00:00:00.000Rufa, one of the things I've noticed recently is that some of the better sort of reporting and opinion pieces on Canada and specifically on Justin Trudeau come from abroad.
00:00:10.840You know, we had during the Trekker Convoy, the New York Times reporting on things that several times legacy media journalists, people like Rosemary Barton at the CBC, were openly criticizing and telling the New York Times to take this down because it's wrong.
00:00:24.240Well, it wasn't wrong. It just didn't fit with the Trudeau narrative. You know, the idea that they were breaking into vehicles and arresting people at gunpoint.
00:00:30.880That was sort of like an inconvenient story that the Canadian media didn't want.
00:00:35.680One of the other things I've noticed is a sort of disconnect between.
00:00:39.560So in Canada, if you say that Justin Trudeau is acting like a dictator or that Canada is going down a tyrannical or authoritarian path,
00:00:47.420the media sort of like clutch their pearls and say, like, that's reckless and hyperbolic. How dare you?
00:00:54.900More and more, we're hearing that opinion being taken from people around the world, outside observers, people who are critical of Trudeau.
00:01:03.780And I saw that you shared a piece by Rav Arora, who's a great young writer from Vancouver.
00:01:09.460He wrote a piece in the New York Post titled Once a Liberal Democracy, Canada is now an authoritarian state.
00:01:15.640So it's a great piece. I encourage viewers to go out and read it.
00:01:19.480Rav argues that Canadian government has taken away, has taken its power to extreme levels.
00:01:23.780He tells a story about how he almost wasn't allowed back into Canada, despite, you know, being a Canadian.
00:01:29.520And he also makes a point saying that, you know, his family left India when he was a child.
00:01:35.260And he feels that, you know, Canada is not necessarily more free than India.
00:01:38.680I'm wondering if you can give us your thoughts on Rav's piece and sort of generally that direction that not only is Canada heading towards this direction,
00:01:49.320we don't see these kind of opinion pieces much in Canada.
00:01:52.180Increasingly, you are seeing them around the world, though.
00:01:54.360Exactly. I very much enjoyed Rav's piece and I shared it, you know, I shared a very important quote from the tweet where he says that,
00:02:04.400you know, the country that my parents left behind, India, you know, seems a lot less authoritarian than Canada at this point
00:02:11.360because he's unvaccinated and he can't get on a plane and and he's essentially a prisoner in his own country.
00:02:17.940I think that's, you know, I'm very sympathetic to that point of view.
00:02:22.560I, you know, I know a lot of unvaccinated people and they're really struggling.
00:02:28.100It's in Canada is an outlier in this regard.
00:02:33.160India, a country that I'm also very familiar with, having spent a lot of time there, has no vaccine mandates in place.
00:02:40.320In fact, the Supreme Court of India said that vaccine mandates were were unconstitutional and in a recent ruling.
00:02:48.400And that, you know, you can't and and and emphasized on the importance of bodily autonomy.
00:02:58.620And and it makes made me question why, you know, what is happening with our courts here?
00:03:04.540You know, why aren't we seeing this kind of, you know, why aren't we seeing this sort of thing happening here?
00:03:09.980And and and so a lot of people like Rav, you know, feel that the country that they grew up in.
00:03:17.760And I will say this as someone who spent 25 years, you know, I came here as a teenager and I've been, you know, and I've been here for for for a long time.
00:03:28.280And I can tell you that I don't recognize this country anymore.
00:03:31.360I don't I don't I don't recognize what you know, I don't understand what is happening here.
00:03:37.240I don't know why Canada is an outlier here.
00:03:39.640Of course, there are problems with India.
00:03:41.720I wouldn't say that, you know, India is necessarily freer than Canada.
00:03:46.160I think that would be a little bit of an exaggeration if one were to say that.
00:03:50.560But one can certainly point to the fact that Canada is heading in the wrong direction.
00:03:55.980It is an outlier in the advanced West.
00:03:57.980It is it's an outlier among major countries in insisting on vaccine mandates on the two dose vaccine mandate, which makes absolutely no sense.
00:04:07.540You have research upon research coming up from various credible health agencies from across the world, whether it's the CDC, whether it's the UK or it's the UK Health Authority or UK Health Agency that show that the two dose vaccine regimen is actually not very effective at this point, where if you've done two doses, you're you're you're you're really the vaccine effectiveness is essentially gone down to zero.
00:04:34.620So so but but but the diff but the thing is, I can get on a plane and I can apply for a federal government job, but the unvaccinated can't.
00:04:44.440And that's the and that's what's very cruel about the situation.
00:04:49.040And and and and also we've we've completely ignored the fact that a lot of unvaccinated people probably have a great deal of natural immunity at this point.
00:04:59.280At this point, everyone's more or less been infected.
00:05:02.040And so you have immunity from vaccination and you also have immunity from having recovered from COVID-19 yet yet the government insists on these vaccine mandates which absolutely make no sense, so I appreciate where he's coming from where Rav Aurora is coming from, and I sympathize with it, and it is an absolutely frustrating situation to be in.