Rebel News Podcast - ＂Terrifying＂ and ＂cult-like＂： Facebook video reveals their new censorship scheme

00:00:00.000 Tonight, Facebook produces a propaganda video about their plans for censoring propaganda.

00:00:05.480 It's much more terrifying than anything I've seen from a government.

00:00:08.980 It's July 12th, and you're watching The Ezra Levant Show.

00:00:17.120 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:20.920 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:24.660 You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.

00:00:27.640 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:00:38.540 What did Facebook do wrong in the 2016 U.S. presidential election?

00:00:44.320 If you believe this man, Christopher Wiley, Facebook sold private information about its users to political campaigns.

00:00:51.480 Information Facebook didn't tell their users what they were going to do with it,

00:00:56.240 and they didn't have permission to do that with it.

00:00:58.440 In the case made famous by Wiley, if you took one of those fun little Facebook quizzes like,

00:01:04.280 what character from Star Wars are you, or whatever, it was really a psychological profile.

00:01:10.340 You probably thought it was just a fun way to pass the time, but it was really a personality test,

00:01:14.980 a psychological test, finding out about you.

00:01:17.360 And then that information was sold to political campaigns.

00:01:22.140 But what's more, all of your friends list was sucked up with that and sold the campaigns too.

00:01:28.640 That's what he accused them of.

00:01:30.100 Now, just this week, Facebook paid a fine in the United Kingdom of half a million British pounds.

00:01:36.460 It's just under a million bucks Canadian, which is a laugh, of course.

00:01:39.760 I mean, the company is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:01:42.960 And, of course, Facebook has been doing this for years and will surely continue to do it.

00:01:48.960 Here's a Barack Obama campaign executive boasting about how they sucked in the entire Facebook database in 2012.

00:01:57.980 So Facebook, 2012 election, had the ability for people to opt in.

00:02:02.540 The Obama campaign, like, rocked this, right?

00:02:05.960 We got people to opt in.

00:02:07.940 And the privacy policies at that time on Facebook were that if they opted in,

00:02:12.880 they could tell us who all their friends were.

00:02:15.440 Okay?

00:02:15.840 So they told us who all their friends were.

00:02:17.360 This is very much how local campaigns work, right?

00:02:20.040 People sit in a room.

00:02:21.020 It's a really small thing.

00:02:22.800 All of their biggest supporters turn around the table and they, like, circle the names of the people that they know

00:02:26.700 and that they're going to outreach to and they figure out how to fill in the gaps of the people that they don't know.

00:02:31.100 The Obama campaign just did this on a digital, in a digital level, on a much larger level.

00:02:36.320 But we were actually able to ingest the entire social network, social network of the U.S.

00:02:41.060 that's on Facebook, which is most people.

00:02:43.520 So, yeah, it's not exactly news what they were doing in 2016.

00:02:48.240 What made it of interest to journalists this time, though,

00:02:50.700 was that the Trump campaign was just better at it than the Hillary Clinton campaign. 0.72

00:02:55.740 That's why it's angry news now.

00:02:57.680 But back when Obama did it, the media party were impressed by Obama's cleverness.

00:03:02.480 So, is that something wrong that Facebook did?

00:03:06.240 Yeah, I think so.

00:03:07.420 But that's not what Facebook was really blamed for in the media that much.

00:03:12.240 It was a bit of a thing, the privacy thing, but not that big a thing.

00:03:16.300 The big thing, and it continues to this day, is fake news.

00:03:20.880 Trump won the 2016 election on Facebook.

00:03:23.300 It is true, and he used lots of data.

00:03:26.000 It's true, but the left wants to say that Trump won through lies and fake news and through Russian propaganda.

00:03:34.700 That Russia thing, that's the basis for this whole empty Robert Mueller witch hunt.

00:03:39.600 It's the basis for all sorts of insinuations that Donald Trump, the all-American super capitalist,

00:03:45.180 is actually a spy for the Russians.

00:03:47.940 It's reached levels of insanity that are breathtaking.

00:03:50.400 Here's an article in last week's New York magazine speculating that Donald Trump has been a Russian agent since the 1980s.

00:04:01.140 I'm not even kidding.

00:04:02.060 That's what the story says.

00:04:04.100 Look at this headline on MSNBC when the author of this appeared.

00:04:08.600 Unlikely but possible that Trump has been Russian intel asset since 1987.

00:04:14.540 Unlikely but possible.

00:04:15.660 Hey, do me a favor, don't ever make fun of InfoWars or Alex Jones again.

00:04:20.840 If you're with MSNBC or the fancy pants in New York magazine, I mean, that conspiracy theory of Trump being a 30-year spy is nuts.

00:04:31.300 Now, don't take it from me.

00:04:32.820 Here's Rob Goldman, the vice president of ads for Facebook.

00:04:37.020 He reviewed all of the ads bought by Russian agents on Facebook during the whole campaign.

00:04:43.640 And he said they were trivial.

00:04:44.980 Here, don't take it from me.

00:04:46.060 Here's what Goldman, the VP of ads, said.

00:04:48.680 Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to affect the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election.

00:04:54.500 I have seen all of the Russian ads, and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was not the main goal.

00:05:03.100 Oh, really?

00:05:04.120 Oh, yes.

00:05:04.940 Here's more.

00:05:05.360 Let me read.

00:05:05.760 The majority of the Russian ad spend happened after the election.

00:05:12.660 We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn't align with the main media narrative of Trump in the election.

00:05:19.580 By the way, I think the total ad spend by Russia was like $100,000 or so in a $2 billion ad campaign, presidential campaign.

00:05:26.960 One more tweet from Goldman.

00:05:28.140 He said,

00:05:28.640 The single best demonstration of Russia's true motives is the Houston anti-Islamic protest.

00:05:34.040 Americans were literally puppeted into the streets by trolls who organized both sides of the protest.

00:05:41.680 Exactly.

00:05:43.860 So, yeah, did this Russian hundred grand change the course of the United States election? 0.87

00:05:49.460 Is that really why Hillary Clinton lost the election in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Ohio or Michigan?

00:05:55.840 No.

00:05:56.220 But the left needs its narrative not just to explain their loss in 2016.

00:06:01.640 I mean, Hillary Clinton can't accept the blame. 1.00

00:06:03.600 But to turn a crisis into an opportunity because if they can blame Facebook propaganda for the loss in 2016,

00:06:10.380 they can use that as an excuse to regulate Facebook in the future.

00:06:13.520 Or better yet, have Facebook regulate itself to stop propaganda from the next election.

00:06:18.720 Of course, what they mean by propaganda is anything they don't like.

00:06:22.920 I mean, it's words.

00:06:25.000 Do you call someone a physician, a doctor, or a quack?

00:06:31.580 Well, it depends on your point of view, right?

00:06:33.680 Three different people could have different views about the same doctor.

00:06:36.280 Do you call campaign material propaganda, an election platform, or a fact check?

00:06:44.760 Well, same thing, right?

00:06:45.940 What I call propaganda, CNN might call a fact check, right?

00:06:49.560 I mean, if you just call your propaganda a fact check, is it now above fact checking itself?

00:06:55.240 My point is that's for us each to decide every day in our own lives and online.

00:06:59.800 We have to sort out all the information in the world.

00:07:02.100 What we believe, what we sort of believe, what is fact, and what we know is a sales pitch.

00:07:06.040 We are bombarded all the time.

00:07:09.300 And, you know, I don't think we mind it that much.

00:07:11.280 I don't think we mind listening to propaganda if it's entertaining, if we learn something from it.

00:07:16.940 Sometimes the ads on TV are the most entertaining part of TV, right?

00:07:20.260 I mean, think of all the great ads on the Super Bowl.

00:07:23.840 They're propaganda, right?

00:07:25.900 Or they're part of a sales campaign, or maybe they're just the truth.

00:07:28.920 But whatever, isn't it up to each of us to be the judge of them?

00:07:32.480 Same with politics on Facebook.

00:07:34.340 But no, no, that's the big push.

00:07:37.180 The big push on Facebook and the left is to censor conservatives.

00:07:41.740 And thus, this week, Facebook started its Maoist struggle to purge itself of wrong ideas.

00:07:48.640 I want to show you extracts from a cult-like video produced by Facebook.

00:07:53.280 I'm sure they think it looks really normal, really thoughtful.

00:07:56.740 But, boy, it made Facebook look really creepy to me.

00:08:01.220 Even the sound effects, the aesthetics, it looks like a creepy cult.

00:08:06.180 Here, take a look.

00:08:06.820 Facebook and other social media sites are being criticized for not doing enough to stop bogus

00:08:15.760 stories that seem to dominate the election cycle.

00:08:19.720 I mean, the big thing that happened was in the wake of the U.S. presidential election in

00:08:22.620 2016 is we just were under a massive amount of scrutiny.

00:08:25.880 That's a result of us making mistakes along the way, both in what we built and how we explain

00:08:29.880 what we did, or maybe not explaining enough.

00:08:31.400 Facebook is now unveiling this new tool that will allow users to see if they had all interacted

00:08:37.140 with a troll farm with ties to the Russian government.

00:08:41.000 That's a really difficult and painful thing.

00:08:43.720 But I think the scrutiny fundamentally was a healthy thing.

00:08:46.420 You've created these platforms, and now they are being misused.

00:08:51.040 And you have to be the ones to do something about it, or we will.

00:09:01.400 Facebook's fight against misinformation, really?

00:09:09.460 Is that their job?

00:09:10.860 Well, Dianne Feinstein says it's their job.

00:09:13.400 The most left-wing senator in Congress from San Francisco, the most left-wing city in America,

00:09:20.240 where Facebook itself is headquartered, of course.

00:09:23.000 Silicon Valley is a suburb of San Francisco.

00:09:25.400 That's their moral center.

00:09:26.920 That's their political center.

00:09:27.800 Dianne Feinstein is despised across most of America as a hardcore leftist. 1.00

00:09:31.960 But to Facebook, that's who they feel the need to answer to.

00:09:35.260 Just watch some more.

00:09:36.420 Nearly everything you see in your news feed, you're seeing because somebody who you're connected

00:09:40.700 with, or a page that you've decided to follow, decided to share that.

00:09:44.580 For a time, we felt our responsibility was mostly around just trying to help organize that

00:09:49.840 information that you, in some sense, had asked to see.

00:09:53.000 There was some reluctance to try to get in between you and those people.

00:09:56.600 Exactly.

00:09:57.740 So if I want to hear from someone left, right, center, friend, or foe, that's the thing.

00:10:03.080 I could have any reason for following someone on Facebook, including that I dislike them,

00:10:08.180 and I want to keep an eye on them.

00:10:10.060 I mean, I follow as many political enemies as I follow political friends, and that's my

00:10:14.340 own business.

00:10:15.280 I'm choosing who I want to follow online.

00:10:17.300 That's the fun of social media.

00:10:18.820 But this guy, Dan Zygmunt, the Buddhist convert who preaches a 15-hour-a-day spiritual fasting

00:10:27.580 diet, he knows better than me about what's normal.

00:10:30.420 Now, I'm not making fun of him or his diet or his religion.

00:10:33.020 I'm just pointing out some of the characters at Facebook who are determining what's normal

00:10:37.640 or not.

00:10:38.840 Dan Zygmunt is severely normal for San Francisco.

00:10:43.600 I think he's super weird.

00:10:44.960 Maybe you can pick that vibe up.

00:10:47.060 I Googled most of the people in this Facebook video.

00:10:50.620 They're a bit cultish, each of them.

00:10:52.980 They're certainly all social justice warriors.

00:10:55.420 Some of them are a little bit messianic.

00:10:57.400 But you heard it right there.

00:10:58.980 You used to be able to choose for yourself.

00:11:01.200 But now Dan Zygmunt knows better for you.

00:11:04.700 And the rest of these San Francisco liberals do too.

00:11:07.400 One of the challenges in misinformation is that there is no one consensus or source for

00:11:14.080 truth.

00:11:15.280 If you think about all of the news that you read in a day, how much of it is objectively

00:11:19.380 false?

00:11:20.120 How much of it is objectively true?

00:11:21.780 The truth has this unfortunate aspect to it that sometimes it is not aligned with your

00:11:25.440 desires.

00:11:26.120 It is not aligned with what you have invested in, what you would like.

00:11:29.300 And you can see that reflected inside of the content.

00:11:31.920 There's a lot of content in the gray area.

00:11:34.140 Most of it probably exists in some space where people are presenting the facts as they see

00:11:39.260 them.

00:11:40.580 People consider misinformation to involve a lot of different things.

00:11:45.620 We've heard hate speech is misinformation.

00:11:48.400 False news is misinformation.

00:11:50.640 The speech about the government is misinformation.

00:11:53.500 So one of the things we're doing internally is defining what we're really looking at and

00:11:57.140 what we can measure reliably and then figuring out how do we communicate that in a way that

00:12:01.880 puts it in the right context.

00:12:03.260 They're all describing the process by which we decide what we believe and what we don't.

00:12:07.760 And it sounds thoughtful.

00:12:09.600 I mean, these are smart people.

00:12:11.280 Lots of fancy degrees.

00:12:12.660 I googled them.

00:12:13.280 I checked them out on LinkedIn.

00:12:14.880 But there's no normals in there.

00:12:16.760 No normies.

00:12:17.580 You can get that vibe, can't you?

00:12:19.540 All leftist, of course.

00:12:21.360 All overeducated.

00:12:23.100 There's a real demographic going on there.

00:12:25.100 I mean, it's the political wing of Silicon Valley.

00:12:27.580 Lots of women in their late 20s and early 30s with strong political opinions about feminism 1.00

00:12:32.740 and liberalism pretty different from the computer side of Silicon Valley.

00:12:37.200 The engineers, basically white guys and Asian guys, all engineers, probably right-wingers

00:12:41.900 if they ever thought of politics.

00:12:43.360 The Mark Zuckerbergs and the Sergei Brins, they built Silicon Valley.

00:12:47.520 They came up with the algorithms.

00:12:48.580 And then they handed their companies over to the liberals who were less autistic than them 0.87

00:12:53.780 and more sociable than them.

00:12:55.460 The geeks sort of handed their prize over to the fashionable kids.

00:12:59.740 Politically fashionable.

00:13:02.940 We in journalism have a myth of objectivity.

00:13:05.660 It doesn't exist.

00:13:06.900 There's also an expectation of a myth of objectivity or neutrality in the platforms.

00:13:11.360 It doesn't exist.

00:13:12.380 Just because Facebook is being manipulated, Facebook has an obligation to recognize that

00:13:17.840 and compensate for that.

00:13:19.960 Hang on.

00:13:20.620 Who is manipulating Facebook?

00:13:24.140 Don't we choose who we follow?

00:13:26.040 Don't we choose who is allowed to be our friends on Facebook?

00:13:29.660 Isn't saying Facebook is being manipulated, isn't that a lot like saying the market is being

00:13:35.780 manipulated so someone smarter than each of us has to come in and protect us?

00:13:40.620 And if you know that every single person in that building, every single person in this

00:13:45.560 video knows, just knows they're smarter than you.

00:13:50.240 And many of them are smarter than you.

00:13:52.340 But being smart, or at least book smart, isn't the same as being morally superior.

00:13:57.100 And even if they were that, too.

00:13:59.800 I'm not a child.

00:14:00.780 I don't want to be treated like a child. 1.00

00:14:02.720 If I sign up and follow some crap on the internet, I want my crap. 1.00

00:14:06.820 I don't want some nanny telling me it's crap. 1.00

00:14:10.760 And maybe it's not crap. 1.00

00:14:11.900 Maybe they call my political taste crap. 0.99

00:14:14.380 I'd call that weird guy's 15-hour-a-day Buddhist fast thing weird. 0.99

00:14:19.540 But I'd never tell him he can't follow that.

00:14:22.780 So why does he get to tell me what I can think?

00:14:25.620 I think an extreme that would be bad would be if a group of Facebook employees reviewed

00:14:30.360 everything that people tried to post and determined if the content of that post was true or false.

00:14:35.360 And based on that determination, decided whether or not it could be on the platform.

00:14:38.840 Good idea.

00:14:39.680 Relieving.

00:14:40.220 But you'll see in this video later on, she has a better idea.

00:14:43.980 She'll set up a computer program to do all that censoring for her. 1.00

00:14:47.640 But then she says this.

00:14:48.680 What I think would also be bad is if we took absolutely no responsibility whatsoever

00:14:53.520 and allowed hate speech and violence to be broadly distributed.

00:14:58.000 That wouldn't be taking nearly enough responsibility.

00:15:00.200 Now, I'm against violence, too.

00:15:02.320 But hang on.

00:15:03.580 Does that mean I can't see R-rated movies like action movies or cartoon war movies or superheroes?

00:15:09.560 What does she mean by violence and hate speech?

00:15:12.760 What does she mean by bad speech that is hateful?

00:15:16.080 That's a normal human emotion.

00:15:17.560 Or speech that causes hate?

00:15:20.480 Well, you never know what will cause hate.

00:15:22.100 Does she mean speech that she hates?

00:15:25.860 I don't know.

00:15:26.360 Do you know what hate speech is?

00:15:28.040 She sure seems to, doesn't she?

00:15:30.400 Now, I follow some alt-left people on Twitter, some extreme environmentalists, for example.

00:15:35.020 I follow the dictator of Iran on Twitter.

00:15:37.720 Is he hateful?

00:15:39.000 Is he violent?

00:15:39.800 Well, of course.

00:15:41.200 So I can't follow any of them?

00:15:43.920 Can I decide?

00:15:45.120 The right answer is definitely somewhere in the middle.

00:15:47.560 But that's a big middle.

00:15:48.860 We want to make sure that we don't inadvertently introduce bias.

00:15:52.680 It's extra important in all of our work to kind of know your own biases, but also sort

00:15:57.100 of take a step back and make sure you're listening to the other side.

00:16:00.560 Do you think they do that at Facebook?

00:16:02.540 Do you really think they listen to, let's say, blue-collar working men and women, people

00:16:09.220 who didn't finish high school, maybe cowboys, I don't know, southern good old boys, right-wingers,

00:16:13.880 rednecks? 0.97

00:16:14.340 Do you really think they do?

00:16:16.140 Amongst the tens of thousands of Facebook employees, do you think that a single one of them wears

00:16:22.000 a red Trump-make-America-great hat again?

00:16:25.560 Do you think they'd be allowed to?

00:16:26.880 That's half the country.

00:16:28.020 I'm sure they're full of Hillary Clinton supporters.

00:16:29.880 But do you think a single Facebook staffer is a Trump supporter, at least overtly?

00:16:34.580 How about a serious Christian? 1.00

00:16:36.780 Someone pro-life?

00:16:38.040 Someone, I don't know, who's against marijuana and prostitution?

00:16:42.340 I'm not saying those are right or wrong points of view.

00:16:44.140 I'm just saying the true diverse range of opinions.

00:16:47.540 Do you think the people you have seen so far in this Facebook video would tolerate truly

00:16:52.780 different points of view?

00:16:54.080 Do you think they really know their blind spots?

00:16:57.840 But let me skip to the most troubling part of this Facebook movie, where they list their

00:17:03.180 enemies.

00:17:04.400 And there's a lot of different types of misinformation.

00:17:07.560 There's bad actors, there's bad behavior, and there's bad content.

00:17:11.540 Bad actors are things like fake accounts or foreign agents.

00:17:16.220 Bad actors.

00:17:17.560 They list fake accounts.

00:17:18.880 Now, I get it.

00:17:19.520 Fake might be bad, but are anonymous commenters bad, by definition?

00:17:24.820 Aren't a lot of dissidents anonymous?

00:17:27.100 Don't they use pseudonyms?

00:17:28.240 Weren't many of the revolutionaries in the U.S. Revolutionary War who wrote some of the

00:17:32.540 Federalist Papers, weren't some of them anonymous?

00:17:35.620 Weren't many dissidents in the Soviet Union anonymous, had pen names?

00:17:38.680 That's not fake, I guess, but it's anonymous.

00:17:42.220 And foreign agents.

00:17:43.380 I mean, I get it, if you're freaking out about Russians, but this video is from California.

00:17:49.520 So is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation a foreign agent?

00:17:52.600 Is Justin Trudeau a foreign agent?

00:17:55.100 That Tessa Lyons-Lang woman who's listing the enemies, she's actually from Ottawa originally.

00:18:00.740 Is she a foreign agent? 0.57

00:18:01.980 How about U.S. environmentalist groups propagandizing into Canada?

00:18:06.820 How about George Soros?

00:18:07.940 Is he a foreign agent?

00:18:09.320 How about Facebook itself?

00:18:11.960 It's an American company, but is it a foreign agent in Canada?

00:18:15.840 Isn't a foreign agent really just whoever Facebook or Dianne Feinstein doesn't like?

00:18:21.680 Bad behavior is using tactics, like spamming, to try to spread a message.

00:18:26.620 All right.

00:18:27.820 Except I suppose one person's spam is another person's direct mail, is another person's

00:18:34.360 critically important public service announcement.

00:18:36.160 And who gets to the side, right?

00:18:38.360 And sensationalizing things?

00:18:40.680 Well, isn't that really just another word for marketing?

00:18:44.680 Isn't the job of every single newspaper editor, for example, to write the most interesting,

00:18:48.800 gripping, can't-miss headline for their front page?

00:18:50.760 I don't get it.

00:18:51.560 And polarizing, as in yes, no, on, off.

00:18:55.960 Aren't there a lot of questions to which the answers are only yes, no?

00:18:59.620 Did you catch your flight?

00:19:01.560 That's a yes or no question.

00:19:03.920 Are you pregnant? 1.00

00:19:06.300 That's a yes or no question.

00:19:07.560 That's a polarizing question.

00:19:08.700 Same thing with a lot of questions in politics.

00:19:10.860 Do you want to go to war?

00:19:13.300 Yes or no.

00:19:13.980 There's no maybe.

00:19:15.860 Do you think we should have a carbon tax?

00:19:17.640 Yes or no.

00:19:18.440 There's no maybe.

00:19:19.080 Do you support Donald Trump?

00:19:20.400 Yes or no.

00:19:21.120 Isn't that what we call taking a vote in a legislature, like a parliament, calling for

00:19:24.940 a division?

00:19:25.620 Isn't that how Facebook and other social media work?

00:19:27.540 You either like something or you thumbs down or thumbs up.

00:19:30.800 I guess you could sort of like something, but Facebook's own symbol is a thumbs up.

00:19:36.380 All right, a little more from the video.

00:19:37.660 And bad content includes things like false news, hate speech, or clickbait.

00:19:42.240 False news?

00:19:44.580 What's that?

00:19:46.120 I know what it is.

00:19:47.240 It's an opinion that someone doesn't like.

00:19:49.600 Hate speech, we've talked about that already.

00:19:51.140 It's a human emotion that the other side doesn't like.

00:19:53.660 Graphic violence, eh?

00:19:54.580 Well, so much for half of Hollywood's movies and rap videos.

00:20:00.040 Now, you can agree with every single idea here, but your agreement and my agreement,

00:20:04.600 we have different ideas how it's implemented, don't we?

00:20:06.740 That's why we both get to be different individuals in real life.

00:20:09.340 I don't want hate speech, but to me, hate speech is that horrible leftist comedian at

00:20:14.040 the White House Correspondents' Dinner, or Kathy Griffin holding up Trump's severed head

00:20:19.360 in effigy, or Samantha Bee swearing at Ivanka Trump so crudely.

00:20:25.320 To me, that's hate speech, but those are heroes to the left.

00:20:29.200 So who gets to decide who's banned, right?

00:20:32.220 Well, until 2016, it was you and me deciding for ourselves.

00:20:37.380 But now it's all the people in that Facebook video who are going to decide for us.

00:20:40.740 They are all liberal.

00:20:42.820 Now, I know they are, because Mark Zuckerberg confessed it when he appeared before Congress

00:20:48.660 earlier this year.

00:20:49.640 Every one of these people voted for Hillary Clinton.

00:20:52.660 Do you doubt it?

00:20:53.680 Not one of them was conservative.

00:20:55.340 Not one of them was socially conservative.

00:20:57.620 Not one of them is a dissident on the right.

00:21:00.040 Not one of them respects flyover country.

00:21:02.440 Not one.

00:21:04.280 You think they'd allow a MAGA, Make America Great Again ad in there?

00:21:07.720 So when they say they just remove bullying, you see that?

00:21:12.640 They're going to remove any bullying.

00:21:14.260 Okay, now do they mean people on the right that they don't like?

00:21:17.460 They haven't banned left-wing bullies.

00:21:19.280 Go on to social media and type in any search engine. 0.98

00:21:22.000 Type in, assassinate Trump.

00:21:24.160 You'll find hundreds of entries on every social medium.

00:21:27.580 But that's not bullying to Facebook.

00:21:29.500 That's dissent.

00:21:30.500 That's the resistance.

00:21:32.580 Look at this culty ending to the movie.

00:21:34.880 Listen to the ending.

00:21:35.960 Listen to the music.

00:21:37.420 Look at the demographics.

00:21:38.960 Listen to this cult.

00:21:45.120 Responsibility.

00:21:46.660 With connecting people, particularly at our scale,

00:21:49.480 comes an immense amount of responsibility.

00:21:51.960 Every week we talk to all of you, all of the new hires,

00:21:55.020 about all the work that we're doing to try and improve the integrity

00:21:58.160 of the information that flows through a news feed

00:22:00.480 because it's important that you have that context.

00:22:04.600 And we're going to have to work together

00:22:05.880 if we're going to be able to effectively address the issues that we face.

00:22:10.120 We definitely think a lot about our responsibility.

00:22:13.340 At the end of the day, we depend on our community of users.

00:22:16.100 So ideally, what's good for them is also good for us.

00:22:19.140 And there's sort of a natural alignment of interests.

00:22:23.280 We try to make a more interesting news feed because we think that's good for people.

00:22:26.360 We think that's good for communities.

00:22:27.620 And that will also be good for us and our business in the long run.

00:22:30.240 They're just trying to make you more interesting, you knuckle-draggers, you Trump lovers.

00:22:36.580 I mean, who are you to make your own world more interesting?

00:22:41.860 Don't you see these interesting people are willing to do it for you?

00:22:46.860 Misinformation is going to remain a topic, but it's going to be an arms race.

00:22:52.160 It's going to move from one frontier of the battle to a different frontier.

00:22:55.320 But in the time that I've been here, we doubled in size in my team and we're doubling again.

00:23:00.900 So there's a great commitment to improving the integrity of our systems.

00:23:03.880 I think that we're making progress now and that progress is going to accrue.

00:23:07.600 And it's going to get better and better and better.

00:23:09.360 We're going to get interest on that progress.

00:23:11.500 But we're taking great steps every single day towards solving this incredibly complex problem.

00:23:16.300 We have to get this right, not just for our platform,

00:23:19.640 but for the community of people that we serve around the world.

00:23:22.980 The problem they're talking about, you're the problem.

00:23:38.220 You think too much or maybe not enough for them.

00:23:42.000 You choose too much or maybe you're not choosy enough.

00:23:45.540 You look at the wrong things.

00:23:47.220 You will be replaced by them. 0.96

00:23:50.160 They'll tell you what you can see.

00:23:51.720 They already are, but you don't even know it

00:23:54.280 because they've eliminated any bad thoughts for you.

00:23:59.380 That's the future.

00:24:00.240 That's the present.

00:24:02.120 George Orwell said the future was a boot stomping on a human face forever.

00:24:05.620 No, he didn't foresee the Internet.

00:24:08.180 The future of authoritarianism is smiling millennials in San Francisco with their cliches, 1.00

00:24:14.200 telling you to relax, relax, relax.

00:24:17.320 They'll do the thinking for you.

00:24:19.760 Stay with us for more.

00:24:21.720 Welcome back.

00:24:38.280 Well, Doug Ford has been wasting no time as Ontario's new premier.

00:24:42.220 He's making decisive decisions about the most important subjects, carbon tax, cap and trade, hydro one.

00:24:49.500 But I think he's tackled the most controversial subject of all, and he did so quickly and decisively,

00:24:57.780 namely, scrapping the child sex curriculum that hyper-sexualized children of tender years.

00:25:04.460 He just scrapped it and reverted to the last version of the sex ed while he engages in a review.

00:25:11.640 No fuss, no fuss, no muss. 0.99

00:25:12.800 He just did it.

00:25:13.980 And joining us now in studio to talk about this is the woman perhaps most responsible for this bold policy decision.

00:25:21.200 I'm talking about Tanya Granik-Allen.

00:25:23.600 She's with Parents as First Educators.

00:25:25.560 The president, it's a pleasure to have you back in the studio.

00:25:27.440 Thank you.

00:25:27.700 It's great to be here, Ezra.

00:25:28.580 I have to say, this was a tough one because the media and the establishment is so unanimous that this is the test.

00:25:39.440 Are you a modern political person or not?

00:25:42.280 And Doug Ford just sort of said, boom, we're done it.

00:25:44.980 No fuss, no muss, no wishy-washy, no flip-floppery. 0.95

00:25:49.060 And it's done.

00:25:50.280 It's done already.

00:25:51.400 That's amazing.

00:25:52.260 This was a great issue because you actually did not require to pass legislation.

00:25:55.580 It's a simple directive from the minister.

00:25:57.560 It's done.

00:25:58.680 And to have that full repeal, though, I should mention that there needs to be a directive sent to the teacher saying that no component of the WinSex Ed should be discussed further.

00:26:08.200 For example, the unscientific gender identity theory, that should not be mentioned.

00:26:13.080 And that should be made very clear.

00:26:15.200 And also, I know they're reverting to the previous version, there must always be an opt-out for parents.

00:26:20.200 So advance notification and seeing through the repeal by always giving parents an opt-out.

00:26:24.200 Because let's face this, you'll never satisfy every parent, and every parent must have their rights respected, and that must be paramount.

00:26:30.420 Those are excellent details that ought to be added, and I agree with you that they're important.

00:26:35.760 But the center, that this—and you know what?

00:26:39.260 And I think it gave people the creeps that Ben Levin, who was later convicted of trying to recruit young children to molest them,

00:26:51.360 that such a person, a pedophile, would have been the deputy minister at the time this curriculum was developed.

00:26:57.560 When he was convicted, I think a lot of people said, how can you possibly allow a curriculum?

00:27:04.260 And I know he personally didn't write it, but he oversaw the ministry for a portion of that time.

00:27:09.800 Well, everything that came through his office, he signed off on.

00:27:12.240 And so he was, in part, developing the curriculum.

00:27:15.660 But of course, I'm with you, Ezra.

00:27:17.460 It's a massive red flag.

00:27:18.720 Who wants their children learning a sex ed curriculum from a convicted child pornographer? 1.00

00:27:22.980 It's absurd. 0.90

00:27:23.900 Yeah.

00:27:24.240 I mean, we followed that trial and that conviction very closely.

00:27:27.820 He—I even hate to mention the details because they're so stomach-turning.

00:27:33.180 He even chatted online with someone saying he would like to molest his own grandchildren.

00:27:38.840 I know that's so shocking to say, and I'm sorry to say it and gross our people out.

00:27:42.500 But when someone like that is in charge of the curriculum, how can you go with that into the schools?

00:27:49.380 It's fruit from a poison tree.

00:27:50.920 And it's shocking to me that it took an election to get that ripped out.

00:27:54.380 Well, it's true.

00:27:55.360 And, you know, people say, well, are you for updating the curriculum?

00:27:58.000 Sure, certainly I am.

00:27:59.380 And I will agree with the former Premier, Kathleen Wynne, that, yeah, updates need to happen.

00:28:04.420 And with modern technology, things like sexting and whatnot need to be covered.

00:28:08.060 Strange, though, that while, yes, I'll concede that it needs to be updated,

00:28:11.820 she never once mentioned pornography in the curriculum.

00:28:14.140 You mentioned Ben Levin, again, convicted child pornographer.

00:28:16.700 Yeah.

00:28:16.920 Makes you wonder why.

00:28:18.180 Yeah.

00:28:18.720 It's really strange.

00:28:19.800 And we were just talking before we turned the cameras on.

00:28:24.860 If there are some parents out there who really want to teach their children of tender years,

00:28:30.220 I'm talking about six-year-olds here, about the six genders or some of the more extreme stuff, 1.00

00:28:36.540 I suppose they can do that.

00:28:37.900 So this isn't stopping any parent who really loved the Ben Levin curriculum, God forbid.

00:28:44.900 It's just freeing the other 90, 95, 99 percent of parents from being bound by it.

00:28:50.700 It just seems so common sense.

00:28:52.140 Let me ask you, though, what has been the public reaction?

00:28:54.860 I know the usual suspects in the media elites are freaking out.

00:28:57.520 But what's the reaction being, I mean, you're the president of a parents-oriented group.

00:29:03.180 What's the reaction from severely normal Ontarians?

00:29:06.140 It's overwhelmingly positive.

00:29:08.300 In fact, I mean, think back to when they introduced the curriculum. 0.99

00:29:12.040 Did you see people protesting for classes on anal and oral sex or masturbation on Queen's Park? 0.99

00:29:16.700 I didn't. 0.99

00:29:17.480 I saw parents freezing their butts off in the middle of winter saying, by the thousands,

00:29:21.180 saying, hey, no, this is irresponsible and sexualizes our kids. 0.98

00:29:24.540 But since the leadership and since this issue was thrust into the leadership,

00:29:28.260 and now we have the repeal, hopefully fully by the end of the week,

00:29:32.000 we see that parents are saying, hey, we know there's a problem with this curriculum.

00:29:36.840 We hear a lot about the problems of this curriculum.

00:29:38.460 We're not sure exactly what, but there's an issue.

00:29:40.440 I need to open up the books of my kids and ask them, what are you learning in school?

00:29:43.240 And I think a lot of parents also had a lot of, they were alerted to the problems within this curriculum

00:29:48.080 when kids would come home from school and they'd be discussing things around the dinner table

00:29:52.200 that parents would never imagine they would have.

00:29:54.820 Oh, you're so right.

00:29:56.020 I mean, I read through the Ben Levin curriculum very carefully.

00:30:01.080 And some of those subjects, in my view, and I don't think I'm a prude at all.

00:30:06.820 If you're not a grown adult, if you're not, I mean, that's like college level.

00:30:13.240 And for maturity and for young kids, that was my chief beef with this,

00:30:19.880 is it pushed sexuality to people who, to young kids who should be allowed to have a childhood

00:30:25.840 where they're not being forced to think and talk and grapple with issues

00:30:30.440 that they're just, they're supposed to have a childhood.

00:30:34.220 That's what was so irksome to me.

00:30:35.960 Not even what was being taught, but how early, why are you talking to, I'm not going to say babies,

00:30:43.760 but these are people who are playing with dolls and not anatomically correct dolls.

00:30:48.620 Like, what are you doing?

00:30:49.360 Well, again, gender identity was introduced as a topic to eight-year-olds.

00:30:53.420 Do you know how many genders there are? 1.00

00:30:54.620 I think we're up to 112 now.

00:30:56.060 So that's concerning.

00:30:57.540 Most adults are confused by, and let's be clear here, this is unscientific.

00:31:03.320 I'm probably part of the majority that believes children should be taught facts

00:31:06.840 and scientific-based things in school, not theories that are unproven.

00:31:10.500 Well, and the left always says, oh, you're just a prude, this is science.

00:31:13.680 You know, I challenge anyone who's watching this, without Googling it,

00:31:17.720 to name the six official genders that the Ben Levin sex curriculum had.

00:31:22.240 And, you know, thankfully, what we're talking about now, it is now history.

00:31:26.920 Doug Ford, I'm impressed by the fact that he tackled this substantive issue.

00:31:32.220 But I got to tell you, it gives me encouragement about him as a premier on 20 different issues.

00:31:37.920 Because now I know that when it comes to an issue that the media is unanimous about over here,

00:31:44.160 and the people are almost unanimous about over here, he won't bend to the peer pressure of the media.

00:31:50.680 That's the rarest thing in a politician, isn't it?

00:31:53.540 Well, I have to just say one thing, though.

00:31:55.500 When it came to my candidacy, that was not the case.

00:31:58.300 Yes.

00:31:58.560 So while I'm happy to see that he is keeping most of his promises, he did break his promise to me.

00:32:04.980 And again, as to why, you'd have to ask him, because I have not heard from him.

00:32:08.700 Well, I'm glad you brought that up.

00:32:09.820 I didn't want to emphasize that, because the news of the day is the sex,

00:32:13.100 child sex curriculum has been repealed.

00:32:16.060 That's great news.

00:32:16.800 Because you're right, that was a big beef for us here at The Rebel,

00:32:22.660 because in so many ways, you were the kingmaker.

00:32:25.840 It was your campaign that put Doug Ford over the top for his leadership.

00:32:30.320 And I found his firing of you as a candidate, or maybe you, I don't know how it actually went down.

00:32:35.620 I found that demoralizing.

00:32:37.180 And I thought, this reminds me of Patrick Brown.

00:32:39.700 But I think now that he crossed the finish line, he's stronger.

00:32:44.220 I don't want to ask you to reveal confidences, but are you at liberty to tell our viewers,

00:32:49.660 have you been in touch with Doug Ford personally or his staff since you were displaced as a candidate?

00:32:55.540 So his choosing not to recognize me as the democratically nominated candidate in Mississauga Center,

00:33:01.840 that happened May 5th.

00:33:03.020 And I reached out to Doug that day, and he did not return my call or text.

00:33:06.960 I did hear from his campaign manager, Corey Tenike, who gave me the information.

00:33:12.040 And I have not heard from him since.

00:33:14.080 So any particulars of that day, I suggest you invite Doug on and ask him yourself.

00:33:17.920 Well, I was more interested if you've had a rapprochement at all or a reconciliation or any more interaction.

00:33:22.640 So basically, when you were sacked as a candidate, that was it, eh?

00:33:25.900 Well, my phone is always available.

00:33:28.300 And I hope if he wants to reach out to me, I'm happy to take his call.

00:33:31.880 Well, I'm glad to hear that.

00:33:32.760 And I have to say, you're a good sport.

00:33:34.420 And you're remarkably positive, given that you earned and you were not handed that nomination.

00:33:40.320 You had to fight for it and win it.

00:33:42.200 It was very stressful.

00:33:42.840 I told Doug this when he called to congratulate me on winning the nomination.

00:33:47.440 I said, Doug, I will do 10 leaderships before doing another one of those.

00:33:50.940 That was stressful.

00:33:52.420 But, you know, it was a wonderful experience.

00:33:55.180 I met so many wonderful people from such a diverse community and faith backgrounds

00:34:00.320 who really stood unified with me on this issue of repealing the sex ed

00:34:04.100 and on religious liberty and freedom of speech.

00:34:06.720 Well, I hope that you can become a part of the government in some way

00:34:11.760 because I think you represent a group of Ontarians.

00:34:17.140 I don't know what percentage it is.

00:34:18.760 You have an expertise in the issue of representing parents.

00:34:22.980 You obviously help put them over the top.

00:34:25.760 Your focus on this issue, I think, is you and there's a few others

00:34:30.680 who properly get credit for this change.

00:34:32.960 I hope that you are incorporated in the government in some way.

00:34:36.040 But tell me what you do.

00:34:37.300 You're back as president of Parents as First Educators.

00:34:40.460 Is that a part-time, that's obviously a part-time NGO that you run?

00:34:44.340 Well, it represents over 80,000 supporters in Ontario, grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents.

00:34:51.240 But I'm a mother of four young children.

00:34:53.420 I'm married happily.

00:34:55.380 So you're pretty busy.

00:34:56.500 I'm a very busy woman.

00:34:57.460 Look, I got into the leadership for many issues, but to be an advocate for the grassroots,

00:35:02.780 for free speech, for religious liberty, and for the repealing of the sex ed and whatnot.

00:35:07.880 So I was always in this for the issues.

00:35:09.740 So I never intended to run for politics.

00:35:11.660 I only did so at the behest of Doug and his team.

00:35:14.060 I followed through and then things happened.

00:35:16.600 But I will always be in there to advocate for the issues.

00:35:19.200 And in my role as Parents as First Educators, as president,

00:35:21.880 is to advocate for the parents and the children of Ontario.

00:35:24.000 Well, I got to tell you, you handled that unfair defenestration a lot friendlier than I would have done.

00:35:32.720 You've been a lot more positive.

00:35:34.220 I mean, I think what happened to you was atrocious, frankly, and I said so at the time.

00:35:39.120 But you held your tongue and you were positive and you were focused on the prize,

00:35:43.760 which was getting that curriculum thrown out.

00:35:47.280 Mission accomplished.

00:35:48.420 So credit to you for biting your tongue and being a team player in a way that many others wouldn't.

00:35:53.620 I hope that you will have successes in the future.

00:35:56.860 We will cover what you do.

00:35:58.860 We'll cover your projects.

00:36:00.980 We think you have an important voice.

00:36:02.800 That's proved.

00:36:03.740 You, in many ways, helped shape Ontario today, whether it's Doug Ford's own success or this curriculum.

00:36:12.740 So I'd like to say on behalf of our viewers,

00:36:14.720 we think that you are an important part of the public policy conversation.

00:36:18.680 And whatever you do in the weeks and months ahead, keep us posted because we think you're a positive force in this province.

00:36:25.500 Thank you, Ezra.

00:36:26.180 And to all your supporters and viewers who have either personally sent positive messages

00:36:31.320 or I know who've quietly supported the parental rights and just freedom in general.

00:36:37.100 Yeah.

00:36:37.420 Well, I'm hopeful that a little bit of you is rubbed off on Doug.

00:36:40.420 I mean, I think he's a good egg to begin with.

00:36:41.860 I think he's got a good heart.

00:36:43.020 He reminds me of his brother in a lot of ways who had a big heart.

00:36:45.520 I think he's going to be good for the province.

00:36:48.040 I think you've got to stay on him a little bit, though.

00:36:49.940 I think we all do because we have, because let me put it this way,

00:36:53.000 you've got a thousand journalists and other elites pulling him this way.

00:36:57.660 Everyone who can should help pull him that way so at least he can walk straight.

00:37:02.120 Well, and there are also, you know, sex that is one issue.

00:37:04.440 I mean, we have to talk about Bill 89 at some point where children are being removed from their homes

00:37:09.400 if their parents don't subscribe to gender theory and if their child wanted to change sex

00:37:13.080 and they don't get them hormone therapy or surgery, the child will be removed

00:37:18.700 because that's considered abuse, as said so by the minister under Kathleen Wynne's government.

00:37:24.120 So that has to be fixed.

00:37:25.700 Yeah.

00:37:25.880 Well, let's talk about that.

00:37:26.880 I mean, I don't want to jump to that now.

00:37:28.080 That's such a big topic.

00:37:29.240 Let's have you back on another day to talk about that in depth.

00:37:32.740 And then there's even the federal C-16 that Jordan Peterson first brought to the leg.

00:37:37.220 There's so much to talk about.

00:37:38.260 The battle never ends because the other side never rests.

00:37:40.980 But Tanya, it's great to see you again.

00:37:42.720 Thanks for coming by our studio.

00:37:44.640 Congratulations on the effect you've had.

00:37:46.560 I have to say, you've had more impact on Ontario's trajectory perhaps than anyone else other than Doug Ford himself.

00:37:55.680 So congratulations.

00:37:56.740 Well, thank you.

00:37:57.200 And thanks to the parents.

00:37:58.060 This was a parents effort.

00:37:59.200 So it's a victory for parents.

00:38:00.600 Well, great to see you again.

00:38:01.820 There you have it.

00:38:02.520 I admit I'm a bit of a fan boy.

00:38:04.140 I think Tanya has done some great work, and I just said so about four times, but it's the truth, don't you think?

00:38:09.260 Stay with us, folks.

00:38:10.540 More ahead on The Rebel.

00:38:23.600 This is the neighborhood that I live in with my three children.

00:38:28.400 It's amazing, right?

00:38:29.380 It's amazing, right?

00:38:34.140 That is a clip taken by Sammy Barcelos.

00:38:41.380 You heard her.

00:38:41.840 She's a mom of three in Toronto.

00:38:43.980 A drug shooting zone, a shooting gallery in her neighborhood.

00:38:47.540 But it's not illegal.

00:38:49.440 It's not being done on the lowdown.

00:38:51.560 That is the effect of one of Toronto's eight official shooting galleries, the Toronto Public Health Safe Injection Sites.

00:39:03.240 When I hear safe injection sites, it makes me think of the phrase from Small Dead Animals, like a drunk driving lane on the highway.

00:39:10.720 When you have a safe injection site in the city, joining us now is the Toronto Sun columnist who has been writing a series about this, our friend Sue Ann Levy.

00:39:19.980 Great to see you again, Sue Ann.

00:39:20.980 Oh, thank you, Ezra.

00:39:22.040 That was a very quick clip, but it was a mom who has three young kids, and all around her house, well, you describe it.

00:39:30.520 Well, I was there yesterday, so I saw it for myself.

00:39:33.580 When I arrived, her house is right beside a respite shelter.

00:39:38.060 So not only are the people shooting up, but they're coming and going and partying until five in the morning.

00:39:43.960 So they're partying, and that's allowed under the rules.

00:39:46.660 It's allowed, and lawlessness is allowed.

00:39:49.680 And these are, the people who stay in these respite shelters are, let's just say, people who've been kicked out of other shelters.

00:39:56.640 They're transients, they're the lowest of the low, and they are, these respite shelters are supposed to be temporary stopgap measures, 1.00

00:40:04.440 but many of them were open over the winter, and now they've been extended right to the end of the year.

00:40:09.720 A lot of shelters have rules, no drugs, no, I mean, because they want to not only maintain some safety for the other clients,

00:40:18.120 but they want to get these people on the path.

00:40:21.620 So they have some basic rules, a curfew, for example.

00:40:25.240 So you're saying that these, what exactly is a respite shelter?

00:40:29.340 What's the mandate of it?

00:40:31.020 Well, like I said, the respite shelter is supposed to be a temporary stopgap,

00:40:35.700 and it's supposed to just provide some of the homeless, basically to give them a place to sleep.

00:40:43.300 Three hots and a cot, I call it.

00:40:45.520 So it's basically to give them some place to put their heads.

00:40:49.200 However, as I've found out, because there are similar problems up around Park Road with the Collier-Asquith neighborhood,

00:40:58.200 which is right near Young and Bloor Street, so right in the core of the city,

00:41:04.200 these shelters may be able to maintain rules inside, but once the people come outside,

00:41:10.660 which they are, of course, doing at this time of year, there are no rules whatsoever.

00:41:15.040 Yeah. So I can understand if it's minus 20 out, you don't want anyone freezing,

00:41:19.140 even if they're very badly behaved, but it's gloriously sunny and temperate in Toronto.

00:41:24.420 I can imagine these places are magnets, because if they're getting free food and a place to sleep,

00:41:29.320 then they could save their change for, well, for drugs.

00:41:33.240 And, you know, we don't have to be shy about saying that,

00:41:35.340 because that's the explicit purpose of these places.

00:41:38.000 When you say that there's lawlessness there, when Sammy, the mum of three there, calls the cops,

00:41:44.480 what do they even do? Because if these are expressly law-free zones, what's a cop supposed to do?

00:41:50.960 Well, the cops have basically been doing nothing.

00:41:54.160 But they've been instructed, I presume?

00:41:56.520 They've been instructed to stand down around these safe injection sites.

00:42:00.380 And what Sammy has been told is that unless they're doing something, you know, criminal,

00:42:08.180 and they have a knife or a gun or whatever, or they've attacked somebody, they can't respond.

00:42:13.500 So essentially, they can shoot up, they can go through her gate, which they've done, break glass.

00:42:21.520 So now they're getting into her property.

00:42:22.860 Scream and yell at each other.

00:42:23.720 So now they're on her property.

00:42:24.540 Yes, and they're trespassing.

00:42:25.940 And what do the cops do there?

00:42:28.000 Now, I presume that in these shelters, there are some social workers or something.

00:42:32.960 They don't do anything.

00:42:34.340 They don't do anything.

00:42:35.220 So these city staff watch as they go into Sammy's home.

00:42:40.880 They watch this?

00:42:41.900 They see this?

00:42:42.800 Or they turn a blind eye to it, whether they see it or they don't.

00:42:46.060 You know, as I said, the same thing is happening up on Park Road, 21 Park Road.

00:42:50.840 And they've complained about people taking over the parks, prostituting themselves,

00:42:56.720 shooting up, leaving needles.

00:42:58.740 They vandalized the Rabba 24-hour store down the street.

00:43:02.540 The poor guy is losing business left, right, and center.

00:43:04.900 And nothing, nothing has been done. 0.98

00:43:06.940 You know, these people, they're criminals.

00:43:11.900 In some ways, they're probably also victims. 1.00

00:43:14.400 They may be mentally ill.

00:43:16.100 They obviously have addiction issues. 0.99

00:43:18.020 There's a lot of problems here.

00:43:19.540 And I don't want to be a NIMBY-ite.

00:43:22.400 I don't want to say, well, shuffle them off somewhere.

00:43:24.520 But this solution isn't working.

00:43:26.000 You know how, you know what I'm thinking right now, Sue Ann?

00:43:28.880 I don't know the street that John Tory, the mayor, lives on.

00:43:32.100 But if this same respite shelter, I've never even heard that phrase before,

00:43:37.120 were right next to his own precious house.

00:43:40.720 I get the feeling.

00:43:41.720 If we moved it into the fanciest neighborhood in Toronto,

00:43:44.680 Rosedale or a fancy part of Forest Hill or something.

00:43:48.500 He's off of Bloor.

00:43:49.540 Let's just say for sake of argument, he's off of Bloor.

00:43:53.500 The closest respite shelter to his place is at Park Road.

00:43:57.640 There was another one up there.

00:43:58.740 But I'm talking right next to him, like this Sammy, the mum.

00:44:02.000 And he had to run the gauntlet of druggies and people who are harassing her.

00:44:06.640 And by the way, when we arrived there to film these people,

00:44:11.420 they disappeared like cockroaches going back into,

00:44:15.360 because they do not like their pictures taken.

00:44:17.340 Isn't that funny?

00:44:18.120 But they're doing it with impunity anyways.

00:44:20.560 I bet if this, and I don't know Sammy Barcellos.

00:44:24.620 She seems like a nice lady.

00:44:26.120 She's trying to raise three kids. 1.00

00:44:27.620 You got to give her full marks for just doing the best a mum can do.

00:44:31.200 And she's got to be afraid.

00:44:33.180 What if we step on a needle?

00:44:34.960 What if the kids get hurt?

00:44:36.080 What if there's broken glass?

00:44:38.700 You know, they're bringing that onto her property. 1.00

00:44:41.720 She should be treated with the same respect as the high property tax paying Rosedale fancy pants. 1.00

00:44:48.660 Well, that's the thing.

00:44:50.060 And as her husband Michael said, and Michael was a crack cocaine addict.

00:44:54.580 Let me make that perfectly clear.

00:44:56.800 He told me this, and he said that he's been off crack cocaine for 10 years.

00:45:01.140 So he's trying to steer her straight.

00:45:02.820 If he can do it.

00:45:03.020 He's trying to steer straight.

00:45:04.140 Yeah, if he can do it, why can't anybody else?

00:45:06.400 And he doesn't understand.

00:45:07.360 He's seeing this right in front of his eyes.

00:45:08.980 And what he said is that this has become the new normal in their neighborhoods.

00:45:13.540 And that's sad. 0.99

00:45:14.760 It's disgraceful and it's pathetic. 0.98

00:45:16.300 Well, here's what gets me is, again, I don't want to be heartless. 0.99

00:45:19.540 No one wants to be heartless.

00:45:21.040 Great.

00:45:21.200 But I just don't see how this solves anything.

00:45:25.240 At worst, I think it's enabling.

00:45:27.860 Yes.

00:45:28.180 I don't, like it's enabling the behavior.

00:45:30.120 Yes.

00:45:31.140 I don't know what the answer is, but this doesn't seem to be providing any solution.

00:45:37.080 What's, is there an ideology behind this?

00:45:39.520 Well, the safe injection sites, which started really up in Vancouver and now are spreading

00:45:43.480 like wildfire right across Canada.

00:45:45.260 East Hastings Street is notorious.

00:45:47.220 It's one of the worst.

00:45:48.020 It's Dante's Inferno.

00:45:49.260 Yeah.

00:45:49.580 So there were supposed to be four pillars because I've studied this issue.

00:45:52.680 And one of the pillars is supposed to be rehab.

00:45:55.460 Another one is supposed to be enforcement.

00:45:57.200 There's no rehab here.

00:45:57.820 And that's not happening.

00:45:59.440 That is not happening.

00:46:00.880 Jeez.

00:46:01.200 Is this, I tell you, Sue Ann, I'm not going to impress you because last time we talked,

00:46:05.120 I said, come on, you got to run, you got to run.

00:46:07.380 Someone's got to bring the common sense criticism to this mayor.

00:46:11.280 And I know you do that through your journalism and the Toronto Sun's quite good at that.

00:46:14.540 But by gosh, do you see anyone in the horizon who is thinking of running for mayor to challenge

00:46:19.780 this?

00:46:20.260 Like this is the, like the great thing about Canada is we have so many different cities

00:46:24.340 we can learn from each other.

00:46:25.980 Vancouver is like the laboratory that came up with the worst idea in the world.

00:46:29.800 Anyone who's been to East Hastings Street, it's so, it's like zombies and zombies and 0.57

00:46:35.920 crime.

00:46:36.400 And you see people almost dying in front of you and Toronto's importing the bad lessons,

00:46:41.680 not the good.

00:46:42.140 Is there anyone who looks like they might challenge the mayor for in, in, in this year's civic

00:46:49.220 election?

00:46:49.740 Not yet.

00:46:50.220 There's two weeks and three days.

00:46:51.860 So I don't want to put you on the spot, but boy, I'm rooting for you.

00:46:55.480 I mean, I think we need a happy warrior who's going to take it to John Tory and not, not

00:47:01.680 be too shy and dainty.

00:47:03.900 These are tough things that we need a tough person to take on the mayor.

00:47:07.440 Not to mention the violence and the, you know, the escalation in the shootings.

00:47:11.420 I read that there's been more shootings in Toronto than New York.

00:47:14.380 I got to check my stats on that.

00:47:15.780 That's crazy.

00:47:16.740 Yeah.

00:47:16.860 And every other day, every weekend, long holiday weekend, there were 11, 11 incidents.

00:47:23.660 I mean, it's, it's sad what's happening.

00:47:25.560 You know, so Anne, I'm glad that Doug Ford is premier.

00:47:28.760 I'm thrilled.

00:47:29.820 And I think a lot of people are surprised.

00:47:31.860 You go back in January, no one would have thought because everyone thought Patrick Brown

00:47:35.120 was running, but him moving to the provincial level has created a void.

00:47:39.560 And, and I sure hope someone fills that.

00:47:42.140 And if that's you, we'll be on side.

00:47:44.040 If it's someone else who champions confidence ideas, we'll be there for them too.

00:47:48.480 Okay.

00:47:49.200 Think about it.

00:47:50.000 I know I'm, I know, I don't mean to put you under, well, I sort of do, but we'll be there.

00:47:54.200 And, and you know what?

00:47:55.600 You have a very important influence in the Toronto sun.

00:47:58.240 You have had a very key role in the provincial election.

00:48:00.440 So at the very least, I know you'll keep writing about this, but we need a champion at

00:48:04.280 the ballot box.

00:48:04.960 That's the only place to get this done.

00:48:06.320 Yeah.

00:48:07.100 All right.

00:48:07.540 Well, good luck.

00:48:08.220 Good luck, my friend.

00:48:09.100 There you have it.

00:48:09.580 You can see, you can see that I'm sort of twisting Sue Ann's arm.

00:48:13.280 Boy, I'd love it if she ran. 1.00

00:48:14.740 Wouldn't be the first time a journalist.

00:48:16.860 I mean, I think of one of the greatest journalist politicians of all time in Canada, Ralph Klein,

00:48:23.620 who was a man of the people.

00:48:25.200 He became mayor and then premier, one of the most successful because he had the common

00:48:28.560 sense of the common man and he got through all the BS.

00:48:32.040 I think Toronto needs that.

00:48:33.160 All right.

00:48:33.400 That's enough of pining from me.

00:48:34.960 Our friend Sue Ann Levy, you can read her columns in the Toronto Sun.

00:48:37.340 She's done a series on this.

00:48:38.760 It's gripping stuff.

00:48:39.700 Stay with us.

00:48:40.680 More ahead on the Rebel.

00:48:43.280 Welcome back.

00:48:54.720 On my monologue yesterday about Donald Trump calling out NATO countries for not pulling

00:48:59.120 their weight, Bruce writes,

00:49:00.200 Trump is the first real person to confront NATO.

00:49:04.200 I find his honesty refreshing and welcome.

00:49:06.220 He didn't swear or call names.

00:49:07.680 He just told it like it is.

00:49:09.100 How I wish we had more real people in power rather than myopic politicians who only care

00:49:13.700 for themselves.

00:49:15.980 Yeah.

00:49:16.220 You know what?

00:49:16.540 Most of what Trump says that irritates people, I think it irritates people.

00:49:19.980 They say it's because the style and the aesthetic approach of Trump and the tone.

00:49:25.060 Yeah, I think it's because he says blunt things, the substance of them.

00:49:30.960 I watched that exchange at NATO.

00:49:32.840 He wasn't shouting.

00:49:33.960 He was saying things that made people uncomfortable.

00:49:36.560 The words, not the tone.

00:49:38.420 I think you're right.

00:49:40.220 Amy writes,

00:49:40.760 Well, sister, going back to 1945, it would be from the Soviet Union.

00:49:52.880 From 1945 to 1989, we were in a Cold War.

00:49:56.280 And although I salute the efforts of our Canadian military, only a fool would realize that we

00:50:00.880 were not under the protective shield of NATO and NORAD and, to the point, American nukes.

00:50:07.600 It was mutually assured destruction of the American nuclear arsenal that kept the peace 0.97

00:50:14.280 during the Cold War.

00:50:15.700 Now, that was for, what, 44 years.

00:50:19.860 Well, who was defending us against a great many threats since then?

00:50:24.460 The renewed Russian bear under Vladimir Putin.

00:50:27.860 Terrorism around the world.

00:50:30.320 Yeah, listen, I wish that we were, as they said in World War I, a fireproof country far away

00:50:36.280 from inflammable material.

00:50:38.040 But that ain't true in the era of ICBM's globalism and terrorism.

00:50:42.440 So, yeah, even if you don't like to acknowledge it, it is a fact.

00:50:47.060 America pays for our national security.

00:50:49.120 And we're so lucky to have them do so.

00:50:50.900 What we have now is a president who's just saying,

00:50:53.080 Hey, can you pay 2%?

00:50:54.840 Can you pay just 2%?

00:50:57.040 I don't really think it's unreasonable.

00:50:58.480 And if you do, don't pretend that you're part of NATO.

00:51:00.680 I mean, don't pretend you want an equal compact of equal countries.

00:51:04.900 Just say, yeah, we want America.

00:51:06.300 You keep doing it for free.

00:51:07.440 I think Trump's calling it out.

00:51:09.740 Folks, that's our show for today.

00:51:11.140 I hope you enjoyed it.

00:51:11.940 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:51:15.400 good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:51:17.620 We'll see you next time.

Rebel News Podcast - July 13, 2018

＂Terrifying＂ and ＂cult-like＂： Facebook video reveals their new censorship scheme

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