Sheila Gunn-Reid examines Rob Gill’s doxing of Sam Oosterhoff’s parents—posting their address and phone number on Dec. 21—while Twitter retains Gill’s verified status despite violations, contrasting leftist impunity with conservative deplatforming. Former officer Leo Knight links Toronto’s 96 homicides in 2018 to progressive policing reforms, including a 152% rise in shooting victims after "carding" was banned and arrests plummeted from 50K to 27K. Sheila rejects accusations of ignoring Scheer/Kenney’s Paris Accord support, defending her critique of conservative leaders’ policy compromises, like Kenney’s oil cuts and opposition to supply management, while warning against conservatism’s leftward drift on issues like policing and climate. The episode underscores how ideological activism undermines both free speech consistency and public safety. [Automatically generated summary]
Social Justice Mob Targets Conservative Parents00:09:02
Tonight, a social justice mob targets a conservative politician's parents.
And then I asked my guest if the same sort of social justice mob has completely ruined policing.
It's January 4th, 2019.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, 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 about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
The story I'm going to talk about tonight really has everything.
Atrocious left-wing mob tactics, anti-Christian bigotry, extreme mainstream media bias, a liberal politician instinctively siding with an outrage mob, and the extreme, shameless, liberal bias of Twitter.
Sam Oosterhoff is a pro-life Christian conservative, and he's also the progressive conservative member of the provincial parliament for Niagara West.
He's bright, he's smart, he's ambitious, clearly.
He was elected to public office at just 19 years old, and he did it all without hiding who and what he was, and he did it without compromising his values.
But over Christmas, Usterhoff's parents were targeted by a failed St. Catharines, Ontario municipal candidate and LGBT activist named Rob Gill.
Now I don't mean that Gil was critical of Uosterhoff's parents for raising a pro-life Christian because, you know, we know the left can think that that's a bad thing.
When I say targeted, I mean targeted for mob harassment by a left-wing outrage mob.
On December 21st, Rob Gil tweeted, this Christmas, let's protest Sam Oosterhoff and his bigoted, misogynistic, and homophobic personality and upbringing.
Let's protest at his parents' home and then Gil published their home address on Twitter.
And then Gil wrote, or give them a call, and then he published their home phone number on Twitter.
Gil hashtagged the tweet, hate raises hate.
Now, I don't think Gil actually knows these people, but he's decided they are hateful simply because they raised a Christian man.
And because of that, Uosterhoff's parents are deserving of mob tactics to intimidate them and their son on Christmas no less.
So Usterhoff did what any loving and attentive son would do.
He called the police, saying on Facebook, fearing for my family's safety, I contacted the police.
The police followed their own protocol and I'm very grateful for their dedication to our community.
Now Gil, he tried to excuse his actions in several ridiculous ways.
Gil first said that he was not cautioned by the police in this tweet here.
Man-child Sam Oosterhoff sent the Niagara Regional Police to my home today.
Sam's angry.
I posted stuff already in the public domain.
Police told me I've done nothing wrong.
It's pathetic that elected officials send police to scare voters.
I'm not scared.
Oh, but then Sam Oosterhoff produced an email from the police indicating otherwise that Gil had indeed been warned about his behavior.
Then Gil tried to say on Twitter that the family deserved the harassment because they were Dutch Reformed Christians and therefore bigoted, homophobic, and misogynistic.
Then Gil tried to say that if Oosterhoff can't handle the criticism online, maybe politics wasn't the right job for him.
Gil told CTV News that, and boy is this ever rich, he fears that politicians are attempting to use cops as the henchmen to censor the free speech of citizens.
Oh really.
I think we should all just stop for a minute and appreciate the fact that now the social justice warriors are suddenly free speech activists, opposing using the strong arm of the state to shut people up, even though that's absolutely not what happened here.
It's really a bold take from the same crowd that happily would prosecute and then persecute a fellow Canadian citizen for the act of misgendering someone or using the wrong pronouns or dead naming, which is the weird phrase activists now use to describe the act of someone using the name of a person before their transgender transition.
It's weird.
They are all for the coercive nature of the state then, but don't you dare ask them to leave your grandmother alone at Christmastime.
Then it's totally free speech to show up on her lawn while she celebrates the birth of our Savior because she's had the audacity to be a devoutly religious Christian lady with a devoutly religious, overachieving family, I guess.
Now, outside of possibly the National Post, who published a very fair article about what happened, the mainstream media reportage of this incident has been absolutely hideous, even going so far as to paint the wrong person as the victim in all of this.
Can you tell me who the CBC thinks is the bad guy here with a headline like this?
St. Catherine's Man says MPP Sam Oosterhoff used the police as muscle after tweet.
In that CBC article, it becomes clear that Gill can't even keep his stories straight because despite the fact that he told CTV News that he deleted the offending tweet to be polite, here he says he deleted it because it wasn't getting any traction.
Apparently, it's perfectly okay to leave up tweets that harass elderly, innocent people as long as they're popular.
The local newspaper, the St. Catharine Standard headline, says that Oosterhoff called police about a Twitter critic like Oosterhoff was the one overreacting here.
Now, I don't want to focus so much on Rob Gill specifically because he's just some local failure and attention seeker trying to make a name for himself with bad behavior.
And so I'm really not going to play too much into that for him.
And really, he could be any left-wing politician or LGBT agitator.
Attacking completely innocent people to the periphery of conservative newsmakers you don't like has actually become the standard operating procedure of many mainstream left-wing and left-of-center groups.
It was just two short months ago that Antifa protesters found out where Fox News host Tucker Carlson lived and then converged upon his house, banging on his door while his fearful wife was at home inside.
Good God, these lunatics, they are so gross.
But they aren't alone in this.
These sorts of protests are also happening across the pond.
In September of 2018, one of the leading pro-Brexit Conservative members of parliament in the UK, Jacob Rees Mogg, had a group called Class War show up outside his family home to heckle his children and his nanny inside.
It's revolting behavior to be sure, but it's absolutely mainstream left-wing behavior.
Remember when Democrat Party whackadoodle Maxine Waters advised people to accost Republican politicians wherever they are?
Just watch.
Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up.
And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they're not welcome anymore anywhere.
And while these psychotic protests might seem like something born in the pussyhat SJW cesspit of 2017-2018, oh no, this has been done by the mainstream left with complete acceptability as a tool in their tool belt against conservatives for at least the last, I don't know, four years.
In February of 2015, more than 100 pro-union demonstrators marched toward the home of Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker to protest his state budget cuts to public education.
But the protesters, being the way they are, were not very bright because they got the wrong house.
They swarmed the home of Scott Walker's elderly parents back here in Canada in 2016.
Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrated in front of Liberal Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's house.
I'm non-partisan on this issue.
Your home is your castle and it's where you deserve to feel safe and unaccosted.
It was wrong when it was done to Kathleen Wynne and it's absolutely wrong when it is done time and time again to conservative newsmakers.
Protesters Getting It Wrong00:03:22
But liberal politicians rarely feel that way.
They tend to have a pretty quick change of heart though when they're called out for agreeing with the mob.
Let's go back to the story that brought us here today in the first place.
Liberal MP Adam Vaughan tweeted in support of Rob Gill and against Sam Oosterhoff for calling the cops to warn Gill away from harassing Oosterhoff's innocent parents.
This is what Adam Vaughan tweeted.
Sending police to check out a critic may explain why it is so important who is in charge of the Ontario provincial police.
Terrible behavior.
Look, I think I'm a pretty high-profile critic of Adam Vaughn, but I bet he would be the first person to call the cops on me for posting his parents' address.
Not that I would ever do something so disgusting.
Now later on, Vaughn tweeted that he just didn't have all the information before he tweeted, which is actually a pretty believable excuse considering he's a Liberal and he's been known to go off sort of half-cocked time and time again.
And I think it's pretty telling that Vaughn's first reflex was to, of course, side with the mob over civility.
Now if I did something like Gil did, I would have my blue verified Twitter check mark stripped from me so fast my head would spin and that's at the very least.
I'd probably be permanently suspended from the platform for inciting harassment against someone and for doxing them or posting private information of an individual on Twitter.
Twitter's own rules around abusive behavior are pretty vague and seemingly all-encompassing, but they do prohibit behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user's voice.
Twitter rules have an explicit focus on behavior that is targeted at an individual or group of people, and especially if the behavior is newsworthy and in the legitimate public interest.
Well, well, well.
There have been endless stories of how Rob Gill tried to direct people to harass Oosterhoff's parents.
There's another Twitter rule regarding abuse saying that one may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone or incite other people to do so.
There's also a Twitter rule that says that one may not publish or post other people's private information without their expressed authorization and permission to do so.
But I just checked and despite all the high profile coverage of what Rob Gill tried to do to two innocent people in their golden years, not only is Gill not suspended from Twitter, he still has his blue Twitter verified check mark.
Gill's harassment is Twitter verified and Twitter approved.
Stay with us.
We're joined by a special guest up next, after the break.
Now in my monologue, I talked about how social justice mobs can endanger your friends and family for political reasons.
But now, I want to talk about how a social justice mob can endanger Canada's largest city.
Border Guns and Neighborhood Fears00:11:51
Joining me now is Leo Knight.
He's a former police officer, and he's become my go-to guy for all security and policing matters.
Leo is on his winter vacation, and he's been so generous with his time to come on the show today.
Hey, Leo, thanks for joining me.
You're very welcome, Sheila.
Now, I wanted to talk to you about the terrible year in Toronto policing.
Sue Ann Levy had, as usual, a really great article sort of documenting all the terrible things that happened in Toronto policing.
As of December 27th, they had 96 homicides.
That's nearly two a week.
It's the most dangerous year in Toronto, really, ever.
Police morale is at an all-time low.
Shootings are up and arrests are down.
Now, I have some theories about why that is.
I think it has something to do with social justice activists like Black Lives Matter.
I think it has a lot to do with the ineptitude of another former Toronto police chief, Bill Blair, who's now the gangs and guns minister for Justin Trudeau.
And I think it has to do with safe injection sites, but I'm just a layperson.
What do you think?
Well, you know, again, you talk about social justice warriors and that, but I think you have to include the mayor of Toronto in that category.
When you look at things like telling Toronto Police Service that they can no longer engage in activities like carding, carding is all that is just a card.
It's a field identification check that police officers fill out in every city anywhere whenever they come in contact with somebody.
And it goes into an Intel database.
That's all it is.
For people to say that black people are being carted more often than white people just means that they're being in contact with police more often than white people.
That's just the reality of life.
So in 2017, they removed carding in the city of Toronto, and nearly immediately they saw a spike in gun violence.
And, you know, to his credit, Police Chief Saunders in Toronto said he tacitly admitted that gun bans aren't going to work in Canada to reduce the gun violence in his city because he said the majority of gun-related violence in his city is quote-unquote street related.
So I guess that's good.
But what are the answers here?
Last week, the Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders held a press conference, a year-end press conference, where he was talking about the record year in 2018 where Toronto recorded the most homicides ever in its history.
And as he was talking, he danced around the issue, which is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, which is black gang violence.
Just before we started this call, I looked up online the Toronto Police Most Wanted list.
And of the 11 people on there, 10 of them are black.
You can let the social justice warriors or the politically correct say whatever they want, but you can't change reality.
That's reality, is that the majority of the violence is black gangs on other black gang members.
So there needs to be some sort of, you can't solve a problem if you don't identify the problem and talk about the problem.
Well, and, you know, it really doesn't do any justice to the people who have to live in these really underpoliced communities because of, you know, the police being scared of being accused of racist, of being racist.
It's not fair to them.
They deserve to be safe just like everybody else in Toronto.
But because of accusations of racism by social justice warriors who don't have to live in these underpoliced communities, the people who live in them are far less safe.
Well, exactly.
I mean, it was just last month or the month before, there was a discussion in the media in Vancouver about the Vancouver police checking more Indigenous people in the downtown east side than white folks.
Well, the practical reality is if you walk around the downtown east side, is the prevalence of people down there, especially the prevalence of people committing crimes, are Indigenous.
You can't get around that reality by saying it's racist by Vancouver Police to be checking more Indigenous people than white people.
It's just, it's ridiculous when reality is reality.
Well, it's one of those times when facts don't really care about your feelings.
And I think part of the problem in all of this is, you know, as was pointed out in that press conference, a complete lack of will to do what needs to be done.
And I think one of the most telling statements by Police Chief Saunders was, I don't think that's, he said with regard to gun violence, he said, I don't think that this is going to be happening next year.
I do think this was a unique year for the loss of life.
And I don't think that this is going to be a trend that we're going to have every single year.
Well, if none of the conditions are changing to create a better atmosphere for policing and give police the tools they need to do their jobs, of course, the trend is going to continue.
It is going to be more violent.
When they stopped carding, it was pointed out that they've seen over the last four years a 152% increase in shooting victims.
They've seen more murder victims.
How are they going to deal with this without giving police those tools back?
Well, carding is just a tool, but it doesn't matter what you call it.
Carding, in New York, they called it stop and frisk.
But what it is, is giving police the ability to be proactive rather than reactive.
If they see somebody in a neighborhood, it doesn't look like he belongs in that neighborhood, the police should be able to stop him and say, hey, what are you doing here?
Who are you?
And that sort of thing.
That's being proactive.
And if you take that ability away, what you get within policing is the FIDO syndrome.
Now, FIDO stands for FIT, Drive On.
In other words, if they see something, it's just ignore it, put your blinders on, keep driving, don't get involved.
And that's just anathema for police in any city.
Well, and it's resulted in police going from, they said, 50,000 arrests five years ago down to 27,000 arrests this year.
I mean, the amount of arrests in Toronto has dropped by nearly half.
And I think it has a direct correlation to the fact that police don't have those intel gathering tools to be able to put two and two together when they're doing their investigations.
Well, a lot of the arrests that occur from, again, I hate using the term, but the term carding as it's used in Toronto is from police being proactive.
Who's that guy?
What's he doing?
You identify the guy.
You know, if you see something suspicious, you know, put the guy against the wall and you say, you know, I'm going to search you and whatever.
You find something on him, a gun, or whatever, a knife, you know, what's this for?
And you start, you know, you're interacting with the individual that way.
And oftentimes it will result in arrest because it is a bad guy and it's a bad guy, you know, because the police understood by seeing that person that they were a bad guy and they check them.
You know, if you take that ability away, then you're going to do exactly what you're talking about, Sheila.
You're going to minimize the number of arrests that are made.
Well, and I mean, doing that sort of thing makes police more visible in the community.
It gives people within the community, I think, more confidence in the police to know that the police are out there being proactive as opposed to reactive intelligence and making people feel like their community is a priority for the police.
And I think it has the opposite effect.
While everybody is screaming racism at the police for doing these things, it actually shows that these black neighborhoods are actually a priority for the police to keep them safe and get the criminals out of their neighborhood.
Totally.
I mean, police care about the neighborhoods they protect.
That's why they do it.
I mean, just by the nature of the job, you could not or would not do it where you're putting your life at risk if you didn't care.
Police care.
The politically correct nonsense that you're talking about, Sheila, needs to be taken out of the equation when you're talking about how to police a neighborhood.
You know, and people like Mark Saunders, you know, at that press conference, like I said, I sat and watched it and he wouldn't talk about the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
I mean, it's obvious to everybody, apparently, but him.
Well, and he says things like, and he would like to see an update to the antiquated criminal code to adapt to the changing conditions in Toronto.
How about just enforcing the law, all the laws in Toronto and arresting the criminals?
Why do they need more laws to deal with this?
They need to, first off, enforce the border, because as you rightly pointed out, it is porous.
Gangsters are trafficking drugs across the border.
They're trafficking people across the border.
Known criminals are coming across the border.
Child pornography is coming across the border.
The first thing Toronto needs to do is call on the federal government to enforce the border and then stop being a sanctuary city.
And secondly, just enforce the laws as we know them.
Well, exactly.
And in your checklist of what's coming across the border, you missed one thing, and that's guns.
And there's a lot of guns coming across the border.
And you can't stop that by having John Torrey saying Toronto is a gun-free area.
I mean, that's just, it's idiocy.
It's ludicrous.
You know, your point about the porous border is exactly correct.
You cannot have without strict border controls, you can't control what's coming into the country, whether it's people, you know, sex trafficking, child porn, guns, drugs, whatever.
You know, you simply cannot have a porous border and expect to have control of things.
Well, and I think there's a secondary issue of Toronto being a sanctuary city when you're signaling to the world's bad guys.
Here's a great big green light.
Come here, we'll take care of you.
Yeah, and we won't ask any questions.
We don't care about your immigration status.
That's a big draw.
You're sending out a beacon to the bad guys as you virtue signal to all the progressives of the world that Toronto is the place to be.
Critics of Scheer and Kenney00:04:36
Exactly.
You know, and it's at the end of the day, Sheila, you know, I would say this.
You know, you cannot allow political correctness to get involved in policing.
Policing deals with reality.
They deal with the reality of the streets.
They deal with the reality of the communities, with the reality of the problems.
And when you're dealing with reality, there is no place for political correctness.
You know, I think that's a great place to leave our interview today.
I want to wish you a very happy new year.
Leo, thank you for taking the time away from your winter holidays to speak with us today.
And from your lips to God's ears, let's keep social justice out of policing.
There you go.
Happy New Year, Sheila.
Thank you.
Stay with us.
More up next after the break.
Thanks, everyone, for bearing with Leo Knight and me while we worked through some of our Skype challenges in our interview.
Now, I know this is the portion of the show where Ezra and sometimes David read their fan mail and their fan hate.
To be honest, I try not to read the hate.
It can be a little discouraging, but I'm always open to constructive criticism.
You know, over the Christmas break, I was still working hard.
I was covering all the pro-pipeline truck convoys being held here in small town Alberta.
And I found this note from William Kay in one of the comments of my videos.
On June 6, 2017, the House of Commons voted on a resolution in support of the Paris Climate Accords.
A few conservatives tucked tail and ran out the door.
One voted against, but the remaining voted unanimously in favor of implementing the Paris Accords.
Have no doubt.
This climate accord is a petroleum phase-out agreement.
It means blocking pipelines, taxing fuels, and strangling the oil sands.
Andrew Scheer supports this.
So does Jason Kenney.
Funny, Sheila, Sheila, never mentions this.
Fake populism, folks.
Look, I appreciate the criticism, and I understand that not everyone can see all of my work all of the time.
So I get if something has been missed.
But I've been a very vocal critic of Andrew Scheer and even Jason Kenney here in Alberta when they deserve it.
I've had petitions against both of them.
When Andrew Scheer whipped conservatives into supporting the Paris Accord, like William Kaye pointed out, as one of his first acts as Conservative Party leader, I ran a petition against him calling him a backstabber.
I ran a petition this summer before Maxine Bernier left the Conservatives to form his own party calling on Andrew Scheer to reverse his expulsion of Maxine Bernier from cabinet.
Now Maxine Bernier was booted from cabinet in part because he, like me, does not support supply management for dairy and for eggs.
And just a couple of weeks ago, I had a petition against Jason Kenney's proposed government-mandated cuts to oil production in Alberta because, again, I think supply management is unconservative, especially for oil.
And I knew those cuts would immediately cost jobs, and as it turns out, they did.
Drilling rig utilization rates in Alberta are at some of their lowest in four decades.
That's what the production cut brought us.
And those are just a few of the times that I tried to serve as a gut check for conservative politicians who are constantly being pulled to the left by the mainstream media and by the governing Liberal Party.
All the forces are dragging conservatives left, and I try to be the one thing dragging them back towards conservatism some days.
And I don't care if they don't like me for it.
I'm trying to do this for the good of the conservative movement, for the good of the country.
I don't have a problem being critical of conservative politicians of any stripe, but I try to do it in a non-malicious way.
I want Andrew Scheer to be a better conservative.
I want Jason Kenney to do all the things he's promised us he will do.
I'm a cheerleader for conservatism, but not for conservative politicians.
To use Williams' language, I'm a shill.
But I'll shill for small government, personal responsibility, low taxes, and minding your own business any day of the week.
Breakfast Send Magic00:00:28
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Happy New Year to you at home and to everybody in Rebel World Headquarters in Toronto.
Thank you again, everybody in the office, for turning the dog's breakfast that I send them into a fully functioning Ezra Levant show for all of you.
You guys in the office perform real magic.
And thank you, everybody at home, for tuning in and supporting the work we promise to keep doing for you in 2019 to bring you the other side of this story.