00:01:08.000So apologies for the wind and so on but we were just standing right there at the former festival where terrible, terrible things happened.
00:01:16.000And just beyond where we were standing were little monuments to each of the young people who were murdered there that day.
00:01:26.000And just with their pictures and their names sometimes they're maintained by families.
00:01:32.000But a very powerful place, holy place.
00:01:35.000So I've got him, I've got Tasha Carradine and Carl Belanger talking about the Middle East, talking about the toxic drug crisis, talking about all kinds of stuff.
00:02:40.000One thing that I wanted to talk about, still Israel's on my mind these days and the challenges faced by the Jewish community,
00:02:52.000is something I observed when I was leaving the place a week ago from up in the air, you know, if it's a clear day.
00:03:00.000Because when you, you can see Israel from the air as you leave, as I did, and you can see what some of the problem is.
00:03:07.000It's like Israel is this tiny sliver of a country occupying a former strip of desert and rock between the Jordan River to the east and the Mediterranean Sea to the west.
00:03:19.000And when clueless university students masked up, you know, like the Ku Klux Klan liked to mask up, when they would chant about imposing a Palestine between the river to the sea, they're referring to the Jordan and the Mediterranean, even if they don't know it.
00:03:33.400And based upon the ample YouTube evidence, they don't.
00:03:38.400From up in the air, it's clear that what the students want is wiping away the Jewish state and the Jews, like so much dust on a tablecloth,
00:03:50.400and handing it all over to a death cult that professes to be Islamic, but is really just satanic.
00:03:57.400And up in the air, you can see something else. Israel is green, and the surrounding Arab states mostly are not.
00:04:07.400After 1948, Israel's farmers, you know, who for centuries had been denied the right to own and work the land by Europeans,
00:04:16.400labored to transform the desert into something green and bountiful.
00:04:21.400So green, you can see the clear outlines of it from thousands of feet in the air.
00:04:26.400And it's probably no coincidence then that the group that Hamas specifically targeted on October 7th, with rape, with kidnappings, with torture, with mass murder,
00:04:37.400were those same Israeli farmers who did what Hamas and its cabal could never do, which is create life, not more death.
00:04:47.400Another thing you see from up in the clouds, no mountain ranges or bodies of water separate Israel and Gaza.
00:04:54.400They sit side by side. Uneasy neighbors, to say the least.
00:04:59.400And individual Israelis and Gazans could literally see each other by looking out the back door. Literally.
00:05:06.400There are no natural barriers between them. Just these flimsy ones the Israelis erected themselves.
00:05:12.400Which most of the time are just some chain link fence, topped with some barbed wire. Maybe.
00:07:48.400And down on the ground, too, there's a political reality, not so much a geographic one.
00:07:53.400If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raises Rafa to the ground, he will have the blood of countless innocents on his hands.
00:07:59.400And he will further enrage President Joe Biden, who does not need more bloodshed in this presidential election year.
00:08:08.400And Israel cannot survive militarily without the United States. Just can't.
00:08:14.400If the IDF doesn't move into Rafa, as they did, like, Hamas' leaders and remaining battalions will get away and take the surviving hostages with them.
00:08:25.400And there'll be another October 7th, guaranteed.
00:08:28.400And Netanyahu's far-right government partners will abandon him, also guaranteed.
00:08:32.400So that's the view from way up above Israel and Gaza.
00:12:39.920I hope everybody has some sunshine where they're at right now.
00:12:42.640Kind of looking at this issue of decriminalization, it's kind of been kicked around a couple different levels of government here, reaching the federal government in many ways here.
00:12:51.640It seems like nobody really wants to touch this.
00:12:55.140But I guess, Warren, I'll start with you on this.
00:12:57.160Is the federal government going to avoid this issue until after the next election?
00:13:00.680This seems like something that it would be traditionally on board for based on its past, you know, nine years of governance here.
00:13:07.960Do you think they're just going to avoid this altogether?
00:13:24.400I spent a lot of time talking to addicted people in Belleville in the past few weeks.
00:13:30.040And the problem is this, like it's, you know, obviously there's lots of things in the mix.
00:13:34.140Lack of housing, lack of treatment, lack of resources.
00:13:38.740That's, you know, the same for everywhere.
00:13:40.740But the big problem is that the drugs are changing.
00:13:44.880You know, it's not just opiates anymore for which there is treatment and for which, you know, the addicted can help themselves or their friends can help them.
00:13:53.680So, it's, they're introducing, the bad people are introducing new elements to these drugs like GHB and Trank.
00:14:00.320Trank's the stuff that makes your, your extremities actually fall apart and fall off your body.
00:14:09.800So, decriminalizing that would have been just madness because we would have had even more opiate, more deaths than we've got at the moment.
00:14:21.120And that's something that we need to address at the level of policing and governance because just decriminalizing is going to mean more people die.
00:14:30.540And just a follow-up, Warren, just from a Toronto perspective, has this been, you know, a big notion of concern for some time there?
00:14:36.840In Ottawa, we've kind of escaped this discussion for the most part.
00:14:42.020The departing head of public health in Toronto, who I think did an arguably good job during COVID, became a very strong and loud advocate for decriminalization over the strong and loud objections of the Ford government and now the federal government.
00:15:00.540Like, as soon as the NDP in British Columbia withdrew from this program that they themselves initiated because it was making things worse, like, that was the end of decriminalization, in my opinion, in this country.
00:15:14.480When you don't even have the NDP on side in British Columbia, then, you know, it's over.
00:15:19.180But we can't just think that it's going to go away.
00:15:23.600The problem, as I say, is getting worse.
00:15:25.340Yeah, and the NDP in BC backing away, like you say, from their own kind of program, but they are getting hammered on this politically.
00:15:32.520I think, Carl, is any, you know, level of government watching the BC NDP politically and saying, you know, we don't want to be like that.
00:15:41.160Let's stay as far away from this as possible.
00:15:42.820Well, I mean, in a way, yes, absolutely.
00:15:48.620But I think also people are looking at other examples around the world, and I'm thinking of what happened in Oregon, in Portland mainly, where they took that step and things got worse.
00:16:02.700And I think Warren is right to point that out, that, you know, the drug supply has changed.
00:16:07.620And at the same time, you know, you look at other examples in Portugal where people who have personal amounts, like I think it's up to 10 days' work of use, are considered patients, not criminals.
00:16:23.440And, you know, I think there's a logic to that.
00:16:25.400But, you know, if you're going to do that, then you need to increase the capacity to treat people on one end, and on the other end, you have to increase the resources to go after the real bad guys, the people who are putting that stuff on our streets and are getting people addicted to it.
00:16:42.280And if you don't do that, decriminalizing will result in what we've seen in Portland where, you know, people have flown to the city, have gone to the city, and now it's a bit of a wasteland.
00:16:58.180The downtown is a bit of a wasteland there because there's not enough resources to back up the policy, the public policy of decriminalization.
00:17:06.180And I guess even here when we talk about criminalization, we took a step afterwards of trying to make it illegal to do drugs in public after, but it seems like it's kind of already too late on that front.
00:17:17.940Tasha, is this a political football that nobody really wants to touch right now?
00:17:22.960Well, it is, but it should be touched because it is killing people, as Warren said.
00:17:29.420You know, I've written about the Portugal model.
00:18:23.300Last month, Congress heard that China is directly subsidizing production of fentanyl precursors.
00:18:30.000We've known this for years, but no one talks about it, especially in this country.
00:18:34.160They're sending the stuff through ports, including in B.C., I will add, where they have a Belt and Road port, the only one in North America.
00:18:41.780And the stuff comes in, and it's made into fentanyl, right?
00:18:45.880And it is a direct subsidy from the Chinese government, and they do this to the producers in their own country.
00:18:52.680And there's – people call this the reverse opium war.
00:18:56.180There's a lot of history behind this issue, but the point is it's killing people here.
00:19:01.060And cutting off the supply is the most important thing the government can do now.
00:19:05.380It needs to talk about that, not just, you know, dealing with people once they're addicted.
00:19:10.640And that's where the conversation is focused.
00:19:12.500It needs to flip, and they're not flipping it.
00:19:14.920And that's where they do have to get involved, in my opinion.
00:19:17.820And we did hear recently about TD Bank getting slapped with a whole bunch of fines because it was facilitating some money laundering with Chinese fentanyl as well.
00:20:07.100And let's, just because you mentioned China, let's stick on China for a moment because we did hear from Canada's top spy this week.
00:20:12.260Talking about warning, essentially, what we have been concerned about is that the Chinese government is able to access Canadians' data through the app TikTok.
00:20:22.560Trudeau asked about this on Friday night.
00:20:24.160The prime minister says we should listen to Canada's top spy.
00:20:27.280I guess, Tasha, for sake of continuation here, just the idea of banning TikTok here.
00:20:33.520We've already seen this conversation happen south of the border with this information.
00:21:50.760Well, when the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats come together on anything, it's worth paying attention to.
00:21:57.300And, you know, a couple of weeks ago, they came together to say, if you don't change your ownership structure, TikTok, we will ban you from the United States.
00:22:07.440And, like, you know, it's really important.
00:22:10.480I think a lot of parents probably don't get it.
00:22:37.000This is the way they're receiving information.
00:22:39.280This is why we're seeing, you know, the main constituency behind all these campus encampments and, you know, the rallies and the anti-Israel and sometimes anti-Semitic stuff we're seeing.
00:22:50.540And, you know, they're receiving their information from TikTok, which is where the Hamas and Hezbollah boiler rooms are and where Iran is.
00:39:05.560Okay, so he was up early as usual, going to meet some buddies for coffee at a nearby coffee shop on Saturday morning, and then he gets the call he just told us about.
00:49:19.700It happens three times, three pumps, three sections, and they all get into the car and he drives off.
00:49:31.700And then his phone gets thousands of messages.
00:49:35.700Take a look at the date, the 7th of October.
00:49:44.700He didn't know what was going on. Why is he getting so many messages?
00:49:47.700And it turns out that the first group that he saved started sending his number to, sending it out, advertising his number as someone who's saving lives.
00:49:57.700And I already sent my children to the house, and I'm coming to the next meeting.
00:50:18.700Whether it's a game of reality or foreign to parents, it's still possible to speak,
00:50:20.700however, it's a game of healthy, Beatty.
00:50:21.700I've experienced an eating all of it and it's just a little bit empty.
00:50:22.700It's very easy to say that I have not ability to do well.
00:50:23.700The next person, he was Mitgl recruited because he was on his phone,
00:50:27.700The next person that he was going to go save because it was on his phone was a girl named Amit and he played a game of hot and cold, right?
00:50:45.200He would honk his car, Marco Polo, right? He would honk his horn and she would say far or near and then he started honking and she said,
00:50:54.400hot, hot, come out and save me. When he got out, it was already too late, she wasn't alone.
00:50:59.400There were Hamas terrorists who were kidnapping her, who were taking her hostage.
00:51:07.400Then I came to them, I saw them and then I decided to go to the Arabian.
00:51:11.400It's just an Arabian language that I'm Muslim, it's called Aburami.
00:51:15.400We need to look quickly from where we come from, from 4 hours.
00:51:19.400They were living here, they also need to look quickly, but they took me to the Arabian because I was very excited.
00:51:29.400They gave me a lot of time and they were very optimistic.
00:51:33.400He speaks Arabic, Rami speaks Arabic, he called himself Aburami.
00:51:37.400He yelled to the Hamas members that were taking her, he says, there are soldiers, he says in Arabic,
00:51:44.400there are soldiers behind us, they're about to get us, give me the girl and run for your lives.
00:51:49.400They gave him the girl, he put her in the car, saved her.
00:51:52.400And Amit was very shortly afterwards in his house.
00:51:59.400He then goes off to find Milet and Zohar, those were the next two.
00:52:11.400Also under heavy fire and they're calling him and they're saying, save us, save us.
00:54:00.400There's no options and sense from there.
00:54:02.400I knew about the battlefield and I jumped,
00:54:04.400played around, looked up and I caught him and found that he is still there.
00:54:07.400When he went out to go on his next saving outing, this time he was caught by a television, a well-known television personality, news personality.
00:54:19.820She says, you have to take me in so I can witness this, so I can film this.
00:54:27.060This time he, the next person, Ofek, he was looking for this person named Ofek.
00:54:32.840He had no point, he didn't know where to go to.
00:54:35.360It was all just a matter of feeling of where the guy could be, and sure enough he went and he found him.
00:55:05.360All of his parents were sending the messages, were sending Rami messages, saying, my son has this color eyes, has these kind of tattoos, so on and so forth.
00:55:25.240He would drive, they're outside of the Miguniyot, remember I mentioned those, right next to all the bus stops are the reinforced bomb shelters.
00:55:35.640So, so he went into these bomb shelters and there he found the kids all dead.
00:55:43.620And so he lied, he actually lied to the parents because he couldn't tell them that the kids were dead.
00:55:49.120He said, I can't possibly get in there, there's too much, too much time.
00:55:52.400This is a picture, a film, of saving Ofek.
00:55:59.920This is a picture, a film, of saving Ofek.
00:56:04.000This is a picture, a film, of saving Ofek.
00:58:30.440They turned out of the sight of Jews andでreaming toward their public気P troisks and so on
00:58:33.440And as a father, he couldn't live to see kids like this, so he covered them over, he said a prayer, and went off to go and save anybody that was alive elsewhere.
00:58:55.940It was about 5.30 to 6, and then I got the phone from the river.