Ezra Levant highlights Ontario’s broken justice system after Jeremy McDonald, a homeowner defending against a 3 AM intruder—a known serial criminal—faced harsher charges than the attacker, exposing police hypocrisy. Doug Ford condemned McDonald’s case but ignored his own past "castle law" rhetoric while appointing judges who prosecuted him, mirroring Alberta’s Eddie Maurice acquittal and Saskatchewan’s Gerald Stanley saga. The UK’s Epping town shut down a migrant hotel after protests, citing planning violations, while Canada’s lack of a formal castle doctrine leaves homeowners vulnerable, despite federal criminal code gaps. Levant argues governments prioritize ideological opposition over accountability, linking self-defense failures to immigration policies like unvetted Afghan asylum seekers’ 22x higher sexual assault conviction rates in the UK, and urges legal reforms to protect citizens from punitive systems. [Automatically generated summary]
It broke last night that the homeowner in the town of Lindsay, Ontario, who was charged by police when he defended himself against an intruder.
He was sleeping at 3 a.m.
Someone broke into his house.
He defended himself and he was charged by police.
Well, I made contact with him last night and we've decided to help him at Rebel News.
I got a big story for you.
So that's ahead.
But first, and also we got a great story out of the UK.
Oh, there's so much going on.
But before I do that, I want to make sure that you have what we call Revel News Plus.
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Tonight, millions of Canadians are shocked when an Ontario homeowner is prosecuted for fighting back against an intruder.
I'll give you the latest.
It's August 20th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious thug.
Hey, everybody.
After I recorded my show yesterday, I record it typically before 5 p.m.
Around 5 p.m., some news broke, and we released another video.
I don't know if you saw it, but I want to talk a little bit about it today.
Yesterday morning, I woke up to the news that a lot of people saw that in the town of Lindsay, Ontario, which is about 90 minutes outside Toronto, there was a man, a homeowner, who was sleeping at night.
It was 3 a.m.
You're supposed to sleep at night, but someone who wasn't supposed to broke into his home at 3 a.m.
So the homeowner wakes up.
There's a conflagration.
Down goes the intruder.
He's injured.
Police come to the house and they charge the homeowner.
Now they do charge the intruder also, but they charge the homeowner with serious assault.
I couldn't believe it.
I was frustrated.
I was furious.
There's such a crime wave in this country.
The police are not protecting us.
Politicians make it worse in a number of ways.
The courts make it worse.
Turns out the intruder is a serial criminal, well known to police already.
Just crazy.
But no one knew the name of the homeowner.
At least no one who published it.
And it wasn't in a police note.
So I made a tweet.
I said, if anyone knows this guy, have them email me.
And I put my email there.
And I thought, well, there's a chance.
A ton of people saw that and shared that.
And it came to his attention.
Someone showed it to him.
And so I get an email and I talk to him on the phone.
Jeremy McDonald is his name.
And it really happened.
And I talked to him a bit, and I don't think he was that familiar with Rebel News, but I said, look, let's do some journalism for you.
Let's start a petition to strengthen what in some jurisdictions is called castle law or castle doctrine, which is just what it sounds like.
A man's home is his castle and he can defend it.
You know, there's a wonderful tradition, especially in the British legal system.
It goes back centuries that your home really is your castle, and not even the king himself can come into your home without a warrant.
And it's a beautiful law.
And no matter how lowly your house is, you are the king of your own castle.
And the idea that some serial criminal breaks in your home and you get charged because you were a little too rough in defending yourself, I find that anathema.
There are different jurisdictions around the world where castle doctrine basically says you can do whatever you want to protect yours and your own.
Now, I don't know what's going to happen.
I hope that this case is dropped before it goes to court.
I think there's no jury in Canada that would convict such a man.
We all know how bad things are.
Anyway, I made a video last night basically saying what I said here.
And I noticed today the Premier of Ontario, who is in many ways responsible for this because it's the provincial government, there's provincial courts that handle a lot of these minor, these criminal matters.
It's the provincial government that handles the prosecutors.
So, yes, there are some problems with the federal government for sure.
But in almost every way, what happened to this man was the fruits of Doug Ford, the conservative premier.
Well, he made a statement today about how he's totally on side with Jeremy McDonald from Lindsay, Ontario.
Take a look at Doug Ford.
Everyone hear about the story in Lindsay?
So this criminal that's wanted by the police breaks into this guy's house.
This guy gives him a beating, and this guy gets charged.
Like, and the other guy gets charged.
But like, something is broken.
I know someone breaks into my house or someone else's, you're going to fight for your life.
This guy has a weapon.
You're going to use any force you possibly can to protect your family.
I'm telling you, I know everyone would.
I'd be scared to break into Kevon's.
Look at this.
He's like a linebacker.
He'd beat the living crap out of the guy as he should.
Because no, enough's enough here.
Violence and breaking people's homes, putting guns at their heads.
And guess what?
Some bleeding heart judge, little Johnny, he didn't have a good upbringing.
So we're going to let him out on bail five more times because he's on his fist, you know, being let out on bail five times, just to go do the same thing the next day.
I'll tell you one thing.
I get more calls than anyone in the country.
People are done with this.
They're absolutely done.
They're finished.
You should be able to protect your family when someone's going in there to harm your family and your kids.
You should use all resources you possibly can to protect your family.
And maybe these criminals will think twice about breaking into someone's home.
Yeah, you know, there's something that really bugs me when politicians adopt the third person when they talk about a mess they created.
Justin Trudeau was a master of that.
He would do something atrocious, awful.
And when it blew up, he would say, oh, yes, we have a lot to learn from this.
And he would sort of position himself as a pundit commenting on what had happened, like he was some passive observer instead of the prime actor.
Doug Ford has appointed many provincial judges.
He presides over the police.
That is a provincial jurisdiction.
He presides over the prosecutors.
That's a provincial jurisdiction.
It was Doug Ford that arrested and charged this man, not him himself, but his delegates.
And the chutzpah of this guy to position himself as if he's outraged by this.
This isn't the first time he's done it.
Here he is on an earlier occasion, specifically using the phrase castle law, but that liar didn't do a thing about it.
Take a look.
Did 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 castle 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.
You know, the fancy people have private security.
I mean, Doug Ford has private security wherever he goes, and in fact, at his house, there's a police car parked nearby.
And I think that's a good idea, by the way.
I think that premiers of provinces should have some protection.
But the chutzpah of this guy claiming that he's with the underdog, here he is telling the story of when someone tried to rob a vehicle from his property.
There's a massive spate of vehicle crimes in Canada.
Here's Doug Ford explaining how it went down on his own property, but because he had a police car there, they caught the bad guys right away.
Here's Doug Ford.
I'm going to tell you a story.
Probably get in trouble for this.
Do you want to hear about stupid criminals?
Have you ever seen that show about stupid criminals out there?
So, four thugs come racing down my street, masks on, ready to take the car out of the driveway.
Surprise, surprise, at 12:30, the two police cars are there, the chase is on.
So, they chase him.
One guy runs out, takes off, they capture him, and they catch these other guys.
But just imagine all the unfortunate people that don't have security there at their house with masks on, and they have all the tools ready to break in and everything.
You know, and guess what's going to happen?
They're going to be back out.
Why don't you guys come over for a barbecue tonight?
You know, I'll take care of you better than the police.
And thank God the police got you.
And I never did.
Anyways, that's my rant.
I'm sick and tired of the weak justice system that we have.
They have to get a backbone, and we start to start throwing these people in jail.
This is turning into a lawless society.
Yeah, I say again: the fancy people have the private policing or their bodyguards.
It reminds me of, I don't know, a couple years ago now, when a police officer was having some public meeting about the crime wave, and his advice to the little people was basically lie back and think of Queen Victoria.
Here, take a listen to the advice of how to make it easier for someone stealing a car from your garage.
Take a look.
To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door because they're breaking into your home to steal your car.
They don't want anything else.
A lot of them that they're arresting have guns on them, and they're not toy guns, they're real guns.
Yeah, you know what?
I'm sort of tired of the mayor, the premier, and the prime minister, at least the liberal government, who have presided over a decade of crime, then saying they sympathize with this guy.
They do not.
If they sympathize with them, they would act in the public interest and give us castle doctrine.
I am not for vigilantism, but it is not vigilantism when you defend your home.
You are there.
And even if it, even if police respond in five minutes, which could be quite quick, five minutes, an intruder can do horrific things, especially if he's armed.
If it is your house and someone willfully broke into it, I believe in the castle doctrine.
I do not believe that's vigilantism.
In Canada, we have a doctrine of self-defense.
And we talked about that on the show the other day when a young person actually killed someone who was threatening him.
And the court found that that was self-defense.
The courts say that you are not to weigh to a nicety.
Juries and judges are not to be exquisitely accurate in what they demand of a person who, in a crisis, defends himself.
That goes doubly in your house.
Could you imagine?
I mean, that's the stuff of nightmares.
My recurring nightmare is that someone breaks into the house.
And I am sharing with you my private thoughts.
That's my number one nightmare.
And I mean, it's never happened to me.
I don't know why it's my nightmare, but that's horrific.
Could you imagine?
It's 3 a.m. and someone and you hear a sound.
Oh, it's just a tree.
Oh, it's just a raccoon.
No, someone's breaking into your house.
And you defend yourself and your family.
And you're the one who, I just, I'm beside myself on it.
Anyways, the good news is the public is overwhelmingly on the side of Jeremy McDonald.
And as I mentioned, I called him up and I agreed to crowdfund for him.
And he agreed to accept that help.
You know, this is new territory for him, but he's not a rich guy.
I'm not going to get into his personal state of affairs, but he made it clear to me that he needed the financial help to fight this.
He's not sophisticated in matters of criminal law.
Luckily, we have a lot of experience with that.
In fact, I told him that we had worked with many other people, including famous cases like Tamara Leach, for whom we continue to crowdfund.
So I think he feels like Rebel News can help him.
And I know we can.
We can certainly help pay for his lawyer.
The petition we have at castle lawnow.com, I think that will show how many.
Last I checked, it was around 10,000 people who have signed it in less than a day, which is pretty good.
And the fact that so many media reports of this are so overwhelming, the response by the public, I don't know.
I think there's a chance something will happen here.
But if I had to make a prediction, it would be this: that after putting Jeremy McDonald through the grinder, they at the last minute grudgingly stay the charges against him, but wag their finger at him.
I don't think they want to go through with the trial.
And by they, I mean the Attorney General of Ontario.
I think it would be a PR disaster for Doug Ford, and he would no longer be able to pretend that he's on the side of the people.
But I think the reason they charge Jeremy McDonald in the first place is in French, pour encouragé les autres, to set an example for others, to tell others, if you dare defend yourself, we'll prosecute you.
I think they're trying to make an example out of this guy and basically saying, don't try and defend yourself in Mark Carney's Canada, in Doug Ford's Ontario, in Olivia Chow's Toronto.
And don't think it's not the same in other provinces, too.
Police really don't want people defending themselves.
And on the one hand, I can understand it because we don't want vigilantism.
We don't want a war of all against all.
We don't want people using weapons or even firearms that they don't know how to use.
But the thing is, people are driven to that because things are so bad and because people no longer trust the police.
Police are clearly making political choices about what laws they enforce and what they don't.
Planning Permissions Controversy00:15:41
We see that every day.
It's tough to maintain your trust and respect and hope and reliance on police when you see them abide crime every day.
And I think, for example, of the pro-Hamas protests and even riots in this country, everyone says, oh, the police really aren't there for us anymore.
I guess we're on our own.
I promised to Jeremy McDonald that we would crowdfund his defense.
We would continue to do journalism about his case and we would put forward that petition.
And that's a promise I'm going to keep.
What I'm so excited about today is how the entire country seems unified by this.
And I don't think I've seen Pierre Pollyev make a statement on it, but I expect that he will soon.
How could he not?
That's my report.
And all of that happened yesterday after I did my show.
So I wanted to catch you up on that in case you missed it.
Okay, so for today, I want to do two things.
I want to give you some amazing news out of the United Kingdom.
I was there a couple weeks ago when there was a street protest outside a migrant hotel in the town of Epping.
That building over there with the three chimneys and the old bell on the roof, that's a hotel that has been the heart of this community for ages until the government, the central government, not the local government, but basically the national government of the UK bought the thing and turned it into an urban refugee camp.
And I heard from someone today that the reason they needed to open this urban refugee camp in a hotel is because a migrant burned down the previous one.
Now, no one knows who exactly is in there.
They're not vetted.
Even the government doesn't know who is really in there.
Incredibly, Epping won.
They won through a legal maneuver because that migrant hotel had not been properly put through the planning and the zoning.
And, you know, when you change the use of a property, when you want to build an office, when you want to build a restaurant, if you want to build a skyscraper, there's all sorts of questions.
What about the parking?
What about safety?
What about traffic, etc.?
They didn't do that for this migrant hotel.
And on that technicality, the migrants are being booted out in two weeks.
Here's my conversation with Jack Hadfield, who was there with me two weeks ago and was there this week.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, you might remember, I went to a beautiful little suburb of London called Epping.
And one of the chief features of Epping is the forest.
People walk through the forest.
People ride through the forest.
People, as part of their getting around town, go through the forest.
It's lovely until they brought a hotel full of migrants, unvetted military-aged men.
And guess who lurks in the forest?
And sure enough, before long, there were alleged rapes and men from the migrant hotel that were dumped there were arrested.
This led to massive protests and these were spontaneous, organic, authentic, local protests.
Hundreds of people, not professional activists, even like my friend Tommy Robinson.
No, these were mums and dads who were sick of the fact that their lovely town was no longer safe, especially for young women.
Here's a clip of my trip there.
You know, more ordinary people, mums, grandmothers, you can see, you can look around here.
I've just spoken to a couple who have come from 85 miles away to come and support this today.
This is how the feeling is growing.
And I think we need to do this.
I've been here all my life and I know the benefits that they get.
They get house, phones, money.
They're illegal for us already.
Like people are saying, like, oh, they're like, some people are in support of it, but they're criminals.
They're over illegally before they even get here.
So get rid of them.
100%.
They shouldn't be here.
It's disgusting.
But here they are right here.
Where are you from?
Iran.
Iran.
And where are you from, sir?
Where are you from?
Well, that one guy told me he was from Iran.
That's interesting.
When I was growing up, refugees were the young, the old, the sick, and the poor.
They weren't military-aged men.
No, that's right.
Women and children.
Yeah, they say that they're children, but they're all men.
How's this all going to end?
Who knows?
Hopefully the government will start listening and start doing something about it, making it stricter.
They need to be vetted.
We need to know who we've got coming in the country.
We couldn't go into another country without a passport.
So why can't they?
Well, these protests, peaceful protests, did not stop in Epping and outside Canary Wharf, the financial center of London, again and again.
Well, in Epping, an amazing thing happened.
The local town council voted to oppose the hotel.
And in a legal decision, the migrant hotel, amazingly, was given two weeks to shut down the home office.
That's the national government in the United Kingdom tried to appeal that decision but lost.
Joining us now to talk about this case and to fill in any gaps I've left in my telling of the story is our friend Jack Hadfield, who I had the pleasure of spending some time with in Epping.
Jack, great to see you again.
Yeah, good to see you.
And great.
And thank you.
Thank you for having me back on again.
Jack, did I correctly explain what happened?
Basically, there was a series of protests.
The local town council saw which way the wind was blowing.
No one in Epping wanted that migrant hotel.
They moved to shut it down.
The national government, the Labour government, tried to keep it, but it was a court ruling in the end that gave them the boot.
Is that how it went down?
Yes, that's right.
So, what's happened is that the Epping Forest Council launched a lawsuit against the imposition of the Bell Hotel as an asylum center onto the people of Epping.
So, what's happened now is that the High Court has granted first a temporary injunction against the use of the hotel as an asylum center.
So, as of now, the Bell Hotel has 14 days from yesterday to turf these migrants out of the hotel.
Now, I do expect this to be challenged, but of course, this will be going to, they'll be looking to make this a permanent injunction as well.
Now, what's interesting is that I think there is a good chance that this injunction will be made permanent because of the reasons why this injunction was won temporarily in the first place.
And that's because it wasn't done over because, oh, the protests are there, therefore there's a risk to migrants, blah, blah, blah, or people are getting annoyed about this.
No, the technical legal reason is because it was determined that the hotel did not properly get planning permissions to move from a hotel, a temporary place of residence, to what is more become a boss or a place for asylum seekers to live there, basically permanently.
So, this is done under planning law, which is why this decision has been made.
And that's also why there's a good reason why other hotels across the country, which also may not have had the technical correct permits to change and to move over, may now be faced because of this.
Now, there's obviously the government will obviously want to try and hold it down, but going up against planning law, British planning law, as those who want to build in this country know, is very strong and has had a lot of legal backing.
So, going down this route makes it easier, I think, for more asylum hotels to be shut down without having so much of a challenge of racism or human rights or so on and so forth.
You know, that's such a great point.
There is a reason we have zoning law, you know, planning law.
There is a reason for that, even if it becomes, you know, it's sclerotic, even if the red tape starts to overwhelm things.
You know, parking, driving, are there enough amenities?
There's a lot of real questions that a shopping mall is asked, that a new hotel would be asked.
So, to turn a temporary hotel lodgings into a permanent place for 200 men, of course, that's going to trigger some planning issues.
I think that's an outstanding way to deal with the issue.
And you're right, it skirts any accusations of racism.
I've seen that other towns are going to copy this legal precedent.
They're going to challenge the hotels on a planning basis.
I think this could spread.
And by the way, Jack, I think one of the reasons people in the community are so upset is because they were surprised by this.
It was a sneak attack, an ambush.
It was secret.
One day, suddenly, hundreds of migrants show up.
They weren't told, they weren't consulted.
The secret part of it, and by the way, there's a lot of secrecy going on.
I mean, we did a story a few weeks ago about this so-called super injunction when the government, when the former Conservative government decided to bring over up to 200,000 Afghans and they went to court to keep the whole thing secret.
So I think one of the things that irks a lot of Brits is that there being demographic changes, cultural changes, immigration changes, and the British people are not only not consulted, they're deliberately kept in the dark.
Avoiding a planning session is something no other Brit gets to do, whether you're building a golf course, a hotel, or a school or a shopping center.
I think this is a brilliant way to deal with it.
No, it definitely is.
It'll be a lot harder for other people to challenge, to challenge the closure of these hotels over this way.
But you're right as well.
There has been a lot of secrecy regarding the imposition of these hotels and also migrants being in HMOs, which is houses of multiple occupation spread throughout private property as well in the community.
A lot of this is done secretly under the cover of darkness.
We saw this with the Britannia Hotel in the Canary Wharf area.
When that was announced, we only found out because people's bookings were cancelled.
And then only people who lived next door were told only on the day of when it was announced that it was to be an asylum hotel.
The security got wind of it and told them that morning.
With the Bell Hotel in Epping, of course, it's funny.
It was actually shut down under the when Robert Jenrick, who is the shadow justice secretary, was immigration minister.
He was involved in shutting down the Bell Hotel for the first time when it was first made into an asylum center in around 2019, 2020.
But then the Labour government, when they came back into power, they actually reopened it.
And, you know, it's then been full of new asylum seekers since then.
I think it was actually previously, before the Labour government reopened it, it was a mixed sex accommodation for families, for women, and children.
But it was reopened as the single-sex accommodation, which obviously most people have more of a concern about because that means they're more of a risk from fighting age men, more likely to have sexual assaults, rapes, murders, other crime in the area.
And just as you mentioned about the Afghan scheme and the data leaks there, I do think there are a lot of people that think this in Britain, that this whole data leak was deliberate and was designed to bring these Afghans in because, oh no, oh, the home office has leaked these lists of names.
Oh, these people are now going to be in danger, which means they definitely have to come over here.
So it created this sense of urgency to bring all these people over.
And as we know, you know, it's Afghans out of all other nationalities that are 22 times more likely to be convicted for sexual assault any night in the United Kingdom compared to British nationals.
So that scheme itself really does rub people the wrong way, I think, given that they can bring in not just people who supposedly helped the British Army in Afghanistan, but families and family members who don't even have to be related by blood or by law at all.
Yeah, there were not, I can just tell you, there were not 200,000 Afghan translators.
In fact, I've been advised there were 1,000 Afghans that did serve as interpreters and translators, and yet that somehow is multiplied 200 times.
Let me ask you one last question.
So if this hotel in Epping is being shut down as a migrant center and hopefully revived as a hotel, I mean, hotels aren't just for visitors.
They're places where you celebrate life cycle events, your 65th birthday, a wedding reception.
Like, it's not just that they brought in 200 foreign men with a rape culture.
It's what they've shut down.
They've shut down.
I mean, it's not quite the same as a British pub, but a pub has an important place in a community.
It's where people go and confer and socialize.
Like it's a building block of society.
And to take these hotels out of commission, you're not just killing tourism.
And it really is a terrible thing that I don't think has much public support at all.
Is Labor going to continue to bring in and warehouse migrant men?
Because it's so obviously opposed by these communities.
And I would have to think that if I was a local politician, if I didn't get on the right side of this tidal wave, I would be washed out of office.
But these decisions are not being made by the local communities.
They're being made by the national government.
Is there any sign whatsoever that the Labour government will stop letting these illegal fake refugee claimants in?
Or are they just too committed to it and they're worried about their Islamic voting base, perhaps?
Well, yes, I do think they are too committed to it.
Not just the Islamic voting base, because it's funnily enough, that voting base is moving further and further away from them as they move towards things like your party, you know, the Corbyn, Zahra Sultana Party, which soon to be set up, you know, the Gaza Independents, which now have five or six MPs in parliament.
So Labor is stuck between trying to get back, you know, this Islamic vote, this, you know, brown immigrant vote, which is moving away from them, versus the white working class voters who are moving away from reform.
So whichever side they tack to, they're going to lose one of them anyway.
But Labour, you know, like the Conservative government and other people, really are so tied up into legalism, all the rule of law.
You know, as Poppy Coburn from the Telegraph said on Newsnight just a couple of weeks ago, you know, really the only solution to this is to get out of the UN Convention on Asylum Seekers, get out of the European Convention on Human Rights, get rid of the Human Rights Act.
You know, these conceptions of rights really don't help anymore, anyone.
And people want to see these so-called asylum seekers removed not just from their community, but from their country.
Just in terms of immigration overall, every single demographic believes that immigration has been too high.
Labor voters, Conservative voters, old, young, every single demographic has been against this.
And when you ask people what numbers they think immigration is in terms of illegal and legal, people think that illegal immigration is around 45% of immigration in total.
Now, that's not the case.
Rural Rights Debate00:15:41
It's only around about 4%.
And 96% of immigration in this country is legal.
But people also think that, oh, how many people are coming to the country each year?
They think it's around 70,000.
So even at that number, when the numbers are more, you know, we've hit net migration in the millions gross even more than that last year.
When people think that immigration is too high at 70,000 and they're off by factors of 10, there is no way that any government that doesn't fix immigration won't constantly be booted out of office at the next elections.
Yeah.
By the way, here in Canada, if you've ever been to Niagara Falls, you will be stunned.
You will not recognize it.
And the reason for that is displayed in a viral video by our own David Menzies a week ago.
There are 2,000 migrants being housed in hotels in Niagara Falls.
Niagara Falls, considered a sort of a mini Vegas.
It's like it's restaurants and gambling and shows.
No, not anymore.
Hotels have cut deals with the government.
2,000 migrants in that city.
Can tell just by driving through it.
Well, Jack, listen, it's great to catch up with you.
And I'm very interested in the UK.
Sometimes Canadians are saying, why are you so interested in the UK?
Well, I think it's because those are the same issues that we have here.
And you guys are just a little bit further down the road than us.
Thanks very much for being our eyes and ears out there.
And your colleague Emma has been doing some great work with us too.
So thanks to you guys, the citizen journalists of the UK.
It's very exciting.
And by the way, we have huge migrant hotels in Canada, too.
It'd be interesting to see if they've broken the zoning laws.
I bet they have.
Let me leave you with a live stream we had today.
Every week we have a Western-themed live stream.
And I was on it today.
Normally, my friend Sheila Gonreed co-hosts it with Lise Murrell.
But we talked a little bit, we talked about some Western things.
We talked about the by-election in Crowford, but we talked a little bit more about the castle doctrine.
And I made some of the points I just made here, but I also heard from Marty Belanger, Marty Up North, and Derek Fildebrand, of course, who is the publisher of Western Standard.
Of course, our friend Lise Murrell was on there too.
So let me leave you with an excerpt from today's live stream.
And let me invite you.
You know, we do a live stream every day.
Most of the time, it's sort of a general interest one.
Once a week, we have other YouTube rising star citizen journalists.
That's pretty fun.
And once a week, we have a Western-themed one.
So if you're around during the day at 1 p.m. Eastern or 11 a.m. Mountain, it's a fun thing to tune into.
And because it's live, you can chat back and forth with the hosts.
Anyways, let me leave you with today's episode of our Western Roundup.
When the cop is saying you're on your own, you know, make it easier for the home invaders so they don't get handsy with you, that, what...
What message does that send to people, not just in Toronto, but across the country?
You are on your own.
And so if a fella in Lindsay, Ontario defended himself and didn't weigh to a nicety just how hard to fight back, you know what?
I'm on his side.
So we've set up castle law now, which we don't just want to help this guy, but I think everyone, I think there should be some change to the criminal code that if you are defending your home, whatever the intruder does, it's on him.
Yeah, Derek.
I 100% agree.
I mean, I live in semi-rural Alberta, not completely rural, but we have a large percentage of our population that's rural.
And the police are, you know, people say call the police.
If I call the police here, it's going to be 20 minutes before they show up, if that.
So, and I want to say this: we don't have castle laws in Canada, but I'd say Alberta is pretty close to there, right?
We've had actually had quite a few similar cases, and the judges have thrown them out of court and said, no, you're allowed to defend your property.
So, not your property.
You're allowed to defend yourself when somebody's in your house.
So, we've had a few landmark cases in Alberta, and that sets a precedent.
But I support a castle law.
I'd sure like to see it as a formal law that if you're in my house, my driveway, maybe not, but if you set foot in my house, expect some resistance.
Yeah, this case has many, many parallels to the Gerald Stanley story that happened in Saskatchewan in 2016, where a farmer, Gerald Stanley, and his wife were working in the yard when a group of near-do-wells from a local reserve came on site.
And, you know, it was just a schmazzle.
But in any case, Gerald Stanley's gun went off.
He did a couple warning shots.
And then one of the kids in the car was shot on his property.
And he was charged and was dragged through the court system for two years to eventually be found innocent.
Okay.
He was not found guilty.
But that he was dragged through the court system, the ideologically captured court system for two years for defending his home and defending his wife is kind of egregious.
Derek Fildebrandt, is it the homeowner that is the criminal or is it the police and the justice system that is the criminal here?
Oh, you obviously saw my tweet.
The real criminal here, it's not even the guy who broke into the guy's house.
It is the police officers who laid the charge and it is the justice system itself that is coming after this guy.
I've always felt strongly about this stuff.
I feel a little particularly personally about it.
The police came after me about two years ago because I had some vandals committing, you know, pretty fairly minor vandalism on my property, but it was repeated stuff I had in the area.
So I was a little pissed off.
And I had a walking cane because I was recovering from a motorcycle accident at the time.
And I literally told them to F off and waved my cane at them like Grandpa Simpson.
And the police charged me for threatening them with a shotgun because the vandals said that my cane was a shotgun.
We proved it was not a shotgun.
The whole thing was ridiculous, but I had to spend a bunch of money and time and it costed me business because, you know, advertisers are like, oh, is this guy going to shoot someone?
You know, they came after me for literally waving a walking cane as I was recovering from a motorcycle accident at vandals.
It was absolutely crazy.
In this country, this is not just the Lindsay police or Ontario police.
This is everywhere our justice system is ass backwards and figuring out who is the victim, who is the criminal, who is the aggressor here.
We have no sense of justice left in this country.
Now, a number of years ago here in Alberta, we had a very high profile case.
I know Marty will remember this.
We had Eddie Maurice, a guy in Okatoks.
That's a town just south of Calgary.
He was just outside of it on a rural property.
He had a guy, it was maybe a little more politically sensitive because it was an Indigenous person who came onto his property trying to steal some ATVs and he fired a warning shot at this guy.
He did not try to hit him, but it ricocheted.
The guy had a minor injury from a ricochet bullet.
And the police came down like a ton of bricks on this guy.
They tried to take him to the cleaners.
He was ultimately, I think he was acquitted or the charges were eventually dropped.
So in Canada, you know, we don't have castle doctrine, but Ezra was right.
He was alluding to English common law.
We have forms of it that have been recognized over the centuries coming from our English legal tradition that has been watered down over time.
Ultimately, if this stuff goes before a jury and you and you were being reasonable, if the vandals setting, you know, had set foot on my lawn and I had actually pulled out a shotgun and blown them away, that would not be reasonable.
But as long as you're being reasonable, a jury will tend to acquit you in Canada in most cases.
But you're going to have to take out a second mortgage on your house.
You're going to go bankrupt defending yourself.
As Ezra used to say about the Canadian Human Rights Commissions, it's the process is the punishment.
So fine, you might not go to prison for this.
As long as you've got the means to take out a second mortgage on your house here and put together an prohibitively expensive legal defense, you'll win.
We need changes to the criminal code here.
We need to, every single cop involved should be stripped of their badges and publicly named and shamed here.
The judges themselves are not great.
But the jury is ultimately acquit here.
But the punishment should not be the process.
You should not have to be financially ruined for defending your home against an invader.
And you know what?
I pulled up some numbers while we're talking here.
I like to use Montana as an example, Montana, just south of Alberta here.
Now, they have some demographic differences with, say, Ontario, but one of the biggest differences is also gun ownership and castle doctrine.
There is an extremely high chance if you break into someone's home in Montana, they have a gun and they're going to shoot you with it.
The robbery rate in Montana is less than half of what it is in Ontario, less than half.
And the two big things are people in that house that you're breaking into are very likely to have a gun and the government is not very likely to prosecute them for using it.
Yeah.
And just wanted to add one thing.
Yes, we do need, it'd be nice to get a formal castle doctrine.
We might get one now because some of the, because something interesting is happening.
Now we have senior politicians that are being affected by some of these wave, you know, these crime waves.
So didn't Ontario, didn't Doug Ford recently get something happened to him?
I'm so happy.
I'm so happy you mentioned Marty because we have a little video of Doug Ford talking about that exact event.
Doug Ford, with a personal police detail, okay, had something happen to him.
And we're just going to watch what he said about that.
I'm not sure if we got that teamed up, Metita, but I can hear you.
Oh, sorry.
He's talking.
Sorry, we're going to watch Doug Ford speak out against the Lindsay man who was charged.
There's two clips, and I do want to show that first one, Lise, which is someone tried to steal a car right off of Doug Ford's own property.
Doug Ford's the Premier of Ontario, and he happens to have a police car station nearby, so they caught him pretty quick.
But that shows how pervasive it is, the premier himself.
But of course, not all of us have that police car at our property.
So Doug Ford a few weeks ago was complaining about it, but he, of course, has protections we don't.
But today, of all the chutzpah, I think this is the clip that you're referring to.
Well, can we play both, Livia?
Do we have both handy?
Let's start with the one.
So, Lise, you're exactly right to remember when Doug Ford himself was nearly robbed.
Here he is talking about how bizarre that was.
And he was only stopped because he's got cops stationed there.
Take a quick look at this one.
He should get a medal for standing up.
It's like down in the U.S., we should have the castle law.
Did you hear about the guy that these thugs came up 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 castle law.
I know any of these people here.
Someone breaks in 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.
These thugs shouldn't be coming in there.
That's not even the clip I had in mind, but let me just tell you, he's a wicked liar.
Because who do you think the prosecutor is of Jeremy McDonald?
And so play, can you play the new?
That's a great clip, and we should circulate that one widely, you guys, because that's, you know, what he said there should be played by Jeremy McDonald if his matter goes to trial.
But we just did a clip.
Rebel News just clipped it.
Here's Doug Ford moments ago talking about the latest case as if he's some passive third-party observer, as opposed to the guy who's prosecuting him.
Here, take a look.
Everyone hear about the story in Lindsay?
So this criminal that's wanted by the police breaks into this guy's house.
This guy gives him a beating and this guy gets charged.
Like, and the other guy gets charged.
But like, something is broken.
I know someone breaks into my house or someone else's, you're going to fight for your life.
This guy has a weapon.
You're going to use any force you possibly can to protect your family.
I'm telling you, I know everyone would.
I'd be scared to break into Kevon's.
He's like a linebacker.
He'd beat the living crap out of the guy.
And you'd probably should.
And you would prosecute him, you liar.
Because no.
The hypocrisy is unreal, right?
Violence and breaking the people's homes, putting guns at their heads.
And guess what?
Some bleeding heart judge, little Johnny.
So the judge is prosecuting him, Buck.
We're going to let him out on bail five more times because he's on his fist, you know, being let out on bail five times just to go do the same thing the next day.
I'll tell you one thing.
I get more calls than anyone in the country.
People are done with us.
Well, you're not.
You're prosecuting.
Jeremy McCarthy.
You should.
Yeah, you're the premier of the province.
Change the rules and fix the problem.
You should use all resources you possibly can to protect your family.
And maybe these criminals will think twice about breaking into someone's home.
Liar, liar.
Okay, boys, have at it.
If I can, if I can get in here, I really hate the role I'm going to play for myself here.
I am not a defender of Doug Ford.
Doug Ford is taking that position probably because he has a good sense of what's popular.
He does what he thinks is popular.
And I think to the average person, you don't have to have any great understanding of Castle Doctrine.
What's happened is ridiculous.
Everyone understands who the real victim and the real criminal is here.
So that he's on the right side speaking there.
But the criminal, God, I don't want to defend Doug Ford, but I'm going to have to semi-do it here.
You have to forgive me.
Everyone watching, forgive me.
But the criminal code of Canada is federal law.
That's not provincial.
It's not like in the states.
In the states, the states have a large latitude in matters of criminal law.
Now, the appointment of the prosecutors, that is provincial.
The appointment of at least the lower court judges, that is provincial.
And the police force itself, that is municipal.
So I think there's some room for grace here.
I want to be fair to Doug.
There's 99 times out of 100.
I think there's a lot of fair to hit Doug with Doug Ford on this one.
I think there is some limited legislative work that can be done by amending provincial statute in Ontario.
They could follow the lead of some of the small things that were done in Alberta, largely after the Eddie Maurice case that we were discussing.
Using Discretion in Prosecution00:03:08
There is some that can be done, but ultimately, I think this is primarily the fault of the police themselves.
Those cops, as I said, should have their badges stripped.
They shouldn't be allowed to be mall cops after this.
But the big change needs to happen at the federal level with the criminal code of Canada.
And because he's so chummy with the liberals, maybe he could use a little of that political capital, call up Mark Carney and say, hey, I've been shining your shoes here for a bit.
Why don't you do this one for me?
I'm so happy you brought up his relationship with the federal government, Derek, because he has sleepovers with the actual prime minister.
And, you know, if there's any a good time to mention to the prime minister that we need to reform some of these laws, it's then.
But Marty, no, Derek, I like what you're saying.
So you're kind of referring to the fact that cops are no longer using their discretion, right?
I mean, if I beat up a guy on my property, a cop could show up at my house and look and go, yeah, that guy's in trouble and drag them back to the jail and leave me alone.
Well, no, I think it's cops always have to use discretion.
They're just using their discretion extremely poorly.
They're charging the wrong people.
When vandals attack my province damage things on my property, they charge the guy who tells them to pee off or F off and waves a cane.
When this guy breaks into someone's home and the guy defends his home, they charge the guy who defended his home.
Both are using discretion.
They're just using it in an appallingly terrible way.
So the fault is the police here.
And the fault is perhaps we don't know enough about it yet.
The prosecutors who are provincially appointed, perhaps some fault there because they can decide not to go forward with prosecution.
The decision with whether the light changes charges is mostly in the hands of the police.
Sometimes they'll consult with the prosecutors.
I'm not sure if that was done in this case or not.
But the prosecutors have a decision to make now if this is appropriate to go forward.
But the big one, if we're going to prevent this going forward, the criminal code of Canada needs to be changed.
When you enter someone's home with the intention of committing a criminal act, you have surrendered your right to the protection of the state.
Your life now belongs to the man and woman who owns that home.
You know, I don't know who made the final call to make these charges.
It would not surprise me one bit if they consulted the Crown Attorney's Office.
And, you know, what's the test for a prosecution?
Reasonable likelihood of conviction.
And is it in the public interest?
Those are the main ones.
There's sort of a newer third one as well.
I think that this is really designed to tamp down anyone who has big ideas of defending themselves.
I think, now, I don't know the exact details, and I have not availed myself of the information.
Let the court work its own processes, but I bet you this guy will be acquitted for certain by a jury, as you mentioned.
I just, you know what?
I mean, let me just switch subject for a second.
I've been covering the Tamara Leach trial for years now.
Fat Trudeau Jokes00:03:31
It's the longest running mischief trial, not just in Canada, but in the history of the Commonwealth, more than 50 days.
And people hate Justin Trudeau and Christia Freeland.
They didn't charge him.
It's all the provincial government.
And the decision to be so obsessed with it is the provincial government.
And I think we should never forget that Doug Ford has been like this with the feds.
Even during the trucker convoy, he declared an emergency.
He's the one who had a you can't go outside for any reason announcement that even the police forces said, yeah, boss, we're not going to enforce that.
Doug Ford, Dean Skarako on Twitter calls him fat Trudeau.
And I'm fat, so I shouldn't call anyone else fat.
But damn it, that sticks.
Fat Trudeau, he is sort of fat Trudeau.
He's sort of dumb like Trudeau.
He just, you know, he's so awful.
He's worse than everyone except for the liberal and NDP alternatives.
And he, you know, he tried to undermine Pier Polyev during the federal election.
He said just yesterday, Olivia, call up this clip if you please.
He said yesterday, I'm going to continue to insult Donald Trump every day.
And I'm thinking.
Just wild.
You're not a diplomat.
You're not part of our negotiation team.
You have no authority to conduct foreign relations.
You have an auto industry that's at risk, frankly.
You know that this is counterproductive.
Donald Trump sometimes takes things personally.
What is your game, you stupid buffoon?
I mean, why don't you, I know what the answer is.
He's trying to distract from his own failures over seven years, and he's trying to rebrand the coming recession as a Trump recession rather than his own fault.
Take a listen to this idiot.
I'll never stop, you know, poking Donald Trump, but we're going to focus on what we can do.
So, that no matter who the next president is or whatever the next crisis, we're able to protect our workers, the services the public relies on, and our communities, not just from President Trump, but from anything that comes our way for decades to come.
We need to build a strong standard.
But he's going to keep poking Donald Trump every day.
I think that Mark Carney actually wants the U.S.-Canada relationship to fail.
And thank goodness for Danielle Smith, who is not a kamikaze pilot like Doug Ford.
There, she has the self-discipline.
I saw her in Washington on the inauguration.
I bumped into her at an event.
She was down there making friends because they are the number one importer of, in fact, almost the sole importer of Alberta oil, Saskatchewan oil.
It's a scorched earth strategy, Ezra.
I agree with you.
Carney in particular, I mean, the failures of the liberals, rather than acknowledge the failures of the liberals of the last decade, let's just keep driving forward and making life worse and blame everything on Donald Trump.
It's done on purpose.
Anybody, everybody should be able to see this.
They're using Donald as a boogeyman and deflecting off of him all their failures.
To me, it's black and white.
Yeah.
Mr. Derek, what do you think about Doug Ford?
Defending Beyond Castle Walls00:04:16
Very little, I hope.
I just defended him.
I almost drowned out an F-bomb there when you asked the question.
I barely stopped.
I've got kids.
I'm getting really good at stopping myself now.
Look, I'm definitely bookmarking that quote of Ford.
Now, if I'm ever in court, I'll say, well, Doug told me to do it.
He told me to defend myself.
So bookmark that somewhere.
Yeah.
Well, look, I don't.
Go ahead.
No, no, you're good.
Sir, go ahead.
I was going to say, talk about, Derek, when you said I'm reluctant to say this, I thought you were going to be the grown-up and say, look, we have to let the legal process act independently.
It shouldn't bend to the will of journalists or politicians.
And that is a correct thing to say.
I would agree with that.
And I thought that's what you were about to say a few minutes ago when you said, I'm going to say something that may not be popular.
Well, that is actually a part of it.
Is that, I mean, Danielle Smith got in a bunch of trouble for discussing the possible pardoning of people who had been given tickets and charged and whatnot in Alberta during COVID.
And I think that'd be appropriate, but she got in a ton of trouble for it.
Technically, in Canada, the heads of government, unlike governors and presidents in the states, cannot pardon directly, but they can make recommendations to there's a certain board or body of some kind that can issue pardons.
This was done, this has been done for certain times.
People have been pardoned for acts of sodomy, criminalization of homosexuality back in the 60s and whatnot.
There have been pardons, but it's just, it's much less regular in the Canadian political culture.
You've got to be careful on interventions directly into the justice system.
And so I have to be a little give a little grace to Ford there, but you've got to, but it's the law itself.
The justice system itself is broken.
The justice system is stacked with people with no sense of justice itself.
But ultimately, the biggest single change we'd have to make to this is around Castle Doctrine.
Well, thanks for watching.
I got a couple letters from viewers.
Let me read them to you.
Stay awake says, the fact that a government tells you whether or not you can defend yourself is beyond insane, only in Canada.
Yeah, I really think that if someone is breaking into your home, anything goes.
That's my view.
I mean, I'm not looking for people to be cruel or violent beyond reason, but, you know, you broke into their house and that person is probably terrified and doesn't know how many of you intruders there are.
And this is the worst day of their life and you made it that way.
I think you should basically absorb whatever they do to you.
And, you know, I don't want people to be killed and I don't want vigilantism, but you break into someone's home, you're an intruder, you're a robber, you're a, God forbid, a rapist.
Yeah, I have no, no sympathy for you.
And the fact that this was a repeat criminal, just as the icing on the cake.
Next letter from Curious, who says, how can a government who is trying to abolish private ownership recognize any castle law?
It goes against their whole purpose.
You know, you're very thoughtful on that.
There's ideological reasons to be against castle law.
Castle law makes a lot of sense from a property rights point of view, from a self-defense point of view, from a legal point of view.
It makes sense in all those regards.
But think of the ideologies it contradicts.
Property rights, the fact that you could defend yourself, that you're allowed to defend yourself as opposed to giving the state the monopoly on violence.
If you defend yourself, that's a rebuke that the government wasn't able to defend you.
In this case, that's very true.
This was a serial criminal.
And very interesting.
And I feel like it's the classic rebel case.
We're reporting the story.
We're having a petition to change the law, but we're also getting right in there and making sure that this homeowner does not suffer because it is not a normal thing to suddenly have to raise tens of thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer.
Most normal people cannot do that.
Luckily, we have hundreds of rebels who say, I'll chip in 50 bucks.
I'll chip in 100 bucks.
If you're one of those people, go to castlelawnow.com.
I'm really excited about being able to defend this guy.