Ezra Levant’s guest, Mohamed Ashur of Aspire Foods, debunks edible insect hype, revealing the company’s $37.8M in subsidies—$16.8M from NextGen Marketing Canada and $10M from SDTC—while admitting its core market is pet food, not human consumption, despite claims of global food security. Ashur dismisses pathogen concerns but acknowledges Aspire’s focus on millennial pet owners amid broader anti-meat movements. The episode then pivots to Berkeley Law School’s "Jew-free zones," where nine groups barred pro-Israel voices, framing it as a civil rights regression echoing historical anti-Semitism. A speaker warns this signals societal decline, linking prosperity to Jewish acceptance while critiquing Health Canada’s flawed climate polling and Alberta oil ethics, suggesting separatist tensions could escalate if federal policies persist. [Automatically generated summary]
Well then, you won't want to miss my interview with the CEO of Aspire Foods, the world's biggest cricket factory based right here in London, Ontario.
It's Thursday, October 6th, 2022.
I'm David Menzies, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
So, folks, you might ask, what's bugging me today?
Well, the answer is actually found in the question, which is to say, bugs are bugging me today.
Oh, sure, we have to share the planet with insects and arachnids and so on.
And they so completely outnumber us.
They are supreme nuisances, of course.
And yeah, I'm looking at you, mosquitoes and wasps and bed bugs.
Yet coexistence is one thing, but do we have to put the creepy crawleys on the dinner plate?
Well, if you ask the likes of Claus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, the answer would be yes, that we need to substitute steak and potatoes for crickets and mealworms.
Oh, not that King Schwab will be chowing down on insects anytime soon, mind you.
Much like he tells us, you know, to surrender our cars as he buggers off in his chauffeur-driven limo.
What a fun burglar.
Now, you may have heard that there is quite the Canadian angle when it comes to the topic of edible insects, namely a humongous cricket breeding facility operated by the Aspire Food Group recently opened in London, Ontario.
Now, my initial calls and my emails went unreturned, so I hopped into the Menzoid mobile and buggered on down the 401 to try and get some answers.
And here's what transpired.
David Menzies for Rebel News here in London, Ontario.
And folks, I am standing in front of the world's largest cricket farm.
I kid you not.
And many of these crickets are destined for human consumption.
And the question arises why I know that edible insect fans, and there are some people that fall into that category, they talk about the millions and millions of people the world over that eat insects as part of their daily diet.
What they don't tell you is that most of those people are in third world nations and unfortunately they don't have access to other food.
I don't think a grub worm is someone's first choice over a hamburger or a chicken souvlaki after all.
Now the thing is, you got to wonder, is Canada truly a nation that is desperate for insects on the menu?
But here's the thing, Aspire Food Group, which is the name of the company here, folks, they're not really taking much of a risk in case this turns out to be a big flop.
For example, Aspire's plant has received $16.8 million from Canadian taxpayers via something called Next Generation Marketing Canada.
And it seems that this payment might just be the first installment, if you can believe it.
Also, Aspire has received an additional $10 million in taxpayer funds from Sustainable Development Technology Canada.
And get this, they've even received a million dollars from the United Nations.
Now we thought the idea of the world's largest cricket farm being located in Canada, well, that's kind of a big story, wouldn't you say?
Especially with so many of the world's elites right now attacking farming, traditional farming that is.
Just look what's happening in the Netherlands.
Just look at that harebrain plan to label Canadian ground beef as bad for your health.
And yet here we have this multi-million dollar insect farm right in the breadbasket of Ontario.
It just seems weird.
But we tried emailing.
They don't return your emails.
We tried phoning unless you know the employee's extension number.
And I took several guesses.
You cannot leave a voicemail.
So why the lack of transparency?
Now I should point out, our good friend at Western Standard, Karen Selleck, she recently penned a fine piece about this operation.
And when she reached out to interview someone, well, at least she got a reply.
It wasn't a good one.
It said the following, quote, hello, Karen.
There is no one available to respond to your questions.
Take care.
Simone, end quote.
I don't know who Simone is, but Aspire CEO, Mohamed Ashur, well, guess what, folks?
He was more than happy to sit down with a CBC journalist.
And if you check out that report, it comes across more like a press release rather than a actual news report.
In any event, I'm here to get some answers.
I think they owe us some answers.
They're getting tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
And because of that, they should be transparent in terms of where that money's going and whether or not this is going to be a viable operation.
Obviously, it's not viable enough for them to roll the dice and invest in this facility themselves.
No, they're depending on you and I, just like the CBC depends on you and I.
And in any event, let's go in and see what's cooking, so to speak.
Folks, just take a look at the size of this facility.
You know, it reminds me of something from pop culture.
Oh, I know, it's a Borg Cube.
You know, resistance is futile.
Self-determination is irrelevant, at least to what the world elites want you to put on your plate in the near future.
Ugh.
Sir, how you doing there?
Good.
I'm David Menzies with Rebel News.
Nice to meet you, sir.
I'm in the middle of a meeting, and the facility is close to visitors at the moment.
But if you'd like to schedule a meeting, you can reach out to us and we'll.
Oh, I have.
I've reached out.
Oh, wait a second.
Oh, is Mohamed Ashur here?
Because your phone doesn't pick up messages.
How about we come back after your meeting?
You'll have to schedule it with me because we're starting the plan.
We're not doing interviews for at least weeks.
Oh, but you gave an interview to the CBC, Mohamed Ashur.
No.
Well, we got the brush off, as you can see.
He seemed friendly.
He's in a meeting.
I offered to come back for the meeting.
Toronto is more than two hours away from here.
They do not return their emails, folks.
And they have a phone system where when you call, unless you know the extension, you cannot leave a message.
It does not go to a voicemail operation, and you end up guessing at extension numbers.
I'd have better luck winning Lotto Max, I think.
Well, folks, my camera woman Sarah and I, we had just finished wrapping up our report, such as it was.
We got the bums rush, as you saw earlier.
We walked around the facility.
We were literally heading out to hit the road.
And who should come out of the building but Mohamed Ashur himself?
He is the founder and CEO of Aspire.
And Mr. Ashur graciously invited us in to have a sit-down interview.
And here's how that went.
Insect Edibles?00:15:46
I'm just wondering, Mohamed, can you tell us why you think there is demand in Canada for cricket consumption?
That's human consumption.
Well, okay, so human consumption, I'm not so sure about that.
Our primary market's actually pet food.
So we don't really, when I first started the company, I was in medical school.
I came across this business competition, the idea, this was at McGill University.
The idea was to build a business that can address global food security.
So we started traveling around different countries, looking at different foods people eat.
We noticed that in a lot of the countries where people have experienced real hunger, places in Africa primarily, insect consumption is actually prevalent.
So our thought was maybe we can come up with a way to farm insects to address food security in these types of countries.
Our thinking was never to try to get Canadians or Americans to eat bugs.
Now, over time, we started to see that, you know what, there could be potential marketability of insects for human consumption, but that's obviously, it's tough.
I mean, you think like 25 years ago, the idea of eating raw fish for most Canadians was crazy, and now sushi is everywhere.
So yes, there's potential for insects to be a greater and greater percentage of our protein intake, but our focus is right now 100% pet food.
Oh, okay, then.
So none of the crickets in this facility are right now destined for human consumption.
In Canada, no.
Oh, but outside of Canada.
And right now we don't have any contracts right now with anybody who's buying crickets for human consumption out of this facility.
Okay, then.
Yeah.
Now, the other thing, Mr. Ashur, is the fact that I was looking at your business plan, and there's tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer funding.
I think there's even a $1 million grant from the UN.
And a skeptic might say that this gamble might not be done if it was simply your money or your investors' money, but it's taxpayers that are taking the risk on this venture.
How would you respond to that?
Yeah, I mean, so I have to, of course, on the one hand, be very grateful for a lot of the support we've received and the grants.
It's important to recognize that for every, so this facility, for example, eight out of $10 that went into building this facility came from investors, which means I sold a huge percentage of my company for us to be sitting here.
And actually, those investors are amazing Canadian private equity investors, venture capital investors.
You know, here's the really cool thing.
We won this prize when we were in McGill, in Canada.
We started this company in Canada, but we actually moved to Austin, Texas to do a lot of the R ⁇ D because we had found a company there.
We acquired it.
That's where we did a lot of our early research.
And then we found that a lot of the great support we were getting, great investors that were backing our company, many of them happened to be Canadian.
So anyway, as we decided to build our facility in London, Ontario, we were attracted in large part by some of these grants.
So one of them, for example, is Sustainable Development Technology Canada.
This is a grant that's aimed at companies that are going from sort of a pilot scale, so proof of concept, to commercialization whose business model has the potential to dramatically reduce environmental emissions and things like that.
In our case, if you look at pet food, 30% of the calories that dogs and cats eat come from meat.
And a dog in the wild doesn't eat cows.
A dog in the wild eats crickets or other insects.
Historically, pet food used to be the leftovers of human food, which makes a lot of sense, right?
You take a chicken, you remove the thighs, you move the breast, and then the rest is rendered and extruded into a pet food.
Nowadays, a lot of millennial pet parents want to be feeding their pets these chicken breasts also.
And so now you have a lot more meat being produced.
You have pet food manufacturers that are literally competing with human food manufacturers to be able to get their pets the same quality meat that they are eating themselves.
And so our perspective is that there's an opportunity for pets who naturally enjoy eating insects to reduce the environmental emissions associated with their consumption through insects as a substitution.
Does that make sense?
Well, I'm not a bug expert, if you can imagine, but I'm just curious.
You mentioned it was the research and development facility was in Texas.
And is there any taxpayer money from Texas going into this venture?
So we actually did not receive any grants within Texas.
Now the HALT Prize, of course, came in Canada in the sense that the HALT Prize is funded by the HALT organization.
So the HALT Business School every year issues a challenge.
It's a $1 million prize.
It's put up by the HALT family.
They're the founders of EF, an education company.
And it was the brainchild of the HALT organization.
So that was the only grant that came in to Aspire up to now when we're ready to commercialize.
It's very tough to get those grants.
Now, the only difference is we actually did receive a small business grant from the Department of Defense in the very early, early days, but we never got it because our company is more than 50% owned by Canadians.
So you have to be an American citizen or at least like more than 50% of your ownership is American.
So we actually had a lot of opportunity to get U.S. grants, but we could never close them because of our status as Canadian citizens.
And as you said, what you're growing here is destined for pet food.
Maybe there's a potential for human food in the future, but there's a lot of buzz, if you pardon the pun, about insects being used as edibles for human beings.
And I mean, we see it from people with the World Economic Forum.
United Nations, as you mentioned, gave that $1 million prize to you.
I'm wondering why does it seem to me, Mr. Ashur, that there's people in powerful positions advocating the consumption of insects while at the same time waging war on traditional agriculture.
You see what's happening in the Netherlands.
Here in Canada, there was a scheme to put warning labels on Canadian ground beef.
And a lot of people, I guess, are nervous or concerned that is this going to be part of the new world order, so to speak, the idea that we're going to give up beef and chicken and pork and instead have insects on our dinner tables?
I should hope not.
I'll tell you something right now.
I personally consume meat.
My family consumes meat.
My parents are from Egypt.
I've traveled around the world.
I think it is preposterous to imply or suggest that we're going to live in a world without meat.
While I, from a distance, can respect entrepreneurs who want to envision a world without meat.
I've been around enough farmers and I've seen regenerative agriculture and what amazing things it can do for our land.
So I think that there's a misperception, and this is the broader alternative protein movement.
You have companies that are on one extreme that say the world needs to get rid of all meat.
We're against meat.
Everybody needs to be eating, you know, plant-based this and alternative that.
And then you have on the other extreme, under no circumstances over my dead body, I'm only eating beef every single day for the rest of my body.
Our company is not an anti-meat company.
And actually, I've lost customers over that because a lot of the alternative protein companies are very puritanical in that perspective.
Like they really expect you to be doggedly against meat or else like you're not in the fold.
That's not our position.
Our position is meat is here to stay.
And there's lots of opportunity for us to create better regenerative agriculture around it.
Our perspective is the world is growing massively.
We need more protein.
And insects are so efficient at converting what they eat into protein biomass.
This facility here is on four acres and it will produce 12 million kilograms a year of meat, of insect protein.
That's a massive productivity out of a short amount of land.
So we're contributing and we're seeing ourselves as part of an overall solution.
But meat's going nowhere.
Okay.
Well, you know, it's interesting because I think I saw you quoted, it might have been a CBC article.
And I think you said up to about 2 billion of the world's people actually eat insects.
But I would say, on the other hand, Mr. Rashur, is that because they don't have access to any other protein or meat that they're forced to eat bugs?
That's so interesting you say that.
So I used to think that too, right?
Because I didn't grow up eating insects myself.
In fact, when we first came up with the idea for this business, we weren't really sure which insect even to start with, right?
So when we traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, and this is one of the poorest states in Mexico, okay?
One kilogram of grasshoppers, David, is more expensive than a kilogram of beef, chicken, and pork combined.
Can you believe that?
I couldn't believe it.
I find that very hard to believe, but is that true?
It is true.
And you know why?
It's because grasshoppers only come in season for about three months.
And because of that, well, three things.
One, they're in short supply and the demand is quite high because they're quite tasty.
You take anything and you add chili and lime and seasoning and it's going to taste delicious.
But the second reason is because the manual labor involved in capturing that many grasshoppers.
Go try catching a thousand grasshoppers.
Good luck, right?
So that makes it very expensive to capture this amount of protein, and that's what makes it expensive.
And I saw relatively poor people literally going up and buying grasshoppers in like 10 gram portions because that's all they could afford.
So that was so disruptive to my worldview.
It made me realize that this, you know, if insects are so prevalent and if apparently they are so good nutritionally, why haven't they already solved world hunger?
Well, it turns out in a lot of these countries, you actually can't rely on these insects year-round because they only come in season due to temperature and climate for a short period, and high demand makes them very expensive.
So it's actually, on the contrary, not only are people not forced to eat this food, they seem to be going out of their way to spend an inordinate amount of money to enjoy this delicacy.
That is fascinating.
But tell me, my colleague Sheila Gunread, she had a commentary a few days ago.
And it was based on a scientific report that came out about the problem with pathogens in insects.
And I think for, I'm going by memory, I think it was over 30% of insects destined for human consumption have a pathogen problem.
Is this a concern?
No, so we have to be careful what we mean here.
So there's pathogen risk, for example, with like food safety.
So if you package something incorrectly at a plant, it doesn't matter what it is.
It could be meat, it could be chicken, it could be, it could be, you know, crackers, right?
Like, so if there's an introduction of some sort of a contaminant in the food processing steps, that could be a problem.
But if you're saying, does the insect itself have a pathogen?
So that depends on the insect.
That's why for us, when we selected crickets, we were very specific that it has to be an insect that does not transmit any diseases to humans, that it's an insect that doesn't have any microbial activity.
At the end, when we harvest our crickets, we actually check and we have to run analyses to look for any kind of microbes.
So for us, we wouldn't operate as a food production facility if we allowed for any kind of pathogen to continue in the food chain.
Food processor or manufacturer, we have to have the best general manufacturing practices, we have to have the right sanitation, the right hygienic practices in place so that you don't introduce any kind of pathogens in your process.
So like producing crickets, it's the same as producing chicken, beef, pork, what have you.
You've got to follow sanitation standards to make sure 100%.
Okay, then.
And so just to be clear, as you said, it's most or all of the product that you will be producing, it's destined for pet food.
But I imagine, you know, there might be a business case for you if you can convince, I don't know, even 1% of the population that a cricket sandwich or wrap, however it's served, is good for, I mean, that's good for your bottom line.
So ultimately, do you see in the months and years ahead maybe having some of your product go for human consumption?
I think we're going to be focused on pet food for quite some time.
That market is massive, David.
And it's only growing.
You know, during COVID, so many more people adopted pets and brought pets into their household.
And because they're spending more time with their pets, they're starting to pay attention to what their pets are eating.
And they're thinking to themselves, you know, the pet is no longer this adorable furry creature that greets me when I come home.
They're now like my favorite child.
So they're treating them accordingly.
Canadians, Americans, people in these countries, we spend an enormous amount of money on our pets because we adore them.
And for us, we see a huge opportunity to be able to deliver the same high-quality nutrition to pets while at the same time having a tremendous impact on both their health and bodies as well as the environment.
And of course, with you being the CEO, I'm sure you've crunched all the numbers.
Are you confident that this is going to be a profitable venture moving on?
Yes, I am.
Okay, then.
Well, Mr. Ashur, I want to thank you so much.
You're a hard man to pin down.
I've been reaching out to your company, but one last question: Is there anything that we haven't discussed when it comes to the consumption of insects that you feel would be relevant for our audience to know?
Not at this time, but if you have any other questions, you can feel free to reach out to me.
And please don't go through the info, whatever contact page.
I'll never see that.
I'll give you my business card.
You'll get my email address.
If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to reach out.
I greatly appreciate that.
Thank you for your time, Mr. Ashur.
It was a pleasure.
Thank you so much for coming.
Well, there you have it, folks.
I should tell you that I found Mr. Ashur to be very likable, and I am indeed very grateful that he invited us into the facility for a sit-down interview.
And I'll take Mr. Ashur at his word that the crickets that are being bred here at the Aspire plant are going to be utilized as pet food.
But then again, that's in the here and now, isn't it?
Who's to say that in the near future, crickets produced by this facility won't be destined for human consumption?
In the final analysis, I'm a complete libertarian when it comes to a person's food choice.
You want to be carnivorous?
Well, there's plenty of superb keg steakhouses to satiate your need for meat.
You want to be vegetarian or hardcore vegan?
Hey, your body, your choice, right?
Except when it comes to getting vaccinated for COVID-19, of course.
And if you want to go through life as an all-out insectian, well, lucky you.
There are an estimated 20 quadrillion bugs on planet Earth.
You will never go hungry.
Say you want fries with that mealworm.
Yeah, well, so many politicians and mainstream media types are promoting the edible insect revolution.
Why do they always look so miserable when they are caught on camera eating a bug?
Check it out.
Pakistan has never seen an unbroken cycle of monsoons quite like this.
Eight weeks of non-stop torrential rain.
A national emergency has been invoked.
Has been invoked, but the weather in Pakistan, the extreme weather, is alarming.
Need to gracia reports.
Yeah, so not exactly finger-licking good now, is it?
And somewhere in the halls of Global News Ottawa, Rachel Crymore remains in the fetal position weeping over the fact that yet another Canadian female journalist was attacked by an alt-right insect.
But getting back to the cricket factory, my bugaboo, alas, is the sheer amount of taxpayer dollars propping up insect farms like Aspire.
If there is indeed a business case to be made for edible insects, then why are taxpayer-funded subsidies needed?
The same could be said for our state broadcaster, the CBC.
If a majority of Canadians gave a rodent's rectum about the CBC, then why does it need more than a billion dollars in taxpayer welfare on an annual basis?
And the answer to that query, of course, is this.
Just check out the CBC's abysmal ratings these days.
Anti-Zionist Climate Rising00:15:22
In the meantime, I remain completely unconvinced that insects are a viable protein source, assuming one is given the choice between bugs or burgers, or for that matter, even broccoli.
The mere sight of bugs is revolting to so many of us who make up club Homo sapiens.
Thus, sorry, World Economic Forum, when it comes to my dinner plate, I will once again paraphrase the late, great Charlton Hested.
I'll give you my hamburger when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Folks, if I told you that there is a policy being enforced stating that an area is a Jew-free zone, where and when would you think, I'm speaking of perhaps Berlin in 1939?
or would it be Berkeley in 2022?
Consider this shocking opinion piece published in Newsweek recently entitled University of California, Berkeley Law Schools, Jew-Free Zones, the latest progressive trend.
Quote, for several decades, Jewish college students have been sounding the alarm about rising anti-Semitism on college campuses.
From mild episodes of graffiti to BDS activism, Torah desecrations, and egging Jewish frat houses, university campuses have become hotbeds of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist activism, both in North America and throughout the world.
Rightly recognizing campus anti-Semitism as a blight on higher education and on America, former President Trump signed an executive order in 2019 on combating anti-Semitism.
Unfortunately, since then, not only has the campus situation for Jewish students not improved, it has taken a dramatic turn for the worse.
This can be seen most acutely in a move recently made by law school students at one of America's most progressive university networks in one of America's most progressive states.
At the beginning of the current academic year, nine law school student groups at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law amended their bylaws to ensure that nobody who supports Israel or Zionism is invited to speak.
Given that the vast majority of Jews worldwide support the state of Israel, these student groups have in essence created a Jew-free zone in the hallowed halls of Berkeley law.
The ruling would bar the law school's own dean, Erwin Chemernitsky, who identifies as a progressive Zionist, increasingly an oxymoron, if the progressives have their way.
Banning Jews or members of any other religious group from participating in a civil activity such as speaking at a publicly funded university is discriminatory and immoral.
And if it becomes acceptable and normalized in America to ban a Jew from speaking on a college campus because of an opinion held about Israel or Zionism, what is to stop the next step from happening, i.e. the normalization of banning Jews from attending that same or other institutions of higher education or other entities.
End quote.
Absolutely incredible and downright sickening.
And joining me now for more on this shocking state of affairs at Berkeley is the author of that opinion piece, and that would be Toronto-based writer Laura Rosencoin.
Welcome to the Ezra Event Show, Laura.
How you doing?
I'm good.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for joining us.
Laura, it is hard to believe that this is actually happening in the USA with all of the constitutional protections that country has, but it is happening.
How did this perverse so-called Jew-free zone initiative get rolling in the first place?
Well, I think for a long time, Berkeley in particular has been a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist political activity.
They have a really active Palestinian student life there.
California itself is a very progressive state.
So all those ingredients together have created a climate that has just become increasingly hostile to Israel and Zionism.
And, you know, as it's been said, when people talk Zionists, they actually most of the time mean Jews.
So what we can see is that the environment has become progressively more dangerous, I would say, and more the temperature is rising on campus towards Jews in general.
So it's been a long time coming.
And as I wrote in the article, it's just that this particular episode has kind of upped the ante on the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist behavior on campus.
Laura, it truly makes a mockery of the term and the concept progressive.
This is not progressive.
This is regressive.
This is, you know, a form of discrimination.
It is a completely biased attitude to an identifiable group.
God forbid, if this was any other minority being singled out like this, I'm sure it would be front page on every single American newspaper.
But that's another factor, isn't it, Laura?
The lack of media coverage.
Nobody's talking about this.
What's going on?
Yeah, I think that there's also been a lot of anti-Christian bias in America on college campuses for a long time.
And that is also something that people turn a blind eye to in the mainstream media.
There are certain groups, certain religious groups, certain maybe gender groups that are more highly protected by the media.
And the media goes into full gear if certain groups are attacked.
I think in this case, it's just really uncomfortable territory for the left.
Jews are very progressive in general.
Jews vote left, whether it's Democrat in the United States or liberal in Canada.
And it's really hard for them to square the circle about what's happening now.
It's a very difficult thing to have to acknowledge at some point that the political left is more of a danger than the political right is to Jews in North America.
So that being said, it is understandable that there would not be very much media coverage of this particular event.
There's often independent media covering anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic attacks.
For example, there's a non-Jewish guy named Mike Chernowitz, who is in California, who was on the story of Jews being attacked, knockout punched, all these Hasidic Jews being attacked.
Here he is, this non-Jewish documentary film producer and sort of social media giant.
And he seemed to be the only one interested in it.
It's very strange.
But Jews, I think, have become on the scale of hierarchies of identity politics.
They're quite low on the scale right now.
And there are people who are higher up on the pyramid.
Jews are not even necessarily considered a minority worthy of any protections in many cases.
They're just considered blanket to be part of the white hegemony, the white power structure.
So things have gone a little topsy-turvy in America in particular.
But whatever happens in America, you know it's going to start to happen in Canada.
Progressives here have their pulse on what's happening in the United States.
And I don't feel like it's going to get better.
I think that with the current administration, a lot of a blind eye is being turned to a lot of this stuff.
And I can't, I'm not particularly optimistic about where it's going to go.
You know, Laura, what you said earlier is a very important point: that there are so many in the Jewish community that vote left.
I would argue that if you are a Jew in 2022 and you're voting for the Biden Democrats or the Justin Trudeau liberals, I would question if you're a self-hating Jew, because these are not your friends.
These are, you know, I mean, Justin Trudeau, when he was unveiling Holocaust proclamations, he couldn't even say the word Jew.
With Biden, look what Rashida Talib says on almost a weekly basis.
Here's a quote: I want you all to know that among progressives, it has become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values, yet back Israel's apartheid government.
This is not anti-Israel.
This is not anti-Zionist.
This is anti-Semitism because there is no apartheid in Israel.
And if your argument is based on a lie, then I'm sorry, the likes of Talib, that is classic anti-Semitism and nothing else.
So, can you possibly explain to me why in 2022, Laura, there are so many Jews that vote Democrat in the U.S. and liberal in Canada?
Yes, I can.
Okay.
So, basically, the problem is: Jews generally also have a messianic tendency, believing in utopian movements.
They're very idealistic.
Jews in their DNA have belief in their DNA, but a lot of Jews have kind of gone away from religion and religious beliefs and observance and real traditional Judaism in favor of much more progressive causes.
So, the Jews that you get voting Democrat and voting liberal in Canada, their religion, for the most part, is political leftism.
That is what they believe in.
They believe in that.
Culturally, they're still Jewish.
They might have Yiddish words that they use.
They might celebrate holidays in certain ways.
But their actual political belief, the thing that they strive towards, is political leftism.
So, that really explains it all, which also is why in more Orthodox communities, you're going to find people are voting for Trump.
They're going to be more politically conservative.
And in Canada, they're voting more for conservatives.
So, there is a definite relationship between, I think, Jewish practice, that is to say, being Jewishly literate, prayer, holidays, Hebrew,
have you traveled to Israel that sort of thing and level of commitment to conservative or left-wing politics once you realize that they're true believers but they believe in political leftism as opposed to maybe the god of Israel as was traditional then it all makes sense absolutely incredible uh laura and you know getting back to berkeley i'm going to quote another piece from your superb column in newsweek And it says,
the anti-Jewish climate at Berkeley on college campuses in the hallways of Congress and on the streets of New York is not just a Jewish problem because what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.
American Jews may flee California and New York for the calmer waters of DeSantis' Florida, but that is really just a band-aid solution for a serious national problem.
So the point I'm making here, Laura, and I think the point you're making, your column, is that if you are not Jewish and you don't care about what happens to the Jewish community, how soon will it be before the so-called progressives come after you for some perverse reason?
Your thoughts.
They'll definitely start coming after you because there's no point where they'll live and let live.
What I also mean by, if you turn a blind eye to what's happening with the Jews, is basically the proverbial canary in the coal mine situation.
That what we've seen is that societies that have generally been accepting of Jews, allowed them their full civil rights to participate in full civil society, those are the societies that actually thrive.
And you have to look through the microcosm of history to see that that is what is actually the case.
The societies that have enabled anti-Semitism, state sanction, pogroms, other anti-Semitic activities, have for the most part ended up in the dustbins of history, empires entirely, and yet the Jews are still here.
The Jews have survived many empires throughout history.
The Jews even survived the most evil extermination attempts of Nazi Germany.
We're still here and we're still going to be here.
But if you look around, and you can even think about it in terms of in a biblical sense, for those people who are believers, even if you're not a person of faith, when in Genesis 12, 3, it says, God says, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you, you really have to look at that and say, isn't that actually the case?
Haven't all the societies that have treated Jews so badly, where are they now?
All these empires have come and gone.
And ironically, what you see now is that societies that are reaching out to Israel, the collective Jew, those societies are enjoying some prosperity as well.
I never thought in my lifetime that I would see religious Hasidic Jews dancing at a wedding, that there would be a chief rabbi of the United Arab Emirates, Jews and Arabs dancing together, engaging in commerce together, traveling to each other's countries.
I never thought that Saudi Arabia was going to be a peace prospect, but it feels like that we might be on the cusp of that as well.
This strange new Sunni Jewish alliance against Iran, for example.
So again, bless those who bless you, curse those who curse you.
And then you think to yourself, what am I actually witnessing here in North America?
And I think that toleration of anti-Semitism is one of those red flags in a society.
And it's not just going to stop at Jews.
So the knockout punches that were happening in New York City, that's happening now to Asians.
Tipping Point of Tolerance00:06:26
Nobody stopped it when it was happening to Jews.
And now it's happening to Asians without mercy.
These are merciless attacks that are happening all the time.
And if you don't stop a place like Berkeley from essentially banning Jews for certain thoughts that they have about a certain country where they have affiliations of ancestral homeland, homeland kinship, I mean, that's basically a thought crime.
So if the next progressive thing will be to stop the Jews from being able to attend or to stop anybody else that they deem, you know, ineligible because of their opinion.
It shouldn't matter what anybody's opinion is.
What matters is your behavior.
So, you know, if there was a Jewish student who was murderous, violent, or something like that, or had injured people, then you could understand banning that particular person for the actions that they had done.
But it is completely immoral, completely unconstitutional in the United States as well, to try to ban somebody from speaking on a publicly funded campus for thoughts or feelings that they might have.
So if you allow that, because it's just the Jews, then you're going to be opening yourself up to a black hole.
It's never going to end because with these particular kinds of fanatics, there is no live and let live.
It doesn't exist.
That concept doesn't exist.
You give an inch, they'll want a mile.
And I think that we've seen that happening in a lot of other elements of life and in society now.
And what it takes is massive lawsuits, massive donors cutting off the funding, some coverage in the media.
So thank you for covering this story.
But other than that, it doesn't stop.
And then once they finish with that, if they've gotten pushback from that, then they're just going to go on to the next thing.
So this is like a relentless, ongoing war.
And it's unfortunately, it is really truly anti-Semitic.
And it's unfortunate that there are going to be a lot of progressive Jews who try to explain it away.
But it's because it's because of what I explained before is that their primary belief system is actually quite far away from Judaism and it's more about leftism.
It's absolutely baffling.
And one last question, Laura.
And you referred to it in your last answer about civilizational decline.
And the conclusion of your column, you note that if these cases of anti-Semitism are not addressed, if this nonsense at Berkeley is not addressed, these are the clearest warning signs of the impending and irreparable decline of the American republic.
Are they going to be addressed?
Or is this a nothing burger for so many people, for members of the media, for even progressive Jews that turn a blind eye when it comes to policies that are designed to ostracize and hurt them?
What are your final thoughts, Laura?
I really do believe that it is a sign of decline of America.
And it is heartbreaking to me because I'm somebody who actually loves America.
And when I see these stories, I actually feel physically ill because America is supposed to still be the beacon of freedom and free speech and free expression and all those great things.
But when you see it happening in America, you wonder who is going to be there to defend these rights for anybody else.
So if those rights get eroded and anti-Semitism to this obvious a degree is normalized in America, I think that that is, they're kind of at a tipping point.
And I'm not sure, given what we've seen over the past few years through COVID and given the leadership that we see in progressive states, how they've been run to the ground, look at Oregon, California, Michigan, New York.
These places are not going to recover.
So people are fleeing.
They're setting up shop elsewhere because they don't see any possibility of recovery.
So, I think anti-Semitism is definitely one of the hallmarks of decline.
And I think also all the election shenanigans, whether you believe the election was stolen or not in America last time, I think there's really some very difficult and troubling undercurrents right now in America.
A lot of people are talking about a national divorce in America, and there are going to be those for whom, you know, anti-Semitism and these kind of they're red lines in the sand because they know what it leads to.
So I don't think it's a, I'm not sure that there's going to be a happy ending here.
And like I said, Jews might try to escape for Florida while there's Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis is not going to necessarily be a permanent fixture.
And some parts of America, I think, have gone too far down the hole to actually be able to bounce back, whether it's spiritually or economically.
And we'll have to wait and see.
I don't like to be pessimistic about it, but I can't really see a real revitalization of the way things were.
There's a lot of stuff that COVID has shown us.
You know, a lot of us talked about not wanting a new normal, but we actually, I think, have to admit that there is a new normal right now.
And it contains a lot of things that are really ugly and that we don't want.
And most of us would like to go back to some kind of a 2019 situation, but some of those days are gone and the left has succeeded in creating a new normal in a lot of places that I think is not reversible.
So we'll have to see.
I don't like to be the Debbie Downer, but with this particular story, I can't, I don't see it ending well.
Well, I always look for the silver lining, Laura, and hopefully there will be pushback.
Hopefully the pendulum will swing back to the realm of common sense because this is increasingly the bizarro Superman world that we're living on.
Up is down, left is right, and so on.
Laura, I want to thank you so much for your time, and I urge our viewers to seek out your column in Newsweek.
It's a superb column.
It's a chilling column.
And hopefully, this will be addressed in the days and weeks ahead.
Alberta's Ethical Oil Movement00:04:34
Thank you again, Laura.
Talking about it, David.
I appreciate it.
You got it.
And that was Laura Rosencohen, who is a Toronto-based writer.
Keep it here, folks.
More of the Ezra Levent show to come right after this.
Well, folks, my beloved colleague Sheila Gunn-Reed, she was filling in for Ezra last night and tons of feedback regarding her monologue about how Biden is increasingly on his knees begging the OPEC masters to turn on the taps to get America more oil.
How funny it was that, well, perversely amusing, I should say, that it was only a few years ago under the Trump administration that the U.S. was energy self-sufficient.
Unbelievable.
In any event, Evil Beaver writes, funny how many who are against Alberta oil always peacock around about equity, ethics, and morals.
If they truly cared about this, they would only buy Alberta oil.
Are there any other countries that are as ethical as Canada or anywhere near?
I would like to know, seriously, ethical meaning, environmental policies, non-slave work, environment clean and friendly to all nations.
Well, you know, Evil Beaver, you nailed it.
And by the way, if anyone wants a great primer on ethical oil, it is the book by that very name, Ethical Oil, written by the big boss man some 10 years ago.
It just shows what a fantastic and stellar track record Canadian fossil fuel industries have compared to the product being mined in the Middle East.
In fact, I'd love to do an experiment, folks, where we go to a gas station and we label the pump ethical Alberta oil and then next to it another pump, saudi oil, same price, or maybe make the ethical oil five cents a liter more expensive.
Who knows?
I wonder if consumers would vote with their lawyers right now, because what's happening to our domestic oil sands industry is a smear job that is reprehensible and downright disgusting.
Stuart D. Reagan, 13, writes, reducing supply doesn't keep prices low.
It allows gas stations to gouge consumers.
Biden is an idiot puppet president.
You know, I don't think there's gouging going on by the gas stations.
I think that's a myth.
As I said earlier, Donald Trump had America energy self-sufficient for the first time in 70 years.
In fact, the U.S. under Trump was exporting oil.
I don't think gas stations want the price to go up to a point where people just park their cars and don't use oil to the same extent.
At the end of the day, that is not going to be good for their bottom lines.
Galand 53 writes, Quebec has long used the threat of separation to extract more than their share of Canada's wealth.
All provinces should threaten separation so the federal government is forced to treat all equally.
Well, you know, yes, Quebec did have two referendums on separation.
Both went down to defeat.
I don't think, given the demographic makeup of Quebec, that separation could pass as a mandate.
And I know there's a separation movement in Alberta.
I'll tell you one thing, folks, if the Liberal government keeps treating Alberta the way it's treating it, and if ever we have conservative leaders such as Air Notool that just take Alberta for granted, I could see a separation movement of quantifiable results starting in Alberta because if you're not wanted, well, time to leave, isn't it?
Well, folks, that wraps up tonight's edition of the Ezra Event Show.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Hey, I'll be back here tomorrow, Friday.
In the meantime, as always, stay sane.
I want to take you through this otherwise unknown Health Canada poll done earlier this year by Environx, and it was clearly tailored to garner the results the government wanted.
But even in the end, the disdain for the government from the public could not be parsed out of the data.
Climate Change and Heat Illness00:05:25
Look at this.
Specific research objectives were to understand the level of awareness of climate change and its health risks and impacts, actions taken to adapt and be more resilient to the health risks or impacts of climate change, trusted sources of media used and other means and opportunities for education and awareness raising, and the public's views on the role of government and non-governmental organizations.
1,520 Canadians were polled for a cost of nearly $120,000.
So let's read through the study together and let's see if you can see the problem with this.
I noticed it right away.
Canadians are increasingly convinced about the phenomenon of climate change.
More than eight in 10 or 85% say climate change is definitely happening.
And this belief has steadily increased over time from 69% in 2008 and 79% in 2017.
Did you notice the flaw right there?
They immediately presume that if you think the climate is changing, the natural default of the study is that it's human-caused.
They're lumping people who think that climate is an ever-changing cycle composed of far more variables than the size of my comfortable SUV and how much beef I eat, and that I think it may have a lot to do with that big burning ball of gas in the sky than how much money I send to Trudeau for my climate sins every year.
Okay, let's keep going.
There has been a substantial jump in the proportion of climate change believers, again, interesting use of that word, who say they have taken steps to protect against the health impacts of climate change from 38% in 2017 to 59% in 2022.
What does that even mean?
Wearing sunscreen, wearing a hat more often, going sleeveless, wearing warmer socks, drinking more water?
It just might if we look at the next finding.
However, many of their reported actions actually relate to mitigation efforts, i.e. reducing the impacts of climate change, rather than protective or adaptive measures.
To date, 7% of Canadians have sought medical attention because of a climate change event.
Medical attention for climate change.
Really?
For what?
Heat stroke, sunburn, frostbite, windburn?
These are immediate weather-related harms.
They're not climate-related.
And the next finding admits as much.
They're calling heat stroke a climate change illness.
As in 2017, most Canadians can identify at least one symptom of heat illness, particularly dizziness and excessive thirst.
Understanding how to protect against heat illness also remains similar to 2017.
Staying indoors, 53%, drinking fluids, 52%, remain the most widely mentioned preventative measures.
Canadians remain the most likely to consult the internet, followed by their doctor, for more information about heat illness.
Wait a minute, if you drink more water and consult Dr. Google or WemMD about dizziness or being outside for too long, that's a climate change-related mitigation effort.
Now, this next finding is amazing because if you live in a tiny hot apartment on the 20th floor, guess what?
Also climate change, indoor temperatures.
Increasing temperatures due to climate change and extreme heat events can create difficulties in cooling indoor spaces, which can be harmful to health.
One in five Canadians find it difficult to regulate the indoor temperatures in their main living space in the summer.
This skews to residents of apartments and condominiums and those who rent their home, and accordingly, to younger Canadians under age 35 and those with lower household incomes who comprise a greater proportion of renters and apartment dwellers.
No air conditioning, climate change.
The role of federal government, almost one in five, 18% of Canadians report having visited Health Canada's website in the last year to learn how to protect themselves and their families from climate change.
This is higher among BC residents, 26%, who disproportionately experience the impacts of climate change throughout 2021.
Again, what does this mean?
This might be capturing people who look at Health Canada for sunburn remedies.
Does this also capture people who go to Environment Canada's website to find out if it's going to rain?
Now, this is why you didn't see the data trumpeted from the rooftops, besides the obvious flaw in the premise that lumps climate cultists in with people like me who think taxes don't change the weather, but that weather has always changed, and we may even be coming out of the last glacial age.
Anyway, the federal government receives only modest ratings for protecting Canadians' health from climate change.
One in 10, 10%, feel the government is doing a good job, while six in 10 give moderate ratings, and one quarter give negative ones.
So, more people think the feds are doing a bad job than a good one on the issue of climate change, and even radical skeptics like me can agree with that.