Are anti-lockdown protesters “far-right extremists？”
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Summary
On May 15th, thousands gathered in Queen s Park in Toronto to join the Worldwide Freedom Rally. Just last week, prominent politicians made some claims and accusations about those protesting. Listen to what NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi had to say about those protesters.
Transcript
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Hi, everybody. I'm Jessica Shamiyovsky for True North. And over the weekend on Saturday, May 15th,
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thousands gathered in Queen's Park in Toronto to join the worldwide Freedom Rally.
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Now, just last week, a couple of prominent politicians made some claims and accusations
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about those protesting. Listen to what NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi
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had to say about those protesting. Yes, I do think that there is a connection with people who
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aren't wearing a mask or who aren't following public health guidance and the extreme right
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and the idea that folks in the extreme right don't care about people around them.
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Those people at those anti-mask protests, let's not kid ourselves. They are people who are marching
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in thinly veiled white nationalist supremacist anti-government protests, and they don't
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deserve that kind of sympathy. Those are some pretty serious claims. So I went out to the Freedom Rally
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basically looking for these so-called extremists. And not only did I get a chance to speak to
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protesters, I got a quick comment from PPC leader Maxine Bernay. So please have a listen to what
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protesters and Maxine Bernay had to say about these types of labels and accusations.
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Do you have any comment? What do you think about politicians calling freedom protesters either white
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nationalists, white supremacists, right-wing extremists? Do you guys have any comments on that?
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It's politics of division. You ask anybody here that they're here to fight for Canadians' rights,
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Canadians' freedom. There's one race, the human race.
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We love Canadians. We love freedom, irregardless of skin colour. That's just disingenuous. And
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they have nothing better. There's no argument to justify these lockdowns, these measures.
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So they start to use the race card and name-calling, and it's pathetic, really.
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It's all division. That's all they want. Just to divide us. We can't be near each other.
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We can't have our energy connected. They don't care about us. They never did. They never will.
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I think they can label you as whatever they want to try and push their agenda. I think most people
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here are just here for freedom and to get their lives back in order. And at the end of the day,
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if that's what they want to label people, I think people are smart enough to understand that these
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people here are here for the greater good and not to push any of that sort of crap that they're
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talking about. That's very typical of those politicians who are imposing all those measures.
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We are people from all cultures and pretty much you can see people of different colours,
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if you like. And we are parents, grandparents, small business owners. We are professional
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of all kinds, from all walks of life, all standing together against lockdowns and all measures
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that were imposed on us without any scientific background or reason.
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Nobody's labelled as anything. And if you notice, it's so diverse right now. So kudos to everybody
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here trying to make a difference. And we don't know if we'll make any change today, but we're
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here to stand up for what our freedom is and our rights.
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I think, first of all, he must come here and he must follow me on all these rallies that
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I'm doing across the country. He will be able to see by himself that ordinary Canadians that
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are fighting for their freedoms. So it's a huge disinformation. But I'm not surprised coming
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from him. He doesn't know what he's saying. And I just try to discredit myself and to discredit
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Walking around the rally, it was perfectly clear how diverse this crowd really was. It
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was not about the right versus the left, and it had absolutely nothing to do with race or
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white nationalism. This was a group of Canadians, thousands of Canadians, gathering together.
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And what they did have in common was their passion and the fight for their freedom to get
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