.720
sure. I didn't misgender you, did I? Oh, please. Go fuck yourself. Oh, that's not very ladylike.
00:16:33.740
Oh, oh, now you're f***ing misgendering me. Ladylike. Oh, well, what are you exactly?
00:16:40.820
None of your f***ing business. What are you? But you said I misgendered you. If I don't
00:16:44.720
know what you are, how can I not misgender you? Don't you love the love-trumps-hate community?
00:16:51.880
First, I'm told to beat it, even though I'm on public property. And then someone who truly
00:16:59.220
resembled a female screams about me misgendering him-her, but he-she won't tell me what her
00:17:07.900
or his gender is so that I can correct my verbiage? Bizarre. And I hate to be rude or insensitive
00:17:17.420
here, but do you think maybe that when it comes to Mr. De Bono and his soy-based sidekicks,
00:17:25.500
there might be, you know, an element of mental illness at play here? I mean, are these folks
00:17:33.300
trans activists or are they members of the cosplay community embracing the sort of characters you'd
00:17:40.720
find at Arkham Asylum? You showed me what was possible. You showed me all it takes is fear
00:17:48.160
and a little focused violence. You inspired me. You're out of your goddamn mind.
00:17:55.000
What? This is all in your head. You're sick. Twisted. How can you say that? You think you'll
00:18:00.180
be remembered? You're a pathetic psychopath. Begging for attention. You're gonna die.
00:18:06.000
No, no, no, no, no. A nobody. But you know, folks, when it comes to the culture wars playing out
00:18:13.460
at the school board level, there's plenty of blame to go around, isn't there? Like where in blue hell
00:18:20.480
is the umpire? I speak of Ontario's milquetoast minister of education, Stephen Lecce, who is about
00:18:29.020
as effective as a professional wrestling referee these days. While the York Catholic district school
00:18:36.900
board did the right thing on Monday by not bending the knee to the lunatic fringe, so many other school
00:18:44.760
boards are hopelessly out of control. Ottawa, Toronto, Waterloo, Durham, Halton, bastions of wokeism,
00:18:53.620
trustees who look upon parents as enemies. Lecce can dissolve these school boards, but he won't.
00:19:01.120
Why? Then again, are we approaching this from the wrong angle? Maybe Lecce is all in when it comes to
00:19:08.980
woke nonsense himself? Because it's now abundantly clear that Lecce, who is supposedly a conservative,
00:19:17.420
yeah, insert laugh track here, folks, is incompetent and ineffective. As the saying goes,
00:19:24.440
if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Far from our knight in shining armor,
00:19:30.300
Lecce is the cowardly line. But while there was victory in York region on Monday, the question arises,
00:19:40.060
does an egregious epilogue to the flag debate lurk? Will the decision by the York Catholic district school
00:19:48.240
board be tolerated? Certainly, the mainstream media has been covering this story as though a day of infamy
00:19:57.380
occurred in Aurora. Expect them to continue to pressure the YCDSB to bend the knee to the rainbow
00:20:05.540
hued mob. After all, dissenting opinions on this file are not allowed. And if you want proof of this,
00:20:13.540
folks, check out what happened to Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass just yesterday. You see,
00:20:19.180
on social media, Bass indicated that he supported the boycotts of Bud Light and Target regarding those
00:20:26.440
companies' disastrous LGBT promotions. And this is an opinion shared by most. Check out the current stock price
00:20:36.500
of Anheuser-Busch and Target these days. But while the leftists chant, diversity is our strength,
00:20:43.500
this mantra does not apply to a diversity of opinions. The Blue Jays are owned by robbers,
00:20:50.120
or I mean Rogers, a totally woke company. And Bass was obviously read the Riot Act. Even though popular
00:20:59.660
support is on his side, Rogers is beholden to political correctness. As well, when it comes to,
00:21:06.660
you know, moving the merchandise, Rogers is cognizant that so many in the queer community are
00:21:13.660
dinks, i.e. double income, no kids. That means they have oodles of disposable income. And that bodes well
00:21:24.380
for season ticket sales, as well as all that grotesquely marked up made in China swag on sale
00:21:32.400
at the stadium's gift shops. So do you really think any allegedly insensitive comments are going to be
00:21:41.120
tolerated by Mr. Rogers and company? And so it was that Bass had to deliver a mea culpa at a press
00:21:48.640
conference. That was kind of like a modern day version of Circe's walk of shame. Check it out.
00:21:55.260
I recognized yesterday, I made a post that was hurtful to the Pride community, which includes
00:22:01.700
friends of mine and close family members of mine. And I am truly sorry for that.
00:22:07.700
I just spoke with my teammates, took them, shared with them my actions yesterday. I apologized with them.
00:22:13.440
And as of right now, I'm using the Blue Jays resources to better educate myself, to make
00:22:18.240
better decisions moving forward. The ballpark is for everybody. We include all fans at the ballpark
00:22:24.340
and we want to welcome everybody. That's all I have to say. Thank you.
00:22:28.400
Sad, but as good as Bass is as a pitcher, he had to bend the knee as an immediately,
00:22:36.440
or he'd no longer be a Toronto Blue Jay, but rather most likely pitching for one of the club's
00:22:42.920
farm teams, such as the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. And that's the thing, isn't it? The media party
00:22:49.420
is pressuring Lecce to force the York Catholic District School Board to reverse its decision.
00:22:58.440
And because Lecce has a spine that makes Jell-O look like titanium alloy, he might just bend the knee.
00:23:07.260
It wouldn't surprise me. He did so when it came to the teacher strike last year, if you might recall.
00:23:12.920
Of course, the nuke for the pride flag people will be a formal complaint to the unelected and
00:23:20.680
non-accountable Ontario Human Rights Board. And it's a safe bet that this kangaroo court will mandate
00:23:29.500
that the school board jettison Catholic values and raise that pride flag or else. Or else what?
00:23:36.900
Or else how about losing your public funding? Just wait. Does this come as any surprise, really, folks?
00:23:45.440
We live in Justin Trudeau's Canada in 2023. On Monday night in Aurora, the York Catholic District
00:23:53.400
School Board went through a democratic process regarding the raising of the pride flag.
00:23:59.820
The no side won six to four. That should be the end of the date, but it won't be.
00:24:08.620
Put another way, in 1984, the late great Tina Turner scored a number one hit single with the song
00:24:16.700
What's Love Got To Do With It. But these days, when it comes to the tyrannical left, their theme song
00:24:25.340
seems to be What's Democracy Got To Do With It?
00:24:30.060
Well, we know so many Ontario school boards have nothing but contempt for parents. So many trustees are
00:24:49.440
control freaks and censorious thugs. But some school board employees would appear to also loathe
00:24:57.820
teachers as well. At least those teachers that dare to speak out about problems. Case in point,
00:25:05.020
an elementary school teacher in the Toronto District School Board says her day-to-day reality is one of
00:25:12.280
quote, fear reprisal and fear of reprisal, end quote. For example, reporting on acts of violence,
00:25:19.060
well, that's verboten. The board likes to pretend everything is okay and they just sweep problems
00:25:26.560
under the rug. And joining me now to speak about this is the superb investigative journalist with
00:25:32.960
True North. That would be Sue Ann Levy. Sue Ann, welcome to the Ezra Levent Show.
00:25:42.220
Where is your prosthetic? Why are you not wearing them today?
00:25:46.480
Okay. I think Ezra has made me put those back in the closet, Sue Ann.
00:25:53.140
But Sue Ann, and of course you referred to the nonsense going on at one of the worst school
00:25:58.720
boards in Ontario, the Halton District School Board. But your most recent piece in True North,
00:26:03.560
it's entitled, The TDSB's Culture of Fear and Silence. What do you mean by that, Sue Ann?
00:26:10.360
Well, it's been an ongoing thing, actually, Dave, and it hasn't improved. And as I note in the piece,
00:26:17.820
you know, way back in 2007, lawyer Julian Faulconer, who was a bit to the left, talked about the culture
00:26:25.500
of fear and that teachers were afraid to speak out. And there was a lot of, I guess, lip service paid to
00:26:34.880
ending that sort of thing and allowing teachers to speak up about primarily violence in schools.
00:26:42.040
And that never happens. Succession of school board directors, most of them getting woker by the
00:26:49.000
minute. And then comes Margaret Wilson, an education consultant that I highly respected in 2015.
00:26:57.700
She talked also about the culture of fear. Same reason, teachers are afraid to speak up.
00:27:04.880
The administrators at the school board have sweet problems under the rug, in particular violence,
00:27:10.080
most especially violence. And fast forward to 2023, it's gotten out of control, absolutely out of
00:27:19.160
control. And the big difference now is that teachers don't seem to care anymore about speaking up,
00:27:24.780
although they're anonymous. I've received a flurry of open letters. There's one more that I'm going to
00:27:30.720
be writing about from the Peel and Toronto school boards about violence in the classroom.
00:27:37.380
You know, and Swen, I mean, certainly in the popular press, we do see stories on a weekly basis about
00:27:42.540
schools that are out of control in terms of violence and intimidation and bullying.
00:27:48.080
I don't get it. If you're an educator, if you are caring for these kids in school while they're in
00:27:56.260
school, and so much is said about so-called safe spaces. Well, if the spaces aren't safe, in fact,
00:28:03.640
if they're rife with violence, then what in blue hell does the school board, what do they have a
00:28:10.020
problem with teachers reporting these problems? I don't get it.
00:28:14.220
Well, I think the two school boards in particular, Peel and the Toronto school boards are deep into
00:28:23.360
this anti-black racism agenda, this anti-oppression agendas where you as a white male, me as a, I guess
00:28:33.440
I'm a little bit down in the oppression. I'm more oppressed, but I am white, are oppressing black
00:28:41.800
students. And they brought in a series of maneuvers that include critical race theory, critical race
00:28:48.080
theory being that blacks are oppressed and white people are the oppressors. And tantamount are in
00:28:56.120
conjunction with that. They have relaxed standards of discipline. So the standards of discipline,
00:29:03.940
they're no longer expulsions, no longer suspensions. Discipline is considered in these two boards in
00:29:10.880
particular. And this did start with Kathleen Wynne, I might add, the discipline is considered
00:29:17.480
oppressive. So it's like the lunatics are running the asylum now. And I'm just going to name the school
00:29:25.760
board director. There's a constant theme. Colleen Russell-Brollins came from the Peel board where
00:29:32.600
there's a lot of problems. And now is at the Toronto school board spreading her ideology. And
00:29:38.360
this is what's happened. Teachers are just fed up.
00:29:44.840
You know, Sue Ann, you bring race into it. And I can only think of way back in 1963 when
00:29:51.080
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous, I have a dream speech, where he referenced that
00:29:57.240
he dreams of a day where a person is not judged by their skin color, but by the content of their
00:30:04.220
character. And you know, Sue Ann, I'm not making a joke here. If Dr. King were alive and well and
00:30:10.420
saying that today, he would be accused of hate speech. I mean...
00:30:16.220
He'd be an Uncle Tom. He'd be an Uncle Tom. He would be considered an Uncle Tom.
00:30:21.540
There is no such thing with these educrats when it comes to a colorblind scenario.
00:30:28.040
Everything is race-driven, it would seem. How did we get here?
00:30:35.780
Well, I have to blame, really, Kathleen Wynne and the education ministry, and the education
00:30:40.920
ministry that she ran, and Mitzi Hunter, who happens to be running for mayor in Toronto.
00:30:46.660
They brought in a series of edicts through their equity and diversity unit in the education
00:30:56.700
ministry that dumbed down the curriculum, talked about anti-oppressive or anti-Black racism.
00:31:05.340
They actually, it is critical race theory, but they use anti-Black racism to try and tone it
00:31:11.380
down a little bit. And that's, it did start with Kathleen Wynne, and these school boards just
00:31:17.060
completely, are completely woke, pandering to the, as we call it, the BIPOC crowd. And
00:31:24.620
unfortunately, Doug Ford and Stephen Lecce, Stephen Lecce has absolutely no guts to stand up to them,
00:31:33.200
to these school boards, and they've done nothing to reverse the problems.
00:31:37.640
You know, when it comes to Minister Milktos Lecce, Sue Ann, I constantly have parents come up to me in
00:31:46.780
frustration saying, where the hell is the Minister of Education? He has the power to dissolve these
00:31:53.560
out-of-control school boards, and he won't. He's AWOL. Here's the thing, Sue Ann, maybe we've been
00:32:00.540
coming at from, coming at this from the wrong angle. Consider this, what if Minister Lecce is on board with
00:32:08.120
all this wokeism, and critical race theory, and political correctness, you name it, what if he himself
00:32:16.600
is an advocate? That would explain his inaction on this file, wouldn't you say?
00:32:22.060
Well, I think there is some truth to that. I think that they don't want to start, they feel their
00:32:29.360
hands are tied, which is ridiculous. They don't want to start with the school boards, but all they have
00:32:34.400
to do is take over one or two school boards. I would start with Toronto. The trustees are bad, if not
00:32:40.840
worse, than some of the, I call them educrats or administrators. All they would have to do is take
00:32:47.340
over one of these boards, show the parents that he really cares about education and not about all
00:32:54.820
this symbolism and wokeism, and that I think would set the standard for other boards in Ontario.
00:33:02.860
The other thing is that I said way back, way, way back when Ford took over, that they didn't clean out
00:33:09.000
the woke people from the Kathleen era in the education ministry, and there they are still doing
00:33:15.400
what they do best, you know, providing edicts that have nothing to do with academics and everything
00:33:22.100
to do with what they call it social-emotional learning, which is ridiculous.
00:33:27.160
Oh, I agree, Sue Ann. This is a conservative government in name only. There's nothing conservative
00:33:33.040
about this government. It's an absolute disgrace. And getting back to your article, I mean, there were
00:33:39.020
so many disturbing examples you had in it. For example, you said that there were TDS employees,
00:33:47.020
and I think this goes back many years, who were so afraid to use their board email addresses for fear
00:33:56.620
of being monitored. Sue Ann, this sounds like right out of the pages of 1984.
00:34:01.880
Yeah, and there's, you know, I think it's going to come out more and more. I wrote about
00:34:06.340
another teacher's open letter in Peel, where I could not believe some of the things that were
00:34:12.880
going on. Even I couldn't believe kids sitting in the hall, blasting music, trying to interrupt
00:34:18.940
classes, leaving school whenever they want, putting, you know, going to the washroom and putting
00:34:25.780
unsightly stuff on the wall that, you know, I mean, it's absolutely disgusting getting in
00:34:33.720
teachers' faces, using the F word, absolutely no discipline, you know, breaking down doors
00:34:42.360
of classrooms. And by the way, by the way, this was grade six to eight.
00:34:48.420
Unbelievable. And I know, Sue Ann, I believe you've written about this in the past. We had
00:34:53.560
a great little project going where we had uniformed police officers in schools. And mothers, including
00:35:03.720
racialized mothers, as the left likes to say, they were impassioned about keeping them there
00:35:09.400
because their kids weren't being shaken down. They were actually going to school to learn rather than
00:35:15.640
to be bullied. And for some kind of woke reason, that program ended. I would suggest that's a
00:35:23.640
contributing factor for the kind of violence and vandalism that you just described.
00:35:29.400
Huge, huge. That would have been a huge deterrent to have cops in schools. I was, in fact, at the
00:35:35.200
police services board meeting in Toronto, when a variety of activists showed up and were screaming
00:35:41.000
and yelling, led by Desmond Cole, the late great, not late great, but you know, we don't hear much
00:35:46.520
from him anymore, Desmond Cole, the black activist. And there were a whole group of people, teachers,
00:35:53.240
administrators, parents, who begged the police services board not to get rid of the cops in
00:35:59.080
schools program. Here we are, I think it's five years later, and it's absolute anarchy and chaos.
00:36:06.760
And then on the, I guess, the administrative side, the woke madness at the Toronto District
00:36:15.080
School Board continues. Earlier this month, Hugh Beach Public School had a wonderful pro-Mother's Day
00:36:22.760
sign on their signage. And evidently, somebody who I believe doesn't have a kid at the school and
00:36:31.240
might even be childless complained that something that was pro-mother, and look, I don't care
00:36:36.520
who you are. I don't care if your mother wasn't a part, isn't a part of your life, or maybe your
00:36:42.120
mother has passed on. But 100% of people on this planet have a mother. And it was deemed
00:36:51.480
sign non grata. The school had to take it down. Meanwhile, yesterday, my cameraman Lincoln and I
00:36:56.600
were at Danforth Tech Collegiate Institute in East York, where they had three drag queens performing at
00:37:04.680
lunch hour. I used to think school was about learning the three R's, not, you know, sitting
00:37:10.440
in the gym watching three drag queens shake their booties. What the hell is going on, Sue Ann?
00:37:17.000
Well, it's the infusion of this woke agenda that started with the Kathleen Wynne era and has
00:37:25.160
continued under our current premier, sadly. And where academics are taking a back seat to this, as I
00:37:35.000
said, social and emotional learning, anti-oppressive agenda, all that kind of stuff. And, you know,
00:37:42.840
besides the drag queens, which I happen to love drag queens, but I think there's a time and place for drag
00:37:48.120
queens and I don't think they should be in schools, period, more specifically the junior schools,
00:37:55.480
elementary schools. But, you know, this whole woke agenda has taken over and kids aren't learning.
00:38:03.480
And, you know, teachers will tell you also that they're subject to indoctrination, to, I guess,
00:38:11.320
seminars or talks from their administrators about how, if they're white, they're actually
00:38:17.000
automatically racist and they have to think about, you know, being good people and, you know,
00:38:23.320
thinking about the black activism agenda. And, you know, the other thing that has happened,
00:38:30.200
which really bothers me, is it's given rise to a series of what I call race grifters,
00:38:35.720
people who have no qualifications whatsoever, except that they're, you know, they've got their skin
00:38:41.560
color, are coming in and giving talks and making a huge amount of money about racism and anti-black
00:38:49.880
racism. And, you know, about the fact that you, you, Dave, are a white supremacist.
00:38:56.600
Oh, listen, you know, my boss, Ezra, he likes to talk about human rights being like a poker game. So
00:39:04.280
if I'm a white straight male, which I am, that's basically the three of clubs. But if you are trans,
00:39:13.080
if you have a disability, if you're a convert to Islam, well, that's a royal flush. I mean,
00:39:18.680
that's how the human rights racketeers look at people, Sue Ann. Sadly, we're not equal. They don't
00:39:25.960
subscribe to what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said almost 50 years ago. It is appalling. One last question.
00:39:34.280
Sue Ann, the buck has to stop with Premier Ford. And what I don't understand, I'm trying to get from
00:39:42.520
you right now what the unspoken strategy is for a lack of inaction. I mean, once upon a time,
00:39:49.720
going back 10 years ago, when Doug and his late great brother, Rob, and they're not the same. We have
00:39:56.360
found that out over the years. They're completely different people. I remember the days when they
00:40:01.560
called Toronto Star journalists, a bunch of maggots. Now they've given Torstar a gambling license that's
00:40:08.440
worth half a billion dollars a year. When it comes to this file, education, as you said correctly,
00:40:17.160
this was all the wind government bringing in these mandates. The PCs have a super majority at
00:40:24.520
Queen's Park. The Liberals aren't even an official party with seven seats right now.
00:40:30.600
Why are they so reluctant to do what I think so many members of Ford Nation wanted Doug Ford to do in the
00:40:40.520
first place, which is, you know, part of the agenda, reigning in these out of control school
00:40:45.880
boards? Well, they're not listening to the average parent. That is for darn sure. And I think parents
00:40:51.560
have to get more active. And I'm, as a matter of fact, part of a group that's just formed that
00:40:58.760
we hope to be similar. And I don't have any children in the system, but I've certainly written about it
00:41:04.040
enough. Um, similar to a group in the States called Moms for Liberty, which have made a huge splash in,
00:41:13.240
every state practically in the United States and, uh, keep on top of these woke school boards are in
00:41:19.160
their faces, expose the woke ism, uh, fight back. And I don't think there's enough of that. I think
00:41:26.360
parents, uh, aren't as involved as they should be. It's starting, it's starting, and you're starting to
00:41:32.840
hear from teachers, but there has to be a lot more backlash. I totally agree, uh, Sue Ann. And
00:41:39.560
gee, when you say Moms for Liberty, has the FBI and the Department of Justice deemed them a domestic
00:41:45.080
terror group yet? That sounds like a really radical name. As a matter of fact, you're so funny. They
00:41:51.400
have been called that. Oh no. Yeah. You know what? Sue Ann, you've just proved a thesis I have. 2019
00:41:58.600
Mad Magazine goes out of business. Uh, my rationale, because that used to be a money spinner of a
00:42:04.520
magazine. The world is beyond parody, my friend. Uh, the front page is Mad Magazine. And I just want to
00:42:13.000
say a special thank you for all your great investigative journalism. You're exposing these
00:42:18.360
serpents and keep it coming Sue Ann. You're welcome to come back on the show anytime. Thank you so much,
00:42:24.120
my friend. Thank you, uh, Dave. I mean, Busty Lemieux. No, Dave. Please, I scare easy.
00:42:44.920
Well, folks, lots of response to Sheila Gunn-Reed's monologue yesterday on the Ezra Levin show when she
00:42:50.040
was guest hosting regarding victory in Alberta for the UCP. And of course, that province's
00:42:57.240
initiative in terms of harm reduction programs. Bruce Atchison writes, pray for Daniel Smith.
00:43:04.680
I'm sure hard left activists will make up all sorts of slanders and write every kind of libel
00:43:12.680
about her. We conservative folks must do a better job to show our fence-sitting friends
00:43:19.800
that conservatism works far better than socialism, communism's little brother. Well, you know what,
00:43:26.920
Bruce? I tend to agree with you. I think we on the right, we're just too darn polite. We fight by the
00:43:34.440
rules of Queensbury. Meanwhile, those on the left are bringing foreign objects and hitting below the
00:43:41.800
belt. I'm not saying we should emulate that kind of fighting back, but we need to fight harder. Heck,
00:43:49.480
the country is at stake, wouldn't you say? And Chris Coyle writes, in Canada now, cigarettes will have
00:43:58.120
individual warnings on each smoke as we hand out heroin and meth. You know, I didn't know about that.
00:44:07.240
I've got to be honest, as someone who's never smoked a cigarette in his life, that's not going to change
00:44:13.480
anytime soon with those horror chiller warnings that they put on the packages, you know, the bleeding
00:44:21.240
heart, the cracked brain, what have you. But to your point, it doesn't make any sense. Why are some
00:44:29.400
addictions verboten and taxed and others are free? You mentioned cigarettes versus heroin and meth.
00:44:36.920
Well, what if somebody lost their license due to drinking and driving? In theory, according to the
00:44:44.120
left, we should be making house calls to their place of residence and giving them booze and actually not
00:44:51.960
charging for it. It's an addiction after all, but riddle me this, how is that going to improve
00:44:58.120
anything for the individual and society at large? Unbelievable. Well, folks, that takes care of
00:45:05.320
tonight's edition of the Ezra LeVant Show. Thank you so much for tuning in. My beloved colleague,
00:45:10.760
Sheila Gunn-Reed, she's back tomorrow, Thursday, and she'll have a great show. I am CERN.