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Shop Amazon for all your gifting needs. Increasingly, bad actors like fake colleges and big chain corporations have been exploiting our immigration system for their own interests. So we're doing something major. We're reducing the numbers of immigrants that will come to Canada for the next three years.
Today, I'm going to let you in on what happened, where we made some mistakes, and why we're taking this big turn. So Justin Trudeau addressing the Canadian people in a highly produced video that talked about status, people, and his vision. So why am I bringing you Canadian news? Because it always affects here, our neighbours to the north. He was also at Mar-a-Lago after Donald Trump said your borders have been a mess. Your lack of coordination and crackdown on illegal immigration is hurting us, especially when it comes to fentanyl.
And I'm going to hit you with a 25% tariff. He quickly said, let's talk, and then he said, let me come over and visit you. And that's where he spent last weekend.
But right now, the Liberals in Canada are losing ground to the Conservatives amongst young people. And that was written about in the free press by an outstanding reporter columnist, Rupa Subramaniah. And Rupa joins us now. Rupa, welcome back. Thanks. Thanks, Brian, for having me.
Great to be here. Yeah. So first off, in Canada, I know people listening right now and saying, you know, why should we care about Canada? It really matters a lot, and it seems to be trending the same way we're trending. Young people looking elsewhere feeling let down by Democrats.
Absolutely. So the piece that you referred to, which published today in the free press, I point to this growing disillusionment among young Canadians with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. You know, initially there was a strong base of support among these young Canadians. They gravitated towards Justin Trudeau back in 2015 when he first became prime minister because he promised them everything, including the legalization of cannabis, which really seemed to animate them at that point. But now they find themselves in this position where they're grappling with high taxes, there's an affordability and housing crisis in this country, high inflation and economic stagnation.
So policies like marijuana legalization and his social progressive agenda were basically seen as are now being seen as insufficient to address your basic bread and butter issues. And what's ended up happening is that younger voters are increasingly shifting support to the Conservative Party led by Pierre Polyaver, and they cite dissatisfaction with Trudeau's handling of the economy and rising cost of living challenges as their key concerns. So the numbers are pretty high. Now we have 40, he's had, the other party has 43 percent of the young vote. How high is that compared to past years and where Justin Trudeau came in on? Oh, he swept the votes of young Canadians. They powered his rise back in 2015, and there was a record voter turnout back in 2015 when he became prime minister. So what's happening right now is basically he's hemorrhaging that vote base. At this point he's just losing these people, and they've just lost interest in his social progressive agenda. Is that why, you know, immigration, legal immigration, is now popular? This is taking away opportunity and affecting the housing market. Do you think that's why he cut the tape he cut talking about the need to limit immigration?
Absolutely. So our problems here in Canada are not illegal immigration, although that is also happening, but it's not happening in great numbers. It's not as significant as what's happening at the southern border with the U.S. Legal migration has been a huge issue among Canadians where lots of people have come in and they've basically taken away jobs that were meant for young people, young students, high school students, students in universities.
These are minimum wage jobs. We basically imported a whole bunch of people from countries like India to work at coffee shops or as Uber drivers when these jobs were meant for young people, you know, to get a summer job or to pay off student loans and so on. And that's created a great amount of discontent. A country that valued immigration and believed in immigration is now souring on immigration, which is extraordinary. Yeah, and by the way, we're talking all about what's going on in Canada, and then Justin Trudeau to show up in Mar-a-Lago. And before I leave that, are you surprised he did that? I'm actually quite surprised, and I must say that I think that was the right thing to do.
I think it's best to be proactive. I wish he had done this before Trump became president because, you know, anybody who is watching the U.S. elections, including myself and those of us in the free press, we knew where things were headed. And I think he should have had the foresight to do what he did long before Trump became president. The point is that Justin Trudeau has actually been very critical of a Trump victory before, you know, before the elections and has been warning Canadians that this is going to be a huge challenge for us. And, you know, and with the usual things that one does when talking about Trump, you know, if you're liberal, that this is the rise of the far right and we should be concerned and so on. I wish he had toned down that criticism early on and then actually been proactive in going to Trump, President Trump, and sitting down with them and having a conversation.
Because they have a lot of things that they help to help each other with. We're talking now to Rupa Subranaya, and she writes for the free press. The other story I found fascinating and disturbing is you talk about de-banking. I remember the first time I heard de-banking is what was happening to the truckers in Canada. All of a sudden because they had their accounts frozen and who knows if they were able to have unfrozen.
I didn't really track the story afterwards, but they really destroyed their lives for standing up for their own industry, which was nuts for our neighbors to the north. And now you have de-banking and the headline tells it all. What do Muslims, January 6th riders and Melania Trump have in common? They've both been frozen out of their bank accounts who are told to bank elsewhere, right?
Absolutely. So there's this rising trend of de-banking in America, where financial institutions close accounts or deny services, perhaps due to political, ideological, or controversial associations that their clients may have. So in my story, I looked at examples that involve conservatives, Christians, Muslims, and others, including the January 6th, those who participated in the January 6th riots, and of course, prominent figures like Melania and Barron Trump. So really a diverse set of individuals and groups, a diverse set of Americans. And what's disturbing about this is that, you know, one of the many things that's disturbing about this is that how few people actually know about what is happening with respect to de-banking.
And I reached out to a range of different experts at various places, and they were hearing about it for the first time from me. And what I wanted to say is that this historical precedent to de-banking, which began with Operation Choke Point, and I detailed that quite a bit in my story, it was a U.S. Department of Justice initiative that targeted businesses deemed high risk for fraud. For example, they went after firearms dealers, payday lenders, and so on. By pressuring banks and financial institutions to sever ties with these folks. And, you know, a lot of people at that time criticized what was happening because it bypassed due process and unfairly stigmatized legal industries.
Yeah, it's nuts. And a lot of people don't ever get an explanation. They're not criminals. They're in Bitcoin. They're not criminals. They might be Republicans. Listen to Melania Trump talk about this.
Cut 30. When we left the White House, when I established my own business, the bank suddenly informed me they will not be able to do business with me anymore. Also, I had a very prominent email distribution service provider just rapidly terminated my agreement. So suddenly, as well as the university, I was all agreed that they will accept my donations for the foster students. And because of the board directors, they called back.
They found out that it was me. They said we cannot go on. It's very, very sad because who suffered?
They were children from foster community. You know, after January 6th, we have to isolate the Trumps, right? Yeah, absolutely. And so what happened on January 6th is truly, truly disturbing. And I spoke to an FBI whistleblower, George Hill.
He's retired now. But he testified before the House Judiciary Committee a couple of years ago. And he said that Bank of America actually volunteered all of this information to the FBI without any predication. The FBI wasn't even asking for this information, but they volunteered the banking information of anyone who was there on January 6th in and around the D.C. area. So even if you had bought a cup of coffee, you wound up on this list that the FBI should be looking at. You could have purchased a firearm like 15 years ago and you'd be on that list. And what's problematic about this is that the banks just volunteered this information.
And one of the questions I had while writing the story is, well, why would you volunteer this information when you're not being asked for it? And therein lies the problem. Because they're political animals, just like the people that want to disturb Donald Trump in this case. But it could be Democrats next. I hope it isn't. Absolutely. But it's all for political purposes. That's what you're saying. Yeah, absolutely.
Because one day the shoe is going to be on the other foot and it's not going to be nice. And the bottom line here is that the Bank Secrecy Act, which was strengthened after 9-11, the idea was to go after terrorists in foreign countries, foreign terrorists. But the same tools then were used to weaponize the financial system against ordinary Americans. You could be a parent objecting to something that is being taught at your child's school and then you become a domestic terrorist. And those are the same tools that are being weaponized against average Americans for speaking out.
It's crazy. And they go into the bank accounts. Lastly, this. Mark Anderson, a venture capitalist, very successful, got the bank too.
Listen to what he told Joe Rogan. As marijuana started to become legal, as prostitution started to become legal, and then guns. Under the Obama administration, they started to de-bank legal marijuana businesses, escort businesses, and then gun shops. Just like your gun manufacturers. And just like you're done, you're out of the banking system.
And so if you're running a medical marijuana dispensary in 2012, guess what? You're doing your business all in cash because you literally can't get a bank account. You can't get a visa terminal. You can't process transactions. You can't do payroll. You can't do direct deposit.
You can't get insurance. None of that stuff is available. You've been sanctioned.
None of that stuff is available. And then this administration extended that concept to apply it to tech founders, crypto founders, and then just generally political opponents. So that's been super pernicious. I wasn't aware of that.
Oh, 100%. Operation Shortpoint 1.0 was 15 years ago against the pot and the guns. Shortpoint 2.0 is primarily against their political enemies, and then to their disfavored tech startups. And it's hit the tech world hard. We've had like 30 founders de-banked in the last four years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's been a big recurring pattern. This is one of the reasons why we ended up supporting Trump. We can't live in a world where somebody starts a company that's a completely legal thing, and then they literally get sanctioned and embargoed by the United States government through a completely unaccountable... By the way, no due process. None of this is written down. There's no rules. There's no court. There's no decision process. There's no appeal. Who do you appeal to, right?
Like, who do you go to to get your bank account back? So, Priti, that just backs up your whole premise. Final thought?
Yeah, absolutely. The lack of transparency is what's most disturbing about this. I'm glad that Marc Andreessen raised this issue on Joe Rogan, and I'm glad that more people are now discovering that this is happening. And more people have come forward, actually, since Marc Andreessen spoke about this, talking about their own experiences of being de-banked. I'll tell you, when I was writing this story, a lot of people just didn't want this attention because they were worried of being further de-banked and then completely losing access to the financial system altogether. But things are starting to change. And let me remind your listeners that it was Trump who put an end to Operation Choke Point in 2017. And the financial surveillance state did not expand under Trump for whatever reason.
But he put an end to Operation Choke Point, and I'm hoping that President Trump is listening to the concerns of Americans who have been de-banked and puts an end to de-banking altogether. All right, thanks so much. Rupa, great having you. Read her columns in the free press. I appreciate it.
