Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Justin Trudeau doesn't care about the consequences of mass immigration, and Canadians are paying for it

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Today, I take you through a Bank of Canada report. Now, before you click away,

00:00:05.540 it's not as boring as it sounds. They study Trudeau's massive immigration spike and tell us

00:00:12.140 how much that's doing to raise the price of housing. This is from the government itself.

00:00:17.360 I'll take you through it and show you an amazing graph. But first, let me invite you to become a

00:00:22.480 subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. I want you to get the

00:00:26.500 video version. I want you to see this shocking graph in this Bank of Canada report about immigration

00:00:33.200 levels under Trudeau. You need to see it to believe it. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe,

00:00:40.020 eight bucks a month, and you get the video version. All right, here's today's show.

00:00:44.080 Tonight, the Bank of Canada says what we already knew. Trudeau's immigration plans are jacking up

00:01:01.660 housing prices. It's December 18th, and this is the Ezra LeVance Show.

00:01:05.360 He's ready for freedom. Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:20.680 Immigration in Canada is out of control. I've got a graph I'm going to show you that is the most 1.00

00:01:25.480 shocking thing I've ever seen on the subject, and the graph is not from some anti-immigration

00:01:30.080 think tank. I don't think there is an anti-immigration think tank in Canada. It's a graph from the

00:01:35.220 Bank of Canada in a study written by 12 authors trying to assess the impact of Justin Trudeau's

00:01:42.560 mass immigration platform on things like housing prices. It's sort of obvious, supply and demand,

00:01:49.460 if you bring in more than a million newcomers a year, and everyone's got to live somewhere, 0.96

00:01:56.580 it's obviously going to push up housing prices. It's also a reason we see shocking images like

00:02:02.480 this footage. This is not taken in LA's Skid Row. This is not some refugee camp in Europe. This

00:02:09.740 apparently is Corona, British Columbia. I've never seen such a thing before in Canada. That is U.S.

00:02:16.720 style homelessness, and I don't say U.S. style as some insult. It's just a massive fact of life. It's

00:02:22.480 the homelessness on the streets, especially in Democrat cities in the U.S. It's come to Canada now. 0.66

00:02:28.500 In many other cities, you have three, four, five families jammed into one home. That's the only way

00:02:34.460 to make it affordable, but Trudeau doesn't let up. It is true that bringing in a million people a year

00:02:40.040 or more into Canada does increase the GDP. I mean, all those people do have to live somewhere, eat 0.78

00:02:45.920 somewhere, drive something, but it's lowering our per capita GDP. In fact, I think one of the reasons

00:02:52.200 why Trudeau jacks up immigration so much, besides the obvious political reasons, is to mask the fact

00:02:58.020 that on a per capita basis, we're actually getting poorer. What I'm saying is the per capita GDP

00:03:03.260 in Canada is going down, but because Trudeau is bringing in a million newcomers a year, that

00:03:08.260 masks that effect. We are in a recession in Canada. Immigration helps Trudeau hide that.

00:03:16.160 There's obviously other consequences to mass immigration. Did you see this shocking footage 0.98

00:03:21.660 from a mall? I think this mall was in the Eaton Center in Toronto over the weekend. Here is a

00:03:28.500 foreign man, I'm judging by the accent, masked in Hamas attire, threatening to put a cop six feet 0.99

00:03:34.740 under. Did you see this video footage? Take a look. See, there's the quantity of immigration and there's

00:03:58.500 the quality. And by that, I mean, do we allow people in without any sort of values test? If you've seen

00:04:04.380 the streets across Canada this past two months, they are swelling with people who are chanting

00:04:09.840 for death to Israel, death to the Jews, depending on how careful they are about what they mean. You've 0.75

00:04:14.060 seen protests outside Jewish owned stores like Jewish restaurants in Toronto. What's that got to do

00:04:20.120 with the battle over in Israel or the Jewish bookstore? The craziest are these protests outside a store

00:04:26.840 called Zara, Z-A-R-A. Have you ever heard of that store? I bet you have, especially the women in the 1.00

00:04:33.240 audience. It's a women's fashion store. It is actually one of the largest clothing retailers in

00:04:41.340 the world. It's got nothing to do with Jews or Israel. It is a Spanish company headquartered in Spain

00:04:49.600 in Spain. The founders are good Spanish Catholics. I think maybe because Zara sounds like it could be

00:04:55.900 an Israeli name. These morons are protesting out front of it. Take a look.

00:05:00.640 Zara, Zara, shame on you. Zara, Zara, you can't hide. Zara, Zara, you can't hide. You've been close for genocide. You've been close for genocide. You are fucking genocide. You were close for genocide. You were close for genocide. 0.56

00:05:30.620 Zara, Zara, Zara,

00:05:37.460 Zara, the Jew is müssen. All of a sudden, you've been close for genocide. You were close for genocide. He's charged with 머こんにちは andatiques, which can not stand out yet. 0.75

00:05:55.880 Well, when I was in London recently, they were protesting outside McDonald's.

00:06:01.280 I really don't know what McDonald's has to do with Jews.

00:06:04.240 But again, it's really just about chaos and disruption and showing who's the boss of the streets.

00:06:10.880 This is when I was in London a few weeks ago.

00:06:25.880 I was in London a few weeks ago, and I was in London a few weeks ago.

00:06:55.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:07:25.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:07:55.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:07:57.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:07:59.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:08:03.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:08:05.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:08:13.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:08:15.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:08:17.880 Shame on you! 1.00

00:08:19.880 My point is, yes, there are some native Brits and native Canadians who were involved in those protests, but in the main, they are foreign nationals.

00:08:27.880 They are foreign nationals.

00:08:39.880 And as we learned in a global news investigative report, many of them are being orchestrated by the 700 Iranian government agents that work in Canada.

00:08:49.880 These are not natural occurring protests by Canadians.

00:08:53.880 You can tell they're not by Canadians. 0.95

00:08:55.880 These are foreign funded, foreign directed protests in support of a foreign terrorist group.

00:09:01.880 And so far they've found they can say and do literally anything in Canada, including telling police they'll be six feet under, and the police, well, they don't do a thing.

00:09:11.880 I tell you, if Adam Skelly from Adamson's BBQ simply had a keffiyeh on instead of a ball cap, the police would have never sent 100 cops and riot horses to shut down his restaurant.

00:09:23.880 I don't remember that.

00:09:53.880 Yeah, what do you think would have happened to the trucker convoy if they would have told the cop they'd be six feet under?

00:10:07.880 They would have been arrested and probably shot.

00:10:10.880 But this pro-Hamas terrorist supporter, ah, the cops are his escort.

00:10:14.880 Anyhow, those are some of the qualitative aspects of unbridled, unlimited, unqualified immigration. 0.88

00:10:19.880 But what about the quantifiable aspect? By that I mean when you add a million plus people to the country every year, what does that do to the ability of anyone, including those newcomers, to find a house?

00:10:30.880 Well, I have in my hand here a study done by the Bank of Canada and released just about a week ago.

00:10:35.880 The study is called Assessing the Effects of Higher Immigration on the Canadian Economy and Inflation.

00:10:43.880 That's a good subject for a study.

00:10:46.880 And you can see there were not one, not two, but 12 different economists and other experts who co-authored this study.

00:10:53.880 I'm going to walk you through it now.

00:10:54.880 I'm not going to go through all of it, don't worry.

00:10:56.880 Some of it's sort of dry and some of it is on other subjects.

00:10:59.880 But let me read to you from the introduction.

00:11:02.880 The rise in immigration is nonetheless contributing to pressures in inflation components linked to house prices, given that it is adding more to housing demand than to housing supply in the context of structural imbalances in the Canadian housing market.

00:11:20.880 Let me translate for you. Bringing a million people a year into Canada makes it more competition for houses and, of course, supply and demand.

00:11:27.880 If you can't add a million people worth of houses a year, those who are on the ground are going to bid up houses.

00:11:34.880 And now Canada is one of the most high real estate bubbles in the world.

00:11:39.880 It reminds me of Pierre Polyev's 15-minute infomercial the other day.

00:11:43.880 The one that had millions of views.

00:11:45.880 It's true.

00:11:46.880 And you can just contrast houses on either side of the Canada-US border.

00:11:51.880 And, for example, Niagara Falls.

00:11:53.880 Remember this clip from Pierre Polyev's video?

00:11:55.880 Eight years ago, payments on an average single detached home cost roughly 40% of median family income.

00:12:04.880 Now that number is 66%, meaning that paychecks have not caught up with the cost of housing.

00:12:11.880 And we can't blame the rest of the world.

00:12:13.880 Canada's housing costs have risen faster and higher than almost any other country on earth.

00:12:19.880 Depending on how and when you measure it, Canada's housing costs are on average 45% to 75% higher than in the United States.

00:12:28.880 In border towns, it's even more.

00:12:30.880 Homes on the Canadian side are often 100% more expensive than their American counterparts.

00:12:35.880 Look at this home in Niagara, Canada versus this home in Niagara, New York.

00:12:40.880 Only about a half an hour apart from one another.

00:12:43.880 What's the difference between New York's Niagara Falls and Ontario's Niagara Falls?

00:12:48.880 Well, one of them has a million people a year coming to it.

00:12:51.880 I think the most interesting thing in this entire study is the graph on page two of the study.

00:12:57.880 Just take a look at that.

00:12:59.880 You can see that immigration fell during the lockdowns.

00:13:04.880 But look at that staggering cliff that has come up afterwards.

00:13:11.880 Rising immigration and shifting composition. 0.79

00:13:13.880 The chart is called Newcomers Drive Canada's Population Growth.

00:13:18.880 1.2 million people last year.

00:13:23.880 1.2 million.

00:13:25.880 Not a quarter million.

00:13:26.880 Not 300,000 as is typically being 1.2 million.

00:13:31.880 And you can see from the red that stands for NPR stands for non-permanent residents.

00:13:38.880 So in one year alone, about 700,000 non-permanent residents came to Canada on top of about 450,000 permanent residents.

00:13:51.880 Births less deaths.

00:13:53.880 You can see the net birth rate in Canada has plunged, approaching zero.

00:14:00.880 But of course, if the pandemic didn't get you, taxes and the inability to buy a house will.

00:14:07.880 Trudeau has made it impossible to form a family and start a life.

00:14:11.880 How can you do that if you don't have the money to buy your own house and you live in your parents' place until you're 40?

00:14:16.880 So natural births in Canada have plunged under Trudeau.

00:14:20.880 It used to be over 100,000 a year.

00:14:23.880 Now it's approaching zero.

00:14:24.880 But don't you worry.

00:14:26.880 He will bring in 1.2 million foreign people in a year.

00:14:31.880 Let me quote.

00:14:32.880 Newcomers have driven most of the increase with the largest rise among non-permanent residents, NPRs, who now represent about 60% of immigration into Canada.

00:14:41.880 This group reflects a mix of students, low and high skilled temporary workers, and asylum seekers. 1.00

00:14:48.880 And increases have been large across all NPR categories.

00:14:53.880 And then they break it down on page three.

00:14:55.880 And I'm going to go through this because it's just so astonishing, these numbers.

00:14:59.880 And I ask you, is there a single MP in all parliament or senator who's even talking about this?

00:15:06.880 By the way, Pierre Polyev does not.

00:15:08.880 So you can see there on page three now, chart two.

00:15:12.880 It's called increased newcomer inflows are driven by non-permanent residents.

00:15:17.880 And you can see the blue is 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

00:15:22.880 And then the red is 2022.

00:15:23.880 I'm sure it was even higher last year.

00:15:25.880 So non-permanent residents, that's the red line, that's about 1.4 million.

00:15:32.880 That's what that graph says, which is almost double what it was the year before.

00:15:38.880 Permanent residents are still up over 400,000.

00:15:41.880 That is, I don't even know how that, I mean, and if you add both of those numbers together,

00:15:46.880 you're coming close to 2 million.

00:15:48.880 I don't even understand how this chart can make sense.

00:15:51.880 2 million.

00:15:52.880 You can see the work permits, 600,000 work permits, almost 600,000 study permits.

00:16:01.880 So you've got 600,000 foreign nationals coming to Canada to study in our universities.

00:16:08.880 If you're a Canadian who has paid taxes your whole life expecting that your kids will go

00:16:13.880 to University of British Columbia or University of Alberta or McGill or Queens or Western or

00:16:18.880 Dalhousie or university, any university.

00:16:20.880 If you have saved up and you got your kids to get good marks, guess what?

00:16:25.880 600,000 foreign nationals are competing to do the same thing.

00:16:31.880 Drive up tuition, drive up the cost of housing on campus and drive up the requirements to get

00:16:37.880 into school.

00:16:38.880 You built these universities through your taxes.

00:16:40.880 You paid into these universities for 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

00:16:45.880 Now your child or grandchild is going to university.

00:16:47.880 Tough luck.

00:16:48.880 There are 600,000 foreign nationals ahead of them in line.

00:16:52.880 How does that make any sense?

00:16:54.880 Study permits, almost 600,000.

00:16:57.880 And then you can see permanent residents.

00:17:00.880 There's economic permanent residents and non-economic permanent residents.

00:17:04.880 There's almost 200,000 people coming here who have no, add nothing to the economy, but they're 1.00

00:17:10.880 just here.

00:17:11.880 They're just in line also.

00:17:12.880 These are staggering numbers.

00:17:14.880 You can see the asylum seekers. 0.51

00:17:19.880 If you look down on the second chart there, you see NPR other, that's non-permanent residents,

00:17:25.880 other.

00:17:26.880 So there's about 100,000 asylum seekers this year.

00:17:31.880 That's up from 100,000 asylum seekers.

00:17:35.880 How are they getting here?

00:17:37.880 Well, about 50,000 a year or whatever the number is of not quite that many a year crossed

00:17:42.880 over from the United States.

00:17:44.880 So by definition, you're not, you know, they're not real refugees. 0.65

00:17:47.880 If you've come here from another safe country, by the UN definition of a refugee, you are 0.99

00:17:51.880 not a refugee.

00:17:52.880 You have an obligation to make your refugee claim in the first place you get to.

00:17:56.880 And if you're coming from Syria or Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever you're coming from, odds

00:18:02.880 are you didn't fly from Damascus to Toronto.

00:18:05.880 And I know that because there is no flight from Damascus to Toronto.

00:18:08.880 You went somewhere else first, but you came on to Canada because you knew we were suckers.

00:18:13.880 And you can see there's an incredible statistic there.

00:18:17.880 It's C-U-A-E-T, which stands for the Canada Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel.

00:18:24.880 So there are almost 200,000 Ukrainians who have come to Canada in 2022 alone.

00:18:32.880 I don't know how many of them are military-aged men who chose not to fight in Ukraine.

00:18:37.880 And by the way, I don't blame them.

00:18:38.880 I mean, it's been a terrible meat grinder, a terrible war there. 0.97

00:18:41.880 Hundreds of thousands dead.

00:18:42.880 Millions of Ukrainians have fled.

00:18:44.880 And by the way, I don't doubt that of all the migrants to Canada, they're in some ways 0.96

00:18:49.880 the most assimilated.

00:18:50.880 But still, when you add almost 200,000 Ukrainians to the other number, that's how you get to 1.4 million people.

00:19:02.880 That's why housing is so expensive.

00:19:04.880 And I have seen with my own eyes homeless people from Ukraine in the streets of Canada.

00:19:10.880 I suppose that's better than being killed by Russia. 0.92

00:19:13.880 But I'm not sure if Trudeau is keeping his promises even to these foreign nationals. 0.99

00:19:19.880 If you look underneath that, there's a chart called Economic PR.

00:19:22.880 That's Economic Permanent Residence.

00:19:25.880 The high-skilled number, about 80,000.

00:19:29.880 And you'll notice that number really hasn't grown over 2019.

00:19:33.880 About 80,000 people are highly skilled.

00:19:37.880 You know, a very small number have Canadian experience.

00:19:40.880 What I'm saying to you is if Trudeau says these are doctors and accountants and scientists,

00:19:46.880 yeah, no, no, they're not.

00:19:48.880 Far less than 10% of the people Trudeau is bringing in are highly skilled.

00:19:53.880 The rest of them are here to take houses, though.

00:19:56.880 They all need houses.

00:19:58.880 I'm going to move ahead to page 10 now when it talks about the economic impact on housing.

00:20:04.880 Because I wanted to show you that that chart is the most astonishing chart I have seen.

00:20:09.880 And if I published a daily newspaper, that chart would be on the front page.

00:20:13.880 That is the reason you cannot get into an emergency room in a hospital,

00:20:19.880 get into a university, get through the traffic.

00:20:23.880 You bring 1.4 million people into Canada in one year.

00:20:27.880 Of course, that's going to be the fallout.

00:20:29.880 And, of course, you're going to have so many thousands of pro-Hamas chanters in the street 0.76

00:20:34.880 because you're indiscriminately bringing people to Canada who don't have the skills,

00:20:38.880 other than skills of agitating.

00:20:41.880 I'm going to read from page 10 here on housing.

00:20:44.880 A rise in immigration to Canada may contribute more to housing imbalances than found in studies of other countries.

00:20:50.880 This is because Canada already has imbalances between its housing supply and demand

00:20:55.880 and because relatively few newcomers joined the construction industry.

00:20:58.880 In other words, we already were short of housing.

00:21:01.880 And then in the face of that, Trudeau decided to bring 1.4 million newcomers in.

00:21:05.880 So it's worse than any other country that these scientists can find.

00:21:09.880 And, of course, we know that's true because of the comparison on both sides of Niagara Falls.

00:21:14.880 Let me read a little bit more from page 11.

00:21:17.880 The imbalance between housing demand and supply has risen steeply.

00:21:22.880 Well, that's why the prices have shot up. That's why no one can afford it.

00:21:26.880 In the five years preceding the pandemic outbreak, net new household formation,

00:21:31.880 also known as demographic demand, modestly outpaced the construction of new homes.

00:21:36.880 That means a husband and wife getting married and move out on their own.

00:21:40.880 That's what they mean by demographic demand.

00:21:41.880 You make a household. You need a place to live now because you're not living with your parents or your roommates.

00:21:46.880 However, over the past year, the gap between demand and supply surged.

00:21:52.880 Altogether, Canada would need just over 200,000 additional homes to close the gap between housing demand and supply that has grown since 2015.

00:22:03.880 This is equivalent to around 10 months of housing starts compared with two and a half months in 2019.

00:22:09.880 But that's just to take care of the newcomers. 0.98

00:22:14.880 But Trudeau's planning to do this again next year.

00:22:16.880 He's planning to do again the next year.

00:22:18.880 And Pierre Polyev still hasn't spoken out about it, has he?

00:22:22.880 And, of course, these people are not working in construction.

00:22:25.880 We're not bringing home builders.

00:22:26.880 We're bringing non-permanent residents, many of them low-skilled.

00:22:29.880 We're bringing Tim Hortons workers.

00:22:31.880 But even they need a place to live.

00:22:33.880 I want to show you chart number seven on page 12 because that talks about this demographic demand.

00:22:39.880 Again, demographic demand is just a fancy economist way of saying a man and a woman get together and they want their own household now.

00:22:45.880 That's that orange line.

00:22:47.880 You can see demographic demand fell during the lockdowns.

00:22:50.880 Families were not being formed.

00:22:52.880 We will not know for years the demographic and health and social devastation caused by the lockdowns.

00:22:59.880 I already showed you how natural birth in this country is approaching zero.

00:23:03.880 And I blame in part the lockdowns for that.

00:23:06.880 You can see demographic demand for new housing in 2021 was extremely low.

00:23:13.880 But then Trudeau decided to open up our borders to anyone who wants to come, including to Hamas supporters. 0.99

00:23:18.880 And it has almost quadrupled the demographic demand that is people starting households since the death of the pandemic.

00:23:28.880 During the pandemic, it was less than 150,000 new homes.

00:23:31.880 Now it's 550,000.

00:23:33.880 Let me read the note from The Economist.

00:23:36.880 Some of these pressures are evident in the inflation data.

00:23:39.880 You don't say, eh?

00:23:41.880 The decline in house prices in the current monetary policy tightening cycle has been less than what have been expected based on previous episodes.

00:23:50.880 And shelter inflation is expected to contribute meaningfully to inflation over 2024 and 2025.

00:23:57.880 Let me explain what that means.

00:23:59.880 The Bank of Canada is trying to cool off the housing market by raising interest rates.

00:24:06.880 They're trying to make people less likely to buy a house to reduce the prices of that by making it so expensive to get a mortgage.

00:24:14.880 But because there's so, so many people who need houses that even jacking up interest rates is not stopping the demand.

00:24:22.880 How could it?

00:24:23.880 You dumped 1.4 million people into the country. 1.00

00:24:25.880 They need a place to live.

00:24:27.880 So they're just paying more and more interest rates.

00:24:29.880 That's why inflation is going to continue for the next two years.

00:24:33.880 I just quoted the Bank of Canada.

00:24:38.880 Let me close by citing page 14 underneath the heading implications for inflation.

00:24:44.880 If you're wondering where inflation comes from, it's coming from a lot of places.

00:24:47.880 It's coming from the fact that Trudeau has just printed hundreds of billions of dollars, which has devalued your money.

00:24:54.880 So it's almost like adding counterfeit money to the pool.

00:24:57.880 So your real money has less purchasing power because there's all these fake Trudeau bucks circulating.

00:25:02.880 So you need more money to buy the things you used to have.

00:25:05.880 He's also raising carbon taxes on everything.

00:25:07.880 So everything is more expensive, especially food.

00:25:10.880 But housing is a significant part of inflation because it's one of the most expensive things we buy, whether it's a mortgage or a rent payment.

00:25:18.880 Let me close by citing page 14 of this study.

00:25:22.880 A more significant inflationary risk appears when it comes to housing, given chronic labor shortages in the construction sector, low levels of employment by newcomers in construction and increased housing demand by newcomers relative to supply.

00:25:38.880 If this imbalance continues to add to the existing structural challenges facing housing construction in Canada, then housing related components of the consumer price index could see additional upside pressure.

00:25:51.880 In other words, the price of houses are going to still go up.

00:25:56.880 They say there's a lack of people in construction.

00:25:58.880 I believe it.

00:25:59.880 But there simply couldn't be enough people to build houses for a million plus people a year.

00:26:06.880 And yet Trudeau insists on doing that.

00:26:08.880 I watched Pierre Polyev's 15 minute infomercial, and he had a few good points and he talked about printing money and he talked about inflation and things and he was exactly right.

00:26:20.880 But if you are not willing to talk about immigration and the vast numbers of people who are coming into this country, you will never solve the housing pricing issue.

00:26:29.880 You will cause damage to our health and education systems, to traffic, to crime, to homelessness.

00:26:35.880 And as we've seen in the streets of this country, to cultural fit.

00:26:39.880 Until someone in this country has the courage to talk about immigration reform, these problems simply won't go away.

00:26:46.880 If you look at the solution that Pierre Polyev proposed in his 15 minute video, one of his solutions was to build basically high density apartment complexes.

00:26:55.880 That's not the Canadian dream.

00:26:57.880 I want to live in a condo.

00:26:58.880 That's where you move when you're young and single, maybe where you go if you're one of these non-permanent residents coming to Canada, 600,000 coming to be students.

00:27:07.880 But the Canadian dream, like the American dream, is to have a house with a backyard and to have a little bit of space, a space to call your own.

00:27:15.880 That will never happen if we keep bringing in a million plus people when just a few years ago a quarter million was considered an extraordinary number.

00:27:25.880 Until the Conservative Party of Canada has the courage to tackle this, the problem will not go away.

00:27:32.880 Stay with us. More ahead.

00:27:44.880 Well, some of the largest protests since the October 7th terrorist attack in Israel have been, not surprisingly, in the largest cities in Toronto and Montreal.

00:27:54.880 In fact, there have been some cases of violence in those cities.

00:27:57.880 We saw, for example, Molotov cocktails and gunfire in Montreal.

00:28:01.880 Calgary is a smaller city, but they have had fairly intense protests every weekend.

00:28:07.880 I would call them dueling protests on one side of McLeod Trail in that city are the pro-Palestinian protesters.

00:28:15.880 On the other side, the pro-Israel protesters and the police in the middle trying to separate them most of the time.

00:28:21.880 There have been some arrests.

00:28:23.880 Well, we've done our best to provide on-the-scene journalism.

00:28:27.880 And this weekend, one of our web writers, Alex Dhaliwal, was there doing some video journalism.

00:28:35.880 What a pleasure to have him report from Calgary today.

00:28:38.880 And Alex joins me now. Alex, great to see you again.

00:28:40.880 Thanks for going out over the weekend.

00:28:42.880 Yeah, thank you for having me on your show, Mr.

00:28:45.880 Oh, it's my pleasure.

00:28:46.880 Now, you brought a few video clips with you.

00:28:49.880 I know Calgary pretty well.

00:28:51.880 I was born and raised there, but I haven't been there lately.

00:28:53.880 And I have not seen these dueling protests.

00:28:56.880 Is that how you would describe them?

00:28:58.880 On one side, right outside the city hall is the pro-Palestinian protesters.

00:29:03.880 And then across the street in Olympic Plaza are the pro-Israel protesters.

00:29:07.880 Is that sort of the scenario every weekend?

00:29:11.880 Exactly.

00:29:12.880 So typically since the October 7 massacre by Hamas terrorists in Israel, we've seen anti-Israel

00:29:21.880 protesters on one side, and we've seen Jewish supporters of the Jewish state on the other.

00:29:28.880 But on Sunday in downtown Calgary, it was just a protest involving anti-Israeli, I guess I would

00:29:37.880 say anti-Israeli protesters, and some could make the case that they're agitators as well,

00:29:44.880 where they were commenting on the fact that they want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end

00:29:51.880 any and all support for what they refer to as the Israeli occupation.

00:29:57.880 And, you know, they're basically saying that Canadian tax dollars should not be aiding and

00:30:04.880 abetting the Jewish state of Israel yet.

00:30:08.880 They, the anti-Israeli supporters, refuse to acknowledge any of the overwhelming concerns

00:30:16.880 that a lot of Jewish Canadians and a lot of Jews across the world have, which is the

00:30:21.880 fact that those within the Islamic community refuse in large part to hold Hamas accountable

00:30:28.880 for the atrocities they committed two months ago.

00:30:31.880 And we saw more of them on Sunday.

00:30:33.880 Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

00:30:35.880 I know you brought with you three clips.

00:30:37.880 Let's play the first one and then we'll talk about it afterwards.

00:30:40.880 Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

00:30:41.880 Here, let's take a look at what it was like this weekend.

00:30:44.880 Now, that's a bit of a surprise to me because just last week Justin Trudeau broke with Canada's

00:31:08.880 tradition of either being pro-Israel or abstaining at the United Nations and signing onto a vote

00:31:14.880 widely seen as being lopsided towards Hamas, calling for an immediate ceasefire by Israel,

00:31:20.880 not mentioning Hamas by name and not calling Hamas a terrorist group.

00:31:24.880 Why, what's your thoughts on that?

00:31:27.880 I mean, Justin Trudeau just went further down that road, the pro-Hamas road, than he ever has before.

00:31:32.880 First of all, I understand how so many people across this country are grieving, are angry, are worried about this unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

00:31:48.880 That is why, as a government, we're continuing to call for immediate humanitarian pauses,

00:31:54.880 to be able to flow in aid, to get people out to safety, to start doing everything we can to protect civilian life.

00:32:03.880 These are things that we're continuing for and that's why we're also working with our international partners towards an urgent ceasefire.

00:32:10.880 We know that is important, but that ceasefire can't be one-sided.

00:32:16.880 Do these protesters think they can get more from him? Are they just going to protest no matter what?

00:32:21.880 I mean, I would be thinking seriously, they would be thanking him. What do you make of that?

00:32:27.880 You know, the reality is this, that I don't think, or large part, I don't think that the protesters know exactly what it is that they are truly espousing,

00:32:41.880 which is when they say, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, what they're essentially saying here is that they reject entirely any attempts at Jewish self-determination.

00:32:52.880 And, you know, as a Muslim, a Canadian myself, I recognize the importance to encourage all groups, whether it's on the basis of civic unity or on the basis of ethnicity, religion, to form their own state as they so wish to.

00:33:09.880 But the unfortunate reality is that they want to engage in free speech and chant and support whatever cause they want to,

00:33:19.880 yet they are not hell-bent on or they do not actually want to go through the rigors of seeking a compromise, which is important in democracy.

00:33:29.880 What they want is they want to get their way, and they will, in some cases we've seen in the past couple months, where they will actually utter threats of violence.

00:33:39.880 And in some cases what we've seen in the schools in Toronto and in the greater Toronto area is where there are viable threats that are issued towards Jewish Canadians as well.

00:33:51.880 And so it's rather unfortunate that rather than trying to seek justice for any innocent non-combatants that are killed in the crossfire, what they want is to completely ignore the fact of what led us to these events.

00:34:08.880 Israel didn't just start dropping bombs just because of their so-called hatred for Palestinians.

00:34:16.880 In fact, that's not the case at all.

00:34:17.880 What they want is to seek justice against the Hamas terrorists, not militants, harassed, Hamas terrorists for slaughtering, raping, and killing over 1,200 Israeli citizens, Jews, and other foreign nationals.

00:34:33.880 And I haven't heard from many within the community their direct opposition to the events that led up to the military campaign in Gaza.

00:34:44.880 It's as if they want to completely disregard the facts on the ground, and they just want to push a narrative that suits their cause, which in my opinion is just to pursue a very radicalized form of Islam that we are seeing in real time. 0.74

00:35:02.880 in real time across Europe and in parts of Canada and the US really wrecking havoc with the cult of the unity amongst different groups here in the West.

00:35:09.880 the cult of the unity amongst different groups here in the West.

00:35:12.880 the cult of the unity amongst different groups here in the West.

00:35:16.880 So thank you Hamas, thank you Iran, that's pretty brazen. 1.00

00:35:41.880 Let me ask you this.

00:35:44.880 What was the reaction from, I guess, nonpartisan or uninvolved Calgarians?

00:35:50.880 I mean, that's right downtown, and I'm guessing there was some normal pedestrian traffic, not the pro and the con sides.

00:35:57.880 How is this being received?

00:35:59.880 Because I know that this has been going on for a couple of months now, these protests.

00:36:03.880 Are Calgarians engrossed by this?

00:36:06.880 Are the crowds dwindling as it gets colder?

00:36:09.880 What's the reaction from the city at large?

00:36:11.880 You know, I think in particular, ever since Calgary's mayor, Jody Gonda, made the cowardly decision not to attend a Jewish celebration of Hanukkah recently.

00:36:26.880 What we've seen is that some of the local politicians are trying to, you know, court votes on, trying to maintain support on both sides without trying to lose any support from what we can unequivocally refer to as the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas supporters.

00:36:51.880 And so since then, what we've seen in Calgary is several dueling protests.

00:36:58.880 But I think as the weather gets colder, you're going to start to see lesser turnout, which is, of course, typical.

00:37:06.880 But what I saw on the ground was that, and this is perhaps most concerning, is that most people yesterday did not seem unbothered by some of the rhetoric that was being spewed.

00:37:20.880 Other, maybe perhaps because they were just going about their day and busy.

00:37:25.880 But the fact that there's not a larger, I guess, reaction to, there's a negative reaction to the rhetoric that's being pushed is concerning.

00:37:35.880 Because you would expect to see this in a more destabilized, quasi-democratic state or a theocracy rather than a liberal democracy such as Canada.

00:37:46.880 And so the concern is there.

00:37:48.880 The concern is there, and I think as we start to see more clips and more reaction from the anti-Israeli protesters, where they become more unhinged and where they issue death threats, which they did not in on Sunday.

00:38:03.880 But when we start to see them become more emboldened in their aggression, I think we'll start to see more Canadians speak out against this, which I hope is the case moving forward, because it does not seem that the protesters are going to quiet down in any way.

00:38:21.880 Alex, great to catch up with you. Thanks very much for going out there and thanks for your comments.

00:38:25.880 You're part of our Rebel team. We have people from every background at Rebel News, and I appreciate your comments.

00:38:31.880 And I know you're a proud Muslim Canadian, and I thank you for your journalism with Rebel News.

00:38:36.880 Thank you.

00:38:37.880 Thank you.

00:38:38.880 Okay. There you have it. Alex Dhaliwal from Calgary. Stay with us. Your letters to me next.

00:38:44.880 Well, that's our Alex Dhaliwal, who's one of our team of 45 rebels across the country.

00:38:58.880 And as he mentioned, he's a Muslim Canadian who does not believe in the extremism he sees at these pro-Hamas rallies.

00:39:05.880 Nice to have him on the team. And it's tough because, of course, I would imagine it's tough because there is peer pressure from these bullies on the streets.

00:39:15.880 They go after Adam Sose. They go after Drea Humphrey. They go after David Menzies.

00:39:20.880 And, indeed, they go after Alex Dhaliwal as well because we tell the other side of the story.

00:39:25.880 Well, that's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.

00:39:32.880 And keep fighting for freedom.

00:39:34.880 Thank you.

00:39:35.880 Thank you.

00:39:36.880 Thank you.

00:39:37.880 Thank you.

00:39:39.880 Thank you.

00:39:43.880 Mm-hmm.

00:39:45.880 Amen.

Rebel News Podcast - December 19, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Justin Trudeau doesn't care about the consequences of mass immigration, and Canadians are paying for it

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