Western Standard - Israeli ambassador says Canadians may have to surrender freedoms

00:00:00.000 Some, I think, rather ill-advised comments from the Israeli ambassador to Canada.

00:00:06.900 We covered this yesterday, both in the news and we had an editorial on it.

00:00:11.140 The Israeli ambassador to Canada said, you know, all lies of the world are on Canada.

00:00:16.700 There's been a significant increase in anti-Semitism and hate incidents against our Jewish community.

00:00:24.780 I don't think many reasonable people would have disagreed with him.

00:00:28.280 but he kept on talking and he says uh you know this uh uh this could um this this is you know

00:00:38.360 gonna need uh Canadians to give up some of their freedoms he did say what freedoms I think the

00:00:42.800 implication is more likely around freedom of speech possibly privacy rights you know with

00:00:48.940 internet spying from the government or something hard to say but probably most significantly

00:00:52.720 freedom of speech freedom of assembly those kinds of things but saying in order to combat

00:00:57.840 the rise of anti-semitism dave uh we're gonna have to give up some of our uh our freedoms

00:01:03.920 yeah sing for a foreign ambassador to say yes that's what he said so you're supposed to let

00:01:09.280 me introduce all that stuff oh i'm kind of tossing it to you to suss it out oh okay well i can't you

00:01:14.480 you said it all uh yes that's what he said uh clearly stepped over the boundary of uh diplomatic

00:01:21.360 lines. You don't go into a foreign country, no matter where in the world, and tell their

00:01:28.460 governments what to do. As far as I could see, Derek, we were the only media that covered that

00:01:35.220 angle, so I'm not expecting much of a rebuke from the Liberal government. Normally, the ambassador

00:01:41.620 would be called in by the foreign minister and given a stern talking to, but I don't see that

00:01:47.960 happening here.

00:01:51.360 Thank you.

Western Standard - March 23, 2026