An influencer from Ecuador stood at Yonge and Dundas Square last week and gave Toronto zero stars. "This is downtown," he said. "This is the flagship of Toronto. And there's literally garbage, crackheads, crazy people, people talking to themselves." 

The panel on Friday's Rebel Roundtable livestream said he wasn't wrong.

The panel discussion opened with a different clip, one featuring a tourist in Vancouver whose bags were stolen from a hotel lobby by two opportunistic drug users who then drained $600 from his bank account.

Drea Humphrey, a B.C. resident, noted that Vancouver has 60% more property crime than Los Angeles. "It's an absolute embarrassment," she said, particularly given the hundreds of millions spent on hosting FIFA's World Cup.

Independent journalist Elie Cantin-Nantel has been flying across the country since January documenting its decline, and detailed how between 2014 and 2024, Toronto saw a 160% increase in shootings, a 47% increase in homicides, a 53% increase in assaults, and an 86% increase in car thefts. Homelessness is up 110% in three years.

"Our country is in decline," he said. "It is in decline." He pointed to Japan — where strict criminal laws and functioning mental health institutions mean a Louis Vuitton store operates inside the main train station.

"Can you imagine a designer store at Union?" he said. "It would get robbed all the time."

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Fellow independent journalist Natasha Graham, who reports from Montreal, said she visited Toronto last summer in tourist mode for the first time in years and was shocked.

"It is decrepit," she said. "The infrastructure is falling apart." She described being physically jostled at the aquarium and seeing a woman foraging through garbage at a suburban mall the night before the show.

"I don't think I need to look at people foraging in the garbage in a civilized society," she said. "I think having someone foraging through the garbage and accepting that — that is a lack of compassion."

David Menzies recalled asking a security guard at Yonge and Dundas Square why the small fountains in the square were shut off at night. The answer: homeless were using them as bidets.

"When that is the status quo and authorities know about it and do nothing except shut off the water," he said, "we have a problem that's not being addressed." He noted Toronto once had the nickname Toronto the Good. "That ship has sailed," he said.

The panel also reacted to FIFA Vancouver's official World Cup tourism website, which includes a guide on how to consume illegal drugs — advising visitors to "start slow" and use "one substance at a time."

Drea called it "so embarrassing." Elie said FIFA should be telling visitors these drugs are illegal and carry criminal consequences, not publishing a how-to guide. "I guarantee you in Qatar they weren't telling people how to use drugs," he said.

"It is not normal that people from the third world say their third world countries feel safer than Canada," Elie said. "We cannot allow this to continue being normalized."

Rebel Roundtable livestreams air Fridays at 11 a.m. MT / 1 p.m. ET on YouTube and Rumble.