Juno News - The woke takeover of Canada (Ft. Ari Goldkind)

00:00:00.000 Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Rupa Subramanya show.

00:00:18.980 Today, it's a great pleasure to welcome back my friend, Ari Golkind.

00:00:23.940 Ari is a criminal defense lawyer based out of Toronto,

00:00:27.380 and he's one of the sharpest and most thoughtful people that I know out there.

00:00:32.500 He provides amazing commentary on key social, political, and cultural issues of the day,

00:00:38.100 and I think has a very interesting take on just about everything in the news.

00:00:43.360 Ari hosts his own podcast on SiriusXM, where I've had the pleasure of joining him,

00:00:48.140 and today it's great to have him back on my podcast for True North,

00:00:52.020 and we're going to cover a lot of ground on a range of issues that have been in the news recently.

00:00:57.820 So let's jump right in.

00:00:59.760 Hey, Ari, it's great to have you here once again.

00:01:04.340 I believe it's like your third appearance on my show, and, you know, it's always fun to have you back,

00:01:10.960 and I really enjoyed being on your show last week to talk about my story for the Free Press.

00:01:16.580 Well, you do such great work, and you write about things that others won't touch.

00:01:21.260 You're sort of the third rail of journalists, which I kind of admire the electricity,

00:01:25.860 so it's always good to talk to you, and the last time we talked, the response was overwhelming.

00:01:31.060 I actually looked at it, so it was really great to see how many people watched us,

00:01:35.900 and I think really appreciated our conversation, and I don't take people watching you or myself for granted.

00:01:41.800 Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think we're going to have a great conversation,

00:01:47.280 so I'm hoping that, you know, we'll talk about the story that I worked on for the Free Press on DEI

00:01:57.580 and the tragic suicide of Richard Bilkstow, but first, you know, I wanted to ask you about, you know,

00:02:04.820 going to your area of expertise as a well-known criminal defense lawyer based out of Toronto.

00:02:11.880 We've seen, for example, in Canada, we've seen criminals.

00:02:18.760 They get the release from jail on bail despite, you know, a high risk of re-offending,

00:02:28.420 and, you know, and what exactly is going on here.

00:02:32.740 One of the things that I've also worked on is a story on race-based sentencing, if you remember.

00:02:41.320 You know, I wrote the story for the Free Press about how these impact of race and cultural assessment reports

00:02:48.580 are playing an increasingly important role in letting go of people who, you know, have spent time in jail.

00:02:57.860 They're released on bail.

00:02:59.380 So what exactly is this happening?

00:03:02.040 What is happening within the criminal justice system?

00:03:05.360 So let's put this into some context.

00:03:07.560 I start my answer with the Seinfeldian, not that there's anything wrong with it.

00:03:11.240 I am a criminal defense lawyer.

00:03:12.720 Your audience should know that.

00:03:13.920 As much as I'm going to speak freely here as a citizen, as a lawyer, as somebody who works in the criminal, I think, injustice system,

00:03:22.100 I just want people to understand I'm still very proud of what I do.

00:03:25.520 I get a lot of hate for it.

00:03:26.980 I would defend anybody I'm about to criticize if they called me in 10 minutes.

00:03:31.680 I would do it to the best of my abilities, and I'm very proud of it.

00:03:35.580 So nobody should misunderstand that.

00:03:37.420 But we have lost the thread in Canada.

00:03:39.820 We are now a country.

00:03:41.200 And in fact, we call ourselves a civilization.

00:03:44.480 We call ourselves the Western world, that we are preferring the rights of criminals over the responsibilities of what it means to be a citizen.

00:03:55.140 We are preferring people who come from afar and pretend that they're refugee applicants over Canadian taxpaying, law-abiding citizens of all races and religions, mind you. 0.78

00:04:07.920 That's why the argument that so many people put up here is a straw man argument, as if Canada is some white, you know, aristocratic country that isn't really a majority-minority country filled with people of all races and religions.

00:04:23.720 And when people of all races and religions who are here, who are citizens, who are paying taxes, now have to put clubs.

00:04:31.620 Remember going to Canadian Tire and buying a club for your car because now car theft is so rampant.

00:04:38.300 Now you have to put your keys in a bag so that they don't operate that.

00:04:42.140 You worry about getting carjacked when you're driving.

00:04:45.980 And the only time the carjacking becomes a story is when it happens to a Toronto Maple Leaf.

00:04:50.820 We're a country where police officers, this is insane to me.

00:04:54.420 I want to be very clear and passionate about this.

00:04:57.080 We used to live in a country where if a police officer was gunned down by a monster who was out on probation or parole or just a ne'er-do-well, there'd be a national funeral.

00:05:08.980 But now police officers are gunned down so often that the prime minister or the premiers of provinces don't even go to the funeral.

00:05:16.700 They'll go to the opening of a door, but they won't go to a funeral for a police officer gunned down.

00:05:22.920 And you just asked me a moment ago, Rupa, about the bail system.

00:05:26.860 As much as people watching us right now think the bail system is broken, they actually don't know just how broken it is.

00:05:34.820 Because you're going to hear about the big story, the guy who stabbed a teenager on a subway in Toronto.

00:05:40.660 He was out on six bails and the revolving door of bail.

00:05:44.520 And you get bail, you get charged with fail to comply, you get bail again.

00:05:48.180 And most people think, well, wait a minute, if you get charged with a crime and you get bail and a judge says to you, and I'm going to look right in the camera and says to you, sir, because it's almost always a sir.

00:06:00.440 When you get bail from me, make me a promise that you will not commit any crime.

00:06:06.000 You will abide by the terms of your bail.

00:06:08.240 And lo and behold, over and over, they don't.

00:06:12.500 Their sureties, what that means in English, is somebody signs a bail that says, I'm going to make sure they don't misbehave.

00:06:18.760 I'm going to watch them.

00:06:19.700 I'm going to be their prison warden in the community.

00:06:22.560 Those sureties make promises to courts under oath that they don't keep. 1.00

00:06:27.100 Nobody really goes after the sureties, the bail person for screwing up. 0.99

00:06:31.540 So the bail system has become sort of a mirage.

00:06:34.640 It's an optical illusion.

00:06:36.360 And to your last part, Rupa, is you asked me about race-based sentencing or issues in the criminal justice system.

00:06:44.200 This is the lie that the Canadian people are told, which is that either the country or the criminal justice system is systemically racist.

00:06:53.040 Now, you're not allowed to hold a contrarian view to that, but I do.

00:06:57.360 I can tell you that the criminal justice system bends over backwards, then does gymnastics, then does cartwheels, to actually give preferential treatment to one race and one cultural background.

00:07:14.320 And your listeners and your viewers right now who are watching us, Rupa, they pay for the privilege of this through what are called enhanced sentencing reports, $5,000 a pop.

00:07:25.840 So if a person who's of one race or one cultural background gets charged with a crime, even that arguably has nothing to do with their background, and let me be very clear, there are a number of Indigenous people who were born into circumstances that you and I could never dream about.

00:07:43.000 Born with fetal alcohol syndrome, born with no parents, abused, left homeless at seven years old, I have great sympathy for that person getting a bit of a different look given sort of the cultural issues in our country.

00:07:58.460 But when you're now calling everything in our criminal justice system, when you're now saying simply because the colour of your skin is different than mine, you deserve different or preferential treatment in the criminal justice system for no reason other than we live in a woke world.

00:08:17.380 That is a criminal justice system that increasingly is losing the confidence of the public.

00:08:23.540 And when the criminal justice system does not have the confidence of the public, and it's a criminal justice system, Rupa, that, as you know, people don't look at it this way, is meant to reflect moral blameworthiness.

00:08:36.620 It's meant to say society looks at certain actions and says, no, when you have the pendulum swinging so that innocent people riding the subway, innocent people riding a bus to go to work, again, Rupa, all races and religions, look at who rides the bus.

00:08:52.780 If anybody looks at the bus.

00:09:22.920 If anybody thinks to the bus.

00:09:23.760 If anybody looks at the bus.

00:09:24.120 If anybody looks at the bus.

00:09:24.780 If anybody wins the bus.

00:09:25.760 If anybody comes at the bus.

00:09:26.760 If anybody believes in the bus.

00:09:28.760 And if somebody remembers, and we stop being the nation of excuse makers, we're never going to put this country on the right track.

00:09:29.760 So someone who believes in race-based sentencing.

00:09:35.360 Let's stick with race-based sentencing for a minute here.

00:09:39.440 a proponent of race-based sentencing will say, well, look, you know, systemic racism is a real

00:09:47.520 issue. There's been historical racism that certain communities have experienced, especially

00:09:55.120 Black Canadians, for example. And because of that, these historical injustices that they've

00:10:05.300 experienced, you know, that's had an effect on how they've been brought up and it's had an effect on

00:10:12.160 their lives. And so we have to be a little more understanding of their circumstances, of their

00:10:18.380 history. And this is why race-based sentencing or the impact of race and cultural assessment reports

00:10:26.320 matter, just like they did with the Gladue reports for Indigenous people. So if you can have that for

00:10:33.540 Indigenous people, why can't you have that for Black Canadians, for example?

00:10:39.160 Okay, so very good point. Let me say one, I don't accept the premise of what these so-called people

00:10:44.280 say, that we run around and live in a country that's systemically racist. The conversation is

00:10:49.100 much more nuanced. It's much deeper. I'll say something now that I'm sure 10% of your viewers

00:10:55.280 will not like. I'm Jewish. I'm not religious, but I'm proudly Jewish. Six million of my people

00:11:02.300 were wiped out between 1939 and 1945. Wiped off the map. But I can tell you that if a Jew gets 1.00

00:11:11.680 charged with a crime, they don't march into court and start complaining about the Holocaust or their 0.65

00:11:17.820 background or that there used to be signs, no dogs, no Jews. I'm being serious, by the way. And I've 0.99

00:11:23.280 walked the tracks at Auschwitz. It was one of the most formative moments of my life. I'm being serious 0.56

00:11:28.300 about that. There are a number of races and religions in this world that bad things have 1.00

00:11:33.820 happened to. But there seems to be one magical race and one magical background where there's no

00:11:40.500 agency. There's no, we have choice. We have autonomy. We don't get to use excuses forever. At what point

00:11:49.940 do you start to have Lady Justice be blind? And the rules apply across all people. I'm not saying a judge 0.99

00:11:57.880 shouldn't be able to take into account what any lawyer like me says when I'm singing for my

00:12:02.880 client's supper. But when you have it codified by the criminal code, that if you're a certain race

00:12:09.420 or background, you should get bail before another one does, or it's a special consideration, even if

00:12:16.500 your crime is heinous, god-awful, you're on three bails. I mean, my goodness, what are we doing? What's

00:12:22.380 the statute of limitations in a country where our new Justice Minister, Rupa, let me make this point.

00:12:28.980 Our new Justice Minister, Arif Varani, I went to law school with him. That's completely true, by the

00:12:33.980 way. Very hardworking, very nice guy, but came out with some ridiculous comments when he first got his

00:12:39.960 appointment. We won't get into those unless you want to. But he said something that nobody picked up

00:12:44.200 on in the press, which is, I came here as a child, and I'm an Ismaili Muslim. This is him speaking.

00:12:51.640 And he said, if I can rise to be the Justice Minister of Canada, and an MP for many years,

00:12:57.820 this isn't his first rodeo, then that shows that this is a country that anybody of any background,

00:13:02.960 any skin colour can do anything in. So if we're going to premise the whole conversation that we're

00:13:08.600 a racist country, or systemically racist, which is essentially a sentence that means nobody can

00:13:13.960 argue it, you can't ask for proof, you can't ask for the ingredients, you can't ask for anybody to

00:13:19.740 back it up, or they'll give you an isolated example. Well, sure, I'll give an isolated example back.

00:13:25.220 There may be young black children who are born out of wedlock to parents that abuse them. But that

00:13:32.740 happens to Caucasian people, too. You know, we don't have to just be in Appalachia

00:13:37.640 to understand that certain things are more class than they are the melanin or melatonin or whatever

00:13:45.060 the word is in your skin. There are going to be Native Canadians, Indigenous people who were born

00:13:51.720 with fetal alcohol syndrome, as I said, and they never had a chance in life that I did. I'm not lost

00:13:57.760 on that. I had a better head start in life than somebody born to parents that beat them and have

00:14:04.920 fetal alcohol syndrome. And the court should always take that into consideration. But why should it be

00:14:11.060 open season on somebody who is violent, won't change their behavior, is incorrigible, is unstoppable, 0.97

00:14:19.260 so that they can go out and offend and rape or murder or stab or shoot other innocent Canadian 0.99

00:14:27.560 people. And as I've said, and I've put this out on my anti-social media group many times, I don't call it 0.99

00:14:32.620 social media, I never will. If you wanted the system to change, it would change in a nanosecond

00:14:40.120 if this violence happened to people that the Justice Minister or the Prime Minister of any party, this is

00:14:46.660 not partisan, of any party actually knew. If it happened to your wife, your sister, your brother,

00:14:52.380 your grandfather, your dog walker, you'd have a view that's different. I see the effect

00:14:58.820 of people who come to court who have been raped, stabbed, carved up. It's one thing by when it's

00:15:06.800 somebody that nobody ever saw it coming, the typical cliche from the movies. He was a quiet

00:15:11.660 neighbor. That is one thing. But when you have, as we're seeing now, the revolving door of bail or

00:15:18.500 parole lead to innocent, and again, Rupa, this is the key point, not famous Canadians, not rich Canadians,

00:15:27.420 just ordinary, average law-abiding people wanting to ride the TTC bus in Toronto to work without having

00:15:34.880 15-year-old teenagers. We all have to use this codified language, setting off fireworks in their

00:15:42.100 face or gang swarmings. Somehow we've lost the thread that our fellow citizens don't matter.

00:15:49.320 We have a charter of rights that, in my view, has essentially destroyed the country. That's a big part

00:15:54.420 of the crime picture. What we really need to have is a charter of responsibilities.

00:15:59.660 And if we had a charter of responsibilities that went along with the charter of rights,

00:16:03.880 which basically means whatever somebody defines it to be today, tomorrow, whichever judge you're

00:16:09.240 lucky enough to get, remember, the news came out last week, Rupa, about who gets appointed to the

00:16:14.160 superior court. It's all liberal donors. That's fact. That's freedom. You don't have to trust me on it.

00:16:19.920 We need to have a social construct, Rupa, where we stop bending over backwards as a country

00:16:27.300 to ignore the person working two jobs to support their family, the person taking their kids to

00:16:33.500 daycare, the mother in Leslieville who gets gunned down next to a safe injection site that shouldn't 0.96

00:16:41.640 be there anymore. Why are we preferring the people that are destroying Canada versus ignoring the

00:16:50.000 contributions of the Canadians that made this a place that the entire world happens to want to

00:16:55.680 come to and which we seem to have an open red carpet for them?

00:17:00.660 Do you think that, I mean, you've diagnosed the problem very well. The question is why?

00:17:08.400 Why is this happening? And even if you were to just take race-based sentencing as an example,

00:17:14.800 which really is quite atrocious when you think about it, I mean, justice is supposed to be

00:17:19.200 colorblind. And, you know, this one person that I spoke to for my story, she lives in Ottawa,

00:17:26.060 tragically lost her partner to a hit-and-run accident, a hit-and-run accident, and the guy just

00:17:32.120 fled the scene. And eventually when he was caught, he said it's because he was black and he had

00:17:40.200 suffered racism. And so therefore-

00:17:41.860 I saw that story.

00:17:42.820 That was part of his impact and race and cultural assessment that happened during the course of his

00:17:51.080 trial. And she said something very, she raised a very important question. Rupa, I get racism exists.

00:17:59.340 I understand that, you know, there are people who experience racism. I also recognize the atrocities

00:18:07.180 that were committed against certain people, you know, 100 years ago, or my ancestors were responsible

00:18:15.400 for that. But why am I being penalized for this? You know, for me, you know, as a taxpaying citizen of

00:18:22.680 this country, why isn't justice colorblind? Why am I being held responsible for something that

00:18:28.660 happened 300 years ago?

00:18:30.440 Well, let's go into that story. I know you didn't plan to do it, but I actually know that case,

00:18:34.860 Rupa. I actually know it. And that man that you're talking about didn't just make an instant mistake.

00:18:39.800 He did a hit-and-run. He left somebody essentially to die. He drives away. He then does a cover-up.

00:18:46.060 He then does more cover-up, more cover-up, more cover-up, and then some more cover-up,

00:18:50.780 and then comes into court and starts trotting out the racial card. It's the get-out-of-jail-free card.

00:18:56.640 Now, there may be certain instances where that's appropriate, but it's become the de facto,

00:19:02.860 du jour, you know, main course of the day. And we live in a country that, because we live in a woke,

00:19:09.300 identity-politic, stupid country, and we are stupid, there is nobody that I would be unwilling 1.00

00:19:15.240 to debate now that can say to me, Canada is better off than it was eight years ago. 1.00

00:19:20.240 There is no metric that this country is better off, and here's the kicker, Rupa, for ordinary,

00:19:27.400 average, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens. If you're not in that group, Canada is the greatest

00:19:34.680 place you could ever come. We are a complete joke. We have no rules. If you land at Pearson or Montreal

00:19:42.140 Airport or Vancouver Airport you're in, we don't turn anybody away. We have 1.5 million new people

00:19:48.800 come a year. We're not allowed to have a conversation about that. You have the absolutely

00:19:53.540 imbecilic Minister of Immigration yesterday. Whenever people watch this, at the time you and 1.00

00:19:59.940 I are speaking, yesterday he said, we need to have an endless amount of new immigrants to build homes

00:20:07.440 to address our housing crisis. Now, think that through. That's the federal government saying to

00:20:15.240 Canadians, we don't have anybody here to build homes. The demand for homes is outstripping supply.

00:20:22.280 I wonder why. 1.5 million new people a year. But now our argument is going to be, we can't build these

00:20:29.680 homes unless we let 1.5 million people in. It's literally insane, but I'm not diverting from your

00:20:36.040 question about your friend. It's because we live in a country where you're only allowed to speak

00:20:43.860 openly. You're only allowed to use your inside voice outside if you hold one set of views.

00:20:50.520 If you hold another set of views, you are in danger of losing your job, your reputation,

00:20:58.940 being called far right, like that debacle yesterday with Pierre Polyev, where somebody said an expert

00:21:04.560 calls you far right. I read who those experts are. I wouldn't trust them to butter my bagel.

00:21:10.700 But somehow he has to answer that experts, experts. Well, I'm an expert, Rupa. It's right in my

00:21:17.240 anti-social media profile. So am I. Right, so are you. But there's no viewer that could come on here

00:21:23.940 right now who said, you know what, Ari, your view is stupid. I disagree with it. Where I'd say, okay, 1.00

00:21:29.400 let's not debate and discuss it. But again, I'm tying this into your friend. Your friend now in

00:21:36.660 expressing, well, wait a minute. You know, sometimes there's a reason why a certain race or a certain

00:21:42.960 cultural background may deserve a bit of a more fair shake or a little bit more leniency. I agree 1.00

00:21:48.300 with that. There's no problem with that. But when it's every single time and you have your friend

00:21:55.120 now espousing views that will now be called far right, this is where I'm going. If you're not far

00:22:03.880 left in this country, which has a much clearer definition than far right now, nobody even knows

00:22:09.540 what it means. It's like a bully a base. Define what goes into a bully. Nobody can do it. But

00:22:14.480 define far left, you're going to get woke, idiotic. You know, everybody can determine what pronouns they 1.00

00:22:21.860 get called. I want to be called handsome and brilliant. I demand that everybody watching this

00:22:26.180 calls me handsome and brilliant. By the way, that's a great Matt Walsh line. This is the insanity

00:22:30.840 that we live in. And again, I'm still on your friend. Because your friend is an ordinary, average,

00:22:40.440 taxpaying Canadian, probably not on welfare. People don't understand the extent of welfare fraud

00:22:45.780 in this country, money laundering, the Ontario Disability Support Program. I can give you 20 names

00:22:51.960 right now that are all getting checks every month from the ODSP program that are healthier than you and

00:22:58.340 me put together. And I assure you, Rupa, I'm very healthy. I can go run a marathon right now if I

00:23:03.240 wanted to. They're healthier. And they're on the dole. Your friend has to deal with this because she's

00:23:10.320 the forgotten. And I talk a lot about this concept of the forgotten. There are a lot of videos coming

00:23:16.760 out in the States, Rupa. I don't know if you saw that man somewhere in Appalachia who put a song out

00:23:21.820 talking about being a working man. And it went viral. There is nothing special about your friend

00:23:29.920 or that man. But because we've gone so far to the left with insanity, post Me Too, post George Floyd,

00:23:39.100 anybody simply saying criminals don't get to have more rights than victims. Canadian citizens

00:23:45.800 shouldn't have less rights than men between the ages of 21 to 27 who flood here, don't work, hate gay people, 1.00

00:23:55.720 hate Jews, big problem for me, hate women. Why do Canadian citizens go to the back of the bus? So to end 1.00

00:24:04.180 this answer, what your friend is experiencing is the personalization of crime. And until ordinary,

00:24:12.800 average people experience the personalization of it, they don't tend to understand it the way I do.

00:24:21.140 I live and breathe it every day. Or they have a security detail, like Prime Minister Priti,

00:24:27.740 who takes a photo op on the TTC surrounded by 20, this is true, by the way, surrounded by 20 RCMP secret

00:24:36.220 service, whatever you call them, and pretends he's a man of the people, when the actual people who are

00:24:42.680 too scared to speak out, are literally sitting on a subway car while a monster on bail runs up and

00:24:51.440 down the car with a knife in his hand as if we're in some third world country, and starts butchering a

00:24:57.100 human being in front of them. The problem is, is the silence of the people whose inside voice is sane,

00:25:05.300 is sound, is commonsensical. But because of the advent of Twitter, let's call it X now,

00:25:13.780 things that trend, or things that we're told are what most people think, which is horse manure,

00:25:21.960 horse manure, you're now cowed into silence. And that's why, in my view, so much of the commonsensical

00:25:30.720 stuff that we'd all agree about if we were sitting at a dinner table together, you're not allowed to

00:25:35.520 talk about it out loud. And if you're not talking about it out loud, guess what happens to the

00:25:40.840 popular culture? That's the moment we're in. That's why my city is dying. That's why I think this country

00:25:47.420 is dying.

00:25:47.900 So, I'm sure you've heard of this Bill C-48. The federal government is proposing changes to,

00:25:58.980 I think, the bail system. It would make it harder for those accused of certain offenses to be

00:26:05.200 released on bail. Bill C-48 would amend this criminal code so that those charged with a serious

00:26:11.760 violent offense involving a weapon, I believe one with a maximum penalty of 10 years in

00:26:17.880 imprisonment, who were convicted of a similar offense within the last five years, will face

00:26:22.920 a reverse onus to get bail. So, a reverse onus apparently means the accused would have to show

00:26:29.180 why they should be released instead of the prosecution having to prove that they should

00:26:32.880 remain behind bars. So, what do you make of this? I mean, is this going to do anything to address

00:26:40.660 the rise in crime?

00:26:41.560 So, let me explain to your audience how the sausage is made. Because they hear these words,

00:26:48.360 well, the government's going to reverse the onus. And, you know, you hear something like that,

00:26:52.780 it's like somebody talking to me about a hedge fund. I don't get it. I can hear it, I just don't

00:26:57.600 get it. I don't understand it. When somebody is charged with a crime, the premise is they should

00:27:03.320 be released from the police station. You're presumed innocent, you should get out, especially if you have

00:27:07.820 no record, a husband and wife get into an argument, custody disputes, somebody pushes somebody. You

00:27:12.660 shouldn't go to jail for three nights. Now, as I say that, you and I had a very interesting

00:27:16.560 conversation about Tamara Leach. And she spent more time in pretrial detention for her Mickey

00:27:23.900 Mouse alleged crimes that weren't even crimes. I invite people to go back and watch you and I

00:27:27.940 talking about that. Because that really is a reflection of just how stupid our bail system is. 1.00

00:27:32.420 She spends more time in jail, pretrial, presumed innocent, than people who have raped women, 1.00

00:27:39.040 abused children, and stabbed innocent human beings. Think that through. It's not a joke, 0.89

00:27:43.600 by the way. It's actually completely true. But now let's talk about this bill. There are,

00:27:49.620 and again, the onus is who has to do the heavy lifting on the day of the bail hearing. It's really

00:27:55.600 a legal fiction. It doesn't make a huge difference. If you have mommy and daddy coming to court and saying,

00:28:01.980 I'll sign a bail for my precious loved one, who the police arrested falsely, or the cops are racist,

00:28:08.880 the person is likely to get out. Now, let me explain, because as much as people should know,

00:28:13.700 I think our current federal government is horrid. I also say that there are positive things in this

00:28:20.240 bill. I also think the next federal government, whomever it may be, may be equally horrid on a number

00:28:26.120 of issues, because so much of this is the bureaucracy. So much of this is never going to change. You saw

00:28:31.420 Pierre Polyevby asked about immigration, and said, would you consider lower numbers than the Trudeau

00:28:36.340 government? And he wouldn't answer. And I'm a fan of his. So if anybody thinks there's going to be a

00:28:41.780 magical change in Canada, I don't think that's coming. So it's good to reverse the onus for certain

00:28:48.060 things, particularly if you've had a serious violent defense in the last five years. But judges and

00:28:53.080 justices of the peace are aware of all of this. We're not reinventing the wheel. My answer,

00:28:59.480 is a much more blunt one. Until we get rid of what I think would have made Martin Luther King Jr. go

00:29:06.940 nuts, which is the color of your skin determines more than your character. Character, by the way,

00:29:13.340 is also your criminality, your ability to follow the rules, your ability to respect authority.

00:29:18.200 So again, I think this would have Martin Luther King Jr. spinning in his grave. My answer is you're

00:29:23.820 never going to get meaningful change on bail until a number of things happen. One, you get rid of any

00:29:31.420 race or cultural-based preferences for who gets bail. The only question that matters is are you

00:29:39.200 dangerous or not? That's it. Are you a threat to your fellow citizen? And Rupa, there are going to be

00:29:45.400 viewers who are disagreeing with me right now. Let me point this statistic out. You go to any statistic

00:29:51.720 kept by any think tank, right, left, far left, left of far left, and even more left of that, and you take

00:30:00.260 a look at who the victims of most crimes in Canada are. They are not Conrad Black. They are not Justin

00:30:09.540 Trudeau. They are not Jordan Peterson. They are people who share the same background as the racial or cultural

00:30:19.720 offender. Why don't those people matter? The only thing that should matter is dangerousness. You must take that

00:30:28.040 out of the system and simply look at who can comply, who can be released safely, and who can't. Full stop. Two, you cannot

00:30:37.440 have a system, whether it's bail or criminal justice work, until you get rid of this nonsense idea that

00:30:45.000 certain races or cultures are over-represented in jail. That is the talking point of Lamedi, who was a

00:30:54.500 complete moron about this, and he knows he's lying. They all know they're lying through their teeth, because 0.99

00:31:00.000 the one thing you're not allowed to say when they tell you that a certain race and a certain cultural

00:31:05.660 background is over-represented in jails is you're never allowed to say, well, what race or religion

00:31:12.300 is over-represented in crime statistics? What race or cultural background commits more violent crimes

00:31:21.720 per capita, per their portion of the population, than others? What are we supposed to do? Are we supposed

00:31:30.020 to have in our jails and our penitentiaries an equal amount of Japanese grandmothers, Norwegian cousins,

00:31:38.980 Chinese entrepreneurs, Jewish accountants? I think I'm allowed to make that joke. 1.00

00:31:46.500 You know, Italian, make whatever joke you want. That is the stupidity of the argument. You are not, 1.00

00:31:53.140 and there's a person who does incredible work on this called Heather MacDonald. I invite people to

00:31:57.620 Google her name. She does incredible work. This is where we are in a society where the public is

00:32:03.860 being lied to that somehow police, when they get up at the morning and three in the morning,

00:32:09.700 they get down to the police division, they put on their uniform, and they say, well, I'm going to go

00:32:16.500 round me up and arrest two very specific groups. The race that we're told is over-represented in jail.

00:32:22.660 By the way, I won't say what it is, because, you know, nobody can guess who I'm talking about,

00:32:27.860 because nobody can, and I'm not going to talk about the cultural background,

00:32:31.940 that because nobody can guess, because people must be thinking, I'm thinking of people from Tahiti.

00:32:38.100 So in any event, until we get past this idea that police are racist, or they're arresting people who

00:32:46.100 are not committing crimes. Now, of course, there's problems in policing. I make a living cross-examining

00:32:52.580 police officers. I make a living calling them liars. I get it. But until we get this idea that we need 0.78

00:32:59.940 to have an honest conversation, Rupa, in this country, and in our friends south of the border,

00:33:07.700 as to who commits crimes, are there patterns, are there population groups that commit more than their

00:33:14.580 numbers? Are there issues with immigration? Are there issues with this? Are there issues with that?

00:33:21.700 We are never going to have meaningful change, and I will take it right back to where I started with

00:33:26.820 your friend. You are going to have ordinary, innocent, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens

00:33:34.580 sacrificed at the altar of wokeness. Now, I want to just say this, Rupa. I apologize for the longer answer,

00:33:40.660 but there is a price to pay for this woke nonsense. This is not benign. This is not a benign philosophy

00:33:49.220 that doesn't matter. It's killing children. It's allowing children to believe they're something

00:33:54.820 they're not. It's encouraging them to be morons. It's ruining universities and colleges, because this 1.00

00:34:01.060 is the generation coming up that's being indoctrinated to think the opposite of everything I think. And Rupa,

00:34:06.900 I don't think anything controversial. I'm simply just using my brain. And until we understand that

00:34:13.700 there are innocent men, women, and children of this country and our friends south of the border

00:34:19.860 that are being gunned down, stabbed, sexually assaulted, look what's going on in Sweden. Look

00:34:26.660 at the numbers there. Until we have an honest conversation about the price to pay

00:34:33.220 of being far left versus being even in the middle, being woke or far left is causing innocent people

00:34:44.100 to be sacrificed at the woke altar. And in my view, it's a disgrace because it completely ignores. And

00:34:51.780 again, Rupa, forgive the long answer, but I have to get into a bit of personal answer here. When I got into

00:34:57.540 politics about 10 years ago, and I did the whole anti-police thing, I'm a criminal defense lawyer,

00:35:02.260 the police are really bad, all of this, people can hold me to that. I went around to the community

00:35:07.300 because I wasn't not famous now, but I was less well known 10 years ago. And I pounded the pavement,

00:35:13.540 and I went to all these low income community housing, Toronto community housing, Jane and Finch,

00:35:18.820 and I thought that my anti-police thing would really resonate. It didn't.

00:35:23.700 They wanted to live as safely as I can live where I live. They wanted to live as safely

00:35:30.020 as Justin Trudeau can live with a detail. And until we all agree that whether you make a million

00:35:36.420 dollars a year or $30,000 a year, you have the right to the same immunity and safety from crime

00:35:46.420 as somebody who lives in Shaughnessy, Westmount, Forest Hill, Rosedale,

00:35:53.060 or near the House of Commons, we will never have common ground or a safe country.

00:36:00.180 Which leads me to my next question. And our final topic, you know, you spoke so eloquently about

00:36:07.860 what wokeism is doing and, you know, and it's actually killing people. And that brings me to

00:36:18.500 the story that I wrote for the Free Press a couple of weeks ago on the tragic suicide of Richard

00:36:24.900 Bilkstow. You and I were in touch for the story. In fact, I had the great honor of quoting you in my

00:36:30.740 story. And then I came on to your show and we talked about it at great length.

00:36:36.420 What do you think is going on here, Ari? Diversity, equity, inclusion. You know,

00:36:42.420 what do you make of these training sessions? Why is there, why is, do you think they feel that

00:36:50.580 there's a need for such training sessions? You know, and, and, you know, how, how is it that

00:36:57.860 we've allowed this to happen? Okay. So let's break this down because it does tie in my view,

00:37:03.940 Rupa. And again, your audience, we don't pre-tape, we don't pre-script. I don't know what

00:37:08.180 you're going to ask me, but this actually ties into what we were just talking about. Let me

00:37:12.180 make the link. I don't think it's tenuous. This ties into law and order and wokeness in the following

00:37:18.980 way. This is all a grift. The people that do this are all grifters. Now it used to be,

00:37:28.180 we would all agree that the double WF is fake. We all respect it. We understand these are athletes,

00:37:35.060 but we wouldn't all have to agree that when Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant get in the ring,

00:37:40.180 it's all left to, it's, you know, it's real. It's, it's all just not scripted. We now live

00:37:46.580 in a world where the double WWE has become sort of, we have to turn up. And I use the wrestling

00:37:51.780 reference because most people grew up with that. A lot of people watching us will know the Stone Cold,

00:37:55.940 the rock. I love wrestling by the way. So I like to throw it in because I am a human being

00:38:00.260 with a personality. You're now being told to ignore what you know is true. And I'm going to take this to

00:38:07.700 Richard in just a moment, but you asked me about DEI. And you'll remember about a half an hour ago,

00:38:13.780 I said, we all have to keep quiet. That's how this wins. That's how they win. You'll remember that this

00:38:21.620 whole issue with, you know, people who say they're trans competing in events that you weren't allowed

00:38:27.780 to say anything until a very brave young lady named Riley Gaines, who I've spoken to, I'm sure you know who I

00:38:34.420 am, who she is started to push back until people talk and say enough is enough. This doesn't stop.

00:38:42.660 What did Richard do? He tried to say, hold the phone. And a lot of your audience watching us Rupa right

00:38:50.900 now who hear my answer, they won't know what I'm talking about, but I invite them not while they're

00:38:55.220 watching us. But when we're done, go listen to how the monster who did that session spoke to Richard,

00:39:04.660 the condescension, the arrogance, the holier than thou, the complete reversal of I'm now a victim 0.93

00:39:15.380 to I'm in charge of you, all these claims that are horse crap, I'm using nice language, 0.96

00:39:21.060 and everybody has to sit there and just take it. Because if you don't take it, you're going to lose. 0.95

00:39:29.620 And again, Rupa, I always talk about the Canadian who's not famous, who's not rich. If you're a middle 0.99

00:39:36.980 manager at a car dealership, if you're at an ad agency, if you're the manager of McDonald's and you

00:39:42.980 have to sit through this garbage, what are your options? Sit there and say, this is garbage, 1.00

00:39:50.420 or get fired. And when you have two children to feed, and you don't want to be one of these 1.00

00:39:55.540 Canadians who's on the dole, you don't want to be one of these Canadians who believe the government 1.00

00:40:00.660 check is how you live, you know to stay silent. And that's why I want to take it back to this all

00:40:07.460 being a colossal financial grift. It's actually a bigger grift than Bernie Madoff. It's a bigger

00:40:15.300 grift than Zelensky, which I think is the greatest grift in the history of grifting.

00:40:19.860 It's a grift where we all know it's a grift. But rather than doing or say anything about it,

00:40:25.940 we all say to ourselves, I hate it, it makes my blood boil. But it's just easier if I stay quiet

00:40:33.060 about it. And it's only when a few a small number of brave people say something that we get there.

00:40:39.060 The problem is it was too late for Richard. So while Stephen Lecce and the Ford government now,

00:40:44.740 and a number of people are coming out and sort of reacting to this,

00:40:49.060 you must understand, Rupa, it's almost too late. Now, it's never too late, but it's all a grift.

00:40:56.260 And when we live in a world where somebody who's late to Starbucks, or late to Whole Foods,

00:41:01.540 you'll know the famous story in the States, gets fired for being late 47 times, but then says being

00:41:08.260 on time is white supremacy, and then gets $11 million from a jury who's too scared to do anything

00:41:16.340 else. Or they all hire Ben Crump, the lawyer in the States, who basically, I think, I don't even

00:41:24.980 want to say because I'm a lawyer. It's just, it's the craziest thing ever. When we have a situation

00:41:30.900 where good people have to sit quietly by while we're all being lied to by people who are at the top of

00:41:38.900 Canada, who have more power than an oil worker in Alberta, who have more money than somebody

00:41:46.260 working two jobs in Walmart, somebody being paid $70,000 and $30,000 to train journalists at the

00:41:54.580 Toronto Star, a person who lives better, has a nicer home, but then walks around going,

00:42:00.420 the world is racist to me. This is insanity, Rupa. I don't think I'm saying anything controversial

00:42:08.100 at all. But the problem is, is that they've shut down discourse so massively that most people watching

00:42:16.100 this just have to stay quiet. And you'll remember, and I'll answer my, I'll end my answer here, Rupa.

00:42:22.980 50 years ago, being far left mean you were for free speech, you were against authoritarianism,

00:42:30.500 you fought the power. Now being on the left or the far left is the exact opposite Rupa. You now only

00:42:37.540 have conservatives saying, I don't want to cancel anybody, let's debate, let's argue. The left has

00:42:43.700 one Rupa, and I'm pessimistic that there's anything coming back from that, because anything that doesn't

00:42:49.380 toe that line, crime, immigration, family, sex, whatever you want to call it, it's not like they're

00:42:57.780 welcoming a debate and letting the marketplace of ideas win out. They have succeeded in making

00:43:04.420 all of us shut up. And when you take a democracy, and you take intelligent people who have brains,

00:43:10.900 and you make them shut up because the price is too high to be paid for saying anything, they win.

00:43:17.460 And Rupa, in my view, they have won.

00:43:21.700 Okay, so Ari, I'm going to challenge you on a couple of things here.

00:43:24.500 You said two things. You said, we don't have, you know, these people don't have a choice but to

00:43:30.420 shut up. And that, you know, that you're, you're, you're basically, you know, you're afraid of losing 0.59

00:43:37.620 your job, you're losing your pension, you're losing everything. And you have hungry mouths to feed,

00:43:43.780 put food on the table, so on and so forth. But, I mean, I'm reminded of this culture of fear, and that

00:43:51.700 this is a term that often came up in the context of working on the story. There's a culture of fear

00:43:56.420 in the TDSP. These teachers and principals are so afraid to speak out because they're going to get,

00:44:01.940 they fear losing their jobs. It almost, you know, it almost feels like one is living in an authoritarian

00:44:08.980 regime where there's no protection of free speech. The constitutional protection of free speech,

00:44:15.300 you know, is obviously weaker here than in the US. But how sustainable is this? I mean, how, I mean,

00:44:24.660 people want change, but they're too afraid to be part of that change. And I look to our friends,

00:44:30.420 you know, in the US, where there's a lot of pushback against all of these things that we've

00:44:36.020 been talking about, whether it comes to the gender ideology stuff, whether it comes to DEI,

00:44:42.180 for example, there are several organizations, universities that are just getting rid of DEI

00:44:46.980 altogether. Why is it that we're not seeing that kind of pushback? I mean, why do I feel like this

00:44:52.740 cowardice at every level of society here in Canada? Okay. So, I'm glad you challenged me. I,

00:45:00.340 you know, I welcome that nothing. I don't even, I don't invite anybody to agree with anything I'm

00:45:04.340 saying. I'm just saying what I think. Let's look at the most famous example of a Canadian who pushed back.

00:45:11.060 Okay. And if I said to you, Rupa, and again, nobody watching this should think you and I talked

00:45:16.580 before this, who's the famous Canadian who pushed back on some of this a few years ago?

00:45:23.300 Not a trick question. Can you name one? Can you name two?

00:45:28.820 Um, I, I, I'm thinking maybe Jordan Peterson.

00:45:32.260 There you go. Okay.

00:45:33.860 That was my question. Now name a second.

00:45:38.660 Um, I can't think of a second. Good luck to you. That's the point. That's the point I'm making.

00:45:44.420 And let's use Jordan Peterson for just a moment as part of my answer.

00:45:48.580 What did Jordan Peterson become famous and a multimillionaire many times over for actually saying?

00:45:54.900 Did he say anything crazy? Did he say anything far right?

00:45:58.660 Did he say anything about Jews, immigrants, marriage, marriage equality, abortion, um,

00:46:05.700 climate change, nothing. He said, you can't tell me what pronoun to call you.

00:46:11.220 That's all he said, Rupa. You can't force me to call you what you demand to be called.

00:46:19.540 Yeah, he's now a multimillionaire many times over. He's known the world over. He's the one person who

00:46:28.100 said something. Did it create a groundswell? No. Are there 10 Jordan Peterson's? No. You're right.

00:46:34.980 In the United States where there's a bit more of a blue state, red state thing, which is not the case

00:46:39.620 necessarily in Canada. There are different demographic setups there. I'm very well traveled

00:46:45.060 in the States, Rupa. There are places that you go and you don't think they're like Toronto.

00:46:49.060 They're very different. But when you have to rely on people in the States fighting the battle of

00:46:56.900 Canadians, when you have a newspaper reporter, I don't know, some kind of reporter just yesterday,

00:47:03.620 and a whole bunch of articles saying Pierre Polyev by talking about the World Economic Forum

00:47:09.060 is now far right. When it was Krista Freeland and Charlie Angus, one of the stupidest men on the planet, 1.00

00:47:16.260 but five years ago, Charlie Angus from the NDP, who now says you can't talk about Davos 0.99

00:47:21.940 or the World Economic Forum if you're far right, he was the one five years ago when it was du jour,

00:47:27.700 who came out and said, this globalization thing maybe isn't working for Canadians. Maybe all this

00:47:33.300 outsourcing isn't working for Canadians. Maybe a lot of this COVID policy 0.98

00:47:38.180 isn't necessarily what we needed to do. Everything has become crazy. And so when you have now Pierre

00:47:46.660 Polyev, who again, wouldn't say a word about immigration when he was asked about it, would

00:47:50.500 you reduce it by one person? Wouldn't answer it. You now have reporters doing a gotcha calling them far

00:47:57.060 right because some expert says by talking about Davos or the World Economic Forum or Krista Freeland and her

00:48:04.820 ridiculousness somehow makes you far right. What opening does that leave to the ordinary average

00:48:12.660 Canadian to say somebody's got my back? The problem in this country, Rupa, is it doesn't seem to me

00:48:20.740 that anybody has the back of the majority of Canadians who are smart, commonsensical, realistic.

00:48:30.580 I'm not talking about anything to do with anything other than common sense. No matter your race,

00:48:37.060 no matter your religion, Rupa, if I sat down tonight with 100 people, the most diverse group of people in

00:48:43.940 Canadian history, I guarantee you on 90 to 95% of issues, we would all agree if we broke bread together.

00:48:54.900 We would all agree. The problem is there is nobody who I think truly has the back of the 90 to 95% of

00:49:04.820 Canadians who I think have become forgotten in preferential treatment to the people like you

00:49:11.220 talked about the DEI trainer, grifter, fraudster, who gets to live the life of Riley, make all the money

00:49:19.460 in the world there is to make now, while somebody working on an oil rig or driving a truck, or working

00:49:26.340 two jobs, or having trouble getting daycare for their kids. Those people are there forgotten. And that

00:49:32.660 again, Rupa is why I'm very pessimistic about this country. I am not Mr. Sunshine, as much as I try and

00:49:39.380 speak with a smile on my face. Well, Ari, that's why your insights are so incredibly brilliant. And,

00:49:47.460 and, and, you know, and you're so always so insightful. And what a depressing note to end this

00:49:54.260 show on. But, but I, you know, but I, but I take your point that, you know, I, there are days when I feel

00:50:01.620 optimistic, I feel like the pendulum maybe shift swinging back a little bit. But, but most of the time,

00:50:08.580 you know, I'm just kind of really depressed about the state of state, just how things are in Canada

00:50:15.940 right now. And all I can hope is that we continue to have these conversations. And, and, and that,

00:50:23.700 you know, I know Jordan Peterson was a trail, trailblazer of sorts. But I think, I think you and I,

00:50:30.660 and many people like us out there, we're not as famous as Jordan Peterson. But I think we're doing our

00:50:35.540 bit to push the conversation in the right direction, as much as we possibly can at risk of censure,

00:50:42.820 by the way. And, and that's a risk that you and I face all the time. So it really, it really is,

00:50:48.260 Rupa, and I just leave on this note, the abuse that you take, and I see it. And again, I think you just

00:50:53.220 write about things that should be written about. I've said this to you personally, the Globe and Mail,

00:50:57.860 the Toronto Star should be writing the pieces that you write, they would have written them 15 years ago.

00:51:04.020 But now everybody seems to come out of the same journalism school, where it used to be you held

00:51:09.620 power to account. Now journalism seems to be the spokespeople for power. So I have a great admiration

00:51:18.100 for you, the Free Press, what Barry Weiss is doing, I've said that to you privately. And hopefully,

00:51:23.540 as the world changes, more and more people just hear different voices and go, they're not saying

00:51:28.980 anything crazy. They're not even saying anything controversial. They're simply what was they're

00:51:33.620 saying what was said 10 years ago, 15 years ago, until the events of me too, or Harvey Weinstein,

00:51:40.980 or post May 2020, or this or that basically made it so that people just had to ignore common sense. So

00:51:48.660 I have a great admiration for what you do. I have a great sadness for the abuse you take,

00:51:53.780 because I'm still waiting to read a column of yours where I'm like, what the heck is she talking about? 0.98

00:51:59.460 If it comes, you'll be the first to know and then I'll come in here and I'll lambaste you.

00:52:03.780 Thank you, Ari. Like you, I'm just using my brain, really. That's really it. Nothing extraordinary

00:52:09.220 here. But a real pleasure to have you back once again. And I can't wait to speak to you again.

00:52:15.860 Very good to be with you, Rupa. I really appreciate the time and I hope the people watching

00:52:21.380 us got something out of it. Yeah, I'm sure they did. Thanks, Ari. Thanks, Rupa.

Juno News - August 19, 2023

The woke takeover of Canada (Ft. Ari Goldkind)

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