THE EZRA LEVANT SHOW | What’s the real problem in Tumbler Ridge, BC?

GUEST: Investigative journalist Melanie Bennet of Juno News joins the show to discuss an Ontario teachers' federation hiring an anti-Israel group to deliver antisemitism training.

Everyone agrees that what happened in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia was horrifying. A drug-addled psychopath murdered family members and then attacked a school, leaving a small northern community shattered.

But within hours, much of the regime media had decided that wasn’t the real story.

Rather than concentrating on the mass killing itself, mainstream media became fixated on how the suspect was described — obsessing over pronouns, gender identity, and the risk of “blowback” against transgender activists.

They called the shooter a gunperson, so they didn't have to say he was a man identifying as a women.

So why was the murderer’s identity treated as more sensitive than the victims'?

A clip from Sky News was particularly revealing. Viewers were told it is “extremely rare” for women to commit mass shootings — a fact presented as if it were the central takeaway. The murderer himself seemed almost secondary.

The same pattern appeared across Canadian mainstream media. Rather than reporting plainly, journalists bent over backwards to avoid stating basic facts, even as those facts were widely known and reported by independent journalists.

The Toronto Star published a lengthy piece attacking so-called “inflammatory claims” — not about the killings, but about discussion of the shooter’s identity. Independent reporters were framed as the problem, while the crime faded into the background.

Early police alerts described the suspect as a “female in a dress,” language that later proved misleading. Police eventually said that the shooter was known to them, and had previously been apprehended under the provincial mental health act and hospitalized “in some circumstances.”

That’s incredible — if police were so afraid of even misgendering the killer, were they also afraid, politically, to arrest him despite his bizarre outbursts and obvious danger?

The CBC literally used his first name, like he’s a friend or something.

When RCMP officials finally acknowledged the shooter’s transgender identity, they insisted nothing had been hidden.

Speaking to the media, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald identified the shooter, who killed family members at home before turning a gun on random students at a local school in northern B.C., as 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, saying she was born male but had transitioned six years ago.

“We’re not hiding it,” he said, when pressed about the online speculation that had bubbled up in the day between the shooting and Wednesday’s press conference.

Is that true? The police really weren't trying to hide the identity of the shooter? By calling the person 'a female in a dress', they weren’t hiding the transgender issue? That’s what they said in their emergency cell phone message, too.

The Commissioner also said: “I will say this, we identified the suspect as they chose to be identified in public and in social media."

So you’re respecting the political wishes of a mass murderer? That’s what “Jesse” would want? Running defence not only for the murderer, but for transgenderism.

No time to talk about the victims, including young children. No time to talk about the vicious crime.

You see, according to the mainstream establishment media and the police commissioner, the real issue here is about the misgendering, and about being anti-trans. Don’t you know?

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Ezra Levant

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