Ezra Levant’s May 25, 2018 episode examines Tommy Robinson’s 13-month prison sentence for filming a Facebook Live near Leeds courts, despite no trial interference, while Toronto plans to house 800 illegal migrants in student dorms and community centers—breaking Canada’s safe third-country agreement. Polls show 92% of Canadians oppose current immigration levels, yet unions endorse the NDP over Liberals, risking fiscal recklessness like past "accidental government" scenarios. Swift warns Horvath’s policies favor union cash grabs over taxpayers, while climate propaganda distorts public debate. The episode ties free speech crackdowns to rising political authoritarianism and immigration chaos, questioning whether open borders and union-backed governance threaten democratic stability. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Tommy Robinson was sentenced to a year in prison today.
The story is subject to a publication ban in the UK, but I'm in Canada and I'll tell you the shocking facts.
It's May 25th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government for why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do stuff.
Tommy Robinson was arrested today in Leeds in the UK outside the courthouse.
A few hours later he was sentenced to 13 months in prison.
I've never heard of that before.
Normally there's an alleged offense, then an arrest, then the charges, then lawyers get involved, then a first court appearance and maybe bail and then disclosure of documents and then a trial and then a conviction and then a sentence and then an appeal.
Normally that takes months, maybe years, but this happened today in just a few hours from Tommy standing on the street laughing, talking to be sent to prison for 13 months.
That happened in the United Kingdom today.
And while Tommy Robinson is the man who was condemned, I think the UK courts, well, they committed murder of their own reputation for liberty and law.
Let me show you the moment it happened.
Here is the arrest filmed by Tommy's own cameraman.
The content of one stream in told I'll be arrested for greater than the money.
You've all watched this.
You've all watched this.
Can you get me a solicitor?
Can you give me a solicitor?
Can you get me a solicitor?
Do you understand what I'm just talking about?
So can you explain to the person on suspicion calling a breach of the peace?
What does that mean?
What does that mean, Lisa?
What does that mean, officer?
I've got a question on something which you may like to do.
What does that mean?
I've been told that the pleasure of the burden is a kid, but I'm not a good person.
No, Tom.
George, that's the information I've done.
I'm inciting you with video.
How have I been?
This is free speech.
This is where we're at.
We're not even allowed to.
Look at this.
Look how many people!
Do you know when you do this?
More people!
Do you want me to shut things up?
I'll just let them do this.
A lot more people watch this now than ever.
This is ridiculous.
Leslie, do you feel right when you're doing it?
I haven't said a word.
In fact, someone laid their hand and assaulted me outside court.
Other people have shrunk.
I'm threatened to behave.
They threatened me about my mother, and here I am being arrested for saying nothing.
I'm threatened to beheaded.
What are you arresting me for, Tommy?
Breach of the peace.
Apparently, I'm inciting on my video.
Can you please, George, get me a solicitor?
I'm going to suspend his sentence, you see.
I don't consult anything like that.
Causing a disturbance?
But he was standing by himself on the public street.
He had a cameraman with him and another supporter, but it wasn't a public disturbance.
It wasn't public at all, really.
There was no crowd either on his side or against him.
There was no disturbance.
In fact, Tommy had been just talking into his cell phone.
You can see an image of it behind me.
He was doing a Facebook video live stream, and he had been doing it for literally one hour.
Just standing and talking into the camera, running commentary for one hour.
A few times during that hour, people walked up to him on the street to have a very brief conversation.
And Tommy did talk with them, and they were all polite, even when someone disagreed with him.
No swearing, no shouting.
Tommy kept the camera running for a full hour until that arrest.
I think I counted seven cops there.
Public disturbance?
He was practically alone by himself for an hour.
Here's a sample of that one-hour live stream.
It was an interesting conversation.
It was political.
He had a strong point of view, but it was not a disturbance.
There was no exhortation to take any action.
He was doing journalism.
He was standing outside a courthouse where a Muslim rape gang was on trial.
Here's just a sample of one hour of Tommy just talking.
I'm outside Leeds Crown Court, where today 10 men are facing verdicts.
They're verdicts for a grooming, alleged grooming and rape scandal.
People need to know what's going on.
People need to know these court cases are happening.
Obviously, the problem is you have people out who think I'm a wanker for reporting on it.
It's not, what's the goddamn do of you?
What's the God do of you?
What's it got to do with me?
I'm an Englishman and they're English girls.
They're women.
They're young girls.
Residents now feel they can no longer rely on police in these issues and they're patrolling and highlighting and trying to combat this epidemic.
The streets were empty.
You could see it was rainy out.
Tommy was literally looking into the camera and just talking for an hour, holding his own phone.
He was pacing and slowly wandering around a bit.
And you can see that there was no one there.
Public disturbance?
It was impossible.
There was no public to disturb.
And he wasn't disturbing.
Now, literally an hour before his arrest, Tommy had asked a few tough questions of two Muslim men who were on trial and were in court that day, today, to hear the verdict on their trial for raping white girls and forcing them into prostitution.
Tommy accosted the men and asked them if they were feeling guilty and what they had to say about the young girls as young as 11 years old who were raped.
The entire interaction was very brief.
It was aggressive, sure, but the men went away quickly.
They were just walking into court.
There was no rule against hollering at an accused rapist.
Tommy was very careful throughout his whole broadcast to always call them accused or alleged criminals.
I listened closely.
He was very careful.
And it's a judge-only trial, by the way.
There's no jury.
And today's the sentencing day.
It's not like Tommy's interaction with these accused criminals, it was very brief, would alter the course of the trial or tamper with a jury.
There was no jury here.
Just for full disclosure, I want to show you the entire footage of Tommy hollering at a couple of criminal accused.
How are you feeling?
How are you feeling about your verdict?
What verdict?
How you feeling about the verdict?
You've got your prison bag, are you huh?
You got your bags for me, got your bags for you?
Yeah, well, how are you feeling about the verdict?
You've got no guilt.
Is there any guilt?
Is there any kill, mate?
Is there any kill?
Stop.
It's the devil.
Now, was that a disturbance?
I suppose in the dictionary definition of the word, it was a disturbance.
It was a bit of an interruption, a bit of noise, but it lasted just, what was that?
Less than 30 seconds.
And it was neither violent nor threatening, other than that one man who threatened Tommy's mum.
You'll notice Tommy didn't even go up the steps on the courthouse.
He was very careful not to be on court property.
Was Tommy accusatory or insulting?
Sure, but it's a free country.
Sort of.
Anyways, that was literally an hour before he was arrested.
He was standing there for an hour thereafter.
There was no disturbance when police descended on him an hour later.
Seven of them, they were arresting him for something that was clearly not happening.
And we could all see it.
I should say, because when Tommy worked with us at the rebel, we had this issue with Tommy before.
Tommy was very careful about where he stood.
He did not stand on court property because a year ago, when he did stand on court property, he was arrested for contempt of court for having a video camera running on the steps of the court.
Now that's absurd.
That's unfair.
Every single journalist in the UK and in Canada sets up their cameras on the steps of the courthouse to do court reports.
It's normal.
It's positively where press conferences are scheduled.
But Tommy was held in contempt of court a year ago for doing what every other journalist does.
So he was very careful this time.
I could tell.
He didn't stand where he was not supposed to stand.
And in part of the video, you can hear him confirm this, both to his viewers and with some court official.
Officer, are they at these stairs?
Whilst recording?
No, it's this.
Okay, so I'll stay off him.
Cool.
It's obviously not on the court steps.
By the way, last time Tommy was arrested for this trumped-up charge, it was a 4 a.m. raid on his home.
4 a.m. just for maximum political harassment to his family.
They could have popped in in the daytime.
They could have phoned or emailed him and asked him to come in, but they raided his house in the dead of night like he was a terrorist just to demoralize him, scare his wife and kids.
Remember this?
0452.
0452 and the police were at my house.
And I'm being arrested for going to a court case in Canterbury and trying to video the Muslim Peter Foss.
As long as I see your camera's on, that's fine.
He arrested unsufficient content of court on the 8th of the 5th, 2017 at Canterbury Court.
Well, they didn't do that this time.
They didn't wait till the dead of night to get him from his bed.
They arrested him in the day.
Now, last time, when he worked with the rebel, we hired the best lawyers in the UK for him.
But he was still convicted, and it was the same judge who sent for Tommy, who was mad at Tommy, who sat in judgment of Tommy.
And Tommy was sentenced to three months in prison a year ago, in prison, for taking a 45-second selfie video.
Now, that three-month sentence last year was suspended for an 18-month period, which means he didn't have to go to jail for three months, but it was hanging over him like a dagger on a thread, that three-month sentence.
And still, since we're in that 18-month period, so if he's convicted of contempt of court or whatever, that three months becomes alive.
And that's what happened today.
Let me show you some more.
Tommy isn't working for the rebel now.
He's independent, but we still keep in touch from time to time.
And I've privately reached out to his team to see if we can help.
But I don't want to interfere with his strategy or do anything without his permission.
Tommy was briefly released, but then was ordered back to court today.
Here's the court docket.
You can see Tommy's on there for contempt of court.
Not the breach of the peace that the cops said when they arrested him.
And we've blurred them out here, but those were all names of the Muslim rape accused.
That's the gang members.
Now I'm blurring the names because as I write this, I don't know if they were convicted or not.
And apparently the names were subject to a publication ban.
But it is a fact that other media had published these names in public.
And we happen to be in Canada, so the ban probably wouldn't apply to us too.
But out of an abundance of caution, I'm blacking the names out.
But that's what they used to arrest Tommy today for.
For saying those names, for contempt of court, for naming the accused rapists, even though that information had already been published in the mainstream media and the trial was over and there was no jury that could have seen Tommy's comments and been affected in any way.
Tommy's long-standing lawyers were not notified of his arrest today.
Instead, Tommy was rushed into court that moment, given a court-appointed lawyer who was neither an expert in contempt of court law nor familiar with Tommy and his legal history.
And the hearing was done in a matter of minutes, in minutes.
That used to be called a drumhead trial, from arrest to conviction to sentencing in a couple of hours.
And Tommy was sentenced to a shocking 13-month prison term.
Tommy got a longer sentence for reporting on rape gangs than many rape gangs themselves receive for rape.
Even crazier, the judge today issued a publication ban about Tommy, making it illegal to report the details of Tommy's case.
Now, that publication ban only applies to the United Kingdom and the rebel media.
We're based here in North America, which is why I'm free to talk about it.
So what?
13-month prison sentence and a publication man.
No one in Britain can even talk about this.
Look at this Google news search.
Lots of coverage of Tommy's case.
Look at all these news stories.
But if you click on any of the British media, they've taken down the stories.
It was secret.
Tommy was convicted and the judge ordered that it be kept secret.
Look at that.
All deleted.
Sorry, is that the freest country in the world?
Or is that the place that Orwell warned us about?
Now, why?
Did Tommy cause a disturbance?
No, he did not.
Did Tommy wreck a trial?
No, he did not.
It is because Tommy speaks boldly about the Islamification of society, especially the systematic rape of young British girls at the hands of Muslim migrants.
We don't understand what rape gangs are here in Canada or the U.S.
And thank God, it's not like a man jumps out of the bushes, grabs a woman, and rapes her and runs off.
That's not what rape gangs do in the UK.
It's much more systematic than that.
It's organized, it's planned, it's like in Rotherham where 1,400 young girls were raped.
They were tricked, entrapped, and extorted, and not just raped once, they were raped dozens, hundreds of times.
A young girl, say just 12 years old, might be approached by a man who offers them candy or cigarettes or even a drink of alcohol or drugs, but that usually comes later.
It could even just start by telling a young, impressionable girl, I love you.
Do you want a grown-up boyfriend?
Something that might be appealing and tempting to a young girl.
And I'm giving an actual example here.
And then the man would say, ah, you've had a free meal or a free drink.
Now let me take a topless picture of you as thanks.
And then he says, aha, I'm going to show this picture to your mother and I'm going to tell her what you've done unless you sleep with me.
And then sleep with my friends, or I'll tell your mother, you slept with me, and we're going to pass you around.
And if you tell anyone, well, we know where you live and we know where your mother lives and we're going to burn down your house.
That is an actual example I'm giving you.
That actually happened.
I'm not making that scenario up.
That happened.
That's what rape gangs, grooming gangs are in the UK.
It's not a brute force attack, grab a woman in a dark alley.
It's extortion and exploitation targeting young girls.
As young as 11, the girls feel trapped and ashamed and the Muslim men, and they're almost always Muslim men and the victims are almost always white girls.
There are some Sikh girls targeted too.
The Muslim men don't report each other to the police.
They don't stop each other.
They join in together.
That's why they're called gangs.
They pass these girls around as young as 11 years old for years.
Of course, there's other criminality too, violence, threats of violence, even murder.
So the first problem is the individual criminals.
The second problem is that other men collude with each other to support them and help in the con and help in the rape.
And the third problem is that every single authority turns a blind eye to this police, the press, politicians, prosecutors, professors, because it's politically incorrect to criticize Muslims.
And the perpetrators are almost all Muslims.
And the victims are almost all white girls.
It's racist to mention it, you see.
Refugee Crisis in Toronto00:15:08
And even if they had the courage to speak the truth, what do you do?
There are so many millions of Muslims in the UK now, and a large percent support Sharia law.
And there are literally 23,000 jihadis on the loose in the UK that they know about.
Holy warriors suspected of being terrorist sleepers.
Those are known to the UK authorities.
So the authorities are paralyzed by fear, fear of being called Islamophobic, and even more fear of violence from the 23,000 terrorists within.
Not Tommy Robinson.
He speaks truth to power.
He's motivated by a big heart, but he's inconvenient to the powerful people.
So he was thrown away today.
And you know what?
It's almost just as well that the mainstream media were censored because all they would have done would be to celebrate and to cheer.
Like on Twitter, the jubilation of Tommy's opponents was unrestrained.
And they were thrilled that he will surely be killed in prison.
So yeah, where are your press freedom liberals, your civil liberties liberals now, eh?
They don't think Tommy Robinson should have civil liberties.
happy to have him silenced, not me.
Tommy Romison doesn't work for us anymore.
He hasn't for several months.
But I reached out to his family today and I spoke to his lawyer and I offered to help them crowdfund their legal defense fund, even though we don't have a formal connection with them.
I'll let you know what they say.
When I last spoke with them, they hadn't actually even had a chance to talk with Tommy.
That's how fast it happened.
They hadn't even had a chance to talk to Tommy on the phone yet.
Even his own lawyer hasn't.
I won't give away any confidences.
I'm just saying if they want our help, we'll help them, even though he's not with us anymore.
But we're not going to impose ourselves on them.
I'll wait for them to ask.
Because Tommy, even though he's not with the rebel anymore, he's actually still with us in spirit because he is still the biggest rebel in the whole of the UK.
And he's not just fighting for his own freedom now.
He is fighting for all of our freedom too.
I'll wait for Tommy or his family to accept our offer for help.
And if they do, I promise I will let you know because I will ask you for your help too.
But we're keeping our powder dry until then.
But whether he takes our financial help or not, we will be doing our best journalistically to support him.
I just wish, I wish the mainstream media would too.
And even mainstream conservatives.
It's Tommy today.
And it's you tomorrow.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, who knew that student dorms and community centers, well, they're not for students anymore, and they're not for at least the Ontario community.
They are being commandeered for the purposes of housing illegal migrants who are simply traipsing across the border from the United States and claiming to be refugees because there is such need to find refuge from the horrific states of America.
I'm making jokes, but it's not really funny.
The flood of illegal migrants continues despite the existence of the so-called safe third-party agreement between our two countries.
That it is a matter of fact and a matter of law that no one coming from the States to Canada or vice versa is a refugee.
Well, tell that to Justin Trudeau and the tens of thousands of migrants he has welcomed in.
Joining us now to talk about this is the author of an outstanding column in the Toronto Sun.
Let me read the headline to you.
It's called Toronto to Turn College Dorms, Community Centers into Refugee Shelters.
And the author is our friend Anthony Fury.
Anthony is very frustrating to me.
I'm sure it's frustrating to a lot of Torontonians.
And even people who aren't directly affected, I'm sure they find it frustrating that this crazy idea of having refugee camps in Canada has come true.
Frustrated, well, if they even know about it, because Ezra, this story is very much hidden in plain sight.
It comes from a City of Toronto press release.
They are clearly trying to get the attention of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to say, hey, you've got to do something about this.
You've got to help us out, both fund these initiatives here because we need space, we need to deal with these people, and perhaps also stop the flow.
But what's interesting, Ezra, is this hasn't been really discussed all that much, even though it's a hidden and plain sight story.
And I think people would be surprised to hear that over 500 kilometers away, this is where Roxton Road is, somehow there are people crossing there in a completely different province, and yet many of them are winding up in Toronto.
And in just the past four-week period, they've already had about 400 people enter the shelter system in Toronto.
They're estimating that by about November, the shelter system is going to be made up of about 55% of asylum seekers, of illegal border crossers.
And that's not including perhaps previous government sponsor and refugees may be in the shelter system a little bit.
And of course, dealing with the homeless population in Toronto.
And last winter, there's a bit of a crisis where they said they don't have the space to house people who were already there.
So the city said, what are we going to do?
Well, we've got all these students who have just left their dorms.
We're going to take 800 beds and we're going to commandeer them, turn them into refugee centers.
What happens, though, when school starts again in September?
Well, they've said then we're probably going to have to commandeer community centers.
Now, Ezra, I asked the city, I said, can you tell me how that will affect programming?
Because I know all the community centers in my area where my children play, and there's not just massive rooms that aren't being used.
There's usually the gym and then there's a place for older people to do Tai Chi and play cards and so forth.
And then that's kind of it.
So are you shutting down the gym so little Johnny doesn't get to play basketball?
It looks like that's what will happen in September.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, all of those solutions are terrible.
I mean, homeless shelters, that's not for migrants.
That's not for immigrants.
Those are for people who have a destitute situation.
Frankly, I think we all know that a lot of the people who go to homeless shelters are people who've been deinstitutionalized from either prison or a psychiatric care.
There's not enough to hold them.
So they are truly the most marginal people.
It's not meant to be like a hotel.
It's not meant to be a permanent place to stay.
It's actually high needs.
And let's be very candid, people with alcohol, drug problems, a lot of Aboriginal people downtown, these are people who have chronic problems.
They're being pushed aside by this plan just to give it to the folks Donald Trump was going to kick out.
It's not even the purpose of a homeless shelter, is it?
A homeless shelter is not to be a long-term lodging for some would-be Canadian.
I find this infuriating.
Have the people who advocate for these marginalized citizens, have they spoken out or are they too worried about political correctness to stand up for the true homeless?
Well, as I said, nobody is really speaking about this issue.
This is one of those, you know, see no evil, hear no evil sort of stories.
So I think it's largely been ignored, although I have been vilified by some individuals for simply reporting what is in a city of Toronto press release.
I guess they're really upset that this basic news of what is actually happening is getting out there.
And, you know, you make a good point.
What do we do with this whole situation?
When the Syrian refugee intake came in, they hired spaces in many, many motels and sort of outlier areas of Toronto.
And whatever one thought about the Syrian refugee intake, it was controlled.
It was planned.
The UN, I guess, did their best to vet these people as genuine refugees.
And they said they did security and health screening and so forth.
And while social services agencies did tell Justin Trudeau, please slow down.
We can't handle this.
It was still a form of controlled, confirmed refugees.
What we have here is uncontrolled migration where we have no clue actually how many people are going to come across.
I know the estimates say 400 people a day once it really gets going in the summer, but when will it stop?
We just don't know.
And this could present a long-term problem here.
Well, it already has because it's been going on for over a year.
Now, you point out that Wroxham Road, which has become quite an entry point.
That is in the border between New York and Quebec.
And we're talking about Toronto here.
So that tells us something that I think we, at least I've observed, which is that Quebecers are a lot more blunt on this issue.
And Quebec has political parties that are not shy about saying politically incorrect things.
I think the last wave or two waves of migrants ago were a lot of Haitians.
So they spoke French.
They were Haitians who were in the United States because they were given a reprieve after an earthquake there about five years ago.
And that five-year amnesty has come to an end.
So all these French-speaking Haitians couldn't stick around America anymore.
They either had to go back to Haiti or, well, you speak French, you're going to go to Quebec.
I think that so taxed the public patience of Quebecers that all of a sudden you had thousands and thousands and thousands of Haitians who are not refugees.
They just didn't want to go home.
Here's my theory, Anthony.
Quebecers have been so burnt by this open borders thing that they've lost all patience.
Justin Trudeau sees that in the polls.
He sees the provincial legislature in Quebec taking a harder and harder line on these migrants.
And he's saying, you know what?
I don't want to mess with my political base.
I need Quebec in the 2019 election.
That's how I'm going to be re-elected.
So to hell with Toronto, they can take these migrants because they're so worried about being called politically incorrect.
They're not going to squawk.
Quebecers can squawk.
So we'll ship these people down the highway to Toronto.
That's my long theory.
Do you think there's any merit to it?
I think it's interesting, but I think you're giving Justin Shu a lot of credit that he actually has long theories, that he actually has long game plans.
I think it's perhaps just simpler than that, that he is bizarrely something of a quasi-open borders advocate.
Now, that hashtag welcome to Canada tweet, and here at Post Media, we got documents that showed that it did actually cause trouble in the government embassies, various government departments writing in and saying, you know, what do we do?
People are calling saying we heard you had open borders.
Is it true?
How do we handle that?
That tweet, Ezra, go look at it right now.
It's still up.
People are still retweeting it and they're still interacting with it, responding, saying, you know, thank you very much for being so welcoming to us and so forth, even though we've all agreed that his tweet was a bunch of malarkey and is not true.
But he's never, ever once walked that back.
There's one Quebec politician, Ezra, who has said, maybe we should build some sort of a wall, a sort of fence.
One politician, now, in my column in the weekend papers, I actually say maybe we should look at building some sort of a structure between the two legal crossings on either side of Roxham Road.
You've got the Le Cole crossing and the Hemmingford, and they're about 10 kilometers apart.
Build some sort of structure, a chain-linked fence.
We can take it down in a couple years, to send the visual cue to people.
Hey, you're not actually welcome.
It's not open borders.
Because when we investigate a lot of these WhatsApp social media channels, a lot of these people, Ezra, they do genuinely believe that Trudeau has said, come on in, and that they are going to be accepted.
And then some of them get sent back later.
So I almost think what Trudeau is doing is unfair to taxpayers, to Quebecers, to the homeless in Toronto.
It's also unfair to these people because he's misleading them about their prospects.
I think we should put up those visual cues to say, in fact, no, you can't come in at this part of entry.
Instead, the visual cue they have now are semi-permanent structures where people who look like cops are actually, well, that's actually the uniform of our Royal Canadian mounted bellboys.
I mean, we literally have police schlepping the luggage of these illegals.
So, I mean, you see a cop, you're doing something illegal.
I think most people would say, yikes, don't do that.
No, no.
They've learned that the police will actually carry their bags.
I got one last question for you, Anthony.
I'm a conservative, and I feel like Canada's immigration numbers are too high.
Polls suggest that 92% of Canadians think the numbers are either fine or too high.
Only 8% want that.
And that's a poll that the Liberal government itself commissioned.
I want less immigration, but let's say you want more immigration.
I'm not for that.
But it would seem to me that you would want to protect the reputation of the immigration system so that people don't start to feel succored.
Because immigration to Canada is dependent on the goodwill of Canadians towards newcomers.
And by favoring illegals over legals, by favoring scammers instead of law-abiding, hardworking applicants, this is the paradox, is that Trudeau and Ahmed Hassan are actually poisoning the well of goodwill.
And if they actually were open borders activists, they would want to stamp out in a very showy way this illegality to maintain public support.
I'm worried that they're going to poison Canadians against all immigrants.
What do you think of that?
Well, you know, I think you're hitting upon a phenomenon that's really happening with Justin Chrudeau, where the people who are most frustrated by rush-dip refugee intakes and this intake process are people who are refugees and legal immigrants.
The people who are most upset about his appeasement of Iran are Iranian dissidents who have come to Canada because they believe in Canadian values, this sort of admiring China's basic dictatorship thing, even though he just got the Acon deal, right?
I mean, these are all things that upset a lot of the Chinese dissidents.
So a lot of people come to Canada because they hear about Canadian values and they want to be a part of them and celebrate them.
And our top immigration countries, India, China, the Chinese people, not the Chinese government, South Korea, and so forth.
I mean, these are people who are coming for Canadian values.
And then the Prime Minister is saying there's no such thing as Canadian values.
So I think we certainly have a major disconnect here.
Yeah.
Well, it'll be interesting playing hockey and just asking the migrants to get off the ice rink for a little bit or I don't know, community centers.
It's going to be a mess.
And I think that grassroots Ontarians will come to be as angry as grassroots quarterbackers.
Anthony, it's great to talk to you again.
Thanks very much for being here today.
Have a good one, Ezra.
All right, YouTube.
That's our friend Anthony Fury.
Just again, if you haven't seen it, his column in The Stun is called Toronto to Turn College Dorms, Community Centers into Refugee Shelters.
And you thought that was only for our friends in Germany.
Stay with us.
More ahead on the Rebel.
Welcome back.
Well, yesterday I said to David Menzies that I still thought Doug Ford had a good chance of forming a majority, but David was much more skeptical.
He pointed out the obvious that the conservative, the progressive conservatives, Doug Ford, who had a 20-point lead just a few weeks ago, is now basically in a dead heat.
NDP Gain in Union Support00:09:00
And all the momentum is with the NDP.
And that is terrifying to any Ontarian who lived through Bob Ray's accidental government or any Albertan who is watching with horror at Alberta's accidental government.
Well, will Andrea Horrath and Ontario's hard left-wing NDP win the day in Ontario in 2018?
Well, some big labor unions seem to think so.
Joining us now to talk about the latest endorsements of the NDP is our friend Catherine Swift.
She's with Working Canadians, a pro-free enterprise group.
Great to see you again, Catherine.
Good to see you, Esau.
Look, I want to be optimistic.
I'm so desperate for good news these days.
I was excited for a month when Doug Ford seemed to have a clear lead.
He was so fresh and brash and not afraid of the media.
But now, do you think these polls accurately reflect the sentiment in the province?
Do you think anybody but Ford is coalescing around Andrea Horrath?
Well, there's no question there's momentum that the NDP has.
I don't think that can't be denied.
That being said, however, the extent of it is still questionable, I think.
It's so recent.
And as you know, there's a huge chunk of undecided two left in all of the polls, like anywhere 30 to 40 percent in some of the polls.
So that's, again, that's a very open question, I guess.
But there's no doubt they have momentum.
And the same dirty tricks that have been done to Conservatives in a number of elections in the last 15 years or so are being done now by a lot of these third-party, so-called third-party groups, labor unions, notably public sector labor unions, who basically want, naturally, they want a friendly government who will permit them to continue to fleece the rest of us.
Unfortunately, the rest of us, and when you look at public sector unions, the rest of us are the strong majority.
So from my standpoint, anyone in the private sector, which is most of us, who would vote for an NDP government is shooting themselves in the brain.
Yeah, shooting themselves in the brain.
You're right.
Now, recently, the Liberals have moved far left, both provincially, Kathleen Wynne, and federally, in many ways.
Justin Trudeau has outflanked the NDP.
And in return, labor unions and groups that traditionally would always be NDP have switched their affections and their political donations and their political volunteering to the Liberals.
I mean, Jerry Diaz is practically buddies with Justin Trudeau.
And Kathleen Wynne is to the left of, I would say she's the left of what Bob Ray governed like.
But I see that in Ontario, the unions are coalescing again around the NDP.
Let me show you, for example, here's the Teachers Federation, the Elementary Teachers Federation.
I suppose it's no surprise, but Elementary Teachers Union endorses NDP ahead of Ontario election.
I mean, that is not a surprising headline, but they're not going with Kathleen Wynne, who actually is sort of has her roots in teaching.
Let me show you one more ad from a big labor union.
This is a private sector labor union.
The steelworkers get involved in steelworkers, vote for the Ontario 2018 election.
And it is, as you can see a little bit higher up, help the NDP and our political allies.
So both public sector and private sector join the NDP there are really throwing their weight behind them.
By the way, do you think if the steel workers tell their work their people to vote for the NDP, they will?
Or do you think that they're as autonomous as anyone else?
Well, I don't think they're as autonomous as anyone else, but I think some will vote the way the union says, but many, many won't.
We've seen that before.
Back in the Ray days, for example, an awful lot of auto workers voted for Mike Harris because they found their level of taxation was so unbearable, they would have welcomed any change.
So I don't think everyone will follow the union, but I think some will, probably less informed voters will pay attention to the union because they haven't maybe formed their own opinions yet.
But again, I think the bottom line here is that unions, for one thing, I think it's probably illegal the monies they spend.
I think a lot of these third parties should be way more limited than they are now, all of them, no matter where they sit on the political spectrum during elections.
But a lot of them, as you probably know, Ezra, there's an awful lot of public sector workers, for example.
Private sector is one thing, but public sector workers on our taxpayer dime going out and being paid to go and canvass in certain ridings in favor of whatever the union's flavor of the election happens to be.
Now it tends to be NDP in a lot of cases.
That's outrageous.
And that doesn't tend to get counted into the overall spending when it well should.
So there's not enough scrutiny on these groups.
The various elections officials, I think they're, I don't know what they do.
Frankly, they're supposed to oversee spending in elections, and yet all manner of shenanigans go on that they should be counted into the total limit of spending during elections, but they're not.
You know what?
I've only been in Ontario a few years, so I don't have a deep history here.
But I think that Kathleen Wynne has is so toxic.
I mean, she's not mentioned in any Liberal Party ads.
There was the case of that one Liberal candidate whose signs were sort of orange and who she was trying to sort of sneakily pretend she was a New Democrat.
Kathleen Wynne's not appearing in her own ads.
And the ones she is appearing in, she says, I can do better.
So she's really damaged.
But Doug Ford has a real built-in base of enemies who hated his brother just as much as him.
Here's my fear.
Andrea Horvath has been around for a while.
People feel sort of comfy with her.
She's attractive, but not too attractive.
She's not off-putting to women or men.
She's friendly.
She seems nice.
She just seems like a low-risk personality.
In some ways, it reminds me of Rachel Notley.
She was around for a while.
People really weren't paying attention to her, but they knew she was there.
They hated the other alternatives, so they said, oh, the heck with it.
I'm sensing that's the same with Andrea Horvath.
She's not odious as a person.
She hasn't become toxic.
And I'm worried she's going to be the anybody but win and anybody but Ford vote.
I think she'd be the second choice for either liberal or PC voters.
What do you think?
Well, for one thing, she hasn't been under scrutiny either.
You're right.
She's been around.
This is her third election.
Normally parties get rid of their leaders after they've lost two.
And maybe they didn't have anybody take her place or whatever, but they've left her in for strike three, I guess, as it were.
But I don't think she's come under scrutiny yet because she might seem nice enough, but when you listen to her ideas, they're anything but nice.
And the more unions, it's very intriguing.
Just in the past couple of weeks, more unions who have shifted their support toward her, because of course they see that Kathleen Wynne is dead, you know, dead premier walking kind of thing.
They realize that's a lost cause.
Where can we park ourselves now?
Well, it's going to be to another government that's going to be very friendly to unions.
And I wonder if they'll be even more friendly.
For example, Horvath came out lately and said she would revisit the notion of having wine and liquor and beer in grocery stores.
Ludicrous stuff.
I mean, that's, you know, we finally sort of entered the 19th century with that in Ontario because most parts of the world have had much more sane alcohol retail than we have here in Ontario.
But, you know, stuff like that was clearly a response to support from unions because naturally the unions love having their little monopoly in the LCVO.
And there's other examples as well that talking about some of these issues.
So I think I would really hope that Ontarians give her a hard, hard look and her policies a hard look.
Because even though she might seem innocuous and nice, her policies are anything but.
And what kills me is people hate the liberals, seemingly, because they spent like mad, you know, dug a massive debt hole that our kids and grandkids and their kids and so on are going to be paying off for generations, et cetera, et cetera.
And yet now they're going to shift their vote to a party that is promising not only more of the same, but an even more extreme version of what we've got now.
Volcanic Politics00:02:25
It just seems insane to me.
Yeah.
Well, insane things happen at the polls sometimes, and you just scared me a little bit.
Catherine Swift, it's great to catch up with you.
Thanks for your time today.
My pleasure.
All right, we have Catherine Swift.
She's with Working Canadians, a pro-free enterprise advocacy group.
Stay with us.
We're ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters on my monologue about CBC's fake news story about global warming triggering volcanoes in Canada.
Hansen writes, I know it's the CBC, but how the heck does anyone interviewing such craziness actually hold a straight face?
Yeah, I mean, the headline, waking, sleeping volcanoes in Canada.
When you get to the actual part of the interview, it's, yeah, well, there might be a rock slide and gravity is to blame.
It's just, you know, they're not journalists anymore, they're propagandists.
Jonathan writes, next day will tell us that Vulcan is hammering away so hard because Jupiter needs his lightning bolts to bring on the crazy weather, so those dumb mortals will give their government more cash and get poor so they will worship the gods more.
Well, that's very thoughtful.
Of course, that's where volcanoes come from, the word Vulcan.
And you're right, Jupiter is also named after a god from mythology.
And that's what I alluded to yesterday, is that there are a lot of superstitions related to massive powers in nature, whether it's the Aztecs and the eclipses or volcanoes and the archetype of throwing a virgin in the volcano to appease the gods.
It's not that far removed from that, global warming and pay the carbon tax.
It's a tithe to Mother Nature.
Someone named J Smart writes, we could give all our income for a century and wouldn't have no effect on volcanoes or climate change.
You're right.
And you'll notice that no politicians proposing carbon tax actually say it will change the weather.
Some of them say it will change the amount of emissions by some trivial amount, an amount that China will make up for in days.
But no one actually says it will change the weather because it won't.
It is 100% virtue signaling in service of 100% cash grabs.
Deeply Worried About Tommy00:01:30
Well, folks, that's our show for today.
I was quite upset by what happened to our friend Tommy.
I'm deeply worried for him.
In prison, it's terrible in prison for anyone, but for Tommy, it really is akin to a death sentence.
I am very worried about him.
I don't think I'm breaking confidences to say that in recent months, I mean, I haven't seen Tommy in about two months, but he would sometimes muse that he might not make it.
I think he in some ways was fatalistically resigned to an untimely end.
I think he thought that he might be assassinated or killed.
And that's not just fantasy.
We know he was attacked from behind and put in a coma last year.
I'm deeply worried about him.
I regard him as a friend.
I mean, I worked with him for a year.
And even if I wasn't a friend, even if he was a complete stranger to me, I regard him as a leading light of freedom and dissent and free journalism in the United Kingdom.
And I'm quite sad.
And immediately to me, Great Britain feels less great.
It feels smaller.
And I feel like things are darker and blurrier and foggier and more pessimistic now.
And the cheering of his enemies is a deep sound of warning to me.
Before I get any emotional, I wish you good night.