EZRA LEVANT ｜ Amish fighting ArriveCAN fines give back, donate to local food bank
Episode Stats
Summary
The Amish do a little bit of good in the community by helping out a food bank. What a contrast to the way they ve been bullied by the government. The Amish are not of this world. They live in a pre-modern way. They don t drive in cars, they don t use phones or electricity. They have second hand clothing stores, they have second-hand clothing stores and they have a secondhand clothing store. They are the heart of the community, the little platoons that take care of each other. They make homemade quilts, they make jams and jams and they make quilts.
Transcript
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tonight the Amish do a little bit of good in the community by helping out a food bank what a
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contrast to the way they've been bullied by the government it's july 11th and this is the
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Ezra Levant show shame on you you censorious bug
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hi everybody i'm in hanover ontario at the salvation army if you don't know the salvation army of course
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it's a christian church but it's also a mission poverty alleviation food banks in some communities
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they have secondhand clothing stores they really are the heart of the community the little platoons
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that take care of each other and so it's not surprising that today i was with a lawyer from
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the democracy fund mark joseph and the leader of the steering committee of the amish that we have
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been dealing with fighting against the abusive and sadistic fines that have been levied against the
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amish people by the government because they don't use the arrive can app you remember what the arrive
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can app was that malware spyware white elephant that trudeau commissioned from his buddies and paid 63
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million dollars for you had to download it on your phone and every time you came into canada you had
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to fill out this invasive app anyways that that's an atrocious violation of privacy at the best of times
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but for the amish community makes no sense the amish in case you don't know eschew all things modern they
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don't drive in cars they're on horse and carriage they don't use phones or electricity so telling an
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amish person crossing the border have you downloaded the arrive can app on your smartphone is so crazy and
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so stupid only a government would do it trouble is when the amish did not fill out their forms they got
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massive fines often five six thousand dollars and because they're not of this world they're
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it's almost like they are living in a pre-modern way they didn't realize that by not fighting the
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tickets they got they were in a way consenting to them and so the government not only fined them
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massive amounts of money hundreds of thousands of dollars for the community but the government when
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they were not paid they put liens on the homes and farms of the amish people so that they couldn't
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sell them bequeath them take a loan out against them in a way it was the first step to expropriating
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the property to pay these stupid fines by the way the democracy fund has helped more than a thousand
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people with these damn arrive can app fines but i have not heard of them taking a lien on anyone else's
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property what do you think of that if i'm not mistaken the democracy fund has helped 1400 people
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with arrive can app problems my math might be a little bit off but not a single one of them that
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i know of had a lien put on their property other than the government's abusive and discriminatory approach
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to the amish and i don't think that's a coincidence anyways in comes the democracy fund taking these cases but
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it's harder than it looks because these cases have hardened like concrete remember these cases were
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earned during the pandemic 2021 2022 and it's now 2025 so these are cold cases they had to be cracked
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open and then re-heard and that's painstaking and not every judge is down with it but slowly but
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surely the democracy funds lawyers are making headway so what are we doing here why are we at the
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salvation army church this has got nothing to do with the amish they are not this is not an amish
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well i'll tell you what the amish in a gesture of goodwill and a statement of solidarity with the
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non-amish community announced in court that they would be making a donation of something close to
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their heart they're not rich people they're not in they don't use modern industry so their farms are
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still run on people power and animal power like seriously animals pull the plows that's the way they live
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in the amish style but they made donations from the heart pickles jams quilts and they selected this
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salvation army food bank as the definite as the destination of their generosity could you imagine
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that a persecuted people bullied by the government responds instead with love and generosity let me show
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you what happened half an hour ago when the leader of the amish steering community showed up here
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with a car full of goodies take a look so cindy in addition to the food uh some of the amish ladies
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have made quilts and and they're beautiful homemade quilts that would be i think you could even call them
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folk art and so they're but obviously they're made for practical use and um so we have some of that and
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and mark joseph who's the senior litigator at the democracy fund so let's see what we've got there
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we're so thankful for them here at the salvation army of course we serve the greater hanover area
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and we are a non-profit organization and the demographic is uh it's not foreign to anyone
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i mean we have children we have seniors we have all age ranges couples families and uh we really
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appreciate this it'll go to very good use food bank uh use is up 50 percent in the past year
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so uh we will definitely make use of it thank you so much
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well that's it's good to hear that we have this coming and i'm sorry that the use is up so much but
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uh this will be put to good use obviously let's see what we have here different kinds of
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pickles i have uh had amish pickles before and they're they're they're they're really delicious
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i see some sauerkraut i think i want to just uh look at those quilts for a second mark can you
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bring one of the quilts so here's one of the quilts that looks like a gorgeous nice warm quilt
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that is very nice and warm and you know what um unfortunately in every community we have homeless
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the homeless population and when they come to the door for service we often offer them
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a quilt and a pillow and uh they all get to made to good use and that is something very warm
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would help someone who's uh living on the streets or living at a campsite
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well here's one with a message on it from fanny and i won't say her her name because she probably
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wants uh privacy so these are custom made homemade quilts and uh i know you'll put them to good use
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from people who need them the most we will and if we don't if we don't manage to have people need
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them in through the year we will give them out as christmas gifts at christmas time because the need
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is different at christmas time and sometimes we have people that a family that could use a quilt
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for comfort along with their christmas gifts and their hamper all right well let's carefully uh mark
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do we have more things in the car or should we carefully start to wheel this down to the entrance
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i want to make sure none of those delicious pickles falls off here maybe i'll do something useful i'll put
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the mic down and i can carry some uh you want to carry those pickles you know what uh i don't want
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to i don't want to hijack any of the pickles here i'll i'll handle down okay perfect i don't want to
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go too fast i don't want to lose any pickles so mark tell us a little bit about um the reason
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that the amish community is donating this to the food bank today sure as many of our donors probably know
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uh the amish ran in some trouble during the pandemic as they crossed the border
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uh they obviously don't have access to technology and they didn't have smartphones so they couldn't
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use the arrive can app and they were uh ticketed for allegedly failing to comply with the arrive can
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app and incurred seven thousand dollar tickets sometimes those tickets fell into arrears
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and uh sometimes those tickets were translated to liens on property and obviously that threatened
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their farms and their way of life so tdf was able to step in and managed to get those tickets reopened
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and those liens off the property for the most part we still have some appeals to do
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but in uh in a gesture to the community uh the amish decided to give back and make this donation of
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of food preserves and quilts to the salvation army as a demonstration of goodwill so if i understand it's
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sort of a plea deal to instead of paying the thousands of dollars and the liens this is a statement
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of good faith and goodwill by the amish and in return the liens are removed from their house and
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there's no fine to be paid is that correct well sort of in it wasn't a quid pro quo it was just it
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was a gesture we announced in in open court to the justice of the peace that in uh the that the
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amish would be making this uh gesture uh as a way to demonstrate to the community that they're giving
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back okay let's take the camera out of here to let them have their privacy mark thank you for
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working so hard with the amish uh we have a special thanks to the steering committee uh the amish prefer
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not to be on tv so we won't show the team and cindy of the food bank thank you for accepting these
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gifts and putting them to good use i feel really good about the fact that you're the destination for
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this good luck to you and your team okay bye thank you bye now all right let's let these folks
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have their privacy well joining me now to talk in a place that's more private i didn't want to be
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near the door of the food bank because people are coming and going and i want them to have some
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privacy some people might not want it to be known that they are in a position where they have to go to
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the food bank anyways joining me now is mark joseph senior lawyer for the democracy fund mark tell us a
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little bit about how this fits into the big legal battle because this isn't really a quid pro quo it's
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more sort of a statement of the mindset of the amish isn't it right so uh democracy fund stepped in
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to try to help the amish and we had some success in getting these tickets reopened uh we negotiated
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with the crown and most of them were stayed uh some were uh given suspended sentences for nominal so zero
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dollars but the amish still felt that they should make a gesture and give back to the community
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uh and so that translated into the donation you see today for for food preserves and the homemade
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quilts i want to tell you that i have bought these same things from the amish before pickles jams apple
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butter it's sort of amazing it's the kind of thing that you always hope you find at a farmer's market
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sometimes the stuff at a farmer's market is actually sort of processed and industrial anyways it
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sort of sneaks into the farmer's market this is the real deal so obviously if someone is in a position
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where they need food from the food bank they're having a tough time and i don't want to make light
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of that at all but whoever is coming to this food bank in the next few weeks is in for a treat some of
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the quality of the food farm to fork is the phrase that comes to mind so what a gift the amish are doing
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and you know what not everybody would respond to bitterness and cruelty with generosity i'm i'm sort
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of a tit-for-tat kind of guy but imagine the amish being pushed around for years by the government
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and their response is the opposite their response is to help the community right so one of the one of
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the uh issues we had as lawyers was to uh have our clients agree to fight this the amish are very
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non-confrontational that's stemming from the biblical beliefs so that was a bit of a chore for
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us to to let them know that this is this is something they should do they should uh fight
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these tickets we felt they were unjust we felt that we could overturn them which we did um and then the
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the gesture they made uh it was quite valuable goods i mean every time i visit them i i buy the the
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preserves myself because they're getting their excellent quality stuff and they decided to make some of
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that uh available to to the salvation army yeah i love the pickles um you know i just want to explain
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one thing and i've explained it before maybe i've alluded to it here part of the amish lifestyle is
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not to use modern things like a smartphone but they also don't want to appear on camera and they don't
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even want us to say their names and there's different strictnesses with different amish communities
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there's different denomination or or sects of amish and so it actually makes it a bit of a challenge
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to tell the story if i can't show you the people in the story if i can't interview the people in the
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story um i can't even say his name even though it's an awesome name uh the the head of the amish
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steering committee who's just around the corner um but that's just how it is we have to tell the
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story for them and in so many ways that's been the essential challenge of this project how do you
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fight for someone who's not a fighter how do you tell the story for someone who is sort of by nature
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shy how do you crowdfund for people who are not online and i think the power of the story has
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overcome that systemic challenge and it was and we were just talking to the head of the steering
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committee a moment ago and it comes down to a righteous gentile named grant lukes who was a
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friend of the amish who heard about this trouble connected them with us and he plays the go-between
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because again these guys don't have cell phones or smartphones or emails or faxes so even just the
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logistics it actually fell to a friend of the amish named gary grant sorry who knew about rebel
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and knew about democracy fund so it's it's actually you could say if you were a believer you would say
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this was sort of a miracle the way this came together because the amish would have suffered in silence
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right i mean the elders i've heard described that they they felt that they'd leave it in the hands of
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god uh and as you described it just so happens that that someone got in touch with the democracy fund
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uh grant he's been a great go-between and then we had to arrange the logistics going back and forth
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there's no phone available for the for the clients usually it's an email it's a phone call for lawyers
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but we had to drive up and drive back and arrange for so that was a challenge but you know we didn't
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complain about it we just had to overcome that uh because of course their lifestyle is you have to
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respect it you know there's a saying pray like it all depends on god work like it all depends on you
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and i think it was maybe a combination of those two things anyways uh a successful and interesting
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day uh i think it made the day of the folks here in hanover at the salvation army they were very happy
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to receive our stuff and uh now i'm back to the big city i came out here with our videographer
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mauricio and we love to tell the story and we're so grateful for the democracy fund you know there's a
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lot of civil liberties groups uh in canada i i'm i find it well i don't i won't say surprising
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because i'm not surprised by it anymore so few of them would would lift a finger for this the
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canadian civil liberties association in fact it's not just other public interest lawyers who ignore
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it but but so-called progressives um this is a shocking story it it's a looks like it's going to
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have a happy ending but because the amish are christian that's my theory it has been thrown down
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the memory hole and no one is talking about it but if you are someone who has supported the
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democracy fund or rebel news this slow turnaround to victory is yours and let me close by saying if
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you want to chip in to help the democracy fund which has obviously not been charging uh these amish
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folks you can go to a special website called help the amish.com you can make a donation there and
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you'll get a charitable tax receipt by the way so a hundred dollar gift i think works out to
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i forget the exact amount you would pay in the end but but uh it's a charitable receipt uh because
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it is a genuine charity so go to help the amish.com if not you well then who and if not now well then
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when and together we'll get justice for these folks for rebel news i'm azra levant
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well all of canada is talking about the letters sent to our country by president donald trump
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announcing 35 percent tariffs on a range of industries it's uh startling and uh mark carney
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our prime minister is happily on holidays he's been working so hard don't you know um hopefully he'll
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come back from his holidays but uh you never know he was busy talking to his european friends remember
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he has three passports so he's doing business there but uh another letter has come across a canada's
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desk it was sent to the canadian ambassador by a friend of canada who is the congressman for the
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seventh district of wisconsin's tom tiffany has written a letter with his colleague brad finstad of
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minnesota and let me just read a couple of lines from it and i'm delighted to say we have the
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congressman standing by to talk about his letter um it says we write to you today on behalf of our
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constituents who've had to deal with suffocating canadian wildfire smoke filling the air to begin
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this summer as we are entering the height of the fire season we would like to know how your government
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plans on mitigating wildfire and the smoke that makes its way south i'm going to skip ahead to what
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i think is the most important sentence of the letter while we know a key driver of this issue has been a lack
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of active forest management we've also seen things like arson as another way multiple large fire
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wildfires have ignited in canada this worrisome trend can be reversed a proper action is taken and
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it ends on a friendly note which i'm glad it does it says canada has been a friendly neighbor of the
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united states and the states we represent so given the significance of this issue we urge you to relay
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this message to your government in particular natural resources canada and the canadian forest service
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and joining me now to talk about this is tom tiffany the member of congress for the 7th district
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of wisconsin well thanks very much for taking the time to meet with us ezra it's good to join you and
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hello to all of our good friends in canada well thank you and i read the letter and at first i i i didn't
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know what to make of it because canada is sort of treading carefully these days but i i regard your letter
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as like a friendly note from a friendly neighbor just saying hey um by the way it you've got some big big
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fires and uh can you help us because we're getting covered in smoke it felt friendly but you did zero
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in on forest management can you explain a little bit of what you mean by that what we've been seeing
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i think across north america certainly we've seen it in our western states ezra where as a result of
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lack of good forest management we're seeing these massive wildfires in fact i would take you back to
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1988 i have a chart that i use in the natural resources committee that that is the dividing
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line to me that's when we here in america stop managing our force as we should and became much
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more preservationist in nature what happened we forest production went down wildfires went up and
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that's been the trend line ever since then and we really used to have really good forest management i
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think the same thing is happening in canada to a certain extent certainly maybe some unique
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circumstances like we meant like you mentioned in regards to arson and things like that have
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happened also but largely it is the um corporate environmental groups who have shut down logging
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to the harm of our economy but also to our environment and as a result we see these massive wildfires
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and we get this smoke that comes down from canada and to be fair it has happened coming from the
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western states here in the united states also and i'm as every bit as critical of them as i am of canada
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right well we have taken a great interest in some of these fires we had a very special campaign around
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the jasper wildfires uh earlier and of course we set up a special website help jasper.ca
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and it is a fact that our environmentalist uh federal government especially uh former environment
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minister stephen gilbo refused to do the natural clearing of the dead fuel and if you just leave
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it there that is a tinderbox waiting to go off you use the word preservationist i think that's sort of
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different from conservation isn't it preservation is sort of like an ideology don't touch anything
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don't allow any logging whereas conservation would be okay let's have a controlled burn or controlled
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color the trees tell me what you mean by preservationists and these corporate environmentalists
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i take it you mean groups like greenpeace give me a little bit more background yeah so um uh conservation
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and management are the two keywords that i use and um that's what we want to see happen
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preservation is simply not touching and when you don't touch those trees are going to
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go one way or another you can either harvest them they're going to go down via disease and they're
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going to burn one way or another those trees are going to come off from the forest land because they
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have a certain shelf life i mean they have a a life expectancy so if you don't manage your forest as we
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used to do effectively and much of that happened as a result of if people remember the spot at all
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fiasco out in the western united states a couple decades ago which was just purely a preservationist
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play by environmental groups who do not believe in the greatness of america they do not believe that
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we should be producing things here in america and it's an attempt to bring us down that's really what
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they're attempting to do and that's why they filed the lawsuits and that's a whole nother problem that we
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need to deal with in the congress of the united states is the frivolous lawsuits well congressman i'm not
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sure if you're familiar with stephen gilbo who was our foreign uh former environment minister who's now
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in another position in in carney's cabinet he was one of these environmental extremists in fact he was
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arrested um and and convicted of i'm not going to say eco-terrorism but of a law-breaking stunt several
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times so unfortunately those groups which you have accurately called corporate environmentalists
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they're environmentalists of fortune they're about drama and fundraising they go straight to the heart
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of our canadian government and i don't feel like i'm tattling i feel like i'm warning you
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um so let me ask you you sent the letter on july 7th to our ambassador it's been a few days since
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and have you had any response or was it just sort of a perfunctory thank you for your letter
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will pass it on have you heard anything from any officials on the canadian side we haven't heard
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uh much from the ambassador um which but i expect we will but boy have we been hearing it from some
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canadians they're like butt out why don't you people be good neighbors all the rest and i just
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including the premier of manitoba um answered us and he was quite indignant about this this is not
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a uh an instance of where i'm saying i want to criticize canada just because it's canada
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i'm equal opportunity in regards to this i am critical of how california's been doing our united
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states forest service and bureau of land management who manage millions of acres i've been every bit as
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critical of them also we need to change the paradigm what has worked what has been going on for the last
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three to four decades here in north america with this preservationist mentality is harming uh harming
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north america both its environment and its economy yeah well and that's and to be fair to the premier
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of manitoba uh you know and he's got this great line he says we'll never be your 51st state but we'll
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be your number one best friend and i sort of he's actually a uh you know an interesting fella i can i can
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understand um but i thought your letter you know it was it had concern in it but it also had friendship
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and it also had a recognition that some of these things are outside the hands of government like
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arson is a real issue but at the end of the day there is a political decision in there and it is to
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you know we just talked about it not culling the trees and so they're just there is feel and you're so
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right i i actually visited los angeles when it was still smoldering uh the pacific palisades and so
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there is horrendous uh forest and water water management too and and and frankly in uh in other
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places like even lahaina maui well um how do you hope this uh well and what are you hoping to hear
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back if uh if uh the natural resources canada or the canadian forest service writes back to you what
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what are you hoping to hear in return and and i think that they'll be diplomatic i thought your letter
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was diplomatic it was uh it got a lot of attention up here what are you hoping to get back from
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the the government itself so job number one of the letter has been accomplished as you just cited ezra
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and uh but we're looking forward to the dialogue that can happen in regards to this but this is a
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serious issue because we've had scrolls running on our local weather reports not so much the last few
00:25:58.660
days uh or last couple weeks but a month ago you saw that regularly here in these upper midwestern states
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like michigan uh minnesota and wisconsin be careful if you're going outside because there are there's
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going to be significant uh plumes of smoke that are going to be over your state or over your region
00:26:17.380
and in fact they had weather maps showing almost like where thunderstorms are they'd show where the
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clouds are and they're telling people if you have respiratory problems you need to stay home
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now if a factory was doing that ezra we would go to them and say you can't do that anymore we're
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saying to our good friends in canada you've got some of the same illness that we have in wisconsin or
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excuse me in america with the corporate environmental groups want to be preservationists start managing
00:26:45.440
your forest deal with the arsonists and others because it does have an impact on us and we want to be
00:26:51.960
good neighbors along with you all right well your message is certainly being received and i and
00:26:57.460
i appreciate the spirit of neighborliness that you're showing because i really uh i i just as
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a personal confession i have found the last six months to be a difficult time because i'm such an
00:27:08.980
admirer of the united states and we're not used to quarreling with our best friends and neighbors and
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it's my hope that we can work together constructively i agree that you raise a very important issue we've
00:27:19.940
raised it at rebel news ourselves about terrible ideological mismanagement of force and hopefully
00:27:26.420
your letter uh will yield a positive response and by the way fixing that problem the number one
00:27:32.260
beneficiaries of fixing that problem would be canadians of course so hopefully this will have a
00:27:37.300
positive outcome congressman that's certainly the intent of the letter and i look forward to working
00:27:43.300
with our good friends in canada right on well thanks for taking the time to meet with us today we've been
00:27:48.020
talking with congressman tom tiffany of the seventh district of wisconsin thanks keep up the good
00:27:54.100
work okay you too there is for more follow us at rebelnews.com