The Candice Malcolm Show - True North’s Investigative Reporting EXPOSES Critical Race Theory in Canada

00:00:00.000 True North has been sounding the alarm bell about critical race theory, its presence in our schools

00:00:04.580 and the threat posed by the woke left for a very long time. Today we'll talk to one of the

00:00:09.720 reporters on the front lines of this issue. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm

00:00:14.400 Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in to The Candice Malcolm Show. I hope everybody

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00:00:33.860 for the final week as well as the week between Christmas and New Year's. If you're watching

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00:00:57.960 Google or Apple Podcasts, please leave us a five-star review if you enjoy the show. Okay,

00:01:03.060 today I am pleased to be joined by one of the star reporters here at True North, Sue Ann

00:01:08.020 Levy. Sue Ann is an investigative journalist and reporter with True North. She recently retired

00:01:12.900 after 30 years of investigative reporting and writing columns for the Toronto Sun and Post

00:01:18.540 Medium. Sue Ann is a two-time investigative reporting award winner and a nine-time winner of Toronto

00:01:25.480 Sun's Reader Choice Award for news writing. Sue Ann Levy made a name for herself by advocating for the 0.91

00:01:31.940 poor, the homeless, the elderly and long-term care facilities and others without a voice and for

00:01:37.400 fighting against the rise of anti-Semitism and the BDS movement across Canada. Sue Ann,

00:01:43.400 thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Candice.

00:01:46.260 So we were talking before air and you informed me that you joined True North in July. I have to say,

00:01:53.480 I thought it had been longer. It feels like you've been with us for much longer, Sue Ann,

00:01:56.960 but you're such a great addition to our team and we really are fortunate to have you reporting for us.

00:02:02.660 So let's talk about the last six months that you have been on staff with True North and reporting and

00:02:09.040 doing your investigations for us. Let's go through some of the biggest stories that you have broken.

00:02:13.600 So from your perspective, Sue Ann, what has been the biggest thing that you've uncovered for True North

00:02:18.860 since running our team? Well, I think the explosion of anti-Black racism initiatives has taken even me

00:02:26.280 by surprise. The selective, we'll call it racism, where Black students are singled out, even though they

00:02:35.120 comprise a very small part of the populations of the school boards in the greater Toronto area. We're

00:02:43.420 talking about Toronto school board. We're talking about the Peel school board and all the initiatives

00:02:48.900 and all the pandering that has occurred and all the time and resources that have gone into

00:02:55.220 developing special woke initiatives to deal with Black students and Black staff.

00:03:02.680 So that has actually really surprised me, but I shouldn't be surprised because during COVID,

00:03:08.020 during the pandemic, a lot of these things were percolating behind closed doors. And, you know,

00:03:14.960 and then I guess parents, a lot of parents and a lot of people in the public have just woken up to

00:03:21.820 the fact that this is occurring now that kids have gone back to school this fall.

00:03:27.020 Well, it's interesting because it was all, from my perspective, it was all in response to the killing

00:03:32.100 of George Floyd in the U.S. the previous summer. And that sort of launched this huge social movement

00:03:38.060 across the U.S. and it spilled over into Canada, into the U.K., into Europe, probably into Australia

00:03:42.800 as well, where, you know, we were having discussions about police brutality and some of the issues around

00:03:48.880 that. And it just seems like this thing has taken on a life of its own, where it's the new trendy

00:03:53.900 leftist thing, critical race theory, you know, there's teaching in critical race theory,

00:03:59.000 this idea that somehow if you're Black, you deserve different treatment, which, to your point,

00:04:06.140 that's the definition of racism, to single out a group of people. You know, Canada is an incredibly

00:04:10.360 diverse country. Toronto is one of the most diverse cities in the entire world. And here we are

00:04:16.140 cutting out different policies, different rules, different treatment for one group of people.

00:04:21.340 I can't imagine it's going to end well. I can't imagine it's good for anyone. It's certainly not good

00:04:25.080 for Black students who are told that they live in an oppressive system that's against them.

00:04:30.780 What are some of the specific things that you've uncovered here at True North? And, you know,

00:04:36.440 I know it makes your head shake, but maybe you can sort of walk us through some of the crazy

00:04:40.600 things that they're doing. Well, Peel School Board, for example, only teachers who have,

00:04:47.500 I guess, intervened in some act of oppression, and you have studied equity and diversity,

00:04:57.140 specifically anti-Black racism, are being promoted to principal and vice principal. So there's a

00:05:03.660 specific selective view of what comprises leadership, rather than academics, mentoring,

00:05:14.320 that kind of thing. That has totally been ignored. And that's happening this fall at the Peel School

00:05:21.780 Board. At the Toronto School Board, the new director who came from Peel and is a Black activist and

00:05:30.120 allies yourself with a Black Lives Matter movement hired Desmond Cole to give a series of talks. In

00:05:37.340 September, four talks for which he earned $16,000 of taxpayer money, and during which he deviated into a

00:05:48.560 rant about Palestine, and a very anti-Semitic rant. He even brought up me that I was the most hateful

00:05:55.600 columnist in Canada, because I had covered other anti-Semitism at the board, and went on and on and on

00:06:02.280 to the shock and chagrin of many of the people who attended. The director never apologized to the

00:06:10.240 Jewish community. It was a terribly anti-Semitic rant. He did it on the Monday, September 20th,

00:06:15.440 and then was allowed to continue with the two talks on September the 23rd, which was shocking to me

00:06:21.440 that they didn't put a stop to it.

00:06:23.640 Yeah, I mean, that's wild, and I know that you and Desmond Cole have not quite seen eye to eye,

00:06:31.180 but he seems a little bit obsessed with you, Sue Ann, I must say. The fact that he just sort of

00:06:35.040 randomly brought you up there was a little bit strange. I think you live rent-free in his head.

00:06:42.740 And so, Sue Ann, you've covered some other big stories for us. The memorable one for me

00:06:47.560 was this incredible story of the tent cities and the squatters who really took over Toronto parks.

00:06:54.080 And, you know, I understand that the pandemic was a really rough time for a lot of people,

00:06:59.020 and that a lot of people really struggled. The homeless population did increase, and it just

00:07:04.700 seemed like a terrible way to deal with it by allowing people to live in parks. And as you reported,

00:07:10.020 a lot of it devolved into crime. It wasn't even necessarily, you know, the people who were showing

00:07:15.320 up weren't necessarily even the homeless people themselves. They were the hard-left activists

00:07:19.420 that were just there for a fight against the police. And you covered this issue in depth. So,

00:07:25.520 why don't you walk us through that story, and then let us know what the latest development is with

00:07:30.380 these tent cities. Well, good news is that a number of the parks have been cleaned out for the winter. 0.99

00:07:35.460 The bad news is that they're still occupying several parks in downtown Toronto. What happens is they

00:07:41.640 move from park to park. And while I was, you know, with you, I had the fortunate occasion to go into

00:07:50.120 Dufferin Grove Park, where there was a group of Indigenous people who chased myself and our videographer 1.00

00:07:56.500 out of the park, screaming, you know, that we were filming their sacred fire. And for one thing,

00:08:04.520 I didn't even know there was a fire there. But for the other, it really showed how these people have

00:08:10.000 taken control of these parks and think they're their own, and they get very agitated because

00:08:16.480 they, you know, they're upset with us coming in and writing about it when, in fact, they're public

00:08:22.240 parks. The thing that concerns me is, aside from all the crime, the drug dealing, the unsafe conditions,

00:08:29.160 unsanitary, the rats, there are hotel shelters that have been put in place across the city by the

00:08:36.120 city of Toronto, costing $220 a night. There's one that has been very controversial down on the

00:08:42.940 Esplanade of Toronto, which is a tourist area, a top tourist area, in the Novotel. Now, the owners of

00:08:49.940 the Novotel, the Silver Hotel Group, have rented out several of their hotels, leased them out to the

00:08:55.980 city during COVID because they, of course, weren't getting tourists. And that those hotels have been

00:09:02.460 turned into a crime scene. It's absurd. So first of all, there are hotels where these people can go.

00:09:08.140 And the fact that some are still in parks is just obscene, in my view. But then you've got these

00:09:14.840 people in these upscale hotels, in tourist areas, in nice districts, law-abiding communities,

00:09:23.380 just wreaking havoc on the communities. There's been crime. There's a group of people down by the

00:09:30.580 Esplanade who live in, you know, very nice condo buildings attached to the Novotel who've documented

00:09:37.080 weekly what's going on down there. Fires, arson, smash and grabs, bike. They have a whole bike ring

00:09:46.060 operating out of the hotel. Drug dealing. I revealed a couple of weeks ago that they had found three long

00:09:52.960 guns in the hotel. I mean, it's absurd, Candace, what is going on. And the mayor and council seem to

00:10:01.380 be turning a blind eye to all of it. They put on a few extra police officers. But other than that,

00:10:07.840 it's continuing.

00:10:09.500 Well, the lawlessness is what is so striking, Sue Ann. And I remember when you went down to that park,

00:10:14.780 Dufferin Grove, and you filmed it. You know, the attitude of the leftist sides, they're so anti-democratic,

00:10:21.400 anti-freedom, that they didn't think that it was your right to film them. It's like, hey, look, I'm a journalist.

00:10:26.720 I do have a right to be here. We're in a public park. Like, I can't imagine, you know, the alternative if

00:10:32.420 a group of right-wing activists, you know, physically stopped journalists from recording them and tried to say

00:10:39.580 that they don't have a right to do their journalism, what the response would have been. I know it would have been

00:10:43.860 the biggest country, biggest story in the country, of course, when it happens to us, the other journalists

00:10:48.520 don't bat an eye. But yeah, you alluded to something else that I think is a really troubling

00:10:54.220 trend, and that is the enabling of hard drug use. And I know that this is a story that you've covered

00:11:01.000 a lot. I know there was that crazy story out in Vancouver of a city councillor actually helping to

00:11:06.460 hand out heroin and other very, very serious drugs on the streets of Vancouver. Where does this trend

00:11:13.380 come from, Sue Ann? What is going on in the world where politicians enable this kind of hard

00:11:20.060 drug use? It's wild. It is all coming up from the states, unfortunately. And our city, as I've pointed

00:11:26.620 out in the past, is fast becoming like a Seattle, like a Portland, like San Francisco. Thankfully,

00:11:33.720 there is a conservative mayor who's been voted in in Seattle who has vowed to clean up these

00:11:40.880 encampments and the drug use. But here, unfortunately, we've got all these safe injection

00:11:47.440 sites and harm reduction sites located in shelters, where homeless people are allowed to take their

00:11:55.440 drugs, their illegal drugs, but safely. And they go into rooms and they're shot up with clean needles,

00:12:02.000 then sent back out on the street. Or in the case of the shelters, they're allowed to roam the streets.

00:12:06.200 And so they've taken their drugs, but safely. But what does this attract? This attracts drug dealers

00:12:12.560 to these sites. And I've actually physically been down to some of these sites and seen where they

00:12:18.040 operate. The drug dealers were operating out of a bus shelter at Dundas and Sherbourne, as I discovered

00:12:23.380 a summer ago. So it's increased drug dealing. Of course, it's increased turf battles. And I take great

00:12:33.260 exception to the enabling of drug addicts. They're supposed to be a component of rehab that's not

00:12:39.980 included. The drug harm reduction industry is in just full throttle trying to intimidate those,

00:12:46.820 including me, who speak up against this enabling philosophy. And you asked about what to watch.

00:12:54.100 Well, the Toronto Board of Health is looking to get some sort of approval from the government of Canada

00:13:03.540 to make illegal drugs, you know, to decriminalize illegal drug use in the city. So this is something

00:13:12.460 we've got to watch over the next couple of months. And knowing Trudeau, and knowing his government,

00:13:17.580 that could happen.

00:13:19.260 It's like, it's like they all outdo themselves to find out who can be the most progressive and

00:13:24.580 the most insane. I mean, the idea that we're enabling drug use and saying it's okay, and

00:13:29.120 facilitating it and creating incentives for it, Sue Ann, what does that say about us as a society? I

00:13:34.740 mean, wow. You mentioned that Seattle elected a new mayor that was more on the conservative side.

00:13:40.800 That's interesting. I know we have a couple of elections coming up in Ontario in 2022. So I'm

00:13:47.540 looking forward to your coverage already, Sue Ann, but why don't you walk us through what those

00:13:50.880 elections are? And, you know, who's running? Do we have any new candidates running for mayor in

00:13:56.020 Toronto?

00:13:57.020 Well, not at the moment, but we are really crying for somebody to come in and clean up the city.

00:14:05.280 I am not, as I've made it clear, a fan of the current mayor or the current council. I think

00:14:11.040 they've bent over backwards to the special interest groups, and the city has deteriorated immensely.

00:14:17.760 The roads are a mess. We've got drug addicts roaming the downtown core. We have, you know, as I've

00:14:24.800 talked about, encampments. And this whole enabling philosophy has just taken Toronto down a very dark

00:14:32.020 path. And there are a lot of people who would agree with me. But it sounds like John Tory is thinking

00:14:38.060 of running again. And I think he needs a strong conservative to come up against him, someone like

00:14:43.840 the gentleman in Seattle who came. And I think people are crying for that kind of change. So I'm hoping

00:14:51.360 to see over the next couple months, someone come out of the woodwork. I'm calling, I'm calling for

00:14:56.680 candidates. As far as Ontario is concerned, this is going to be, and I'll just backtrack to John Tory

00:15:03.480 for a minute. Because here he is spending his time pushing vaccines for small children, instead of

00:15:10.120 dealing with the real issues of the city. The man has become a vaccine cheerleader. It's actually

00:15:15.880 sickening to watch his social media feed. And they've all succumbed to this pandemic. I don't know, they,

00:15:25.980 they're so absorbed by the pandemic that nothing else matters. And the same for Doug Ford, although he's a

00:15:33.460 little bit better with some other things. And I think that the election, the Ontario election is

00:15:39.920 going to be a real test of how he's dealt with the pandemic, how he's dealt with leadership. Of course,

00:15:46.960 what's haunting him is how terribly the long term care homes were afflicted by pandemic. I myself lost

00:15:57.460 my father to COVID in a facility, not one of the worst ones, one of the better ones. But I mean, how many people

00:16:07.700 lost their lives, it was 1000s of seniors lost their lives in these terrible long term care facilities. And I don't

00:16:15.980 see much movement, frankly, in terms of how they've improved over the last year, lots of talk, not a lot of action. That

00:16:25.760 should be one of the top issues. I'm not sure it will be because, you know, seniors don't really

00:16:30.720 matter. It'll be, you know, how many crumbs he provides in terms of daycare, whether he appeals to

00:16:36.940 the woke crowd, you know how it works. Absolutely. Well, Doug Ford is usually pretty good about not going

00:16:44.640 down that path. Although when it comes to policy, he's much more susceptible to flip flopping where he'll,

00:16:51.840 you know, he came out and he said no to the vaccine passports. He said he didn't want to divide society

00:16:55.840 up that way. And then a few weeks later, he kind of came around to the expert opinion that that was

00:17:01.280 the only way to go. And that's just one example. It has happened many times. So who are the major

00:17:09.280 contenders against Doug Ford? Because, you know, he's got the name recognition. He's done a pretty good

00:17:14.400 job, you know, just generally speaking. And, you know, we have a new liberal, a new liberal leader

00:17:19.920 that's perhaps not as well known, and an NDP leader that's a little bit stagnant. So what, you know,

00:17:26.400 do you think that either of those contenders have a real shot against Ford?

00:17:30.400 No, I don't think so. I actually don't think so. I mean, the unions will try. They've always tried

00:17:35.760 to rule Ontario, particularly the teachers unions. But I see their pushback very weak in terms of on

00:17:43.760 social media and things like that. Andrea Horvath really should step down at this point and find a 1.00

00:17:49.520 more inspiring leader. She's run a couple of elections. And I mean, last election was the election she was

00:17:56.320 supposed to win or come close to winning. She didn't even come close. She's not inspiring.

00:18:02.240 Steven Del Duca is just, I don't know where he is. He is just totally uninspiring, uncreative. He's not,

00:18:12.080 he's not leadership material. And look at, they have a caucus of what? I don't know, six people,

00:18:17.760 maybe. Kathleen Wynne is going to call it quits. Thank goodness she's not running again. And 0.99

00:18:25.200 you know, who do they have? Who is going to run? It boggles my mind that the federal liberals did so

00:18:34.560 well in Toronto, really, when the provincial liberals were just basically shut out. I can't

00:18:41.440 understand. It's a great disconnect. Well, it's all that conventional wisdom that people in Ontario are

00:18:47.680 so middle of the road that they're happy to vote. You know, if they vote federally for the liberals,

00:18:52.240 are going to vote provincially for the Tories, or maybe it's because all the talented politicians

00:18:57.280 for the liberals have gone federal because they have a better shot at winning there. Well, Sued,

00:19:01.760 thank you so much for joining us at TrueNorth. It's so great to have you part of the organization,

00:19:06.560 part of the team, and I know you're going to do great things for us in 2022. So thank you.

00:19:11.600 Thank you. Thank you very much, Candice.

00:19:14.240 All right. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:19:22.240 Thank you.

00:19:22.880 Thank you.

00:19:23.440 Thank you.

The Candice Malcolm Show - December 13, 2021

True North’s Investigative Reporting EXPOSES Critical Race Theory in Canada

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