Rising homelessness in Canada surged 40% since 2020, driven by inflation, unemployment, and 44% of Canadians struggling with housing costs by fall 2022. 38% of homeless report poor mental health, while 13% of women flee abuse—a crisis worsening for five straight years. The federal government spent $2.8M on consultants under Reaching Home, yet 76% of ArriveCan contractors did no work. Meanwhile, Texas’s razor-wire border crackdown under Operation Lone Star (2021) fails to stop river crossings, with migrants exploiting Canada’s free healthcare and loopholes like asylum claims doubling at airports. Critics accuse media of politicizing kids’ programming while ignoring systemic failures, revealing how policy distractions deepen both homelessness and border chaos. [Automatically generated summary]
Homelessness is up in Canada and the poverty consultants are cashing in.
Then Alexa Lavoie joins us to discuss the Texas border fight.
It's February 5th, 2024.
I'm Sheila Gunread and you're watching the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Friends, you may notice a change of scenery.
Ezra's busy today.
David's off, and so here I am at the kitchen table of the Airbnb in Ottawa that's serving as the HQ where Kian Simoni and I are working on our newest documentary.
It's called MAID, The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion.
You can learn more about that at made documentary.com.
However, medical killing isn't the only misery ballooning under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Homelessness is on the rise in Canada, along with spending on so-called homelessness consultants.
Since February 2020, homelessness is up 40% in Canada.
According to Statistics Canada's latest data, financial challenges are the leading cause of homelessness.
Deteriorating housing affordability following the onset of the pandemic, combined with higher unemployment and fewer job vacancies in recent months, along with a surge in inflation through 2021 and 2022, has led to higher costs for essential goods and services.
These factors continue to place financial pressures on many households across Canada.
In the fall of 2022, almost half or 44% of Canadians were very concerned about their households' ability to afford housing or rent.
So it comes as no surprise that the most reported reason leading to homelessness was financial issues, almost 42%.
What would be the effect on inflation if the carbon tax was eliminated?
And that would create a one-time drop in inflation of 0.6 percentage point.
But wait, there's more.
Victims of abuse may have nowhere to go.
The link between abusive home situations and homelessness is an ongoing concern as the incidence of family violence in Canada rose for the fifth consecutive year in 2021 with women and girls accounting for two-thirds of the victims.
Relationship issues at nearly 37% was the second leading factor driving Canadians into homelessness.
A related driver was fleeing abuse at 13%, a common pathway into homelessness for many, but four times more likely for women than men.
When looking at absolute homelessness exclusively, these figures double with over two in five women reporting absolute homelessness at some point as a result of fleeing abuse compared with 12% of men.
But friends, there's still more.
Health issues can interrupt housing stability.
While financial and relationship issues are the most common causes of homelessness, health-related issues can also lead to homelessness episodes.
Canadians who have experienced any form of homelessness were more likely to report fair or poor mental health, 38% versus 17%, than the overall population.
More respondents listed health issues as a major factor contributing to absolute homelessness than to hidden homelessness.
Canadians experiencing homelessness and underlying mental health conditions have also been highly represented in recent opioid hospitalizations.
The Canada.ca website says very clearly, a few grains can kill you.
Is that appropriate?
So, Mr. Chair, my colleague did ask this question before, and I believe we've already tabled all the proofs on Safer Supply, and I'll be happy to table them again for further reference.
Not the question, Minister.
My question is, do you think you should be giving an incredibly potent synthetic opioid of which a few grains can kill you to children?
Yes or no?
Simple.
Each physician works with their patient on the treatment protocols that work best for them.
That is a very unique and important relationship.
Have you had enough yet?
The Trudeau Liberals haven't.
There's still more here.
Moving doesn't always lead to finding a home.
Canadians move for a variety of reasons, including changing household size, employment, better housing or neighborhoods, and evictions, leading to many diverse experiences of hidden homelessness.
Other notable drivers of hidden homelessness are relocation at almost 21% and waiting to move into a new home, 16%.
Over one in three households relocating at some point in the past reported waiting over six months in a state of hidden homelessness.
The truth is that the Prime Minister is not spending money on any of those things.
He has a food program that doesn't feed kids.
It feeds bureaucracies and creates frameworks that kids can't eat.
He has a housing affordability program that doubles the cost of housing, a housing accelerator that hasn't built the same single house, a carbon tax that hasn't reduced emissions.
So instead of spending billions on programs that cause inflation and do nothing but sound pretty, why won't he axe the tax on our farmers so that they can feed Canadians this winter?
The Right Honorable Prime Minister.
Whether the Leader of the Opposition makes a homemade video about it or not, a key factor contributing to food inflation around the world is Putin's illegal war in Ukraine.
That party has been playing right into the Kremlin's hands by voting against Operation Unifier, by voting against funding for military aid to Ukraine, and by voting at every opportunity, including again this morning, against the Canada-U-Trade free trade agreement that Ukrainians have been asking for.
We will never abandon Ukraine, unlike the conservative leader who showed us Canadians.
Now, like every problem in liberal land, Trudeau knows the solution.
Just line the pockets of rich consultants to tell us the problems are something other than what we know them to be.
Easily predictable outcomes of bad liberal policies.
This is from today in Blacklock's Reporter.
A federal homeless relief program paid millions to consultants documents show overall spending on consultants jumped 13% last year despite cabinets promise to cut spending on consultants.
The Department of Infrastructure in an inquiry of ministry tabled in the Commons disclosed $2.8 million was paid to date to consultants under the 2019 Reaching Home program.
The grand program was to reduce homeless rates at a budgeted $4 billion over nine years.
Homelessness, according to the liberals, it just needs more consultants instead of bail reform, drug treatment not enabling, more mental health supports, fewer taxes, and more housing starts.
Oh, and a pause in immigration to take all that strain off the housing supply.
Instead, us Canadians, we just get more of the same.
For example, are people being injured by untested vaccines thanks to vaccination or unemployment and segregation ultimatums from the federal government?
Well, here comes the vaccine injury support program.
But two-thirds of the money there is going to administration and consultants and not the people who were injured by the policy.
Justin Trudeau liberals have paid out nearly $11 million of compensation for injuries from the safe and effective novel COVID-19 jobs.
But most of the funding allocated to the vaccine injury support program goes to the consultancy firm responsible for administering it.
I am extremely pleased that I got the AstraZeneca vaccine a number of weeks ago.
Every single vaccine available in Canada has been approved by Health Canada as being both safe and effective.
So what we do not know as yet are the effectiveness of the vaccines that we have in preventing asymptomatic infection or to reduce transmission.
That data is just not there.
But I do know that international studies, the vaccine manufacturers, also following that.
So we expect to sort of take that data in mind as we look at what the impact of vaccinating persons in long-term care could be.
Certainly, I think that the primary goal is, I absolutely think that everyone has to commit to getting vaccines as fast as possible into this population.
And the Conservatives won't tell us how many folks haven't been vaccinated.
And why is this a concern?
Well, I mean, look, last week the Conservatives had a caucus of member tested positive.
And now here we are in the House, unvaccinated members with exposure to somebody with COVID being in the House.
That's a great concern.
Then you need a travel app to enforce all that vaccine segregation.
People Crossing Borders00:16:22
Well, 76% of the contractors on that travel app, ArriveCan, did no work whatsoever for their paydays.
But this is the way in the Trudeau universe.
They talk about the middle class and those working hard to join it.
Good morning, Teresa Wright, the Canadian press.
You've triggered an election today and you're asking Canadians to vote for you.
Perhaps you could tell Canadians why they should trust you to be returned to power when we still don't know all the details of the SNC Labelin affair, despite numerous attempts and some of that has to do with committees with a Liberal majority blocking those details coming forward.
We made a commitment to Canadians to grow the economy for the middle class and for people working hard to join it.
That was the heart of the promise we got elected on.
We have delivered on that by watching Canadians create well over a million jobs over the past four years at the same time as 900,000 Canadians have been lifted out of poverty.
Our commitment to invest in communities, our commitment to support and move forward on giving a real chance to Indigenous peoples to succeed by advancing reconciliation, to move forward on demonstrating that we understand that growing the economy and protecting the environment goes together every step of the way.
And it's not a choice of either or anymore.
But it's all about the consultant class.
Rich consultants get richer for less work than ever before, and you get poorer.
Stay with us.
Alexa Lavoie joins us after the break to talk about what she saw in Eagle Pass, Texas.
So that clip you saw right there is from a trip that our Revolues reporters Alexa Lavoie and Lincoln Jay made to the Texas border, the southern border of the United States.
as the state of Texas and Governor Greg Abbott is in a bit of a standoff with the Biden administration about what to do with illegal immigration.
Greg Abbott thinks that he has a solution.
He wants to enforce border policies, and Biden has other plans, I think, because he assumes that many of the people fighting across the border will end up one day as Democrat voters in the state of Texas, thus flipping the state of Texas to the Democratic Party.
It's all about changing demographics.
But what about the people who have to live with the consequences of Biden's manipulation of a humanitarian crisis to help Democrats?
Well, that's part of what Alexa and Lincoln were doing down there, talking to the very people affected by Biden's.
I was going to say inability, but I don't think it's an inability to enforce border policies.
He just doesn't want to because it helps his agenda.
Alexa, you're just home now.
We have a ton of videos still that you filmed at the border to publish.
Tell us what you learned at the southern border at Eagle Pass.
I was really surprised because the main reason why we went down there, it's because of the pushback of Greg Abbott against what he says that is Biden-lawless policy regarding the immigration.
So Greg Abbott have decided to reinforce the border, putting some razor wire, putting some shipping content, and making really a wall where it's Shelby Park.
Shelby Park is a park in Eagle Pass.
So since then, since it's reinforcing in these arresting people for crossing illegally, making it as a crime, because it started in 2021 at the Operation Lone Star.
So the word has spread in the other side in Mexico, where people like now know that in Texas, it's beginning a little bit more difficult to cross over.
So we saw a decrease in the illegal crossing, but we need to know that in January, usually it's a month that it's always low for the crossing.
So we need to wait a little bit longer in the next few months to see like if it is effective what Governor Greg Abbott is actually doing in Texas.
But for now, what we were able to see, it's like, yes, there is less people crossing around Shelby Park.
But not far away, we talk about 20 minutes drive.
Me and Lincoln, we were able to access straight to the river without passing through razor wire or fence.
So the border is really huge.
There is a lot of loophole where you can just like cross over.
And it would be always difficult for the government, the states to take care and to seal the border completely.
There is also like border patrol that are patrolling and there is helicopter all the time patrolling the area.
There is also sensor tower with camera who always like look what is going on.
At night, we see more border patrol because of course like the camera is probably less effective.
But we saw tons, like not, we saw on our eyes eight people crossing.
We were kind of lucky because as I say, border is huge.
They cross everywhere.
But we saw on social media and from other independent journalists who were on the ground that we met, we saw 14, one day, another, 20.
They are by bunch of people.
Sometimes it's all men, all single men crossing.
We noticed like when we saw the eight people crossing, a young boy of 10 years old, unaccompanied by himself, crossing into the US, no family here in the US, no relative.
And he said that he was there for going to school, that he had no parents.
And the border patrol say that it's actually something common to see a lot of unaccompanied child just crossing over.
Who are those kids?
And who pushed them to come into US?
And talking with a lot of people from US, they are really concerned and scared about the sleepers.
People come into US, are there, keep silence for a while, and have an agenda behind.
They don't know who are these people.
It's not all people that are nice.
But it's a thing.
Texas is a Republican state.
They are doing what they can to protect their border.
But when we look at Arizona and California, there are two Democrat places where illegal migrants are just flooding in.
And we know that there, they have a huge problem with drug addict, homeless people.
They have 10 cities where people are just like sleeping in 10 or outside.
And those people who are crossing, they don't want to stay close to the border.
They want to go up north.
And talking with the former Border Patrol agent, what they were saying is like, you know, those people are getting processed here.
But after that, they are either being bused up or fly up.
So those people are going to sanctuary cities.
And those cities are not safe anymore.
Those cities, it's being crowded by illegal migrants or by like people who cannot find like any place to stay because the inflation is getting skyrocketed.
And so those people will want to go to Canada where it's like really spacey, where it's better because our health system is better from the U.S. because it's free.
Everything is free in Canada.
We're all helping those illegals to cross over and to get all the help that they need.
So now those people who are crossing illegally, and this shocked me so much because as I was mentioned before, they don't need to have any ID.
They don't need to prove from which country they are coming from.
They don't need to prove who they are.
If you say, oh, my name is this and I'm coming from Honduras and you have no proof, they need to trust your work.
So you receive afterwards a sheet, a travel sheet that have your detail on it.
And afterwards, you can fly.
You just show your paper, you fly around, and afterwards, you receive a court date.
It can be between one to six years and you disappear into U.S. and most of them, they will disappear where?
In Canada.
Yeah, I mean, and let's not forget that the United States has birthright citizenship.
So a lot can happen in one to six years.
You could have a child that then becomes the American citizen that can sponsor you and now your entire family into the country.
It will unillegalize, I guess.
That's not the right word, but you know what I mean, for the entire family.
And, you know, the monologue today on Ezra's show is about homelessness, the rise of homelessness in this country and what's causing it.
We know it is mental illness.
We know it's drug addiction, but one of the big precipitating factors is cost of living.
And then, so this is not a problem that's unique to the United States.
When you have an influx of people that you don't have the resources for and you don't have housing for, and you don't have health care for, and you don't have the supports for, that drives homelessness right across the board.
And you did reporting on this earlier in Quebec where when you were doing reports on Wroxham Road, which is now closed, but there's kind of a loophole there, and we'll talk about that in a second.
But the illegal migrants from Wroxham Road were occupying the homeless shelters meant for Canadians because there were just too many of them coming across the border.
And as you say, a lot of these people are being shipped up north, some of it by Greg Abbott.
You know, if Texas, if New York wants to be a sanctuary city, they get to prove it and take a bunch of migrants, but they don't stop there.
They end up crossing the border.
And one of the loopholes in closing the illegal border crossing at Wroxham Road is that now a number of asylum claims will be taken at regular ports of entry.
So at the airport, at Pearson, at Trudeau Airport, you can make a sanctuary claim there now.
And we know the Canadian government turns away very few people and those people will continue to take spaces in our homeless shelters.
Yeah.
And what we learned not long time ago, I think it was by CTV, but the number of people arriving by flight for refugee status have doubled this year.
Just this year, I have doubled.
So people arrive on a tourist visa, but not for being tourists.
And the same day, they will come and claim for asylum.
And so this is a real burning problem because not only our airport is being slammed, but our border by feet is getting slammed too.
So we have people arriving from everywhere because the word is passing around.
People know about it and they know that they would be welcome on the Justentiudo and on the Biden administration.
When the administration would change, because it might change in the future if Pia Poliev taking office or maybe if, I don't know, a Republican is taking office in the U.S. I'm pretty sure that there will be a flooding of people getting in before anything change.
But the question remains like for how long Texas will be able to hold the line and protect the border because some of the people say that all what is going on at Shelby Park is kind of big show to show because it's just at Shelby Park.
Like every reinforcement that we see, mostly it's at Shelby Park when we know that people are crossing on the side of it.
And we don't know for how long, but what we know that apparently the governor of Texas is putting pressure on the Mexican government to do something.
So apparently at multiple bus stations, military is looking at buses to look for migrants and to turn them back at the southern border for exposing them.
For now, we saw some video online.
We tried to find where the military were doing that.
Unfortunately, it's not at the main town.
It's apparently outside.
But this is something that I learned too.
Under Trump administration, the migrants were crossing illegally.
They wanted not to be seen.
They wanted to really hide.
But under the Biden administration, they want to be caught.
They want to be caught by the Border Patrol.
They want to be caught by the authorities because they know they will be receiving refugee status or they will wait for so long for their court trial that they will be a little bit everywhere.
And when we were at the airport, me and Lincoln coming back, we saw some migrants with the bracelet on their feet because those people are waiting a court trial to know if they are receivable into the country.
So they have like electronic bracelet on their feet and they've been like put on flights and now they need to wait.
So I'm just wondering because when I was at Roxanne Road, I was able to see someone with the ankle bracelet.
Do these people were waiting for a court trial in the U.S. to know if they were receivable as a refugee claimer?
And because they knew they would not be received, they just say, we will just try into Canada.
Because I know I saw some people having that at their ankles.
Crossing Borders00:06:24
So all this, we should be more concerned because it's just people flooding in from different countries, sometimes from Middle East, sometimes from China.
And you just think to yourself, why all those men that travel alone are going to do it?
And they are all middle-aged, about 20 to 30.
So I think we should be more concerned of who is crossing over.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right.
You know, the other side of this says, you know, it's mostly women and children.
It's families.
They're fleeing strife or whatever.
But as you demonstrated time and time again, that's really not the case.
And I think one of the reasons the Biden administration really wants to crack down on what Greg Abbott's doing is Greg Abbott is showing that reinforcing the border is possible.
And with all the resources of the federal government, the Biden administration just refuses to.
It's not that they can't, they just don't want to.
And also the whole story about, you know, the legal battle.
Now that we heard that, okay, Greg Abbott has lost a Supreme Court saying that, yes, the Fed can cut the razor wire if they need to.
But the Supreme Court didn't say to Greg Abbott, don't put more razor wire, or you have no rights to put razor wire.
No, Greg Abbott can put more if he want.
He can put whatever he wants.
And the thing is, we didn't see federals cutting the razor wire, especially at the shopping park, because the park remains to the state.
It is a state property.
And the federal have no rights to come and cut the razor wire on a piece of land that is not them.
So for now, at Shelby Park, they give access to the water to federal officials, the Border Patrol, so they can cross and put their boat on the water.
But that's it.
They have no rights to operate on the state place.
So Border Patrol is being mostly seen on the side road and patrolling the road and on state land.
Well, Alexa, I want to thank you and pass along my thanks to Lincoln for your very hard work at the southern border with the United States and Mexico.
How do people see your reports?
I mean, you got a ton of reports I'd already got.
I mean, in the morning staff meeting this morning, you listed like at least half a dozen more yet to come.
You guys worked non-stop in some pretty treacherous and changing conditions.
How do people see the reports that are coming, but also support your independent journalism to the southern border?
So me and Lincoln, we travel really mostly modestly.
We travel economic.
We had like a really modest Airbnb and we eat on the fly all the time.
So if you want to support us on our journey, you can do it at texasborderreports.com.
On this website, you can donate a couple of bucks if it's only what you have, but just helping us and make this journey being a worthy trip.
And I think we need to really put awareness on the southern border because the southern border is also kind of our border because we have the same border with the U.S.
So thank you for everybody who chip in generously.
And you can also watch all our reports and you will see a really nice report about Canadian is coming up at the southern border.
I think really nicely produced, but I think the video will be framing a dire warning for us as Canadians.
Alexa, thanks for your hard work.
And just good job getting the truth out and telling the other side of the story.
Thanks.
Stay with us.
letters to Ezra unceremoniously read by me up after the break.
Again for those of you who want to see and support Alexa and Lincoln's work from the border please go to texasborderreports.com Now, we've come to the portion of the show wherein we invite your viewer feedback.
I say this every time I host Ezra Show, but also on my own show, The Guns Show.
Without you, there is no rebel news, and that's why we want to hear from you.
I care about what you think about the work that we do here at Rebel News.
So unlike the mainstream media, we leave our comments section open and we even tell you how to get in contact with us via email.
Now, today's letters come to us on Ezra's show the other day on CBC Kids News lying about the Freedom Convoy.
Ray Zier writes, I remember a time when children's TV was about innocuous cartoons.
Now everything has become politicized.
They're grooming an entire generation of aspiring activists.
Yeah, if they don't get your kids in the classroom, they get them on what they sell to you as innocent children's programming.
I don't know if you've spent any time whatsoever on CBC Kids.
It's nothing but climate activism and sex activism.
It's polluting the most innocent amongst us.
And the worst part is that CBC Kids does it with our tax dollars.
They're brainwashing our kids with our tax dollars.
And if I were you, I'd be wondering if your children's school uses CBC Kids as a learning resource, because I know some schools do do that.
Brainwashing Our Kids00:03:21
Lori Parker Stewart, 868, writes, always remember Prime Minister Trudeau on the television telling parents to leave the room, saying he wants to talk to your children alone.
These are your family, not the property of his government.
Yeah, I remember that.
The second somebody says that they want me to leave the room and talk to my kids alone, that's when I want to look at their hard drive.
And I'm not saying Justin Trudeau has anything strange on his hard drive, but it's funny how normalized the language of grooming has become.
And, you know, we see this in Alberta right now where activists are doing their best to pit kids against their parents and doing their best to advance a narrative that they love your kids and know your kids better than you do.
And we know that's absolutely wrong, but that's what Marxists have done ever since there were Marxists.
Renee, KK1HF, sends us a note on Alexa and Lincoln and their trip to the southern border of the United States.
Renee writes, thank you for going to Texas to cover this.
The migrants seem to be going in through California now.
I heard Trudeau has given flights to the border with travel papers.
Stay safe.
Now, I don't know if that's true.
There's a lot of things on the internet that we hear about Justin Trudeau that aren't necessarily true.
And Justin Trudeau is so bad that we don't need to exaggerate how bad he is.
That's why we always double check, triple check everything that we publish.
But Justin Trudeau doesn't have to give these people flights and travel papers because the Biden administration, as you've heard from Alexa, is already doing that.
And Justin Trudeau, for his part, is allowing people to make refugee claims at regular points of entry.
So his big thing was that, oh, we're closing Wroxham Road.
Okay.
But the reason people were using Roxan Road is because you couldn't make a refugee claim at a regular point of entry.
So they were doing it at what they called an irregular point of entry.
Well, Justin Trudeau fixed that by just making migrants able to make refugee claims at Pearson or Trudeau International or, you know, however they come into the country.
So you may have heard that Trudeau has given flights. to the border with travel papers.
He doesn't need to do that.
He absolutely doesn't need to do that.
The Biden administration is already doing that.
We don't need to advance conspiracy theories when we have already conspiracy facts.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you for tuning in.
Thanks to everybody who works behind the scenes in Toronto and across the country who will be putting together what I shot at the kitchen table of our Airbnb while we work on our made documentary in Ottawa into a perfectly usable Ezra Levant show episode for tonight.
And as I always say, because I'm filling in, I get to say my tagline.