Ezra Levant defies Toronto police after a billboard near their HQ exposes Mayor Olivia Chow’s claim that lawyer Falguni Debnath blocks charges against pro-Hamas protesters—including "from the river to the sea" chants—while journalists like Joe Warmington face threats. Scarlett Grace joins Rebel News, detailing unchecked aggression at Hanukkah events and a Conservative MP switching to Liberals amid Chinese influence suspicions in Markham. Viewers demand radical immigration shifts like Alberta’s 10-year waiting period, fearing Canada’s future under perceived open borders fueling anti-Semitism. Levant warns: silence won’t stop the threat—justice must. [Automatically generated summary]
I got a call from a very, very senior, powerful political person in Toronto asking me to stop our truck from broadcasting a message.
I'll tell you more about it.
I won't tell you everything because I agreed to take the call secretly or off the record.
But it was so astonishing.
I'm just going to tell you a little bit about it without giving away who called me.
Very unusual days.
I should tell you, I refused the demand.
That's ahead.
I won't give you any more right now, but listen to the show.
You might find it interesting.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
You'll see on Rebel News Plus the truck and what this big shot was talking about.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
You get the video version and the satisfaction of keeping Rebel News strong so that we are independent of these political big shots and we do not have to jump when they call us and demand we do so.
A little interesting story for you ahead.
Tonight, we finally found a billboard that the Toronto police object to.
And no, it's not in support of Hamas.
It's December 19th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
You know, I'm Jewish.
I grew up in Calgary, which is a very un-Jewish city, very small Jewish community.
And I always thought of Toronto as the big city.
And it has about 200,000 Jews in it, which coming from Calgary, which had, when I was growing up, maybe 5,000 Jews, seemed huge.
Like there's so many Jewish schools and synagogues and kosher restaurants.
It seemed like a little slice of Israel or like going to New York itself.
That's how it felt.
And the Jews were in high stations in life in Toronto.
Doctors and lawyers, even politicians.
The great mayor Mel Lassman was Jewish.
And I think the Jews got along pretty well with people in Toronto.
They got into construction with the Italians and they got along with the Greeks.
It was sort of a very happy harmony.
At least that's what it seemed like to me growing up.
The point I'm trying to make is that I looked at Toronto as a pretty Jewish city, or at least a city where it was very easy to be Jewish.
Well, that's changed.
I'll tell you that now that I'm a resident of Toronto.
I live not far from an intersection of Bathurst and Shepherd.
Bathurst is a north-south road around which, along which I'd say most of the Jewish community lives.
So if you were to start in Midtown and drive north on Bathurst, you could drive for half an hour.
And on each side, you would see kosher supermarkets or schools or synagogues.
You would see Orthodox Jews with their black hats and whatnot.
And you would say, oh, this is the Jewish part of town.
There's the Chinatown.
There's the Greek town.
This is the Jewish part of town.
But a few terrible things have started happening since the October 7th, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
Now, that was a shocking attack, as you probably know, as the largest death toll, the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust itself.
And that's a terrible thing, and it caused a war.
Israel reacted to Hamas in Gaza, and it soon spread throughout the region.
But I remember saying in those very early days, I should dig up my old quotes about it.
I was far more worried about what's happening in Toronto, in other Canadian cities, in America, in the West, than I am about what's happening in Israel itself, because Israel has a strong military.
But more than that, Israel is awake to what's going on.
Israel doesn't fool itself thinking diversity is our strength.
Israel is, I suppose you could call it multicultural and multiracial.
There's people of different backgrounds there and different religions, but it is very alert and awake to the risks involved there.
Not us here in Canada.
We have a completely porous border.
And over the last, I'd say, 20 years, we have brought in so many people who, simply put, have brought anti-Semitism with them, and a number have brought violence or at least extreme political activism with them.
What's worse is they have been activated by foreign agents.
For years, it's been reported that the government of Iran has used Canada as their playground where they can whip up anti-Semitic meetings on short notice.
Well, that went into high gear after October 7th.
Before Israel even reacted and responded to the attack from Gaza, there were marches throughout Toronto condemning the Jews, threatening the Jews, accusing the Jews of horrendous things, and calling for a genocide of the Jews.
They would use words that might seem cryptic to ordinary Canadians, like from the river to the sea.
But that just means extinguishing all Jews within its geography, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Globalize the intifada.
Intifada is an Arabic word meaning pogrom or a riot.
And those ideas have started to come true in the West.
Most atrociously, just the other day in Bondi Beach in Australia, where two Muslim migrant terrorists shot dead and wounded dozens of Jewish Australians.
We haven't had a massacre on that scale in Canada yet, but I fear it's only a matter of time.
As you know, a Jewish day school in Toronto called Beischaya Mushka has been attacked on three separate occasions by gunshots.
A synagogue on Bayview Avenue in Toronto has been vandalized on 10 separate occasions.
As you know, we've covered it quite regularly.
Pro-Hamas protesters walk through Jewish residential communities shouting at men, women, and children they encounter in the streets.
There have been vandalisms, uttering of threats, assaults, and all sorts of other mischief.
And to see the way that they've been treated with kid gloves as compared to, say, the truckers is astonishing.
And that's the subject of my monologue today.
I've seen how the police can react when they want to.
I've seen them brutally arrest and jail and punish the truckers.
I've seen what they've done to the men in Coots, Alberta, some of whom are still in prison.
That's what the government does to politically disfavored groups.
In the case of Tamara Leach, people who oppose forced vaccines or forced lockdowns.
Those are the worst people.
But people who walk through Jewish communities, and these are foreign nationals, mind you.
These aren't fellow Canadian citizens.
I don't think fellow Canadian citizens would even do that.
These are foreign nationals under the direction of foreign governments walking through our streets in Canada and screaming anti-Semitic abuse at people.
It's outrageous, but it has been tolerated for two years.
And in the wake of the Bondi massacre, a lot of people in Canada said, oh my God, we're next.
We're so obviously going to be next.
One of the things that I think upset me the most about Bondi Beach in Australia was that the Jewish community which had gathered to celebrate Chanuka on the beach, they had guards.
I think they had five guards there, but they were unarmed.
What use is that?
Are you going to challenge a terrorist to an arm wrestle or something?
If you don't have a firearm, what exactly are you other than an usher or something?
Well, it's the same thing here in Canada.
There are dozens of Jewish schools and synagogues and Jewish centers, community centers, and none of them have armed guards.
An armed terrorist like we saw in Australia would cut through them like a hot knife through butter.
And gun crime is rampant in Ontario.
It's not hard.
And the rest of the country, too.
It wouldn't be hard for a terrorist to get a hold of a firearm and do horrific things in Canada just like they did in Australia.
And so the last week in Toronto has been interesting as the Jewish community realizes what happened in Bondi Beach could just as easily have happened in Canada.
And if we don't do anything about it, it probably will.
Now that sparked this interesting conversation on radio, where Canada's pro-Hamas mayor, Olivia Chow, Toronto's pro-Hamas mayor, who refuses to show up at most events, who is so totally dedicated to the pro-Hamas movement, she, obviously feeling the scrutiny, was asked why none of these pro-Hamas protesters are charged.
They utter threats.
They block roads and sidewalks.
They commit assault.
They violate noise regulations with their PA systems where they shout at Jews.
And I'm not even talking about the actual hate crimes.
I'm talking about the crime crimes.
Why have there been so few, if any, charges?
Well, here's what the mayor said.
So at some point, they said they have a lawyer at the police headquarters that looked at cases and said, okay, there's no hope of you getting anywhere, so don't bother.
So, which is why sometimes they don't do charges.
And I think the chief is coming to your tomorrow.
Yeah, exactly.
Ask him about that.
I'm not overconfident, it's a very comfortable chair, but ask him about that because I've asked exactly the same thing.
Why can't you arrest more and charge more?
A, there's the human rights, the charter rights concern, and that some of the charges basically thrown out.
So why keep doing it if it doesn't work?
Right.
The mayor, in other words, is implying that she thinks there should be charges laid, but there aren't.
And it's because of the bloody police department.
And in particular, there's a lawyer at the police department named Falguni Debnath who won't let any charges go through.
Well, that's quite newsy, isn't it?
Well, next up was Toronto's police chief, who was invited on the same channel to answer.
And he said that the mayor was making it up.
Well, he didn't quite use that language, but he basically called her a liar.
Here, take a listen.
And when the mayor says that there is a lawyer who has advised, do not engage, do not arrest, is she in error?
Well, listen, I don't know where she's getting that nerd.
She says you.
Yeah, well, we didn't have a discussion that would suggest quite the way that's been framed.
So the mayor is saying there ought to be charges, but the general counsel, the senior lawyer at the police, is stopping them before they can be made.
And the police chief is saying that ain't true.
Well, our friend Joe Warmington wrote about this in the Toronto Sun and named the general counsel the lawyer involved.
I mentioned her name a moment ago, Falguni Debnath.
Now, not a lot is known about her.
I've seen reports that she was born in Pakistan and that she worked once at the United Nations in some sort of war crimes inquiry.
And those three things aren't necessarily alarm bells, but when you have someone who comes from Pakistan, which is an inherently anti-Semitic country, it's an Islamic supremacist country.
It's a terrorist country, really.
It's where a lot of terrorists are from, who works for the UN, which is an inherently anti-Semitic organization, and on war crimes or other matters like that, which typically means accusing America and Israel of those things.
One would want to know: well, is this woman the reason that there have been few, if any, charges made?
It's an excellent question.
And it comes not from mere speculation, but from this war between the mayor and the police chief.
And so our friend Joe Warmington wrote about it in the Toronto Sun, and he did a good job.
Holy smokes, did the police ever unleash on him?
They sent a hail of emails threatening him in bizarre ways.
But to their credit, the Toronto Sun stood by their man.
It was quite something.
Stephanie Sayre, the press attaché for the Toronto Police, said to Joe that there would be consequences to him if he continued to report it and didn't delete his stories.
What does that mean?
Would he be sued?
Would he be arrested and maybe charged with something?
No charges for the Hamas supporters, just charges for a journalist who embarrasses the police chief?
Or would there be more?
I mean, the police are packing heat.
What would they do exactly to Joe?
To the son's credit, they backed him up.
We saw that and we thought, we have a lot of questions about this too.
This is a real news story.
So we deployed our big, beautiful billboard truck, asking simple questions.
Who is Falguni Debnath?
Is she the reason that these charges are not made?
Who's telling the truth?
The mayor or the police chief?
Here's a little look at David Menzies with our big, beautiful truck parked right outside police headquarters.
Hey, detective, is Miss Debnath setting policy for the police?
Why am I questions instilling fear in the hearts of those who are packing heaters?
I don't get it.
Hi, ma'am.
How you doing?
Good.
What do you think about the lawyer for the police service, Falghuni Debnath, setting policy in terms of who to arrest and not to arrest?
To be honest, this is the first time I see this.
Oh, okay, then.
All right, then.
Sorry, I'm not going to.
Are you going to sign our petition to fire the chief?
I have to go now.
Oh, okay, then.
Have a nice day.
What do you think about the lawyer setting policing policy?
No.
No.
I feel that that's skipping due process, which should apply to everyone fairly and equally.
So that's not fair, I would say.
I couldn't agree with you more, sir.
I thought the whole idea of law enforcement is that when you see a crime, you make an arrest and you let the courts sort it out, right?
Gather the evidence and hand it over to the judge, and that's their job to weigh in on that, not anyone below them.
Lincoln Jay and I have been here for about half an hour.
We got another half hour to go before college turns into a towaway zone, and you know they would love to tow away this baby.
That would be a trophy catch for them, wouldn't it?
But it's funny, absolutely no engagement with any of the cops.
I'll take that as a W compared to, oh, I don't know, getting arrested happened to me five times last year, three times by the Toronto Police Service, happened to my boss, Ezra, once last year, just for practicing journalism in public.
Phone Threats and Media Resistance00:11:46
Hey, guys, what do you think about Falguni Debnath?
Is it okay that she's setting police policy?
Hi, sir.
What do you think about Falguni Debna setting police policy?
Thanks, everyday.
Okay.
Thank you.
Merry Christmas.
Hi, ma'am.
What do you think of Falguni Debna setting policy for the police?
Is it me?
Is my English not understandable?
Or am I encountering a disproportionate number of deaf people working at police headquarters?
Well, holy smokes.
Did the police effort to silence Joe ever backfire?
Not only did Joe continue to write his story in the Toronto Sun, but we brought our beautiful billboard truck, which cannot be missed.
So big and bright, and every cop going in and out of the police headquarters would have seen it.
Wouldn't surprise me if the police chief himself sort of peeked through the blinds to see that truck.
Well, I think the police know better than to call us up and threaten us, but they contacted Joe again to threaten him.
I mentioned the police spokeswoman Stephanie Sayre, who said that the appearance of our truck was, quote, a direct result of Joe's reporting.
So she was blaming the truck being there on Joe.
In a way, I suppose it's indirectly true because we followed the story and learned about the police threat from Joe, and we acted on our own to deploy the truck.
But holy smokes, a media aide, a media communications director who does not like the media and thinks she can silence them.
Now, to their credit, they haven't tried to threaten me the same way they threatened Joe.
And I think it's because Joe has sort of other bosses on top of him, whereas I suppose I only answer to our viewers.
But a funny thing happened yesterday, and I want to be very careful how I describe it.
Because I was asked if I would take a phone call from a very, very senior person in the Toronto police.
And if I would take that phone call on a confidential basis and not report it, would I take a phone call off the record?
And I thought to myself, well, if I say no, I'm not going to get the phone call and I won't know anything.
But if I take a phone call off the record without reporting it or recording it, at least I'll have some information that can color my other work.
Even if I can't report it, I can know it and I'd be no further behind.
So I agreed to accept the phone call on those conditions.
And I'm going to honor those conditions because I don't want people to think that if I agree to keep something private, that I'll break that promise.
But let me just tell you, it's most astonishing.
And I'll just sum it up by saying I was asked by this extremely senior person to withdraw the truck and no longer ask the questions.
To which I said, well, has the mayor withdrawn her accusation?
Because that's really all we're doing.
You saw the truck.
It's based on what the mayor said.
The mayor says that this lawyer, Falguni Debmath, at the Toronto police station, is the reason that none of these pro-Hamas types are getting charged.
If the mayor still believes that, if she still says that, if she still accuses of that, I'm going to report that news.
If the mayor recants and says I was mistaken, okay, we'll report that as well.
And maybe we'll have to change up the truck.
I have never in my 10 years of running Rebel News received a phone call like the one I received.
And I'm not going to say anymore to identify who it was, and I'm not going to particularize what was said.
Suffice it to say that we were asked to take that truck down and we weren't.
And we didn't rather.
In fact, to make the point, we sent the truck out again today.
What's going on here?
What's going on here?
Well, on the immediate level, there's an attempt to intimidate.
I mean, I don't know, they must not know me if they think that a call from a big shot cop is going to make me afraid.
You know, I actually ended the phone call.
I'll tell you what I said.
I said, call anytime.
And if you want to meet me, feel free to arrest me.
That's what I said to him.
I was being a little bit cheeky.
But yeah, no, we don't roll over for anybody.
If we do something that's wrong, and if you can convince us we've done something wrong, we'll correct it or retract it or whatever.
I mean, every now and then we get it wrong, but we reported what the mayor said.
We got it right.
We don't take instructions from police.
We're not in a police state.
And in fact, we think the police in Toronto are not living up to their duties to arrest actual criminals.
And you know that they've been arresting rebel news reporters time and time and time again.
I just made a joke about me being arrested, but in fact, I was arrested at that very intersection I've been describing to you at Bathurst and Shepherd.
Here, remember when I was arrested?
Acting Inspector Ford told me they had a media area for you and you guys stayed in it?
We did not came back.
We did not.
Well, because it's not up to him to say you have free speech there, but not here.
Well, yeah, because you're inciting this crowd and then it breaches the peace.
Well, your presence is inciting them, and that's exactly what you're trying to do.
I'm a Jew.
No, because you're trying to incite them.
I haven't tried to incite them.
I want you to take a picture of the hate crime that you got.
You did it on the other side.
You didn't need to walk over here.
No, I wanted to go out and get it.
Okay, now I'm going to tell you to move over there.
And if you don't cross the road, you'll get arrested for breaching the peace.
So you're refusing to leave?
I'm refusing to leave.
Why?
Because I'm a Jew, I'm a citizen, and I'm your boss.
And I don't leave because you say Jews aren't.
Well, you know what?
In the interest of keeping peace here and public safety, you're under arrest for breach of the peace.
Take them in.
I was arrested for standing on the sidewalk.
There was a horde of dozens of pro-Hamas activists who were standing right there and they weren't arrested themselves.
You see my point?
Why would they arrest me?
Did Falguni Debnath say, oh, you can arrest the Jew, but not the Muslims?
What was the legal advice there, I wonder?
Or our friend David Menzies, who's been arrested time and time again, simply for reporting on these Hamas extremists.
Here's a sample of some of those.
Hey, I'm not standing.
Don't stand.
Don't talk sticking.
What's wrong with you, Piel with you guys?
Who are you by?
What do you mean you guys?
My grandfather spent five years of his life fighting the Nazis.
Do you think I'm going to bend the need to be a live Nazis?
No.
What crime am I committing?
No, come on.
Enforce the law.
Obey your own law.
Obviously your own.
Yeah.
What am I doing here?
Don't argue.
Hey, hey!
Let's go, bye!
We're about to pray.
We're praying such a prayer as well.
God says we can bring anything you want to do.
Start, start, start.
Start.
Stop, man.
Stop.
We offer you some food if you want to eat it.
Hey, what is going on here?
We just want you to watch the lawyer.
Excuse me.
We're trying to put him behind the street.
Hey, hey, that's my guy.
That's my guy.
Stop.
Public safety.
Why don't you take care of that?
Stay back, guys.
Stay back.
Hey, stay back.
Stop pushing forward.
Do you see why this is an important story?
They're threatening Joe Warmington, and I think they tried to intimidate me, but either I was too stupid to understand it or too stubborn to go with it.
They're trying to stop coverage, stop asking questions about the mayor's accusation that the police itself refused to prosecute pro-Hamas extremists.
And in so doing, in making threats against Joe Warmington, Guessing they were trying to threaten me, I'm just too stupid to realize it.
They were showing they were taking a harder line against peaceful journalism than they do against pro-Hamas activism.
The fact that they arrested David time and again and even arrested me, but wouldn't arrest these foreign nationals who are not only whipping up anti-Semitism, but are breaking the law in the ways I outlined earlier.
Don't you think this is quite a new story after all?
I should tell you, the people of Toronto think so.
Here's an image from the Toronto Sun website, which shows the hottest stories by view count.
You might think that the story I've just described is a little bit of inside baseball that no one would care about.
Well, if that's what you think, you'd be wrong.
The number one story on the Toronto Sun website is precisely Joe Warmington describing this.
I think we've got a problem in Toronto.
We have some sort of blockage.
And it rings true that it could be this Falgooni Devnath.
Alas, she isn't talking to any journalists.
So all we have is our speculation and the mayor's accusation.
I'm less concerned about politics and gossip and inside baseball than I am about the fact that every week these pro-Hamas activists take to the streets.
And every night somewhere in the greater Toronto area, there is some anti-Semitic vandalism, shooting, Molotov cocktails in Montreal, vandalism of synagogues.
That's actually what I'm worried about.
And I'm worried that if someone like those Bondi Beach terrorists came to the idea that they were going to take steps and murder some Jews, they could find it easy to do so.
In fact, I see in the papers today that there was a young man who was already caught up in our justice system, who was arrested with firearms and was planning to kill Jewish students, female girl Jewish students.
He was planning on it and he was arrested before he had a chance.
Now, had he acted on his plans, I don't know if he could have been stopped.
I truly think it's only a matter of time before one of the hundreds of thousands of extremist anti-Semitic Muslim migrants to this country says, I'm going to do what ISIS encourages me to do, what Hamas encourages me to do, and what the hero and the martyrs in Australia did.
I'm very worried about that.
And I'm worried about that because nothing has been done.
And if the reason nothing has been done is because of a Pakistani-born United Nations lawyer at the Toronto Police Service who stops any charges from being made, well, that's an important story to tell.
And I'm glad the Toronto Sun is telling it.
I'm glad Joe Warmington is not scared.
And I'm glad I'm obviously too stupid to realize when I'm being threatened by a senior member of the police.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Joan of Arc Rejoins00:08:39
Hey, welcome back.
You know, the other day we announced that Tamara Leach, the Joan of Arc of the Truckers, is joining Rebel News.
And that was a bit of work to accomplish because we had to approve her job description with her probation officer.
I know that sounds nuts, but remember she's under house arrest.
So we need to let the government know every time she has to go and do a story, come to a meeting, travel.
And it's a bit of a hassle.
But on the other hand, I look at it as a way that she can be productive and do things.
Of course, she worked with Rebel News before she was sentenced by the court.
So this is a continuation of that.
So Tamara Leach was very exciting.
But you may have seen, and keen-eyed viewers who love their rebel videos would have seen that we have recently brought on board another journalist too, who has done, I don't know, three or four stories already.
And I thought, well, good heavens.
Let's invite her on the show to do a proper introduction.
Joining us now via Zoom is our latest talent, Scarlett.
Grace, Scarlett, great to see you.
And thanks for your week of work over the last couple of weeks.
Welcome aboard.
Thank you.
I'm having a blast.
Doesn't feel like work at all.
You know what?
I feel the same way because these are things that I want to talk about.
These are places I want to go.
So going with the rebel brand, a few things happen.
First of all, a lot of people know rebels.
So they know, okay, this is going to be populist.
This is going to be on the side of the little guy.
And in the case of, you know, the Palestinian protest, people know we're on the side of Canadians and we're not on the side of the Palestinian Hamas.
We're not on the side of people shrieking about jihad.
So when you wear that rebel hat or that rebel shirt to go out there, our reputation precedes you.
You yourself have a strong reputation.
Why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about yourself?
Yeah, well, I guess my life changed when I went to the Freedom Convoy in 2022.
And I went kind of on a whim.
I first saw the whisperings of it on Facebook and I was like, yes, somebody's doing something about this, full support.
And then last minute I decided to go to Ottawa.
I thought it was just going to be the weekend and I ended up staying three and a half weeks and it changed my life in every way.
I met all of the new people that I know now through that.
I wasn't afraid to hold my opinion back anymore.
I was in the art scene before, so, you know, very left dominated, but the Freedom Convoy freed me.
So I just kept speaking up and speaking my mind and it's eventually led me here, I guess.
You know, it was a crucible for so many people to wake up and it changed things.
I mean, Aaron O'Toole was deposed as leader of the conservatives, Jason Kenney in Alberta.
So it had huge seismic effects in politics, in journalism, and I think in the hearts and minds of millions of Canadians.
So your story is interesting and it's not unique.
A lot of people, that was their awakening.
I have seen you on a number of occasions at some of these street, I'm not going to say street battles, but there have been street protests in Toronto, pro-Israel ones.
And I'm also going to say pro-Hamas.
Some people say, oh, why are you saying pro-Hamas?
They're really pro-Palestinian.
No, no.
At these protests I've been to, they are pro-Hamas.
They even once had its reenactment of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
A lot of them dress like terrorists.
I've seen you there as an activist.
Why don't you tell me a little bit about that?
Well, October 7th happened.
And at that point, I wasn't fully informed of the entirety of the Palestine-Israel conflict.
I knew a little bit.
I talked about it with my mom in the past, but I didn't know everything.
But my initial reaction was to, I was hurting for Israel after the horrendous footage we saw.
Oh my God.
And then I don't even think it was two days later, I was in Ottawa for a freedom-related event, and I saw my first pro-Palestine protest.
I had to look up what the flag was.
I didn't know anything.
And then I saw that these people were supporting what had happened on October 7th.
And my mind was blown.
I'm like, after what I just saw, there are people in our streets in the Capitol supporting this.
So I took a step back and I was like, I need to educate myself.
I took like a month or two just reading, watching documentaries, talking to people, and eventually came back to my initial instinct to stand with Israel, even more so now that I've learned more.
And the fact that more people aren't speaking up for the Jewish community here even, you don't even have to be standing up for Israel, but the Jewish people here blows my mind.
Like we learned about this in school.
Learned about what happened leading up to World War II.
It's history repeating.
And because people are not speaking up like I am, I feel like I have to be even louder.
Wow.
I mean, I share your view.
I'm not so concerned about Israel.
I think Israel can take care of itself.
It's a tough little country.
I'm worried about Canada.
I'm worried about threats of violence here.
I'm worried about, you know, people shrieking, people walking through residential areas, shrieking at anyone who looks Jewish.
Like, I can't believe what's happening here.
Forget about over there.
I'm worried about Canada.
Well, there's one more story.
In fact, let me throw to the next story because in the last couple of weeks, you've done a few things.
You've covered the weekly protest at this intersection of Bathurst and Shepard.
Let me just throw to a clip of that.
And then I want to show another clip where you went to Markham, Ontario, which is part of the Greater Toronto Area, to talk about an MP who crossed the floor from the Conservatives to Liberals.
So first, here's one of your first reports at that weekly protest where Palestinian and Jewish Canadians face off.
Here, take a look.
Australia was blessed with this modern-day Maccabee who spoke the word of God and spoke the truth.
Rabbi Schlanger is now dead, but his message of truth will echo throughout the ages.
Are you seeing a lot of parallels with what's happening in Australia and here in Canada as well?
Absolutely.
I mean, it can happen right now for all we know.
It's devastating.
There's a great phrase.
I don't know who came up with it, but first they come for the Saturday people, then they come for the Sunday people.
Exactly.
Is there a reason that we're in the Jewish neighborhood, the largest Jewish neighborhood in Canada today after the first night of Hanukkah?
Nobody has an answer why we're in a Jewish neighborhood on the first night of Hanukkah.
No?
Scarlett, now you were saying that this was actually a special event.
There was a menorah lighting for the holiday of Hanukkah, but it looked like the Hamas side was there still blasting away.
Tell me, tell me, but they sort of swarmed you, but you kept your calm, you kept your po, you know, you're well composed.
Tell me a little bit about that.
Yeah, so like I explained in the report, the pro-Israel rallies that are at the end that were at the intersection of Bathurst and Shepherd, they actually concluded in October once all of the living hostages had returned.
But the pro-Hamas side continued to show up every Sunday in the same neighborhood.
And because they didn't have a specific crowd to target, they started going through residential areas, carrying on doing their thing.
So they are there every Sunday, anyways.
But we have come back this past Sunday for the first night of Hanukkah for the menorah lighting.
And yeah, I, of course, I interviewed people in the Jewish community.
And then towards the end, we were like, maybe we can get an opinion from the other side.
Let's see how it goes.
Normally, the police do not let anybody from the Israel side of the street cross the street to the pro-Palestine protesters.
But I think because I was doing journalism, I had the guys of being with the press.
They let me that time.
And they just, the police just watched as they swarmed me, tried to have a conversation, asked a few of them why they thought it was appropriate to be there on the first night of Hanukkah.
No justifiable argument, of course, just shrieking, yelling around me.
Chinese Influence in Elections00:02:25
But I've done that before.
I'm used to it.
Yeah, protesting against a Jewish holiday sort of shows it's not about Israel or this land or that land.
Just don't like Jews, which I think they'll admit if they're candid.
You were also, you had a tough job.
Markham is an interesting place, and their MP just switched sides.
I understand from reports that he had met with the Chinese embassy just a few days earlier.
And I haven't seen an answer to that.
I don't know if he's confirmed or denied that, but an MP, a Chinese-Canadian MP, in a riding that is hotly contested by which the Chinese influence.
I'm not talking about Chinese-Canadian influence.
I'm talking about the People's Republic of China is messing around.
This is one of the 11 districts that was compromised.
And suddenly, a Chinese-Canadian MP crosses the floor, looks pretty fishy.
You went there, and ordinary people on the street, a lot of them were not comfy with it.
Here's a clip of your streeters in Markham: conservative to liberal crossing the floor.
Yeah, it's great.
You think it's a good thing?
Oh, yeah.
The Red Liberal government sees itself as a player.
It is picking winners and losers through that age-old enemy of human progress, central planning and interventionist Luton.
He is told me he's a tool head snake.
Did you support him as a conservative?
Yes, I'm.
Yes.
So do you feel that you're being represented by the switch?
I don't think it looked tough to get people.
I mean, it's hard to get people to stop and talk, especially when it's cold out.
But you spoke to one Chinese Canadian who said she was not pleased at all by this.
Do you think this is just going to blow over?
Because there was another MP from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia who crossed the floor a few weeks ago, too.
I guess there's really nothing you can do about it, but are the grassroots in Markham?
Do they seem angry?
Yeah, yeah, they do.
There was a protest last week, or I believe on Monday, in front of his office that we covered.
And then there's going to be another one tomorrow at, I believe, 2 p.m.
They're not happy, and they have a reason to be upset.
They voted for a conservative candidate, not a liberal one.
Unfortunately, as it seems with most liberal scandals, I think the liberals are just going to try and ignore it until it blows over.
But I don't think that protesters are going to stop anytime soon.
Yeah, very interesting.
Immigration Minister's Courage00:03:28
Well, Scarlett, welcome aboard.
And I know you're going to learn our tricks of the trade from our whole team, whether it's our chief reporter, Sheila Gonreed, our managing editor, Tamara Ugolini, David the Menzoid Menzies.
There's a whole bunch of people here who have been doing that rebel style of journalism for years, and we're at your disposal.
We look forward to your work.
Now, you're going to take a break over Christmas, as all of us will, but you're going to start with the, I mean, I think you're going to be doing something in the field tomorrow.
But I'm really looking forward to starting the new year with a bang with you.
And thank you so much for joining our team.
I think you've got the number one element of being a rebel.
And I told you this when we interviewed you for the position.
The number one thing a rebel news journalism has to have is courage.
Courage to say something that someone might not want to hear.
The courage to speak truth to power.
You showed that courage when you were at Bathurst and Shepherd were surrounded by screaming pro-Hamas protesters and you didn't blink.
So I think you've got the courage and spades and the rest will come in time.
So congratulations.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
I'm really excited.
Right on.
Great to see that.
Scarlett Grace, the latest rebel.
Stay with us.
your letters to me next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me on Michelle Rampel Garner's conversation about immigration.
Reena says, I agree with Michelle on all immigration issues, 100%.
I think a little more needs to be done above what Michelle has mentioned, the only way to get back to normal immigration standard before 2015.
Remigration, that's the word.
We have to send these folks home.
Donald Trump's doing it.
Nandra Farage says he's going to do it.
Austria looks like they're going to do it.
Sweden is doing it in a small way.
I think Denmark and Norway might as well.
I think it's the only way to fix the problem because it's untenable.
Memory Lane Canada says, I live in the same neighborhood as you, Ezra.
I'm not Jewish, but I too share your concerns about the chips and hummus group at that exact corner every weekend because simply by living in this neighborhood, I become Jewish by association.
I've been in this neighborhood for over 35 years.
It is not the neighborhood it was prior to 2020.
Not coincidentally, things began to change in 2015.
Yeah, in 2015, Justin Trudeau, first of all, switched sides on the Palestinian Jewish Israel question, but more importantly, let in literally millions of people who not only hate the Jews, but hate Christians and hate Canada too.
Paul Kay says, all you have to do is look at the present immigration minister and you will know why it's a complete mess.
Oh, our current immigration minister.
I mean, they really give it to the weakest member of cabinet each time.
It's crazy.
Fantable says Canada is finished, destroyed beyond repair.
Well, you might be right, but there's enough chance that you're wrong that it's worth fighting.
And I think people are starting to get fed up.
Remember, it wasn't just Michelle Rempel Garner who said that.
When I spoke to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith a few days ago, she said she was in favor of dramatic changes to immigration, including a new rule that you couldn't get social services in Alberta until you paid in for, I think she said, 10 years.
So that would dissuade a lot of people from coming to this country and maybe get the remigration process happening.