Sheila Gunn Reid calls Vancouver’s East Hastings "hell on earth," citing a 300% rise in overdose deaths since 2017’s decriminalization under Trudeau, with $1M/day spent yet no progress. Alberta’s 8,000-treatment-bed expansion cut overdoses in half, unlike BC’s failed safe supply and injection sites. Reid compares Ohio’s East Palestine derailment—where Big Jake, a rail engineer, blames poor maintenance and questions TSA’s Pete Buttigieg’s safety focus—to Alberta’s stricter fracking protocols. Both argue progressive policies enable decay while ignoring real solutions, warning independent journalism faces suppression as mainstream media downplay crises. [Automatically generated summary]
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is doing her best to prevent Calgary and Edmonton from turning into East Hastings satellite colonies.
Then Arthur C. Green of the Western Standard joins me to discuss his work documenting the social decay in downtown Edmonton.
It's February 15th, 2023, Rebel News' eighth birthday.
I'm Sheila Gunread, and you're watching the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
It's bad, real bad, in the neighborhood of East Hastings, Vancouver.
It's quite accurately been described as hell on earth.
Yes.
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 reverse it.
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.
East Hastings, Vancouver is a disease-riddled third-world slum inside one of the most expensive, beautiful cities in the Western world.
It's a place where misery, suffering, addiction, desperation, and remorse are all shoehorned out of the view of fancy people in some sort of open-air prison where the bars that confine you are opioids.
And no one, no one should live like this.
These people are human beings, the least of our brothers.
But of course, the comments of Pierre Polyev about East Hastings being hell on earth offended the mayor of Vancouver, Ken Sim.
I mean, of course it did.
What progressive wants to admit to themselves that the very same failed policies they have supported for decades and now continue to implement are the same ones causing such human suffering?
Who wants to preside over human misery?
And not just misery of the addicts, but also of their families who suffer along with them in a thousand different ways.
And I'm not exaggerating when I say government policies of turning a blind eye to drug addiction and enabling drug addiction through handing out drugs and paraphernalia and offering a safe place to poison oneself with illegal drugs are an abject failure.
The data supports it.
Look at this analysis done three years ago.
So let's just assume that it's worse because we've put the pandemic on top of this.
Public health officials and progressive leaders often cite Vancouver, Canada as the gold standard of harm reduction.
Over the past 30 years, Vancouver has implemented the full range of harm reduction strategies.
The centerpiece of the city's current efforts is the InSight Safe Injection Facility on East Hastings Street, which has drawn the attention of academics and media from around the world.
Advocates argue that such facilities can prevent fatal overdoses, reduce rates of infection, connect addicts with social services, and mitigate street disorder with few negative consequences.
What's happening in Vancouver can hardly be categorized as a success, however.
Though harm reduction has brought some benefits, such as reducing the transmission of HIV, it has also compounded the problems of addiction, homelessness, and public disorder.
Vancouver's concentration of services in its own opioid district, the downtown east side, has created a veritable death trap for addicts around British Columbia who travel there to obtain drugs, overdose, and then perish in the streets.
If you build it, they will come, I guess.
On the surface, Vancouver is an unlikely location for an opioid epidemic.
In popular imagination, the crisis is taking place in impoverished inner-city slums or forgotten rural communities.
According to the influential Deaths of Despair hypothesis, the opioid crisis is most pronounced in communities exposed to prolonged economic distress, leading to a decline in life expectancy for middle-aged men.
But Vancouver is neither West Baltimore nor West Virginia.
It is one of the world's most prosperous and progressive cities with a booming economy, liberal leadership, and universal health care.
And yet, despite this affluence, the city faces one of the worst drug problems on record.
Since 2008, overdose deaths in British Columbia are up 151%, with Vancouver's numbers driving much of the increase.
According to CTV News, Vancouver's paramedics and dispatchers are feeling fatigued and burnt out by the pace of the opioid overdoses, and some are experiencing occupational stress injuries such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Bear with me, friends, I'm almost done.
The downtown Eastside neighborhood is ground zero for the troubles.
For the past century, the area has been Vancouver's skid row, home to a dense network of cheap hotels, bars, brothels, and increasingly homeless encampments and social services offices.
It's here across 10 city blocks that Vancouver has launched its experiment in harm reduction, opening Canada's first needle exchange in 1988 and North America's first safe injection facility in 2003.
Rather than try to disperse the downtown Eastside's social pathologies throughout the region, policymakers have decided to concentrate new subsidized housing construction, welfare services, and drug programs in the neighborhood.
Total social spending in the downtown Eastside now amounts to more than $1 million per day.
Despite these intensive efforts, the city has failed meaningfully to reduce rates of addiction, homelessness, and criminality in the neighborhood, which remains the epicenter for all overdose deaths in the region.
In 2017, the city of Vancouver logged 8,000 overdose calls, with the downtown eastside responsible for 5,000 of the total.
Again, 10 city blocks, even with a population of only a few thousand residents.
The DTES, as it's called, the downtown east side of Vancouver, was turned into an open-air social experiment three decades ago, where the mad scientists who didn't have to live with the results of their human trials experimented on the most vulnerable amongst us.
Pilot Project for Safe Transit00:05:06
All this instead of getting them the help they needed to be clean and productive through treatment, deterrence, and mental health supports.
We have nearly two generations of data here to know government enabling of drug addiction does not work.
But it gets worse because BC is now legalizing hard drugs, just enabling people into their graves either slowly in prolonged suffering or quickly through an expedited overdose.
And they're calling it compassion and understanding.
Alberta has also been hammered by the opioid crisis, as so many places have been.
It was made worse, of course, as it has been, I think, across the world by the societal trauma of the pandemic lockdowns.
But Alberta is doing something very different, and I will give credit where it's due.
The move away from the NDP liberal policy of government enabling and safe injection sites and safe supply began under the previous Conservative Premier, Jason Kenney.
Kenney opened up treatment beds and swatted down the insane NDP idea that the things addicts really need to get better are more drugs, a warm place to do those drugs, and have it all provided by the state.
And new Premier Danielle Smith, to her credit, is not just carrying on in the same vein as Kenny, but going even further.
And I love to see it.
She's going full speed ahead.
Everything I'm going to show you, or at least the next two things I'm about to show you, is from the first half of this week.
And it is Wednesday morning.
As I'm writing this monologue that I'm speaking right now, the provincial government is making an announcement in Calgary for more detox and pre-treatment addiction beds on top of the 4,000 beds previously announced that the government is exceeding pace on achieving.
Yesterday, the provincial government, so February 14th, Valentine's Day, announced a pilot project in partnership with the Calgary City Police to deploy Alberta sheriffs to assist the Calgary police in keeping the transit system safe from drug addicts and drug dealers.
It's a three-month pilot project to see if it's effective.
Alberta's Public Safety Ministry is deploying an additional 12 sheriffs and their job is to address social disorder in downtown Calgary.
And two weeks ago, Public Safety Alberta announced a similar 15-week pilot project with the Edmonton City Police, again deploying a dozen sheriffs to help get a handle on whatever is happening in the downtown core of the capital city.
Daniel Smith has even inspired the progressive mayors to walk back some of their own enabling behaviors, especially in Edmonton.
Look at this.
In an attempt to reduce open drug use in public places, harm reduction contractors are no longer giving syringes and pipes to people in Pedways or near transit centers, a change attracting mixed reaction.
The quote clarified approach took effect February 1st because of safety concerns, a city official in charge of the program said in a statement to CTV News Edmonton.
We anticipate this clarification will prevent negative interactions between those working in transit spaces and those turning to transit spaces to consume drugs, said Bus Operations Director Ryan Birch.
Did you know that the city of Edmonton had been hiring contractors to give out crack pipes in ETS bus shelters?
What in God's name is wrong with these people?
In every person that gets clean, I see a child who gets her dad back, a mom who doesn't have to worry about her son dying before her, a neighbor who doesn't have to worry about their car being stolen, a family that can finally take their kids to the park without having to worry about stepping on needles.
And shame, shame on those people who call it a kindness to foist that misery on so many innocents.
Stay with me up after the break.
We've got Arthur C. Green from the Western Standard.
He's a bit of a new Edmontonian.
And if you follow him on Twitter, you'll see how progressive policies have failed the vulnerable in Edmonton.
Mayors in Canada's major cities seem to be worried about the feelings of drag queen performers in their cities, as Calgary's Mayor Jodi Gondik is threatening to use anti-harassment laws against peaceful protesters in her city.
Calgary and other major cities in this country are descending into social decay.
And one independent journalist who has been doing incredible work documenting just how bad it is in Edmonton is Arthur C. Green.
He works for the Western Standard, and this is the first time we're talking to him officially here at Rebel News.
And I'm so excited to have him join us.
Why I Started This Work00:14:59
Art, tell me, what made this your focus?
Because you're really the only person talking about this, at least in media.
And you're an independent journalist, so you get a little bit more freedom.
But how did this end up on your radar?
First of all, I don't really tell a whole lot about my personal life.
Sure.
I have a mother-in-law who is addicted to drugs and who lives homeless.
And I've been trying for two years to get her help.
She's lived with me and my girlfriend several times.
And, you know, we've instilled rules in our household, no getting high and no bringing drugs into our house.
And she wasn't able to abide by those rules.
So I've been trying to get her help for about two years.
And, you know, I was riding the LRT one day, and I'm a very observant person.
And this was about three months ago.
And I just thought to myself, I was like, you know, as a journalist and having to deal with this situation myself, if I couldn't get my mother-in-law help, how would I get anybody else help that is also dealing with a drug addiction?
And so I started riding the LRT.
I did have one resident, and I won't say her name because she doesn't want me to name her, but she reached out to me and she works in downtown Edmonton.
And she has two autistic children.
And, you know, she rides the LRT.
She's a hardworking Albertan and she rides the LRT to downtown.
And, you know, she told me a story about how she kisses her children goodbye in the mornings, not knowing if she's going to return that evening.
And it's because of the dangers that she faces on the LRT system.
So having been all over the world, I've been through 27 countries and I've been some pretty scary places.
I've lived in Belfast and some other places.
So I'm quite fearless.
I decided that, you know, I'm going to take a stand.
And I don't believe in safe supply, Sheila, because, you know, at AA meetings, we don't give out alcohol shots at AA meetings.
So why are we giving out a safe supply of drugs to drug addicts?
And I just want to enforce a note: you know, there is no safe supply of heroin and cocaine.
No matter what the government says, you know, there is no safe supply of these hard drugs.
And I truly believe that Safe Supply and handing out needles, you know, and again, Edmonton made a decision yesterday.
I was reading that they're going to stop handing out needles here now in the LRT system, which is a first step.
But, you know, we don't, we don't give drugs to the drug addicts is the thing, you know, because, like, how is that helping them?
And I know that what my mother-in-law, and again, and I'm trying not to ramble here, Sheila, but again, like, you know, people have really, I've experienced a lot of hate in the last three months.
And I'm going to call them out.
It's from the woke left and liberals and NDP supporters.
They don't like what I'm doing.
You know, they say I'm not preserving people's dignity.
But like under photo law, Sheila, you know, because you're a journalist, if you're in a public place, I'm allowed to take your picture and publish it.
And, you know, people say, you know, you need to preserve these people's dignity.
And, you know, I preserve people's dignity.
I watched a man, you know, use the bathroom a couple months ago on Jasper Avenue when it was minus 40.
And, you know, it was frozen to him as he was trying to wipe himself.
And, you know, his dignity is already gone.
And I once lived homeless myself.
And I won't tell my own story, but, you know, when you're down, you never think you're going to be up again.
And when you're up, you never think you're going to be down.
So don't judge the person that's on the corner, you know, addicted to drugs and homeless because it could be you.
And it can happen to anyone.
Addiction touches all families.
And of course, it's touched mine.
And, you know, my girlfriend is, her family has been torn apart by drugs.
And, you know, I see the pain that it causes her.
And I just want to help other people and humanity here in Edmonton.
So that's a little bit about why I started this.
You know, I've got a real tough time taking lessons about preserving human dignity from people whose progressive policies are damning Edmonton's homeless and drug addicted to a slow, tumultuous death.
And it's not just the drug addict, as you point out.
And you're not alone in this.
I mean, drug addiction touches, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a family that has escaped it.
But it's not just the addict that is suffering out on the street.
It's their family.
It's, you know, it's you here who, you know, you're trying to get your girlfriend's mom some help, and you've got progressives telling you that you don't care about the addicted.
Tell me, this has put you on the radar of some pretty scary characters.
And really, all you're doing is taking pictures and sharing pictures of the things you see on your way to work.
What's, you know, like, tell us about the ramifications of just telling the truth for you.
Well, like I tell people, the absolute truth will be my legacy, Sheila.
You know, I always say to people, I work for the people.
The Western Standard just pays me.
And, you know, it's my girlfriend is really scared.
She really worries about me.
But, you know, I'll die for this for this stance that I've taken.
And, you know, I haven't really reported a whole lot on what I've experienced because I don't want to be seen as a snowflake.
You know, we saw the Kill McMcGowan video where he gave me the finger and we posted it online.
And, you know, people said, oh, you're a snowflake.
You know, you're, you know, you're making a mountain out of a mohill-based.
Right.
But if the mainstream media journalists get a mean tweet, they're going to convene a government panel to examine the treatment of female journalists online.
But independent journalists and you, you can get, you know, shoved, assaulted, threatened by well-connected people, and nobody seems to care.
Well, and, you know, two months ago, some people in the LRT tried to set me on fire for taking pictures.
So, you know, they sprayed me with a flammable liquid and tried to light me.
And just a little bit about myself, you know, I do have a rough and tough background being a newfield and being all over the world.
And, you know, I've worked in some pretty scary places and the devil wouldn't frighten me.
And I can fight and I'm good at it now.
I didn't want to fight anyone, but I was willing to fight those people that day.
And, you know, I can handle myself and I can look after myself, but it worries me about the seniors and other people, children who are riding the trains and who can't look after themselves.
So I've been in some scary situations.
And I don't want to put a bigger target on my head, but I've been told that gang members have a price on Arthur Green in Edmonton.
And, you know, I'm upsetting the balance because these drug dealers are preying on these vulnerable people.
And, you know, they're preying on my mother-in-law.
And I don't take that lightly.
It's personal for me.
And I'm not going to back down.
And yeah, so every vulnerable person, group that I follow, because like I do, I observe and report.
I'm an investigative journalist.
So like I do watch people.
I won't say I stock people, but I do watch people.
And I followed some groups around the city.
And, you know, the same individuals muster within these groups.
And I know they're the dealers.
And I can figure this out.
Having lived on the street myself, again, and having a tremendous background when it comes to, you know, being down and out, there was no one ever down and out as I was.
You know, I picked myself back up.
And now it's, it's, I just can't stop, Sheila.
And I'm not going to stop.
This is happening.
You know, people can, you know, live in their glass houses.
They say don't throw rocks at glass houses and people can live in their houses and you know worry about their supper and what they're going to watch on TV that night.
When meanwhile, in downtown Edmonton, drug dealers are, you know, preying on the vulnerable and causing chaos.
And, you know, these dealers, they usually wear red hats.
I don't mind.
I'm not afraid.
I mean, if they come and kill me, Sheila, they come and kill me.
That's the point that I'm at now because there's no turning back now, Sheila.
You know, I've exposed something that's very serious.
It's been going on in Edmonton, I'm told, for at least the last four or five years.
Nothing's been done.
And, you know, a lot of journalists have messaged me and people from independent podcasts that tried to bring light to this, but were scared off.
And, you know, I've been invited.
I've been talking to gang members, Sheila.
I wrote a story a couple of months ago about a shooting here in downtown Edmonton.
A girl was shot by gang members.
And, you know, I didn't have the full story.
The police only told me so much, but the gang members actually reached out to me and was like, hey, this is the truth.
And this is what happened.
And, you know, they invited me to their penthouse.
Apparently, there's a penthouse here in Edmonton that they have.
And, you know, my boss wasn't too happy at the Western Standard or our insurance corpus is letting me go.
I didn't go, obviously.
Didn't want to, you know.
Feels like a trap.
Felt like a trap to me as well.
Like, I'm not that stupid.
But, you know, it's very serious here in Edmonton.
You know, there's it's completely out of control.
And I was able to show that just like the other day, someone messaged me on Twitter.
And again, it's not only me, Sheila.
I have thousands of people who have also are backing me.
You know, my Twitter inbox is full every two minutes, it seems I can't keep up with notifications.
There's people emailing me and messaging me from every part of the city, you know, saying, Hey, and they've been really helpful too, as well, because they've given me like tips on things that have happening.
And, you know, they're so I can't take all the credit myself.
It was a real team effort to show what's happening.
Now, I want to ask you, if you've carefully looked at this, you've lived this a couple of different ways.
You continue to live it.
What can the city do tomorrow to make this better?
Again, as a news reporter, I try to keep my opinion editing so I can remain unbiased.
And, you know, this is the only real story that I've really stated my opinion on, Sheila, since I started my career six years ago.
And, you know, my opinion for the city, what they need to do is, first of all, they need to sweep the LRT system.
So start in the south and head north.
Remove, I know the left and the liberals and the NDP are not going to be too happy about what I'm going to say, but you know, they're saying these people have nowhere to go.
But, you know, the Edmonton City Council removed a loitering bylaw.
So they essentially created their own problem.
They basically turned the LRT system into a homeless shelter and a place where, you know, vulnerable people can do drugs.
And then they were handing out needles in this, in the LRT.
So, you know, they didn't even have a reason to leave, Sheila.
And, you know, I've been speaking to some people here in the city that have been talking about the Hope mission.
You know, the Hope mission shows up outside of LRT stations to hand out food and different things.
And what the city needs to do, what they need to do, Sheila, and this is the ultimate answer for me and my girlfriend as well.
They need to stop enabling people to be able to do drugs.
So for us, our mother-in-law hasn't hit rock bottom yet and lost.
Well, she's about there.
But, you know, we were giving her money.
She would call for different things.
You know, she needed tampons or whatnot food.
Or, you know, it was always a story, but really we know what that money was being used for.
And here in Edmonton, you know, the city really needs to stop enabling these people and enabling them.
I know they've stopped giving out the needles, but giving out the tools to do drugs, not a way to solve an addiction.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and shoehorning the problem for me, I see it as, you know, it's almost, and I hate to say systemic racism, but when you are using government policy to shoehorn drug addicts into a minority neighborhood like Edmonton's Chinatown,
I'm reliably informed by the left that that might be considered systemic racism, that you don't want it in your fancy neighborhood, the mayor's fancy neighborhood, but it's perfectly fine to dump it all in Chinatown.
And I've been called racist myself, Sheila.
And, you know, people on Twitter are quick to judge me.
You know, don't quote me on the exact number, but roughly 57% of homeless people in Edmonton are indigenous.
And, you know, people were saying by the pictures that I was posting that I was racist and that I was picking on the Indigenous.
Well, little do they know my mother-in-law is indigenous and my girlfriend is indigenous.
And, you know, I lived up north, Sheila, and I've been through 33 communities in the Northwest Territories.
And I thought firsthand how the federal government destroyed a culture of people.
Yellowknife Liquor Restrictions00:07:45
And, you know, I really started my crusade when I lived in Yellowknife.
I started a Coach for the Coal campaign.
And, you know, people were like, why are you doing this?
And I was like, well, first of all, it's freezing out and mine is 60.
And I don't want to have to report these people's deaths.
So, you know, my only friends in Yellowknife were the homeless.
And, you know, they were really kind to me.
And I really, and I really helped a lot of people up there because, you know, in Yellowknife, the sobering center is right across from the liquor store.
So I don't know how, I don't know how that makes any sense.
My first day in Yellowknife as a news reporter, someone killed someone at the sobering center for a bicycle.
So it was completely out of control.
And when I moved into Yellowknife, it's basically a smaller mirror image of Edmonton of what's happening here because people were like, oh my God, why is there so much crime?
What is going on?
And I'm like, no, this has always been happening.
It's just, I'm reporting it now.
And CBC and the mainstream media in Yellowknife just turned a blind eye to this issue.
And, you know, basically in Yellowknife, when you commit or in the Northwest Territories, when you commit a crime, you're sent to Yellowknife to face your charges.
And I'll just tell one little quick story about a man from Tayok de Yuktuk.
You know, he lived on the street an entire winter.
Basically, he was charged with a misdemeanor crime in Tayok de Yuktuk, sent to Yellowknife to face his charges.
Then he was given restrictions.
So his restrictions was he had to abide by the peace.
He had to check in once a week and he wasn't allowed one kilometer outside of Yellowknife.
So he wasn't allowed to actually leave the city.
So once he faced his charges, he was given a court date and these restrictions and then threw back out on the street.
You know, no one was here to help him.
I became really close with this man.
I actually spent three months without a paycheck, compliments of this the radio in Yellowknife and had to fish from the lake to eat to stay alive because I had no one to help me.
And, you know, the homeless really helped me.
They were the only people that looked out for me.
And everyone in Yellowknife are basically the same way that people in Edmonton are.
You know, they live in their glass houses and, you know, they don't head downtown.
It was so bad in Yellowknife, like with the liquor store that they put another liquor store uptown.
So they didn't have to see the indigenous downtown drinking on the side of the street and going into the indigenous liquor store is what they call it.
Yes, totally terrible.
So eventually I, you know, I asked, I just asked questions.
I just talked to people.
Same thing I do here in Edmonton.
Like people say, oh, you haven't really interviewed anyone.
Well, not very many people want to be on camera when they're strung out on drugs.
But, you know, I have talked to people and I do talk to everyone that I encounter in Edmonton.
And the man in Yellowknife, I actually went to court with him.
And because the media got involved, because I was in the courtroom while his case was being here, Being looked at, they basically were like, Oh, yeah, we can change your restrictions.
Hold on, let us do it.
And they changed it, and he was allowed to go back to his family and talk to Yuck Doc, who he hasn't spoken to in 10 months because he didn't have a phone.
And there's they didn't have a phone, so there was no communication.
He got transferred to Yellowknife by the RCMP, and his wife never heard from him again.
Now, God bless his heart.
He did die in a boating accident that summer, but uh, you know, I saw what he went through, and you know, he told me he committed crimes in Yellowknife while he was on probation or his restrictions waiting his court day so he could get a shower or so he could stay warm.
You know, he went 17 days without a shower, and I'll try not to cry because it uh it really hits me here.
You know, humanity, and it's amazing what another human being can do to another human.
Yeah, yeah, and it, I guess that brings us full circle to these progressive cities enabling Edmonton's homeless, who, as you rightly point out, are largely indigenous, into a slow, horrible death.
I mean, that's really unless you get clean, you die of your addiction.
You either die soon or you die later, but you die of your addiction.
Arthur, how do people find the work that you're doing?
Um, if they have tips, how do they send them to you?
I think what you're doing is just so valuable, and I think you're the right guy to do it.
Um, I usually just, you know, I give people my email address: it's agreen at westernstandard.news.
I always take tips.
You can look me up on Twitter at Art C Green.
Uh, you know, just give me a follow and send me a message.
Uh, my phone goes off quite regularly.
Um, I just wanted to add one thing, Sheila, about safe supply and the mentality of safe supply.
You know, the government is saying that we need safe supply for drug addicts.
You know, we did see tainted drugs in BC and fentanyl overdoses and whatnot.
But I just want to let you know, Canada know what vulnerable people and drug addicts think of safe supply.
So, my mother-in-law, for example, I've been telling her how dangerous drugs are, you know, and she wasn't taught growing up in the education system that drugs were bad.
You know, she didn't know that cracking meth was so addictive when she tried it.
And, you know, with Safe Supply, I've told her about the dangers of drug use and how her organs are eventually going to shut down and she's going to die.
And, you know, she's like, Well, it can't be that bad.
The government is decriminalizing it.
The government is legalizing it.
The government's giving it out with your tax dollars and my tax dollars.
And, you know, she thinks it's okay because the government is saying it's okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, they look at it and they say, look, they put warning labels on cigarettes, but it's okay because I can go get meth.
There's mixed messaging, that's for sure.
Art, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Hopefully, we'll have you back on again very, very soon.
Best of luck.
Please stay safe out there.
I'll try my best.
And thank you for having me.
I'm a huge fan.
I was totally impressed when you reached out to me.
And like, you know, Sheila, some people have said, I've been doing this just to gain fame.
And no, I've been doing this because I truly do care about people.
This is more than a job for me.
This is this is a life.
And, you know, I'm not going to back down.
And I will die for this cause because it's about humanity and it's about saving lives.
And if it takes my life to save others, then that's what I'm willing to do.
Well, Art, if anybody says a mean thing about you, they're going to have to come through me first.
Art, we'll have you back on again very, very soon.
And as I say, please stay safe.
Stay with us.
your letters to Ezra read by me up after the break.
Well, we've come to the portion of the show where we, unlike the mainstream media, invite your viewer feedback on the stories that we're doing.
East Palestine Tragedy00:05:05
Now, some of you may know that we have sent a team of two journalists, our head of video, Efron Monsanto, and a journalist, Lincoln Jay, to East Palestine, Ohio, to follow the facts wherever they lead.
There was a train derailment last week, and according to the official government narrative, they were unable to clean the chemicals in the rail cars up, so they are conducting what they are calling a controlled burn.
Now, according to the EPA and the company involved, the controlled burn of these chemicals is not deleterious to public and animal health.
But the people from East Palestine are saying something much different.
Is this psychosomatic?
Is it a cover-up?
Is it something in between?
We don't know, but we have two brave journalists on the ground in East Palestine to bring you the news, whatever they see as they see it.
If you want to support their trip down there and their independent journalism, which you won't see in the mainstream media in America or in Canada, you can go to OhioExplosion.com.
Now, we've got some letters here on that story.
Big Jake writes: I'm a retired electrical and mechanical engineer who designed, then built, then maintained the equipment which built rail cars and engines.
This boils down to poor maintenance on the cars, which caused the wheels to come off.
Profit over safety is pretty common.
The sparks he saw coming out from under the car was caused due to friction, metal on metal, meaning no grease or mops packed with grease inside the hubs.
It's really common.
The decision to release the chemicals then ignited was absolutely wrong.
There are multiple ways those chemicals could have been cleaned up.
Why neutralizers weren't used is beyond me.
Every chemical has a neutralizer that makes it safer to handle in the instance there's a spill.
Burying it was the worst idea ever.
So who made that choice has to be held to account?
Now, I'm not an expert on chemicals, but I asked a similar question yesterday.
This happened in Ohio, and Ohio probably has 100 fracking companies working.
That's fracking heartland in the United States.
And being in Alberton, what I do know about fracking companies is they have spill mitigation programs in place before they even start a project.
They've got booms to maintain chemicals, to prevent chemicals from leaching into the groundwater.
They have protocols.
And I don't know why some of that private expertise was not relied upon here to deal with this in a better, different way.
Now, profits over safety, I think that's often the way a lot of companies work.
But where is the transportation czar, Pete Budigej, on this?
He was asleep at the Switch or perhaps on paternity leave while the supply chains in the United States descended into chaos.
And he doesn't seem to be all that concerned about any of this either, talking about social justice instead of what some are saying could be the worst ecological disaster in the United States in a generation, maybe ever.
I don't know.
I guess time will tell.
Sherwood writes: When that train derailment happened in Quebec, the town already had plans drawn up three days prior for the rebuild.
I think you're talking about LAC Meg Antique, where oil that probably should have been in a pipeline was being transported in a rail car and the rail cars, I think, rolled away and caused an explosion in the town.
Now, I don't know if that is a conspiracy theory, that the town already had plans drawn up three days prior to the explosion for the rebuild.
What I can tell you is, even two years later, And I'm inclined not to believe that that is the case because what I do know is two years later, they had to stop the mitigation efforts, the decontamination efforts, just to hold memorial service at the same site.
So, it doesn't seem like they had too much planned in advance to deal with that when they were still dealing with the fallout two years later so that they could have a small ceremony.
Camito, 23, writes, thank you.
Amazing how an independent Canadian journalist sheds light on this while American mainstream media have completely ignored this.
Where are all the environmentalists and outrage?
Yeah, I asked that question too.
They're usually protesting a completely inert pipeline somewhere instead of burning chemicals because I think their guy, like this is the Biden administration and Pete Buttigieg, who checks a lot of identity boxes.
They're the ones in charge here.
And I think the EPA as well.
So this is their team.
So they're going to completely ignore the failures of their team.
Like there is when it gets too hot or too cold.
Mainstream Media Indictment00:01:18
Yeah.
Complete media blackout here in the States by the mainstream media, beyond nefarious.
Charges being brought up aren't enough.
People still haven't went back to their homes.
May never will.
Again, we don't really know the full extent of what's going on there.
We don't know what's exaggeration and what's real.
We know that animals are dying, but also as a farmer, I also know that, for example, chickens can get sick and die pretty darn fast and a whole coop will die.
So we're just doing our best to follow the facts wherever they lead us without exaggeration, without embellishment, because I don't think we need to.
I think this is probably pretty bad on its own.
And the fact that the mainstream media isn't there is an indictment on them and job security for us.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Thanks to everybody who works behind the scenes to put the show together.
David Menzies, I believe, is covering for Ezra tomorrow and then me again on Friday.
And as Ezra always says, keep fighting for freedom.
Oh, and happy birthday to us, by the way, and to you.
Thank you so much to all of you at home who have stood by us these past eight years and have cheered for us to keep living when our competitors and the government have done their best to euthanize us as quickly as possible.