Ezra Levant’s January 28–February 1 coverage of China’s spy balloon—undetected for five days over Alaska (0.08/sq mi) and Montana, disrupting airports—exposes a $405K U.S.-Canadian response to a likely $5K asset, questioning why Blinken delayed sanctions and Trudeau ignored warnings. The balloon’s path over North Dakota’s ICBM fields hints at deliberate provocation, yet officials downplayed risks, calling it a victory for Beijing’s aggression. Levant contrasts Canada’s failed 2017 BC decriminalization (300% overdose spike) with Alberta’s treatment expansion (overdoses halved), framing Vancouver’s crisis as a "poverty industrial complex" where bureaucrats profit from addiction while ignoring solutions. The episode reveals how weak responses to both espionage and drug policy empower authoritarianism over accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello my friends, it's great to be back at our world headquarters.
As you know, I was in Alberta covering the trial of Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky Thursday and Friday.
Today I'm going to talk to you about that crazy spy balloon.
And I'm going to ask you, was it a success for China or not?
I think you might be able to guess my answer.
I'm going to show you footage of the balloon, it being shot down, and I'm going to show you various people opining on it.
I really want you to get the video version of this podcast.
I want you to see the balloon and seeing it being shot down.
I want you to see General Milley give his excuses for China.
You can do all that with what we call Rebel News Plus, the video version of the podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com and click subscribe.
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You get the video every day.
And we need the $8.
I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but if enough people get the $8 a month subscription, we can pay our staff off that because we don't get any ad money from YouTube.
We don't get any grant money from Trudeau.
We want to keep it that way.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, what do you think about Chinese spy balloon?
You know, it went over Canada too.
It's February 6th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
You know, I thought it was a joke at first, a balloon sent over from China.
I mean, if you've been following the war in Ukraine, you're alive to the threat of high-tech drones and missiles.
And if you've been following the threats from North Korea, you know about ICBM's intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But did you see it coming, that it would be balloons?
I didn't.
And in fact, we should ask, who did see it coming?
Because what I can tell is it was announced to the world, not by the U.S. military, not by NORAD, not by NATO, not by the U.S. president, but by some folks on the ground who just saw it with the naked eye.
Here is the ABC News timeline that they put together.
Apparently, the balloon was first spotted 10 days ago, January 28th, over the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.
I think that's what they're saying.
Then it went over the Northwest Territories in Canada two days later.
I'm laughing at how the ABC graphics department, their map, shows, you see the northern interior of BC, and they call it SW Canada.
I don't know, Southwest Canada.
So maybe we're dealing with a less than reputable news agency here with ABC, but I'll keep using it anyways.
According to them, the balloon entered U.S. airspace again, so went through Alaska, then the Northwest Territories in BC.
Then it entered the U.S. airspace again on January 31, and then it was publicly filmed by citizens on their cell phones on February 1st, four days after cruising through North America.
Here's one of the first citizen journalist reports of it.
Okay.
That's the moon.
It's a little fuzzy out here, and it's kind of a cruddy phone, but it's slightly overcast.
Well, what the heck is that?
That's not the sun.
And according to my little planet guide, it's not a planet.
What the heck is that?
Any help would be appreciated.
That's John Martin in Montana.
He tweeted that video and he asked, quote, any clue as to what this is in the sky?
It's moved a little in the past 40 minutes, but it was just as bright in daylight hours.
It was literally a UFO, an unidentified flying object, not an alien spaceship, just something that wasn't identified.
And the local airport began diverting flights, as you can see.
They've changed the headline of this story since the original one, but let me read the line that I want.
Quote, on Wednesday, the Billings-Logan International Airport was shut down for roughly two hours.
Around the same time, many Montanans were noticing an unexplained object in the sky.
Shane Kettering, the director of aviation at Billings-Logan, says two flights to the airport were diverted, and one flight was delayed from taking off while the airspace was closed.
The diverted flights were eventually able to land.
So my point is, literally five days after this Chinese balloon had been over North America, it still wasn't identified or made public.
No officials had said anything.
It fell to ordinary citizens to report on it, and local airports had to change air traffic control to accommodate it.
No one warned them.
I started seeing this on Twitter, and I'll be very candid with you.
My first thought was this was some sort of internet joke, a hoax.
I'm embarrassed to say that, but I'll explain myself, and it's not a great explanation.
I thought, you know, we haven't heard a word from NORAD from the North American air defense team that's, you know, the treaty between Canada and the U.S. is in charge of protecting the continent.
Not a word from the Canadian government, not a word from the U.S.
And surely they would have said something.
So surely this was just a fake or something.
That's what I thought.
I actually still trust authorities to let me know what's going on.
I'm foolish, as you can see.
No, it was real.
The government was just hiding this from us, assuming they had detected it.
Here's Joe Biden when he was finally asked about it on Sunday.
Government's Balloon Dilemma00:04:46
And he said he wanted to shoot it down last week, but the generals told him that was too dangerous, so they didn't want to do it, and he obeyed them.
So he let it finish its journey all across North America and then only shot it down after it was done.
Here, take a listen.
The Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday as soon as possible.
They decided without doing damage to anyone on the ground.
They decided that the best time to do that was as it got over water outside within 12-mile limit.
They successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it.
And we'll have more to report on this a little later.
Thank you.
What'd they say about China?
What's the message to China?
You were saying the recommendation was from your national airport.
I told them to shoot it down.
On Wednesday.
On Wednesday.
They said to me, let's wait till the safest place to do it.
By the way, the vast majority of North America is uninhabited.
I'm talking most emphatically about Alaska and the Northwest Territories.
Huge areas, almost no people.
The average population density in Alaska is just one person per square mile.
But of course, almost all of them are in just, there's only about five cities in Alaska, Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks.
So it's literally, if the balloon was literally not above those cities, the real population density outside those cities is a tiny fraction of that.
There's no one up there.
I once drove through the Northwest, through the Yukon to Alaska.
I think it was 90 minutes before I saw another vehicle.
That's how empty it is.
Northwest Territory, it's actually more pronounced than in Alaska.
The population density is 0.08 people per square mile.
And again, if you take out the, there's like five towns, the Northwest Territories.
You know, once I flew from Innevik to Tuck to Yuktuk, and in that one hour, it was in a small plane, so I was looking down the whole time.
We did not see a single human or any evidence of any humans.
It was nothing but emptiness.
The only thing I did see was there was a crashed airplane on the ground, and I saw an abandoned radar station that was once part of the, it was called the Dew Line, the distant early warning line that once provided radar warning of any Soviet attack during the Cold War.
Now, the Dew line was replaced about 40 years ago by the North warning system, which apparently has better technology.
Here's a government of Canada map showing all the different radar stations from this new system.
You can see that the balloon would have or should have been detected on many occasions.
It basically should have been constantly detected because it was going down the coast pretty much, just setting off radar all the way down.
Did it?
And if so, why was it kept secret?
I do not believe Biden's excuse for not shooting it down earlier.
Shooting it down over Alaska or the Northwest Territories or even Northern BC would have had a minuscule risk of hurting someone below.
There is no one on the ground other than those few towns in Alaska and Northwest Territory.
It is empty.
I've been there.
Frankly, they could have issued a public warning to anyone in the area, especially in remote areas, but they didn't.
That's the point.
I really don't think they wanted anyone to know.
They thought they could keep it a secret for the Chinese.
When I say they, I mean Trudeau and Biden both are deeply committed to China.
I mean, they would rather have allowed the balloon, which I think we can assume is a spy balloon, to finish its job rather than to expose China as hostile and active.
And yet, even when it was revealed by citizens, they still allowed it to complete its mission before shooting it down.
Here's the video of that.
Checking Twitter on several different officials.
Oh.
Oh.
I believe it just happened there.
That was it.
Live, raw, and unfiltered.
It appears that that China spy balloon.
Oh, and it just so happens that the root of the balloon took it over the U.S.'s ICBM fields in North Dakota.
I'm sure that was just a coincidence.
Why wouldn't the U.S. say, though, where exactly it was going?
Were they embarrassed?
Why were they keeping China's secrets for them?
Position of the balloon classified?
Phil, right now, what we're not going to do is get into an hour-by-hour location of the balloon.
Again, we're monitoring it closely.
As I mentioned right now, it's over the center of the continental United States.
Why Not Stop the Balloon?00:03:39
That's about as specific as I'm going to get.
I understand my being convenient, but does the public not have a right to know?
The public certainly has the ability to look up in the sky and see where the balloon is.
I don't get it.
What was the thinking about not letting people know?
What was the thinking about not stopping it until it was done at spy mission?
Was it anything to do with this?
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green as fast as we need to start investing in solar.
I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he could do everything he wanted.
Or was it anything to do with this, Joe Biden's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, basically the head of the Biden military?
As you alluded to in the previous question, China's not an enemy.
And I think that's important for people to clearly understand.
China is a rising power.
China has been a rising power since Deng Xiaoping in 79.
And they've been clicking off at 10% growth for almost 30 years, and they dropped down about 7% the last year or two.
And they'll probably drop again and come into the range of normalcy and 3% to 5% growth.
But that's still significant economic growth.
And there's been a really large historic change from a North Atlantic-based global economy to now it's proceeding to be a North Pacific-based global economy.
So with respect to China, what normally happens historically, it's not in all cases, but in most cases, where you have economic growth of that magnitude typically follows military power.
And that's what we're seeing.
We're seeing a significant increase in Chinese military capabilities over the last 10 to 20 years.
And they are going to develop themselves and are developing themselves into a great power.
That is not to say, however, that they are an enemy.
Is it anything to do with this?
That the Chinese thought wrongly that the United States was going to attack them.
I am certain, guaranteed certain, that President Trump had no intent to attack.
And it was my task to make sure I communicated that.
And the purpose was to de-escalate the power of the United States.
You shared all that earlier, I understand.
And as part of that...
Just say, did you or did you not ask, tell him that if we were going to attack, you would let him know?
As part of that conversation, I said, General Lee, there's not going to be a war.
There's not going to be an attack between great powers.
And if there was, the tensions would build up.
There'd be calls going back and forth from all kinds of senior officials.
I said, hell, General Lee, I'll probably give you a call, but we're not going to attack you.
Trust me, we're not going to attack you.
These are two great powers, and I am doing my best to transmit the president's intent, President Trump's intent, to ensure that the American people are protected from an incident that could escalate.
I understand your intent, but I think you articulating that, that you would tell him, you would give him a call, I think is worthy of your resignation.
I just think that's against our country, that you would give our number one adversary that information and tell him that.
Yeah, that's the U.S. military boss who convinced Joe Biden not to shoot it down until after it was done.
Not that Biden needed much convincing.
I mean, his son, Hunter Biden, did billions of dollars of deals with Communist China, starting when Biden was Obama's VP.
I'm guessing Biden didn't need a lot of convincing to let the balloon do its work.
Chinese Surveillance Balloon Mystery00:07:14
What was in the balloon?
I don't know.
The military shot it down, but hasn't said what they found yet.
I wonder if they ever will.
Was it just a surveillance device?
Was it a weather balloon like the Chinese said?
Could be.
I mean, China has spy satellites.
They also have commercial aircraft flying into and across the U.S. all the time that I'm sure have electronic sensors in them.
They have thousands of human agents on the ground, let alone hundreds of official diplomats, many of whom are Chinese spies.
And of course, so much information is willingly given to China.
If you're on the app TikTok on your phone, China pretty much knows everything about you.
How many soldiers on military bases have that app in their phones?
Who knows what that balloon was?
Some people wonder if it was a test for an EMP attack, electromagnetic pulse, to detonate a nuclear device at that high height that would not kill people, but it would fry electronic communications across America.
Maybe it was that.
Maybe it was something more sinister, like testing out a bioweapon delivery system.
I don't know.
In the end, a $200 million F-22 fighter jet and a $400,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder missile took out the balloon after a week.
My point about the cost of those weapons is this.
How much do you think that balloon cost?
Apparently there are more balloons going on now too, but what would the cost of a balloon be?
Now, I don't know what the payload was, whether it's a bomb, a bioweapon, some spy sensors, but what would a balloon cost?
I just googled high-altitude balloons, and here's one for sale for $159.
Here's the Canadian government on stratospheric balloons.
They don't give a dollar amount, but they say this.
These balloons require no engine and no fuel and are fully recovered after each flight.
They can reach altitudes of up to 42 kilometers, holding their instrument packages aloft for several hours.
Some balloons can even conduct long-duration flights lasting days, weeks, and even months.
Stratospheric balloons are a platform of choice for scientists and engineers as they can be used to test and advance space signs for far less than the cost of a satellite, up to 40 times less, and provide an opportunity to carry out concrete scientific experiments in a short period of time and obtain results quickly.
Yeah, or use them for spying.
So what was the price of the Chinese balloon?
Was it even $50,000?
Was it even $5,000?
If even.
And so what if they don't send one?
What if they send not one, but 1,000?
What if they sent 10,000?
You know, it's just a fraction of the cost of the F-22.
You know, that's how drone warfare over Ukraine is being conducted right now, sending not one drone, but swarms of drones, each one costing maybe a few thousand dollars.
What are you going to do?
Scramble a $200 million fighter jet after a week of indecision?
And in the end, that's what I think this actually was.
I don't necessarily think it was about an electromagnetic pulse.
I don't think it was about a biohazard.
I don't even think it was about spying, though I think that happened.
I think it was testing something else.
I think it was testing America under Joe Biden and Canada under Justin Trudeau.
And the test was a spectacular success for China.
Trudeau and Biden either didn't spot the balloon, which would be a huge success for China, or they spotted the balloon and chose to keep it a secret from their own public, which would be a huge success for China.
Then Canada and the U.S. refused to shoot it down until it was done its mission.
Big success for China.
And here's the totality of America's political response.
This is unbelievable.
I'd just like to briefly address the presence of the Chinese surveillance balloon in U.S. airspace.
I spoke this morning with Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Office, Wang Yi, to convey that in light of China's unacceptable action, I am postponing my planned travel this weekend to China.
As you know, President Biden and President Xi agreed during their meetings in Bali in November that I would travel to Beijing to follow up on their discussions.
We've been working across the U.S. government to prepare for a substantive set of discussions on issues that matter to the American people and to people around the world.
And we've been engaging for some time with our counterparts in Beijing to prepare for these meetings.
Yesterday, the Department of Defense announced that we have detected and were tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that remains over the continental United States.
We continue to track and monitor the balloon closely.
We're confident this is a Chinese surveillance balloon.
Once we detected the balloon, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.
We communicated with the PRC government directly through multiple channels about this issue.
Members of my team consulted with our partners and other agencies and in Congress.
We also engaged our close allies and partners to inform them of the presence of the surveillance balloon in our airspace.
We concluded that conditions were not conducive for a constructive visit at this time.
In my call today with Director Wang Yi, I made clear that the presence of this surveillance balloon in U.S. airspace is a clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law, that it's an irresponsible act, and that the PRC's decision to take this action on the eve of my planned visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have.
I told Director Wong that the United States remains committed to diplomatic engagement with China and that I plan to visit Beijing when conditions allow.
That's the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
So no sanctions, no military response, no deporting of Chinese diplomats, no tariffs on Chinese imports, no banning Communist Party members' children from going to school in America, nothing, just the pitiful Secretary of State saying he's going to postpone his trip to China, but he's still absolutely committed to still coming to China and working collegially with them.
Don't worry about that.
It was almost an apology to China, which is actually what China sort of asked for.
Beijing registered its strong discontent and protest after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon on Saturday.
But there may be little it can do to retaliate.
Hang on, the New York Times is suggesting that maybe China should retaliate against America.
That's a political option here.
As if they were the ones who were wronged here.
Should America retaliate?
The New York Times never contemplates that.
What a disaster for us.
China's Retaliation Dilemma00:02:55
Hey, what do you think Donald Trump would have done had this happened on his watch?
Well, that's a trick question.
Do you think for a second that the Chinese dictators would have dreamed of sending over such a provocation during Trump's tenure?
Of course not, precisely because none of us actually know what Trump would have done.
And the fear of the unknown would have held China at bay, as it held the world at bay for four peaceful years under Trump's presidency, as it held Putin at bay.
Putin, who invaded Ukraine under Obama before Trump, and who invaded Ukraine under Biden after Trump, but didn't dare invade anybody during Trump.
I saw this laughable story in the regime media.
They're now claiming that, oh, in fact, yes, this absolutely happened several times when Trump was president, other than the small detail of no one knew anything about it, no one saw it, and Trump was never briefed on it.
But, oh, no, no, trust us, guys, this did happen, and Trump didn't do anything.
Yeah, sure.
No one believes that other than the media party.
And up here in Canada, well, here's our defense minister, Anita Anand.
We deployed a Royal Canadian Air Force CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft to strengthen efforts to disrupt gang activity in Haiti.
This aircraft will provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and bolster efforts to establish peace and security for the Haitian people.
Got it.
So the Haitian people will be secure.
When will the Canadian people be secure?
Here's Anita Anan again on the weekend.
She said, today, a Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft departed Halifax carrying the first Leopard II main battle tank that Canada is sending to Ukraine.
Canada stands with the people of Ukraine and will continue to provide Ukraine's armed forces with the equipment that they need to win.
I'm not sure if sending one Cold War-era tank to Ukraine is going to tip the balance of war there.
Not sure Canada has too many such tanks that are actually operational.
Not sure who's going to operate the tanks in Ukraine, who's going to maintain them, who's going to train the Ukrainians to use them.
Not quite sure of any of that, but it was good for a photo op.
I do know one thing, though.
Anita Anan has made literally hundreds of announcements about security for Haiti and Ukraine, but her sole comment about China's balloon was this one press release.
Certainly not a video or a public statement.
And the sternest language she could muster was that the balloon, quote, violated U.S. and Canadian airspace and international law.
Yes, we know that, sister.
The question is, what are you going to do about it?
Nothing.
No condemnation of China, no repudiation or denunciation, no threat, no demand, no retaliation, no end to the joint Canada-China military projects, of which we know there are plenty.
She said more about fighting Haitian gangs this past weekend than about defending our airspace.
Broken Promises in Vancouver00:15:04
Like I say, a complete and utter success for China's dictatorship.
If I were Taiwan, I'd be pretty worried.
Stay with us for more.
And if you become prime minister.
Yes.
And by the way, I'm going to add just on that.
Decriminalization has been in place in BC now since about 2017.
In reality, the results are in.
The debate is over.
It has been a disaster, an absolute, abject failure.
You not only need to take a walk down the streets of East Vancouver, where addicts lay face first on the pavement, where people are living permanently in tents and encampments, but you just need to look at the data.
A 300% increase in drug overdose deaths in British Columbia since Trudeau took office eight years ago.
The Trudeau NDP approach is on open display in Vancouver.
It is a complete disaster.
It is hell on earth.
We're going to reverse that policy, and we're going to replace it with recovery and treatment.
That's what works.
And again, the debate is over on that as well.
In Alberta, they doubled the number of treatment beds from 4,000 to 8,000, and they've cut in half the number of overdoses.
We need to save our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our friends from the scourge of drug addiction, and a Kaliyev government will make sure there is treatment and recovery to do that.
Well, Justin Trudeau loves to say how well things are going, and certainly they're going well for him.
But I note that he does condemn Canada quite often when he is outside of our own country.
It's very strange to see a world leader on an international stage talking down Canada.
If anything, it should be the reverse.
He should be boasting about his country, my country, right or wrong, when he's abroad and when he's at home, he should be tucking into the problems we have.
With Trudeau, it's the reverse.
And it's very strange, especially when Trudeau accuses Canada of genocide, an extreme statement that he just won't stop saying, because not surprisingly, that is thrown back at us when we actually accuse real genociders, like, for example, Communist China of doing the same thing.
Well, Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Conservative Party, has been using a phrase domestically, not abroad, that Canada, or at least big parts of it, are broken.
Here is Pierre Polyev with a recent video talking especially about the declining state of safety and health in one of the great cities in this country, Vancouver, BC.
Take a look at Pierre Polyev.
Do you ever feel like everything's broken in Canada?
I mean, here we are, most beautiful place in the world, beautiful British Columbia, the Pacific, the Vancouver skyline, and another tent city.
In that tent city are people hopelessly addicted to drugs, putting poisons in their bodies.
They've probably lost their homes, their families.
They've lost control of their lives and they might lose their lives altogether.
Just today, we learned that British Columbia is on track to have over 2,000 drug overdose deaths this year alone.
That is a 300% increase from 2015 when Justin Trudeau took office.
These are Canadian citizens who are losing their lives.
They could be your sister, your brother, your daughter, your son.
They could even be your parents.
This can happen to anyone.
Many people got hooked on these drugs by taking them first as medications and then increasing their dosage and eventually becoming outright addicts.
It's not just crack cocaine and methamphetamines, but it's opioids that are in the same family of drugs that are often prescribed or over-prescribed.
But the addictions that we see that have terrorized these people and our communities, they are the result of a failed experiment.
This is a deliberate policy by woke liberal and NDP governments to provide taxpayer-funded drugs, flood our streets with easy access to these poisons.
A powerful social media video that has been seen a great many times.
Well, Trudeau has been attacking Polyev for talking this way, not just in response to that latest video, but for weeks.
Trudeau has said anyone who criticizes Canada or points out our failures is talking us down.
Here he is in mid-January, making that very point.
Mr. Polyev might choose to undermine our democracy by amplifying conspiracy theories.
He might decide to run away from journalists when they ask him tough questions.
That's how he brands himself, and that's his choice.
But when he says that Canada is broken, that's where we draw the line.
But this is Canada, and in Canada, better is always possible.
But I don't accept Canadians and politicians that talk down our country.
Let me be very clear, but let me be very clear for the record.
Canada is not broken.
Well, isn't it the job of the official opposition to oppose?
Isn't it the job of both the official opposition and the prime minister to recognize Canada's problems and, you know, fix what's broken?
Joining us now via Skype from British Columbia is our friend Aaron Gunn, a filmmaker and social commentator who knows a lot about this subject.
He is the filmmaker behind the enormously popular viral video called Vancouver's Dying.
And he joins us now.
Aaron, great to see you again.
What do you make of this quarrel between Polyev and Trudeau?
Is it possible to say Canada is broken or at least parts of Canada are broken while still being a hopeful patriot?
Yeah, I think that's the story of any democracy is you want to be pointing out where things aren't going so well and where they can be improved.
And if you've traveled to parts of Vancouver and you've traveled to the downtown east side specifically, which is the part of the country that Polyev was mentioning and referring to, then I don't know how you can think things aren't broken.
Here in British Columbia, we have an overdose crisis that's, you know, there used to be 150 people dying every year from overdose.
Now it's over 2,000.
We have crime that's rampant every day in Vancouver.
There are four random, violent stranger attacks every single day.
You just have this homelessness that's all over this place, this general degeneracy, needles in the sidewalk, on sidewalks and parks.
And there's lots of, you know, there's neighborhoods of Vancouver where people don't feel safe to walk anymore.
And that's, I don't think that should be acceptable.
And I think Polyev is correct in pointing that out.
You know, I was shocked the last time I visited San Francisco.
This was in 2019 before the lockdowns.
And even then, it was coming apart.
Even in very wealthy neighborhoods, and San Francisco has some staggering wealth in part because of Silicon Valley.
You see shocking, not just homelessness, but what is happening in these permanent shanty towns.
It didn't feel like North America, San Francisco, LA, parts of Portland and Washington, but don't think Vancouver is immune.
I think that the downtown east side, the Lower East Side, has just been, sorry, the downtown east side, excuse me, East Hasting Street, has been turned into some sort of holy place by the media party, that you just have to accept it and you have to work with it and you have to respect it as opposed to fix it.
I think we actually know more about the urban decay in American cities than we do about the urban decay in our own cities.
It's a weird thing.
And I think Trudeau is, how dare you, how dare you point this out is part of that.
They just want everyone to be in a conspiracy of silence about it.
Yeah, it's almost as if I think the media is trying to gaslight Canadians that this should be, this is normal, that we should be accepting this.
And the fact is when you travel around the world, what's happening in the downtown east side in Vancouver and other Canadian cities is not normal.
And it shouldn't be surprising that when you see other cities starting to copy and paste the same policies that have been implemented in Vancouver over the past 20 years, you get the exact same results.
And of course, what are they pushing now where you have decriminalization of fentanyl, crack cocaine, and crystal meth is supposed to be somehow solved the problem.
And what these activists and ID logs actually want, which is taxpayer-funded supply of hard drugs in perpetuity, and that we just have to kind of accept this and treat it as some sort of palliative issue.
And if that's not indicative of how broken parts of Canada are, I'm not sure what is.
You know, it's terrible.
I don't know the death toll that COVID viruses had in British Columbia.
I don't want to guess without looking it up.
But of course, most of those people who are very old, average age of deceased from COVID was in the high 70s.
Average victim had several comorbidities.
Whereas you just gave us a figure, and I'm just still reeling from what you said.
2,000 overdose deaths a year.
And those are mainly young people in their 20s and 30s, maybe in their 40s.
These are people who would naturally have had their whole life ahead of them.
So it's not, and of course, any death is a tragedy, but someone dying at 75 from a virus is, I think, far different than someone dying at 30 from a completely preventable social ill.
We haven't had a fraction of the care, the concern, the social interventionism for 2,000 overdose deaths as we've had for a similar number of COVID deaths.
Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head there, Ezra.
These are young people.
These are people that had their whole lives in front of them.
They're, you know, they're sons and daughters.
They have the potential to be productive tax-paying members of society to raise their own families, or in some cases, they're leaving families behind.
And it's a staggering number.
It takes a while to comprehend it.
2,000 deaths a year, preventable deaths a year, just in British Columbia, of predominantly young Canadians.
I mean, think about that.
I remember when we were losing, you know, obviously, tragically, a couple dozen a year in Afghanistan across the entire country.
And that, of course, was a tragedy.
We're talking 2,000 young people just in BC alone every single year, over 10,000.
You know, if you go back over this past decade, pretty much.
And it's a staggering death toll.
And we have these bodies piling up on top of each other, as you also alluded to, at least in the first year, much higher than COVID was.
And yet, we don't want to talk about it, or the solution is just to throw more drugs at the problem.
Yeah.
You know, I just checked really quickly there.
And indeed, the number of COVID deaths in BC is around 2,400.
And of course, every one of them is a lost father, mother, et cetera.
But to have that annual death toll.
And by the way, there is a demographic aspect to this.
A lot of the people in that terrible condition are Indigenous people.
A lot of them are mentally ill.
They have some challenges besides just being addicts.
And I think that the fact that this is encouraged, this is almost curated, that this is so completely approved of, I think, is a terrible, not only a bigotry of low expectations, but it's almost as if the entire welfare state, all these social workers and politicians and activists, they want this misery because it gives them a justification for their perpetual fight.
That if these people were ever helped out, cleaned up, get put into some proper system, taken off the streets, well, then what would this entire industry?
There's an entire industry built up around this downtown East Side in Vancouver.
Don't kid yourself.
There are people who, there's probably several, for every person on the street, there's probably several, several bureaucrats, agencies working.
It's a cottage industry keeping people miserable.
I don't know.
I just think that the old saying, you know, that in a definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
It's just getting worse, isn't it?
Yes, it's the poverty industrial complex.
That's what I call it.
There's groups making hundreds of millions of dollars, these so-called non-profits that aren't that, you know, people are making huge salaries that are running that are living off of the suffering of others.
Now, I think I really want to point out what really frustrates me, Ezra, is the hypocrisy.
Because if Justin Trudeau or any of these bigwood politicians, if their children had the fell into the unfortunate circumstance of becoming addicted to drugs, becoming addicted to opioids, you think the solution for them would be, oh, here's a safe supply of crystal meth or heroin or fentanyl, and we're just going to warehouse you in some crime-ridden hotel where everyone surrounding you is doing drugs.
No, that's not the solution they would get.
They would get proper treatment and rehabilitation, abstinence-based treatment and rehabilitation.
But when it comes to all these other people, these minority groups like Indigenous Canadians, as you mentioned, apparently the solution for them is we're just going to throw drugs at them and then put them away in some shanty hotel.
I don't think that's something that I don't think that's a solution.
I mean, it's just perpetuating the problem and perpetuating that industry, as you pointed out, instead of actually getting people clean and returning them to being tax-paying members of society, which is what would be best for them, would be best for the community and best for taxpayers ultimately over the long term.
Perpetuating Problems in Toronto00:05:10
Yeah, it's a great point.
And there's a classism to it also.
I want to show you a video.
And really, there's a new video like this every day from Toronto.
You're out there in BC, Vancouver, one of the most amazing cities in the country.
Toronto, the biggest city in the country, has a spate of crime on the Toronto Transit Commission.
Those are the buses and the subway stations.
And a lot of it is drug-fueled and mental health issues too.
And the answer by Toronto's mayor is we'll have a national summit.
Oh, is that what we're missing?
More politicians jetting together to have a little gab fest over some nice wine.
And you are so right that if it were Justin Trudeau's kids on drugs, they wouldn't be given a safe supply.
They would be fixed.
And if it was John Torrey's family, well, they only ride in limos.
Here's a quick clip from the streets of Toronto.
Yesterday's attack of an elderly woman here on Young Street is just the latest in violent incidents that have happened throughout the city.
And it's been enough to incite fear among residents and those visiting our city as well.
We've definitely noticed quite an escalation in violence.
Like it's pretty scary riding the TTC.
Even having my headphones in, it's just, I don't know, it's kind of the risk now that you have to consider.
In addition to an 89-year-old woman being pushed and killed on Young Street, last night a woman in her 20s was suffering from stab wounds to her abdomen after being found at Dundas subway station.
Police were told the incident happened at York University before she made her way downtown.
A man in his 50s was arrested Friday afternoon after trying to push another person onto the subway tracks of Bloor Young Station.
To be honest with you, this part of the city, I'm usually afraid to come to this part of the city, so I don't come that often.
Yeah, there's a madness, but there's a classism too.
And I'm not a Marxist, but the little people can live with it.
The fancy people live in gated communities, only travel in, you know, fancy vehicles.
Certainly, they would never go public transit.
And sucks to be you if you're on the downtown east side.
Just incredible.
Tell us before we go a little bit more about the wild success of your movie, Vancouver's Dying.
We showed it before.
This was very important right before the Vancouver municipal election where the NDP mayor was thrown out.
Quite a surprise to me.
And a support the police, I would call him conservative mayor, came in.
Again, it was delightful news to an outsider like me.
Give me one more minute reminding our viewers about your film, which I really think helped make the difference out there, Vancouver's Dying.
Give us a word on that while we play some B-roll of it in the background.
Yeah, thank you for that, Ezra.
Yeah, the Vancouver is Dying documentary really opened my eyes.
It was a big topic to tackle, but it's really blown up since we released it back in October.
It's got about 2.5 million views on YouTube and a couple hundred thousand in other places on the internet.
But it just tackled the problem and tried to drill down to what is the common denominator with all these overdose deaths, massive increases in crime and ramp and homelessness everywhere you look in parts of Vancouver and really drilled down to this drug addiction crisis that is being fueled by poor government policies.
And we just talked to the experts and talked to people that talked to people living on the downtown east side, talked to people that were in recovery.
And I think it just, you know, as an expose, because just as you pointed out earlier, you know, the mainstream media doesn't want to talk about this issue.
So we decided to go on the ground and do the journalism that they weren't doing.
Well, it made a difference.
It's one of those times where telling a story makes a difference in the world.
Sometimes it's just, you know, blather, talk not action.
But I think your movie was one of those times when ideas changed the course of the world just a little bit.
And in the city of Vancouver, I think your movie did.
By the way, we'll have a link to Vancouver's Dying.
You can watch it directly.
I'll put a link to it under this video.
You can find it.
Aaron, always a pleasure when you're doing something.
I know it's something to watch.
You're always fighting for freedom and prosperity and a safer community.
We can hardly wait to see what you do next.
Let us know what you're up to because we're always riveted by it.
Vancouver is such an important city.
We're glad that we have reporters out there now these days.
Of course, our friend Drea Humphrey is doing outstanding work there.
And look forward to your next move also.
Aaron, great to see you.
Thank you for having me, Ezra.
All right.
It's our pleasure.
There you have it.
Aaron Gunn.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Steve Z says, thanks, Ezra.
I actually lived in Alberta for three years, but had to flee back to Ontario because I was set up by the police.
Can be a scary place.
Prager U and Freedom00:02:43
Could the good pastor's story be paralleled with the hugely unjust Julian Assange saga for wider exposure?
There seem to be similarities.
Regards, thanks, Steve Z.
I don't think it's comparable at all to Julian Assange.
He published internal military documents that embarrassed the military.
The military claims that it exposed U.S. secret allies around the world, and he's been jailed for years without a substantive trial.
You can have different opinions on Julian Assange.
I think I was very hostile to him in the beginning, but I think I've softened my stance.
I think I took his critics' line as the gospel.
Whatever you think of Julian Assange, the case of Arthur Pavlovsky is completely different.
Arthur Pavlovsky served a few, you know, 51 days in prison, grand total, but he has not been languishing for years and years.
He's had trials, and actually he's won those trials.
And what he's on trial for is not receiving or publishing secret government documents, but rather for making a public speech, encouraging peaceful truckers to hold the line at their protest.
So the comparison is not apt at all.
But here's the difference that I think is important.
Julian Assange is an Australian in the UK being deported to America.
Arthur Pavlovsky is a Canadian on trial in Canada for a speech he gave in Canada.
That terrifies me more.
Pamela writes, hi, Ezra.
I'm a big fan of yours.
Great work covering the World Economic Forum.
And I loved your interview with Noor bin Laden to spin off her comment on the importance of educating the public on the founding fathers of America and how historically the USA has been the wedge between the globalist agenda and freedom.
The one company that I think has been doing a fantastic job with educating the public and most importantly children on conservative values and the founding fathers of America has been Prager You.
Perhaps an interview with Dennis Prager or Marissa Strait.
Additionally, a great app I've discovered is Angel Studios, and they have a fantastic cartoon for kids called Tuttle Twins, whereby they visit the past via a time machine with their Cuban grandma and visit the founding fathers, etc.
Well, first of all, thank you for your compliments.
I'm not familiar with that app or Tuttle Twins, so I can't speak to them.
Prager U, though, I am quite familiar with.
They're very strong in terms of freedom.
They have hundreds of millions of views, probably billions of views.
And I have had the pleasure of being at a Democracy Fund event where Dennis Prager and a colleague were talking about freedom, not just in America, but in Canada.
So I agree with you on PragerU, and I thank you for your compliments.