Sheila Gunn Reid and Keean Bexte expose Canada’s chaotic border policies, with 60–70 migrants daily entering via Wroxham Road despite Trudeau’s COVID-19 travel bans, straining healthcare and risking RCMP safety. They critique $2.6M spent combating "misinformation" while ignoring systemic failures like the $5B Victoria-class submarines, plagued by fires and deaths since 1995, and Liberal procurement blunders—such as canceling Sea King replacements (costing $500M+) and buying 25 retired Australian F-18s instead of NATO’s F-35. Minister Bill Blair’s "enhanced screening" claims are debunked by firsthand reports, revealing a government prioritizing optics over security, undermining public trust in crisis management. [Automatically generated summary]
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Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you, in which we look back at some of the very best commentaries of the week by your favorite Rebels.
I'm your host, David Menzies.
Now, even if you believed in open borders, as our Prime Minister clearly does, you'd think we might hit the pause button on that when it comes to illegal migrants crossing into Canada from illegal border crossings, you know, in light of the COVID-19 crisis.
But Kian Becksty recently revisited the infamous Wroxham Road crossing, and guess what, folks?
Virish Miris, it's business as usual there.
Say, if your plan was to escape from the coronavirus via submarine, don't even think about hopping aboard any of those lemons we bought from the Brits back in the 1990s.
Can you believe it?
The Navy can't find spare parts for these clunkers.
Just will you hear what Sheila Gunread has to say about this scandal.
And finally, letters, we get your letters, we get your letters every minute of every day.
And I'll share some of your responses regarding my visit to Pearson International Airport on Monday night to discover that contrary to what Safety Minister Bill Blair has been tweeting, there were absolutely no new enhanced screening measures at the airport, even for a flight touching down from Hong Kong.
Those are your rebels, now let's round them up.
Keen Bexy for Rebel News.
I'm at Roxham Road right now.
This is the notorious intersection where illegal immigrants come from New York State into the province of Quebec.
You can see the fence behind me.
It wasn't there last week when I came here for my second time while I was documenting the illegal immigrants coming to this country in the middle of a pandemic.
That was before Justin Trudeau announced that no foreigners will be allowed in this country at all.
Actually, on top of that, he said even Canadians who are sick and abroad are not allowed to return home.
We will be denying entry to Canada to people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
Now, after he made that announcement, I thought, well, surely Roxham Road will finally be closed.
Not only are these people not Canadian, not only are they not family of Canadians, these people have no travel history.
And on top of that, they've come from New York State, which is quickly becoming the epicenter in North America of the Wuhan virus that has become a global pandemic.
In fact, the county right south of me right now, which allows access to these illegal immigrants, the aptly named Clinton County has now announced cases as well.
New York State is a hotbed.
And not only are these people coming from that state, they're coming from across the world with very little travel documents, if any.
Now, I came here to see with my own eyes that this is still happening in real time.
Justin Trudeau is betraying Canadians.
This is an image of the illegal aliens who just came in.
Over the course of the hour that I've been here, about two dozen have come in, but I find this family very interesting.
There's about seven or eight of them, and very specifically, two of them were wearing masks.
Wasn't the children, wasn't the father, it was two women, very specifically them wearing masks.
It wasn't an overly cautious family who put a mask on everyone, saying that they're concerned that they're going to contract the Wuhan coronavirus from Canadians.
Sick Canadians are not allowed to return home to their country, which actually is a charter violation.
It is against the Charter of Rights and Freedom to restrict access of Canadians to their own country.
But while he does that, while he breaks the charter, he's allowing illegal immigrants about 60 to 70 a day.
Oh, sure, COVID-19 is a potentially deadly virus, and yeah, it's now a global pandemic.
But as you just saw, it's business as usual at Wroxham Road as the Royal Canadian Bellhop Police continue to accommodate anyone and everyone from parts unknown, even as law-abiding, tax-paying Canadian citizens are having their charter rights violated in the name of public safety.
And with yet more on this disgraceful situation is our roving reporter, Kian Bexti.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, my friend.
Hi, David.
Hello, Kian.
So, Kian, I think in the last few years that this sieve of a border has been operating, Canadians have been caring and they've been compassionate and they've been going beyond the call of duty in terms of accommodating illegal migrants.
But given the COVID-19 crisis, you know, I feel like I'm being kicked in the head right now.
What's your take on this border fiasco?
Well, first off, it's unfair.
It's unfair to a whole host of people, the RCMP that have to screen these illegal migrants, the families of the RCMP who are at greater risk once they come home and they could be infected.
To every Canadian who is going to be pushed out of a bed, any sort of health care solution when it comes to this global pandemic that we're dealing with, you can be sure that the refugees 10 times out of 10 will be getting that care for Canadians.
Just the nature of the fact that they're already being isolated, they're already being quarantined, is taking resources away from Canadians.
And when one of them is inevitably sick, as we saw yesterday, they were even wearing face masks.
Just a select few in certain family units that came across were wearing face masks.
So it wasn't just overly cautious families.
It was some individuals of them appeared to be sick on their own.
And they're coming into Canada to get gold-plated health care.
And that health care is going to be taken away.
It's a scarce resource health care.
It's going to be taken away from someone in Canada, a Canadian who needs it, to be given to them because Justin Trudeau will not accept any refugee casualties in Canada.
Well, that does seem to be Justin Trudeau's Canada, doesn't it, Kian?
The makers get penalized and the takers get rewarded.
But here's the thing, Kian.
You and I, and I would assume everyone else here at the Rebel and most of our viewers, we're very big on defending borders and walls and fences.
I mean, I would say that if a nation doesn't have secure borders, it really isn't a sovereign nation to begin with.
But we know the Trudeau Liberals are open borders cats.
Yet, given this crisis, this global pandemic, you would think that this would be enough for them to say, hey, listen, guys, on a temporary basis, we're putting up big fences.
We're putting an end to taking in migrants.
But clearly, that's not the case, is it?
Yeah, there's been some very specific situations, changes in the situations in our borders that made me think that finally Roxham Road would be closed.
So I went there last week and I saw, okay, there's a global pandemic going on.
Refugees are still coming in.
I thought that that was insane.
And then Justin Trudeau announced he's closing the border to all foreigners except for Americans.
So I thought, okay, well, these illegals coming in at Roxham Road, they're not Americans.
They might be coming from the United States, but they are not Americans.
They're either from the Congo, they're from Haiti, they're from Iran.
They could be from anywhere.
One of them that I saw yesterday was actually Asian.
I don't know how they figured out that Roxham Road was the place to go, but they figured that that was what they needed to do to get gold-plated healthcare.
So even then, it wasn't closed.
And then Justin Trudeau announced that even to Americans, the border was closed.
The United States-Canada border was closed for the first time in a very, very long time.
I don't know if it has even been closed in my lifetime, perhaps at 9-11.
I'm not quite sure.
I wasn't old enough then to remember.
But this is an unprecedented moment in Canada-U.S. relations and Canadian relations with the entire world.
We're closed off to everyone.
The only way to get into this country now is at Roxham Road.
And Justin Trudeau is turning a blind eye to that.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
There's no policy reason for it.
There's no justification.
There's no explanation.
It's just pure insanity what is going on there.
It boils my blood to know that Canadians are going to be pushed out of health care beds, out of beds for care when this situation is rapidly growing.
It's exponentially growing.
And we don't know where it's going to level up, if it will at all, until massive amounts of people start dropping like flies.
We don't know if this is going to stop in the short term or the medium term or the long term.
And it's short-sighted to allow more people into this country who are possible spreaders of this pandemic or possible drains on the limited healthcare resources, limited healthcare resources that we have.
Oh, and Kian, I would argue, too, that it's not just Justin Trudeau, as you mentioned, who is turning a blind eye to this.
Where in blue blazes is the media?
This is a sensational story.
This is an important story.
As you've mentioned, this is a story that's a matter of life and death.
Why don't we see Global and CBC and CTV with their cameras there documenting what is happening?
They certainly have more resources than we do to cover stories like this.
I don't know why we're the only ones that are able to get to Roxham Road.
It wasn't an easy trip, that's for sure.
They were all somehow, even though the airports are almost empty, all of the rental cars were gone.
So I had to get an Uber to get to Roxham Road.
I asked the Uber to stay for two hours and then I'd take the Uber back.
And he wanted to leave because the RCMP started harassing him.
It was hard to get there.
But I mean, the global news and the CBC, they have vans upon vans in Montreal that they could just drive out there and stake it out and watch what's happening there.
And for some reason, they choose to be willfully ignorant on this topic.
They want Canadians to be in the dark on what's happening because, of course, they're in Trudeau's pockets.
I think that's it, too.
They don't want to bite the hen that feeds.
And of course, we're not in that camp, thank goodness.
But you know, it's very interesting.
You mentioned the Uber driver, and we know from last week when you got a parking ticket from the Quebec provincial police officer.
And as you mentioned, the RCMP were hassling the Uber driver, even though he was doing nothing illegal.
Isn't this the world upside down to me, Kian?
Here we have law-abiding citizens, you and the Uber driver, feeling the brunt of law enforcement, even though it's light, you know, in terms of warnings or parking tickets, and yet people clearly breaking the law, coming in illegally to our country at an illegal border crossing, and the RCMP is carrying their luggage.
Am I reading a mad magazine script here, Kian?
It's tone deaf.
It's hard to comprehend as a regular Canadian why the government is prioritizing people who are going to be drains on an economy that is collapsing by the hour, by the minute.
The TXS, the TXF, TS, oh my gosh, I'm tired.
The TSX is crashing every minute.
Healthcare beds are being filled up every minute.
The government's budget is changing every minute, both provincially and federally.
The federal government just spent 3% of the Canadian GDP.
It is unprecedented.
This is effectively wartime.
It seems strange to say that, but at this point, in the spending trends that we're seeing, the illness trends that we're seeing, and the response from the general population, this is wartime without a national, without a country that we're fighting against.
We're fighting against an invisible enemy, and the government's resources are being depleted and drained by people who are not part of our team, by people who are coming into this country specifically to be a dream.
And for some reason, the government is complicit in complying.
Oh, and even more than that, Kian, we have to wrap it here, but I would argue if you look at one of the line items in how the government is addressing the COVID-19 crisis, they set aside $2.6 million for combating any kind of so-called racist or culturally insensitive misinformation about the virus.
And we're probably guilty of doing that right now.
I wonder if the federal government has any kind of fining mechanism to slap us for even having the temerity to mention what's going on at Wroxham Road.
Unbelievable.
Kian, great piece of journalism, my friend.
And thank you so much for joining me here on Roundup.
No problem.
Thanks, David.
You got it.
And that was Kian Bexy, safe at home.
And keep it here, folks.
More of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
Remember the Sea King helicopters?
They were so old that they were falling out of the sky and killing servicemen.
And yet the Liberals would not replace them for the military.
The Liberals actually canceled the replacement contract to replace the Sea Kings back in the 90s and paid half a billion dollars in penalties because of it.
Then there was the recent procurement of 25 retired F-18s from Australia to replace the aging CF-18, as in the Liberals bought a similar model of jet to replace some of our own aging fleet.
And now the Liberals are pouring money into them, 500 million bucks to keep them in the air for just 10 more years instead of joining with our NATO military partners when they all procured the F-35.
Liberals' Submarine Legacy00:10:52
Then, of course, there were the Victoria-class submarines, four used subs bought from the UK by the Liberals that have been a money pit ever since.
Now, earlier this year, we learned that in 2019, the subs spent no time at sea at all.
Look at this from the CBC last month.
All four of Canada's submarines were tied up, tied up, okay, last year for repairs and maintenance.
News that has the opposition conservatives questioning whether the Liberal government can keep the second-hand fleet afloat for another two decades.
In response to a written question before Parliament, the Department of National Defense said the boats spent zero days at sea in 2019, but three of the four would return to service at some point this year.
But the situation around those rust bucket used British submarines is even worse than first reported.
Blacklock's reporter broke the news yesterday and then sent me down a lengthy maritime military audit rabbit hole.
Seriously, does it get any worse than that, folks?
Not only are these vessels substandard, fixing them is a Herculean effort because, well, there are no parts available.
What a slap in the face yet again to those who serve in the Canadian military.
And with more on this story of substandard submarines is our very own Sheila Gunread.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, my friend.
Hey, David, thanks for having me on the show.
It is always a pleasure.
Sheila, do the Liberals have no shame?
Our veterans are told they are asking for too much when it comes to their pensions and benefits while the likes of terrorists receive eight-figure paychecks.
And now there seems to be no issue with putting submariners or submariners, I should say, into submarines that might not even be safe while docked in the harbor.
Why this disrespect to those who have signed up to make the ultimate sacrifice, if need be?
Well, this is just how the Liberals operate, isn't it?
In my commentary, I mentioned the Sea King helicopters.
That was back during Paul Martin's time.
And the Sea Kings were literally falling out of the sky and killing our servicemen.
They were old.
They needed to be replaced.
They were, like I said, killing people.
And the Liberals canceled the procurement contract to replace them because, as Paul Martin so flippantly put it, if it's good enough for the U.S. president, it's good enough for our military because at the time the president did fly in a Sea King.
But he wasn't flying sorties and missions in a Sea King.
He was just, you know, flying from Camp David to the White House in one.
These subs have been a problem since they were purchased.
Last year, they were not even in the ocean whatsoever.
They were in dock getting repairs.
One was put out of commission, I think it's for six or eight years.
People have already died in these.
They have already died in these.
And instead of just decommissioning them, selling them for scrap or whatever you do with aging submarines, they just keep pouring more and more and more money into these instead of getting our military the equipment it needs to be at least pulling our weight within NATO.
This all, I mean, it's part of a theme with the Liberals, isn't it?
The Liberals, instead of procuring the F-35 with the rest of our NATO partners, decided that we should buy, used, again, Australian F-18s to replace Canada's aging CF-18s.
So they bought a similar model of aircraft to replace the ones that are already too old for our pilots to fly.
Some of them are older than our pilots.
This is just a theme of how the government continues to treat our military, treating them like they're greedy, like they're asking for more than Justin Trudeau can give them, when Justin Trudeau is ready to hand out money to every single social justice cause on the face of the earth.
It's so shameful, Sheila.
But in the case of these submarines, for those who don't know the history, let's turn back the hands of time to the mid-90s when this fiasco first started under the Kretschin Liberals.
First of all, why did we buy you submarines from the UK and why was the UK selling these subs in the first place?
Well, the subs were being decommissioned, much like the Australian aircraft we just bought.
They were being decommissioned.
They were headed to the scrapyard.
Instead, in 1995, during the last decade of darkness, when the Liberals were treating the military like it's expendable and disposable, in 1995, they spent $750 million to buy four used UK Victoria-class submarines.
So these are diesel, diesel-electric.
Subsequently, the Chikudami, one of the subs caught fire, killing a crewman and causing the evacuation of the entire crew.
The fire then put the boat out of service for nine years.
And since then, these things have been a money pit ever since.
Last year, they weren't in the ocean at all.
They anticipate that this year, one might be able to be serviceable.
And in the meantime, it's going to cost as much as $5 billion.
That's with a B, to try to keep these things going until the mid-2030s.
These things have cost $1.31 billion between 2018 and 2021, and they aren't even in the water.
It's shocking.
Sheila, this is mind-boggling.
And let's dissect some of the words you use.
When the UK decided these subs need to be decommissioned, that's another, that's like a fancy word for saying they're junk now or they're going to be money pits.
And yet, somehow we thought this was a bargain.
And yet, as you mentioned, and I remember that story very well, a Navy personnel member did die in one of these subs.
So how is this in any way a bargain, especially right now, as you mentioned?
$5 billion just to keep them going for another decade and a half?
That is crazy.
Yeah, I mean, we could scrap them, scrap them completely, buy new, and still save money to keep going up until the 2030s.
There used to be a running joke around Edmonton because the world, West Edmonton Mall used to have two subs.
I think it was two or three subs that you could go in.
And they're just like these little mini like scientific exploratory subs.
But the running joke was that at least ours were in the water and they were working and you could safely go in them, which is something that we couldn't say for the Canadian military.
And we won't be able to say it for any time in the near to midterm future because as this defense report points out, there just aren't parts anymore.
You just can't even machine the parts for these things anymore to keep them in the water.
But somehow they keep piling money into these things.
And as you said, they've been docked in a harbor for the last little while.
So I guess the military strategy here was that should the enemy come into the same harbor and get into torpedo range, I guess we can fire upon them from our solitary position.
But Sheila, this is like Economics 101.
If someone is shopping for a car, for example, right?
And if you're looking at a used car and it's 50% less than the brand new car, on paper it sounds like a bargain, but if it needs new air conditioning, a new transmission, new wheels, et cetera, et cetera, pretty soon you're paying more than what a new car would be.
Who thought this was a great deal going back to the 90s?
Did the federal government back then, Sheila, get any input or advice from the people, oh, I don't know, the admirals who are actually running the Navy to maybe get feedback from them to say a bargain is no bargain when it's going to cost more than buying brand new?
Well, this was a Paul Martin thing.
And at the time, you'll recall better than me, since you are of a certain vintage.
Oh, Paul Martin.
Paul Martin was making steps to be fiscally prudent as a liberal.
And when liberals are trying to be fiscally prudent, it's just not in their DNA, so they always do it poorly.
They thought that these subs at $750 million were a great deal, a heck of a deal.
And look at what we're doing for the Navy.
We're buying subs.
This will be our legacy.
And instead, the legacy has just been, well, one death, subs that are never in the ocean, and a multi-billion dollar debt load when the military could have had new, better equipment to do things like patrolling the Arctic, protecting Arctic sovereignty, which is something that Justin Trudeau has never, ever really focused on, and he won't.
He doesn't see Russia as the threat that the rest of us do.
So he's not going to invest in the kind of technology that our Navy needs to go under the ice up there.
And I don't think he ever will as long as he's in charge.
You know, Sheila, I don't really know why any man or woman in Canada would sign up for the armed forces in this nation.
And the disrespect goes back more than a century.
I remember from grade 10 history class, there was the Ross Rifle scandal.
The Ross Rifle Company had political contacts in Ottawa.
The Ross Rifle people made the rifles for the First World War servicemen, and they were garbage.
Ross Rifle Scandal00:04:11
After a few shots, they would jam.
They were so bad that if there was a dead German on the field, a Canadian would dump his Ross rifle and grab the handgunner rifle of the German soldier.
And here we are more than a century later, literally.
Folks, as you know, this afternoon, it's a Monday night right now.
Justin Trudeau announced new measures to protect Canada from the COVID-19 virus.
This was in terms of restrictions for who can fly into Canadian airports.
Of course, there's so many exemptions that, you know, it's very questionable how effective these measures will be.
However, before Justin Trudeau's announcement this afternoon, in the morning hours, Bill Blair tweeted out the following.
And he said, quote, since the disease first began to spread in Hubai, we immediately took action by enhancing our border measures through additional screening questions, examinations, and advice to mitigate the risk to passengers and others.
Well, folks, we've been coming to this airport several times in the last three months.
Here's what we discovered when We were questioning people off a flight from China to Toronto back in January.
And I ask you, do you think this sounds like enhanced screening measures, which Bill Blair boasted about?
Check it out.
Just wondering, did you go through any kind of special screening?
No, no, this is not.
Yeah, that's not very reassuring.
In fact, I think Mr. Blair is being a little fast and loose with the truth.
In any event, the new measures don't take place until Wednesday.
However, there is a flight coming in tonight from Hong Kong.
It's going to arrive shortly.
And I'm going to ask the people departing that flight whether they have been asked these enhanced questions and have been subjected to different kinds of screening.
The sort of stuff Bill Blair says has been going on since January.
Let's see what these arrivals have to say.
Hello, sir.
Did you just fly in from Hong Kong?
Yeah, I'm going to ask you a question.
Just wondering, did you go through any special screening procedures when you went through customs?
You mean Hong Kong, here?
Other here, yeah.
No, they asked, but they didn't have anything special.
Well, there you have it, folks.
Despite what Bill Blair boasted about, there have been no enhanced screening measures at Canadian airports since news of the coronavirus first broke.
Not unless you consider handing out pamphlets to travelers about COVID-19 is supposedly an enhanced screening measure.
In any event, here's what some of you had to say about my visit to Pearson International Airport on Monday night.
Victor Shandor writes, God forbid we offend anyone from another country or anybody who has been abroad.
Please just waltz in and infect us all.
Yep, Victor, and it's happening at Wroxham Road too with illegal aliens.
But when it comes to abiding by a prime directive, the Chudo Liberals subscribe to the mantra of political correctness rather than public safety.
And given there are literally lives on the line here, that sort of virtue signaling is just downright despicable.
Percy writes, why is the CBC not at the airport asking questions?
Are you kidding me, Percy's?
That might come across as, you know, biting the hand that feeds.
And Midnight Move 11 writes, anybody else noticed that David's mask is not being worn properly?
The nose barrier was not compressed above the bridge and both straps are above the ears but should be above the head and under the ears to make a seal.
Epic Failure00:00:43
Epic failure, man.
Well, you know, we got dozens of emails bemoaning my improper wearing of the mask.
But hey folks, what can I say?
I'm not a biohazard technician.
Yet it does go to show you the lengths we'll go to here at Rebel News to bring you the other side of the story.
And hey, if my misuse of the mask has indeed led me to catching Wuhan flu, well, what's that line Lieutenant Whorf likes to recite?
Ah yes, perhaps today is a good day to die.
Well that wraps up another edition of Rebel Roundup.
Thanks so much for joining us.
See you next week.
And hey, folks, never forget: without risk, there can be no glory.