The Ben Mulroney Show - Who will pay for refugee-filled shelters? Is Mayor Olivia Chow... right? You betcha.

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

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welcome to the thursday edition of the ben mulrooney show it is Thursday august 21st this is my last day on the show this week i'm off with my mother uh to a charity event in Victoria, BC. And I said it yesterday. My mother is far more organized than I, and she made sure that we had our Air Canada tickets, and then we found out that there was going to be a strike. And so just to be safe, we got ourselves WestJet tickets,

and later today we're going to confirm which flight we're on. So stay tuned. But we are getting to Victoria, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing the West Coast. And I watched Superman for the third time last night with the kids. It holds up, guys. It holds up. It's a great movie.

It made me feel great. Love that movie. Thank you, James Gunn, for bringing back Superman. All right, we got to talk about this. This is a very uncomfortable video to watch. In somewhere in Mississauga, in what looks like a, it looks like a, it's not a grocery store. It looks like a small, like a hasty market. It looks like that one of those smaller, like a rabba or something.

A man in Mississauga just goes off. I don't know what instigated it. I don't know what the flashpoint was. but this man went on a racist tirade as he was exiting a store and I want to play it for you

and then we're going to talk about it on the other side I hate this this country is it's all brown and shi I hate this fucking pockies and Arabs leave

yeah that's That's disgusting. And I know myself, right? I don't know if I have it within me to run into a burning building if I hear the cries of someone in there. I don't know if I would have that in me to do. But I know myself because I've done this before. If I had been in that moment and I had been there, I would have called that man out to his face. That is disgusting language. It's toxic. He should be condemned. I don't know if anybody has identity. him and I frankly don't care what set him off to use that language is disgusting and it is it is it is beneath all of us but it exists and we need to talk about the fact that that sentiment exists I don't know that we would have heard something like that and because we heard it from this guy you know others are saying it and certainly others are thinking it things are getting worse in this country, things are getting worse in this city for the idea of the idea that we are building something great together, right? I remember just a few short years ago, there was a magic here in the city of Toronto where we, it's almost like we solved the riddle, we solved the riddle of how how people can live together from different places, can coexist and,

build something greater and this city was great and that's not necessarily the case anymore so this disgusting racist needs to be condemned for being the disgusting racist that he is but the sentiment that he brought up should be viewed as a warning sign to us that we are going down a path we have gone down a path that we need to reverse course on When somebody takes issue with the current state of Canada as it relates to the influx of immigrants, it is not a criticism of immigration. It is a criticism of the immigration policy that got us to where we are. There is a certain type of person who suggests that any criticism of a policy is criticism of the idea behind that policy.

And that is false. it lacks nuance. It is a childlike view of a real problem and I don't have time to address those people because they are not willing to participate in a conversation that can take us to a better place. Our premier Doug Ford commented on something quite similar to this.

He's on topic. Let's listen. But what do you expect when you bring in over 2 million people and I'm all pro-immigration but in saying that we've got to slow down now because the foundation of our health care system, our education, our infrastructure, everything we do is one thing. That's our economy. And we just need to make sure that we can keep up.

We're building the schools, building the hospitals, we're building infrastructure, but we're the fastest growing region in North America. So let's just get caught up, get our housing, and then we can bring more people in. You know, some people compare it. There's some people who say, well, the door needs to be open to Canada. We're a welcoming place. Yes, we are. But it's not a door to an open, never-ending paradise.

It's a door to an elevator. And the elevator is currently at capacity. And yes, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could invite 10 more people onto the elevator. You know what happens if you invite 10 more people onto an elevator at capacity? It snaps on the way up and everybody dies. They crash to their death. It's not magnanimous. It's not generous to bring people into a country that cannot house them, that cannot give them jobs, that cannot give them social services.

It's dumbfoundingly stupid. And that's where we are. We are behaving as horrible hosts. We're hosting, we're telling everybody, we're hosting a block party, except we don't have any food to serve. We don't have any drink. We don't have any entertainment. It's the worst party on the block. And things are about to get worse in the city of Toronto

because we turned on the taps increasing the number of refugees were allowing in this country. The refugees were, it was determined by the government in Ottawa, how many were coming. And of course they flocked to Toronto. And now the government in Ottawa

is saying they will no longer fund the housing for those refugees that they brought into the country. So Toronto is going to be on the hook to fund and pay for the housing required to take care of these refugees. And if you're listening right now, you may want to, you know, turn on the voice notes on your phone because I'm going to say something I don't often say. Olivia Chow, the mayor of Toronto, is absolutely right. she is she is sounding the alarm she is saying we don't have the funding needed to deal with the

refugees that were allowed into the country by the federal government she says the new funding offer for refugee shelters leaves the city more than $100 million short in 2025 100 million this is a federal responsibility chow is arguing that housing asylum seekers is a federal duty she is right, warning that Ottawa's decision to cover only 39% of Toronto's $671 million request amounts to a funding cut equal to a 2% property tax hike. So here's what's going to happen. The municipal tax base is going to be responsible for taking care of this. Our mayor likes to look for solutions in terms of how can she get more money from us.

We are going to be on the hook for this. I would bet dollars to donuts and in the next municipal budget we the taxpayer probably through an increase in our housing tax we're going to be asked to take care of this

so yet again the taxpayer in Toronto is going to be asked to pay more and we the taxpayers aren't getting anything in return because it is to fund refugees who were brought here by Ottawa So I'm going to say it.

This is Mayor Chow is right. She's signaling the alarm. It's pottery barn rules. If you break it, you buy it. If you break the refugee system, you have to pay for it. Until we get our house in order, as Doug Ford has said. This is pretty simple stuff. If you're the one who decided that you wanted to bring people in

because you want to show how generous of spirit Canada is, how magnanimous we are, how open we are, then you got to pay for it. And by the way, when I say you, let's be honest, there's only one taxpayer. We're all, we're on the hook for it. It just should come from our federal taxes. This is a very real danger here

that this could spark another public fight between Toronto and the liberals. This could echo the 2023 fight when asylum seekers were sleeping on the sidewalk. it could happen again the winter is coming this could happen again and Toronto the good

will be Toronto the mediocre all right don't go anywhere when we come back we were the first to tell you about the story yesterday Hussein Borhod is a convicted ISIS sniper but instead of a jail cell he's been living in a townhouse

we got a former CIS officer joining us to ask is this how Ottawa handles national security threats don't go anywhere Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show in a follow-up to a conversation we had yesterday when we told you about a Canadian

by the name of Hussein Borhot who traveled to Syria to pick up arms against Canada swearing allegiance to ISIS. First he wanted to be a... He thought to... Maybe what I'll be as a suicide bomber. But then he... He started noodling around with becoming a sniper for ISIS.

It turns out quite proficient in that second in his class. Anyway, he eventually comes back to Canada. I mentioned yesterday. I actually said the words, I have no idea how he got back to Canada. But he got back to Canada under investigation by the RCMP and undercover Sting. And over seven years, he spoke gleefully about his, it was hatred of Canada and how much he was looking forward to killing as many infidels as possible so he could get into paradise. It was only after he was.

before the courts did he say he was sorry and he was regretful and remorseful and oh, he was so young when it happened. And then we find out that a man fitting his description and his name is serving out his sentence as a convicted ISIS terrorist in a minimum security facility with no fences in essentially what amounts to a townhouse 100 kilometers north of Calgary. I got a lot of questions. And so why not bring on the CEO of Borealis threat and risk consulting former C. Senior Strategic Analyst on Terrorism.

Phil Gerski, Phil, welcome to the show. Morning, Ben. How are you? Well, I got lots of questions and hopefully you got some answers. So I said it yesterday. It was a question that popped up while I was describing this guy. How does a guy like that who goes to fight with for the enemy on the other side of the world end up being able to get back into the country in such a way where he's not arrested on the spot? Yeah, that's a really good question.

So just for your listeners knowledge, you mentioned, worked at CIS. So, you know, we worked on cases like this for a long time. And the way it works in Canada is that CIS often gets involved early. And then when it becomes criminal in nature, we disclose to the RCMP. They pick up the criminal case, etc., etc. We've had this happen before, Ben, where people have left the country and then you kind of lose track of them. Because once you're outside of your jurisdiction, it's hard to follow them, surveillance, sources, that kind of thing. It's purely possibly came back on a forged passport with a different name. We've had that happen before. But the particulars as to how we got back in, I don't know,

Because certainly if he'd come back as we were saying Borod, I'm guessing we would have been over like, you know, peanut butter on a stick kind of thing. So it must have been false documentation. Phil, like, we were talking yesterday about how this guy was radicalized somehow in Canada. I don't know whether it was online or through a group. I don't know what it is. But he went, he was so radicalized. In fact, he swore allegiance to ISIS and he took steps to become a lethal member of a fighting force sworn to kill Canadians. then he comes home and he is while under investigation by an undercover RCMP sting he's very proud

of this radicalization and and then he gets before the courts and at that point that's when he's remorseful that's when he starts hedging and and explaining away his sins i have personally i think the onus should be on on him to prove he's been de-radicalized i don't know that was do you think any of that proof was ever offered? Was it as simple as him saying he was sorry? Because saying sorry is a pretty easy thing to do once you've been caught. I hate to tell you this, Ben.

I've seen this happen dozens of times where we've got people before courts and it's like this light bulb was on, right? Oh my God, what have I done? If I say sorry, maybe it's okay. It's a great Canadian thing to do to say sorry, right? Yeah. I trust this guy as far as I can throw him.

I've seen people who have said, you know, been there done. I got the T-shirt of abandon the cause. And they go on and rejoin it, you know, five months later kind of thing. So, no, the onus is on him to prove that he no longer does it, but it doesn't matter. The fact is he committed a defense on the criminal code. He joined an enlisted terrorist entity.

He wanted to kill Canadians. I don't care how sorry you are. You did it in the first place. That's an offense under the criminal code. And I get that. I mean, and he was tried and he was convicted. And yet, for some reason, his crimes did not rise to a level that this country felt was so important that he would face anything but living in a townhouse with no fences around in a minimum security facility. I struggle to understand how we can look.

All I need is this one case. All I need to look is one case. This, to me, demonstrates that we as a nation are not taking our national security seriously. It gets worse, Ben. There was an ISIS woman who we brought back a taxpayer expense, and she got a one-day sentence in prison for having joined ISIS. Yeah, her risk of recidivism is not very high. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, but I feel like I look at it.

that. I say, I don't care if her risk of recidivism is high or not. I care that she did what she did. And because she did that, there needs to be a punishment. She needs to live with the, she needs to live in a way where some sort of, some sort of, of, of, of punishment reminds her daily that we as a society do not stand for what she did. I completely agree with you, brand. The problem is it's not the soup of the day right now. No one cares about ISIS. al-Qaeda, isom of extremism. You can't use the term anymore. I've been called racist, Ben,

for talking about Islam of extremism for the past 10 years. People don't want to hear about it. And all I want to talk about is neo-Nazis and the armed forces, blah, blah, blah. So we've lost the program. But, Phil, wouldn't our allies care? Wouldn't our allies care that,

because here's another question for you. We've identified this one guy. There's no way that this is the one guy, the one ISIS fighter from Canada, who's living amongst us. There's no way that this is, we're one and done here. Well, I've got an example for you.

Remember Offender Saw back in the late 90s who tried to blow up Los Angeles airport, the so-called Millennium plot, he tried across the border in B.C. and was caught by the United States. If he'd gone through, it would have been some very uncomfortable questions asked of Canada.

You knew about this guy. He came back to your country. Now people are dead in Los Angeles. What are you doing about it? So yeah, it has implications for our alliances, but has implications for Canadians as well, Ben. And the bottom line is that places like Calgary, Emerton, I worked those cases for many, many years. There's lots of people, you know, Hussein Borod is not a sole example here.

There are many people like him. And you're right that the system's not taking it seriously because they've moved on to other things. And they're ignoring the threat that's facing them, you know, right in front of them. Now, we do have a new government with a new prime minister who has new priorities. And to be fair, on the issue of our military readiness and strengthening our army. border, all of those things, he has at least spoken in a way that should be emboldening to us. He talks about beefing up the border. He talks about new technologies.

He talks about staffing up. He talks about taking these things seriously. Have you seen steps? Are we getting to a place? Is he and his government, are they putting steps in place where we could do a better job on failings that were examining? today in the future. Well, okay, I'm cautiously optimistic.

I am a glass, half full kind of person, but to be perfectly honest, it's just words so far. And you know, as well as I know, Ben, departments have been asked for a 15% cut across the board, although defense apparently exempt from that. I've heard about ceases the RCMP, but defense has been exempt from the cuts. It's one thing to make an announcement, and they call the people out in front of the cameras, and we're going to do X, Y, and Z. But, yeah, I'll wait and see, you know, when the money actually shows up and things

are done. When would you expect money to show up? Well, how much time do we have? I don't know. I mean, this government inherited a humongous deficit thanks to the previous government. There's some serious fiscal decisions that have to be made, but national security, whether there's defense or ceasers, the RCMP, you can't, you can't scrimp on that, you have to put the money forward. Where are they going to find it? I have no idea. I just hope for the sake of Canadians and for our allies, that they do find it, and that they do take these things seriously, because a former government clearly did not take national security seriously. We saw that in the whole inquiry with the Chinese interference. So let's hope the county government finally wakes up, realizes we've got these threats, we're going to take this seriously, and we'll make sure we have the resources, both financial and human, to deal with them. Are we doing anything? I know you said that we don't want to talk about, you know, ISIS or radical Islam. And, you know, I don't want to talk about it either, but you got to take the world as it is. Are we doing enough today in the here and now to prevent homegrown radicalization

of that community. Okay, well, so I retired from CESA in 2015, and that was our primary counterterrorism investigation, it was jihadis, whether they're here in Canada or going abroad. And let's face it, lots of Canadians have gone abroad and killed people. That's not a good thing for your reputation as a country, throwing a Canadian flag by beheading somebody. I hope they're doing a lot.

I can't give you figures because I don't know, but I do know that they have shifted resources because you've got so many threats simultaneously, and you have to sort of fill it. You know, it's like the little boy of the dyke, right? You keep putting your finger in the holes, right? There's lots of holes. I don't know that jihadism is getting the attention that should.

There's another arrest in Montreal, by the way, Ben, of a team that a pledged legal to ISIS and wanted to shoot people in Montreal. So they haven't gone away. And as I said earlier, my fear is that the government thinks this is yesterday's problem, and yet on a daily basis, because I monitor the news on a daily basis, there's a jihadi attack every day somewhere in the world. And so if the government doesn't realize that, they're not reading the same news that I am. So I am hoping that they will allow these security services like CIS and like CIS and like the

or CMP do their jobs and then, you know, not put their head in the sands and get embarrassed over talking about racism as extremism. Phil Gersky, really appreciate you coming on. It's not the best news that you've given us, but information is always power. So thank you very much. Ben, you only ever call me when things go bad,

but I appreciate it, my friend. All right, you take care. You do, bye-bye. All right, here's some more good news for you. North York robbery ends with five teens arrested, including a 12-year-old. Once again, crime is in the spotlight. as your faith in our justice system waned.

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I share how investigators uncovered shocking evidence of a serial killer. and hear exclusive interviews with the killer's family. Listen to the full season of Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon music by asking Alexa to play the podcast Crime Beat. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us on this Thursday. Well, another day in the city of Toronto, another story of a gang of young people committing a crime.

Here are some details on a robbery. Five masked suspects. allegedly used hammers to smash their way into a locked jewelry store near York Mills and Leslie on Tuesday afternoon. The five mass suspects aged between 12 and 15, 12 and 25, 12 and 25. Ladies and gentlemen, 12 is the youngest age that we can charge anyone with a crime in this country. We were concerned with 16-year-olds just a few weeks ago. Well, these gangs, and I'm assuming that this is a gang-ordered robbery,

these gangs are getting these kids as young as 12. It's only a matter of time before they're 11. What are we supposed to do? We just let them go. That's what our laws allow. We can't charge anybody younger than 12. In the getaway attempt, the group arrived in a stolen vehicle, stole jewelry but were quickly tracked down by police arrests have been made officers arrested all

five suspects shortly thereafter recovering stolen property at the scene each one faces multiple charges including robbery with an offensive weapon possession of stolen property and disguise with intent the 16 year old also faces a breach of release order i'm guessing because probably charged another crime and out on bail so a couple of things that come to mind i'm getting sick and tired of people, I mean, if I see a group of young people in hoodies wearing masks entering a mall, I will bet my next mortgage payment that I'm about to witness a crime. All right? It's the uniform.

I've seen it on social media at every, at Christmas, the smash and grabs that happened. That's the uniform. Hoodie and a mask. I know that we wore masks during the pandemic. We're not in the pandemic anymore. I know that we've been allowing people to wear masks at protests all over this city for almost two years. Can we finally acknowledge that this is a problem? I guarantee you, some of these kids, they're not going to go out.

They're going to be a little more scared to commit a crime if we can see their faces. I would like, I humbly, humbly suggest we make it illegal to wear masks in public anymore. I think it should be illegal to wear a mask in a mall. If you don't like that, stay home. If you're worried about COVID, stay home. I urge you. Stay home. Shop online. But if you're going to go to the Eaton Center,

if you're going to go to the shops at Don Mills, you're going to any of those places, it should be illegal to wear a mask. Am I infringing on somebody's charter rights? I don't care. I care about the rights of the entrepreneur who opened a business and all they want to do is turn a tidy little profit

so they can put some money away so that one day when they hit 65 or 70 they don't have to work anymore. Instead, these things are allowed to happen. You know what happens? Their insurance rates get jacked up. And these kids are out again. So what do we do here?

What's the solution? Is this criminal code, right? How many times have we heard it from Ron Chinser, any of these other police officers, ex-police officers saying they have to know, as you were saying, repercussions. And these kids, that 12 year old, I guarantee you he knows he is just going to get a slap on the wrist of some sort. And look, he's 12 years old. A 12 year old doesn't just wake up

one day and five minutes later he's in the back of a car on his way to a robbery. There is grooming involved. To take a 12 year old whose biggest concern is, you know, his first day a school or, you know, what's his mom going to make for dinner or playing basketball or playing baseball with his friends or playing video games with his friends. To go from that to this requires grooming. It requires attention by a criminal element to that young boy to make him feel welcome, to make him feel comfortable. And then when you ask him to commit a crime, you got to get him to a place where he's down with that.

We both have children around this age. What are they thinking right now? What sort of thing? I guarantee you they're not thinking about stuff like this, right? But in other words, this takes dedication by a group outside of the home. And I am not suggesting that the parents in this case did everything wrong. But without knowing anything, they did something wrong. Like you drop the ball in some fundamental way.

I understand. I'm not going to sit here and have somebody call in and say, well, they may be busy or they may be unemployed or they may have this or they may entirely possible. You have a child that is your responsibility. If your child at 12 years old has somehow found themselves into a gang of thieves, then at some point you weren't doing one, at least one thing that as a parent you should be doing. And I don't know if, look, if we're not going to go down the path of trying these, these, these youth criminal justice act,

the focus of the youth criminal justice as adults, then maybe the onus has to be on the parents. Like if we're not going to change the Youth Criminal Justice Act, if we're not going to recognize that gangs are leveraging that to build out an army of people, of thieves and of criminals who will be treated with kid gloves. If we're not going to recognize they've weaponized that act against society, then maybe it's time to start looking at making the parents accountable?

Making the parents accountable somehow? I don't know. I'm putting it out there. But like something has to be done. This is, this is, I didn't think I'd, I didn't think I'd wake up today and, and we'd be talking about a 12 year old in a gang. I didn't think that. Well, in a gang, one thing, I mean, did they get recruited early, but actually doing a smash and grab with hammers? Yeah. violence wearing a mask? Are you to, and tell me, the 12 year olds doing that then, like now? Yeah.

What's he going to graduate to? Exactly. You know that this isn't the only time. No, of course not. It's, it's, of course not. Of course not. So, yeah, we're going to be watching this space. Meanwhile, yeah, people are still talking about this.

I'm talking about the man who defended his home where somebody broke in and he has now been charged. The police said the 44-year-old man in Lindsay was asleep when he woke up to find an intruder inside his unit. There was an altercation that ensued, which resulted in the suspect sustaining serious life-threatening injuries. Couldn't care less about that person. I don't care. I don't care what happened. You walk into somebody's house, you best believe you're putting yourself at risk. However, the resident was subsequently charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon, while the intruder, 41-year-old man, also from Lindsay, was charged with four

offenses, including possession of a weapon for dangerous purpose and break and enter. The public is angry about this. The public is angry that this man who is defending his home is now being charged as and could find himself in jail. He could be sharing a cell with this guy. The two of them could be in prison together. That's actually wild. Yeah. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah. I thought maybe since they're both from Lindsay, maybe they went to school together. Yeah. But they could be in a cell together. Yeah. Well, the public anger is stoked by the police, the fact they're not releasing details on what exactly happened here. But here's something just to chew on. When they were, when Pierre Trudeau was building out his charter of rights, there was talk of having property rights

entrenched in that document. That was, that fell by the wayside. One of the reasons they decide not to give us the, our God-given right to our property is because the crown wanted to make it easier on themselves in case they ever need to expropriate land. This is a knock-on effect of us not having property rights at a charter level in this country. If we did, I promise you, this guy would not be charged the way he was this is insanity insanity but it's canada in 2025 all right bc nurses there's a bc nurse facing a 93 thousand dollar bill and a suspension over online posts for being critical of of um the new gender reality we're living in no patients have been harmed but the college says her comments could harm trans people question is do words kill that's next

Thank you. Thank you. You know what I'm going to be. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrudey show. Thank you so much for joining us. And yesterday I thought we had a respite from the insanity storm that we've been living as a culture for years when the news of a teacher at the TDSB

who had, he had worn black face. Or he had worn, he had painted his face black. It was interpreted as black face. He thought he was dressing as a zombie for Halloween. He lost his job, and after an investigation, they realized, you know, he didn't really appreciate what he was doing, and he was exceptionally sorry. He got his job back. He got his back pay, and it was just, and I pointed out, he was a Serbian immigrant who is not steeped in the history and the danger and the insult that something like that presents. And so he took a course, he apologized, he's learned from it.

and everybody has moved on and this person who made his life the education of the young is now back doing his participating in his chosen profession and I think we're all better for it right and I was happy to share that story with you yesterday so you got that and I was hoping that that was the beginning of a trend well clearly this is candid you got to remember that's not the case so there's a nurse out of British Columbia who was suspended for a month and she was ordered to pay almost $94,000 in legal cost after being found guilty of professional misconduct by the College of Nurses and Midwives. What's the crime? What's the professional misconduct? Did she, was she drunk on the job? Was she violent towards her coworkers?

Did she not adequately offer care when somebody needed it in her, as part of her professional responsibilities no she expressed support for j k rolling and she said that there she believes that there are two genders uh there was an investigation in a hearing there which which um which gave rise to a three hundred and thirty two page report led to a 20 day hearing over 19 months it focused on her off-duty comments no patients no no no patients were harmed um um um um But the college's rationale was that the disciplinary panel ruled her posts, carried a likelihood of being offensive or harmful to trans-identified people, even without evidence of actual harm.

So I want to take trans people out of this conversation for a moment. I try to lead with respect in every interaction I have with anyone. I don't believe I have ever behaved one-on-one with a member of that community that I would feel I'd done something wrong and I don't feel that I want everybody to live the fullest expression of their life. And I acknowledge that everyone has their own journey and some people's journeys are more difficult than others. and some people have it easy and some people have it easy for a while in life and then it gets hard other people start hard

and then it gets easy everyone is different I appreciate that one of the glories of living in the Western world one of the things that used to make a country like Canada so magical one of the reasons we punched above our weight

one of the reasons this country of less than 100 million people less than 50 million people has been able to achieve such incredible things is because our system, our society is built on the collision of ideas in the public space. And you walk out your front door and you don't know what you're going to collide with. And it's that magical alchemy of having your ideas challenged or hearing something you'd never thought you'd hear. because we have a free and unfettered system of communication

where you can do and say whatever floats your boat and you may get taken down a peg you may get challenged and what happens when your ideas are challenged they either fall to pieces or you come up with a better idea and it's that collision of ideas that gives us a society in Canada that I believe is better than the others I am not a moral or societal relativist.

I believe not every society is different and the same. No, no. Ours is better than a lot of them. That's why people move here. That's why people move here. And they don't move other places. Because this place is better. And it has a lot to do with the collision of ideas in the public space.

And so I take great issue with the idea that any group, any group of people, need to be protected from ideas need to be protected from speech that isn't like unless you're telling me that we have made a law that what this woman is saying has been deemed hate speech and I don't believe that's the case

then nobody needs or deserves protection from ideas and if you identify with a group that feels that words are injuring to you and words cause pain. I don't know what to say to you because I've just laid out for you how I feel that this country is only special because we let people argue things out and we appreciate the collision of ideas in the public space. If you want to live in a place where you will never hear

anything that challenges your worldview or challenges how you see yourself in the world. I can't help you because that's not what this country is. You're asking for a reimagining of what this country is and you're asking to cast aside everything that makes this place special. You know, I go home from work some days and I am defeated. this the world defeats me I go to bed at night and I say wow today just kick the ever-loving shiz out of me

the idea it's the stories right the stories that are out there is it is it the stories or is it the lack of discussion no I get I get I go sometimes I get defeated because I'm just weaker than I want to be that day and and what I've encountered that day was stronger than I was

and then I wake up the next day and hopefully if I hopefully that one day doesn't become two and doesn't become three I've been in those dark places before where entire seasons of my life are consumed by a feeling like I'm drowning and I have to work

at being bigger than that and I just saw a video today of a friend of mine and we're going to talk about this on another day he was honest about how he was feeling he hasn't worked in his chosen profession in almost two years and he was being in this moment he is defeated the world broke him in that moment he will survive he will beat this he will be stronger than what is hurting him i know that for sure he doesn't need protection from the

world he needs to figure out how to be resilient in the world and so it's about how you react to it, but to cower and to say, words hurt me. Words are violence. Silence is violence. That's all nonsense. It's all nonsense. We all exist together in a place where our ideas collide in a productive, respectful way. Even if you disagree with what you're hearing, it's not intended to hurt because words can't hurt. And if you are somebody who believes that words truly hurt you, then that is something that you need to talk to somebody about. Words are not violence. They never have and they never will be. Violence is violence. Any suggestion otherwise is an attempt to create a fiction that I will not live in. I fully appreciate that the world can hurt, like that the world

can bring you down. It's how resilient are we to rise above it and to challenge those things that we disagree with and to create a reality that we can live in that we're uh where where where we push back on ideas we disagree with i'm i'm disappointed by this and i hope you you you understand i have not mentioned a single group specifically because i don't believe it's about one group or another it's about the fear of ideas if you are fearful of ideas there are plenty of places in the world where ideas are prohibited. This place, Canada, has and will always be magical because we are not afraid of ideas. We are not afraid of words.

And we allow them to explode in a collision in the public space. And the second that we deny that is the second we just say goodbye to the promise that is Canada. Big Brother is back. Let's break it, go! This summer the game gets hotter, the alliances get trickier, and the blindsides, brutal. Just a roller coaster of backstabbing and craziness.

New house guests, new twists, same epic drama. Bro, I'm gunning for you. You're my number one target. Who can you trust when everyone's watching? Game on, baby. Big Brother, all new Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays on Global. Stream on Stack TV.