Juno News - Reporter speaks out after being arrested while questioning Chrystia Freeland

00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.380 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lotten show

00:01:31.880 on true north it is my pleasure to have you aboard it is what day is it tuesday january 9th 2024

00:01:39.500 and i will say i had a bit of a less eventful day yesterday than one of my colleagues did you've

00:01:47.220 seen him on the program in the past. I've been on his show going back, way, way back to when he had

00:01:52.120 a show on Sun News Network, David the Menzoid Menzies of Rebel News. Now, David was doing 0.90

00:02:00.240 something that I've tried to do on a couple of occasions, which is question Deputy Prime

00:02:04.420 Minister Chrystia Freeland. Now, to adapt and update the Wizard of Oz line, not nobody gets

00:02:10.740 in to see the Deputy Prime Minister, not nobody, not know how. Chrystia Freeland has a laser-sharp

00:02:16.640 focus when she walks. She does not break stride, as the saying goes. This is what happened when I

00:02:22.740 tried to ask her a question in Davos. It's what happened when I tried to ask her a question at

00:02:27.080 the Global Conference for Media Freedom. And it's what happened when she was on her way into an

00:02:31.480 event about Iran and the anniversary of Iranian regime officials downing a passenger airline

00:02:40.300 yesterday in Richmond Hill, the memorial yesterday. The airline was not down, airliner was not down

00:02:45.740 in Richmond Hill. But let's watch the footage, shall we?

00:03:15.740 I've got my credentials here, and you just bumped into me.

00:03:19.000 So, excuse me.

00:03:19.720 Police, you're under arrest.

00:03:21.120 What is your name in your badge?

00:03:23.420 What is your name in your badge?

00:03:25.040 They've been told you're under arrest.

00:03:26.500 Why am I under arrest?

00:03:28.860 He blocked my way.

00:03:32.720 Sir, I was just swimming with Christian Freeland.

00:03:35.880 I'm a police officer.

00:03:37.120 You're under arrest.

00:03:38.080 What is your name in your badge?

00:03:39.220 I'm an assault on the police officer.

00:03:40.640 How is that possible?

00:03:41.540 Okay.

00:03:41.780 That was quite chilling footage, and I don't want to do the whole Zapruder-like analysis here

00:03:49.920 that you had for decades and decades on the JFK video, but I do want to play a little bit of it

00:03:57.180 here because I literally yesterday when this came out, I went frame by frame to watch this because

00:04:02.000 oftentimes these videos are ambiguous or murky at best, and I've taken the relevant section here

00:04:08.180 where the supposed assault of a police officer took place.

00:04:13.400 And I've slowed it right down for you.

00:04:15.220 So why don't you take a look?

00:04:16.640 This is the footage here,

00:04:18.620 and I'm going to talk over it as it plays for you here.

00:04:21.620 But this is the footage where David Menzies is,

00:04:25.540 I'm hoping the footage will start playing.

00:04:29.640 David is talking.

00:04:32.160 Christopher Freeland is right there.

00:04:33.400 There's a pole.

00:04:34.240 He avoids the pole, 1.00

00:04:35.580 avoids moves his shoulder to avoid the police officer who puts his arm out and then eventually

00:04:43.360 he is pulled aside christia freeland gets out of dodge and david as you saw in that first video is

00:04:49.160 slammed up against the wall he's later put in handcuffs carried away and he was released with

00:04:55.020 no charges but if the goal was to protect christia freeland from being questioned by a reporter

00:05:00.960 mission accomplished. David Menzies is here to talk about this directly. David, good to talk to

00:05:07.560 you, sir. First off, how are you? I mean, you've been through this before, but you actually looked

00:05:12.240 in that moment quite startled. Andrew, and by the way, I hope you had a Merry Christmas and

00:05:20.300 a Happy New Year. But gee, speaking of the new year, law enforcement is really off on the wrong

00:05:26.960 foot. You know, one of the cheekiest comments I came across in the various streams, Andrew,

00:05:34.080 is, hey, Menzies, this is on you. You should have been calling for genocide of an identifiable 1.00

00:05:39.900 group. Then the Mounties would have bought you Timbits and a cup of coffee, as we saw the Toronto

00:05:46.160 police do to the pro-Hamas demonstrators on Saturday as they were blockading the Avenue

00:05:51.540 Road Bridge. But, you know, I have to tell you, Andrew, aside from the shock, the overwhelming

00:05:58.740 feeling was deja vu all over again. You may recall back in December of 2021, my ace cameraman,

00:06:10.060 Lincoln Jay, and he was the shooter at the event yesterday. We were in downtown Toronto to scrum

00:06:17.320 the Prime Minister. The context was this, Andrew. Trudeau had said that he wanted Canadians not to

00:06:26.760 get together with family and friends over Christmas time because COVID is just too

00:06:32.460 dangerous. At the same time, here he was in early December going to a downtown Toronto restaurant

00:06:39.340 for one of those $1,700 a plate fundraisers, and they were packed in like sardines. The hypocrisy

00:06:45.780 was off the charts. So Lincoln and I stood on a sidewalk and we waited for the motorcade to come.

00:06:52.840 And Blackface is always late by at least an hour. And eventually he came. And my goal was to simply 0.99

00:07:00.140 ask him, Mr. Prime Minister, how do you justify this double standard? Canadians can't get together

00:07:06.680 to celebrate the Christmas holidays, but you're going into a packed restaurant. And to my shock,

00:07:12.640 Andrew, and I invite your viewers to check this out on our website or on YouTube.

00:07:20.020 These Royal Canadian Mounted Henchmen jumped out, grabbed me, didn't even identify who they are.

00:07:25.680 They're in plain clothes, no badge, no uniform. Bounced my head off of a wooden fence.

00:07:32.160 I wasn't even under arrest. That's the really shocking part of it. But it's always been my

00:07:38.060 theory, and I can't prove this, of course, unless Trudeau himself fessed up, they knew who we are.

00:07:44.560 I'm completely identifiable. I've got the Rebel News mic flash in my hands. And I think they acted

00:07:52.060 on the prime minister's orders. He saw us. He hates us. He said, boys, give them the works.

00:07:58.320 Because to me, it's inexplicable that Mounties on their own accord would jump out of their SUVs

00:08:05.180 and assault a journalist um nevertheless we fast forward to yesterday yeah and here it is again i

00:08:13.260 i'm on a in a at a taxpayer funded um performing arts venue in richmond hill which is where i live

00:08:22.140 and i'm i'm not touching uh christia freeland or her companion at all i'm just trying to ask

00:08:29.660 questions and andrew i can tell you i felt that mountie before i saw him because my focus was on

00:08:38.380 christia freeland and the pole i mean you were i mean he was literally standing watching you

00:08:45.180 and i i don't want to say obstructing your path but he knew where you were walking and he knew

00:08:49.660 that there was a collision here and it's not to say that you know you couldn't have like gone out

00:08:54.620 of your way to get away from him but when you watch the video what i find notable here is that

00:08:58.940 There's not a lot of room between you and Chrystia Freeland.

00:09:02.600 If you were to try to move out of the way of him, you would have bumped into her,

00:09:06.240 and then you would have had a bigger problem on your hands.

00:09:08.040 And it looks like he has his arm out.

00:09:10.640 I mean, he is the obstruction here.

00:09:12.240 So I'm not seeing the assault on a police officer of which you were accused.

00:09:17.540 Yeah, I think, Andrew, this was, as I say over in the UK, a stitch-up.

00:09:23.980 This was a frame job.

00:09:25.780 He knew exactly what he was doing.

00:09:27.400 He was he ambushed me. He initiated the physical contact. I have no interest in getting physical with anyone, for goodness sakes. I'm certainly not going to touch a female cabinet minister who I tower over. I just was asking questions.

00:09:47.700 But it seems, Andrew, in Canada of 2024, impolite and insensitive questions, those are verboten.

00:09:56.860 You can get arrested, I guess, for wrong think.

00:10:00.720 I mean, I liken Canada to a banana republic, except, of course, we don't grow bananas in Canada, Andrew, as you know.

00:10:07.040 So let's call it a maple syrup republic under Trudeau.

00:10:10.740 But the thing is, I think, you know, if you're not an admirer of Rebel News or Ezra Levent or myself, that's fine. But surely there should be people out there, especially in our industry of journalism, that stand up or should be standing up and saying, this is wrong.

00:10:33.600 This is verboten. But the mainstream media, in Canada at least, has been silent. And this is a story in terms of Twitter impressions. I think it's over 10 million as we speak. It's absolutely shocking.

00:10:48.860 And that was kind of the same treatment the mainstream media gave to what happened in December of 2021.

00:10:58.260 They either ignored it or almost came up with a conspiratorial theory.

00:11:03.580 That was David Aiken's mantra at Global saying that this was all pre-planned.

00:11:12.420 It was absolutely outrageous.

00:11:14.000 Well, yeah, I mean, you chose to ask the question to Chrystia Freeland,

00:11:17.940 but how they responded is on them.

00:11:20.720 And I will say, though, you do seem to have a bit more support this time around than you did then.

00:11:26.420 I mean, one, I'll put up the tweet, Elon Musk weighed in on this, the owner of X.

00:11:32.500 And Elon says here, fine for the officer to body block.

00:11:36.240 I'm not actually convinced that is fine, but he says it's false to say that you deliberately assaulted an officer.

00:11:41.520 But to his credit, Pierre Polyev, and I know the Conservatives have historically had a bit of a strained relationship

00:11:47.380 with Rebel News, but Pierre Polyev weighed in. He shared the Rebel video, said this is the state

00:11:52.620 of freedom of the press in Canada in 2024 after eight years of Trudeau. And, you know, it's funny,

00:11:59.220 Alexander Brown, who runs a sub stack that is quite important for people to pay attention to,

00:12:03.940 he had said here he was tired of the, well, I don't like David Menzies, but, or I'm not a fan

00:12:09.440 of Rebel News, but he said, if you can't just look at this and say this is wrong, you are part of the

00:12:14.920 problem here. And this is a press freedom issue. Let me ask, has your inbox been met with any

00:12:21.320 support from the civil liberties groups in this country or the journalistic advocacy groups in

00:12:25.940 this country, apart from the independent press gallery? No, the silence is deafening, Andrew.

00:12:32.960 And it's really egregious in terms of, you know, you made a quote there that I thought was

00:12:39.140 significant. I don't like David Menzies. I don't like Ezra LeVant. I don't like Rebel News.

00:12:43.560 but and we're getting a lot of those uh and it just shows you how egregious and offside

00:12:49.960 that Mountie was um even when these uh commentators state that they're not particular fans of ours

00:12:57.380 and that's yeah they don't want to support you and it pains them that they have to because it's

00:13:01.800 that bad what happened exactly that's the point and I thought you did a brilliant tweet uh yesterday

00:13:08.140 on this matter, Andrew, where you pinpointed the time code. I think it was 009. So the nine second

00:13:16.220 mark where you see the Mountie initiating physical contact. And it's crazy. I mean,

00:13:24.180 I know if you literally touch somebody that can be taken as assault, but this was at best

00:13:29.700 incidental contact. I mean, the real roughing up came when they were putting the cuffs on me

00:13:35.480 and slamming my head into the wall.

00:13:38.580 I don't know why they do that, Andrew.

00:13:40.120 I've been arrested a few times.

00:13:42.040 And every time I'm incapacitated with handcuffs,

00:13:46.360 they still slam my head off a wall or a fence

00:13:50.680 or the hood of the police SUV.

00:13:53.980 I don't get that.

00:13:55.640 Maybe they think they're on TV or something.

00:13:58.620 But yeah, I want to thank you for pinpointing that out.

00:14:03.180 And golly, I got to say, in slow motion, it does look like the Sapruder film from the Kennedy assassination.

00:14:10.520 Was there a second menzoid coming in?

00:14:13.240 Yeah.

00:14:13.900 And when you think of it, Andrew, I've always looked at that film and I've called it the great, great, great granddaddy of social media.

00:14:23.420 You know, now almost everybody has a cell phone camera and we can record it.

00:14:27.980 But if Zapruder didn't have that little eight millimeter Bell and Howell camera, that footage wouldn't exist.

00:14:35.240 So it's interesting to bring it up.

00:14:37.560 And, you know, there are other cameras.

00:14:39.320 We've got an appeal out to anyone else who filmed this.

00:14:41.600 And, of course, the Richmond Hill Center for the Performing Arts, they have closed circuit security surveillance as well.

00:14:51.280 I'm sure as part of our lawsuit, we'll be asking for that footage as well.

00:14:56.600 Yeah, you mentioned the lawsuit. So let me ask you about this, David. I saw your boss, Rebel Commander Ezra Levant, tweet this morning that you're suing Freeland, the RCMP, and York Regional Police, as I understand. What's happening there?

00:15:10.860 That's correct.

00:15:11.440 I believe there's four things we're suing for, including false arrest, Melissa's prosecution, and garden variety assault on me.

00:15:20.360 Because, you know, far from the RCMP's narrative, he did the assault.

00:15:26.000 I wasn't under the arrest at the time, nor was I, you know, and Andrew, I just want to go out on a limb here.

00:15:32.080 If I was some guy wearing a balaclava and wearing camouflage and it looked like I had something that resembled a handgun or a rifle, I can see a preemptive strike by law enforcement. I can. But, you know, Andrew, they know who we are. I've got the Rebel News mic flash out. I wear my trademark hat. And they know I'm not there wearing trouble on my shirt. I'm not there to hurt anyone. So they can't play that card. And I can tell you, Andrew, if

00:16:02.080 If any of your viewers have it in their heart to support our case against this draconian fascism we saw on display in Richmond Hill,

00:16:11.840 if they can kindly go to standwithdavid.com, that's standwithdavid.com.

00:16:16.840 And I know things are tough these days, but if you have a few extra bucks, we crowdfund our revenue.

00:16:23.120 As you know, we don't take any government funding.

00:16:26.180 and uh if they can go to standwithdavid.com make a donation that would be greatly appreciated

00:16:32.700 and i just to confirm they released you without laying any charges so so this egregious assault

00:16:39.360 on a police officer by their own admission either didn't happen or didn't rise to the level of

00:16:43.720 needing to charge you you know absolutely and as the footage goes on you see me eventually getting

00:16:50.620 loaded into a police SUV, a York Regional Police SUV. The cops were gracious enough to

00:16:57.820 handcuff me, take the handcuffs off behind my back and put them in the front because I told

00:17:05.320 them with the cramped space in that cruiser, I have double hip replacement. This would be

00:17:12.300 not safe for me. And so at least they gave me that little mercy. But here's the funny thing.

00:17:18.000 It wasn't, as the saying goes, not so funny at the time.

00:17:23.180 They were telling me, we're going to drive you to the police station on Major McKenzie Drive for processing.

00:17:31.280 And then they had another officer come up to them.

00:17:34.340 There was some kind of conversation, and they waited for a while.

00:17:37.240 And then they drove off, and they started going northbound.

00:17:42.660 And since I live in Richmond Hill, Andrew, I know the station's southbound.

00:17:48.100 So I'm thinking, where are we going?

00:17:49.480 And I'm brought to the back of a school, which has been dismissed.

00:17:54.660 And I'm thinking, holy moly, what is this, the Cherry Beach Express?

00:18:00.600 It was unbelievable.

00:18:03.620 But it turned out to be a good news story because they said, we've been told the Mountie in question has declined to press charges.

00:18:12.280 i guess he had a come to jesus moment maybe he saw some cell phone footage uh because this is

00:18:17.800 about almost an hour after the incident so we're just going to release you here so it was like

00:18:22.500 catch and release like dump you out on the curb somewhere basically and i and i walked back to

00:18:28.120 the performing arts center not to go inside even though we were invited as media because according

00:18:33.480 to the police uh myself and lincoln had been trespassed which makes no sense because if there's

00:18:38.400 no charges. What's the issue? So we had to do the rest of the reporting on the sidewalk. And I got

00:18:45.020 to tell you, Andrew, our original goal of going there, we didn't even know Blackface and company

00:18:51.120 were going to be there yesterday. I was at the first commemoration ceremony for that Ukrainian

00:18:56.560 airline that was shot down. Let's keep in mind, Andrew, 179 innocent civilians plus one unborn

00:19:05.160 baby, which, of course, the media will never list as a homicide. That included 55 Canadians,

00:19:11.540 by the way, most of them of Persian descent. And when I went in 2020 to that very same venue,

00:19:16.940 the Richmond Hill Center for the Performing Arts, there were politicians of every level,

00:19:20.800 every political stripe except one. And that would be none other than the liberal MP for Richmond

00:19:27.340 Hill, Majid Johari. If you can imagine, Andrew, Majid Johari supports the Iranian regime. He's

00:19:34.720 had meetings with Iranian government officials in Canada. And it's so beyond the pale for me.

00:19:41.440 I've lived in Richmond Hill for 25 years. I can tell you it's a significant Persian minority

00:19:46.780 there. I believe it's as high as 14%. All the Persians I've met there have been wonderful

00:19:54.640 people. I go to Persian shops, Persian restaurants. They're typically people that fled the regime

00:20:00.560 post-1979, the revolution. They're getting away from tyranny. And imagine, Andrew,

00:20:09.980 that somehow, some way, that the member of parliament for that riding of Richmond Hill

00:20:16.400 is a pro-regime person. Now, he didn't show up at the first commemoration. And I had people there

00:20:22.980 tell me that was for his own safety because there were so many people who had relatives that died

00:20:28.960 on that plane. And for him to show his face would be egregious. So that was really why I was there.

00:20:34.860 I knew there'd be politicians there, but would Majid Johari show up? Well, not only did he show

00:20:39.640 up, evidently, because again, I couldn't get in, but Trudeau himself. And Andrew, talk about the

00:20:47.360 continuation of lies. It's been four years since that egregious incident where Canadians were 1.00

00:20:54.660 murdered in cold blood. The IRGC is still not a terrorist group, not recognized as one, I should

00:21:01.920 say, by the Canadian government. Trump recognized it as one. When Biden came into power, I thought

00:21:07.900 I'd never say anything positive about Biden, but he didn't take them off the list. So why is it

00:21:12.820 that they're not on the list? And even if you look at the mealy mouth statement Trudeau said,

00:21:17.460 it was along the lines, we'll look at ways of putting them on. Look at ways you've really got

00:21:23.460 an unofficial majority government you can do it today you know if you wanted to i i gotta jump in

00:21:30.580 here david i i should also point out i promised i would let you go at 120 at your request and you

00:21:35.300 were the one that took us over so uh that's on you sir but uh you had some good commentary and

00:21:39.560 i should say majid johari has denied these allegations which were i believe originally

00:21:44.700 made by an iranian uh journalist that he had had this uh relationship with iranian intelligence he

00:21:50.140 says no he's he's not loyal to the regime but i would encourage people to look up reporting on him

00:21:55.360 in the past david menzies glad you got the cuffs off always good to talk to you sir well thank you 0.97

00:21:59.900 and one last thing if majid johari is denying it this man is such a liar andrew he will spit in 0.87

00:22:06.280 your face and tell you it's raining okay so okay you're trying to get us sued david i was trying 0.99

00:22:11.000 to get us through the exit here now i i should say we i am not making an accusation that he is a liar

00:22:16.840 But I do think that if he has nothing to hide, he should make himself available to independent journalists and not have the police stand in the way as Ms. Freeland did there yesterday.

00:22:26.320 David, thank you.

00:22:27.520 Thank you so much, Andrew.

00:22:28.800 All the best in the new year.

00:22:29.940 All right.

00:22:30.660 Thank you to David Menzies on that.

00:22:32.540 And let me just say here, like, I don't buy, I don't like this whole, well, maybe you don't like him, but I don't like it.

00:22:38.620 Like, he's getting support from a lot of people that hate Rebel right now.

00:22:42.920 And you know it pains them to have to do that.

00:22:45.900 I mean, Pierre Polyev, I'm not saying he hates rebel, but for the conservative leader to go to bat for a rebel journalist is actually quite a significant development here.

00:22:54.120 And let me also say it's very convenient.

00:22:56.080 I don't actually believe it's exculpatory on law enforcement that they are not charging David,

00:23:02.580 because what they were trying to do was prevent him from asking Chrystia Freeland a question.

00:23:09.860 So when they say you're under arrest, that gives them license to manhandle him, to shove

00:23:15.020 him up against a wall, to take him away and drop him off in the parking lot of a school.

00:23:21.160 Well, this event that he was going to report on is underway.

00:23:25.080 And it reminds me of during the 2019 election, I was banned from covering the liberal campaign.

00:23:31.700 I was banned from the liberal campaign bus and airplane.

00:23:34.860 And what happened was I just like, Candace Malcolm and I had worked out this little plan

00:23:38.940 where I just like rented a car and booked last minute flights and followed them along.

00:23:42.820 And at one point we were in, they had been in Hamilton and we were driving,

00:23:47.440 but I didn't know where they were going because they didn't publish the itinerary.

00:23:50.500 So I was just following the bus.

00:23:52.340 I was just following the campaign bus to figure out where the next campaign stop was.

00:23:56.700 And at a certain point, a member of the Hamilton police service that was escorting the bus

00:24:01.840 pulled me over, did not ticket me, did not charge me, but just kept me at the roadside for long

00:24:10.000 enough that the bus was long gone and I had no idea where it was going. Because the goal was

00:24:15.560 never to accuse me of committing a crime or breaking the law. The goal was to get me away

00:24:20.560 from the person that they were trying to protect. Not protect from a safety threat, but protect

00:24:25.940 from prying eyes of media, and that was what happened in the case of Chrystia Freeland. 0.97

00:24:32.820 They never thought, they never believed for a moment that David had assaulted a police officer

00:24:38.120 or anyone. That was completely made up. It was bogus. They knew it, but they needed a pretext

00:24:43.440 to pull him away so that she didn't have to deal with his questions. It was shameful,

00:24:49.660 and it was humiliating for members of law enforcement, many of whom have emailed me

00:24:55.040 in the course of the last, I don't know, 18 hours or whatever, and said how disgraceful they find

00:25:00.000 this display was. I am the president, in addition to my role at True North, of the Independent Press

00:25:05.220 Gallery. We put out a statement last night saying this is egregious. It was shocking, although

00:25:10.140 sadly not altogether unsurprising given everything we've seen. So we will follow this story as it

00:25:15.880 progresses. I would love to see the Liberal government say this is not what we think should

00:25:19.760 happen to journalists, but I am not holding my breath or else I would be turning blue within a

00:25:24.860 couple of minutes time here. You may have seen yesterday at True North, my colleague Cosman

00:25:29.600 Georgia published what I thought was a tremendously researched story. One of these hidden in plain

00:25:34.860 sight reports. It was based on the Canadian Military Journal, which is the official

00:25:39.620 publication. It's more academic in nature, but the official publication of the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:25:46.720 And while it's not a product, it's not a communications product of the Department of

00:25:50.720 national defense. It is official and it is where the military gets a lot of its theoretical and

00:25:57.060 practical material from, clearly. Because what we saw in this issue is it was dedicated to

00:26:03.460 unmasking and exposing patriarchy and whiteness and white supremacy. I believe we have the table 0.76

00:26:10.840 of contents for you here. This is one issue, the summer issue, getting to the root of the problem.

00:26:16.840 There is an article about interrogating whiteness and power in the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:26:22.340 There is an article about whether supporting military families is reinforcing patriarchy.

00:26:28.120 There is an article about gender identity and military culture.

00:26:33.100 There are articles about women's experiences, feminism, and the military.

00:26:38.060 But the bulk of this is saying that the military is upholding white supremacy and patriarchy.

00:26:43.640 This idea that the military is clearly behind and you wonder why they're having so much difficulty with morale because they're telling all the men and all the white people that, well, you guys just don't really matter.

00:26:54.980 You are you people don't want to be too gendered about this.

00:26:57.600 I wanted to get some veteran perspective on this because, again, I've heard so many members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:27:04.000 My father is a veteran and I know many people in my family and in your families and many of you listening have served in the Armed Forces as well.

00:27:12.000 I wanted to welcome into the show Tom Marazzo, who you've heard from on a number of occasions, a former captain with the Armed Forces and also the author of the People's Emergency Act, as well as Andrew McGilvery, who's the president of Veterans for Freedom.

00:27:26.160 Drew and Tom, it's great to talk to you both. Thanks for being with us here and thanks for your service.

00:27:31.060 I mean, let me just ask first and foremost here, how does this publication and how the military has gone on this issue make you feel about your service, this body that you devoted a chunk of your lives to?

00:27:43.860 I'll start with you, Drew.

00:27:46.460 It's pretty alarming.

00:27:48.220 You know, I'm one of the guys who's, and I was going to put in 25, 30 years.

00:27:54.920 And, you know, I joined because I was a patriotic Canadian.

00:27:58.720 I grew up in Scarborough, which is located in Toronto, a very multicultural neighbourhood.

00:28:05.840 And then they're pushing this stuff and they're forcing it on the troops.

00:28:08.420 And then I look back at my 12-year career and I say, you know, why did I do this?

00:28:12.460 Why did this isn't the institution?

00:28:14.100 This isn't the country that I signed up to defend and ultimately was willing to risk my life for.

00:28:20.220 And it's completely disrespectful to the troops and the soldiers that are still in there.

00:28:25.160 and you know this has been a trajectory they've been going down for the past couple months so it

00:28:32.080 just is what it is unfortunately and i'll put the same question to you tom well i i do find it

00:28:38.320 completely uh offensive to be perfectly honest you know my time in the military and i did 25 years

00:28:45.700 total i was a reservist and i was a regular force member and you know the vast majority

00:28:51.840 of people that join the canadian armed forces are rural members some small towns but the vast

00:28:59.560 majority of people that join um are caucasian uh males and females of a christian ethnicity or

00:29:08.860 christian uh descent and you know they're they're very patriotic canadians and you know

00:29:18.800 this idea of whiteness like it's how how do you justify the concept of white supremacy when

00:29:25.380 your entire year unit that you're in let's say as an example your entire platoon or your company or

00:29:31.720 even your regiment when the vast majority of the people in there are caucasians who are you know

00:29:37.760 come from a christian background and i'm not suggesting that everybody's religious i'm saying

00:29:43.780 that their their religious uh morals and ethics and their values derive from a christian upbringing

00:29:50.980 in a largely christian society so where does the white supremacy come in when you look around and

00:29:57.300 everybody's white like who are we supremacist against like it's a it's it's kind of offensive

00:30:04.820 to sit there and say that there's this um this you know racism or deep um dislike for somebody

00:30:13.860 who doesn't look like you based on your skin color in the canadian forces when the reality is

00:30:20.180 if anybody who's done basic training knows your personality is stripped down to the bare essence

00:30:26.340 of who you are as a canadian and you're rebuilt as a soldier or a sailor or an airman you're not

00:30:33.380 rebuilt as a christian or a muslim or you're not from india or whatever like these things are very

00:30:41.140 blurred to paint this very nefarious picture that doesn't make any sense because from you know as

00:30:46.900 far as i'm concerned and everything i was ever taught in the military you're a soldier first

00:30:51.940 that's what matters and can you be relied upon uh to defend the lives of your brothers and sisters

00:30:59.460 and arms nobody's looking at your ethnicity nobody's looking at your religion nobody's

00:31:04.740 looking at your whiteness they're looking at uh you know in the case of the army they're looking

00:31:10.660 at a guy who or girl who's you know camouflaged uh and are they competent and willing and able to do

00:31:18.340 the business of war the business of violence not the business of social engineering and this is

00:31:25.300 what a lot of this crap that we're seeing is all about it's not about warfare it's not about 0.52

00:31:29.940 defending canada it's trying to hypnotize certain portions of canadians to vote liberal and i hope 0.95

00:31:37.540 we can get into that uh discussion as well yeah and i but i i wanted to ask because you you raised

00:31:42.500 i think an important point there i mean my understanding of this is not someone who served

00:31:46.580 but someone who's had family members who have is that uniformity was always a very core part

00:31:52.580 of the military and and it was meant to basically be exactly what you've just described there your

00:31:57.780 role has to be the uniform not who you are as an individual when you're serving and i think it was

00:32:03.300 two years ago that they significantly dropped the standards on uniformity where you could have

00:32:08.980 uh dyed hair and face tattoos no offense to people with dyed hair and face tattoos but

00:32:14.260 uh well i mean a little bit i'm okay offending a little bit of the face tattoo crowd but

00:32:17.940 The thing about that is that here we have the military and I understand why, because if you have no recruitment and you have no people there, I understand the impulse to just start dropping all these barriers.

00:32:28.660 But I think it has an inverse relationship because all of a sudden you change it so much that the people you want in there are saying, I don't know if I want to be a part of that anymore.

00:32:37.240 But it seems like the military has gone along with this very woke academic idea that everyone needs to be this celebrated individual snowflake, which is a complete reversal.

00:32:49.620 Correct me if I'm wrong here, Drew, but of what the military has always been about and what it needs to be to be a success at its goals.

00:32:57.640 Yeah. So ultimately, there's a guy named Andy Stumpf who does a podcast called Cleared Hot.

00:33:03.060 And when he was asked about diversity in the SEALs, and he felt that they were, you know, did they lose anything by the lack of diversity?

00:33:10.900 And his answer, which I remembered verbatim because it was the perfect answer, he said, well, I don't know.

00:33:17.060 He goes, are we aiming for diversity or are we aiming to achieve a standard?

00:33:21.660 And that standard is dictated to us by what we encounter on the battlefield. 0.79

00:33:26.300 And the battlefield doesn't give a crap about diversity, which is ultimately the best answer I've ever heard. 1.00

00:33:32.400 and it it's when you get into into uniform you you get discriminated against generally in three 0.68

00:33:41.140 ways okay it's your element so either army navy or air force your trade and your rank and that's

00:33:48.920 just to build a spree de corps and there's banter and that sort of thing no one cares about the

00:33:54.140 color of your skin or what's between your legs we care about what is between your ears so all

00:34:00.500 this stuff that's happening with academia and what they're doing it's being funded by the government

00:34:05.380 and what we're what's worrisome is we're seeing a similarity between uh what's happening what's

00:34:11.700 happened in china with the ccp and what's happening here and how i what i mean is that in china uh the 0.70

00:34:19.540 their military is beholden to the party it's beholden to the ccp and not the state and we're 0.73

00:34:25.860 starting to see that here in canada is that the canary forces is becoming beholden to the liberal

00:34:30.900 party and their ideology and not the state this idea that we're seeing because the the the whole

00:34:37.780 like we're a systemically racist institution that goes back a couple of years now this article that

00:34:43.460 or the series of articles from the summer that true north reported on yesterday was this really

00:34:49.220 a creation of the last couple of years or did you start to see this both of you near the end of your

00:34:54.580 service and i don't know what years you left but had you started to see shades of this trend then

00:34:59.620 or has it really just been a blunt instrument as of late yeah so i i can i'll speak to that just

00:35:06.340 ahead of tom because i know he got out a while ago i i just got out just over two uh just over

00:35:11.780 two years ago and we lose drew i hear him i don't see him i don't see him either it might i might

00:35:18.740 come back i mean there's a snowstorm and it was part of that of ontario all right well i'll go to

00:35:24.340 you uh first tom while we're getting drew sorted out so in the early 90s like i left the military

00:35:30.180 in 2015 but even in the early to mid 90s we had this uh training program it was called sharp it

00:35:37.780 was an acronym for sexual harassment and all these things we had to undergo a lot of this training

00:35:43.380 but it was interesting because the the training was put on by non non-veterans or non currently

00:35:52.460 serving military they were you know academic think tank people coming in and trying to

00:35:57.620 reshape the culture of the military yet none of the people who were responsible for creating this

00:36:04.780 training ever served in the military so they don't understand the culture you know and what

00:36:10.060 found really interesting about um your colleague in the article that that was was put out you know

00:36:16.140 you've got these academics who are academically tied to the defense academy in kingston yet i

00:36:22.620 see no evidence that they actually ever served in uniform so how is it that they are trying to

00:36:28.060 reshape currently the culture of the military we're in in the past they've never even been

00:36:33.580 part of it and this is a problem when academics try to get involved in a culture that they don't

00:36:38.460 fully appreciate because they haven't even so much as done basic training now i've done basic

00:36:44.060 training once in the reserves and then as an officer i had to redo it and yes there are

00:36:49.020 training evolutions you go through um annually there are some things but it's never been as

00:36:56.140 obvious and egregious as it is right now where they've gone so far to attack things like

00:37:03.260 you know even masculinity i mean i'm sorry but we we need we need aggressive men and women

00:37:10.300 in uniform who do the business of violence okay and i find you know you you raise the example of

00:37:18.220 the uh you know the tattoos and the dyed hair and even the nail polish and earring in my day that

00:37:23.580 was absolutely unheard of okay you you had to be focused on the business of war not the the

00:37:30.940 the business of social engineering like we're seeing right now and yes this has slowly been

00:37:37.340 creeping in over over years but since this current liberal government has gone in they

00:37:42.780 have completely terraformed the canadian armed forces into something very um non non-serious

00:37:50.380 non-serious i mean if canada were to go to war today who in the hell would be intimidated by

00:37:56.140 the fact that the canadians are now coming i want to leave this one last point um you know rommel

00:38:02.220 had said the perfect military the the most deadly military in the world would have been german

00:38:08.380 officers american equipment and canadian soldiers and i don't think that equation holds true any

00:38:15.580 longer unfortunately yeah and to your point about masculinity i i'm not sure any afghan afghan girls

00:38:22.300 that had an education for the first time in their lives

00:38:24.960 because of the Canadian military and other allied forces there.

00:38:28.100 I don't think they were complaining about toxic masculinity 0.98

00:38:30.120 when the soldiers came to town against the Taliban,

00:38:34.380 just to give one recent example here.

00:38:36.300 Drew, you got cut off by technology there.

00:38:38.620 We were talking about kind of when this started,

00:38:40.840 and I'm curious about your experience here.

00:38:43.160 Yeah, so I got out just over two years ago,

00:38:46.080 and the anti-racism in DEI training was just starting to trickle in.

00:38:50.700 And, you know, I was someone who was told that I had to go into the communist style struggle sessions where they said, oh, y'all, white men, bad, not even be putting on by current military members.

00:39:02.740 It was being put on by, you know, government, you know, their bureaucrats and stuff who were coming down and doing this training in academia.

00:39:09.500 And really, in six years, we have seen three instances of right wing extremism or white supremacy in the calf.

00:39:16.940 It was Patrick, Matthews, Boris, Mihaljevic, and then the Proud Boy incident in 2017.

00:39:22.900 That's three incidents.

00:39:24.440 From my last year at the recruiting center in Toronto, we saw three instances of attacks on our recruiting center.

00:39:31.040 Two were by, I guess, want to say jihadi-type attacks, and one was done by a left-wing Antifa woman.

00:39:39.440 And the media wasn't down there reporting on those, but you can sure believe if it was some sort of white supremacist attack on a recruiting center, they would have been down there reporting it.

00:39:49.680 So they've been pushing this bogus narrative for a while.

00:39:53.220 And you can talk to any current serving member where Al's at an all-time low because of these commie-style struggle sessions is being forced on them.

00:40:02.480 That's not what the job of the military is.

00:40:04.880 if you ask an infant here, their job is to close with and destroy the enemy. They don't care who's

00:40:10.460 beside them as long as they're well trained and they can trust them with their lives. So this has

00:40:14.640 been coming and it's going to continue to come. And there's no pushback from senior leadership

00:40:20.940 within the military. I have an email chain saved that I had with the vice admiral where he was

00:40:26.220 telling me to read anti-racist by Ibrahim X. Kendi. And I read it and I pushed back to him and

00:40:32.940 this goes completely against the ethos of the Canadian Armed Forces so we're going to continue

00:40:38.860 to see this and we get all sorts of tips and emails from serving members telling us the stuff

00:40:44.940 that they have to go through and that's why they're the attrition rate is three times the regular rate

00:40:50.700 and that's why guys like me who released earlier getting out because it's just uh it's just nonsense

00:40:56.620 and it's uh we're not like a the care forces in the passport office okay we are a completely

00:41:02.060 different entity in society and uh there's just so much creep uh that's stuff that's crept in

00:41:08.820 from the likes of you know barbara perry and um the ontario technical institute and they just gave

00:41:15.400 a bunch of money to a man named andy knight who was a university of alberta professor who's going

00:41:20.220 to study white white supremacy in the canary forces so it's just a false and bogus narrative

00:41:26.340 in my opinion. Is your sense, Tom, that the military leadership have bought into this,

00:41:32.300 or are they just basically taking their marching orders from cabinet and government or seeing the

00:41:37.880 writing on the wall and that this is the way things are going? Yeah, absolutely. I do believe

00:41:43.460 that the senior leadership of the Canadian forces has bought completely into this. And, you know,

00:41:48.920 I tweeted about this yesterday where, you know, there was the American veterans and currently

00:41:54.720 serving members have created this declaration of accountability where you know um there there's a

00:42:01.840 group of over 200 i believe 230 uh currently serving and re uh retired american veterans

00:42:09.520 who want accountability against the joint chiefs of staff for all of their actions uh during covet

00:42:15.600 and um you know my tweet was actually about the same thing is that the canadian armed forces

00:42:22.320 members um had the same have the same duty i mean you learn this in basic training in the first week

00:42:29.040 when you're covering military law you as a subordinate rank when you're trained have a duty

00:42:36.640 to report a crime if you witness it being committed and if so actually lay charges and that doesn't

00:42:42.480 matter if the person committing the crime is of a higher rank than you you've got a duty to take

00:42:48.000 action because you know it's a professional organization with its own body of laws it's got

00:42:53.900 its own criminal justice system it has its own mechanisms to deal with these things and the fact

00:42:59.500 that it right now the currently serving military members have never taken their superior officers

00:43:06.320 to task tells you it speaks volumes about the the state of buy-in from senior leaders who are

00:43:15.280 protecting their careers not the integrity of the institution of the Canadian Armed Forces

00:43:20.980 but they're protecting their careers they're not risking their pensions or their livelihoods or

00:43:25.660 their reputations on pushing back against this ideology and I think that that in itself is a

00:43:31.640 massive leader of failure or a failure of leadership on on behalf of let's say lieutenant

00:43:38.160 colonels and above or even majors who are the first rank of senior officer very few instances

00:43:43.560 We've seen this. I can think of one major that did a video in uniform where he pushed back against the actions of the senior leadership of the forces.

00:43:52.940 But that's the only example I can come up with. And, you know, I believe some people should stay in and fight from the inside, try to make it better.

00:44:01.100 But the reality is that the best people are going to get out of the way.

00:44:04.780 They're going to leave the military and the garbage is going to percolate to the top.

00:44:08.300 And they are going to occupy those senior positions within the Canadian forces, and they will remain beholden to the Liberal Party of Canada, not to Canadians, not to the institution of the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:44:22.920 That's where their loyalties are going to lie in their next promotion.

00:44:26.780 And their next promotion is going to be contingent on how woke you are and how much you abide by this gender ideology and all these other things, right? 0.99

00:44:35.080 I mean, we have quotas, 25% of all the occupations we want to fill by women. 1.00

00:44:41.080 That's not based on capability.

00:44:43.560 That's based on this bizarre quota of what your gender is and what your skin color is.

00:44:50.400 It's not based on capability.

00:44:52.920 And, you know, up until recently, the fundamental idea was that your capabilities were what earned you the position within the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:45:03.320 you know you don't have the right to join the canadian armed forces you have the right to apply

00:45:08.960 you don't have to be accepted but to be accepted you have to meet a minimum standard and drew could

00:45:13.760 probably talk about what's happening now with the cfad score which is the canadian forces aptitude

00:45:18.700 test so you know i do think that there's some nefarious things happening so that senior officers

00:45:24.800 can get promoted into uh more advanced positions than they currently hold well yeah and obviously

00:45:30.080 if we are embracing diversity and DEI and anti-whiteness and anti-colonialism and all of

00:45:36.300 this, which you clearly are, we see this in the documentation, it stands to reason that that's

00:45:41.340 going to become at the core of hiring and promotion practices. And I mean, obviously,

00:45:47.300 no true meritocracy really exists. There are always biases and nepotism and things that can

00:45:53.400 seep their way in. But the idea that senior military strategists or people who are supposed

00:45:58.600 to be strategists are going to be decided based on how many diversity checkboxes you can tick

00:46:03.880 isn't really all that far off is it drew i mean and you think i mean this is the whole point of

00:46:08.520 that intersectionality idea that these academics who have never served as tom points out are

00:46:13.460 talking about here it said oh well yeah this guy may have led uh you know 20 successful campaigns

00:46:18.380 but oh this one's a transgendered indigenous person in a wheelchair this is our our new admiral

00:46:22.960 No, exactly. And I'll just touch base on one thing that Tom said is the difference. So we know and we're, I guess, partnered with the American guys who put forth that military accountability document.

00:46:37.140 The difference down there is they actually have senior officers who are signed on to this, guys with credibility and who are known within the community.

00:46:45.840 With V4F, we're at over 3,000 members.

00:46:48.820 We have a handful of four ringers, so either captain navies or colonels, but we haven't had any sort of major general or admiral push back and step up.

00:47:01.020 General Mason has been doing some good work.

00:47:03.620 He's been speaking out against sort of the wokeness effect in the CAF, which is great, but there needs to be more senior officers and senior NCOs who speak out about this stuff.

00:47:15.840 and that's uh sorry what was your question andrew i guess i lost your answer was good enough but i

00:47:21.480 was basically just asking about whether diversity uh diversity hires are going to become the new

00:47:26.840 norm uh with how things are going and you know the general the vice admiral all these leaders are

00:47:32.060 not going to be people that were these you know brilliant tacticians and strategists and operators

00:47:37.580 but are actually just going to be people that are chosen for these intersectional diversity

00:47:41.900 categories yeah so you're 100 spot on so when i was in recruiting so i was a military career

00:47:48.260 counselor i would really sign off the guys sign off on the files to get them uh sort of approved

00:47:53.340 and onto the competition list uh which has been watered down but at that time uh women who were 1.00

00:47:58.980 applying to the canadian forces didn't have to pass the aptitude test to be able to be approved

00:48:04.740 and put on the thing so they had lowered the standards there for women um just to get them on 1.00

00:48:10.280 how they actually select applicants but that's a whole nother story it is now this is something

00:48:16.520 that we released on our uh social medias yesterday is for just under 50 of the trades

00:48:22.580 um in the canadian armed forces they've waived the requirement to pass the canadian forces

00:48:28.140 aptitude test and that aptitude test tests you in three things tests you in math it tests you

00:48:32.620 in english test you on your spatial awareness and based on your scores it will dictate to us

00:48:38.420 the military career counsellors of what occupations you're good for that's not even happening anymore

00:48:43.780 so 47 trades no longer require that aptitude test now i talked to our source at cfrg which

00:48:49.920 canadian forces recruiting group headquarters and see he said that this is being done to for

00:48:55.580 two reasons one to help push through the 2600 permanent residents who've applied to the canadian

00:49:02.820 Armed Forces, and two, to help meet the what we call EE employment equity quotas, which I believe

00:49:09.920 is 25% women. These are the goals, 25% women, 15% visible minority, and I think it's four or five

00:49:16.460 percent Indigenous. So they're lowering the standard of the troops in the military to help

00:49:23.940 achieve their DEI targets, which is, you know, it's unacceptable. You never lower the standard,

00:49:31.620 especially when people's lives are on the line.

00:49:34.200 I mean, that used to be when this came up

00:49:35.840 with firefighters years ago,

00:49:37.280 this used to be the most obvious pushback on this,

00:49:40.180 which is, you know, someone like me

00:49:41.400 doesn't drop a hundred pounds

00:49:42.540 if the firefighter is a woman. 0.97

00:49:44.400 So this is, I think, the painful reality here.

00:49:47.320 Well, I'm glad you gentlemen are speaking up about this.

00:49:50.080 Thank you for your service and for your time today.

00:49:51.920 Drew McGilvery from Veterans for Freedom

00:49:54.020 and Tom Marazzo, also from Veterans for Freedom,

00:49:56.480 but also the author of the book,

00:49:57.600 The People's Emergency Act.

00:49:58.980 Thank you very much, gentlemen.

00:50:00.320 Thanks, Andrew.

00:50:00.820 thank you all right that does it for us for today i will say all of you who have served i thank you

00:50:07.080 so much for your service and to the spouses of those who have served and family members as well

00:50:11.400 you've put up with a fair deal so uh your country thanks you as well we will be back tomorrow with

00:50:16.120 more of canada's most irreverent talk show thank you god bless and good day to you all

Juno News - January 09, 2024

Reporter speaks out after being arrested while questioning Chrystia Freeland

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