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Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Chris Rufo lays out strategy for defeating wokeism at Red Deer conference

By
Isaac Lamoureux, True North Wire
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Source: christopherrufo.com

American conservative activist Christopher Rufo revealed the blueprint behind his success in combating woke ideology during a keynote speech at the Canada Strong and Free Network in Red Deer, Alberta on Saturday.

Rufo is known for his influential role in campaigns against critical race theory, gender ideology, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. He emphasized that victory in the cultural battle relies on a three-part model: facts, emotion, and power.

Rufo mentioned Ben Shapiro’s famous saying, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” However, he said that Shapiro has it backwards. 

“I think it’s completely wrong. And I think it’s actually completely true in the reverse, the inverse. Your feelings actually don’t care about the facts more often than not,” he said. He asked anyone in the audience whether they picked their spouse on the cold calculation of logical facts but determined that no robots were in attendance when nobody put up their hand. 

Rufo explained that while facts are essential, they are not enough on their own. 

“Human beings are primarily driven to action through emotion,” he said. 

He cited Aristotle’s teachings on rhetoric, noting that persuasion is built on the manipulation of emotions, not just on mastering facts. 

Rufo further emphasized that the media plays a crucial role in creating the urgency needed to push political figures into action. He elaborated that by leveraging facts through media narratives, he has been able to push issues like critical race theory into the national spotlight.

After establishing the need for facts and emotion, Rufo moved on to the third component: power. He explained that political victories require the truth and the ability to push that truth into positions of authority. 

“You have to fight very hard against some very savvy and very ruthless opponents to get those ideas into a position of power,” he said. 

Rufo outlined his method for achieving policy victories, including the abolition of critical race theory from public institutions in 22 states and his role in banning child sex change procedures in Texas permanently. 

He also helped abolish various DEI initiatives with support from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, United States Senator and vice presidential contender JD Vance, and former President Donald Trump. 

He pointed out that while outrage is an important tool in politics, it must be carefully directed toward a positive outcome. He warned that endless outrage without action could backfire. Instead, the outrage should be funnelled into meaningful policy changes.

Rufo was the mastermind behind blowing up the Claudine Gay controversy after it was discovered she plagiarized large portions of her dissertation. 

Left-wing activists and journalists tried to boycott Rufo after discovering he was attending the CSFN, causing various sponsors to pull their support. They were unsuccessful, as Rufo held the stage for over an hour.

Rufo also discussed how to target rhetoric, using Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as an example.

He said that individuals with right-wing belief systems too often try to use the centre-left language to appeal to them, but he said that seldom works. 

“I did see the video of the guy eating the apple,” said Rufo. “This guy is fantastic. I like that guy. And I think he’s adopted a pretty savvy rhetorical model.” 

He added that Poilievre presents himself as a “normal Canadian guy,” which he deemed a big advantage.

“What I think is so great about the apple video and why the apple video works, I mean, one: it’s hilarious… But what he does is he never accepts the premise. ‘What policies? How am I like Trump? You know, explain why that’s bad.’”

He said that by not falling for any rhetorical traps or accepting the premise, Poilievre disarms the journalist. Then, he uses facts to his advantage, turning to his main talking points of housing costs and the like.

He said that disarming an opponent rhetorically and then providing a solution opens a person up to listening and realizing that the premise on which they based their argument was false.

While many of Rufo’s points were covered in his over 40-minute speech, some of the most salient points came during the question and answer period with attendees, which lasted an additional 20 minutes.

OP-ED: Louis Riel and the Metis Rebels would have understood the Freedom Convoy

By
David Solway
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Source: X

The truckers’ protest in the winter of 2022 against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate not only continues to make headlines as the trials of prominent protesters drag on and verdicts are sporadically delivered, but the Freedom Convoy itself remains a touchstone in the ongoing debate about the country’s direction after a decade of increasingly left-wing Liberal government. The movement’s implications continue to resonate.

The Freedom Convoy wasn’t just a protest against forced vaccination, it was a nationwide outcry against what many perceived as an unprecedented experiment in authoritarianism. Thousands of truckers and thousands more supporters roared across the country from Prince Rupert, British Columbia, to the nation’s capital in Ottawa, demanding the attention of a leader they saw as having overstepped his bounds.

After two years of dutifully serving their country, as columnist Gwyn Morgan observed, “the truckers were to be thrown out of work – cast aside like unneeded accoutrements.” Once hailed as the heroes who essentially saved Canada from starvation during the pandemic’s frightening first wave, truckers were now facing unemployment and social ostracism – fuelling the sense of betrayal that drove them to Ottawa.

Their calls for the abolition of vaccine mandates and the restoration of constitutional rights fell on deaf ears, however. Trudeau refused to meet with the protesters, instead labelling them as extremists and racists. This contrasted glaringly with his fawning treatment of protests by First Nations or Black Lives Matter, with whom he met willingly, showed solidarity, “took a knee” or bowed his head like a penitent. But here, Trudeau responded with contempt and a heavy hand, invoking the never-before-used Emergencies Act to crush the protest and seeing numerous protesters slapped with multiple criminal charges.

Why the hypocrisy? Simple favoritism towards left-wing causes over “right wing” ones explains some of it. But I believe there was something deeper, something Trudeau and his acolytes may have sensed. In my opinion, the Freedom Convoy was about far more than just a giant convoy that crossed the country. It was the latest in a convoy of confrontations – a line stretching back to the nation’s very founding – between long-established centres of power in “Laurentian” Canada and people in the regions trying to assert their basic equality as citizens and protect their livelihoods, freedom and dignity. 

Trudeau’s approach to the protest, and his broader governance style, are characteristic of the attitude and tactics of the Laurentian Elite. This group, which includes political, academic, cultural, media and business leaders from Ontario and Quebec – the region drained by the St. Lawrence River – has long dominated the country. Their influence is particularly strong in shaping policies that disregard the needs and perspectives of Western Canadians.

The Laurentian Elite, as described by John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker in The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, and more recently by essayist John Weissenberger, have historically treated Western provinces as secondary.

It began with the formation of Canada in 1867 with two dominant central provinces. The purchase of Rupert’s Land in 1870 added what amounted to a vast hinterland colony to the young Dominion – without consulting the local inhabitants. This would trigger not one but two open rebellions by the Métis under Louis Riel – the second one bloodily suppressed by federally organized troops in 1885.

Three distinctly second-class provinces were carved out of the former Rupert’s Land, with Ottawa withholding crucial rights and jurisdictions that Ontario and Quebec took for granted. A succession of transportation and trade policies were crafted by the Laurentians and for the Laurentians – with one Liberal minister, Sir Clifford Sifton, openly boasting “that the great trade of the prairies shall go to enrich our people to the East.”

And so it continued for decades, from the anti-free-enterprise Canadian Wheat Board to tens of billions of dollars shovelled at Quebec through the federal equalization program, to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s utterly ruinous National Energy Program in 1980 – perhaps the first time Ottawa combined both taxation and the attempted destruction of a western industry in one policy. The first time, but not the last.

In short, the West has often been treated as a “semi-colonial possession,” its resources exploited but its contributions undervalued and its opinions dismissed. The truckers’ protest can be viewed as a modern-day manifestation of the longstanding tensions between Central and Western Canada. The convoy thus was not just about vaccine mandates but about challenging the Laurentian power structure that has long marginalized the West.

The protest’s dynamic revealed deep-seated frustrations with a federal government that many Western Canadians feel has consistently failed to represent their interests. The Laurentian Elite, despite their dominance, now face growing resistance not just from protesters but multiple provincial governments.

Alberta in particular has taken significant steps to assert its autonomy, introducing the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act in response to federal policies that it views as unconstitutional. Saskatchewan has similarly defied federal authority, refusing to pay the carbon levy and challenging Ottawa’s attempts to garnishee its funds. These actions signal a growing determination in the West to reclaim control over provincial affairs.

The truckers’ protest should therefore be seen as a catalyst for a broader movement seeking to redefine Canada’s federal structure. As the legacy of the Freedom Convoy continues to unfold, it may well be remembered as the spark that ignited a renewed push for a more balanced and equitable Confederation.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published by C2C Journal.

David Solway’s latest prose book is Crossing the Jordan: On Judaism, Islam and the West (New English Review Press, 2023). A new poetry chapbook, From the Sommelier’s Notebook, is scheduled to be released in August 2024 (Little Nightingale Press). Solway has produced two CDs of original songs: Blood Guitar and Other Tales (2014) and Partial to Cain (2019) on which he is accompanied by his pianist wife Janice Fiamengo. A third CD, The Dark, is in planning.

Premier Legault shares post accusing the Bloc Quebecois of selling out the province

By
Noah Jarvis, True North Wire
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Source: X

Quebec Premier François Legault pulled no punches when he reposted a tweet bashing the Bloc Québécois for supporting the Trudeau government in an upcoming vote of no confidence.

The Coalition Avenir Québec leader shared a post on X which compared the Bloc Québécois’ support for the Trudeau Liberals to their 2008 support for Liberal leader Stéphane Dion. He claims that the Bloc is selling Quebec out for a centralizing and Trudeauist party.

“In 2008, the Bloc preferred to be an accomplice to a centralizing and Trudeauist party rather than defend the interests of Quebec,” said Desmarais in the post later shared by Premier Legault.

After the 2008 election in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party won a minority government, the NDP and Bloc Québécois decided to support Dion and attempted to make him the Prime Minister, though the plot failed.

The tweet was originally posted by Vincent Desmarais – Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s Quebec advisor who served as a senior staffer in the Legault government from 2021 to May 2024.

Last week, Legault called on the Parti Québécois to tell the Bloc Québécois to vote with the Conservative party on the vote of non-confidence to bring the Trudeau Liberal government down and force an early election.

“I’m asking Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon to have the courage to ask his Bloc Québécois comrade to back down, not to support the Trudeau government next week, to defend the interests of Quebecers and the Quebec nation,” said Legault originally in French.

The confidence motion will fail if Bloc Québécois MPs vote in favour of the Liberals.  

Both Legault and Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet have demanded that the federal government give Quebec greater authority to manage immigration into the province. However, Blanchet has opted to attempt to work with the Trudeau government to extract those concessions while Legault urges for a change in government.

Blanchet told reporters that he would consider voting non-confidence in the Trudeau government if the Liberals fail to make concessions to the Bloc over the next few weeks.

“Part of what we both want is the same. We want more powers for Quebec and immigration because only Quebec should manage and administrate this issue for Quebecers,” Blanchet said. 

“If [Legault] is patient a few weeks, maybe Santa Claus will come and give him an election.”

Ratio’d | They are CENSORING True North content as “hate speech”

By
Harrison Faulkner
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Last week, a True North interview that challenged the Residential School narrative was censored by Spotify and removed from the platform because it violated community guidelines and was labeled “hate speech”. NDP MPs began publicly celebrating the censorship of our interview on social media.

Only a few days later, another NDP politician at a National Defence Committee meeting asked how True North could be “defeated” – as if our journalism is a threat to national security.

This is a matter of free speech and a free press. Both are under attack by big tech and the radical left.

Watch the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner!

US threatens stricter border rules if Ottawa doesn’t fix illegal immigration

By
Quinn Patrick, True North Wire
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Source: X

The US is urging Canada to review its immigration policies and to enforce stricter border protection after data revealed that more than 1,200 terror suspects have been stopped from crossing the northern border since 2020. 

According to US Customs and Border Protection, over 1,200 terror suspects from the agency’s Terrorist Screening Dataset, also referred to as the “watchlist” have attempted to gain entry to the US via the Canadian border in the last four years. 

A problem that US CBP said didn’t exist before 2020.

The agency is calling on Canada to either change its immigration process or suffer consequences.

The US CBP has seen a 54% spike in watchlist members trying to get from Canada in recent years. The agency stopped 484 listed people last year and has already encountered 281 people so far this year. 

A dramatic surge when compared to data from 2017-2019, where the US saw an average of 158 people from the watchlist try and enter annually.  

The agency said that listed members are now six times more likely to try and enter from Canada as opposed to the southwest border. 

Since 2020, US CBP has had 1,256 encounters with known or suspected terrorists trying to gain entry from Canada. 

When this happens and the person is an American citizen, they can be arrested or transferred to another agency. 

Non-citizens will be denied entry and could potentially be detained. 

However, if authorities don’t have enough grounds to make an arrest, they will send the person back to Canada. 

The US CBP’s main concern is that a growing number of watchlist members have been issued Canadian documents, which decreases the likelihood that authorities will be able to properly identify them. 

This has led the US border patrol to reconsider its lax relationship with Canadians who want to travel south. 

“It would be irresponsible for the U.S. to not take necessary heightened precautions when foreigners attempt to enter the United States,” said Senator Marc Rubio in a statement.

Rubio made the statement in July, urging the US Department of Homeland Security to execute a stronger approach to Canadian identification. 

“Irrespective of Canada’s immigration policies, the U.S. should not waive common-sense terrorist screening and vetting for any individual entering the U.S. through other countries,” he added.

Earlier this month the RCMP arrested Muhammad Shahzeb Khan in connection with a terror plot near Roxham Road in Quebec .

Khan had plans to illegally enter the U.S. and attack Jewish people in New York City. 

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Khan is described as a “Pakistani citizen residing in Canada.”

There have also been dozens of TikTok accounts discovered recently that advertise their ability to illegally smuggle Indian temporary residents and others from Canada into the US with ease, using unofficial points of entry.

Such TikTok accounts have emerged as the number of irregular entries into the U.S. from Canada has grown exponentially.

US CBPl recorded 189,402 migrant encounters at the Canada-U.S. border in 2023, up 73% from the previous years and 597% from 2021 when there were only 27,180 such encounters.

US authorities released a statement condemning the practices being carried out by “transnational criminal organizations” that are “claiming the borders are open and offer the northern border as a way to enter the U.S.”

Seven key takeaways from Danielle Smith’s Canada Strong and Free appearance

By
Isaac Lamoureux, True North Wire
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Source: X

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith blasted the Liberals’ recent Senate appointments, touted her government’s economic recovery from NDP debt, and warned Alberta Health Services to improve or face consequences in a sweeping address on healthcare and leadership. 

These are some of the critical points from the premier’s keynote address at the 2024 Canada Strong and Free Network in Red Deer on Saturday.

Below are some salient takeaways from the address and subsequent fireside chat with the conference’s chair, Michael Binnion.

Liberals appointed radical extremists instead of honouring Alberta’s Senate election

Smith wasted no time bashing the Liberals in her keynote address, taking aim at the Liberals for ignoring the results of Alberta’s Senate election.

Smith was introduced by Erika Barootes, who finished in second place in Alberta’s 2021 Senate election. Pam Davidson narrowly beat Barootes, but both would be sitting in the Senate if Ottawa honoured the results.

“Both of them should be sitting representing us in Ottawa, as opposed to a radical, extreme, LGBT activist, as well as a radical extreme fundraiser for the Liberals for a long time,” said Smith. 

The UCP has lifted the province out of the hole the NDP dug

Smith highlighted that under her leadership, the province has seen six credit upgrades in the last 18 months, resulting in lower interest rates, “which allows us to finance the outstanding NDP debt at a lower rate,” she said. 

Alberta’s premier highlighted that Alberta had created over 100,000 jobs in the past year, leading the country with 90% of private-sector job creation. While the province is set to lead the nation in job growth until at least 2028, she warned that bad leadership can still stymie a province as prosperous as Alberta. 

“We know this because, under the disastrous job-killing policies of the NDP, we watched our great province move backwards. During this time, we saw six credit downgrades, 13 quarters of consecutive outmigration, billions of dollars in lost investment, $80 billion in brand new debt, and a job crisis that devastated families,” she said.

Why Conservatives don’t succeed, and why a cornered Trudeau is dangerous

Smith said that Conservatives don’t succeed because they are incrementalists.

For example, when a left-wing government takes control and moves the goalposts by five feet, a Conservative government will take control and only move the goalposts back one or two feet. She said that Conservative governments should focus on moving the goalposts further back to normalcy and then begin incremental changes.

“The left takes advantage of these situations all the time,” said Smith. “Gerald Butts, let’s not forget what his advice was to Kathleen Wynne, and he’s even said this publicly. He knew she was going down in flames. So he said, let’s just go for broke these last ten months because then it will make it more difficult for the new guys coming in to reverse course.”

She warned that this could repeat itself in the coming months.

“Which is why this period of time right now is very, very dangerous with Trudeau on his last legs. This could be the time where they actually bring through the worst of their legislation,” said Smith.

Smith said she won’t make the same mistake as past governments. She plans to be bold and hopes that by being competent and getting things done, she can win the next election.

The Liberals’ immigration levels are unsustainable

While Smith has been more pro-immigration than many other premiers, the focus has been on interprovincial migration, and she has recently joined their opposition against the Liberals’ reckless policies.

For example, Alberta has continuously set interprovincial migration levels over the past few years, in part thanks to the Alberta is Calling campaign. Notably, applicants must already be Canadian citizens or permanent residents, so international migrants are not eligible. 

However, Smith has become critical of the Liberals’ immigration policies, urging a return to numbers seen under Stephen Harper, which was around 1%. 

Also, Smith said that the province, joined by Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, is against the feds relocating asylum seekers. 

“Let’s get back to a normal level of population growth through immigration. I suspect with the new government in Ottawa next year, led by Pierre Poilievre, we will see a return to those sensible policies,” she said. 

Alberta will be introducing compassionate intervention

Albertans suffering from addiction or mental health problems that pose a danger to themselves or others will be ordered into care for three to four months, where they will be treated and can recover.

“This was a very divisive idea when we first proposed it, but today we are seeing some surprising governments that are also supporting it and following our lead in British Columbia,” said Smith. “The sort of birthplace of safe supply and crack pipes being issued in vending machines has now decided that they’re going to introduce compassionate intervention legislation.” 

Enough is enough, AHS; deliver now or hit the road

Smith said that her decision to fire the “AHS superboard” followed a 15-year monopoly where they continuously delivered worse and worse outcomes despite the NDP shovelling money at them.

The premier regrets that AHS became essentially the only door Albertans could walk through to get treatment. To simplify the process, the provincial government has decentralized the services so that AHS can focus on their 106 facilities and ensure that they run them well. If they fail to do so, Smith said she’ll re-evaluate in a year and decide whether managerial changes are required.

Binnion said that he recently had to go to the United States to get a surgery done on his hip because it would take years to even see a doctor in Alberta. His wife had to do the same for a separate major surgery.

Smith said that she is considering implementing a surgical wait time guarantee, where if a service cannot be delivered within the recommended period, the province will reimburse you for services sought abroad.

For Binnion’s case, if he spent $35,000 but it could have been done in Alberta for $25,000, he would be reimbursed the latter amount.

She added that she’s more focused on fixing the current system, as the payback system may not serve lower and middle-class families who need Alberta’s healthcare system to work.

Alberta’s Bill of Rights will be introduced, emphasis on medical choice

While the premier couldn’t share too many details before implementing the legislation, she said that Alberta’s Bill of Rights would make it illegal for governments to discriminate against individuals for refusing medical treatments, such as vaccines.

Legislation that will be introduced in the fall will also prohibit gender reassignment surgeries for minors and ban puberty blockers for those 15 years old and younger.

An opt-in for topics on gender ideology and sexual identity will also be available to parents.

Also, Smith promised to ensure that biological females can compete in sports leagues against one another without having to face “stronger” biological males who are transgender.

The Daily Brief | Eby offers “glorified rentals” to BC residents

By
Lindsay Shepherd
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Source: Facebook

The BC NDP’s latest 2,600 homes announcement is being touted as “glorified rentals” by realtors in the province.

Plus, Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen has issued a public apology to independent journalist Kat Kanada for falsely accusing her of being influenced by the Russian government.

And a Pakistani man who was arrested in Quebec near the US border over an alleged terrorist plot earlier this month is said to have raised no red flags for immigration officials.

Tune into The Daily Brief with Lindsay Shepherd and Isaac Lamoureux!

LEVY: TDSB is in desperate need of reform after anti-Israel school field trip

By
Sue-Ann Levy
-
Source: X

On the same day of the controversial TDSB middle school field trip turned Jew hatefest, education director Colleen Russell-Rawlins walked out the door of the board to take vacation days until her official retirement in November.

She left all of the chaos she created behind.

The board is an absolute train wreck.

It is ironic that her woke policies, her obsession with DEI and her lackadaisical approach to policing those teachers and students who adopted her anti-racism, pro-Indigenous view of the world culminated in a “field trip” that clearly crossed the line.

The field trip on September 18th – evidence of an out-of-control board of administrators and trustees without a moral compass – was sold to parents as an excursion to downtown Toronto’s Grange Park to support “Mercury Justice for the Grassy Narrow Community” and Indigenous rights.

Parents were told the students would observe only.

As my former colleague Bryan Passifume has reported, it quickly turned into an anti-Israel hatefest during which students as young as those in Grade 3 were encouraged to march and chant, “From Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime.”

Students were also asked to wear blue shirts to identify themselves as colonizers. 

Jewish students who contended they were uncomfortable were reportedly told to “get over it.”

Some reportedly came home with “Zionism Kills” stickers – a shocking revelation.

A teacher named Anne Marie Longpre – known for her tweets expressing ongoing hatred of the Jewish state – appears to have organized the event, judging from her own comments on her X page.

Source: X

She was unrepentant about her involvement, claiming parents were not deceived.

She wrote in her X thread that there was “absolutely no deception” and asked why it was “harmful to kids” to hear “From Turtle Island to Palestine, Occupation is a crime.”

Source: X

The executive of the Toronto Elementary Teachers Federation took part and gladly posted their pictures on X. That included Helen Victoros, a Jew, who is president of the local union.

In a statement, the board itself and acting chairman Marxist Neethan Shan downplayed the “harms” that students may have experienced when the “educational experience” turned into a anti-Semitic hate fest.

Never mind that the board’s administrators misled parents. Never mind that teachers have no business pulling students—particularly ones so young — out of class to engage in social justice.

It is worthwhile to note that in early September, I predicted that the board was in an accident waiting to happen, given that it was rudderless. 

Besides the education director’s early departure, the board’s mostly woke trustees were left without a chairman when Rachel Chernos Lin took leave to try to better her political fortunes – running for an open seat on Toronto city council.

The last thing City Hall needs is another sure vote for our socialist mayor.

Only trustee Weidong Pei anticipated, quite correctly, that the Israel-Hamas conflict and rampant anti-Semitism would rear its ugly head again this fall.

In the last six months, Pei has tried to move a motion banning divisive geopolitics in board schools and the use of board property to promote a particular point of view (in other words, a pro-Palestinian point of view). 

He was defeated twice by a majority of the board’s trustees, who have enabled the out-of-control protests by ignorant woke teachers like those who marched last week and their unions.

He says he intends to try for a third time at next month’s board meeting.

A spokesman for the advocacy group, Save our Schools TDSB says, that the years of neglecting good governance, lack of transparency and meaningful consultation have finally caught up with the board’s top brass.

Because the senior leadership and trustees have put aside parental concerns that don’t align with their progressive vision for schools, “it is no coincidence that some teachers in the TDSB see this as a ‘green light’ to take children and introduce dangerous geo-political themes in class and on the streets of Toronto,” the spokesman says.

As the SOSTDSB spokesman says, the public outcry has shown that parents have lost confidence in the leadership of the TDSB.  

That notwithstanding, something has to be done about this train wreck of a school board, especially now that Russell-Rawlins has left the building.

I am pleased to see the new education minister, Jill Dunlop, is paying attention.

Dunlop needs to take drastic action.

Those teachers involved in the protest should be placed on leave and disciplined or fired for cause, starting with Longpre.

Since the majority of trustees can’t be trusted to do the right thing, or to pick a suitable new director, It is time for a board takeover. A provincial supervisor needs to be brought in, and not one whose sole obsession is anti-black racism and DEI ideologies.

Students should not be used as pawns in a dangerous woke science experiment.

What the teachers who organized the protest and the union executives did by participating last week was tantamount to child abuse.

The RCMP have lost 205 firearms since 2020

By
Quinn Patrick, True North Wire
-
Source: X

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police lost a total of 205 firearms since 2020, including submachine guns and machine guns, according to data obtained through an access-to-information request.

Over the past four years, the RCMP have reported losing 122 handguns, 55 shotguns, 23 rifles, three submachine-guns and two machine-guns, with nearly a dozen firearms having already been lost this year. 

Machine-guns and sub-machine guns, which are fully automatic weapons, are almost entirely prohibited from being privately owned by Canadians. 

The bulk of the lost guns went missing in 2021, a year when the RCMP reported an astonishing 99 missing firearms, including three fully automatic weapons. 

In 2020, the police agency lost 25 firearms, 44 in 2022 and 26 last year.

It remains unknown if any of the lost firearms have been recovered, or if any charges or disciplinary measures occurred as result of their disappearance.

According to Statistics Canada, “in 2022, police services in Canada reported about 14,000 firearm-related violent crimes.”

“This rate is 8.9% higher than that recorded in the previous year and represents a peak since collection of comparable data began in 2009. The rate of firearm-related homicide (0.88 incidents per 100,000) was also the highest rate recorded since 1991,” it said. 

The data on missing firearms was obtained by researcher and scholar Matt Malone and shared with CTV News. 

Malone works with the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ont. and is also the founder of digital database Open by Default, which is home to over 5.2 million government documents released through Canada’s access to information system.

The RCMP did not respond to True North’s request for comment.

However, in its response to Malone’s access-to-information request, Canada’s federal police force said it “cannot determine specifically if a firearm was lost by a service member.” 

A previous access-to-information request filed by Open by Default revealed that an additional 601 firearms were reported lost by the RCMP between 2000 and 2019, which included 15 machine-guns and submachine-guns.

The RCMP employs over 30,000 people across the country, including more than 19,000 police officers.

LEVY: Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well

By
Sue-Ann Levy
-
Source: Facebook

I made the mistake of responding to a leftist Jew I know very well on social media while on holiday in Italy last week.

She posted her deep respect for Democratic Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris on Facbook—accented by one of those glamour lithographs of the Democratic candidate —praying she’d win the Presidential election over her opponent Donald Trump.

I countered that it was surprising to me that any Jew would support Harris given her wishy-washy stance on the Hamas-Israeli conflict, her weak support of the Jewish state and her complete lack of response to the virulent and still ever-present tide of anti-Semitism in America and in Canada since last October 7.

I didn’t even mention the fact that Harris’ stepdaughter Ella Emhoff, 25, actively promoted donations to UNRWA this past March — a fact that the Democratic campaign has apparently tried to bury.

My reasoning was based on common sense and the concern that only a Trump presidency could address the global chaos. I pointed to his previous record during his first term during which he moved the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and initiated the Abraham Accords— striking diplomatic relations with the UAE and Bahrain.

I can’t vote. I know Trump has his faults. But I honestly believe he will be better for the future of America.

Well you would have thought I’d declared war on Liberal Jews.

For nearly 24 hours, my social media feed exploded — most of the users in Canada, but some living south of the border.

They questioned my morals and engaged in name calling.

They questioned how I could support a man with no ethics, especially being Jewish.

These alleged champions of women’s rights dismissed my years of political experience and flatly ignored my concerns about illegal immigrants crossing the border and raping and murdering women.

Stupidly I tried to present facts.

The more I did,  the angrier and more aggressive they became.

At one point one seemingly entitled hateful woman —after being told I own a home in Florida and naturally I’m invested in U.S. politics even though I can’t vote— told me to back off because the election was none of my business.

Clearly they all had a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

It was indeed a sad but accurate portrayal of how media bias and indoctrination has poisoned the minds of low-information voters, how disconnected some voters are from reality and how the world is truly topsy-turvy.

Stupidly I thought that perhaps these so-called “informed” women would be as concerned as me about safety and the future of the Jewish state.

Nope. They were proof positive that visceral hate and emotions trump logic.

They were more concerned with proving me wrong and gaslighting me to back off.

After a good 12 hours of this online hate and seeing I would not bend to their way of thinking, the poster decided to block me.

But this was not before she apologized to her online “friends” and thanked them for their kindness and understanding while someone (me!) disrupted her “dinner party.”

I kid you not! She actually described her post as a “dinner party.”

The world has truly gone mad!

A week before our trip, a lesbian acquaintance of mine also blocked me for merely challenging the tiresome narrative and the inaccurate tropes that the media dish out about Trump and Republicans. 

She seemed irked and even hurt that I was invading her echo chamber of like-minded uninformed voters.

But it didn’t just happen to me.

On a crowded train from Rome to Venice, Denise and I were forced to sit apart.

She was stuck in a set of seats with four women who also suffered from TDS.

My wife is the most patient and polite person imaginable.

I only heard snippets. But these women were ranting on about how awful Trump is —straight from the mouths of the biased pundits of MSNBC and CNN.

Denise tried to explain that she realizes —married to me—that all is not what it seems in the media and that media bias is rampant.

She, too, endeavoured to present them with facts.

But clearly that was a waste.

After disembarking she heard the women — who didn’t realize we were within earshot— talking about her and not necessarily in a flattering way.

Still I guess I was somewhat naive to think that TDS wouldn’t rear its ugly head this election as it did in 2016.

I guess I thought that the world had changed so much in eight years, that chaos is so rampant, our safety so in jeopardy, that anti-Semitism has grown at such a dizzying pace and the economy so in crisis that voters would have learned that the steak matters, not the sizzle.

But it is as it has been throughout my years of covering politics: voters’ memories can be extremely short and the left-wing media does an effective job of indoctrinating vulnerable minds.

I keep hoping that over the next six weeks logic and common sense will trump the gaslighting we see in the left-wing media.

The alternative is just too painful to imagine.

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