Premier Doug Ford slashes Toronto’s council from 47 to 25, saving $25M over four years, dismissing accusations of undemocracy by citing Mayor John Tory’s past expansion without public input. Mark Moreno exposes plastic straw bans as virtue-signaling hypocrisy, citing inflated claims and corporate backlash—like McDonald’s reduced fries—while George Gatsis defends his 3D-printed Trump figurines against leftist censorship, including Hudson’s Bay dropping Ivanka’s line. David Menzies highlights Antifa’s violent tactics, contrasting today’s performative left with its historical free-speech values, framing Ford’s reforms as a clash between efficiency and ideological obstruction. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Doug Ford is cutting the size of Toronto Council and the career politicians are losing their minds.
Maybe they're just scared they will have to, oh, I don't know, work for a living.
It's July 31st.
I'm David Menzies, and this is The Ezra Levent 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 so.
There's something decidedly different about Premier Doug Ford's style of governance.
At first I couldn't quite put my finger on it and then it dawned on me.
The Ford PCs are moving at the speed of business, not bureaucracy.
No wonder those on the progressive left are losing their minds these days.
So late last week it was when Premier Doug Ford dropped a bombshell.
Well, it was only really a bombshell to anyone who neglected to pay attention to Doug's time on the campaign trail these past few months, particularly when he promised to reduce government waste.
Well, too bad so sad for the Asleep at the Switch progressives then.
Because last Thursday night, Ford said he was gutting Toronto's municipal government by cutting the number of city councillors from 47 to 25 ahead of the October 22nd municipal election.
And the look on the faces of so many of these career politicians who were on cruise control was absolutely priceless.
It was as though they had just taken a drag on one of those joke store cigars, you know, the kind that explode in your mouth at a certain point.
And when the shock wore off, out came the over-the-top pronouncements, you know, that Ford's move was undemocratic, that it was a thinly veiled personal vendetta against Mayor John Tory, that there was no consultation, that the changes were being done, well, just too darn fast.
You know, that last complaint is the funniest, folks.
You see, the Toronto election is almost three months away.
For those in the private sector, in which decisions must be dealt with on a daily basis, three months is an eternity.
But for many politicians, a three-month deadline is like asking for a task to be completed yesterday.
You see, government likes to take its sweet time when it gets around to that whole governance part of government, which is probably why just about every government-run construction program I can think of never came in ahead of deadline and always came in over budget, of course.
But as Premier Ford noted in the Ontario Legislature the other day, his government is cut from a different cloth than those politicians who worship at the altar of tax and spend.
You ask anyone in the GTA, even better, you ask anyone in Ontario, how does the city of Toronto work?
Every single person I've talked to says there's too many politicians.
And I don't remember any consultation when they wanted to cut the 800 police or they wanted to raise taxes or they wanted to get themselves in debt another $550 million or if they wanted to increase politicians.
Maybe I was away campaigning, but I can tell you I never heard that whatsoever.
It's about driving efficiencies, respecting the taxpayers, putting money back into the taxpayers' pocket instead of the government.
It's about empowering the people instead of the government.
I know my opposition, they love big government.
They love to spend.
They love high taxes.
We aren't cut from the same cloth.
We're cut from a different cloth.
We're cut from a cloth every piece of cops.
Making smaller government.
Having accountability and transparency.
Absolutely.
Love it.
Oh, by the way, folks, the very fact that the Ontario legislature is sitting during the summertime speaks volumes too.
I mean, the PCs won bigly on June 7th, and 22 days later, they were already hard at work in the House during a time period in which most MPPs are heading to cottage country at Wart Factor 9.
Oh, and how the NDP and Liberal members and the green guy must absolutely despise coming to Queen's Park and putting in a full day at the office during the dog days of summer when they likely feel they should be using this timeframe to work on their tan lines.
But the fact is, after 15 years of grotesque Liberal mismanagement, there's so much work to be done, so much damage to repair.
Forget about yours to discover.
The official tagline on Ontario license plates should read yours to recover.
As for those Toronto City Councillors who are screaming that this is Doug Ford's so-called latest blow to democracy, where's the proverbial proof in that political pudding?
Toronto, as well as all the other municipalities, exist by the whim of the provincial government, and twas ever thus.
Yet, even so, Mayor John Torrey thinks there should be a referendum on this issue, that the people need to weigh in on something as fundamentally important as council being slimmed down.
Here's what Torrey had to say, quote, change of this magnitude should always happen with a degree of consultation that allows the public to be heard, and I believe a referendum will ensure that opportunity, end quote.
Oh, really, Mayor?
People power is suddenly a big deal with you?
Where was that referendum when City Council recently decided to swell its ranks from 44 to 47 councillors?
Oops, all of a sudden, the opinions of Hogtown's great unwashed masses weren't all that important.
Oh, no, not when government was enjoying a growth spurt as opposed to facing a downsizing.
And then there was NDP leader Andrea Horwath yesterday who laughably accused the Premier of, quote, abusing his power.
Here's what she said, quote, the Premier's secret plot cooked up in a back room, hidden from the people of Ontario for the entire election campaign, doesn't just fit the very definition of a hidden agenda, it is also petty and mean-spirited, and it is the vendetta of a man who doesn't want to lead.
Instead, he wants to bully his way through, end quote.
Oh, well, on the bright side, at least Ford wasn't called a racist.
And for those keeping score, I think this is the 181st time in the space of one month that Horwath has uttered a sentence pertaining to Ford using the words, hidden agenda.
Hey, Andrea, it's getting really boring already, especially since there is no hidden agenda, of course.
Doug campaigned on a three-word slogan that was so often repeated by his late brother Rob, respect for taxpayers.
And cutting council in half is going to save those taxpayers some $25 million over the course of a four-year term.
And another thing, if the city of Los Angeles, with a population of almost 4 million people, can be governed with a 15-member city council, then why is it so inconceivable that the city of Toronto, with a population of 2.8 million, cannot possibly function with a 25-member council?
Moving forward, instead of braying at the moon like a pack of frenzied werewolves, I suggest the old school, same old, same old political elites in the province of Ontario get back with the program and adapt to the fact that there really is a new sheriff in town.
Banning Straws?00:10:11
And this sheriff is charging out of the gate atop a thoroughbred as opposed to lazily meandering along on the back of an old jackass.
Well, whether it's saving the planet or saving the whales or saving the fill in the blank right here, the green police just love banning things from plastic bags to incandescent light bulbs.
And as for the latest consumer product on their hit list, well, it's the ever-so-humble straw.
And with more on this latest environmental villain allegedly bringing planet Earth to its very knees is Mark Moreno, founder of climatepot.com.
Welcome to the Ezra Levent show, Mark.
Thank you, David.
Happy to be here today.
I should have had a straw.
I should have been drinking out of a straw here.
That would have been more appropriate.
Well, Mark, you don't want to trigger anyone out there.
But Mark, take us through this.
How exactly are drinking straws supposedly killing the planet?
Well, the idea is it's plastic.
And plastic is the evil of the environmentalists, despite all of the positive benefits that plastic has brought to us as humans.
And so what's happened here is it's become the ultimate virtue signaling movement.
The idea is that plastic's bad, the straws are horrible, so everyone wants to ban it.
You have Starbucks banning it.
You have other major companies.
You have the United Kingdom being the first major country.
Now, the first one in Europe, I should say, banning straws.
California, cities in Seattle.
So this is continuing.
The idea is this is bad for the planet.
It doesn't biodegrade.
We have to send it far away to recycle.
And then it turns out that actually these plastic, because of the recycling laws, it's all going to countries in Asia.
And five of the countries in Asia have the biggest disposal problem.
They're ending up dumping it in the ocean.
So this is part of the problem is we send it off for recycling.
So to make a long story short here, the plastic ban is now going into effect because the liberals seem to think it's the worst thing on earth.
However, the ban, we're finding in the case of Starbucks that they're actually using more plastic in the replacement for the straws with their new lids.
And we're also finding that the replacements for straws, biodegradable and other things, aren't good.
They're not a great landfills.
And disabled advocates are complaining about it because they dissolve in liquids.
As you would imagine, the substitute isn't as good as the original.
It's sort of like the sequel.
So the replacements they're trying to mandate on people aren't working.
You know, you've touched upon many things there, Mark.
And the first thing I want to talk to you about is this whole idea of how good the replacement products are.
And it reminds me, about 10 years ago in this province in Ontario, we have an entity, it's a government liquor monopoly called the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.
And in a example of virtue signaling, they got rid of their plastic bags, which were the best plastic bags in Ontario.
They were thick.
You could carry lots of bottles in them.
And they replaced them with paper bags, which, as you can imagine, are proning to ripping.
And when you have a $100 bottle of scotch going kerplunk on the pavement, it's not fun.
So, you know, that's what drove me crazy.
That's just one example where you had a solution that nobody was complaining about.
And simply for the PR aspects of banning plastic, in this case, a plastic bag, you replaced it with something that is inferior that just about nobody wanted.
It doesn't make sense to me, Mark.
No, it doesn't.
In fact, here's the deal.
In California, they're now contemplating a $1,000 fine to a waiter if he offers you, a waiter or waitress offers you a plastic straw.
They will be personally fined.
On the same thing, tucked away in this legislation.
are provisions for they can allow a plastic straw if someone is physically disabled and there's no suitable alternative.
So what are you going to end up getting?
You're going to get waiters and waitresses and customers claiming, oh, well, they were disabled.
I had to do it to avoid these big fines.
It's a way for the government nanny state to turn us all into liars and to start micromanaging more aspects of our lives.
But you're absolutely right.
The disabled advocates are now standing up strong here and saying that they don't want to see straws banned.
In fact, they're going after Starbucks specifically for this because straws are strong and any other alternative made from these biodegradable materials that they claim to be using or some of them not so biodegradable.
And so this is going to go forward.
In addition, these five countries I mentioned in Asia, including Vietnam and a couple other countries, they have been dumping all of these liberal do-gooding, oh, we'll mandate all these straws go out of the country and we'll recycle them.
Well, guess what?
They're not being recycled.
So we're ending up with massive ocean pollution.
And it's not because we're using the straws.
It's because we're not disposing of them correctly and we're not where some people are saying burn them, put them in landfills.
There's other ways to do it than to ship them expensively through fossil fuels, by the way, over to Asian countries, which aren't actually meeting the requirements and dumping them in the ocean anyway.
So becoming a big biohazard.
And you know, Mark, this is a very important part of the story, too.
It's like we are collectively absolving ourselves of taking care of the dirty work, if you will, that we're ostensibly sending these things off to get recycled when the evidence shows that it is just ending up in landfill or even worse in the oceans.
But because it's way off there, it's in some developing country, that doesn't make it our problem.
I mean, this is outrageous hypocrisy of the very worst, I think.
No, but it's also in a long line.
I mean, we had McDonald's happy meals.
They came in and said, there's too many french fries and we don't need the toys.
So they started changing the amount of french fries.
What ended up, parents ended up buying extra french fries or foregoing happy meals because kids were complaining they were getting hardly any french fries.
And there's other examples like this where corporate America trying to be green.
Campbell's soup was another example where they decided the salt nanny's gone on them and said there's too much sodium.
So they started reducing the sodium in their soups.
Guess what?
Sales started dropping because they didn't taste as good.
So they ended up having to reverse that decision.
So this is all corporations essentially trying to appease noisy activists who go to shareholder meetings, who cause problems, who try to threaten the bottom line.
And so they easily capitulate.
And then the bigger bottom line is the consumer out there who ends up voting with their dollar.
And that's what ends up hurting the most.
And we're seeing many of these reversed.
So interestingly enough, in the Starbucks ban, you're having the disabled go up against Starbucks, which Starbucks liked to see itself as the champion of all things, you know, minority and disabled and disenfranchised in our society.
So we'll see how that turns out with disabled people lobbying against this straw ban.
Well, right now, I think Starbucks has enough problems by the very fact they've declared themselves sanctuary city washrooms for drug dealers and the homeless.
You think they'd only take on one major problem at a time.
But, Mark, just before we wrap, I just still want to get it in my head.
As you said at the very beginning, there's so much in our lives made of plastic.
And let's face it, they improve our lives.
And even the environmentalists that campaign against plastic, I don't think could survive without plastic in their lifestyles.
What is it about this tiny piece of plastic, the straw, in the first place?
I guess what I'm saying, Mark, I remember reading stories years ago about the plastic holders for six packs.
And there was an argument made that animals can get their throat caught in those spaces when it's discarded.
But is there anything particularly really bad about a plastic straw that would have some poor waiter in California get a $1,000 fine for offering it?
The answer to that, David, is ask a nine-year-old.
And I'm not kidding, a lot of this was based on the school project by a nine-year-old elementary student who claimed 500 million straws are being used.
The real number is many times lower than that.
He made a couple surveys.
The media, I think it was NPR or someone picked up on it.
And this nine-year-old study from a few years ago, nine-year-old elementary spawned this whole straw movement.
But it's the perfect movement for the left because it's all symbolism.
I mean, we've talked about climate.
Think of the UN-Paris Agreement.
Even the UN admits it would have no impact, no detectable impact on climate 100 years out.
But yet it's the most important thing in the world to them.
It's about power, control, virtue signaling.
Same thing is true of the lowly straw.
And I really wish I had that prop right here.
But interestingly enough, on the larger issue of plastics, the environmentalists right now are fighting the Trump administration because they want to enforce these Obama-era cafe standards on cars in the U.S., where we're going to have to have 54 miles per gallon, the average for each fleet of cars, which means what?
More plastic in cars.
And that's what they've been doing for years, getting rid of aluminum and steel and packing automobiles with more plastic to lighten the weight, to use less fuel to meet the global warming standards.
So the irony here is the environmentalists, on one hand, are forcing a massive increase in plastics in many areas, including automobiles.
But on the other hand, they're lamenting it.
It all comes down to it's really a war with modern life in terms of all our modern benefits.
That's really what it comes down to.
They want the virtue signaling, they want the power, and they like the idea that these companies bow to their need, their demands.
War With Modern Life00:04:39
Incredible.
Well, Mark, you know what?
There's no making sense of this, and there is no appeasing the loony left.
If we all acquiesce to a global ban on straws, you know they would just spin the wheel, pick out something else made of plastic, and that would be their newest campaign.
Mark, thank you so much for weighing in on this.
And I guess, folks, if you've got straws, use them while you still can.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mark.
And folks, keep it here.
more of the Ezreal event show to come right after this.
A few weeks ago, we raised the alarm that the Bradford Exchange is now selling this here Justin Trudeau doll for just $130 plus shipping and handling.
You too can get your hands on a miniature version of the Kokani Groper if you so choose.
But thankfully, for those who would rather display a political leader of more substance, my next guest, George Peter Gatsis, is marketing a Donald Trump figurine.
Actually, a few of them.
Now, that's more like it, I should think.
So, hey, George, welcome to the Ezreal Event Show.
Yeah, a pleasure.
And tell me, what got you into manufacturing these Donald Trump figurines using 3D technology, I guess?
Yes.
What happened is when President Trump became president, I looked on the internet for something of anything of patriotic regarding him, so I can buy it.
I loved his campaign.
The Democrats and the Republicans were all fighting against him.
The only people that actually stood for him were the actual people of the United States.
Yeah, can you imagine?
Shock.
So I was shocked.
I was equally shocked was that there was actually no respectable figurine.
You know, that's very interesting, George.
I think you told me off camera when you were searching around the web.
A lot of Trump merchandise that mock and defile the president.
Plenty of that to be found.
And yet here he is, you know, the president of the United States, and nothing that was done respectfully.
Do you think this ties into what I call the uncharted waters we're in right now?
That here we have a president that the elites despise, the left despises, the media has an agenda against him.
And I've just never seen anything like this in American politics before.
Yes, absolutely.
And my understanding of this whole process is they're trying to bring him down indirectly through any means necessary, making fun of him in comedy, making fun of him in product, and making a mockery of the man and the position of the office in general.
And don't get me wrong, I mean, it was ever thus, especially in a society like the U.S. that embraces freedoms, it's part of the Constitution, to do a caricature of a president, to mock him in comedy, that's one thing.
But when you see the likes of a Kathy Griffin, you know, posing with a decapitated, bloody head of the president, there is this, I guess what I'm saying, George, there's this element of mean-spiritedness that we've never seen for any leader before.
Well, yes, but the beauty behind the United States, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights is she has the right to do what she did.
But in the spirit of respect for the man and for the office, it goes against the grain completely.
Indeed.
And now you have been selling.
Actually, tell us about these figurines.
The first one, the one in gray, George, it's Donald Trump in a business suit.
And the second one, the white one, it looks like he's in a Buzz Lightyear suit or something.
Yes, he is.
He's in a Space Force outfit.
Oh, okay.
It's an astronaut's outfit.
I modeled it as close as I can to the astronauts that we have in space.
Except I added a few little awesome items like the jets, the 45, the Saturn-type planets on the bottom, 45 signifying his presidency number, and just pointing to the stars.
Right.
Nice Little Figurines00:02:10
And also a nice little gun for the NRA.
Oh, well, there you go.
That's going to trigger a few social justice warriors, even though it's a space gun.
I mean, guns are bad, as you know.
And I also see to your left that you've got the…this is a prototype.
This is not yet available.
This is a prototype.
It's a 3D bust of Donald Trump.
It can be taken apart real quick through interconnections and just standard screws, which I'll just demonstrate here.
Okay.
The whole thing is designed so that way when it gets sold, there is no instructions.
You just get all the parts neatly packaged up and with a challenge.
How fast can you put this together?
Ah, so it's kind of like a presidential Mr. Potato head in the middle.
Something like that, except all the pieces do logically fit within each other and they interlock, interconnect.
Okay.
And they're held into place by just a very small number of actual screws, which are all custom-made.
Everything's custom-made.
And they get a little mini screwdriver to boot.
Okay.
Now that one's not available yet.
You're still working on it.
But tell me, these two, what are you looking at in terms of the off-the-lot price?
Well, right now, the little one is selling for $79.
Okay.
And it's American.
And the big one, the Space Force, is selling for $125 American.
Okay, then.
And it's very nice.
They sell consistently, quietly.
I tried to go to the internet and put this out there through Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, you name it.
And there was no takers.
You know, the initial moment, the initial time of the offering.
So I became clever.
I just kept my mouth shut.
And I put out, I have two direct links to my stores that you can't find unless you actually know about it.
And then I just waited.
Going Under the Radar00:06:07
After a couple of weeks, people started paying attention.
Oh, so people had to make an effort to find you in this website, and that was the way you were able to go under the radar in terms of selling it.
Well, can you give out that website for yes, absolutely.
GeorgePeterGatz.com slash get45.
And can you just spell it?
It says George the Normal Way, Peter, and Gatsus is spelled.
G-A-T-S-I-S.com.
Okay, then.
Now, you mentioned something interesting off-air.
It was about, I think it was Reddit that they were selling there, and then there were spikes, and then there would be dips where...
Well, I posted this on Reddit.
It wasn't selling on Reddit.
I posted the figurines on Reddit.
There was a form regarding the QAnons and all that stuff.
I just posted on a lot of the patriotic forms.
And I watched the pluses and minuses on Reddit.
So I was curious because after a week, it didn't go up far.
In fact, it went down and then went up.
So I did a quick test, and I did a video on my BitChute channel where I actually recorded over a period of five minutes and watched the positives and negatives go up and come down, go up and come down.
And then I knew there was some sort of censorship going on.
Not necessarily censure, but counter-positive attitudes.
And the whole idea was to economically penalize the promotion of this.
Much like what Ivanka Trump has gone through with her clothing line, several retailers have dropped it.
The latest was Hudson's Bay and it looks like she's going to walk away from the entire clothing line.
It's kind of disturbing to me.
I mean, if you like the Trumps, if you like Ivanka, if you like the clothing, fine, buy it.
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
But this bullying on the left, I would say, George, to pressure retailers, you know, to drop it.
And much like the kind of pressure you went through with the Trump figurines, you know, to just make sure it stays out of the hands of people who want to buy it with their own money.
I just find that despicable.
Yeah, it's sad.
The people who are doing the actual bullying or the pressuring are the people who are non-buyers.
They have no interest in buying stuff because their attitude is poor in general and poor in economics.
So the bullying of it is more of a virtue signaling and they feel good that they've done it, but they don't understand the economic effect of actually pulling down the line because it's not just Ivanka that came down.
It was all the people that she had employed.
Thousands of people.
So their feel-good attitude of taking down a company is that the indirect consequences is that many, many people, maybe thousands of people, got unemployed.
Yeah.
No, you said it.
The left has a profound problem in connecting the dots when it comes to a logical process.
George, we have to wrap it here.
Thank you so much for coming in and showing our audience your figurines.
And folks, you've got the website now.
If you'd like to buy one of those figurines, I'm telling you, you're getting way more bang for your buck than this plastic lunkhead right here.
Then visit George's website and make your purchase just in time for Christmas.
Keep it here.
More of those are on The Benton Show to come right after this.
Regarding my monologue yesterday about the angry Toronto schoolteacher demonstrating eight leftist tactics of debate, Bruce writes, great show this evening, Dave.
I love your dissection of the lunatic teacher's rent.
It was classic left-wing hate speech.
Well, thank you, Bruce.
But it seemed as if this social justice warrior teacher was completely unaware of the irony.
After all, what she was uttering was indeed far more hateful than anything I said.
For the record, I was merely asking people if they were buying the official narrative that the actions of Faisal Hussein had nothing to do with terrorism and more to do with mental illness, especially given a breaking CBS report that he had visited ISIS websites.
And merely for asking such questions, this makes me a racist?
Gee, I'm really, really having a tough time these days connecting the dots when it comes to making sense of leftist logic.
Keith writes, with teachers like this, is it any wonder that today's and yesterday's kids are all mixed up?
The Marxist creep shows in education and it goes back to when this female was brainwashed.
You know, I'm afraid you're right, Keith, when it comes to the department of you reap what you sow, I find it downright disturbing this woman is indeed a high school teacher who is presumably doing her utmost to indoctrinate impressionable young minds to embrace her own toxic worldview.
Man, talk about a walking-talking advertisement for private schools and homeschooling.
Stephen writes, you forgot the number nine tactic of the left, shout and/or talk over you, not letting you finish what you say and just plain ignore what you have to say.
You know, you're right, Stephen.
I was indeed trying to engage her in a discussion, but it was akin to having a debate with a jackhammer.
Oh, well, to her credit, at least she didn't embrace tactic number 10 of the left, which is, of course, to act out violently.
After all, there is this feeling among some on the far left, such as the rank and file of Antifa, that it's perfectly okay to engage in violence if one feels triggered by certain words and/or ideas.
Hey, does anyone remember when the left was all about free speech and peace and tolerance?
Debate With a Jackhammer00:00:14
Geez, what happened?
Well, folks, that wraps up another edition of the Ezra Event Show.
I'll be back in here for Ezra tomorrow.
In the meantime, thanks for tuning in.
And hey, never forget, without risk, there can be no glory.