Why Manitoba is a COVID-19 success story (Guest: Marty Gold)
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per Minute
173.70595
Summary
Marty Gold joins me to talk about the coronavirus lockdown in Manitoba, the crime that s occurring because of it, as well as the recent rebranding of the J.C.A. website.
Transcript
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Hey Rebels, you're listening to a free audio only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show
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The Gun Show. Tonight my guest is independent Winnipeg journalist Marty Gold to talk about
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everything that's happening in Manitoba from their coronavirus lockdown to the crime that's
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occurring because of it as well as the relaunch of the J.ca. Now if you like listening to the show
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then you're going to love watching it but in order to watch you need to be a subscriber to
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Rebel News Plus. That's what we call our premium long-form TV style shows here on Rebel News.
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Subscribers get access to my show which I think is pretty good if you ask me but you also get
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access to David Menzies fun Friday night show Rebel Roundup as well as Ezra's nightly Ezra Levant show.
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Just go to rebelnews.com slash subscribe to become a member of Rebel News Plus. It's only eight bucks a
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month and I don't think you'll regret it. Just for our podcast listeners however you can save an extra
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10% on a new Rebel News Plus membership by using the coupon code podcast when you subscribe. That's
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people find the podcast. Now please enjoy this free audio only version of my show.
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How has Manitoba managed this crazy coronavirus lockdown and what on earth has happened over at
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the Jewish website the j.ca. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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Manitoba has really had almost no coronavirus cases to speak of and really a statistical rounding error
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of deaths and they've had very little real enforcement of the social distancing regulations
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passed by Brian Pallister's conservative government which of course is in stark contrast to places like
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Quebec and Ontario where enforcement rather than education seems to be the path the government has
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chosen to deal with their much much much larger virus outbreaks. Now in other news Canada's little
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Jewish news website that could the j.ca just got a massive new rebrand and an enormous stable of
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incredible new journalists and writers. How did that happen? Well joining me tonight is someone with a
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foot in Manitoba news and a foot in managing the j.ca. Joining me tonight in an interview we recorded
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yesterday afternoon is Marty Gold from the j.ca.
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Joining me now from his home in Winnipeg is Marty Gold he's an independent journalist and a good friend
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of the show. Marty I wanted to have you on because Manitoba from the very beginning has been sort of
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going against the grain when it comes to the coronavirus when we saw other jurisdictions like
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Ontario and Quebec and to a much much lesser extent Alberta doing coronavirus enforcement and these
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massive fines. Manitoba was moving towards education and I think you found a lot more compliance because
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of that. Well you know the situation here was very interesting in that we we you know I'll look at the
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the stats as we tape today and just give me a second to pull up my whatever twitter window
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uh I had this in uh courtesy of Scott Billick I'll make sure to mention him uh I follow Scott's uh he's
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at the press always at the press conferences the provincial press conferences uh and and also you
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know when there's there's uh they've eased off on the the uh those kinds of things now that's certain
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days they just put out a notice so here's the Manitoba stats we'll we'll go off of this the total
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uh remaining zero new cases total remaining cases 292 16 active cases seven deaths I'll go through
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those in a second there's currently zero hospitalizations and zero in intensive care 269
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recoveries so that's 269 recoveries and seven deaths out of 292 total cases uh they did about 400 tests
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on Monday and there's been just under 40,000 uh tests done total now it's a very small sample size
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for a population of a million uh but the number of total cases is ridiculously low here and the deaths
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uh and Scott helpfully always reprints this uh man in his 70s woman in her 80s woman in their
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two women in their 60s uh and then three other men in their 50s 60s and 70s so we have no deaths
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under the age of 50. I remember uh that a number of these cases had pre-existing conditions some of
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these people are already in rough shape but we've had almost no effect uh in terms of casualties
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and the number of cases as I think you and I have discussed uh previously um this is in in no small
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measure because we are so isolated here we did not have the volume of traffic air traffic in
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particularly would have come from uh uh uh Iran or China and so we didn't have the spread and as
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you mentioned the government here was very big on uh on education they uh essentially locked down
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I'm going to turn that off because somebody thinks I'm very popular today and I'm not interested in them
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for now um all right the the population here you know honestly tends to be kind of compliant with
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these things we did not know we're dealing with but one thing that I think a lot of Manitobans recognized
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was that if this wasn't kept under tight controls that we could end up with an influx especially from
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places that don't have you know when you think of a crowded place that doesn't have you know access to
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water and hygienic uh hygienic living environment it would be the numerous especially northern Manitoba
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aboriginal first nation communities and so I think there was a very real and very legitimate fear
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including among the aboriginal leadership that they could end up quickly with something that got way
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out of hand on them uh and cause a lot of tragedy and and and we were fearing that um but Manitobans
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uh there's been uh without discussing the um moral standing of these kinds of things there's been very
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few fines handed out very few shops uh or restaurants or there weren't even any there might have been like
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one restaurant where customers were coming onto the property that weren't allowed to access under the
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Manitoba emergency conditions uh Manitobans are I think you know very often a polite compliant bunch
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uh but Manitoba and Saskatchewan in particular I'm not so familiar with the numbers from the Atlantic
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provinces but the numbers here have been very encouraging we did not have any kind of an over
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any kind of an overwhelming of the emergency rooms in fact uh here as well as in other jurisdictions
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there was a concern that people had stopped going to see doctors stopped going to hospitals
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for uh you know if they're having you know the hypothesis was people could be having mild stroke
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symptoms but and Manitobans are a number of us are often famous for ah it's nothing and sometimes
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it's more than nothing uh so we didn't have any strain there may have been strain on the staff
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in some of the hospitals where these cases were appearing uh but no overarching theme of a crisis in the
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healthcare system has emerged here um business-wise we are certainly suffering casualties very well-known
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restaurants are falling by the way wayside by very accomplished chains a lot of the mom and pop type
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shops small coffee shops uh are obviously struggling when they couldn't have customers in a number of
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places uh I don't want to say resorted to that seems like that's sort of an unfair attribution uh but
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they they tried uh to mitigate the damages that they were suffering the loss they were suffering by
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doing various kinds of fundraisers on platforms or whatever I don't know what's happened so much in
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Alberta but here a lot of restaurants including chain places created home delivery groceries so for
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instance uh there's a pizza chain that you could order ingredients to make a to make pizzas they
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bring you the dough they bring you the chopped up green pepper the pepperoni the pizza sauce
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I see from the look on your face that this isn't something you've necessarily heard about
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um pizza hotline which is a very big Manitoba business one of the biggest if not the biggest
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advertiser in normal times on television uh uh they did a fantastic job of adjusting on the fly as have a
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number of Manitoba businesses uh and they put out in the regular flyer run all of a sudden it's like
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make our pizzas at home and so many people now are doing that as part of family activities yeah I was
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gonna say that sounds fun that sounds like something I would like to do with my kids well
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and nothing against Chef Boyardee or any of those kind but you know like uh this is as close to a
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restaurant pizza and unless you you know you not like you have a stone to put it on you know you
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don't have a pizza oven but people I think the uptake on that and and and pizza hotline wasn't the
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only one to do only wants to do this there's various kinds of restaurants uh in um in in other
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fields that have tried this kind of home delivery uh of their product or come pick it up or to provide
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people the ingredients to to make their own recipes uh there's been quite a bit of ingenuity that has
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gone on and now gradually with the reopening um there's a you know there's rootings through some of
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the the restaurants Bernstein's deli put rootings to get through their their small restaurant their
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small uh their restaurant they have a uh a retail section as well um and although there are casualties
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uh in the business sector uh and and uh I don't know how Premier Pallister is going to deal with the
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level of debt that the province has taken on he's he's taking a lot of heat for public sector cutbacks
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and layoffs uh and hydro layoffs and stuff welcome to the real world public sector folks well you know
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the the controversy revolves around you know laying off people as part of an of a bigger uh phyllis
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ideological um pursuit by the Pallister government uh that very well is possible I mean Brian Pallister is
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no fan of of big government per se although I don't think that he's kept up to his reputation
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in some aspects of how the Manitoba government has run uh but um here in Manitoba the the the fact that
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there were not that there was not a big effect in the community only look seven deaths is such a small
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ripple effect that people were cautious without being overly panicked you certainly see here now
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and the weather got nice and it got nice in a hurry and really nice at which point the government and the
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public health officers they knew that it was a chicken and egg part about opening up and encouraging
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people to you know to get involved from stop get it get you know more socialized you see people
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walking around with masks on the sidewalk it's kind of odd you know someone in the tank top and shorts
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they're wearing a mask it's it's sort of uh you know it reminds me of the rave scene a little bit
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in Vancouver you know some of the costuming is a little odd generally speaking I think Manitobans
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psychologically and I I can really speak more so of Winnipeggers I I don't want to be I don't know
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and we haven't had a lot of reports from rural Manitoba the smaller communities places like
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Brandon but in Winnipeg I I think that this has had a lot less of a scarring effect psychologically
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on the population than maybe in other centers the number of people that are uh part of the open up
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crowd it's comparatively small here I I'm not deriding them I think there's some very good points
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that have been made uh and I believe there was a poll maybe yesterday that 50 of Canadians believe
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that we aren't being told everything the medical authorities know about this condition and how
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prevalent it was I think that's correct uh there's a point at which this was for our situation because
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it wasn't a widespread condition where it did seem kind of ridiculous yeah the businesses that were
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weren't open and you know everybody's and I I'll I'll figure out how to say this everybody who is
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interested in in fashion beauty and those industries they're all dying for the nail shops to to open up
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god knows that when you know my hair yeah when when when my style stylist who's a rock and roll musician
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uh him and his brothers and when they opened the shop or said they're going to look at opening I
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contact him said look I I want to get in as early as possible and they really looked at me as a bit
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of a guinea pig in terms of you know yeah when to sweep and when to disinfect the floors and everything
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so I was one of the first customers which and I was you know a reliable character I'm not going to freak out
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if something's a little you know out of pace or somebody says oh we should have done this or that
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um and uh and I think that will bloom from this pretty well socially how well we do economically
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hard to say taxi industry suffering the level of violence here yeah has become disturbing um in
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winnipeg 14 shooting reports of of gunfire I don't want to say shootings I think one guy was I think shot
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and four four stabbings over the weekend that there was a murder on a bus a stabbing on a bus
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uh in the neighborhood groups uh that I belong to on facebook uh whether it's river heights or
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st boniface or what's called scotia heights the part of the uh north end of winnipeg and this the uh
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uh the area towards kildona park there's a lot of people having their cars broken into people having
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their their yards vandalized lots and lots and lots of that and so uh you've had an acting out
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I guess of in particular people that um you know I ran a column in my newsletter in the city circus
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newsletter I don't know if you saw it where a a long time winnipeg writer talked about you know
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rubbies and junkies and people don't like that language anymore I've taken heat for it I've used in
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the past but there is a certain subclass in every society but in winnipeg in particular it's always
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been here of people that are derelicts that that their life revolves around a miserable existence
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and to some extent for some of them it is self-inflicted where they refuse help now how much of that goes
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back to mental health um uh indicators or or root causes I understand all that but ultimately the public
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here does not feel they're being adequately protected from a lot of those elements yeah and and that's a real
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challenge for the city police and it's a challenge for the attorney general as well uh this is
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something it's I think I think more people are now aware because with less activity on the streets the
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zombies are more obvious yeah they don't blend in there's nothing to blend in when there was nobody
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on the streets and and notwithstanding the need for shelters and social services um I I think that
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more people understand even if they didn't agree with it before I think people didn't understand the
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nature of lock them up for you know detention orders they're starting to see that there's cause
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for it Osborne Village is is is having a big problem not only with economic downturn vacant spaces
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etc but the public safety aspect is turning people off from going down to Osborne Village at all
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and it's the most densely I think still was 15 years ago the most densely populated neighborhood
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in the country and there's going to be it shouldn't take you know a really bad serious violent incident
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in Osborne Village for the city government to wake up uh in particular but you've got the mayor and a lot
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of counselors that coddle these kinds of elements that bend over backwards in the realm of social justice
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uh activism uh and what we end up with is a situation that uh you know I can mention I haven't
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had a chance to look too deeply into it but uh over in the exchange in the east exchange exchange district
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which is normally you know it's like four blocks from city hall like near downtown uh there's a tent city
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that was taken down once as I recall there's a I think a couple of teepees were set up in this winter
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and was being taken down and and there might have been there's a fire I think of one of them
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well now there's like 25 tents and this is near a lot of the social service agencies like Salvation
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Army stuff like that and there seems to be no supervision of it whatsoever and now the neighbors
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there's small residential clusters like one or two streets uh in South Point Douglas and over in North
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Point Douglas and the Israeli freeway was the creation 1960 like split this neighborhood by bringing
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people from uh East Kildon and from the east side of Winnipeg into the downtown but I'm hearing from
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people on both sides of the Israeli freeway where this tent city is set up over here that
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they're having break-ins harassment vandalism and nobody's listening to them including the city
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councillor and there's a number of city councillors that they they whenever they talk about public
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safety it's like they'll they'll they'll twist it like we've heard it from a lot of people who are
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concerned about public safety and I am also concerned about these people out in the streets well
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you know they make it like it's about the people that are the perps yeah and their concern isn't
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with the victims of the crime because somehow you know look in Winnipeg we've got an element that says
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that when you're in the middle of a of a 911 call and and you're driving a stolen car waving around a
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weapon at a domestic call and you get shot and killed by the police you're a victim of a police
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shooting right well the word victim here has been twisted a little bit nonetheless I think that
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there's going to be some reckoning to be had with regards to the crime here the business side
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who it's there's no way of knowing what's going to happen um the gold ice season is threatened you
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know Sam Cates did a great interview on CJOB radio with Kathy Kennedy a couple of weeks ago about it I
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mean he'll have no revenue that ball team will have no revenue for like 18 or 19 months if there's no
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baseball season what's going to happen to the lease they're trying to renegotiate the lease for the
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stadium which is a beautiful one of the best minor league parks best experiences around
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what happens if there's no gold ice and there's no one to lease that stadium then the city's got a
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like a white elephant on its hands because they're going to take it back in a couple years
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so a lot of complexities to this with the bombers as well um the whether jets the jets would make the
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playoffs in that revamped system nobody knows which direction it's going to going to go a lot of
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people are obviously concerned winnipeg is economically wheezy at the best of times there
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are some very strong entrepreneurs that have have um made headway during this period and a lot i want
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to say there's a lot of very strong people in the first responders health care workers um a lot of
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businesses have moved into making masks and if for those that feel they're immunocompromised for those
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who feel it's uh a precaution they want to take i'm not going to criticize that i know others do
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i'm not going to pick on people for doing what they think is right in under these circumstances to
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protect themselves uh even though it's obviously not a big issue in winnipeg but you don't want it to
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be a big issue for you or your family um we've certainly seen the ingenuity of manitobans come
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forward uh and the the palestine government has tried to keep i think essentially a very low profile
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uh through this uh and i think manitoba is in a lot of ways certainly better off than ontario and
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quebec and british columbia oh i can't compare us to isn't that the truth i mean ontario i think a lot
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of ontario's cases have been travel related or next to travel related and then they're all after that
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just about all of them are in nursing homes and extended care facilities so it's the vulnerable
00:21:45.960
it's travel related it's the things that people who have been talking about closing the borders
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have been talking about since the very beginning yeah you know we closed the borders here um and and
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we we only had a few there was one cluster of cases in a trucking company uh and another in in a
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seniors care facility i i i can't remember if it was in i think it was in gimley um and there was maybe
00:22:13.840
five cases there we were very lucky that we did not seem to have that what's gone on in ontario
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i i watched premier ford's press conference he's obviously deeply shaken uh by by those reports
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i i think in manitoba we and we've got a a number of old timers in homes in this province i think we
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count ourselves very very fortunate that that we did not have an outbreak of of any measurable you
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know of any real consequence here in in winnipeg and in the province very fortunate indeed this is
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one time we're being in a small relatively small insulated insular isolated kind of place has worked
00:22:57.100
in the in favor of manitoba and in favor of saskatchewa yeah and i think uh your business
00:23:03.660
community is going to see the benefit of that um in alberta like alberta is leading the reopen
00:23:10.200
um but we had to stagger our reopen which as someone who lives in the northern part of the
00:23:17.400
province i'm glad because we weren't held accountable for what was going on in uh calgary
00:23:23.160
and in brooks where the meat plants were but yeah you know calgary they got the warning that
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they weren't going to reopen with the rest of the province like 12 hours before the scheduled
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relaunch and so there was restauranteurs and stores that were hiring staff they planned to reopen they'd
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order supplies and they got the rug pulled right out from underneath them and i think you're not going
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to have that happen in manitoba and i think that you know that delayed relaunch in calgary with very
00:23:52.700
little notice i think that might have killed some businesses who are just on the cusp of surviving
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yeah it's the whole situation in calgary uh i i i only hear anecdotally i don't have a lot of
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contacts in calgary and edmonton just a few but nobody talks optimistically yeah about those
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communities at this stage and that that predates the pandemic honestly i mean when you've got don
00:24:16.660
ivison and and nenshi leading your cities uh it's very hard to be optimistic yeah add that to four
00:24:24.920
years of rachel notley and then going on five with justin trudeau and it's a perfect storm
00:24:30.440
it's i just want to mention when you when when when you when you bring that up you'll remember that
00:24:36.220
and the when that election took place in 2015 was it yep and i said we didn't even know each other at
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time we were you know knew each other through facebook or whatever and i said welcome to manitoba
00:24:47.360
stand yeah and sure enough when the selinger rat finks start abandoning ship and migrating to alberta
00:24:54.480
and ruining your province yes same kind of marxist forward thinkers that uh undermine manitoba and
00:25:02.660
it's one of the reasons why the pallister government and pallister comes with his own baggage certainly
00:25:06.740
uh uh not so much the cabinet ministers but pallister rubs a lot of people the wrong way and has
00:25:14.700
continued to do so but boy the what what they were trying to overcome here in terms of what was done
00:25:20.860
to undermine the economy and and to undermine regulation uh uh uh uh uh you know the the way laws were set
00:25:28.980
up for different industries the mining industry we just had i haven't even been able to think about
00:25:34.420
this yet we just had an auditor's report last week about um it's a quarry rehabilitation fund
00:25:42.160
so you you know when you when uh when uh when uh uh you need to uh uh i don't know how to put it
00:25:51.160
rehabilitate reclaim yes reclaim lands that have been you know dug up and and whatever and it turns out
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that there was no contracts tendered after 2005 even though in the annual reports they referred to we
00:26:05.140
have we this year there were you know 80 uh 80 contracts had out and they never differentiated
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between the ones that were hand out sole sourced and the ones were tendered none have been tendered
00:26:16.320
since 2005 because shades of the city of winnipeg they would take uh uh uh situation a plot of land
00:26:24.880
where there may be three different mining sites in an area that should have been one big project they
00:26:29.040
split it up to be all be under 50 grand so it wouldn't need a tender and who was handing out the
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contracts the inspectors and so in quebec you and i know we'd be looking for the brown envelopes
00:26:38.780
this was under the ndp government and they only the audit only looked to 2010 it was the same
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minister responsible for mines not that you'll read this in any winnipeg media outlet that dave
00:26:49.640
chomiak was singularly responsible as the minister of mines from about 2006 i think till the fall of
00:26:56.080
the selinger government palliser government comes in and they see there's something not right with the
00:27:00.400
reporting and then the order would do uh google uh google earth searches and so they've got a you know
00:27:06.940
an invoice that was paid for for something to be cleaned up and you look on google earth and there's
00:27:11.720
no evidence any work was done and barely i barely touched the surface of that story in the media
00:27:18.140
there was a good report by cbc but didn't go into what the really interesting stuff was in the report
00:27:23.740
about the the excuses and you know the slipperiness internally and meanwhile the ndp was happy
00:27:30.800
to i think we you and i can surmise that some of these sole source contracts went to people who
00:27:38.660
surely would have been found as contributing to ndp campaigns in the aftermath of the whether the
00:27:43.940
cleanup took place or not right a little mini poster inherited a little mini winnipeg style sponsorship
00:27:52.640
scandal and when when palister drained the swamp of all those ndp fixers that were in government a lot
00:28:00.000
of them fled to alberta for jobs with rachel notley so yeah yeah and i still feel sorry for you folks
00:28:06.360
they're having to try to clean that mess up we're still getting rid of them now i wanted to talk to
00:28:11.600
you um because we're going on about 26 minutes here i wanted to talk to you about your uh non-secular
00:28:20.540
project we've talked about your work with city circus and the newsletter and maybe you want to tell
00:28:25.200
people how to sign up for that in a second but your work with the j.ca you guys just went
00:28:31.740
through a major relaunch and it has been incredible i've never seen a website relaunch and hit the ground
00:28:41.820
running and i cannot get over the caliber of writers that you have however i'd like to point out that
00:28:48.560
good editors make great writers um we try you guys have rounded up like every single right wing or
00:28:56.620
center and right uh jewish jewish journalists in the entire country and they're writing these
00:29:02.500
incredible articles for you guys all of a sudden like out of the blue i have to tell you that i
00:29:07.360
wouldn't even really know that that you're i'm sure you're correct but i wouldn't know because
00:29:12.320
you know there's been some it's interesting how people have gravitated to the platform what we did was
00:29:18.360
uh by for a bit of backstory uh uh when we we rushed the j out a year ago 13 months ago in the uh in
00:29:27.980
the midst of the linda sarsour incursion into winnipeg right uh and this was a major battleground
00:29:33.900
for not just the jews and the pro-israel crowd in winnipeg but people that that generally aren't
00:29:39.280
identified with that who just uh felt that this was uh you know a move by marxists to try to normalize
00:29:46.460
points of view and normalized speakers who are are clearly vile and and reprehensible and so we
00:29:53.540
rushed the website out originally and and uh and pretty much with every appearance i've been on
00:29:58.800
with you in the last year whereas we've talked about whatever stories we're covering there
00:30:02.300
largely focused on anti-semitism whether it's incidents um of anti-semitism or just incidents
00:30:08.940
of neo-nazis bubbling up in alberta saskatchewan and uh of course coverage from winnipeg and and it's
00:30:15.560
things in toronto like what went on at york university with the well with the posters and
00:30:19.620
and and etc and then ron east our publisher and uh you know ron i first i met ron i his father
00:30:27.940
mentored me as followers pretty much know and so i've known ron since before his bar mitzvah actually
00:30:33.680
uh since he was 12 and so he had a vision for this uh that we we didn't have a lot of resources to put
00:30:40.600
into it we we stayed the course uh kept it established then as as this came up we were
00:30:46.120
already going how do we emerge from this not knowing what was going to happen knowing the
00:30:51.980
jewish community you know the traditional jewish newspapers are not going to handle this well
00:30:56.940
because they rely on you know come to our speakers event or or you know the the hanukkah party and
00:31:03.220
they rely on that kind of advertising and with no events there's no advertising we weren't reliant
00:31:08.940
on advertising uh not we didn't have any real revenue but we weren't reliant on advertising
00:31:13.800
and so he already wanted to to go to a national a more national scope and then when the canadian
00:31:20.680
jewish news around april the jeez it might even been april the second i think announced that the
00:31:25.540
next week they were going to be folding after 101 years and immediately we were contacted by people
00:31:31.140
who were fans of what we did and asking will you can you expand nationally and in particular uh
00:31:42.640
you know there's some particular ideas about how to do it we hired dave gordon on as managing editor
00:31:47.980
from toronto who is such an accomplished writer and i only knew dave by name uh the internet's a weird
00:31:54.000
thing where you think you know people but you don't and dave is brilliant uh he's written for so many
00:31:59.760
newspapers and magazines and the the roster that's been put together is you know 90 his doing he
00:32:07.120
already knew a lot of these people and he knew if he didn't know them how to reach out to them
00:32:11.480
yeah and the uptake there's like a hundred writers he sent me a list today that i haven't gone through
00:32:16.440
asked me to take some directly um and we've got a major sports writer coming on board uh uh uh and
00:32:25.920
and uh a correspondent from the west coast but he's asked me to take on some he's got a hundred
00:32:31.560
writers still lined up that all want to contribute and uh it's funny because one of our
00:32:38.420
one of our new correspondents um had posted uh on twitter whatever and promoting her story about how
00:32:47.140
we have the most diverse lineup and she started naming off all these you know the identity politics crowd
00:32:52.260
and and i suggested dave to you know explain to her we didn't go out of our way to do that
00:32:58.680
yeah if we've got i don't care if somebody's a lesbian i don't care if they're an immigrant i don't care
00:33:05.340
if uh if they're uh honestly i don't care if they're right wing and i don't really care if they're left
00:33:11.000
wing because i obviously have lots of left-wing friends there are left-wing jews that are pro-israel
00:33:14.960
pro-zionist yeah the there is a dividing line on the left i there might be one on the right but i've never
00:33:20.980
encountered it but there's a dividing line on the jewish left that we've detailed between the
00:33:25.940
progressives that are marxists more so than they are pro-israel uh that attack the israeli defense
00:33:33.160
force that called the called soldiers serving the idea of baby murderers and all this other stuff
00:33:39.520
that are essentially a lot of them are like anti-netanyahu and that bleeds over into their
00:33:44.480
views and their statements about israel we have two criteria you have to favor the survival of the
00:33:53.300
jewish people and you have to support the state of israel as a home for the jewish people and dave
00:34:01.400
gordon and has done a great job as managing editor uh terry pilts from montreal came on board also and
00:34:07.740
what a great guy he is and he's handling our social media he's revamped the twitter feed and the facebook
00:34:12.800
page and they are flourishing um i only assist with you know uh to some extent that people are
00:34:21.120
caught you know uh congratulations on the relaunch then i'll thank them i'll retweet the you know some
00:34:25.600
of the some of that stuff but the messaging for the stories themselves except pretty much for mine
00:34:30.280
are coming from from terry and then dave backing it up as well we've been so fortunate to be able to
00:34:37.060
get our the kind of writers we have uh jacob uh glogauer is great eagle heck got us an interview
00:34:43.760
with the new israeli minister of public security um baba botech who's the daughter of rabbi shmuley
00:34:50.540
botech who's got like a million followers on facebook uh and and is a very influential modern jewish
00:34:58.160
thinker um she came to us and is providing columns uh her grandfather uh who was a um a major
00:35:10.340
businessman property holder in los angeles y'all have just passed away a couple of days ago and we've
00:35:16.420
of course extended our sympathies uh to the family uh and i was able to look up a little bit about that
00:35:22.100
but you know when when rabbi shmuley is is telling people how great our website is and so you know
00:35:28.860
this story or that story about of whether it's about israeli government or life in israel when you
00:35:33.680
get that kind of support out there so our growth has been exponential we have uh abu dandanchi who's
00:35:41.000
a syrian immigrant who's a brilliant writer i mean if you want to have somebody who doesn't need any
00:35:45.180
editing there's a guy who who needs no help getting his messages across and explaining
00:35:51.040
the thought patterns in the in the islamist world yeah and and trends in the arab world towards
00:35:58.040
uh our communities um and you mentioned i but you may not imagine suen levy came on board and i was
00:36:04.420
so happy to help her love suen and and she's already provided two columns one was a very touching piece
00:36:11.500
about uh about um how the covid uh isolations affected the jewish traditions of sitting shiva
00:36:20.000
and going you know going to funerals and then sitting shiva and then the mourning period
00:36:24.000
and suen did a really beautiful piece about about that in her family and then followed up with a
00:36:30.580
fantastic story that honestly i wish i'd have written uh about uh you know self-hating jews jewish
00:36:36.440
anti-semites uh and it was a great analysis um we have a lot of uh you know there's various kinds of
00:36:43.720
you know more politically oriented writers uh doran uh berger did a story of about leswin lewis
00:36:52.220
and i guess she did a town hall maybe in toronto and he picked off the material that was of interest
00:36:56.900
to the jewish community and the pro-israel crowd great i thought that she was a great candidate
00:37:01.320
for people with those points of view um we have a we had a column for yomir shalom for the
00:37:08.500
uh day celebrating jerusalem from moisha phillips and of hirut north america who's been a tremendous
00:37:14.780
friend for us and speaking of people from hirut that are friends lauren isaac so i think you've
00:37:19.520
interviewed love lauren lauren went to israel uh just before the lockdowns uh hit on mass she was in
00:37:27.560
a two-week isolation when she got to israel she takes a trip there every year and makes the news most
00:37:33.020
of the time and during the course of uh about i guess four days into her isolation lauren decided
00:37:39.740
that she was going to make the big move and be and make aliyah as we say elevate herself to becoming
00:37:46.580
a citizen of israel and she wrote a wonderful column about um about her feelings and her family's
00:37:54.920
reaction that she i mean nobody knew her is surprised by this but she's decided to jump in
00:37:59.700
with both feet and she will be a regular calmness for us great leaving her post with hirut as director
00:38:06.940
of hirut in toronto but she's going to be a regular calmness for us so we have not only her there's
00:38:12.600
others where we have canadian voices from israel contributing to us um we are reaching out in
00:38:20.120
atlantic canada uh i've got an option now for vancouver uh we're going to try to fill in the rest of
00:38:26.580
regions you know canadian jewish community is so um there's look it's it's like being being the
00:38:33.000
neighbor of the united states there's 390 000 jews in the country but 300 000 of them are between
00:38:37.340
toronto and montreal so when they roll over you kind of notice uh but it's been very gratifying for
00:38:43.200
us that the toronto crowd and the montreal crowd have been very there's been some stories that that
00:38:49.820
raised eyebrows um for instance dave gordon and i yeah i apologize i don't remember the co-author uh
00:38:56.280
just now i haven't had the chance to speak with with the gentleman they had written a story and hadn't
00:39:01.400
had any place to put it yet about the 72 million dollar jewish community center and this calm
00:39:07.840
strongly questioned whether this was a good idea compared to the level of poverty in toronto which
00:39:14.240
i understand for senior citizens approaches 25 in that city and you know in winnipeg as you'll
00:39:22.880
remember as you will know when the canadian museum for human rights came up and all of a sudden they
00:39:28.100
started panhandling you know the world's richest panhandlers started asking the federal government
00:39:33.120
to bail them out i was on kick fm radio along with various other commentators and bloggers in
00:39:40.240
winnipeg very critical of this and the door government handed over 20 million dollars in
00:39:45.200
two different years to keep bailing the museum out without a vote in the legislature and you know i
00:39:51.400
would there would be visitors to winnipeg important visitors uh including people from you know the
00:39:56.540
diplomatic sector and i would be asked to give them a tour of winnipeg and show them what's going on
00:40:01.980
they want to know what's really going on not just go to cocktail parties if you hit the lights right
00:40:06.640
in three minutes you're in neighborhoods from the museum like down one street down another street
00:40:13.060
just keep driving and then go on to the residential side streets where there's abject poverty miserable
00:40:18.440
conditions and i tell them when you wonder why not everybody loves the museum it's because the door
00:40:23.520
government was more interested in what gary doer was interested in sucking up to the upper class because
00:40:29.420
gary loved doing that and yet here's the level of poverty a five minute drive how do we justify
00:40:35.420
by private donations fine now the museum also badly affected the not-for-profit sector here in
00:40:44.380
winnipeg and osborne house where i ended up working for a while as managing as operations manager and
00:40:49.700
other charities they suffered because there's a lot of high pressure arm twisting by the canadian
00:40:55.720
museum for human right the friends yes who are doing it and it hurt a lot of charities a lot of
00:41:01.140
non-profits in this city to this very day well in toronto apparently they've never had this kind of
00:41:07.440
open discussion they've never had anybody come up and really question whether whether this falls too
00:41:17.200
much into the category of empire building and monuments to to philanthropy as opposed to service to
00:41:25.040
the community right and i i was very surprised there was a lot of heated comments criticizing that
00:41:35.760
story which to me was a perfectly normal thing to question millions of dollars of spending within the
00:41:41.200
community on one priority as opposed to another priority but it got people paying attention and it
00:41:46.520
got us feedback and it got us people saying we want to write an op-ed for you uh and so it served that
00:41:53.040
purpose um the one story that i was able to to generate because i'm very occupied with you know
00:42:00.000
back of the book stuff now uh and we're still really you know working on the business side and
00:42:06.280
and and um and some of the you know uh looking towards scheduling future stories you know different
00:42:13.080
ideas and topics and and whatever that we want to start being able to find writers and assigning them to
00:42:17.900
but i was able to get to put together some news about our dear friend firaz al-najim who we've
00:42:23.780
talked about before and he of course made headlines in toronto this would now be two weekends ago uh
00:42:29.700
that dragged in an an mpp in toronto after he stood outside of a mosque on the under terms of the exemption
00:42:38.400
of the noise by law for the call to prayer and uh he proceeded to politicize the religious call to
00:42:45.720
prayer for devout muslims with various statements about the criminal zionist regime and blah blah blah
00:42:51.880
blah blah blah and uh the mosque in question jafari mosques said that they didn't know this individual
00:42:59.720
and this wasn't authorized except that they supported a letter he sent the prime minister trudeau protesting
00:43:07.340
something other a year or two ago and they he spoke in support of a zoning variance or something that
00:43:14.440
they were seeking at toronto city council so the mosque definitely knew faraz faraz definitely knew
00:43:20.120
the mosque the denial and criticism of the mpp for questioning whether we had anything to do with
00:43:25.860
this or supported it you know they they lectured the mpp on it she then got dumped on by minute by
00:43:31.220
people in the jewish community for backing down and lo and behold what none of them knew was
00:43:36.080
toronto wasn't the first time he had done this that faraz had at the end of april and then the first
00:43:40.680
week of may gone to ottawa pulled the same stunt the mayor of ottawa jim watson got a complaint
00:43:47.080
uh he then got a second complaint when faraz did the replay the following friday
00:43:51.900
where maybe it was a thursday night actually that he did it again uh now mayor watson sent it to the
00:43:59.240
city lawyer the city solicitor who referred it to the police who blew off the complainant in a manner
00:44:04.920
that i thought really betrayed you know in this in january we're reviving the hate crimes unit there's
00:44:10.440
too much ottawa and then when they get a complaint well thank you if you have anything else to tell us
00:44:14.940
i don't know like yeah yeah what about the part where they say we will uh we will meet with people
00:44:19.140
we will offer them counseling we will talk with them none of that yeah however it did wake up jim watson
00:44:25.380
who i don't know from a hole in the ground the mayor of ottawa i'm always happy to rattle a mayor's
00:44:29.020
cage anywhere in this country but it woke him up and so when we revealed that toronto that ottawa was
00:44:35.720
like the the the trial balloon that he tested this out in ottawa first i guess to see if you know the
00:44:41.920
cops are going to come apprehend him with truncheons or i don't know what yeah to see whether the jewish
00:44:46.000
community with the jewish federation would rise up and say something of course in ottawa they said
00:44:50.960
nothing as federations often don't in this country jewish federations um so we were i got i ran that
00:44:58.300
story i was able to put those details together from the emails and this shocked people that he
00:45:03.160
was able to do this in ottawa the toronto in particular media was following up on the complaints
00:45:10.300
about what's the mpp's name uh uh marlo i think gina marlo i think is her name that they were following
00:45:16.000
up on this but none of them knew that he'd already been gallivanting elsewhere in ontario
00:45:20.700
pulling this and he's just done the same thing in niagara falls if my information is correct i haven't
00:45:27.800
checked it yet uh and so um you know we we are able i'm able to still in this role as the editor
00:45:34.300
of this expanded national edition i'm going to continue to focus on these kinds of stories
00:45:37.660
about anti-semitic activity of the reaction you know the political canadian political end the
00:45:42.880
domestic end and the police center responses to this but as i said dave and and tevi uh have put
00:45:50.280
together a fantastic just a fantastic lineup and run is uh east has also recruited a few uh a few
00:45:57.440
writers as well agnes imami i want to mention her because she came to us she started up she felt
00:46:01.720
kind of helpless about the rise of anti-semitism in this country and started a facebook group
00:46:05.580
uh jays against jews against anti-semitism canada and then she was the creator of the anti-semitism
00:46:11.660
toolbox series speaker series and you know these are quality people that are coming forward looking
00:46:19.060
for something that can replace the canadian jewish news we don't have a gestetner there's no plan yet
00:46:24.320
to put out a physical print edition but we are looking at putting out a pdf version because we
00:46:30.600
know that a lot of uh a lot of babas and zetas and a lot of rabbis and rabbits and they like to print
00:46:37.380
out these kinds of things and then they can read them on on on shabbos and on jewish holidays and
00:46:42.900
whatever so we're looking towards a pdf version i am i am personally very happy entirely happy with the
00:46:49.660
look with the reception we've gotten with the social media growth and the fact that this isn't
00:46:55.040
only uh what they want to make clear it's not only you know although you've identified that we've
00:46:59.480
corralled a lot of the reading the leading writers and thinkers and that they do want to be part of
00:47:04.020
what we're doing we don't exclude listen i'm i'm the editor of a national platform now that as as i'm told
00:47:10.320
by one of our writers three lesbian writers who knew but i don't care what cares yeah i don't care i
00:47:17.820
and i think there's a lot of people who've been released people who thought we went looking for
00:47:22.460
that we didn't go looking forward it came to us because of the credibility that ron east has been
00:47:30.640
able to generate for the j.ca not only in in you know what what we've produced in terms of the content
00:47:39.360
my writing and some of the other contributors we've had um but the credibility that he brings when he's
00:47:45.460
talked to jewish leadership with jewish organizations sometimes his style has rubbed people the wrong
00:47:50.160
way because he believes that our community and our friends we need to stand up we need to raise our
00:47:56.600
voices we need to challenge those who would endanger us we need to challenge policies that that uh
00:48:03.880
marginalize the state of israel and and that and that um unfairly um demonize or criticize israeli
00:48:14.020
government practices or policies of the idf but all these people uh have willingly come under our tent
00:48:21.080
uh and and it's i never imagined i would have this kind of a staff and this kind of a roster
00:48:30.900
and we're adding more and more columns and and features uh in the next week two weeks we'll have the
00:48:37.100
newest we're putting out stories tonight wednesday night three more stories one other thing i forgot to
00:48:41.960
mention please indulge me the jewish news syndicate came to uh basically was brought to us and we have
00:48:48.800
an exchange deal with them now so we are able to run jns stories from you know jewish uh life great
00:48:56.760
sciences uh uh political stuff from around the world uh and they will be able to run our stories from
00:49:04.140
canada and give those issues a worldwide audience as well uh on a very respected a very respected
00:49:12.700
platform so uh i i'm i i can't take credit we have a webmaster who's a genius and run worked with him
00:49:20.280
has worked with him and tevi also directly for i mean nobody's been sleeping for about two weeks i'm
00:49:26.760
hoping that that eases off and we welcome uh people to go to the j.ca uh you can sign up for
00:49:34.100
the newsletter uh for the newsletter which will generally alert you that the new stories are
00:49:38.440
being posted on our facebook page uh there's alerts also when new stories are posted we'll try to get
00:49:44.100
up a couple of jns stories every day as well as some domestic content and then a mini push every
00:49:49.500
pretty much wednesday depending on jewish holidays fall and the new additional come out from the looks of
00:49:54.720
on our schedule every sunday evening for the foreseeable future through the summer i would
00:49:59.420
think we'll stick to that schedule i'm i'm very lucky right place right time honestly that this need
00:50:05.880
uh emerged there was already a need for something other than the canadian jewish news which you know
00:50:13.380
is great for archival content but it had swung very far to the left under the the editorial direction
00:50:20.200
the last few years uh i'm told that the board um wasn't really as cognizant of that didn't really
00:50:26.460
understand that that's what was going on if it wasn't for that the j.ca probably wouldn't have had
00:50:30.920
nearly the traction it did especially among israeli canadians uh but i'm right place right time
00:50:37.200
runs a fantastic leader uh and dave and tevi have uh worked miracles in eastern canada pulling together
00:50:44.520
the content the writers doing the majority of the of the of the editing and working with us to we're
00:50:50.280
trying to find you know we were trying to figure out what are we going to provide it turns out we're
00:50:55.220
providing everything we've got a we got beauty columns you've got dating columns parenting columns
00:51:01.360
there will be the the more expected rabbinical stuff you know the stuff that relates back to um
00:51:08.000
to living a jewish life as well as the political analysis both of the united states canada the eu
00:51:14.980
and of course the state of israel it's uh it's a it's like going how do i put this it's like going
00:51:22.080
to a carnival and there's all these great rides and all these great things to to taste all these
00:51:28.160
different columns and ideas to taste and to try out and i couldn't be prouder you know this
00:51:33.340
i don't talk about this stuff publicly and i decided not to write a column about it but i will
00:51:39.860
mention it to you as we tape this this is the anniversary on the hebrew calendar of the death
00:51:46.280
of my father it's his yortzai and in the jewish tradition uh the days are days calendar days start
00:51:54.360
the night before so tuesday night is wednesday is a young is uh uh yom shli shi for us the third day
00:52:02.320
of the week the days don't have names except for shabbat except for the sabbath and so as you and i
00:52:08.160
talk this is the anniversary on the hebrew calendar of my father's death and um he died at age 44
00:52:16.780
and life was a struggle for my parents uh the family business in which he worked folded in 1970
00:52:23.840
the pot business and uh i don't know that my father had ever contemplated working outside the family
00:52:31.240
business uh and um he tried some other ventures got went to red river college and graduated from the
00:52:43.220
creative communications class he loved advertising so he graduated from crecom before they even called
00:52:48.760
it crecom and uh i had my own involvement with the crecom department through kick fm
00:52:54.100
and uh i know that there would be a great deal of pride seeing a kid who was pretty happy and full
00:53:05.380
of ideas uh who wanted to be a sports writer essentially but i was your book editor and i
00:53:10.760
wrote for the high school newspaper but he never saw you know i i never did anything that he was alive
00:53:17.380
to see even my first work in radio i started three days before he died at the university manitoba radio
00:53:24.520
station so he never even heard any of my any of my broadcasts on radio and um it's not redemption
00:53:32.500
because i don't think i need to be redeemed from anything uh but i would never been able to follow
00:53:38.060
this path of um speaking out on behalf of the jewish community speaking out out on behalf of even
00:53:46.420
behalf of jews that are not at the forefront compared to the sometimes the big shots that
00:53:51.620
like to steamroll the rest of the community we were little guys in the jewish community but we
00:53:55.540
were very respected from my family's involvement with the with the misraki with the canadian zionist
00:54:01.040
federation with the pioneer women and so um to some extent i've kind of come home with this
00:54:06.800
and my brother my brother messaged me last night about this and um i know that my father my mother
00:54:17.600
died four years after i know my father would be very proud that my friendship with amis rocky family
00:54:24.900
who ended up moving in 12 houses down the block from my grandparents house and with ron east that
00:54:31.660
we've been able to ride this out and develop this baby and now give the jews of canada and and the
00:54:37.580
support of the jewish community the support of the state of israel in this country something that is
00:54:41.340
robust something that has quality something that will always stand up for what's right and that will
00:54:49.420
always speak truth to power i know my father would be very proud of that you're making me a little
00:54:54.940
over clamped here if i'm using that word properly yeah you did you know what i wasn't expecting it
00:55:01.680
either but i i i want to mention that that um i i know from my own background and the difficulties
00:55:10.720
my brother and sister have had in their lives the um how difficult it is to lose a parent
00:55:18.000
especially when you still need them um my dad died when he was 44 and my mom when she was
00:55:24.740
48 and that's already 40 you know 40 years ago and it's affected me it's affected my children
00:55:31.940
and my grandchildren in very adverse ways but ultimately
00:55:37.220
the way i was raised and the values i was raised with i am able to express and to promote
00:55:48.440
and to promulgate through the j.ca and if for as long as this part of the ride lasts if this is my
00:55:58.720
legacy i'm proud of it marty i want to that's a great uh place to end the interview i just want to
00:56:06.860
give you a chance uh before we wrap up to uh let people know where they can find some of the other
00:56:12.560
work that you do how they can sign up for your city circus newsletter because you are doing work
00:56:17.480
in winnipeg that i don't really think is being done at least in edmonton i know in calgary they do
00:56:22.700
have save calgary who does some of the municipal accountability work but you really are kind of the
00:56:28.780
only guy on the block in winnipeg doing it and how do people sign up for that what happened was that
00:56:34.020
in uh in april right around the time we got the call about you know from outside interests suggesting
00:56:40.540
that we uh that we uh expand the j around the same time i had realized that there was a serious gap in
00:56:47.320
winnipeg where there's always a gap winnipeg reporting was getting more serious because so
00:56:50.200
many reporters were being assigned to covet stories that there was again this like the what was going
00:56:56.320
on with the police shootings that i was interviewed by you about they weren't looking into the background
00:57:01.000
of the people that were getting involved with police uh because their behavior was resulting
00:57:06.340
in 911 calls and the public was feeling endangered uh and so i thought the best route was to put out
00:57:11.760
a newsletter uh that it's not like putting out something every day i i try to put out once a week
00:57:17.060
and so there'll be three or four stories i've got guest columns from people that provide submissions
00:57:22.560
i create an ad to promote a particular restaurant in winnipeg business uh that's uh overcome trying to
00:57:29.020
overcome their lockdown problems or whatever uh and uh and uh um of course you know promote
00:57:35.400
independent journalism uh and i thank those that have uh have uh put a little something forward to the
00:57:41.600
uh hard drive and monitor fund because that's what any of those contributions go for is equipment
00:57:46.680
upgrades at this stage uh city circus i only put out the subscribers though i you know and i should
00:57:52.360
have asked you about this but people are thinking i should start just putting the urls out there
00:57:56.980
so it gets a more general distribution if people want to subscribe to city circus and get an inside
00:58:02.700
look at some of the nonsense that goes on involving city councillors and city policies crime police and
00:58:08.480
i'm going to start touching on provincial stuff too since winnipeg is essentially manitoba um
00:58:13.480
i if you get a copy of it there is a there is a subscribe button on the newsletter at the bottom
00:58:21.200
but otherwise if people want to email me marty gold live at gmail.com send me a note i'll add you
00:58:26.880
to the subscription list or get a hold of me on twitter at tgcts i may have to change that handle
00:58:32.380
one day because i don't know the great canadian talk show is going to be coming back because i'm
00:58:35.520
so busy with other things or you can contact me through the j.ca and you can subscribe not only
00:58:40.520
that newsletter but we'll get you subscribed to city circus as well it's just a different way of
00:58:44.780
covering winnipeg different kinds of stories and when the city councillors are subscribing to your
00:58:49.080
newsletter you know you're you're getting in there you're getting in there on their radar and you
00:58:53.560
know that you're making a difference and so far i've had a very good response to it and i'm going
00:58:57.920
to try to continue the reporting i've done for the community at large for now it's over 15 years in
00:59:04.320
winnipeg as well as providing national coverage uh of israel and jewish affairs uh with the j.ca
00:59:12.000
terrific i'm plenty busy now all of a sudden and and sheila i want to thank you and i want to thank
00:59:18.420
ezra because you've you have always been very generous with your time you've allowed me to
00:59:26.120
become the the uh window for rebel media into winnipeg and manitoba yeah and and i i take that
00:59:33.100
um that responsibility very seriously and and it means a lot to me that your viewers have been so kind
00:59:41.260
and so nice and have been supportive of these appearances and when i've had different stories
00:59:46.940
have been mentioned where they've gone into uh into uh whether it was my blogs previously or the
00:59:53.180
j.ca and they've recirculated them and they've stayed they've they backed our place so to speak
00:59:57.920
and i i know that this is uh on the political right though there are obviously differences i know that
01:00:04.700
we have much more in common than than we don't and those that stand for the safety of the jewish
01:00:11.000
community and for the for the uh inclusion of of jews in all walks of canadian life including the halls
01:00:17.980
of of politics and the halls of power uh i'm i'm very gratified to have had this opportunity and to
01:00:24.780
continue to have the opportunity to um to be able to to have an audience with these people and if any
01:00:30.820
of you have any story ideas any of you want to write whatever you know just jump on the pile and
01:00:36.020
i'll get through it and uh we're going to continue to expand this base and make sure that these voices
01:00:40.940
are heard uh and that these stories are told what a great place to end the interview marty thanks for
01:00:49.560
doing what you do to tell the other side of the story both in winnipeg and for the canadian jewish
01:00:54.200
community thank you so much and anytime i look forward to uh appearing uh appearing again in a month
01:01:00.160
or so and uh catching up on all things winnipeg and all things the j.ca great thank you
01:01:05.040
you know marty's kind of a rebel he tells the other side of the story with his municipal
01:01:16.080
accountability work but he's also telling the other side of the story about the jewish community
01:01:20.580
here in canada that they are not all downtown toronto progressives i encourage you to check out
01:01:26.300
the work that's happening over at the j.ca some of the most interesting journalists in canada
01:01:32.640
are now writing at the j.ca it's kind of surprising but kind of great well everybody that's the show
01:01:39.440
for tonight thank you so much for tuning in i'll see everybody back here in the same time in the
01:01:43.720
same place next week and remember don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to