Ezra Levant exposes Ottawa’s $342M "firearm buyback" as a sham, using destroyed 2012 registry data to justify confiscations while criminals evade charges—like the Lamborghini owner facing prosecution for warning shots. Legal expert Ian Runkel reveals systemic bias: law-abiding gun owners risk steep penalties for self-defense missteps, while violent offenders face minimal consequences due to police ignorance of firearm laws. Meanwhile, G7 summit protests in Banff spotlight Falun Gong practitioners’ claims of CCP-linked organ harvesting from 1999, despite Canada’s media restrictions favoring CBC and BBC. Their warnings about Chinese police intimidation in Toronto and Banff underscore broader concerns over press freedom and state-sponsored violence, pushing for Prime Minister Mark Kearney to confront the CCP’s global repression. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a tale of two different gun stories and defense lawyer Ian Runkel joins the show to break it down.
It is June 20th, 2025.
I'm Sheila Gunread, but you're watching the Ezra Levant show.
The Trudeau-Carney government's so-called assault-style firearm buyback is now projected to cost $342 million, and I don't like calling it a buyback because the government never owned these firearms in the first place.
They were yours and you legally acquired them.
But all of this is based on firearm ownership estimates from 2012.
You heard that right.
The bureaucrats testified this week in the Senate that they're planning a national confiscation program using records from 13 years ago pulled from the long gun registry Parliament ordered destroyed.
Now, that's like counting the number of landlines in this country to determine how many cell phones are out there.
That registry was scrapped by the Harper government for being invasive, expensive, and inaccurate.
And now it's backed from the grave like some sort of zombie to justify another bloated federal program and attack on your firearms rights.
So far, the feds have spent millions buying 12,000 firearms from licensed gun shops.
These were stranded assets.
These gun shops could no longer sell.
The feds have earmarked $260 million more to compensate law-abiding gun owners and $75 million to help convince provinces to do their dirty work.
Meanwhile, actual violent criminals, still armed, still ignored, still caught and released.
Which brings us to Ontario this week, where a Lamborghini owner fired shots at a would-be carjacker or series of carjackers.
Now, we don't know whether the firearm used was entirely legal, but we do know this.
Violent crime is out of control, and Canadians are increasingly being forced to defend themselves with a justice system waiting to punish them for trying.
This government is throwing hundreds of million dollars at confiscating legal guns from people who follow the rules while turning a blind eye to gangs, organized crime, and street violence.
Joining me tonight to break down the legal side of that carjacking case and what it tells us about the right to self-defense in Canada is criminal defense and firearms lawyer Ian Runkel.
Take a listen.
You hear about the guy that these thugs came up, you know, ready to steal his car.
They're all in their masks and everything.
So I guess he was a hunter or something.
He shot up in the air.
I don't recommend that, by the way.
But he gets charged.
I got to find out this guy's name and number.
And I'm going to hold a fundraiser for lawyer fees for him.
He should get a medal for standing up.
It's like down in the U.S., we should have the CASEL law.
Someone breaks into your house, and I know any of these people here, someone breaks into your house and they're coming after your kids and you're coming after your spouse.
You're going to fight like you've never fought before.
You're going to use anything that you have, be it weapons, baseball bats, knives.
You're protecting your family.
So what we just saw there was a clip of Ontario Premier Doug Ford remarking on the case of the Lamborghini owner defending his property against auto theft by using a firearm.
But since Doug Ford made those remarks, more details have come out about the situation.
As that tends to happen, it's probably why people should reserve comment until all the facts are out.
But joining me now is Ian Runkel.
He's a criminal lawyer with a special interest in firearms law.
And I saw his incredible video on his YouTube page just breaking down what we now know since Doug Ford indicated that he thinks Canadians should be able to defend their home and property using firearms.
A statement I actually don't disagree with whatsoever.
But Ian, thanks for coming on the show.
It's a real pleasure to talk to you.
And thank you for allowing us to lean on your expertise here.
Tell us what we know now about the case of the Lamborghini owner.
So what we know now is actually very little.
And this is the problem.
They've said that he's a renter, that he owns this Lamborghini.
He was targeted by five people who came.
We don't know if those five people were armed, but frankly, five people is armed in and of itself in the sense that five people can pretty easily kill one person, you know, whether or not they're armed with, you know, knives or guns or anything else.
Five people is a potentially lethal threat.
It's certainly a concern.
But they've charged him, and we have to assume, you know, everyone's innocent until, you know, until and unless proven guilty.
But if you assume that the police had some basis to lay the charge, they've charged him with what they've described as discharging a firearm.
Now, discharging a firearm is a problem because there's multiple discharging of firearm offenses.
It could be discharging a firearm at a person if he was shooting at them.
And that would put him, you know, pretty clearly outside the law because the law says you're allowed to use reasonable force.
And the courts have been pretty unanimous in saying that it's not reasonable to kill somebody who's taking your property.
Now, that's a, you know, people will disagree with that, but that's the court's position.
And that's sort of the established law.
If you want to change that, that would require, you know, legislative amendments that we're probably not going to see from this government.
And we'd have to have a serious discussion as to whether they were a good idea or not.
But they could also be discharging a firearm recklessly, which could, for instance, be firing warning shots into the air.
That would be ultimately something the court would have to decide if it was reckless.
And one of the factors they'd consider is that this apparently happens in a city.
And when you put lead into the air, it comes down.
Now, we don't know anything about the type of gun that was used except that it was a long gun.
And there's all sorts of considerations there too, because if he fires a shotgun with shot into the air, it's not really going to cause any damage when it comes down, especially if it's something like birdshot.
So that would probably defeat the reckless discharge if it was into the air and if it was, you know, all of these things.
But they've charged him as well with unauthorized possession of prohibited or restricted weapon.
Now, a lot of people have said that this means that he's unlicensed, and that is a possibility.
It could be that this is a guy.
And in that case, we think, well, maybe this guy is involved in some sort of crime.
You know, maybe that's where he got the Lambo, because the Lambo could be that he's a successful person.
It could be that he's a person who takes on a lot of debt.
Or it could be, you know, proceeds of crime.
We don't know anything to put him in one category versus the other.
So one possibility if the guy has an unlicensed firearm is that he could be in that category.
But it could be somebody who's a lawful gun owner who has one of the guns that was banned by Trudeau's orders in council.
Could be an amnesty.
And so it could be an AR, but it could be any number of other things because, you know, they pay.
They've got 110 on that list.
They've got 22s on that list.
You know, they've got all sorts of things.
So if he, he might've grabbed like a bright pink GSG 16 and gone out there and, you know, we just don't know what he had, but because of the way the amnesty works, if he's using the gun for something that's outside of the permitted purposes in the amnesty, which are largely things like, you know, taking them to a place to have them destroyed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
then he'd be in violation of the law that says that he can't have this.
And the amnesty provides him with a protection on this.
I've already seen a number of people who've been charged for possessing a firearm.
And this is even in situations where they were covered by the amnesty, because often what'll happen is, you know, you've got a gun, the police somehow catch wind of it, you know, they, and when they run it in their system, their system only comes back with prohibited firearm.
Right.
And it doesn't explain to them the whole complexities of the amnesty.
So people get charged.
And then it's up to a lawyer later to sort it out and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, this guy's covered by the amnesty.
You can't, you can't do this.
So, you know, it could be that.
If the guy grabs his AR, if he grabs any of these banned guns, then that charge would also almost certainly be laid.
And he might, in fact, be able to be convicted of it.
They charged careless storage, I noticed, but they didn't report that they charged storage contrary to regulations.
And so if we assume that that wasn't just an oversight, that suggests somebody who was storing it within the regulations.
And we've seen this in the past, where somebody who's got it stored in a way that meets regulations, but ends up using a firearm for some sort of defensive purposes, either defense of self or property.
And they say, because you could get to the gun, it must not have been stored legitimately.
And the thing is, is that in the it's actually not all that hard to get a gun that is properly stored and get it ready to operate and ready to use.
And especially, I don't know how long these guys were at the Lambo, right?
If they're sitting there and if they're spending five minutes trying to get into it, well, five minutes is a lot of time to, you know, to get into a gun safe and so forth.
So he may well have been able to.
In fact, you're probably more likely to be able to get into your safe to protect somebody stealing your car than you are for somebody who's like breaking in and attacking you.
But my concern is, is that if this guy is a licensed firearm owner, that really they probably should have exercised some discretion here and said, hey, now it depends.
Like if this guy is endangering people, then maybe the charges are legitimate and righteous and, you know, a good idea for society.
You know, if he comes out with an AR and his warning shots are fired into another building, then that's not cool because somebody lives there and they don't want to get shot.
And similarly, the law does not allow for lethal force in defense of property, but warning shots in defense of property have been supported by case law.
Now, I don't recommend warning shots as a general principle, but if you're ever in a situation of firing a warning shot, make sure it's as safe as possible.
Like not into the air, into something that is a backstop.
Because once, you know, both morally and legally, once you pull a trigger, you own that bullet and the consequences of it up until it stops somewhere.
So this applies even if you're hunting.
If you are out there and you see like, you know, a majestic buck and you've got your tag, you better be real sure of not just the buck, but also what's behind the buck.
Because if there's unknown land out there, you really don't want to put a hole in some other hunter.
You'd have both moral and legal responsibility for that.
So, but we don't know any of this, right?
The police in Canada tend to be very, very stingy with information.
And our courts are very stingy with information.
If you compare with the U.S., in the United States, when they charge somebody, you get a whole charging document that lists a narrative of what the police happened.
In Canada, you can pull those charging documents and they're fundamentally useless for reporters or, you know, YouTubers or the like because they'll just say on or about the 16th day of whatever, you know, in the town of whatever did discharge a firearm.
And you're like, cool, great.
Fantastic.
Thanks.
So I really, and this also sort of plays into this because the public looks at this and we can see these thieves and we want to know what's happening in terms of this guy as well.
And we can't get any of that.
We don't, you know, I've got requests in myself as, you know, media going, you know, which camp, like which charge of discharging a firearm is it?
What kind of firearm is it?
Did he have a firearms license?
These kinds of things that are really important for us to determine, we don't know.
And that's a problem.
Yeah, there's very little context in all of this.
But and I think the reason people weighed in immediately on this, it seems to be this rising severity and boldness of criminals in this country.
And I think police so often are overwhelmed, but then we sort of have a catch and release bail system in this country where bad guys are out committing crimes while they're on bail for other crimes.
And it feels as though people are left to take matters into their own hands.
We talked before we started recording, and I think you touched on it a little bit of the case of Ian Thompson, but he's not alone in, you know, people who are confronted with home invaders who then have to act in defense of their own lives, be it by firing warning shots, or in the case of at least two recent cases here in Alberta, Eddie Maurice and then an unnamed homeowner in Red Deer, Eddie Maurice, fired a shot.
He's a farmer in southern Alberta.
He winged the home invader and then he was sued by the home invader after he was charged.
Luckily, we changed the laws here in Alberta to prevent those sorts of lawsuits from going forward.
And then a Red Deer homeowner beaten with a baseball bat in his own home in the middle of the night.
Missed Charges, Tied Up00:14:19
He was miraculously able to get to a firearm.
He was not charged.
He killed his home invader.
But Ian Thompson wasn't quite so lucky, was he?
He did get charged, and initially they charged him for, so for the people who don't sort of know his background, some criminals attacked his home, and they were firebombing it.
He was a firearm instructor and managed to get into his safe, loaded a gun and exited the house and fired warning shots into the air.
They initially charged him with like discharging the firearm and various other things.
And then eventually they just boiled it down to charging him with careless storage because their theory was that if he could get to the gun before he burned to death, that that meant that he couldn't possibly have had the gun legitimately stored, which is kind of a crazy thing.
You being alive here is proof of the offense.
Right.
Now, that was also a case that was marked in part by some very startling misapprehensions of like fact by because there's a moment that happened in court where they thought he was picking up his brass to show that he had, you know, a consciousness of guilt, because otherwise, why would you pick up the brass from outside when it was actually revealed that what he was using was a revolver, which doesn't eject the brass,
which the people charging in these circumstances don't necessarily have a very thorough knowledge of firearms, and that can lead them to make some serious, you know, assumptions.
Ultimately, he was cleared.
We have Peter Cahill, who was convicted of manslaughter with respect to confronting somebody who was stealing his vehicle.
And this also indicates the dangers, right?
You don't want to be in a situation where you're trying to defend a, because the law allows for reasonable force, but they will never find reasonable force in defense of property.
Now, it might be in defense of life.
So that's the other thing.
But the law in Cahill essentially changed such that the jury was able to say that the defensive strategy he should have taken was just never to go out there in the first place.
Like just let them steal your truck, which is not a satisfying option for a lot of people.
And we have a case just reported.
I'm just seeing it was reported June 18th.
So yesterday is when this story dropped.
There was a guy in Barhead who went to check on his neighbor's property and he was armed with a phone.
That's what he had.
But the people who were there breaking into the property, they took a shot at him with a rifle, which thankfully seems to have missed.
They ran him over with their pickup truck.
They struck his pickup truck.
And that was because they weren't okay with being confronted with somebody who's taking video evidence.
His leg was broken in five places.
And I can tell you, like, if I'm out in one of these rural properties, you know that when you call the police, the police are probably half an hour away.
For sure.
It's, you know, sometimes the police are not close, especially if there's, and it gets even worse the more remote you are.
And, you know, if you go out there and confront people, it might be that your, you know, your body is found a long time later.
I probably would not have felt comfortable if my neighbor out in a rural property like that said, I think my place is being broken into.
I'd bring the camera, but I'd also want something not to defend the property, but to defend myself, right?
If somebody's going to start taking shots at me with a rifle, I don't want to, you know, I want my options to be more than just die.
And I mean, this guy's, you know, in the hospital.
He's, you know, all of these things.
And he wasn't charged because he didn't have a firearm.
But I go, is this, is this the society we want?
Numbers wise, things don't seem to be picking up that much.
But the problem is that the numbers as reported seem to be concealing sort of an increase in severity in things.
We see more people who are willing to kick down doors or try to kick down doors while the homeowners are home, for example.
And that's an inherently dangerous situation because at that point, you know, you're in a confrontation.
You're in a dangerous situation and those can go quite badly.
Even simply, there was a case that was reported, and this was a U.S. case, but a lot of the commentary online was people saying this guy managed to get a gun and shot them rather than letting himself be tied up.
And there were people saying, well, why not let yourself be tied up?
You know, they'll tie you up.
They'll take your stuff and they'll go.
Well, if they tie you up, then they can kill you fairly easily.
And the other thing is just being tied up itself can be fatal.
Lots of people have died from being tied up because they put a rope around your, you know, your chest and it restricts your breathing and positional asphyxia can, you know, can be a cause of death.
All of these are very concerning and people are all the more concerned because they because they feel that the justice system may not have their backs and in fact may be may be sort of even-handed in a situation where even-handed is not called for,
or in fact, lean more on them because you get situations where like the criminals have fled and the police don't know who they are, but it's really easy to pick out the guy who's whose home it was because he's the person who called.
He's right there.
He's an easy charge.
I mean, in terms of the bail system, I am a big believer in bail.
We need a bail system because, you know, the police can charge people wrongly.
I've seen so many cases of wrongful.
And all of these people who are defending themselves who get charged, they need bail too.
Absolutely.
The problem is our system has gotten really bad at identifying the difference between somebody who's dangerous and somebody who just makes us mad.
And sometimes we'll deny bail for people who make us angry and approve bail for people who are potentially a dangerous threat.
So I don't know if we can fix this through legislation, but maybe, you know, education of judges or something like that, some sort of, you know, risk assessment instrument.
Because if somebody's committing, you know, very simple property crime that avoids people, they might be a lower threat.
But if they're committing crimes that involve confronting people or potentially confronting people, or if they're committing offenses or, you know, that, and we have to weigh the evidence because at the bail stage, nobody's been convicted.
They're presumed innocent.
That's why we have bail.
But you can weigh some of the considerations like, you know, is this person carrying a weapon?
Does this person have a past history in terms of, you know, if sure, it might be just a burglary into a shed, but if this guy has three priors where he's been stopped and he's beaten somebody, then maybe this is a situation to deny bail.
But, you know, the person who's acting in self-defense, maybe we should be more liberal on bail.
And particularly, maybe we should be also considering whether we have to charge somebody right away.
Lots of these cases, the statute of limitations is either forever because it's, you know, certain offenses or effectively forever based on technicalities in the law that the government is able to sort of manipulate to extend the statute of limitations to perpetual.
In these cases, you go, well, they have all the time in the world.
So somebody like your Ian Thompson, you don't have to lay charges right away.
You can say, let's investigate this.
Let's determine who the bad guy is here.
And if there's a case where you've got somebody like a homeowner who might have technically violated the law, but is still clearly the good guy, you know, in the Western nomenclature, if you've got your black hat and your white hat, this guy might have, you know, you might have somebody who, for instance, didn't store their firearm properly.
A fairly minor offense in the scheme of things, but prevented himself from getting murdered.
And you go, well, we've got a pretty clear black hat, white hat situation.
Maybe we can just let the guy who didn't have his firearm stored properly off with a lecture instead of like trying to proceed with charges, especially because we should recognize that the impact of charges can be disproportionate.
If you're a gangster who's got an, you know, a lengthy criminal history, you may not care if you get charges, but if you're a homeowner and you get, you know, if you get charged with something and held without bail for a month, a lot of your life will have fallen apart by the end of that month.
You know, you're, you're going to have been fired from your job.
You're going to have missed bills.
You're going to, you know, have missed rent, all of these things.
And so we end up with an uneven playing field in that the consequences are so much more severe for the people who try to follow the law generally.
And this is, it ends up with a system that I think is very well intentioned.
And I don't think anybody in the system is like trying to make it not work.
But it also doesn't feel like it's working for a lot of people.
Yeah, I think with that's a problem.
Yeah, I think with Ian Thompson, the process really was the punishment.
Like his life was sort of held up for several years.
And in the end, I mean, his crime was not dying, I guess, in the attack.
And I mean, I've seen people who were clearly like the victims of a sort of hate-motivated offense.
And, you know, they were targeted and they end up getting charged.
And in some cases, they get charged and the actual offenders are just never discovered because somebody, for instance, gets like, you know, bricks thrown at them and, you know, they display a weapon, something, you know, like a knife or something to ward that off.
And when the police arrive, the guys who were throwing bricks are gone.
They've vanished.
Like, and the guy doesn't recognize them.
They don't know who this is, but they tell their story to the police and the police are like, well, so you had a knife and you displayed it in self-defense.
Well, we'll charge you.
Does that make that person feel safer?
Does that make the members of that community feel safer?
I don't think so.
It's one of those things where the police should maybe go, maybe the knife isn't a great idea, but we're really glad you're alive and we're going to look for those people, but we're going to let this slide.
The police have a lot of, you know, a lot of leeway and the prosecutors have a lot of leeway.
You know, I'm not just going to blame police here because you get situations where, you know, the Crown Prosecution Service gets something and they go, well, this is a viable charge.
And there should be more consideration of, is this charge a good idea, even at the early stages?
Right.
Is it in the public interest?
Yeah.
And, you know, maybe could we wait on this?
There was a case that was reported, I believe, out of Ontario where a woman was nearly murdered by her boyfriend and stabs him in self-defense with his knife.
And she goes and seeks help.
She ends up charged and denied bail, notwithstanding that she went to seek help.
She was covered in so much blood that apparently the neighbors that she went to thought that it was a Halloween costume because it was October.
And they just thought that there's no way anybody could have that much blood on them.
And the thing is that she'd stabbed him in the leg and managed to tag an artery and he bled out.
You know, he didn't survive, but she wasn't trying to kill him.
She was just trying to get him off of her because he was smashing her head into a concrete floor.
The prosecution later called it one of the clearest cases of self-defense that they'd ever seen.
But she spent a substantial amount of time in jail.
And it would have been nice if they'd figured out that it was one of the clearest cases of self-defense they'd ever seen before they decided to proceed with charges.
And then they could have just not blown up her life like that.
You can never take away the trauma of being in jail.
You can never take away the damage.
And ultimately, when somebody's cleared, people ask me this as a, you know, I do criminal defense, which means you're defending people who are both, you know, the guilty and the innocent.
But the question you'll often get from people who've been wrongfully charged is, so what are they going to do to make this right?
And the difficult conversation you have at that point is, well, nothing.
Yeah.
They won't even give you an apology, right?
They're just going to, that's it.
You just, you, it's on you to rebuild.
They're not going to give you a dollar.
They're not going to give you, they're not going to give you a reference to go back to your employer and say, hey, this guy isn't actually a bad dude.
So that's where things sit.
Defending Property Safely00:03:46
Now, Ian, what's your advice for people who just want to be safe in their own homes?
How do we make ourselves just a little bit safer?
I mean, the starting place I would always say, and this is for a couple of reasons, is good locks and good perimeter security.
So there have been, you've seen, I've seen videos, I'm sure your viewers have seen some of them as well, where you get people who try for a home invasion and they kick the door and they kick the door and they kick the door.
And after about four or five kicks, they give up and they leave.
And that's really the best case scenario for a home invasion is they tried, they failed.
So I would say check your door.
If you've got a little tiny, the strike plate, which is what the deadbolt goes into, if it's, you know, two, two and a half inches long, you're going to want to have that replaced with a security strike plate, which is six inches long or longer, or, you know, possibly even security door frames.
That'll make it much more difficult for somebody to kick, you know, kick their way through.
And also makes it so that if they do kick their way through, you've got a better, better case for self-defense.
The other thing I'd say is video doorbells are fantastic because your door and it's, you know, doesn't do you much good if you open the door and somebody can then, because sometimes what they'll do is they'll knock on the door.
They might be wearing like high-vis vests or something that looks really official.
And so with a video doorbell, you can speak to those people ahead of time.
And if they're saying, oh, you know, we're with your, you know, we're with your gas provider.
You can call the gas provider and be like, do you have guys sitting on my porch right now?
And, you know, if you didn't ask for them and they didn't send you a notice ahead of time, you probably don't have any interest in these people.
When you get a notice, you can call, like, because they'll send a note.
Like, I've had notices where they're like, we're going to have gas technicians in your area.
They'll be on your property.
And I've called and been like, is this a legit notice?
And they go, yes, it is.
Cool.
Excellent.
I've called the company on my thing.
If you're ever in a situation of defending property, think real hard about whether the property is worth the worth the hassle.
And I hate that I have to say this, but most of the clients I've had who've, you know, have just said, I wish I'd let them take my truck.
And I hate that I have to say it, but, you know, it's a bad situation.
And if you are ever in a situation of self-defense, the number one sort of tip is make sure you're retreating and make sure you're verbally disengaging.
And what I mean by that is that if you're moving backwards, that is some of the most powerful evidence of self-defense that you can get.
Backwards is always the direction you want.
And you want witnesses to A, see what's happening, B, see that you're moving backwards and C, see that you're saying things like, I don't want to fight and leaving, because your version of events will probably not be believed by police.
But the bystander beside, you know, away.
And if you're not retreating, you should have a good reason why you're not retreating because there may be situations like, you know, you've got a child who's, you know, child in a bassinet and you have retreated into the child's room, but you can't retreat any further, right?
You cannot retreat abandoning your child.
That's something that you could, you know, as a lawyer, you know, if they're saying, well, why didn't he leave?
It's like, because his child is right there and he's clearly not abandoning the child.
Pulling Trigger: Legal Discussions00:04:29
But keep in mind, if you are ever pulling a trigger, you should imagine that that's $100,000 easily, you know, the cost of pulling that trigger.
So, and it might be the rest of your life is the other thing.
So lots of times people will say, well, I couldn't, you know, couldn't do this.
And it's like, well, understand the consequences.
If I, and I, I hate that that's the scenario that we're in.
But I've had people who have taken serious beatings who are just like, well, I kind of wish I'd taken more of a beating.
So yeah.
You know, there are things in Canada you go to jail for that they would give you a parade for in Texas.
But unfortunately, that is the culture.
Ian, I could talk to you all day, but you talk all the time on your YouTube channel.
How can people find your work and find you out there in the world?
I'm on YouTube at Runkle of the Bailey.
I think you'll find me if you search the same thing on Twitter.
And, you know, if you, I think the Twitter handle is just Ian Runkel.
But yeah, Runkle of the Bailey, I'm on YouTube.
I do legal discussions, including self-defense, firearm discussions.
I've got some firearm videos coming out soon.
And I plan to do a more expansive discussion of like self-defense principles soon because I get a lot of these questions and people are saying, well, how do I defend myself against a home invasion?
I think it's probably time that I get that video out because it's worrying.
A lot of people are afraid.
And it's kind of bad that they're afraid both of the criminals and what the justice system might do to them if they are forced into that situation.
So.
Well, yeah.
Well, Ian, thank you so much for coming on the show and explaining all of this to us.
I can't believe that your YouTube channel is free because it is just an incredible wealth of information specifically on these topics.
And hopefully we can have you back on on Rebel very soon.
Sounds good.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
As I said yesterday, we normally close the show with your letters to Ezra, but I am neither Ezra Levant, nor am I the holder of the letters.
So we're not doing that today.
We're breaking from the mold a little bit, and I thought I would show you some of our independent journalism from the G7 summit.
Now, the summit itself was held in Cananascus.
The media, like me, we were holed up in Banff, far away from the leaders where only the hand-selected pooled media, CBC, BBC, Reuters, and the like, only they were allowed at Cananascus.
In fact, only their photographers were allowed to take pictures of the leaders.
It was very bizarre, very controlled, but they wouldn't want anybody like me with a prickly question embarrassing all the fancy people.
And there was a lot of action actually happening in Calgary as well, around the airport, at the designated protest sites, the designated free speech sites where people could protest, frankly, I guess, whatever they want.
There was also a designated protest site in Banff.
It didn't see a lot of use, but I want to show you this report from Sid and Angelika.
So Sid Fizard, Angelique Atoy, also accredited with me.
They went down to check out the protest site in Banff while I held down the fort with all the mainstream media in the media lockup.
And they ran across some protesters against the Chinese Communist Party.
So we will close the show out on their journalism.
I'll say goodbye.
And I will also say Ezra's famous tagline, keep fighting for freedom.
Sydney Fizard for Rebel News here in Banff, Alberta.
It's the second day of our coverage here for the Canonascus G7 Summit.
And here is a designated protest site set up in the town of Banff.
As you can see, there are a couple of people around, a few people behind us.
And in this report, I want to share with you an interview from the Falon Chinese group here behind us.
They're fighting against a very totalitarian government back home in China.
China's Forced Organ Harvesting00:13:13
And their roots extend all the way into Canada.
There are Chinese police stations here that actually come after people that go against what the Chinese government has to say.
And the main highlight, the big concern here is the fact that based on your religious beliefs, as you can see, killed for their beliefs, there's an important message here that people in China are being targeted.
They're being harvested for their organs by the government.
This is MAIDS 2.0, but it surely might come here if we're not prepared.
So here's our interview with the organizers of this event behind us.
We are, you know, Falun Dava Association of Calgary.
We are here, all Falun Gong practitioners.
You know, we stand on Shunfani's compassion and tolerance.
We do the traditional Chinese meditation called Falun Gong.
Falungung and Falun Dava is the same thing.
But formerly we call Falun Dava.
This is traditional Chinese culture.
So we are here now since we want to show people, especially to show T7 leaders, you know, some messages to ask them to help us to stop the persecution on Falungung in China and oversee here.
And also to stop the organ harvesting from Falungung practitioners and the Chinese people.
You know, this is our purpose coming here.
Obviously, the Uyghurs, they became very well known for being harvested for their organs in China.
But you said it's not just them.
It's actually more widespread, the organ harvesting.
Yeah, before, you know, very, you know, when I was young, quite little people, you know, little crime guy, you know, they were killed for organ.
But later, after cultural revolution, maybe 20 years ago, later, you know, 1999, it has been over 25 years.
And ever since then, you know, not only practitioners, Uyghurs, Christians, their organs, they were put into concentration camps and their organs were taken without consent.
And they were forced to do hard work in the concentration camp.
And also, you know, I think that we hope that the Canadian government could get more attention to this issue.
And so that in the future, maybe bring up this to President Xi or someone else so that we can, so in the future, hopefully there won't, because this persecution has been over 25 years and it's still going on.
And like we can't in the Western world, because in China there's no journalistic autonomy or press freedom.
Well, speaking of which, we even had to fight, we had to take the federal government to court just to get our accreditation.
So it's coming here, the lack of freedom of the press.
But if I could ask a question for you, why is it that the CCP, why is it an acceptable practice to do the organ harvesting?
Is there not a moral barrier there that they should consider?
Because you know the CCP is anti-divine.
It's basically anti-divine.
In most countries, believe in Christianity, Catholic, and for CCP, believe in none except for materialism.
And that is the true evil.
Because if you don't believe in anything, you can't do anything.
So this is the root cause of this issue.
And I guess for us, we need to bring more, because in China, people don't know that.
And because there's scrutiny over the internet, everything is under control.
It's a totalitarian state.
So what we are doing here is we need to bring up this attention to the Western world, to the media, so that we can get to know more people, get to know what we are.
We are suffering, many of us.
We can't really, in the Western world, what we can do here.
But in China, if you're doing this, you will be imprisoned at once.
Well, they'll be harvesting your organs if you protest it.
The Chinese government, they just kill practitioners for their organ.
And even in one week, you can get the Sydney and whatever organs like that.
This is terrible.
As a former officer, Ottawa officer, called David Kiergel, he said, you know, the organ harvesting in China, this star, you never see that kind of crime.
So this is terrible.
So many people died just because for a few people, they can pay a lot of money.
So this is something very terrible.
True, and I hope that in the future more people could support us and get to know us.
Because I guess this is very important.
Nowadays, many people don't believe in God anymore.
Even in the Western world, you're going to church, you're just doing it for on weekends.
This is a form of, like, you're civilized.
But most people, they trust in science.
They don't believe in God.
So this is a problem.
Like, I guess there's an experiment once conducted.
The science scientists have separated two groups of children.
One group, they told them, don't eat the candy.
And the other group, don't eat the candy.
And there's this invisible man watching you.
And for the second group, the children ate the candy.
Yeah, so that's a function of religion, I guess.
Yeah, that's what we are doing.
So what would you tell Canada's Prime Minister, Mark Kearney?
What would you say that he needs to do to better recognize your fight?
Yeah, I hope the new leader to how do I say?
Hope them to stop the hyperass.
No, just stop the persecution on Falungong.
Not only on Falungong for some, you know, this is a revival of, we hope there will be a revival of tradition and culture.
Because the EPOC Times, what we are doing is focused on truth and tradition.
Are you guys with the Epoch Times as well?
Yes.
Yeah, okay.
I like the EPA Times.
He is great.
Yes.
He is a reader of Epoch Time.
Selects.
But our purpose also want to show people don't believe CCP.
They are not normal human beings.
They are evil.
But most people, they don't know that.
This is why we are here.
Stand up.
Power people the truth.
So if you know the more Chinese history, modern history, this is how the CCP's government, they just use a killing.
When they strong, they kill people.
When they are not strong, they lie to people.
This is the basic nature of CCP.
Yeah, they always, like, for instance, they will group up 40% of the population to fight against the 60% of the population.
And back in the 50s, 60s, the CCP told the farmers, like, if you support me, you can get the land.
But as a result, when the farmers has demolished the landlords, the Chinese Communist Party started the People's Commun.
Have you heard of it?
I have not.
The People's Commune is pretty much run by the government, the community.
And no private land or properties.
Everything belongs to the government.
And I've seen videos from China as well where they have people within every community and they kind of watch everyone else to make sure their social credit score is good.
They're not doing things they shouldn't be doing.
That's true.
Like in China, there's, you know, there's several like the power, the power hierarchy is like province, city and county.
And under that, there's like small groups villages.
And usually there's like 50, 60 people, and there will be a party leader watching people's actions, speech.
Even in companies, if you want to set up a company in China, I can't come up with the proper figure, but over 300 people, there will be a section from the, I think it is called the parties, like they will send someone there to manage the company.
It's pretty much a parallel system.
Well, it seems why they can lie people, lie to people, you know, because they have only one broadcast.
cutter, one CCTV.
So if you have different idea from private media or what you can, you know, if you do so, you will be, you know, disappear sometime.
Yeah, there's no journalistic autonomy or press freedom in China.
Only one voice.
Who is it Apple Daily in Hong Kong that you got to?
Jeremy Lai, he has been arrested back in 2019, I guess.
Just after the pandemic, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
And he's still there.
I'm not sure he's alive, though.
And the problem is, like, in the Western world, the media, the function of the media is to control, like, to watch the government, to make sure it's the voice of the people, to make sure that they are doing their job.
But in China, no, it's the propaganda machine of the government.
I was going to say, that's what it's supposed to be.
But like I mentioned earlier, we had to fight even to get our accreditation.
And still, we need the prime minister's permission just to get into the press conferences to ask questions.
But I have a last question for you guys.
And that is in Canada, we've seen recently that there are the Chinese police stations in Canada, and they're targeting Chinese Canadian citizens.
How do you combat this?
Are you concerned that there's going to be CPP, pardon me, CCP people that come here to watch you guys, to inspect you, to find out more about you for the government?
Yeah.
We know, exactly, even myself.
When last time, this is 10 years ago, when we had the organ harvesting, how do I say?
Xi Wan, what is Xi Wan Luntan?
Forum.
Yeah.
Forum.
When we had the forum for organ harvesting, a lot of people, more than 200 people attended that meeting and see the TV.
At that time, my car, punched out by a knife.
So why it's a knife.
So four times, one month only.
So they also monitor you.
You monitor my home.
I know that.
Here, quite a lot of people, not everyone, but they don't know.
So the Chinese police station here, we know.
Even in Toronto and Bancor, that's for sure.
But this is why quite a lot of Chinese guys here, they can't speak out.
They are threatening to speak out.
When they speak out, they will be in trouble for their relative in China.
This is terrible things.
So when you talk with Chinese guys, they usually wouldn't like to see that.