Juno News - August 10, 2025


Feds hiding immigration data, while Carney poses with naked man


Episode Stats

Length

46 minutes

Words per Minute

184.71988

Word Count

8,675

Sentence Count

3

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 here we go all right let's do it so uh did everybody have a nice long weekend in august
00:00:08.500 was it a holiday in your parts of the country too yeah it was bc day in bc what does bc day
00:00:17.420 celebrate apparently pride we had the pride parade that was a big deal i didn't even know
00:00:22.720 what was happening um but it was i think it was called heritage day in alberta i have to joke that
00:00:30.200 i feel that this holiday was created because otherwise it's july 1st to first weekend september
00:00:36.920 they thought that's a really long stretch maybe not to give us a day off but growing up they always
00:00:41.780 called it bank holiday or civic holiday and now it's heritage day or bc day what do you call it in
00:00:48.100 on ontario there waleed not sure actually today i don't have to go to work well uh i appreciated it
00:00:57.140 nonetheless it uh was a nice day out at the lake and i didn't get sunburned or eaten by mosquitoes
00:01:03.120 which are both uh i consider wins um all right let's get started
00:01:07.800 well happy friday everybody i'm so glad you joined us for another episode of off the record
00:01:18.040 my name is william and joining me today are two members of our true north team you've got waleed
00:01:23.180 who's based in montreal i think right now or montreal slash ottawa and you've got alex out in
00:01:30.780 british columbia so you've got a pan-canadian team and no one possibly no one from ontario which might be
00:01:37.520 a first for us so we're glad you came to join us we're going to have a review of some exciting news
00:01:43.120 stories and it wasn't a dull week even though we're in the middle of summer for news and we
00:01:48.300 actually had a whole series of immigration stories happen in the past week waleed why don't you give
00:01:54.060 us the rundown on what happened with immigration well yeah starting with the fact that we don't know
00:02:00.820 what's happening with immigration in the country right now i mean our numbers have been frozen since
00:02:05.080 pretty much when mark carney took office in terms of our monthly updates on immigration numbers
00:02:09.340 we do know since the beginning of 2025 that over 800 000 uh people have been new immigrants have
00:02:16.340 been admitted into canada throughout different classes of migration temporary workers and uh
00:02:21.260 from the residents and whatnot uh but michelle remper garner calgary area mp mentioned and uh spoke
00:02:27.700 out just yesterday about the fact that uh the immigration department is no longer updating those
00:02:33.460 numbers monthly therefore leaving canadians in the dark about what exactly we're having to deal with
00:02:37.700 in terms of the housing and economic stress that frankly the mass migration regime in canada is
00:02:43.060 causing now i would never be the first to to suggest that the government just wasn't being incompetent
00:02:51.080 uh when it comes to producing figures although you do have to wonder alex do you think that there's
00:02:56.600 possibly a reason why the government is failing to disclose immigration data for the past five months
00:03:01.860 uh well i don't i also would be the last one to speculate that the government is incompetent
00:03:08.340 uh i think that maybe they just aren't keeping track but luckily we all have eyes and ears
00:03:15.940 so we can kind of do that on their behalf you know part of me wondered if perhaps given that they
00:03:22.980 tried to say during the election during mark cardi's leadership race and subsequent to that that there was
00:03:28.500 going to be a new sheriff in town when it comes to immigration they're going to undo some of the
00:03:33.460 damage that's done what makes me wonder if maybe the numbers aren't actually bearing that up that if
00:03:40.020 the numbers were published we'd see that it's still the open season on open borders in canada and we
00:03:46.660 have uh millions of immigrants coming into the country i think in 2024 the number was somewhere around
00:03:52.820 three million between permanent and non-permanent uh immigrants in canada and anecdotally i think a
00:03:59.460 lot of canadians who live particularly in big cities uh you know still see quite a lot of immigration
00:04:05.300 happening uh wali do you believe that uh that the government has actually made a concerted effort to
00:04:11.780 crack down on immigration do you think it's business as usual from the new shiny new carny liberal government
00:04:18.580 i think it's business as usual with maybe perhaps a slightly different rhetorical tone in terms of
00:04:23.380 how they discussed immigration during the election period of course it's becoming pull after pull has
00:04:28.260 shown that the support for immigration immigration levels or immigration overall across multiple
00:04:33.380 classes have consistently declined in canada and to get canadians to feel that way about migration given
00:04:38.500 the fact that you know immigration has been a part of our modern legacy to grow our population grow our
00:04:43.620 economy and and perhaps grow our society to an extent um right now it's no longer a popular theme
00:04:49.220 i mean today is very much popular in the other direction to be against this mass migration regime
00:04:54.900 it's very much popular to be in favor of reducing the overall number uh to put a moratorium on certain
00:04:59.940 classes of migration and certain programs of course temporary workers right now are making up close to 19
00:05:06.740 of the private sector and this is happening as students and we know we talked about this before
00:05:11.060 students aren't just becoming conservative all of a sudden students and young people are not finding
00:05:15.940 jobs not finding ways to pay off uh rent student loans and being forced to live in their parents
00:05:20.580 basements and this was polyev's leading tone when it comes to speaking to the youth so uh all this is
00:05:27.220 happening because frankly it's too much and i don't think carney is changing the evidence shows that he's
00:05:32.100 actually continuing perhaps even expanding that legacy again in the first four months of this year over
00:05:37.860 800 000 people were admitted into canada uh new immigrants that is so the numbers don't suggest
00:05:43.940 that at all and of course as long as that's the case there's no evidence to suggest that carney is
00:05:48.900 any different from trueville and i think one of the concerns canadians have isn't just the raw numbers
00:05:55.780 it's the kind of immigrants that are being brought to canada they're being allowed in i think if it were
00:06:01.620 800 000 doctors nurses engineers uh people with in-demand degrees skills and education i think we'd be
00:06:11.300 building uh welcome scans for uh for that level i think it's because so many of these people are are
00:06:19.220 unskilled or don't have skills that the canadian economy particularly needs and the so the question
00:06:24.260 is do we really need 800 000 more uber drivers doordash drivers and tim horton's workers
00:06:31.060 so uh you know which just seems to be where a lot of these temporary foreign workers
00:06:35.940 are ending up so alex you're out in in british columbia what's the view from that part of the
00:06:41.380 world well bc has always been kind of left coast and so we're generally pretty tolerant of most things
00:06:48.260 generally and that includes immigration um william you and i were talking off air just before we started
00:06:54.660 about how especially when it comes to the news and particularly politics people tend to have a very
00:06:59.140 short attention span so to a lead's point i think it's really difficult to overstate how much canadians
00:07:05.860 attitudes have changed about immigration over the last 10 years people are probably unlikely to
00:07:11.380 remember that during the 2015 federal election debates between stephen harper and justin trudeau
00:07:17.060 they were both tripping over each other over who would seem more tolerant about bringing in syrian refugees
00:07:23.940 and now it seems like mark harney and pierre pauliev are tripping over each other about virtue signaling
00:07:29.940 i guess you could say to the canadian public's demands to reduce or at least bring immigration
00:07:36.020 below the speed limit so i think that that sentiment applies here in bc as well which is really
00:07:41.380 surprising because again we're kind of the most tolerant place in the entire country
00:07:44.980 i would certainly say that uh it would be very hard to divorce politics from immigration policy that
00:07:54.740 you know no politician wants to lose votes uh and if you take a really tough scant uh against immigration
00:08:02.260 i i think there's a worry that you're going to be perceived as intolerant or unwelcoming or or against
00:08:09.620 certain ethnic or cultural groups and uh politicians hate that they really do they they don't like
00:08:16.900 losing votes if they can possibly avoid it now uh in bc or or crossing the border i had see a second
00:08:25.540 story there waleed that apparently we saw some number of illegal immigrants crammed into a truck
00:08:32.180 and attempt to be smuggled across uh the border what's the what's the story there
00:08:36.980 so the story here is that we had a border crossing in quebec um that had a cube truck
00:08:44.420 truck that probably doesn't fit nearly as many people as were found 44 people mostly haitian
00:08:50.900 nationals now that's important because haitian nationals have been flooding into the u.s previously
00:08:56.100 given the situation of rather civil or incivility or chaos in haiti over the last couple of years
00:09:03.380 uh the u.s ended their temporary special status that they offered as well to venezuela and a few
00:09:09.460 other nationalities and they've therefore flooded into canada as a response now um that truck was
00:09:17.540 was operated by three turkish nationals who were operating this whole smuggle operation so i guess
00:09:23.380 the story here is that migrants are smuggling other migrants in and and foreigners are doing dirty work
00:09:28.740 to bring other people into the country um and of course the rcp found them in rather concerning
00:09:34.340 condition dehydrated um not a lot of air inside of there no no proper ventilation so the conditions
00:09:40.740 that the authorities found these migrants in were absolutely horrific and unfortunate and it just
00:09:46.340 goes to show exactly the kind of lengths that uh some people are willing to do to come to canada
00:09:52.100 but in other sense what the lengths that some other people are willing to do to make a couple bucks to
00:09:57.860 smuggle other people and i really think this is just one more example among many of course this one
00:10:02.660 being more recent yeah i did read that uh the 44 people were not in great condition there wasn't
00:10:10.340 any water or food that there was limited air because of course a cube van isn't ventilated for human cargo
00:10:17.780 it's ventilated for pallets of of cargo of inanimate objects being moved across the border and i think
00:10:24.580 the point you make about the three people who engaged in the smuggling they they certainly
00:10:28.820 weren't doing it out of kindness of their hearts to take these haitian refugees and have them cross the
00:10:34.900 border these people often end up in indentured work uh they they take out loans or they commit to paying
00:10:41.540 vast amounts of money um to to these smugglers and then have to to work it off uh after they get here
00:10:48.740 sometimes for years um alex uh have you you know again out in british columbia where i think vancouver
00:10:55.700 after toronto would probably be the second largest destination for uh for immigrants is is smuggling
00:11:02.740 an illegal border crossing a real problem in british columbia right now i don't know if um british
00:11:10.420 columbians are even intolerant enough of migration to require people to be smuggled in illegally like they
00:11:15.540 have to be in quebec i uh just had a friend visit from alberta and she said that the alberta departure
00:11:21.780 gate was the at yvr was the whitest place she was ever there in bc so um yeah we it would be hard to
00:11:30.900 tell you know who is migrating illegally and who isn't um we we tend to have a very very multi-ethnic
00:11:36.580 place and again a very very um accepting province and so i think a lot of people just fly in and frankly
00:11:42.580 just never leave it wouldn't come but even for tolerant left coast british columbia the issue of
00:11:50.820 affordable housing must sometimes run up against immigration and say you know unlimited immigration
00:11:57.140 causes a problem in a place where so few people are already able to afford housing how does that
00:12:02.580 dynamic play out between you know on the side of the supposed progressive left well there's always been
00:12:08.740 a funny thing going on in bc when it comes to illegal migration and housing because typically
00:12:13.460 the folks that you would expect to migrate illegally um which would be from you know the east indian
00:12:17.940 community they pack like 100 people into one house so it becomes difficult to blame them for the housing
00:12:24.100 crisis um given the fact that they're so efficient i guess you could say at um cramming multitudes of
00:12:31.220 people into single family spaces i did see a posting that was advertising you know it used to
00:12:38.260 be you could rent a house and then it was rent a room uh and then it went to rent a bed and the most
00:12:44.500 recent one i saw was rent half a bed that for i think it was 900 or 950 a month you can rent one half of
00:12:54.500 a queen size bed uh the other half already being occupied by someone i assume you would become
00:13:00.980 pretty close friends with if you're going to be sharing a queen size bed with them every night
00:13:06.340 is that do you think we've reached the the most absurd level of sharing or do you think it'll be
00:13:11.380 have an entire bed corner to yourself or you know uh the beds are already full but you know sleep under
00:13:19.060 the bed and uh you can uh occupy i i do wonder if we've seen the limit or if it's going to continue
00:13:26.420 uh getting worse as again as more and more people enter the country we're not building the housing
00:13:31.380 you keep up with it well yeah i mean in all seriousness we would only build what 250 000
00:13:36.180 houses per year and we're bringing in one to three million people per year by most estimates
00:13:40.900 so just by the pure law of supply and demand i imagine as ridiculous as it sounds we could actually
00:13:47.140 be in bunk bed territory uh the next couple of years here well so people go to go study submarines to
00:13:54.660 figure out how to pack that many people into a into uh into a tight space now um alex i have to say
00:14:01.540 you made a comment about the alberta departure gate being the whitest part of bc i i would beg to
00:14:07.220 differ slightly in that and waleed i think you even have a video clip that shows maybe that isn't really
00:14:12.900 the case do you want to tell us about it well let's just say and this is kind of malcolm's words
00:14:19.460 canada doesn't feel like canada anymore this is a scene you'd see out of india but you're seeing
00:14:23.060 in calgary instead watch as you see a woman in a brown jacket running alongside the moving shuttle
00:14:30.180 bus with a massive group of bus users chasing down the bus in an attempt to board it in response to
00:14:37.460 the scene of the franklin lrt station calgary transit says in a statement as soon as we are made aware of
00:14:43.380 a situation calgary transit promptly deploys shuttles to assist customers in this case 13 shuttles have been
00:14:49.540 deployed transit ambassadors are also on site helping customers with wayfinding and directing them
00:14:55.700 to the shuttles during the mad rush to catch a bus this man says this is something he's seen before
00:15:02.340 oh i am in my homeland like this yeah does it remind you of your homeland where's your homeland
00:15:07.300 punjab and this is like this yeah you know i have to say that's what went through my mind too that
00:15:15.860 this is not a scene you particularly uh see in canada uh but it is a common scene not just in the
00:15:22.500 punjab but in any any part of the world that has a lot of crowding and maybe insufficient services to
00:15:29.220 to handle it so this clip is from last year this is not a new clip why do you think it's suddenly
00:15:36.980 resurfaced on on twitter and is suddenly getting the viral attention uh when this wasn't something
00:15:43.220 that just happened a day or a week ago well canadians aren't only concerned of the scale of migration
00:15:51.140 they're also concerned about the demographics presented to them perhaps then there's no demographic
00:15:57.860 that bows to the indian demographic which perhaps is the largest and specifically and i'm going to
00:16:03.460 quote the demand from the video uh punja a sikh majority region when you look at that video you
00:16:10.260 can clearly see a number of colored turbines across the crowd of people uh the man says it feels like
00:16:16.900 his hometown well because that's how it looks like back home so the fact of the matter is canadians are
00:16:22.340 not just concerned with the volume of migration and economic effects those are definitely perhaps the
00:16:26.740 more popular and you could say perhaps the politically acceptable or more politically acceptable
00:16:31.620 path to being critical of canada's current immigration regime but they're concerned with
00:16:36.180 the cultural differences and that's perfectly fine um the fact that we are having a lot of people
00:16:41.620 coming from the same places in this case punjab other cases of course alex where you're from
00:16:47.860 there's a larger chinese uh community um there are perhaps more arab pockets in alberta depending
00:16:54.500 where you are you know every province shares a slightly different immigration demographic based
00:16:59.540 on local language economic opportunity and of course any other possible uh trends that have
00:17:05.780 happened over the years so the fact is when kennus malcolm says and many people perhaps echo the sentiment
00:17:11.700 but canada doesn't feel like canada anymore because it isn't canadians or native-born canadians or
00:17:17.780 canadians of 25 different backgrounds together it's primarily and i'll be willing to put money on this
00:17:23.940 primarily uh indian south asian southeast asian uh members who are uh you know causing scenes like
00:17:32.180 that uh through frankly just simply following the way of life that they've had for for a little while
00:17:40.900 alex i i think you know apart from the numbers because i i think it's hard for any of us to wrap our
00:17:46.900 heads around you know when people say oh it's 1 million or 2 million or or what that means is there
00:17:52.980 a general sense though that immigration has reached a point where or a volume that um instead of of
00:17:59.780 new immigrants coming here and integrating into canadian society they're actually coming here and and
00:18:06.660 forming enclaves of their home country here in canada and holding on to maybe values traditions and
00:18:13.940 beliefs that can sometimes even be at odds with what we would think of as being canadian values or or
00:18:21.460 you know canadian cultural practices what are your thoughts on that well i would say that that's
00:18:26.180 definitely the case i mean i we were saying again off air just before we started i mean i grew up in
00:18:31.140 surrey and that scene could have been taken out of surrey central sky train station 20 years ago
00:18:36.420 but but the difference is is that surrey is now basically a model for the entire country like the
00:18:41.380 whole country is becoming just like surrey but worse because when i was growing up in surrey i mean we had
00:18:47.140 a large punjabi diaspora population but most of the kids spoke perfect english and they integrated
00:18:52.820 quite well and you know we would all hang out and we we kind of shared the same values but now i
00:18:58.260 think that even though we're saying notwithstanding the numbers you have to think about the numbers
00:19:02.580 because if you have this many people coming from one part of the world simultaneously it makes it
00:19:07.860 actually very difficult for them to integrate into what we would consider traditional canadian society
00:19:13.540 because they're not surrounded by canadians they're surrounded by people from the punjab region and
00:19:18.260 i actually hear a lot of people in that punjabi diaspora lament the fact that this is happening
00:19:25.860 they they say that they're they're actually missing to canada that they knew 20 years ago as well so
00:19:31.940 i think that everybody's pretty frustrated across the board with what we're seeing and it's uh that
00:19:36.740 we're looking more like a melting pot and less like a cultural mosaic yeah i mean i think that's
00:19:42.420 it's a or possibly neither possibly we're now you know it's like you uh taken a a a new ingredient
00:19:49.860 and instead of chopping it up and having it become part of a dish or adding a unique spice to it now
00:19:54.820 you've just got a big glob of it that is uh floating in your soup to use a pretty unpleasant cooking
00:20:02.340 metaphor after that well the other the other thing i think that's important to address too is that again
00:20:07.300 this is a numbers issue that would not have been a news item one year ago if the transit infrastructure
00:20:14.260 was able to keep up with the rate of immigration but of course the people who administer transit are
00:20:19.140 not responsible for immigration that's the federal government and so what we have here is again just
00:20:24.500 too many people coming in and canada not being able to keep up the same thing that applies to housing
00:20:29.140 applies here as well i think interesting points and something that true north is always focused on
00:20:35.700 immigration immigration policy something the legacy media either ignores or doesn't report on in a
00:20:42.260 fair manner but that's why we're here and we will continue to keep focus on this issue uh as we go
00:20:49.060 forward now moving from uh calgary to the other side of the country uh there's a that nursery rhyme
00:20:54.820 that you know if you go down in the woods today you're in for a big and turns out nasty surprise at least
00:21:01.700 if you're in nova scotia because you're not allowed to go down into the woods today you'll be hit with
00:21:07.300 a twenty five thousand dollar fine the government of nova scotia in the name of protecting forests from
00:21:16.500 wildfires has banned people from hiking camping fishing and taking off off-road vehicles into the woods
00:21:26.820 and they've actually even said don't step foot they've put up police tape around their woods
00:21:33.460 they have posted signs and one fact that i found surprising is that something like 75 of nova scotia
00:21:41.780 is covered in forest so the government has basically now said you know three three quarters of your
00:21:48.260 province is a no-go zone and at least to me i felt shades of covet when i read this article i felt the
00:21:56.340 shades of government restriction and government saying well you can't be trusted to use the woods and to
00:22:03.380 behave appropriately so we're just going to we're just going to bang you maybe you'll need a maybe
00:22:08.500 you'll need a forest permit or something to walk into it and if you don't have your proof of forest permit
00:22:14.900 you'll be uh subject to fines and arrests so waleed what do you think uh reasonable measure or
00:22:21.860 massive curtailing of civil liberties in nova scotia absolute government overreach frankly
00:22:27.940 like you said it definitely echoes the same vibe as covet because the fact of the matter the formula
00:22:32.100 is the same the formula is this uh safety is a concern perhaps for some and others of course wildfires
00:22:38.980 are are not good not good to our environment many of them are caused simply by either human error or in
00:22:44.580 some case arson attempts so there definitely has been this underlying narrative that some people
00:22:49.860 can buy into and by buying into that narrative it causes this safety first safety only mindset which
00:22:56.020 is the fact that okay well there's a risk that perhaps someone can walk in there and cause a perhaps
00:23:01.780 a more frequent wave of forest fires whatever it is because you know they're saying it's dry season now
00:23:06.180 and it's really warm so i i don't know if they've put a deadline on on this measure when they're
00:23:11.380 going to take it off if this is like a two weeks to flatten the curve kind of situation or or not
00:23:15.940 but uh but rather what i'm thinking mostly is that any scenario where people are in this state of fear
00:23:22.820 and state of concern over public safety if that's just an invitation for government intervention then
00:23:28.580 this is one more like covid but not the last and it's very very much concerning for the state of
00:23:34.340 civil liberties in this country alex what are your thoughts on nova scotia some would say draconian action
00:23:41.540 well i think that one of the things that makes this so covet 19 adjacent um is one of jeff evely
00:23:47.860 who's another friend of the show he posted a video on x recently where he showed that on one side of the
00:23:54.260 woods it's considered the woods and if you walk there you're subject to a 25 000 fine but on the other
00:23:59.940 side it's not considered the woods and it's completely arbitrary and performative and and so that reminds me a
00:24:06.500 lot of the days when you had to wear a mask when you walked into a restaurant but then as soon as
00:24:11.620 you sat down you were able to take the mask off right i don't think that people even mind so much
00:24:16.740 these government restrictions because they're somewhat well-intentioned like believe was saying
00:24:20.660 nobody likes forest fires but when it ventures into this performative nonsense where it's just
00:24:27.220 nonsensical at that point people have every right to become skeptical and in some cases outraged i
00:24:33.380 also find it particularly cruel for this to be happening in nova scotia i don't know if you guys
00:24:37.140 have been to nova scotia but going into the woods and fishing is pretty much all there is to do like
00:24:42.980 it's not really a place where you could have many alternative options for fun and uh so i think that
00:24:48.660 this would be far more tolerable in a place like toronto or calgary or vancouver but in nova scotia
00:24:53.940 i think it's just plain cruel because there's basically nothing else to do just just to add to
00:24:58.580 alex i mean this this is what's so wrong about these one-size-fits-all solutions and this top-down
00:25:03.460 government authoritative nature which is the fact that i mean for example in covid a lockdown wouldn't
00:25:09.860 affect a young uh programmer working from home who already lives at this parent's place you know in a
00:25:17.060 comfortable financial situation uh frankly it's a bit advantageous for some people uh but a lockdown
00:25:22.980 for someone that is dealing with uh you know mental health uh issues that is already facing severe
00:25:28.340 social isolation and whose livelihood depends on being outside and engaging with people
00:25:34.580 significant so what i'm trying to say here is that for nova scotians because i'm not a nova
00:25:38.420 scotian i haven't been to nova scotia i have been to the woods in a very long time and so all those
00:25:43.620 things would put me in a position where i would be much less sympathetic to the lifestyle and nature
00:25:47.940 that people out there you know are facing of course perhaps there are a few more things to do than
00:25:52.980 visit the woods in nova scotia but my point here is that a lot of people simply lack sympathy because
00:25:58.500 they lack understanding and i think that that's probably the issue with a lot of canadians outside
00:26:03.220 of those commercial who might be very much supportive to measure perhaps what they appreciate and what
00:26:08.500 nova scotians and preachers are two different things and uh simply that's why they wouldn't mind
00:26:12.900 seeing uh those restrictions be put on on themselves but that's why government uh you know
00:26:18.660 one-size-fits-all solutions don't work because people have different needs and different like
00:26:22.020 lifestyles and cultures and livelihoods and therefore i think this is very devastating for
00:26:26.660 people that live in those people that live in rural areas um you know cub scouts i used to do cup scouts
00:26:32.260 so you know going to the woods hiking these activities are very much part of the culture over there and
00:26:37.060 across the country frankly so it's sad to see yeah i think that's a really good point waleed um and
00:26:42.660 anytime you have these extreme measures you're always going to have winners and losers so i'd be
00:26:46.500 really curious to see what happens in nova scotia in terms of the indoor 24-hour fitness industry this
00:26:51.940 might be an opportunity for them to recoup some of their losses during covid um but yeah i think that's
00:26:57.220 a really interesting point as well i'm now thinking that we have to produce a new series called waleed in
00:27:04.020 the woods and uh and have him report from different wooded areas and if that's something you'd like to
00:27:10.260 see make sure you respond on our socials and uh and share that with our team uh i guess the other thing
00:27:16.580 that really left out of me was a 25 000 fine for wandering in the woods to have a bit of summer summer
00:27:26.020 summer fun of fishing or hiking uh i don't even think we charge 25 000 for serious assault uh in
00:27:33.780 this country as a punishment but yet you know you take out your your walking stick and that is uh
00:27:40.580 that's a 25 000 fine does that does that seem a little excessive to anybody else in this case
00:27:46.260 oh it's completely excessive that actually i think brings us to our next story it's a perfect segue
00:27:50.580 because it's i think we're going to talk about stranger attacks in vancouver and in this recent
00:27:55.300 story in vancouver i i kid you not the guy's bail release order the last time he was in court i think
00:28:00.660 was 100 for a similar stranger attack so you're right i mean it's a 25 what would the math on that
00:28:07.540 be a 2500 percent uh greater fine for wandering in the woods in nova scotia than it is for randomly
00:28:14.340 attacking a tourist in downtown vancouver gives you an idea of the kind of topsy-turvy bizarro world
00:28:20.020 canada lives in right now yeah you do have to think you know uh it was fine when all he did was
00:28:28.020 assault strangers but then he ran into the woods to escape and that's when he really crossed the line
00:28:33.460 and we had to do something um now alex you're again as a vancouver person this isn't the first time
00:28:39.940 we've seen uh a random stranger just get attacked for no apparent reason what is what do you think's
00:28:47.220 happening out there in vancouver well we just have a ridiculous revolving door justice system so i had
00:28:53.540 done an article on behalf of true northwire just a few months ago about a fellow named hugh mason i
00:28:58.740 believe in surrey if my memory serves me correctly and i think he's been i think he's had 42 court
00:29:04.900 appearances in the last two years um so basically what we do is we just you know we take a hundred
00:29:11.220 dollars as like their bail and we just throw them back on the streets and we hope for the best
00:29:16.260 um our other friend of the show clayton domain was pointing out recently that one of the most absurd
00:29:20.740 things about our criminal justice system is that the punishment for breaching your probation and in
00:29:25.380 the case of a stranger attack is more probation right so like it's no surprise that these people just
00:29:31.940 complete just can continue to reoffend given the fact that the consequences are basically nil
00:29:37.860 uh until they do something incredibly horrific in which case it becomes a serious indictable offense
00:29:43.460 like a murder you do have to wonder if um uh you know someone has committed multiple assaults in the
00:29:50.900 past how shocking you be that they then go out and commit another assault now we'll lead in this case
00:29:57.460 uh it was a tourist again who was assaulted do you do you think vancouver is starting to get a
00:30:03.540 reputation as an unsafe city as a city where tourists should avoid given the level of random
00:30:10.180 violence that seems to be happening there on a on a pretty regular basis now well frankly i think you
00:30:17.540 have to put in the context across the country i mean toronto and montreal are also major tourist
00:30:22.660 destinations but i think what puts vancouver apart is that drug situation out there i mean i went to
00:30:26.500 vancouver only once in my life and that was a four-day trip and i saw two overdoses happen in two days
00:30:31.140 friday and a saturday on a on a weekend trip so the fact that the matter is vancouver is perhaps
00:30:36.900 it's provincial government it's a social cultural approach of being progressive and accepting to
00:30:41.860 everything and anything means that frankly that uh it isn't the safest destination it can be much
00:30:46.500 cleaner much safer much more organized but they choose not to because i guess that's the kind of
00:30:50.820 their contribution to civil liberties is keeping criminals on the streets so it's unfortunate to see
00:30:56.340 but that's if it was very very much a beautiful city but i think uh it's uh too much of a slap
00:31:01.460 on the wrist and to tie it back to the comment uh because i think it was a perfect segue from the
00:31:05.700 noble scotia story is i think our politicians in canada know how to deter canadians from doing
00:31:10.580 things but they don't know how to deter canadians from doing crimes they know how to deter canadians
00:31:14.900 from having fun 25 000 is a pretty strong deterrence but they don't know how to deter people from from
00:31:20.660 committing crimes because you know 100 bail bail after bail after bail probation house
00:31:26.100 arrest keeping these dangerous people that are committing violent offenses in open society
00:31:31.060 it's simply an approach that's not working yeah you know it is interesting to think if there's uh
00:31:37.700 you know the criminal justice system is largely federal but things like uh enforcement of drug policy
00:31:46.420 or homelessness uh vacrancy tends to be more of a provincial thing and you're wondering if it's becoming
00:31:52.980 you know the combination of those two things together uh that's that's you know destroying
00:31:58.420 what is what is one of the world's most beautiful cities that you know there is no doubt that vancouver
00:32:04.100 you know between the ocean and the mountains and the fact that uh you know there were rules to make
00:32:09.860 buildings have a certain look and feel to it that it's a gorgeous city and it is sad to think that uh
00:32:16.420 it's it's almost rotting from the inside with uh with some of these bad government policies
00:32:23.380 well yeah a lot of people like to think that the court system is run provincially and it is but what
00:32:28.260 people don't realize at the same time is that amendments to the criminal code which includes
00:32:32.500 bill policy is again determined by the federal government so vancouver has and it's not unique to
00:32:38.420 vancouver this is generally a big west coast problem you have similar issues in portland san francisco
00:32:44.340 los angeles and i think the reason for that is that the west coast just attracts forgive me for
00:32:49.700 using this politically incorrect term i think it is politically incorrect these days but crazy people
00:32:54.260 i think what happens with the west coast is a lot of people are just escaping their problems so they
00:32:58.420 go west and then they hit the ocean and there's just nowhere else to go so they kind of settle there
00:33:03.620 i think the same thing applies to vancouver but the problem is is that vancouver has to well the judges
00:33:09.460 in vancouver have to operate according to the bail procedures and the criminal code amendments that
00:33:14.180 are established by the federal government and the people in the federal government in ottawa might
00:33:18.180 not necessarily be privy or understanding as they should be about the situation on the ground
00:33:24.580 where we are and so they might say well we should give more lenient sentencing to violent
00:33:29.380 offenders out of a place of compassion thinking that everywhere is like wherever their riding
00:33:34.020 happens to be but of course vancouver is a different fish entirely
00:33:40.900 definitely an interesting combination of of i think shows the power of government policy
00:33:46.580 to create outcomes both good and all too frequently uh bad um so we're coming at the end and uh you
00:33:56.020 know i have to laugh this new story uh is just such a such a canadian one in so many ways but uh prime
00:34:03.300 minister mark carney was in vancouver enjoying the vancouver pride festival and while he was there
00:34:11.380 he took some photos with pride attendees and one photo in particular which i should say is a little
00:34:18.660 bit uh viewer discretion advised we have blurred it to uh try and minimize the uh offense of it uh was
00:34:28.260 with this gentleman who was wearing not very much uh as a pride outfit and you have to think why did
00:34:34.260 prime minister mark carney decide out of everybody at pride this was the man he wanted to embrace
00:34:40.660 and i do laugh because at first a lot of people thought this was artificial intelligence that
00:34:46.740 there's no possible way that prime minister mark carney is hugging a man wearing a bright pink thong
00:34:54.100 that is showing off his his bare buttocks but i can assure you this is a reuters photo taken taken and
00:35:01.460 now licensed by reuters for use in other publications so to me my opinion is this shows
00:35:09.380 the kind of identity crisis happening at at pride braids because people have very different ideas
00:35:16.580 about what pride is and what it should be and what its role is and you've got on one side the people
00:35:21.860 saying pride is for everybody it's a family friendly event it's sponsored by banks and airlines and cell
00:35:29.300 phone companies who have you know kindly rainbowed their logo for june for pride month or for the parade
00:35:37.460 and then on the other side you've got well no pride is meant to be kind of a rebellion it's a meant
00:35:43.220 to be a rejection of of restrictive society that for very for a long time held back gay and lesbian people
00:35:52.020 and people from living their their real lives their true lives and so therefore it's a time for
00:35:57.860 outrageous shocking provocative behavior i think the problem is those two things are deeply incompatible
00:36:05.940 with each other you know a family takes their two young kids to pride to say you know look how tolerant
00:36:12.740 look how diverse look how look how this is celebrated in canada and then a man with his bottom
00:36:18.580 hanging out of of a thong just happens to walk by and is hugged by the prime minister so these are
00:36:24.260 surprising things so what do you think on on this pride issue and on this in particular photo that the
00:36:30.500 prime minister took i think he should use it as the cover for his next book values too you know but i
00:36:38.900 actually find like that those uh observations about pride really really insightful because there there does
00:36:44.580 appear to be two sort of competing concepts of what pride is supposed to be and growing up in vancouver
00:36:50.900 the pride parade has been around as long as i've been alive and when i was a kid i always thought of
00:36:55.940 pride as sort of a place where you know a gay or a lesbian individual might take their nieces and nephews
00:37:01.220 you know to show them that this is an acceptable way of life and that you know this is just family
00:37:06.500 values right i mean we've all kind of grown to accept that now uh to some extent but then over time it
00:37:12.260 just started to become more fetishized and more obscene frankly and so that's how you end up with
00:37:17.860 these situations as you've noted where you have kids walking down the street and then you know
00:37:21.620 naked men walking next to them and i don't think that those two things are compatible i think that
00:37:26.740 the only way that they can really remedy this situation at this point is either a enforce the law
00:37:31.940 and say you can't walk around naked or b you have to have two separate events you have to have a
00:37:37.540 family-friendly pride parade and then maybe an adult-only pride parade you know after midnight
00:37:42.500 in a very specific location because otherwise these things are just going to keep happening
00:37:47.700 i don't really think it's appropriate and i don't really think that it's actually doing anything
00:37:52.180 positive for the gay and lesbian community either because they're being associated with what i consider
00:37:58.100 to be kind of degenerate behavior by a certain segment of the pride parade population
00:38:03.540 it was a lot of peas i'm impressed by your alliteration there alex um now we'll leave
00:38:10.580 this was also not the only controversial thing to happen at one of the summer's pride celebrations in
00:38:15.300 this case it was the prime minister hugging a a naked man or a near naked man and and that could be
00:38:20.980 construed as inappropriate but also comical the fact that the leader of our country is is taking this
00:38:26.260 photo but we've also seen pride become increasingly disrupted by the pro-palestinian movement by
00:38:33.540 the those who oppose uh the war in gaza by black lives matter by trans rights organizations and
00:38:43.620 and pride in fact is getting canceled in a lot of places because these warring factions just seem to be
00:38:49.700 at each other's throats rather than um you know figuring out a way to put on what is frankly not that
00:38:55.780 difficult to task it's a parade you walk down a street and you wave at people so what is what do you
00:39:01.940 think are we at a point where maybe pride parades or are going to go away just because they can't seem
00:39:08.180 to even get along with themselves anymore i think there are maybe are two or more factions in this
00:39:15.300 community and and this parade in particular and of course i'm still confused as the fact as why is
00:39:20.580 there's a major parade happening in august i thought i mean i was born in june i was always told that
00:39:25.220 my month was pride month and i had to live up with that but now it's i mean july and august we're seeing
00:39:30.500 parades across the country no issue with it whatsoever but again the the matter here is
00:39:35.620 that there is there is very different factions whether it's a generational divide of people that
00:39:40.100 are let's say let's say a classic pride mindset of tolerance of different sexual identities and
00:39:45.620 orientations and lifestyles and you know having a bit more of a family-friendly event to commemorate
00:39:50.900 that sentiment or what i think is happening which is pride is transcending itself into a kind of a
00:39:55.780 rebellion movement that is always transforming depending on the issue of the day of course for
00:40:01.140 the last two years the issues in the middle east have been of of high interest perhaps in the past
00:40:07.300 black lives matter and other kinds of social issues as well so whatever is on the table is something that
00:40:12.980 pride can can try to attempt to deal with or to write off i mean i i know people that are very much
00:40:21.780 you know pro-palestine as as can be but not very much fun with this because you know there is there
00:40:26.820 ain't no pride in palestine no pride in the middle east and frankly there won't be as long as that's
00:40:32.340 the face of pride and this is another issue that i have with this ongoing situation of pride becoming
00:40:36.980 more and more ridiculous some of the scenes of naked men naked people that's the attack angle that
00:40:42.740 people have that is very hard to disrupt or very hard to reject i mean when you're seeing people
00:40:48.020 expose themselves in public in front of children in front of families that draws the line for many
00:40:53.540 people that crosses the line that people draw in many cases and that's a very normal thing i mean
00:40:58.020 it's it's very critical for for children to be away from those kinds of scenes and of course when you're
00:41:02.980 bringing people under the guise of a family-friendly event while having those scenes coexist it doesn't
00:41:08.580 work out well for the representation of the pride movement and this this goes hand in hand with
00:41:12.900 canada's immigration issue as well i mean as we're seeing more and more immigrants pouring for
00:41:17.060 primarily conservative religious muslim southeast asian countries and societies while seeing the
00:41:23.860 scenes of pride getting more and more ridiculous i think the trend today is taking the world taking
00:41:29.780 canada at least to much more potentially homophobic future i mean really if you if this is the kind of
00:41:36.100 things that people are being introduced to in general society and these are the kinds of populations
00:41:40.180 we're seeing increase exponentially then i don't see where that social formula continues i mean the
00:41:46.180 reason why pride exists in canada the reason why we have tremendous civil liberty in the social
00:41:51.380 sexual sphere is not because we have a rock solid constitution or we have the best laws in terms of
00:41:56.260 freedom it's because we have a very tolerant society but the society is made up with those people and as
00:42:00.740 long as the people keep changing and the pride movements keep moving further and further to the
00:42:04.820 extremes of every issue they can i think it creates a formula for disaster in the future where people
00:42:09.940 might feel like they have to go back in the closet in certain areas of the country or in certain
00:42:13.860 environments or certain times of the year and i think it's rather unfortunate because there is
00:42:18.020 pride to say uh we're a free country but i don't think there's probably to say that we're uh you
00:42:22.340 know we're half naked and uh all these other nonsense to pull items i mean i i had to pick up on one
00:42:29.220 comment you made there of the divisions happening in in prague uh one of the groups that keeps getting
00:42:34.100 uninvited are uh jewish groups from pride they uh they don't want i think it was montreal just had to
00:42:40.900 just was forced to re-invite them after outrage uh the jewish groups were being excluded from their
00:42:46.980 pride and of course you are wrong about one thing there will eat in that there's no pride in the
00:42:52.020 middle east well there's exactly one country in the middle east that has a pride parade and that would
00:42:56.820 be that would be israel so i hope i hope irony is on the menu for uh for those groups who try and exclude
00:43:05.540 from pride based on middle eastern politics when there's only one country in the region that has
00:43:11.140 protections protections for gay and lesbian people so well i think that takes us to the end of our
00:43:17.300 our episode there it's been a busy week i want to thank uh my friends alex and waleed for being part
00:43:23.060 of today's episode uh neither of you live in nova scotia so of course you're free to go out and enjoy the
00:43:29.700 woods this weekend if you will uh bring bear spray if necessary and and and be be aware but uh you
00:43:36.420 know enjoy some of the civil liberties that still exist in your parts of the world and of course for
00:43:41.940 you thank you for watching and remember everything we've said is off the record
00:43:46.260 i was actually just in the woods uh i uh with my family we uh do a annual all of the children from
00:44:00.740 the little cabins around this one lake in uh west of edmonton do a games weekend and it's fun to watch
00:44:08.900 you know the children four five and six do the relay race or do the potato bag sack jump or
00:44:15.940 uh the one event that ended sadly in tragedy was the tug of war uh where there's one for kids and
00:44:21.460 then there's one for all ages and in the all ages one on one particularly big heave the rope just broke
00:44:29.060 right in the middle so that was that was a painful uh uh sit down for quite a lot of people who were
00:44:36.100 tugging on that rope oh that's great yeah i mean i think it's important especially people with like
00:44:42.420 as walid was saying people with mental health issues i mean like they say that you're supposed
00:44:46.580 to go for a walk through the woods it's one of the best things that you can do for your brain
00:44:50.660 so i i think that this is just incredibly cruel i feel a little bad saying there's nothing else to
00:44:55.220 do in nova scotia i imagine we'll get some angry youtube comments about that but there are other things
00:45:01.140 to do in nova scotia but when 75 of your province is covered in forest be in the forest is at least one of
00:45:08.580 the things that we have to do and and i still am gonna pitch to uh to the board uh having waleed in
00:45:15.620 the woods as well i love that that's the show yeah um i guess the best i can do for now is a virtual
00:45:24.820 background but i uh uh to be fair from the show i was just very interested with the fact that this
00:45:31.620 happened so suddenly i mean i don't know if there was a kind of a the nova scotia thing i don't know if
00:45:36.660 there was a uh some previous measures taken or if it's just like a hammer right away i mean i i
00:45:42.260 haven't heard anything similar to this before until this happened and this is significant right so i
00:45:48.820 read they tried it they got away with it two years ago so you know that that also shows the danger if
00:45:54.900 if you don't if you don't fight for your freedoms when they're first taken away it gives government
00:46:00.500 permission to do it again and again so um that's uh that's an important lesson for all of us well
00:46:07.060 it's also a slow period in the news cycle right so the perpetually outraged folks just latch on to
00:46:12.580 stories like this like let's be honest here most of the people complaining about this either don't
00:46:16.660 live in nova scotia or even if they do live in nova scotia they probably like weren't avid hikers
00:46:21.060 anyway you know it kind of reminds me of uh when covet first happened i live across the street from a
00:46:26.180 basketball court and i never saw kids play basketball and then when they banned playing
00:46:31.060 basketball all of a sudden the court was full so it was like this fascinating lesson in reverse
00:46:35.300 psychology people just love you know wanting to do the things that they can't do you don't know what
00:46:40.660 you've got till it's gone that's right that is human nature for sure that is definitely human nature