Juno News - September 02, 2025Liberals mock crime wave sweeping Canada
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Summary
On this episode of Not Sorry, Alex Zoltan talks about the latest in the Wild West, including the Lindsay Lindsay Self-Defence case, the Welland, Ontario break-in that left a father dead in front of his family, and the attack on a Jewish woman in a supermarket.
Transcript
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Welcome back, Juno News. I'm Alexander Brown, host here of Not Sorry. I'm the director of the
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National Citizens Coalition. I'm a writer, a campaigner, thrilled to be with you, thrilled
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to be able to talk to you coming out of Labor Day, coming out of a Wild West weekend where I'm as
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frustrated as you are. I hope that you were on the dock. I hope that you were walking in nature
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I trust you were spending time with your loved ones and being grateful for all that we have,
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even in our often frustrating country. But going into the weekend, Sean Frazier sniped back at Pierre
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Polyev saying, you know, this is not the Wild West in relation to the Lindsay self-defense case.
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That tweet has gone viral the world over. That is going to hang around his neck like a millstone for
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the rest of his career. And it should. And it should hang there along with whatever millstone
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has been created, you know, thanks to his time in immigration and housing, because
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generationally incompetent, one of the worst of the worst, there's no way around it.
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But quite unfortunately, and this has been reported on here at Juno News and all across,
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you know, media streams, it was a rough weekend for this country on the public safety file.
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There was a, it seems like an execution of a father in front of his family. There was a
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horrible instance in Welland, Ontario, where it is believed to have occurred that
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a former offender, they're always former offenders, we know why, broke into a family's home overnight and
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sexually assaulted a five-year-old. You know, that's, I don't know when these things became
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acceptable in our country. There's been great reporting recently here at Juno News as well
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from Clayton Domain on this Jewish woman who was attacked in a supermarket. And it was for being
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a Jewish woman at a supermarket. We have stunning video from Mario Zelaya that's gone all kinds of
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viral and is now prompting an OPP investigation where, you know, there's this all but militia of guys
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just letting loose rounds into the, into McTeer and Muskoka. And I, I used to work summer jobs in
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Muskoka. That is a populated area. Like outside of that park, outside of that bridge, there are
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working class homes. It's not just the affluent cottages. There are people walking those trails
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and those are live rounds dropping among them from, we know these guys don't have, you know,
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they're, they're shooting licenses. We know they don't have their PAL or their RPAL. We do know
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that they're likely on temporary visas of some sort. And apparently this had been going on for months.
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And finally, because it goes viral that we decided to give a darn, this is the Wild West in comparison
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to 10 years ago without the advantages of the Wild West, such as you could stake a claim for yourself.
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You could afford a home. If you were, you know, a hardworking young person, you could defend yourself
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without, you know, being thrown into this bureaucratic legal nightmare, having to defend the
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fact that you defended your family. This is more insulting gaslighting. This is more performative
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nonsense from the same group of people who put us in this situation of decline to begin with.
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You can tell I'm tired of it. It's upsetting. It's upsetting to all of us.
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We're going into a September where vital change needs to happen. And we're looking at the same
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damn gaslight. I don't think that's acceptable. I imagine you don't think that's acceptable too.
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And I'm thankful to have you here to watch this episode because we're going to talk to Alex Zoltan,
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the crime reporter here at Juneau News and the True North Wire service, which is going to be
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of a big help because this is infuriating. This is a time to push on all these key files,
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whether it's immigration, whether it's crime, housing, employment, because if we don't get this
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fixed now, it gets worse. And I want to draw your attention to something because maybe you saw it
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today. Doug Ford, Ontario's premier, just pulled a cheap stunt over this crown royal situation where
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a bottling plant, not the operation in Gimli, Manitoba, a bottling plant, believed to have been
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planning this move to leave for the U.S. and shut down operations in Ontario for years because whiskey
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sales globally are changing. People are drinking less. Doug turned it into this cheap performative
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stunt when most of these crimes occurred that we just talked about in Ontario. He pours the 40 out
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and thinks he's spiking the football, thinks it's some wonderful moment. It is cheap nonsense at a
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moment when people are being executed in their homes, when families feel less and less safe,
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when young people do not recognize the towns they are trying to start families in and lay down roots.
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We are pouring out booze. We are doing the let them eat cake thing. Everything with him is
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let them drink booze. It's retail politician nonsense. It is dreamed up by consultants
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and transactional consultants. And you can tell because they do not have your interests at heart.
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He is, this is a phantom protecting of jobs here. This, this place was already shutting down.
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This is a parlor trick and a parlor trick at a time when Ford, who does comment on this issue
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of crime during this, this presser should be talking to his new buddy, Mark Carney about all they can do to
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fix crime. He should be more critical about that than all this cheap nonsense.
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Thank you for sticking around for this interview. Can you tell I'm angry?
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We now welcome on Alex Zoltan, true north wire service crime reporter does great work
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through Juno news. We are of course talking about the wild west coming out of labor day. We're talking
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about the flippancy of, of Sean Frazier's tweet, dismissing these very real concerns is, is not
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happening. We, we look around, we, you know, you leave your house. We've can very much tell that it's
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happening. No one's been on this beat quite like, you know, the man on the call with me right now,
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as a, as a crime reporter, he has recently put out stories on that 18 year old who, who stabbed up the
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Calgary stampede on that just unconscionable sort of targeting home invasion, allegedly ensure sounds
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like an execution in Vaughn. Alex Zoltan, thank you for joining the show. Thank you. Are we, are we in
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the wild west right now? I would say that yes, we are. One of the things that bothers me so much
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right now in crime reporting is when police departments suggest that the crime rate has gone
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down. Um, there's a certain level of speaking to people that is required in journalism. And if you
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speak to people, they will tell you that crime is so high and that we've hit a critical mass and people
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just aren't even reporting it anymore. So yeah, it's absolutely the wild west for sure.
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Yeah. I was, uh, I just left the house this morning running some errands before, you know,
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we, we got to record this and I, I'm not even kidding. Like I witnessed like two or three felonies,
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but it's now this baseline. We've lowered the standard where, you know, you, you see rampant
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drug use, you see the 10 cities, you see degradation, you see, you know, petty nonsense.
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And we know that people aren't calling the police anymore when they see it, because you're going,
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we all stand up against the big stuff when we have to, but you're going like, is this worth my time
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right now when I got stuff to do? And the cops might just shrug their shoulders.
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Heck, you get your car stolen in a place like Toronto right now. They just tell you to call
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the insurance company. They don't even try to find it. You can bring them the GPS responder
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saying it's here. It's in this illegal trucking yard in Caledon, let's say, because they're
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increasingly in Caledon. It's destroying that wonderful town. And they go, call your insurance
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company, not our problem. Going into this story that you've reported on where York police said
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officers were called to a residence shortly before 1am on Sunday, where they found a 46 year old man
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suffering from trauma to his body. We have since seen online chatter and learned reports that this
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could have been, you know, as bad as it gets, that this was a kind of potential sort of gangland
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execution in front of a family. You've been covering crime, you know, for a number of years
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now, and you're great on Twitter. You do an excellent job sort of communicating with the
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Juno News audience. Have you ever seen anything like this?
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Oh, gangland executions, well, I'm from Surrey, so yes. Famously, we had the 36 case, and that
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was a case of mistaken identity. I think that there's an element to this story that people
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should be cognizant of in terms of reporting, because in this story and the Welland story,
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which both happened over the Labor Day weekend, that was the one involving the horrific assault
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of a child. In both cases, the police said that they were targeted. Well, targeted is a very broad
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term, right? So targeted could mean that they were targeted because they were in a case of mistaken
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identity, right? So yeah, this is not entirely new gangland executions, but it is horrific,
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and it's terribly inconvenient for Sean Fraser to have said, this is not the Wild West, just before
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this horrific long weekend of serial crime across the province of Ontario specifically, which of
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course we know is the liberal stronghold. And a liberal light stronghold now, if one could make
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the case with Ontario's premier, it strikes me as another instance of this kind of disconnect between
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reality and communications, which reminds so many, I think, of the Trudeau years, where
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you leave your house, everything is really, is looking not as great as it used to, and then you're
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being told through official channels that everything is hunky-dory, you know, don't be offensive, take your
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medicine, you know, we don't have a crime problem, we don't have an immigration problem, housing's
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not so bad, you know, forget the drugs, it's in the best interest of society. And you're going,
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no, it's not. Like, we can tell it's not. We see the impacts it has in our communities, we see the
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impacts it's having on our youth, on employment, on public safety, on the conversations we all have
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in private, and we all have them. You know, you go to even some stuffy liberal cocktail party now,
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not that I really get invited to those. And people are talking about, like, the degradation
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at their doorstep. And then after a Labor Day weekend of the gun, Sean Frazier, you know,
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leading into it, tells everybody, like, Baghdad, Bob, nothing to worry about, folks.
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Well, yeah, I mean, I think we just both found out. We're both from BC and maybe from BC. We're
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living in BC and fairly close to the downtown core of Vancouver. And that has always been the
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epicenter of Canadian chaos. What I find really crazy about these police statistics, them saying
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that crime has gone down, you know, there's that old saying, I think Benjamin Franklin said,
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there's three types of lies, small lies, big lies, and statistics. And in this case, if you have eyes
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and ears, and you've lived in the lower mainland for a long time, you can tell that things are much
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worse, because there are now multiple downtown east sides, there are what I like to call satellite
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downtown east sides. And it doesn't just go across Vancouver, it also goes all the way into the
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interior. Kelowna, I think, has one of the largest 10 cities anywhere in North America.
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So my eyes and ears do not lie. I think that many Canadians feel the same way. We're at a real
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crisis point. And it is a form of gaslighting for the Minister of Justice of all people to say that
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this is not the wild west. When we see rampant crime and homelessness everywhere, we turn.
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Yeah, and I think like the concern amongst other concerns with this is, this is the same Justice
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Minister who just beat the ever loving heck, I'll say heck, out of immigration and housing. Like we've
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seen like historical ineptitude, like he will go down, he's on the Mount Rushmore with Justin Trudeau
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for most damaging politicians to this country. Yeah, he was following some orders. But you know,
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at some point, you can say, I don't know, maybe a few million less, or maybe this should keep up with
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the housing supply. And now we're handing him a sort of crime and chaos file. And he's giving us
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the kind of answer that they gave us on immigration and housing, not years ago, which they now admit
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and say, Oh, we got to solve this crisis, that crisis, who's been in charge? Who's been in charge
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this whole time? We frequently hear Ontario's Premier Doug Ford, a three term conservative majority
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friend of Mark Carney's saying, Oh, you know, we got to fix this, folks.
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You're the Premier. It boggles the mind, it drives people crazy that these these changes in
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population growth, we're finally witnessing. It's not just like sending temporary scammers home. It's
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it's people giving up because they're so frustrated with this. I know so many talented Canadian
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professionals far more talented than I, I have one of these sort of communications, imaginary laptop
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jobs, like people with people with crazy skill sets are looking around for other visas, because
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they're going, I don't feel safe. I don't feel like they have immigration under control. I can't afford
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a house. These, these, these terrible stories this, this weekend that just serve to remind those even
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on even on, you know, Labor Day, it's supposed to be this nice, like, moment of self reflection and
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like quiet moments on the dock. Well, across from the dock, we now have temporary foreign worker
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militias firing off illegal rounds. And in McTeer and in Muskoka, like, there are family homes just
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along that tree line. There are there are kids working summer jobs. I used to work summer jobs
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there. I worked at a marina and I pumped gas, I detailed boats, I did a terrible job at it. But I,
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I, I don't remember there being a bunch of guys who just got here just letting loose with assault
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rifles. Like, could you've done a good job pointing out this story? I mean, we've all seen the videos
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from Mario Zalaya as well. Like, what can you tell us, you know, more about this, this group of guys?
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Which group of guys specifically are you referring to? Like the, the bridge in Muskoka, let's say the,
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the, what the heck happened there? Yeah. And we're looking at the video now.
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Yeah. So I did a very, so I covered a very similar, Muskoka is very far away. Canada is a very large
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country, as you know. So, but we had a similar group of guys in DC that I followed with the help
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of my editor, Cosmo Georgia. Big shout out to him because he helped with the story immensely.
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Big shout out. Cosmo is amazing. And, and so what we did is we found a video via X, you know,
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via third party, of course, that showed a bunch of guys doing a similar thing in, in the outskirts
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of the greater Vancouver area. And we were able to locate probably, I would say within, you know,
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a degree of separation of two or three people, exactly who it was in a matter of minutes.
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It really wasn't that difficult. We just zoomed in on the license plate and we looked at the
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license plate cover and we figured out the dealership. We contacted the Surrey police and the RCMP
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about this. And like, you know, I get it. It's kids shooting guns. On the one hand, it's kind of
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innocent, but on the other hand, it's the brazenness of doing it and showing your license plate and
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filming it on the internet that I find offensive as just like a reasonable human being, right? Like
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it's, there's something I find really genuinely upsetting about that just in terms of people maybe
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thinking that they're above the law, uh, or at best being too ignorant to know that there is a law.
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Or that the law doesn't matter. Like that's the concern, right? Like it's, it's, if we care so
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little about this stuff that we can, you know, uh, do the, uh, ISIS Kalashnikov into the air routine in, in
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borderline residential areas and post our, our cars in our, in our, you know, they're practically holding
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up their, their driver's licenses and, uh, you know, that months could go by and no one could know or give a
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darn. And thank goodness for you guys being on the beat there and, and doing the job that the police
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are supposed to do, because I see this too. Like I, I've covered immigration extensively more than
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I'd like to. It's just such a big problem. I see the problems it's causing for young people. It's
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like, I want to talk about other stuff, but if I can interject your very briefly, I think the police
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are doing that within the resources that they have and the laws that they're constrained by are,
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are doing what they can. So this is a crazy statistic. So statistics, Canada last year
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reported when they were last year on record that 40% of people who actually go to trial are convicted.
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And that includes, um, both conditional and absolute discharges. So when you think like the prisons are,
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they're, they're not full, at least the federal prisons, you would think that they would be full.
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The, the provincial prisons are full of people waiting for bail. And when they finally go to trial,
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many of them are not convicted. I don't know. I'm very curious as to why that is.
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I don't think that that's the police's, um, jurisdiction. I think that that's either
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judges being too lenient or perhaps prosecutors being incompetent, uh, or even more unlikely that
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our criminal defense lawyers are just exceptional. That, that could be the case, but I, I, my mind,
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I think the laugh, I think the laughter, the, the natural inclination there is what figured out.
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Yeah. The, yeah, because it's, it, it must then be, and, and there's been great coverage and opinion
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and thought about this. And, and Candace does a good job talking about this here as well at the Juneau
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is that this evidently this problem with these kinds of liberal appointee, uh, judges of the last 10
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years where you now have this kind of what their version of like a post judicial approach to law
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and order, which increasingly we're seeing Cosman's reported on this as well. Um, you know, more lenient
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sentences for, for those on visas because the judge doesn't want it to get in the way of their
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immigration status. That's exactly what should get in the way of an immigration status. That's,
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that's the point. This is supposed to be, this isn't a given. This is a supposed to be a privilege
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to come here and to qualify and to contribute. Instead, we're seeing these massive fraud networks.
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We're seeing it in our trucking industry, which I, I hit on last week with Gordon McGill going,
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going deep into the rot there. And just like the, the, the obvious and clear criminality that like
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you, you spent three minutes on that file and you go, holy moly, like a lot of people chose to let
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this go through. I think even just, I'll open up Instagram some days, like the, the depth of the
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rot here. And I will openly see immigration scammers on Instagram reels and Tik TOK, just
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saying, use my service. I'll smuggle you into the United States. And you're going, that's
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just right on front street. That's right on front street. Like what, what is going on here?
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And so it's, it's, it's really unfortunate to see the level of, of lack of care of lack
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of duty to care. And now after a weekend like this, after all these stories that you've reported
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on so excellently, we're, we're, we're kind of seeing things come to a head. Like the house
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is resuming and people are getting really upset and they're going, you know, you've had a few
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months here. Let's, you know, maybe start thinking about some criminal reform, not just reform
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to the other files because surely they can't get away with gaslighting any longer because it does
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feel like the wild west with the unfortunate caveat that you're not even getting some of the benefits
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of the wild west. Like, you know, you can truly opportunity, abundance, settling your claim, you
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know, go west young man. Like I I'm in a dog crate condo. I, uh, you know, if, if someone tried to
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attack my, my little dog crate condo right now, like I might get charged for, for standing my ground
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or having to go through a legal rigmarole. And so, uh, thankfully there's guys like you who are
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going to keep exposing this stuff. And, um, we really appreciate your time today. If I may, I think
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that when it comes to debating these issues, uh, cause they are issues that will be debated amongst
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legislatures or legislators, I should say. And so when you're making laws, uh, in a political
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environment, there has to be some level of compromise and understanding. And so where I think
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that Sean Fraser, I think what he was trying to say is that the likelihood of someone like you or
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myself having a random home and trade intruder just burst through your window with a crossbow
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is extraordinarily unlikely. That is true. It is extremely unlikely, but I think that what
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Canadians don't understand about the flimsiness of the self-defense laws. And I learned this
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covering the Coots case, uh, with Gordon McGill, your previous guest, Canadians do not even have a
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right to preemptive self-defense. This is how crazy the self-defense laws are in Canada. If you were to go
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to your kitchen and pull out a kitchen knife and say, this would make a great weapon against a home
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intruder, which is what most of us do. Like when we're keyboard worrying about the subject all the
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time, you are in possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. And you can go to jail.
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You are not even allowed to talk about defending yourself in Canada, much less actually defending
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yourself in the extremely unlikely event that somebody would jump through your window and attack you
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with a crossbow. I've got a kitchen knife to put back in the kitchen right now. That's right. If
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you have a kitchen knife, it's only for cooking folks, put them back now. And then you can take
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them out later. We won't, if you have a baseball bat, um, it's, it's for going to, to play baseball.
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No, this, this is actually how the laws are oriented in Canada. Um, if you have a gun and you say,
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I have it for the purpose of self-defense, you were in contravention of the self-defense laws in Canada.
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Yeah. Young women can't carry like mace or bear spray on the subway, even though, you know,
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that can be the wild west, especially if you go to Toronto.
00:24:10.900
Correct. So what I, the reason that I bring this up is because I'm seeing a lot of things on the
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left where they're, they're saying that this situation with the man and Lindsay is analogous
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to, for instance, a young black boy, I understand who was shot recently because he was Nicky,
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Nicky nine door. Those two things are not analogous. Like they're, they're just not the same. If
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somebody comes into your window with a crossbow, obviously that's not the same thing as somebody
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knocking on your door. Um, but in order to understand where the left is coming from,
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you have to put your feet into their shoes for a moment and recognize that it is very unlikely
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that any individual is going to be the victim of random home intruder coming into their home.
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There, there is that, that is the baseline of their logic. And I think that there is some truth
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to that. I've looked through most of the, the self-defense cases in the recent months in the
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court of Ontario, Ontario court of justice. And in almost all cases, the individuals knew,
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they were familiar with each other. So is it the wild west compared to 10 years ago? Absolutely.
00:25:10.340
Compared to 150 years ago, I guess. Fraser has a point like if we're going back to like the red
00:25:17.380
dead redemption days. Yes. One of my favorite games, Alex, thank you for that perspective. You know,
00:25:25.380
it's obviously helpful to, to flesh that out and not just, you know, just not just
00:25:31.220
whip people into a fervor. I think concerns will remain, but you know, to know that maybe,
00:25:38.020
maybe give him a slight benefit of the doubt it's, he, I don't know how much, you know, rope he deserves
00:25:44.820
given his, his track record, but it is encouraging to know that it is not malicious. It might just be
00:25:50.900
ineptitude, which would be kind of appreciated, but you know, evidently the audience, like our
00:25:56.340
audience here, you know, beleaguered common sense folk, you know, they're, they're running out of
00:26:01.940
time to, to accept some of these, you know, potential excuses to accept this tone policing
00:26:07.620
when, you know, objectively speaking, as you were saying, like, it's definitely worse than the last 10
00:26:12.580
years, like, or it's gotten worse over the last, you know, that period. And so I know you're going
00:26:17.220
to be a busy guy in your crime reporting. We're, you know, great, greatly thankful for you hopping
00:26:22.180
on and we'll keep an eye out for more of your stories. Thank you, Alex. My pleasure. Thank you.