Juno News - Liberal gov promotes 'free' healthcare to migrants

00:00:00.000 A pro-Hamas Islamist group has hijacked visual and audio systems at four American and Canadian

00:00:11.240 airports. The Liberal government's immigration department is advertising Canada's public

00:00:15.980 health care system to attract immigrants, despite experts saying health services are

00:00:20.300 already overwhelmed. B.C. Premier David Eby has once again admitted that the province's

00:00:25.980 illicit drug decriminalization experiment was a, quote, mistake. Hello, Canada. It's Thursday,

00:00:33.060 October 16th, and this is the True North Daily Brief. I'm Kozman Jirja.

00:00:37.860 And now it's all done.

00:00:38.880 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know. Let's discuss the top stories

00:00:43.480 of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.

00:00:47.260 A pro-Hamas Islamist group has taken credit for a series of cyber attacks at two B.C. airports

00:00:57.880 and others in the U.S. Display and speaker systems were hijacked at Kelowna International Airport

00:01:04.520 on Tuesday night at around 5.15 p.m., displaying, quote, unauthorized pro-Hamas messaging on the

00:01:11.840 airport's flight information display screens. At the same time, Arabic chants played over the

00:01:17.900 airport's public address speakers for several minutes. Spectators reported hearing Arabic

00:01:24.240 chants along with chants of Free Palestine and A** Trump repeatedly for about two minutes.

00:01:31.420 Flight info screens displayed the message, quote, hacked by Muhtarif Cyber Islam and read,

00:01:38.840 Israel lost the war. Hamas won the war honorably. You are a pig, Donald Trump.

00:01:53.680 Kelowna International Airport released a statement at 10.30 p.m., confirming that the incident was

00:01:59.380 limited to a, quote, cloud-based third-party software provider used by the airport and confirmed

00:02:05.640 with True North that the RCMP and Transport Canada have been contacted. The statement reads,

00:02:11.360 quote, yesterday, public displays in our terminal building limited to the flight information display

00:02:17.060 screen and public address system were accessed by a third party to display unauthorized messaging.

00:02:23.500 Our team was able to remove the messaging from systems in the terminal building within a matter of

00:02:29.640 minutes. All affected systems were isolated and verified before being restored late last night.

00:02:36.360 The statement noted that the airport conducted a joint threat assessment with the RCMP and Transport

00:02:41.760 Canada and concluded that the messaging didn't pose a direct threat towards the traveling public.

00:02:47.920 Kelowna International Airport said in a statement, quote, to analyze the root cause, we are continuing to

00:02:53.760 work with the Canadian Center for Cybersecurity and Transport Canada. Victoria International Airport

00:02:59.140 confirmed with True North that the incident also took place at its airport. The RCMP did not respond

00:03:05.620 to True North's request for comment. So, Alex, I was looking through this this morning and I noticed

00:03:11.480 there was an ex-account viewers of this message were directed to by this pro-Hamas Islamist group.

00:03:19.260 What was posted on the account and have local politicians responded to this hijacking of

00:03:26.820 airport technology? So, Cosmin, in terms of the account, the messaging and you are referring to

00:03:32.620 that account, I also visited. It's I think it's called Sabre Islam, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

00:03:39.640 And in terms of the content that it's sharing, I believe it's in Arabic. So I don't really understand

00:03:44.820 any of the actual text message itself, but the videos appear to show Hamas fighters with

00:03:51.420 rocket propelled grenades and all kinds of other weaponry. It doesn't have a ton of followers. It

00:03:57.480 doesn't seem to be a very large account, but I understand that they're also responsible for

00:04:01.800 similar, I guess you could call them cyber attacks in Turkey and Mexico. I heard even that they did a

00:04:08.500 cyber attack in a pizza restaurant in Mexico. All of this seems really random and strange to me.

00:04:13.500 I'm not sure if you've ever been to the Kelowna airport, but it's a tiny, tiny place. And so I

00:04:18.620 can only imagine how disturbing it would have been to be in that airport terminal when this messaging

00:04:23.520 came up on the screen and all of the Arabic chanting and the epithets towards Donald Trump.

00:04:29.900 The story just seems like incredibly random to me as well, given the small stature of the Kelowna

00:04:34.900 airport. One MLA from BC, Tara Armstrong, who is one of the two MLAs representing the newly formed

00:04:41.360 one BC party. She posted on X, Kelowna International Airport's display and PA system were hacked with

00:04:47.620 pro-Hamas messaging, referring to the story that we were just speaking about. As someone with years

00:04:51.860 of experience working in airport ops, this is deeply alarming. And she said, this isn't a tech

00:04:56.220 issue. It's a serious safety and security breach. Time for a cybersecurity wake up call across all

00:05:01.760 airports. I was in between airports when this story came about, and it didn't exactly imbue confidence in

00:05:07.720 me in terms of how safe travel is in Canada at the moment. But that's besides the point.

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00:06:27.760 As Canada's health care system buckles under immense strain, the federal immigration department

00:06:32.800 is facing heavy criticism for a digital ad that shamelessly promotes the nation's universal health

00:06:37.600 care to migrants. The Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada post published Monday on X invites

00:06:44.560 people to, quote, think about moving to Canada to, quote, learn about health care in Canada. It links to a

00:06:50.400 government page explaining how provincial health care coverage works. The ad has drawn attention for

00:06:54.880 presenting an optimistic image of a system under serious stress. Conservative immigration critic

00:06:59.520 Michelle Rempel-Garner responded with a sharp rebuke. She wrote, quote, read the room, Lena, addressing

00:07:05.360 immigration minister, Lena Diab. The ad's timing coincides with Canada recording its worst wait times

00:07:11.040 ever. According to the Fraser Institute's Waiting Your Turn 2024 report, the national median wait time between

00:07:16.960 referral to a specialist and receipt of treatment is roughly 30 weeks, the longest in the survey's

00:07:22.160 history and a 222% increase over the 9.3-week median in 1993. The Fraser Institute estimated

00:07:29.120 Canadians lost nearly $5.2 billion in wages and productivity in 2024 simply due to wait times for

00:07:35.760 medically necessary care. Many patients experienced worsening conditions, reduced quality of life,

00:07:41.360 or permanent harm. Report authors Bacchus Barua and Mackenzie Moore noted that, quote,

00:07:47.920 as long as lengthy wait times define Canada's health care system, patients will continue to pay

00:07:52.800 a price in lost wages and reduced quality of life. So, Cosmin, what are Canadians more broadly saying

00:07:58.560 about the Liberals' Immigration Department's post, and what are some of the criticisms of this move?

00:08:03.360 I would say most Canadians are pretty frustrated and upset when you see the Liberal government putting

00:08:10.320 out ads flaunting how Canada has a so-called free health care system. We all know in reality it's not

00:08:18.960 free. We pay for it as taxpayers, people who have bought into the system their whole lives, hoping that

00:08:26.400 it will, you know, be there for them when they need it the most. But an ad like this basically tells

00:08:33.280 people thinking about moving to Canada to abuse the health care system. It's free after all. You can

00:08:41.600 arrive here, claim asylum or refugee status, and you have free health care for life. At the same time,

00:08:48.320 wait times are at record highs and Canadians go into the hospital. A lot of people just leave in the ER

00:08:55.520 room because of the wait times and they're not even seen by doctors. But part of the pressure on this

00:09:01.520 system goes back all the way to like 2017 to 2018, and it's a direct result of policies implemented by

00:09:11.440 the Liberal government. At the time, Ahmed Hussein was the Liberal Immigration Minister. He no longer has

00:09:20.000 that role, but he changed a long-standing policy. I think it was around for 40 years that denied entry to

00:09:30.640 immigrants who had high cost health or social service needs. So that includes people with terminal

00:09:37.200 illnesses, other people who require constant care from social services, etc. They were barred from entry.

00:09:46.400 They didn't meet medical admissibility rules. So under prior governments, people who wanted to come to

00:09:54.720 Canada, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, etc., had to prove their health conditions would not cost

00:10:03.200 Canadian taxpayers more than $7,000 per year. That was the inadmissibility target before the change.

00:10:13.680 After the change, the Liberals reversed this policy, implemented a maximum cost to taxpayers of $21,000 a year.

00:10:24.400 Now, I looked at some average health care cost estimates for Canadians, and $21,000 a year is about

00:10:33.360 three times the average cost a Canadian implements on the health care system.

00:10:38.960 So it's astounding these standards that the Liberals have lowered. And on top of that, they're actually

00:10:47.440 promoting immigration by seniors through their family reunification programs. There's other changes

00:10:55.280 to asylum and immigration rules that the Liberals introduced that essentially bring in more

00:11:03.680 seniors for seniors. And we know Canada already has an aging population. A lot of our health care

00:11:09.680 is geared towards treating and making sure seniors are comfortable.

00:11:15.760 But these new immigration rules and the changes introduced by the Liberals have made it even worse.

00:11:23.360 It doesn't actually address the health care crisis, the lack of staffing. When you're bringing in people who

00:11:29.520 will rely on the health care system, an unnecessary amount of people who rely on that health care system

00:11:38.000 for the rest of their life.

00:11:39.280 In what has become a reoccurring event, BC Premier David Eby has again admitted that British Columbia's

00:11:50.720 radical drug decriminalization experiment was a, quote, mistake. Eby made the comments Tuesday at a

00:11:57.440 news conference in Burnaby alongside Forests Minister Ravi Parmar, United Steelworkers District 3 Director

00:12:05.280 Scott Lunny and Unifor Western Regional Director Gavin McGarigal. Reporter asked Eby to elaborate on his

00:12:12.400 previous remarks. Premier, you recently made some comments around decriminalization and your belief

00:12:18.240 that it was a mistake to bring that forward. Do you have anything that you can expand on that or

00:12:22.880 why did you feel like that was something that you needed to say publicly? Yeah, like I've said it a number

00:12:28.640 of times. And, you know, the reality and the challenge of the toxic drug crisis is that it's

00:12:35.200 required us to try a number of different approaches to the problem. We want to take down those barriers

00:12:39.760 so people can access drug treatment, so they're able to get the care they need, but not at the expense

00:12:44.640 of downtown cores, not at the expense of our parks, not at the expense of our schoolyards,

00:12:49.200 and the safety of kids or the safety of people at bus stops. So we had to reverse course and ask the

00:12:55.040 government to recriminalize the public use and possession of drugs, illicit drugs. It was necessary

00:13:01.680 to do. And we're pushing ahead with involuntary care for people that can't access care because they

00:13:09.200 either can't or won't ask for it, but they're causing outsized amounts of chaos in our community,

00:13:14.480 as well as expanding, continuing to expand treatment beds throughout the province. It's a really hard and

00:13:20.080 challenging issue. We won't always get it right, but my commitment to British Columbians is we treat

00:13:24.240 it very seriously. Every life lost is one life too many. It's never been clear how decriminalizing

00:13:29.680 street drugs would create a pathway to treatment. Shortly after being sworn in as premier, one of

00:13:35.440 EB's first initiatives was to decriminalize possessions of small amounts of certain illicit narcotics,

00:13:42.560 including fentanyl. Under a pilot program approved by Health Canada, that policy allowed individuals to

00:13:49.680 possess up to 2.5 grams of drugs such as crack, cocaine, crystal meth, and fentanyl. Alex, you live

00:13:57.040 in BC. What are some of the stats and metrics surrounding overdoses, overdose deaths after the BC NDP

00:14:06.160 government decriminalized drugs? So Cosmin, since BC began its drug decriminalization pilot in early 2023,

00:14:14.960 the numbers have definitely, you can say, gone in the wrong direction. It might be helpful for

00:14:20.240 listeners to have an understanding of what the purpose of this so-called decriminalization project

00:14:26.080 was in the first place. The idea was that by removing criminal penalties for small amounts of hard drugs

00:14:32.880 like crack, meth, and heroin, or in some cases even fentanyl, it would free up the criminal justice system,

00:14:40.240 and it would reduce stigma, opening up a pathway to recovery. This was kind of fantasy-type thinking,

00:14:48.000 and it certainly hasn't panned out the way that they intended. Last year alone, BC recorded more

00:14:52.800 than 2,250 toxic drug deaths, most of those being fentanyl overdoses, one of the highest tolls ever on

00:15:00.080 record. That works out to significantly higher than the rate in Alberta, and 10 times higher than the rate

00:15:06.240 in Saskatchewan, and quite a bit higher than the rate in Ontario as well. In fact, Ontario, which did

00:15:12.400 not, of course, decriminalize hard drugs, saw about 2,200 opioid-related deaths last year,

00:15:18.080 but with a much larger population. And I was also in Ontario recently, and I can say,

00:15:23.040 anecdotally, from what I saw, they also have, like Vancouver, a very robust

00:15:28.560 drug scene, a lot of drug usage going on there. So, to zoom in, the contrast becomes even clearer.

00:15:35.280 If you look at Toronto, with the population of Vancouver, they saw roughly 500 overdose deaths in 2023,

00:15:42.320 but Vancouver's numbers are almost on the same scale, despite the city being just a fraction of

00:15:46.720 Toronto's size. So, when David Eby calls decriminalization a mistake, I think that he's actually echoing

00:15:54.160 what the data already shows, rather than an opinion that this has been a terrible failure. What's

00:15:58.880 incredibly baffling about his comment is that the experiment largely continues. It's a kind of

00:16:06.080 dual experiment between the provincial government and Health Canada, and it's set to continue until

00:16:11.440 pretty much late next year, which I find, again, quite shocking, given that the Premier is already

00:16:17.200 acknowledging that it's a terrible, quote, mistake, and has probably cost hundreds, if not thousands,

00:16:22.800 of lives. I should add, there has been one change to the policy, which is that you're no longer

00:16:27.760 allowed to do hard drugs in public places, like a playground or on a city bus. That actually runs

00:16:34.400 contrary to the original spirit of the program, which was to reduce stigma and thereby reducing

00:16:40.000 overdoses, because the idea was that if people were allowed to use drugs in public, they'd be more

00:16:45.120 likely to overdose in front of others and in the presence of others who could provide life-saving

00:16:50.480 care such as a Narcan kit. And so, yeah, even in terms of the spirit of the the original policy,

00:16:57.600 the provincial government appears to be going against it. And I estimate that this will result

00:17:01.680 in even more opioid overdose deaths than the province already has.

00:17:05.280 That's it for today, folks. Thanks for tuning in. You can stay on top of new episodes every weekday by

00:17:13.920 subscribing to The Daily Brief on iTunes and Spotify. Also, while you're at it, make sure to hit us with

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Juno News - October 16, 2025

Liberal gov promotes 'free' healthcare to migrants

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