Ezra Levant examines whether humanity has an innate need to hate, citing Justin Trudeau’s demonization of unvaccinated Canadians as "extremists" and Emmanuel Macron’s push for social restrictions targeting them. Ontario’s school closures—despite vaccinated teachers and low child transmission risks—sparked protests like the January 9th Queen’s Park rally, where parents like Tamara Ugolini and Bronwyn Alsop demanded reopenings amid academic decline and mental health crises. The episode ties politically fueled scapegoating to rising intolerance, questioning if systemic hatred becomes self-perpetuating when normalized by leaders. [Automatically generated summary]
They would stop everything, and for two minutes, you had to shout and scream and wave your fists and hate the approved enemy.
And it was on all the telescreens or whatever.
And then you go back to normal.
Two minutes of hate.
And I thought, well, what was that about?
How was that?
And I think I finally saw that in action in two countries, actually.
And I'll take you through how that warning is coming true.
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Thanks.
Here's today's show.
Tonight, do we have an inherent need to hate people?
I think maybe we do.
Justin Trudeau sure thinks so.
It's January 10th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Did you catch Justin Trudeau's comments the other day about how much he hated unvaccinated people?
He said unvaccinated Canadians, his own citizens, many of his own voters, that they're extremists, they're misogynists, they're racist.
He's a small group, but he takes place, and there, we have to make a choice as a leader, as a country.
Do we tolerate these people, or do we say, well, let's see.
The Jean-Prison 200%.
Trudeau tried out a version of that during last fall's election campaign, too.
And really not a peep of objection from the corporate media.
Remember this?
Because everyone needs to get vaccinated, and those people are putting us all at risk.
So he's dividing us.
He's demonizing people as enemies, enemies of the state and enemies of other citizens, enemies that we should hate too.
It's one thing for Trudeau not to like someone, but for such a person to be deemed a racist or a sexist means we all have to hate them too.
I noticed how in that one clip, he's pretending it's a question, should we tolerate them?
Which suggests the answer could be no, because if it was unthinkable, you wouldn't ask.
That's similar to what Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, said.
He said he wanted to make it as uncomfortable as possible to be unvaccinated.
So the abuse, the discomfort was the point.
It wasn't an unfortunate side effect of good public policy.
It was the public policy.
Here's how the left-wing pro-Macron Guardian newspaper put it.
They said, I am not about pissing off the French people, the president said in an interview with readers of La Parisienne on Tuesday.
But as for the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off.
And we will continue to do this to that end.
This is the strategy.
And then he said, in a democracy, the worst enemies are lies and stupidity, Macron said.
We are putting pressure on the unvaccinated by limiting as much as possible their access to activities in social life.
And he said, when my freedoms threaten those of others, I become someone irresponsible.
Someone irresponsible is not a citizen.
Now he was speaking French, and he actually said en français, en vie de emerdé les non vaccine.
Forgive my accent.
But if you know the French word maired, it tells you more precisely what he actually said by Hmer Day.
The president of France actually said he wants to, and I'm sorry, I'm going to swear here.
He wants to shit on the unvaccinated.
It's not the English phrase piss off.
It's the French word.
And in the name of public health and public interest, he's going to do that.
We're seeing some crazy talk like that here in Canada.
Trudeau's health minister talking about a forced vaccine for everyone.
The so-called conservative premier of New Brunswick says the same thing.
And how do you deal with the unvaccinated?
Well, I'm in the case that if you can accommodate, you know, we always thought 90% or so was, at one time we thought 75% was herd immunity, and then it went to 90%.
So it is 90% the right number.
And if we have 90% people that are fully vaccinated and continue to be so, and that allows society to function as normally, then that's fine.
But we haven't gotten to that point.
So if we continually have outbreaks because of the 10% that refuse to be vaccinated, then we have to go to the next level.
So I would say accommodation is, you know, you look at flu shots, you look at a lot of things that we do as routine.
This needs to be routine.
But we have to decide first and know that would that 10% be jeopardizing our health system.
And right today, I think because we haven't stabilized with this COVID virus, we don't know that.
But that is a key factor on how hard you need to go.
That's odd blaming the unvaccinated because I think that premier himself is vaxed and he got the disease.
In fact, by far the majority of people in Canada getting sick are vaccinated.
New Brunswick hides its statistics.
No surprise there.
But here are Ontario stats.
So yeah, I'm just going to go out on a limb here.
Perhaps the rage directed at the unvaccinated who are clearly not the problem statistically and who are logically not the problem.
I mean, how is this person not taking a vaccine a problem for you if you are truly vaccinated?
But dial up the hate anyways.
And here's my thinking on that.
I was talking with our team about it.
Why the rage from politicians who normally talk about sunny ways.
Remember Trudeau would talk about sunny ways, how Stephen Harper was the grouchy one and Trudeau was the smiley one?
You know, there's a phrase the left invented under human rights ideology.
We have to accommodate people, reasonable accommodation.
It meant you had to accept someone different than you, even if it caused you some hardship at your business.
For example, you had to be reasonable to accommodate some difference, like if someone's Sabbath was on a Friday or a Saturday, you should schedule them off on that day, but they can work on a Sunday.
That's what they mean.
It was a tolerance thing.
I think most people are on side with him.
It's a liberal thing.
But here's Catherine McKenna, mercifully no longer a cabinet minister, talking about reasonable accommodation for unvaccinated people who, by the way, there's plenty of good reasons to be unvaccinated, medical reasons, religious reasons, reasons of conscience.
And she says, pretty sure most Canadians want them to be unaccommodated.
When did the Liberal Party, the party of the Charter of Rights, become this way?
Why Anger Lingers00:03:00
Not just that, but the whole anti-bullying thing, which is half the curriculum in schools these days.
Don't be mean.
Don't judge people who are fat.
And fat shaming in the media.
They put really fat people on the cover of glamour magazines now.
You can't say a word about transgender people, even if they're destroying women's and girls' sports for biological women.
You can't say anything about anyone.
No jokes even.
Not even comedians can make jokes about things in jokes.
No bullying, tolerate everyone, tolerate everyone, everything.
Certainly no picking on weak or vulnerable people.
No sexism, no ageism, no white splaining, no man spaining.
But then this torrent of official hate from Trudeau and McKenna.
And for the first time in a long time, I remember that passage from the book 1984.
Let me read it to you.
They stopped the world in the novel for two minutes, the whole society, to rage, to express hatred for two minutes at the government-approved target.
Let me read.
The horrible thing about the two minutes hate was not that one was obliged to act apart, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.
Within 30 seconds, any pretense was always unnecessary.
A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.
And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
Just to remind you, they had some official enemy.
One day it was East Asia, one day it was Eurasia, whichever country they were at war at.
And the personification of the enemy was always Emmanuel Goldstein, some schemer always behind the setbacks in society to blame.
So whatever was going wrong in society, I don't know, crops failed, corruption, I suppose even a natural disaster, but usually a government-made political disaster.
It was always the fault of the scapegoat, in that case, Emmanuel Goldstein, and the national enemy of the day, because you had to feel anger about your life.
It was so dark and dreary and sad and impoverished and uncomfortable.
Everything about your life was miserable.
Naturally, you felt feelings of anger and hate and grievance, and you definitely couldn't hate anything official.
You couldn't hate the actual thing that caused the misery, certainly not the government, let alone Big Brother.
So your hatred was encouraged as long as it was channeled and directed to Big Brother's enemy.
Same thing happened in Orwell's Animal Farm, actually.
When there was a setback, it was blamed on saboteurs and underminers, never on the pigs.
Trudeau has been a total failure from the very beginning.
So have the provincial premiers, by the way.
Scapegoating And Hatred00:06:12
So obviously have the public health officials who are just playing.
Simon says, repeating whatever Anthony Fauci says, though what he says always changes.
All the experts are wrong.
The media is wrong.
The police are wrong.
The politicians lie.
I mean, remember this guy?
What's your position on vaccine passports for those individuals unwilling to be vaccinated?
Opposed.
And we've been very clear from the beginning that we will not facilitate or accept vaccine passports and that in fact we regard, I believe that they would in principle contravene the Health Information Act and also possibly the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
We also amended the Public Health Act to remove the 110-year-old power allowing Alberta to force people to be inoculated.
So these folks who are concerned about mandatory vaccines have nothing to be concerned about and there will be no vaccine passports in Alberta.
And will the provincial government act on behalf of Alberta citizens if the federal government seeks to impose such restrictions?
Yes.
Yeah.
Don't remember that, people.
Best to get angry at some scapegoat.
In Alberta, it's that annoying pastor, Arthur Pavlovsky, or in Toronto, it was that annoying restaurateur, Adam Skelly, or whoever.
But best to demonize the unvaccinated.
It fits right in with the proven demonology used by the Nazis.
Jews were unclean.
That was literally a Nazi propaganda line.
Just refresh it and put in the unvaccined.
So let me end with a little story that perhaps you missed over the weekend.
When our correspondent, Yankee Pollock, first played it to me, frankly, I didn't think it was newsworthy, I'll tell you.
It's a recording of some guy, some anonymous guy, who knows who, some random person, calling up a kosher Jewish grocery store in Quebec and abusing the Jews for being unvaxed or something like that.
And I actually think that most Jews in Quebec, even Orthodox Jews, are vaxed.
The one thing is that they just don't stop going to their synagogue just because there's a lockdown.
They really take that part of their life seriously.
So I think it's the fact that they just go to synagogue, no matter what the public health tyrants say.
And people sort of know that the Jews do that.
And because Orthodox Jews are so visibly distinct, they have beards, they dress a certain way, the hats.
So they can be spotted a mile away.
And that look can be a proxy for, well, not being unvaxed so much, but it's going to gatherings illegally.
I think that's what it is.
If you had to scan a thousand people by sight alone, could you tell who was vaxed or not?
Probably not.
Maybe someone wearing a mask or not would help you figure it out, but lots of Orthodox Jews wear masks.
It's just the Orthodox Jews go to gatherings.
So there's a proxy for unvaccinated people or people who aren't following the rules.
Listen to this for a couple minutes and I'll come right back on the other side.
I speak English.
Now, you're in Quebec here.
And first, I want to tell you something.
How do you want people to respect you if you don't respect the law?
With me, I'm going to do something.
All of you is going to go back from Quebec.
Go away.
You understand?
Yes, because you're a very bad person.
You understand?
And you answer me in English too.
So Quebec is going to go and see you for the French language.
And two, you are really stupid.
Okay, when it's closed, it's closed.
You don't open.
And masks and all that.
You don't understand.
Your brain is very small.
You understand that?
Okay.
You don't understand.
We have a variety.
For you, it's not true, huh?
It's not true.
It's not there.
There's about, I don't know how much thousand people.
It's an hospital now, but for you, it's nothing.
You're really stupid.
And I'm going to check to every people know that.
You understand?
Okay.
Do what you have to do.
Yeah, and you go away because it's going to be very bad for you.
We're not going anywhere.
We're staying here in Montreal.
No, no, you're going to go back where you are.
Because you're not.
It's just you.
What Jewish?
Don't f around.
Why are you f around?
Like you, but now you church marriage.
Why do you do that?
Pabarnagi, you don't understand.
So, if you believe him, he's not actually a deep Jew hater.
He's not using extreme anti-Semitic language, like the equivalent of the N-word for Jews.
He's not calling for a gas chamber.
He's not a neo-Nazi who has the phraseology of anti-Semitism down pat.
I think he even sort of said there that he used to be friendly to the Jews.
It's just that he thinks Jews are breeding disease now, and they're the problem now, and they ought not to be tolerated now.
And that was his two minutes of hate.
Who told him to do that?
Who told him to think that way?
Well, the media, the chief fearmongers, of course, but who gave them the direction and, in fact, the moral permission to do that?
Well, this guy did.
Est-ce qu'on tolère?
these jeans.
This guy did.
Because everyone needs to get vaccinated, and those people are putting us all at risk.
Justin Trudeau and the premiers and the health officers said it's okay to demonize, it's okay to hate.
They radicalized that young caller in Quebec.
They made him a lockdown extremist.
Right now, that guy, whoever he is, is just making angry phone calls.
But how long till something gets physical?
The cops are already showing the example, aren't they?
The cops assaulting people.
Even Trudeau's own bodyguards beating up David Menzies.
Novak's Exemption Controversy00:12:39
And not a peep from any other media.
They love it.
So much of Orwell's warnings, so many of them have come true, and that includes the two minutes hate.
It's here.
And not a single person in authority is speaking out against him.
Stay with us for more.
Well, that looks like funding.
In case you don't recognize it, that is the Serbian flag.
But that wasn't in Serbia.
That was in sunny Australia.
It's their summertime down there now.
They were dancing because an incredible thing happened over the weekend.
The world's best tennis player, Novak Djokovic, was flying to Australia to go to the Australian Open, a major tennis tournament.
Now, he's not vaxxed, but he has had the disease, so he has natural immunity.
And he applied for an exemption.
He had his daughter doctor report the facts.
The government in Australia at the state level reviewed it, approved it, issued him a proper exemption and the visa, and to Australia he flew.
But when that fact became public, it showed something that's been obvious from the beginning: that there are different rules for fancy people, for rich people, for rock stars in our country.
You can see it in hockey.
NHL leagues are allowed to play, but your kids aren't allowed to go to the local rink.
So the Prime Minister of Australia panicked and he ordered the exemption and the visa revoked.
Oh my God, here is Novak Djokovic's father just raging at what he called an imprisonment.
Take a listen to this.
They could have said, don't come, Novak, and that would have been okay.
But no, they wanted to humiliate him and they're still keeping him in prison.
He's not in detention.
He's in prison.
They took all of his stuff, even his wallet.
They left him with just a phone and no change of clothes.
Nowhere to wash his face.
He's in prison.
Our pride is a prisoner of these idiots.
Shame on them.
The whole free world together with Serbia should rise.
This isn't a battle for Serbia, Novak.
It's a battle for seven or something billion people for freedom of expression, free speech, freedom of behavior.
Novak didn't break any laws, just as seven billion people didn't break any laws.
They want to subdue us for us all on our knees.
It won't fly.
Freedom, Novak.
We're all with you.
Well, Novak Djokovic isn't just the world's best tennis player.
He knows how to instruct lawyers.
They, on an emergency basis, went to court and said, look, we did everything we were told, and this is a capricious and political overturning of a medical exemption.
And wouldn't you know it, he won.
And joining us now live from Australia via Skype is our chief Australia correspondent, our friend Avi Amini.
Abhi, great to see you.
Good to see you, Ezra.
Novak Djokovic is becoming a hero.
I'm not sure if he really is, but he turned into one.
He's just a tennis player, not very political, I don't think.
Followed the rules, had the rules changed on him.
And instead of cowering or going meekly, he decided to fight.
I guess that makes him a hero.
He didn't bend the knee.
I think he certainly is a hero in many people's eyes, especially around the world, for standing up in something he believes in.
It's been apparent over the pandemic that he's held views, not political views, about his body.
You're talking about one of the greatest athletes at the moment in the world who has his own personal ideas of health.
And when he did travel to Australia with a medical exemption, which, by the way, is not just by some doctor.
He went through state health panels, two panels from the Victorian state government that gave him that exemption.
And he flew in with all the paperwork.
You can actually see when he flies into Melbourne, he pulls the paperwork out, just expecting Border Force to accept it because it's all official documentation.
But not only did he win the case yesterday, if you watched the trial and you heard some of the judges' comments at one point, especially, I think it was 10.30 a.m.
And that's when I tweeted, he's won.
This was hours before the end of the case, because it was clear.
The judges turned around and said, he was angry underneath.
And he goes, I just don't understand what more this man could have done.
And that was it.
That was the moment where I go, this is shut.
It's a question about what the ruling is going to be, not whether they're going to quash it.
Yeah.
You know, there's so many things at play here.
First of all, the fact that a politician thought they could step in and rewire a health decision shows it wasn't ever really about health.
This is all about politics, about control.
I think the reason the Prime Minister of Australia panicked is because of my earlier point that there's clearly fan.
I mean, and by the way, I think everyone should be able to get an exemption if they have medical reasons, if they have natural immunity, for example, if they have reasons of conscience.
So I'm not upset that Novak Djokovic got one.
It's just that I can understand, even though I don't accept, I understand why the prime minister panicked, because he's locking down.
Go ahead.
I don't think he panicked.
I think, like you said before, everything's political these days.
The whole pandemic is politicized.
I think he did polling.
And what happened when because a day before he arrived, the prime minister was asked why he was given that exemption.
And the prime minister put it squarely on the state, saying that they've actually given the power to the state to make those decisions.
I think the bad vaccine.
Yeah, here, let's take a quick look at that.
He's not taking a stance one way or another.
He's saying it's a state decision made by Victoria.
Talk to them.
I'm not sure if that's passing the buck.
It's like Canada, certain jurisdictional things at the local level, some are the provincial, some of the federal.
So I think that was probably the right answer by the Prime Minister.
But like you say, he did the polling.
How do you think it's looked now that a judge has says, has just absolutely blown it up in the face of the whole establishment?
I think Novak's gotten far more support here now than he did when he originally came in.
And that's what I believe the Prime Minister misunderstood the poll.
Yes, most people were angry that Novak Djokovic got in here with an exemption, not because people care whether he's vaxed or not.
The reason why people were angry is because 93% of the population, let's say 70% of or 80% of that, did it under duress.
Did it because the government said you can't go to work if you don't have that.
You essentially can't live.
And so many people who tried to get exemptions just couldn't get them.
So people were not angry at Novak.
They were angry at the fact that a celebrity who was coming here to obviously make money for the state was given this exemption that they couldn't get a hold of.
Even if they did have COVID.
Although having COVID is probably the only exemption that's a little easier in Australia to get.
But even so, often it's almost impossible to get an exemption here.
And that's what people were angry about.
And I think when the federal government played their hand and it became this rivalry between the state and federal government, which both of them said they didn't want Novak here, but the state health department or this special panel that was an independent panel created by the state who did review everything and did give him his exemption before he came in.
It just became this pointing fingers where it was obvious that he did jump through all the hoops that were put in front of him that was set out and he did it all legally.
And still they tried to it's just an example of everything we've been through.
The government think that the rule of law does not apply to them.
And that's exactly what we've seen throughout this pandemic here, especially in Australia.
Well, it was nice to see a judge stand up against the government for an unvaccinated person.
You don't see a lot of judges doing that.
Now, is there, I've got two questions for you.
When is the Australian Open?
Is it today?
I believe it starts on Thursday.
Go ahead.
They said they needed an answer by today for scheduling.
So they needed to know.
Australian Open said they needed to know by today.
This was the deadline.
So the judge was working very, very fast.
This is one of the quickest cases we've seen.
Yeah.
Now, of course, every court has a court above it that an aggrieved party who thinks they got the wrong ruling can appeal.
Do you know if the government is going to appeal their loss?
In this case, I don't think there's necessarily an appeal process in this because it was an injunction.
So the route that the government still has, which right now is the talk of town, is that the minister has a personal power to again go and recancel his visa.
So arbitrarily cancel the visa and the process starts again, which essentially means he won't get into the Australian Open because there's no way it's going to be all done by this afternoon.
So watch this space.
It's important.
My gut, I don't think they're stupid enough to do it.
They've mucked.
If you watch the trial, you saw the state fumbled the whole way through, even to the point of having ridiculous representation against 2QCs.
And, you know, he threw everything at it and won and won, you know, in an amazing fashion.
And at the end of the ruling, the judge made it clear that if they were planning on doing something like that, as in having the minister use his special powers, he wants to know.
He wants to know everything that's happening.
And I think that it's almost a warning to the government.
Don't go down that route.
Then there's private litigation.
Like if you are the world's best tennis player, you're invited in good faith, you accept in good faith, you jump through all the hoops and a court says you're fine.
And if you're blocked again, I would imagine the breach of contract, the economic interference, whatever the tort would be called, get ready to pay that man tens of millions of dollars.
But of course, money's no object to the government these days.
It's just incredible, though.
I don't know.
I don't follow tennis, but I've got myself a new hero.
I'm in that same boat.
I've, you know, I never really would have cared.
But I think over the next few couple of weeks, as the Australian Open plays out, I want to go hear from people every day, people on the street and from outside the Australian Open to see how people feel about what's happened.
The funny thing is, throughout all of this, on the major betting sites, he was still coming up as the number one favorite to win the Australian Open, even when they pulled him off the Australian Open tour official list.
So I think he is going to play.
He is going to win.
And that is the best outcome to it all because it's exposed our government, both on state and federal.
This shows both sides of politics.
Parents Demand School Reopening00:15:55
Our state is Labour Party, Federal is Liberal Party.
So it is the right and the left, the Conservatives, and it just exposed them for exactly what they are.
People who believe that they are above the law, who can use this pandemic how they wish to play politics.
Well, there you have it.
Abhiyamini, thanks for getting up early, Tuesday morning, Australia time, to talk to us here on Monday evening in Canada.
Great to see you, my friend.
Good to see you.
All right, there you have it, Abhiyamini.
Stay with us more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your feedback.
Michael Coffey says, when the ideal is militant racial chauvinism, impartial justice is oppressive.
You're talking about critical race theory.
Yeah, you know, it just, I mean, Canada feels fairly easygoing, but race, we don't, you know, we're not like Rwanda and the Tutsis and the Hutus.
We're not like Pakistan and India.
You know, we're not even like Jews and Palestinians or whatever.
Like, Canada's sort of far away from that, and we didn't have a deep history of slavery or Jim Crow laws.
I mean we have our Indian Act, let me put a big asterisk on that, but that's not being dealt with by even leftists.
But to import that American structure, one thing I learned from Simon Say is he's saying, look, it's not about the actual history, it's about forcing everyone into this Marxist format so we can destroy the existing culture.
I learned a lot from Simon Say, and I hope we can have him on the show again.
Antonietto D'Onofrio says, Dr. Breidel has been making the claim for months that the vaccines seem to concentrate in the ovaries, causing menstrual problems.
Unfortunately, he is one of the many doctors and scientists that are being censored and shunned by public health and mainstream media.
I haven't seen Dr. Breidel talk about that, but it's now everywhere.
By the way, I said the CBC has refused to cover that story.
They finally did.
24 hours later, they just ran some Associated Press pro-vaccine story.
They didn't do their own story on it.
It's interesting what's happening under the Centers for Disease Control and the Fruit and Drug Food and Drug Authority now.
They're actually admitting what we've known from the beginning, that the vast majority of COVID deaths were actually deaths by people with three, four underlying serious comorbidities.
So I think what's clearly happening is that the official people, the deep state, the public health bosses have realized that if they keep up their extremist lockdownism, it's going to be a devastating 2022 election for Joe Biden.
So whereas under Donald Trump, they wanted to magnify every problem by counting anyone who, you know, within 30 days of being admitted for problem X also had COVID.
They're trying to minimize the stats now under Joe Biden just to help him slouch through the finish line.
I think that's what's going on.
Energy Mind89 says, thank you, Samuel Say, for speaking out.
Critical race theory is alive and thriving in Canada under the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
I used to subscribe to curio.ca for access to educational materials, but found the content increasingly unusable, meaning woke.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
I mean, how many leaders over history said, give me a child till age six or seven and I'll have them for life?
I mean, that's been the thinking of so many ideologies.
Just give me the kids and I'll indoctrinate them.
And I may not convince their parents, but I'll get their kids.
That's what terrifies me.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with our video of the day.
Tamara Ugalini.
Families and educators gathered in Queen's Park in Toronto to advocate against Premier Doug Ford's province-wide school closures.
Yeah, I think Ontario has got to be one of the few places in the world that are shutting down schools.
It's junk science, and we Canadians are getting the brunt of it.
Here's her video.
I'll see you tomorrow.
I don't think schools are unsafe at all.
I think they're ready to open tomorrow.
I think we have masks.
The teachers are vaccinated.
They should have been prioritized earlier to be boostered.
I think healthy teachers aren't at risk of contracting severe COVID.
We know our kids aren't at risk.
I don't understand why the Ford government keeps making this decision at the cost of our children.
Our kids are suffering because any child I know that has had it has been very mild and absolutely even no symptoms.
So the fact that they're trapped at home because of the risk and possibility of catching it really outweighs the damage that they're having for their mental health and the lack of education that are falling behind and also for children that are being child abused, suffering from child abuse at home that no one even knows about.
I just feel I've never come to a protest in my life and I just don't know what else to do to advocate for my children.
I want to pull my hair out every time I see the news.
Tamara Ugolini here with Rebel News.
I am on the lawns of Queen's Park downtown Toronto on Sunday, January the 9th for a back to school protest where parents have finally said that enough is enough and they want their kids back in class.
On Monday, January the 3rd, Doug Ford announced that he was closing schools again for just another two weeks.
We'll be delaying the return to in-class learning for the next two weeks and continue with virtual learning for the duration of the time away.
And while we know how that's gone previously, we are two years into and going on year three of two weeks to flatten the curve.
And finally, parents, educators, and students alike have had enough and they do not want to see schools closed any longer.
So I'm going to head on into the crowd and get some feedback and see what we can find out.
Stay tuned.
I'm a parent.
I'm a mother of four children, 12 and under.
And I've seen them suffer academically tremendously.
I've seen them suffer mentally.
And my children are privileged children.
I cannot imagine every time I look at low-income housing or other areas where there's a single parent trying to work, maybe working outside the home, leaving young children by themselves.
This is an emergency.
This is a real emergency for all children.
And I just can't understand why when we're in a pandemic and states of emergency have been posed, that children seem to be coming last.
Yeah, and Ford said that, right, that schools should be the last to close and the first to open.
And here we are closing them first.
So what would you like to see them do differently?
Well, I think that if I were looking at society, there are some things that you need to keep open in a pandemic.
You need to keep grocery stores, you need to keep pharmacies open, and the government's main job actually is to manage hospitals and education.
And those things should be protected, period.
They should be made a priority.
And then managing numbers, the pandemic should be with everything else.
But children should be protected.
They can't advocate for themselves.
And their poor parents are exhausted, beside themselves, and just trying to cope, manage, pay the bills, economic stress, and look after children.
And he's really picked on the most vulnerable area of society.
Why are you here protesting the school closures?
My name is Virginia Johnson, and I'm here because I'm outraged that Ford continues to keep closing our schools.
Remote learning, we all know, is not learning at all, and it's a mental health crisis for our kids.
I've experienced it in my own family, and I don't know why that's not being taken into account.
Do you think that schools are inherently unsafe, as they claim?
I don't think schools are unsafe at all.
I think they're ready to open tomorrow.
I think we have masks.
The teachers are vaccinated.
They should have been prioritized earlier to be boostered.
I think healthy teachers aren't at risk of contracting severe COVID.
We know our kids aren't at risk.
I don't understand why the Ford government keeps making this decision at the cost of our children.
What would you like to see them do differently moving forward?
I would like them to prioritize schools and children and not close.
And you have a petition going here as well.
Would you like to tell us a little bit about the kind of feedback you've received?
So this is a petition that's going to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
We have 100, maybe 150 signatures that we've just gathered in the last hour and shows how much parents are desperate to have their kids back in a classroom.
My name is Bronwyn Alsop and I'm the founder of Ontario Families Coalition and we are a parent-led advocacy group for wanting in-person learning for our children.
And I'm also an early childhood educator and we put our children first for having in-person learning from JK to grade 12.
It's imperative that they have in-person learning.
Now, do you think that schools are, or do you agree with rather, that this concept that schools are unsafe and that's why they should be shut down?
I believe that schools, definitely, our children are safer in schools right now.
I agree with our medical officer of health, how children are safer in schools than outside of schools, because many families have had it who have the privilege to pay for learning pods, who have other areas when they go.
I know people have already pulled their kids out line and they've traveled to other areas outside of Ontario because they are sick of having their kids trapped on virtual learning and they don't want to put them through the torture of that.
So if they have the financial privilege for it, they've gone and they found other resources.
Families who are underprivileged, who do not have that luxury, are the ones who are forgotten and ignored and definitely suffering that no one seems to care about.
And all children from every financial income needs to be in school in-person learning.
And it's ridiculous that they think that they can keep, or Ford, that he can keep ignoring science.
He needs to follow science and stop dragging our kids through politics.
Your sign here says kids need in-person learning.
And then on the opposite side, there was this is an Ontario problem.
Do you want to expand on that a little bit?
Well, if this was absolutely necessary to close schools for the safety of our children or the overall safety and risk, that would be one thing.
But there's no other jurisdiction in this country that has had their children out for months and months and months on end.
And the amount of damage that that's done to the next generation will not be known for years and years.
And in fact, if I were going to ask the government to do one other thing, it would be to reinstitute standardized testing for all children so we can see what's happened so far and start to make a plan as to how we're going to get them to catch up.
It's been clearly stated through science that the transmission in schools was very low throughout all of the other closures.
I know with Omicron that it spreads faster, but anyone who I know who has had Omicron and even been double vaccinated with the booster, the symptoms have been very mild.
And it is something that I think that we truly have to normalize and that we have to look at this with our schools is that our kids are going to be safer in school and that our cases are going to be continuing to rise because that's what happens in this with the virus that we're coming hopefully to the end of this where it is going to be spreading faster and we have to normalize this where our kids are suffering because any child I know that has had it has been very mild and absolutely even no symptoms.
So the fact that they're trapped at home because of the risk and possibility of catching it really outweighs the damage that they're having for their mental health and the lack of education that are falling behind and also for children that are being child abuse, suffering from child abuse at home that no one even knows about and can't even talk right now because they have no voice.
So I'm disgusted that there's the assumption that every child is safe at home where the damage that's happening across our province with having school closures consistently is just awful.
It just cannot happen again.
What did you think of the turnout here today?
It's a pretty windy blustery day.
I was really pleased people came out and supported.
I think we're coming where the momentum is, things have shifted where parents before were scared to speak out.
I would have tons of families that would come to me and they wanted to step out and stand up to have their kids to have in-person learning even last year when they could see the damage that was happening within their homes.
But there was still the political concern and also fear of speaking out in your community and being out there to really raise your concerns publicly on how this was not right that this was happening to your kids.
So I'm really seeing quite a shift in that where parents are coming out and standing up and not bringing anything else politically into this except about schools.
I'm fully vaccinated.
I wear a mask every day at work.
I personally feel that we need to completely move forward with this and have our children in school.
And that's the only thing that we should be focusing on.
Is there anything I missed that you'd like to touch on?
No, I just feel I've never come to a protest in my life and I just don't know what else to do to advocate for my children.
I want to pull my hair out every time I see the news.
Well, the few people that I was able to catch and pull aside for an interview seemed to agree that schools are not inherently unsafe and they just want their kids back in class.
The harms far outweigh any projected modeling good that school closures could potentially have.
There is enough data and evidence to show that the school closures result in great harm to children and it's destroying families and their ability to cope through the pandemic.
Now, there was some mainstream media journalists here.
I was really happy actually to see that.
Hopefully this gets some good light in the mainstream media.
There's been previously a lot of smearing of protesters and anyone who goes against the government's response to COVID.
They did get the luxury of sitting in their nice warm vehicles.
They're allowed up on the lawns of Queen's Park, you see, but not me at Rebel News.
Now, in order to continue to support this back to class initiative, I've started a campaign at backtoclass.ca where a lot actually of my original report that I published on January 5th, just a mere two days after Ford first announced his unscientific school closure again.
A lot of what I heard here today actually was in alignment with that original report.
So I urge you to go and check it out.
All in all, there were about 75, maybe 100 people in attendance here.
And because of the weather, it's very windy and quite cold.
A lot of people scurried out quickly after the speeches commenced.
So I present to you the few that I was able to catch up with and we'll see if any more protests occur as school closures remain in place.
For Rebel News at Queen's Park Toronto, I'm Tamara Ugolini.
We're spearheading a campaign at backtoclass.ca to get kids back to class.
It's clear that parents, educators, and students all want to be back in the classroom.
And it's finally time to say enough is enough and let's advocate for these children who don't have voices of their own to sign our petition.
Our goal is 10,000 signatures.
I think we're up to almost 8,000 as of today.
That's Sunday, January the 9th.
We're up to about 8,000 signatures.
We also have an initiative there called One Click Politics where you can send a form letter to the Minister of Education and the Premier of Ontario to urge them to open the schools and get kids back to class.