In this episode, Ezra Miller talks with Candice Malcolm, founder of Rebel News, about Bill C-63, the Online Harmens Act, and other ways that the government is throttling freedom of speech and a diversity of opinion in Canada.
00:00:14.680I've said before, and people thought I was being clever or cute, I was neither.
00:00:19.280I've said before that soon there will only be two kinds of journalists left in Canada.
00:00:24.140Those who are approved by, funded by, licensed by the government, and those that are banned by the government.
00:00:34.760That sounded shocking when I first said it, but now it's hurtling towards reality.
00:00:40.120Joining me to talk about this, about Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act,
00:00:46.260and other ways that the government of Canada is throttling freedom of speech and a diversity of opinion,
00:00:51.220is our friend Candice Malcolm, the founder of True North News.
00:00:55.960Great to see you, Candice. Thanks for taking the time.
00:00:59.120Oh, I always enjoy our conversations, Ezra. Thank you so much for having me.
00:01:02.200Well, it's a pleasure having you on the show, and I have to tell you how grateful I am for True North to be here.
00:01:08.740I remember when Rebel News started up nine years ago, it felt very lonely.
00:01:12.520And with the advent of True North a few years after that, and the counter signal, and the new Western Standard,
00:01:20.760I feel like there's a growing community of independent journalists, citizen journalists.
00:01:26.020We're all small compared to the mighty legacy media, but I feel like there's a critical mass now, don't you think?
00:01:32.160Well, Ezra, you deserve so much credit. You really paved the way, because back in the Sun News days,
00:01:38.160I mean, you and I both worked together at Sun News Network.
00:01:40.600You were a host, and I was a lowly researcher, but still, you know, we had this opportunity to have this big mainstream platform.
00:01:47.740It didn't work out, and you landed on your feet, and you created something.
00:01:51.540You had a vision for, you know, what YouTube was going to be, how the future of news was going to be,
00:01:57.540which is really just a bunch of, like you say, citizen journalists getting out on the street with a microphone,
00:02:03.520recording the news, reporting the news, using social media to disseminate that news, right?
00:02:08.260You don't need the traditional channels and the traditional platforms like the CBC and the Globe and Mail anymore.
00:02:13.420You can reach a heck of a lot more Canadians.
00:02:14.940Just, you know, with your iPhone, chasing after a journalist or recording something that you're seeing on the streets in front of you.
00:02:22.820And I think that, you know, with the rebel, you know, True North and these other organizations have really just been following in your path.
00:02:29.280So I thank you for that and for the vision that you had for the future.
00:02:33.620And I do think you're right that we are, we pose a huge threat to the liberal establishment, not just the prime minister.
00:02:40.300We know that we pose a huge threat to him because he doesn't let us anywhere near him.
00:02:43.560He was in Calgary last week and he wouldn't let independent reporters even scrum him on the way to the car.
00:02:50.300Like, like they wouldn't even allow them to be in the parking lot waiting for him to leave an event,
00:02:54.040let alone go to the press conference where they let all kinds of other left-wing activists and student newspaper reporters in.
00:03:00.840But they wouldn't let even, you know, Rachel Emanuel, who's a reporter here at True North,
00:03:04.880who went to a prestigious Canadian journalism scroll over at Carlson.
00:03:08.900She interned at the Globe and Mail, for goodness sake.
00:03:11.200But as soon as she steps into the independent world, they are afraid of her.
00:03:15.800They don't want even a question from her, Ezra.
00:03:17.720So they send their police thugs after her in the same way that they did to your David Menzies.
00:04:08.460I think that so much of the Online Harms Act, which is the new censorship bill, C-63,
00:04:15.060I just really feel like it's targeting independent journalists.
00:04:18.480I think the liberals are trying to misdirect by saying, oh, no, it's actually about protecting kids from child pornography and stopping revenge porn.
00:04:26.860But all those things are already in law, like Stephen Harper banned revenge porn, put it in the criminal code in 2014.
00:04:33.480There's a five-year prison term for it.
00:04:36.340I think that the liberals are trying to focus on those things that they're sort of reannouncing
00:04:41.360to distract from what I think really is an attempt to squash critical voices.
00:04:47.720Let me play a quick clip that you referred to when your reporter, Rachel Emanuel, and Kian Bextie, who's with the Counter Signal.
00:04:55.320He's our alumnus, and he's got that scrappy style.
00:04:58.400I just want to show our viewers two clips.
00:07:24.440You know, it's interesting, Ezra, because with the new Conservative leader, Pierre Polyev, and his style, which is really to call out lying media.
00:07:31.820Like, if a media member or journalist is asking him a question that's completely leading, completely biased, he's very good at just stopping them and pointing that out.
00:07:39.280Right. And you see the legacy media up in arms and, like, you know, Pierre Polyev is a bully.
00:07:44.640How dare he speak to a Canadian press reporter this way?
00:07:47.840Like, Canadians are seeing his true colors.
00:07:49.300It's like, guys, have you been to a press conference with the prime minister?
00:07:53.040It's like, he actually has some physically roughshodding young reporters.
00:07:57.540I mean, Rachel Emanuel, you know, she made a funny point.
00:08:00.160She's like, I'm basically like a stay-at-home mom with a podcast, and I just want to ask the prime minister a question.
00:08:06.340And I'm getting, like, threats from police officers and getting blocked from being close to my prime minister.
00:08:13.340That shows Justin Trudeau's mindset and how he believes that he can fix problems by just basically being a bully and being tyrannical, frankly.
00:08:21.660And, again, it's just such a bad look on both sides, both parts.
00:08:26.680It's unfortunate for us because I would have loved for Kian or Rachel or David Menzies in other scenarios to have their questions answered.
00:08:37.580The bigger story is really just the treatment of the prime minister and then total radio silence from the journalists who, you know, care so much about freedom of the press,
00:08:45.900except for when it happens to be from their rivals and from competitors in independent media.
00:08:50.620You know, when I was at Sun News, I remember there was a wonderful time.
00:08:55.580It was a wonderful initiative by Pierre-Carl Pelletot, which is even stranger.
00:09:14.880And I coined a phrase there called the media party, which in a sense it was to describe how the media was in league with the Liberal Party.
00:09:25.020But I actually meant in a bit of a different way that it was a party until itself.
00:11:07.500And that's the only reason I mentioned that Rachel Emanuel, you know, she went to a fancy journalism school and she interned at the Globe and Mail.
00:11:13.920She worked at iPolitics before she came over to the dark side of independent media.
00:11:18.300So it's like how quickly you can turn on your own.
00:11:22.120It's kind of like she crossed the floor.
00:11:23.680She went from one party to the other, although I don't think we're quite the same kind of a chummy club on the independent side.
00:11:30.800But, you know, the broader point really is that there's a bunch of cultural elites that sit in Ottawa that think they're better than everyone else in the country.
00:11:38.340They don't really care about the concerns of everyday Canadians.
00:11:40.900They're more worried about spinning on behalf of Justin Trudeau.
00:11:43.760There was an article in the CBC last week by Aaron Weary talking about how the real problem with the carbon tax was a communications issue.
00:11:50.320They just weren't explaining it right, Ezra.
00:11:52.300It has nothing to do with the, you know, huge cost of living increases, the affordability crisis, the fact that folks can't afford to fill up their gas tank.
00:11:59.560That's not the problem with the carbon tax.
00:12:01.160It's just a matter of, like, tweaking the language here and there.
00:12:04.700And, again, really, the purpose of the legacy media is to defend the Liberal Party.
00:12:09.340They need the Liberal Party in order to survive.
00:12:13.760And they don't care about the concerns of everyday Canadians, which is why there's such a huge opportunity for us, you know, True North saw our audience double or triple during COVID because we wanted to tell the stories of the people who were getting fired for not getting vaccinated.
00:12:25.280We wanted to tell the stories of people who perhaps had injuries because of policies that were forced upon them by the federal government.
00:12:32.200We just wanted to tell different stories.
00:12:33.760And it seemed very clear at that point that the legacy media was so disinterested in telling any stories other than the pre-approved narrative from the PMO.
00:12:42.120It was really, you know, the thing that had been living under the surface for probably two decades in Canada was just out in the open, unapologetic about it.
00:12:51.620These people do not care about Canadians.
00:12:53.340They care about pushing a message, pushing an agenda.
00:12:55.460And again, just creates a huge opportunity for us at True North, folks like you at the Rebel.
00:13:00.640And, you know, it makes it fun, too, because we really have our work cut out for us.
00:13:04.420But there's so many opportunities to tell great stories in this country.
00:13:06.840One of the most surprising things I heard when I was watching the CBC president, Catherine Tate, answering questions in committee, I suppose I knew it, but it was just sort of shocking to hear it again, that since Catherine Tate was appointed the CEO there, their viewership has fallen in half.
00:13:27.200It's a little bit difficult to get precise numbers because the agencies that measure those things don't publish them regularly like they used to do.
00:13:37.500But Canada's population has never been bigger.
00:14:24.320And I think that's why Trudeau government is stepping in with all these different various censorship bans and banning outlets on social media and trying to ban, you know, weaponized words that they don't like and ill-defined ideas like hate speech.
00:14:37.420It's like they're trying to get that glory days back.
00:14:41.460It's interesting because I was covering a Radio Canada documentary that came out a couple weeks ago called Trans Express.
00:14:49.160The French CBC dared to do something the CBC would never do, which is tell a countercultural story about how many of the people who are rushed into transitions as adolescents live to regret it.
00:14:59.320So they followed four young women who had made this decision.
00:15:02.380Three of the four regretted and are now working to get their lives back.
00:15:06.340But anyway, Radio Canada still does have a bit of a presence.
00:15:10.300The journalists who put that together went on a radio talk show or a television talk show, sorry, called La Toute de Monde en Parle, which Quebecers actually watch.
00:15:18.180Like there's still a critical mass of people in Quebec that are watching these stations that will have an impact on the culture.
00:15:24.160And I was trying to think if there was anything equivalent in Canada.
00:15:27.680And it's like, you know, there's just so much diversity online.
00:15:31.120There's so many different places where you can get your news from.
00:15:33.500I think that Canadians of your generation and my generation might still be aware that the CBC has a show called The National.
00:15:38.920I don't think anyone under 30 or under 25 is even aware that that exists or that that's an option.
00:15:44.200They probably haven't had cable television in their house ever, perhaps.
00:15:47.960And really, we're witnessing a changing landscape, which I think is a big reason why you have what Paulie have calls the gatekeepers, people like Justin Trudeau, people like Catherine Tate.
00:15:57.600They're trying to tighten their reign and trying to maintain control, even though, you know, the ship that they're manning is sinking around them and there's nothing that they can do to stop these trends.
00:16:08.480I sometimes think of a metaphor of a room with no windows and a hundred candles.
00:16:18.080And if you snuff out one candle, so there's only nine to nine burning, it's really imperceptible, the difference.
00:16:25.960If you snuff out 50 of a hundred candles, it's darker.
00:16:28.960It's still bright, but you'll notice a difference.
00:16:56.920You've just cut out half the light that's left.
00:17:00.400And there's one candle left flickering in the dark room.
00:17:04.740And if you take out that candle, it's a greater change than any other change before because you go from one to zero.
00:17:12.360Just one single candle is enough to put some light in the room.
00:17:17.220And the reason I think about that metaphor in my mind is that there used to be a lot of independent journalists, including at some legacy media outlets.
00:17:27.720And you can still find a few at the National Post and the Toronto Sun and even a few at the Globe and Mail.
00:17:32.960But as more and more of the media either turn out the lights themselves or are co-opted by taking government grants, the handful of candles that are flickering for freedom, and we've talked about the four, the, you know, Counter Signal, Rebel News, True North, Western Standard.
00:17:54.140Justin Trudeau does not like – I think he's very thin-skinned.
00:17:58.400I think he's very emotional when he's criticized.
00:19:19.160I think that that room that you mentioned, the room with no lights and just candles, if that's the world of legacy media, then good.
00:19:26.920Let's shut off the candles and let's move on to a different room, because I think that this may be the last election, whenever it does come, between Pierre Polyev and Dustin Trudeau, that the legacy media even has an impact, that it even sways the needle one way or another.
00:19:41.200Ezra, you and I have lived through many elections where the media has dominated the outcome, and that the winner of the election is solely because of the media coverage.
00:19:49.680Or if not, it's a lack of media, no lack of trying on behalf of the media to paint, for instance, Stephen Harper as an absolute monster who's going to Americanize the country or whatever they were accusing him of doing back then.
00:20:04.640I think that the only reason that the legacy media has an ounce of relativeness in our society is because of all these bailouts, because of all the money that Trudeau has given them.
00:20:15.600And hopefully, if Pierre Polyev is elected, he'll do away with that, and we'll see a reshaping of the landscape.
00:20:22.340More players like us will have more opportunities to get in and shape the landscape.
00:20:27.280You'll have independent journalists on both sides of the political aisle, and you won't have this sort of stale, very rehearsed teleprompter reading,
00:20:37.380news stations that are totally out of touch and not covering things that are even the slightest bit relevant.
00:20:43.700And I think your analysis on Justin Trudeau is really true.
00:20:47.360I was reading a book the other day, The Psychology of Money, and he talks about a story of this sort of wealthy guy who had kids and was worried that his kids were going to grow up spoiled.
00:20:56.300And so he asked, like, the groundskeeping staff at his property to go play sports with his son, like, go play soccer.
00:21:02.600And then he watched later, and he was horrified because his, like, seven-year-old son was, like, winning, and he was dominating, and he was scoring on all these housekeepers.
00:21:11.260And the dad was horrified because he was like, you know, none of the staff wanted to stop the privileged golden boy from playing soccer.
00:21:20.720So this kid, you know, grows up thinking that he's an amazing soccer player because he's playing against adults and he's winning.
00:21:26.640I kind of thought of Justin Trudeau when you talked about his growing up and how he's been surrounded by people who adore him,
00:21:34.060and he's been part of this sort of tradition of liberal royalty in Canada and how distorted his self-perception is.
00:21:41.700But look, I mean, he must look at the polls.
00:21:44.140He knows how unpopular he is and how hated and despised he is.
00:22:13.140You know, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a journalist at a company that's getting a media bailout.
00:22:22.520And my understanding is for newspapers, like the print newspapers, it works out to about $30,000 a year that the subsidy is at, and that's about to go up.
00:22:31.060And every journalist knows that because it's not a secret, because 99% of media companies in Canada have signed up for these subsidies.
00:22:39.460And even if it's just in the back of their mind, it is going to affect them, even subconsciously.
00:22:45.220And it'll certainly affect what their publisher does.
00:22:48.060Even if the local journalist feels sort of free, the big boss who has to get the millions a year from Trudeau to make his company work, it's absolutely on his mind.
00:22:57.660And there is no way it could not alter the coverage of these companies.
00:23:02.680And we know that from an advertising point of view.
00:23:04.720We know the reason why we mark ads as ads and editorial as editorial is so that people can say, okay, this was paid for.
00:23:14.700This here, this little box here was paid for.
00:23:17.580And even then, companies can throw their weight around with the media.
00:23:20.460But there's no disclosure on how the government has influenced the story or not, and we don't even know.
00:23:27.740One of the things, as you know, and I think you guys are similar, you guys have a subscription model, and you also take donations.
00:23:33.380I think I'm a monthly subscriber to you guys.
00:23:37.200We get 78% of our money through crowdfunding, and the average gift to Rebel News is 58 bucks.
00:23:44.100So there is no way – and by the way, of course, we don't tell our journalists who these donors are.
00:23:49.720They don't know who gave 58 here or 100 there.
00:23:52.920So it's my hope that it's impossible or extremely unlikely that our journalists would pull their punches for untoward reasons.
00:24:01.300They – you know, we have an editorial philosophy that I want them to follow.
00:24:05.520People have their own conscience, and we try and think of our viewers, but we try and keep out of it money questions.
00:24:12.740And I think – that's why I think crowdfunding is actually the most ethical way to do journalism because it's diffuse help.
00:24:58.980I would just like to give you an opportunity to talk about your experience as an independent journalism publisher, founder, entrepreneur, grower, because you're growing.
00:25:10.080I mean, I've told my story to my viewers before a dozen times.
00:25:22.220Yeah, I'm happy to talk, but I just want to go back to what you were talking about earlier first,
00:25:25.420and then I'll get to the second question in a second.
00:25:27.160You know, the idea that journalists and editors might be slightly influenced by Trudeau because he's giving the money.
00:25:32.700I mean, the fact that we're even like that we even need to suggest that, like that's like basic journalism or investigations, like anything.
00:25:38.940It's like follow the money, follow the money.
00:25:40.320You want to find out why someone's doing something?
00:26:13.720I believe that all of these government all of these government funded newspapers, television stations, the CBC, it should all just say state funded or even more specific liberal party funded since the conservatives oppose it.
00:26:27.800Sometimes people think it's kind of scandalous, you know, that True North accepts donations and that we receive money from tens of thousands.
00:26:35.640We had over 10,000 unique donors last year in 2023.
00:27:18.680That's why there's a huge ecosystem and there's room for lots and lots of different independent journalists and lots and lots of different media companies.
00:27:27.160I think that what we've kind of stumbled upon is the future of journalism.
00:27:31.420It's not going to be, you know, necessarily big corporate media that's beholden to one specific ideology or a government media, which is even worse.
00:27:39.820But the idea that that people are interested in what's happening in their country, you know, we often hear about, oh, the the, you know, dying landscape of media and how it's so dangerous for democracy.
00:27:49.380It's like, no, Canadians still really care about what's happening in their country, so much so that they're willing to reach into their own pockets and pay for it with their after-tax money to True North, to Grebel, to other independent outlets.
00:28:00.800They just don't want to hear about it through the package that's being given to them, through the propaganda, through the spin, through the bias, the partisanship, you know, the authoritarian mindset.
00:28:11.500Just all the bullying that happens to the legacy media, they're not interested in that anymore, so that might be dying.
00:28:18.320But the idea that Canadians are no longer interested in what's happening in their country and the stories of fellow Canadians is not true.
00:28:24.380And I think that we're living proof of that.
00:28:27.380And when the incumbents or the regime media or the legacy media, there's different ways to call them, when they lament the destruction of the industry, that's a solipsistic view.
00:29:55.180This is the one that scares me, because there's new criminal law in here.
00:30:02.100I don't think they're going to go after you or me with criminal law.
00:30:05.240I don't think that either you or Rebel News does anything so insanely shocking that it would attract a criminal remedy.
00:30:13.080But I think the poison pill or the secret weapon in C-63 is to allow anyone in the country, whether they're a citizen or not, by the way,
00:30:28.640to file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal alleging that any social media post is likely to expose a person to detestation,
00:30:39.800which is so vague, which is so vague, it's a feeling, it's an emotion, hate is a feeling, just like love is a feeling, an emotion.
00:30:47.880And you can file this complaint for free, you can have your identity as a complaint kept secret, even from the person you're complaining about.
00:30:57.980If you win your complaint, you get up to $20,000 from the target, plus they could have to pay $50,000 in fines.
00:31:07.700And this is for every single incident, and the law specifically says it's for your historic work too if it's still online.
00:31:17.380So my great fear is that every tweet, every Facebook post, every YouTube video, all of which are called social media,
00:31:27.560could be the subject of a nuisance complaint, hundreds, thousands, literally every day.
00:31:34.580It could be the same person complaining, it could be a professional activist funded by Trudeau who's complaining,
00:31:52.760I see C-63 as the rebel killer, as the true north killer, as the citizen journalist killer, because it doesn't even rely on a government prosecutor.
00:32:05.700It basically deputizes every whiner, every woke person in the country who used to just grumble.
00:32:13.660Now they've got a $20,000 incentive to file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal, and even if they lose, you know, skin off their news.
00:32:21.280I think C-63 is the final chapter in this three-part play to come and kill independent journalism.
00:32:36.800If Justin Trudeau had his way, that is what they would do.
00:32:40.700My only sliver of hope or silver lining, perhaps, is that I think that enough people at this point see through it.
00:32:46.980You see civil liberties organizations on both sides.
00:32:49.700You have the former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal come out and say that he thinks this is all deliberate and that really it's chilling.
00:32:57.600I just don't think that they're going to be able to do it in the way that they want to.
00:33:01.140I can't imagine that they're going to, you know, they're still in a minority situation.
00:33:06.240I think that a lot of people have raised the opposite angle, which is that this can be gamed and manipulated by either side.
00:33:13.020So you could very easily go against the Palestinian activists that we see making, you know, deranged, crazy genocidal statements online, and it could be weaponized against them.
00:33:22.660I kind of hold out some hope that there's some sensible people who are going to stop this.
00:33:29.560Do you think that this bill is going to actually pass and get implemented as it is currently being proposed and written?
00:33:37.180You know, I respect your point of view, and I'm very glad to hear it, but I do disagree with you.
00:33:42.940I note that Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau renewed their vows in their coalition right before this bill was introduced, and I don't know if that's a coincidence.
00:34:22.040And even if it is, those will be dismissed because the people who operate the machinery of the censorship tribunals, they're woke activists too.
00:34:31.780They say things like it's impossible to be racist against white males, for example.
00:34:38.000So they would not accept – they would say in the Marxist dialect, they would say critical theory.
00:34:46.180A Palestinian protester can never be wrong because they're the oppressed, and an oppressor can never be right.
00:34:55.180So I just – I worry that you're using common sense that is absent in the human rights censorship industry.
00:35:04.060I fear that Trudeau and the NDP and probably the Bloc will ram this through.
00:35:10.080I fear that the Senate will approve it.
00:35:12.720I fear that there might be a couple of holdouts there, but Trudeau has such a dominant majority.
00:35:21.080I think that if it goes to law the way it is now – well, I'll tell you right now, Rebel News, I've already been talking with lawyers about as soon as it's legally possible, we intend to challenge it.
00:35:34.560You can't challenge a law that's not on the books yet, and that hasn't been implemented yet.
00:35:39.160But – so it may be a while before we can fight it.
00:35:43.540But I really think this is an extinction-level event for independent journalists.
00:35:49.660Why wouldn't hunter-killer groups like the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, which gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from Trudeau specifically to hunt and complain about conservatives,
00:36:00.520why wouldn't they just say, oh, okay, good, let's file 10 complaints a day all year, that's 3,500 complaints a year, even if only 1% of them get through, that's 35 direct hits, that's $70,000 or $700,000 in damages against Rebel News or True North,
00:36:23.520and we've burned up 1,000 hours of their time.
00:36:25.860Like this is – if they do it – and why wouldn't they do it?
00:36:29.040Why are they doing it in the first place?
00:36:30.520They're not doing it because there's public demand for censorship.
00:36:33.700They're not doing it because Canada is a typhoon of right-wing hate.
00:37:44.220They came out and they basically only talked about protecting kids, how, like, the entire point was to protect kids.
00:37:49.540All the people at the press conference, when the Justice Minister announced the bill,
00:37:52.660were all just talking about these kids that had been exploited, sexploited online, and how terrible it was.
00:37:58.040And I think most Canadians can agree with that.
00:38:00.120Like, little kids shouldn't be viewing porn and accessing porn online.
00:38:03.460And, you know, there's all kinds of things that are needed.
00:38:06.080It's kind of laughable that we're supposed to believe that the Liberal Party are the ones that care about kids and protecting kids.
00:38:11.180Well, out of the other side of their mouth, they're also promoting, you know, transing, mutilating, self-sterilizing procedures against little kids.
00:38:21.860You have Paul Bernardo, who is a rapist and a murderer of young women and girls.
00:38:27.460And he's, you know, in a medium-security prison playing ice hockey and playing tennis, you know, under the Liberal regime.
00:38:34.020And we're supposed to think that they are the ones that care about kids.
00:38:38.280They're trying to, like you say, really put a damper on free speech.
00:38:43.980You know, the whole concept of hate speech is so murky.
00:38:45.880I think there's so many problematic elements.
00:38:48.180But, again, I'll try to just remain optimistic that a country like Canada won't let it happen and that there's enough safe gaps in place that we will stop this or we will overturn it very quickly after it gets implemented, I hope.
00:39:35.000I told you so means you were worried something bad would happen and it happened.
00:39:41.220And, unfortunately, we've said I told you so all throughout Trudeau's regime.
00:39:46.740But I'm glad that there are green shoots of hope out there and I think citizen journalism is part of that.
00:39:52.320You've been very generous with your time today.
00:39:53.660I just want to throw one last question to you because I know we've talked – you mentioned a little bit about transgenderism and we've talked a lot about free speech and just the problem of the regime media in general.
00:40:04.160But one of the specialties of True North, one of the policy areas you've always been known for, is immigration.
00:40:11.220And it looks like for the first time in a decade, the Conservative Party is very carefully talking about immigration and how it's broken.
00:40:21.560Give me one minute on that before we sign off.
00:40:24.120Well, you know, it's funny because you were just talking about the I told you so's.
00:40:27.340You know, I wrote two books in the early part of Justin Trudeau's tenure, one called Losing True North and the other called No Border, talking about the concerns of Justin Trudeau's approach to immigration, making it really easy to become a Canadian citizen, massively increasing the number of people to come to Canada, which I believe was for cynical reasons, trying to, you know, pump up the Liberal voting base and trying to cover up the ruinous economic policies that Trudeau is implementing.
00:40:49.980You know, I just put out a video and a couple of reports, Ezra, on the 2023 immigration numbers.
00:41:46.300You have all kinds of cultural tensions falling out into the streets, these crazy hate rallies against Jews.
00:41:54.860You have people lashing out at different cultures.
00:41:57.700And the whole multiculturalism experiment, capital M, is clearly failing.
00:42:01.700We're all viewing that day in and day out.
00:42:03.500It's so sad to see the state of Canada and so many of, especially the big cities in the suburbs, it doesn't feel like Canada at all anymore.
00:42:11.580And so, again, I do think immigration is one of those issues that kind of comes and goes.
00:42:16.060And sometimes it's all anyone's talking about and other times no one wants to talk about it.
00:42:20.180I think that Max and Bernier and the People's Party can be given a lot of credit for raising this issue and keeping it in the public debate as well.
00:42:27.860And I think that maybe there's enough pressure on the political right and, you know, just obvious outcomes from Justin Trudeau's ruinous policies that will lead the Conservatives to take the right approach and to basically just crack down on the misuse of the system.
00:42:43.280Even if you just say, hey, we're just going to go back to like Stephen Harper levels in 2014, 2015, that seemed to work a lot better than anything that Justin Trudeau has introduced.
00:42:54.560I hope they find that political courage because immigration can be a tough issue to talk about.
00:42:58.760The Liberals love it when the Conservatives talk about immigration because they just use it to bash them over the head and call them racist and say that, you know, they're just being bigoted or whatever they've accused Conservatives of forever.
00:43:08.640But I think, again, we're at a point now where enough Canadians can just kind of look around and see that things are broken and that it's safe to talk about and that we obviously need major changes because our immigration system is just massively, massively broken and is having huge impacts all across the country as well.
00:43:26.500You know, there's a terrible Marxist-Leninist saying, the worse, the better.
00:43:31.200And I do not believe in the worse, the better.
00:43:33.100But what it means is when things fall apart, when things are so atrocious, people wake up to the crisis.
00:43:41.980That's the Leninist meaning of the worse, the better.
00:43:44.760And I think that's why immigration is slowly becoming normalized as a conversation because it is so absolutely horrible.
00:43:53.120So maybe the worse, the better is actually allowing us to talk about it now.
00:43:58.660But at such a great cost to everything from crime to, like you say, cultural conflicts to cost of housing and a hundred other things, hopefully.
00:44:10.840Well, Ezra, I'll just say quickly, there was a very funny news report on Toronto News last week where the police were telling people,
00:44:16.440hey, look, we know these guys want to steal your car.