Rupa Supranania is one of my favorite columnists and investigative reporters. She's been with the National Post and True North, and now she's with Barry Weiss's The Free Press. What a pleasure to have her for the whole show today.
00:03:25.080I'm now full-time with The Free Press.
00:03:27.180And, you know, what makes The Free Press special and sets it apart from other independent news outlets in the U.S.
00:03:37.820and Canada and elsewhere is that we're not afraid to, you know, go after subjects that, you know, other people are afraid to touch.
00:03:47.200And we've done that consistently, you know, across the board, whether it relates to free speech or identity politics, wokeism, gender ideology, and so on and so forth.
00:04:01.760We've done some amazing work on all of these subjects, and, you know, and our readers see us, see that for, you know, appreciate our, appreciate what we have to offer.
00:04:16.900And we're in a very exciting place right now.
00:04:20.820We're, you know, growing really, really fast.
00:04:23.680We're picking up a lot of subscribers, and it's the talk of the town, essentially.
00:04:32.440And I'm incredibly proud to be associated with Barry and Nellie and the rest of the team and what we're trying to accomplish.
00:04:45.600I remember your coverage with the truckers.
00:04:47.140You were one of the very few journalists who actually just went on the street and just talked to truckers and asked them, who are you and why are you here?
00:04:55.400The two most simple questions, even, you know, frankly, a child could have asked those questions.
00:05:01.000But the professional journalists that made up what I call the regime media, they wouldn't even ask those very basic questions.
00:05:09.120That's sort of a rebellious thing to do, if I can use a word.
00:05:11.940But is the free press, is it a dissident publication?
00:05:18.400Or is it just, I mean, like Barry Weiss is fairly much an establishment person.
00:05:23.480I know she is the backing of some of the establishment.
00:05:26.420Would you call them contrarians and dissidents or just critics and open-minded skeptics?
00:05:31.780No, we're not contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, but we are very much concerned about the way the free press wouldn't be possible if not for the fact that the legacy media has gone the way it has, right?
00:05:51.540And so there's a real need, a real desire among the public for a media outlet that can offer the truth or, you know, at the very least, you make up your own mind.
00:06:08.140You know, we don't go around, you know, ceremonizing to our readers.
00:06:15.500We treat them as intelligent people and we lay out the facts.
00:06:20.440We tell them what the story is and then it's up to you to decide.
00:06:23.160And I think that's really the essence of journalism and that's what the free press does.
00:06:29.160But having said that, we're not afraid to take positions on certain things.
00:06:32.760Like, you know, we call out anti-Semitism, for example.
00:06:35.620We call out things that are unfair and unjust.
00:07:14.920And I think if Pierre Paglia becomes the prime minister, I don't think he'll revive that bill.
00:07:19.160But even without that bill, there are a lot of censorship apparatuses already in effect, whether it's human rights commissions and tribunals or, frankly, the media subsidy, which is another kind of corrosion of free press.
00:07:32.880I mean, you could use a carrot of censorship or a stick of subsidies.
00:08:01.320But yeah, it's going to be devastating.
00:08:05.780And I cannot even believe that we that someone would even come up with something so preposterous and draconian when already our individual liberties and our right to free expression is under, you know, is under threat and has been.
00:08:23.860And as we saw during the truckers protest, which led to the debanking of some protesters by our former finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, the point is the state of free speech in Canada is so weak.
00:08:39.440And then on top of that, we're imposing this this this this this this legislation, this proposed legislation.
00:08:46.760You know, this is the kind of stuff that you see in authoritarian tin pot dictatorships in the third world.
00:08:52.920And I never imagined my my life in the nearly 30 years that I've lived in this country that, you know, the craziness, the insanity that I left behind is now here.
00:09:04.360And it's and it's and it's and it's taking root here in a way that I never even expected.
00:09:11.100And and and and the dissent, the opposition to this, you know, is is to me, you know, you asked me about Pierre-Paul Yevour.
00:09:21.360However, I you know, he does say that Canada should be the free he wants to restore Canada to being one of the freest country in the world.
00:09:29.780I do think that Canada at one point was a very, very free country.
00:09:33.740I would say I've pointed this out several times.
00:09:37.360We were at one point even more libertarian than the U.S., but things really, really changed, especially under Trudeau senior.
00:09:46.880And and, you know, things have been going downhill since then.
00:09:49.180And then success, you know, governments in those intervening years, whether liberal or conservative, I don't think they took these issues very seriously, which is why which is why we are here in this situation in the first place.
00:10:05.280In a sense, I feel that the Canadian public has been primed to to to to have more government in their lives.
00:10:13.320You know, they I remember like 20 years ago in grad school, you know, I stood out as a you know, you know, I was seen as a heretic.
00:10:22.140I was seen as, you know, an oddball for for for for for talking about the things that we're talking about now.
00:10:29.360But the chickens have come home to roost. I do I do wish that the conservative party was a little more clear on things like censorship.
00:10:38.060You know, I I I I do wish that they would articulate that that that that more clearly, you know, so I know exactly where they stand.
00:10:47.840It's not just good enough to say I'm going to make Canada the freest country in the world.
00:11:27.160He has been robbed of the promise of Canada.
00:11:31.960It was a very simple promise that if you worked hard, you got a good life.
00:11:36.820Now, it wasn't fancy or extravagant, but you got a house with a yard where you could have kids playing safely and you could have a nice dog that you could afford to feed along with the kids and your kids could play safely in the streets.
00:12:11.680And our purpose is to bring home that promise for that young man, that young father and that older female worker so that they can once again take back control of their lives, live in a safe country where their hard work earns them a good wage, where the rent and their food is affordable.
00:12:30.520And where, when they go to bed at night, they know that they will be safe throughout their sleep and that they will have their car in their driveway in the morning.
00:12:40.080A country where people are proud again to fly the flag, where they know the government is a servant and not a master.
00:12:49.140A country where they understand that every day, the commons, this place, works for the common people, not for the ego of one man desperate to cling on to his job.
00:13:02.440We must remember that we are servants in this place.
00:13:07.020We have a job to do on behalf of the people who sent us here.
00:13:11.380Our personal dramas are not important.
00:13:13.620The dramas that should seize all of our concern and imagination are the daily dramas of the working women and men that build this country.
00:13:34.140And so, you know, I'd like a little more clarity on that, on those statements.
00:13:40.360I do hope, I do hope that Mr. Polyevra, you know, stays true to his word and, you know, won't take us down this path of, you know, to more censorship.
00:14:00.760You know, the problem with a lot of this legislation is that once it becomes law, once it becomes policy, it's very difficult to reverse it.
00:14:14.520You know, I've seen this in other places as well.
00:14:16.380Once you have something in place, it's very difficult to reverse it.
00:14:19.980So the question is, you know, you know, how do we see, how does, how do we see the next government restore our rights and freedoms?
00:14:29.980That's the, that's one of the biggest questions for me.
00:14:33.640There are all kinds of other issues that animate me as well, but I want to see, I mean, Mr. Polyevra has a lot, is going to have lots of challenges on his hand.
00:14:41.760You know, the economy for one thing, you know, our GDP growth, per capita GDP growth has stagnated, immigration is an issue.
00:14:52.080And, you know, we're basically in a state of crisis right now.
00:14:55.060And, you know, a lot of that, I think, needs to be, you know, he's got, he's got his plate full for sure.
00:15:04.640But I do think as well that we need a leader who is going to make us less socialized, less social, who's going to argue for less socialism in our lives.
00:15:17.720And that is something that is very, I'm very passionate about that.
00:15:20.660Where is Mr. Polyevra's position on, on supply management, for example, on the dairy industry?
00:15:56.000And these are issues that I, I really think we, we need, we need, we need the conservative party to tell us where they stand on this thing, on these issues.
00:16:07.180How do they plan on fixing these issues?
00:16:10.700How does the conservative party plan on fixing the problem that I and so many other Canadians don't have access to a family doctor?
00:16:20.580You know, hearing you list those things, supply and management, healthcare, those are age old problems that I think a lot of freedom oriented people just said, well, we're doomed to have those forever.
00:16:34.440It's like the mountains, they'll always be there.
00:16:36.700But when I look south of the border and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been appointed by Donald Trump to head something they call the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE.
00:16:46.620And they're talking about hacking away entire agencies.
00:17:12.940The civil service and their public sector unions.
00:17:16.080Do you think that besides tackling inflation, the deficit, immigration, the anti-Semitic crime wave, do you think he'll have enough political capital to also take on the dairy cartel?
00:17:30.900Which irritates everyone, but there's a lot of votes in Quebec for it.
00:17:35.400Do you think he'll have the power and the energy to take on health care?
00:17:39.700Because even though everyone knows our health care is broken, it still has sort of a magical aura to it.
00:17:45.520I mean, I think almost everything needs to be fixed.
00:17:48.960What do you think should be the top priority?
00:17:51.260Because what you've just described, those are very real issues.
00:17:56.120But would they make the top five things Paulyev had to do?
00:18:42.240How do we ensure that young Canadians have a shot at the Canadian dream, which is now basically, it's in the toilet right now, to be honest.
00:18:53.720And, you know, how do we fix all of those problems?
00:18:57.700So the economy, you know, his priority is going to be the economy to basically stop the bleeding, you know, as quickly as possible.
00:19:08.580But all of these other issues that I cite are very related to the fact that we are in this mess to a large extent because Canadians have, you know, I used the word primed earlier.
00:19:23.540We have come to accept, unlike our, you know, our neighbors to the south, where they're generally skeptical of the government, we have come to love government in this country.
00:19:35.400We love the government doing stuff for us, which is why, you know, criticizing the health care system or touching it or any politician touching the health care system and even proposing an alternative to what we have right now.
00:19:49.700It would be, you know, a career suicide, essentially, because we have gotten so used to having the government do everything for us.
00:20:03.860You know, it only it only survives because of large subsidies from the government and the international students who come here, who pay international student fees to subsidize the education of local Canadians.
00:20:18.900I once was an international student many, many years ago.
00:20:26.280And because that hasn't changed, given recent announcements with respect to capping immigration in Canada and, you know, and capping the number of student study permits and so on, colleges and universities are struggling because they're they're not forced to compete.
00:20:48.200Nobody in this country is forced to compete and actually jump into the deep end of the pool and take a risk.
00:20:55.800You know, we're not we're not we're not our our our our we don't think that way.
00:21:02.360We don't we don't we expect to always have the government to fall back on.
00:21:07.780And that is the fundamental there's a fundamental problem with the Canadian psyche that needs to change.
00:21:14.340And and I hope that that this current crisis, you know, gets people to think, you know, about it's not just good enough to blame Justin Trudeau.
00:21:25.640I know he deserves a lot of the blame, but much of what is happening right now, it took root a long time ago and nobody said anything.
00:21:36.020And that's that's what needs to change, because Pierre Pauliever is going to can do, you know, how much power is he really going to have to really radically bring about changes to the system, real overall all of the system?
00:22:32.760You know, you Canadians who tend to, you know, successful Canadians end up moving, leaving Canada to the U.S.
00:22:43.800You know, the other day Trump put out a very short message on social media saying any business that wants to bring a billion dollars or more to the U.S.
00:22:55.360will get expedited clearance through any regulatory approvals, including environmental.
00:23:03.000And it seemed sort of a, you know, a statement out of nowhere.
00:23:06.820Then a few days later, the president of a Japanese bank called SoftBank announces at Mar-a-Lago he's bringing a hundred billion dollars with the aim of hiring a hundred thousand people.
00:23:17.580And I just thought that would never, ever, ever happen in Canada.
00:23:21.020No one would make that kind of bet in Canada.
00:23:24.140There's no one in Canada who would go out and hustle that.
00:23:26.640The Canadian way is to take a bunch of tax dollars and invest it in a pre-existing company, typically a foreign company, like an international carmaker, and say, here's money to build a battery plant in Canada, which is a weird investment, weird meddling in the market.
00:24:10.960I mean, to be abused, to be lectured at by Trudeau or Freeland or whoever's next, why wouldn't they go to this amazing country that is lighting up, that's going to roar like a rocket?
00:24:40.380Look, the exodus of Canadians to the United States is not new.
00:24:47.060You know, that's been the case for years and years, you know, and for various reasons, of course, everything from, you know, there are better opportunities there.
00:24:58.520It's a bigger market and, you know, lower taxes and so on and so forth.
00:25:03.460But now people leaving Canada, and I've spoken to several of these individuals who've left just in the last five or six years, some before the pandemic and some after.
00:25:19.220They're tired of not being able to get by in this country.
00:25:23.440You and I can just go, like, just 100 miles south, 80 miles south, and be able to buy a home and pay lower taxes.
00:25:37.080And that's just how, you know, how stark the contrast is.
00:25:42.720And so people leaving now are young people, nurses.
00:25:47.300I've spoken to nurses who are leaving when we have a nursing shortage in this country.
00:25:51.700Why would you, you know, what we're doing right now, Ezra, is we're bringing in, like, low-skilled workers from India and other countries, but primarily from India.
00:26:06.840They're a drain, a net drain on our economy.
00:27:03.620And, you know, the United States is going to, has historically brought in the best and the brightest, including many, many Canadians.
00:27:12.660And under Trump, that's, that's really going to skyrocket.
00:27:17.180That's really going to, you know, be, be an important policy plank of his.
00:27:22.660He's going to attract the best people to, to America.
00:27:26.340And, and, you know, once again, restore America to its, to its, to, to, to, to, to its past glory, which, you know, which took a beating, you know, over the last few years.
00:27:39.480But, but I think that's what Trump intends on doing.
00:27:42.480And, and, and we should be really, really afraid.
00:27:45.240I mean, it's not just the threat of tariffs and, and, and so on.
00:27:49.680The 25% tariffs would be devastating on our economy.
00:27:53.340We should also be worried about the fact that a lot of good Canadians are planning on leaving this country and moving to the U.S.
00:28:00.000I saw a speech by Pierre Polly in Parliament the other day saying people who are well off would move if they could.
00:28:07.420When I travel across this country, I consistently meet two types of people.
00:28:12.720One, those who are a little better off and tell me that, and I'll be very blunt about this, is that if I don't win, they will leave the country.
00:28:29.100The ones who don't know, and if I can just be, use very blunt language, who tell me, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do.
00:28:37.320I have no idea how I'm going to pay my way.
00:28:41.360And I think that's, I think that's part of, Trump has been tweaking Justin Trudeau on social media about the 51st state and calling him Governor Justin Trudeau.
00:28:49.200And just recently he said we should annex Canada in the 51st state.
00:28:54.100All of that, like that's sort of silly for the leader of the free world to do, but he's a master negotiator and psychological operator.
00:29:02.640I think he's actually getting at something that a lot of Canadians look south and say things are better there.
00:29:09.320Even proud nationalist patriotic Canadians have to say, well, there would be some benefits to being in a freer, richer country.
00:29:19.100It's very interesting to see Trump play with Trudeau.
00:29:22.220You could say that Trump's original tweet about the 25% tariffs set in motion this domino effect, one thing happening after another, which led to Chrystia Freeland's ouster and the crisis.
00:29:36.220I mean, it's amazing what that man can do with tweets.
00:29:38.780But let me come back if I may to your points about immigration.
00:29:42.380I think there was, I think the so-called consensus about immigration was always exaggerated by, in the media, I think Canadians have always been opposed to high immigration.
00:29:54.220Just no politician was able to say it.
00:30:16.280And I think there's three things, and I'd love it if you responded to this.
00:30:19.660First of all, the sheer number of immigrants is so shocking to people that it's now around 2 million a year by all categories.
00:30:28.560I'm going to use the word fraud, summer fraudulent, like fake refugee claimants, but also fake students who go to these diploma mills in strip malls and say, I'm here as a student.
00:30:39.740There's a million so-called foreign students in Canada.
00:30:42.380There are not a million Canadian students in Canada.
00:30:44.740And finally, there's the cultural baggage.
00:30:51.060We see battles between Sikhs and Hindus, between pro-Hamas protesters and the Jewish community they're targeting.
00:31:00.100I feel like you've got three big problems, sheer numbers, people feeling taken advantage of, Canadians saying we're being tricked and taken as fools.
00:31:09.580And finally, something I'm very alive, too, we brought in a wave of anti-Semitism, and there's other foreign diaspora battles I don't even quite understand.
00:31:18.820I think all three things are rooted in immigration.
00:31:25.640Look, I've always been very, very clear on immigration as an immigrant myself.
00:31:32.360You know, as I told you, when I first came here as a student, these were problems I was seeing even back then.
00:31:39.480I remember as a grad student here in Ottawa, you know, anti-Semitism is something that I would, you know, I speak to with my, some of my professors, because some of these, you know, the campuses, university campuses in Canada were really like, you know, you had these student movements on these campuses, which were virulently anti-Semitic.
00:32:08.000And this was 2007, 2008, when I was a student.
00:32:13.780And, you know, it was just shrugged off and, you know, it's not a big deal.
00:32:19.580It's not, you know, nothing to take seriously.
00:32:24.740But, you know, let's move on, you know, and that was the end of the matter.
00:32:29.020But it's, you know, and I remember tweeting about this when Trudeau announced that he was bringing in a whole bunch of Syrian refugees a few years ago.
00:32:40.340And I was, I was saying, well, you know, this is, this is, this is going to result in some serious problems in Canada.
00:32:47.740And I was called a racist and a bigot for pointing that out.
00:32:50.360So, so these problems, look, you know, diaspora politics have criticized that, you know, my first column in the National Post in 2020 was about, my inaugural column was about diaspora politics.
00:33:05.580Why are we bringing this nonsense into this country?
00:33:08.540And, but we, and, you know, like, look, I mean, Trudeau deserves a lot of the blame when he says, you know, Canada's a post-national state and so on.
00:33:18.920But the roots of this predate Trudeau, you know, once again, we just, you know, it's convenient to keep blaming him for everything.
00:33:25.640But, you know, we've also, many of us have been sleeping behind the wheel when these things were set in motion, multiculturalism.
00:33:33.640And, you know, I, when I came as an immigrant, as an international student, and I just didn't understand what this multiculturalism thing was all about.
00:33:43.200There's no multiculturalism in the U.S.
00:33:45.420You, you're American first and then everything else after, you know, you're American first and then, you know, you want to pray at a Hindu temple.
00:33:53.700You want to go to the synagogue, you want to do, go to a mosque, you know, you know, wear your ethnic outfit on, on, on, on a, on a certain occasion.
00:34:03.540By all means do that, but you're American first.
00:34:05.940That was never the case in, that was, that was really never the case in Canada, at least in the 30 years that I've been here.
00:34:14.260Where you're, you're, you're allowed to, in fact, you're encouraged to take on all of these other identities before you become Canadian.
00:34:23.880And that is the fundamental problem in this country when it comes to, you know, how, how we deal with immigrants.
00:34:30.760They, they, where's their desire to integrate?
00:34:35.020What exactly are they integrating into when they're not, you know, they're just allowed to just, you know, yeah, you know, you're, you're, you're Sikh first.
00:34:45.400You know, why are Sikhs in this country advocating for a separate homeland in, in India?
00:34:50.600I, you know, I just don't understand that.
00:34:52.900Why are Hindus and Sikhs in this country battling it out on the streets of Brampton and, and, and the, and Indians, Hindus are carrying Indian flags.
00:35:03.140What is the relevance of the Indian flag in Brampton?
00:35:50.160We used to have a nonstop flight to Mumbai where I used to live, um, part-time and that got canceled because it was just not financially viable.
00:36:31.780And, and immigrants, I still believe that most people who come here are coming in good faith and they want a better outcome for them and their families.
00:36:40.720And they, you know, they're going to work hard and they're not going to take advantage of the system.
00:36:45.980That's historically, that's been my position for a very, very long time, but I'm not starting to question that, you know, I'm starting to question, well, who are these people?
00:36:54.800You know, why, why are they, um, you know, bringing in all their grievances here?