Juno News - BOMBSHELL U.S. allegations put spotlight on crime in Canada

00:00:00.000 welcome to straight up with mark patrone appreciate you tuning in my friends i am your host

00:00:08.780 well a former canadian olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug trafficking kingpin

00:00:14.720 is now suspected of ordering the murder of a key witness in the case against him

00:00:19.820 according to the u.s department of justice ryan james wedding controls one of the most prolific

00:00:26.060 and violent drug trafficking organizations anywhere today we're unsealing a new indictment

00:00:32.360 charging wedding with two additional counts of witness tampering and intimidation murder

00:00:40.260 money laundering and drug trafficking the new indictment also includes several other individuals

00:00:47.060 involved in the murder of the witness and other crimes in connection with this criminal enterprise

00:00:53.380 do not get to be a drug kingpin and evade the law make no mistake about it ryan wedding

00:01:00.340 is a modern day iteration of pablo escobar he's a modern day iteration of el chapo guzman

00:01:06.220 this justice department and this fbi will work with our canadian counterparts and the government

00:01:11.460 officials across the world to bring him to justice now you heard cash patel and u.s attorney general

00:01:18.980 ham bondi calling him basically the largest distributor of cocaine in canada independent

00:01:25.620 journalist sam cooper is working on that story and he'll be joining us a little later on as our guest today

00:01:31.220 an inspector with the ontario provincial police says at least seven transnational criminal gangs

00:01:38.100 are operating in canada pat morris says these groups have been designated as terror organizations

00:01:44.660 for good reason intelligence indicates that at least seven major transnational criminal organizations

00:01:50.500 maintain operations in our country they have systematically embedded operatives within canadian

00:01:55.780 shipping logistics chains and export facilities they have cultivated relationships with corrupted

00:02:01.620 public and private sector employees including port workers warehouse supervisors

00:02:06.020 transportation and licensing officials they understand canadian supply chain vulnerabilities

00:02:11.620 and they exploit them methodically yeah these criminal gangs are involved in drug trafficking especially

00:02:16.980 fentanyl human trafficking and illegal firearms well is this the deal albertans and many other

00:02:23.300 canadians have been waiting for the globe and mail is quoting unnamed sources saying ottawa alberta close

00:02:29.220 to a deal that includes oil pipeline to dc coast sources say the proposed oil pipeline would run from

00:02:37.300 alberta to the northwest coast of british columbia and according to the globe the deal would involve

00:02:42.820 granting an exemption to certain ships from the current ban on oil tankers off the bc coast no word on the

00:02:50.180 possible objections to the oil pipeline in carney's own caucus he's got some climate hardliners there like

00:02:56.900 stephen gilbo and nate erskine smith another sign governments are backing away from net zero commitments

00:03:04.100 bc has scrapped the mandate that every new vehicle sold in the province must be zero emission by 2035

00:03:13.300 it's also canceled a rebate program for evs energy minister adrian dix says the 100 sales goal and a 90

00:03:23.460 target for 2030 are just no longer realistic highly skilled immigrants are the most likely to leave canada

00:03:31.300 according to the institute for canadian citizenship the ceo of that organization daniel bernhard

00:03:37.620 says most of the skilled workers leaving are well most likely to do so in the first five years of

00:03:43.780 their time in canada the five-year departure rate for immigrant health care workers is 36 percent that's

00:03:50.260 the same for scientists the five-year departure rate for experienced executives is 193 above average

00:03:58.580 software developers ai and cyber security professionals managers in finance engineering

00:04:04.180 architecture the very people who can help canada build the economy and infrastructure and housing of

00:04:10.980 the future all leave at above average rates yeah and more than a third of immigrant health care workers

00:04:17.940 head for the exits within five years of getting here as well and i'm now joined by the founder of the

00:04:24.100 bureau and independent journalist sam cooper welcome sam great to be with you well we now hear from the

00:04:31.220 likes of cash patel and pam bondy that this former canadian olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug

00:04:38.420 trafficking kingpin sounds like one of the most notorious canadian crime figures in history maybe you

00:04:45.940 could give us a little bit of background on this yeah for sure the ryan wedding story is should be deeply

00:04:52.980 shameful to all canadians and it should underline that there has been some truth to what president

00:04:58.980 trump and cash patel have accused that canada is being used by mexican cartels and chinese communist

00:05:05.860 party uh fentanyl precursor suppliers and i've done a lot of reporting uh a lot of it sourced from american

00:05:13.860 government uh people that were very frustrated that canada and the rcmp were not adequately investigating

00:05:21.700 wedding wedding and that's really the core of the story this former snowboarder raised up uh the

00:05:27.860 ranks of bc organized crime starting in cannabis he made connections with very i will call them state

00:05:35.300 adjacent iranian money launders he made connections to women with good access to mexican cartels and in a

00:05:43.380 nutshell he became the the possibly the single conduit of canadian organized crime which is just exploding

00:05:53.380 in terms of the number of crime gangs on the streets in canada he became their conduit to to the mexican

00:05:59.620 cartels he controls that pipeline and so uh i've been told by my american government sources that not only the

00:06:07.700 drug enforcement administration of course the fbi the atf have been looking at wedding very seriously

00:06:15.540 and one of their top concerns is his lethality his brutality i was told that he was killing canadians

00:06:23.140 right and left over the past year and rcmp canadian police weren't doing much to cooperate with the

00:06:29.700 americans which obviously have a lot more information about wedding so what how is he using canada

00:06:36.420 he is essentially as i've reported using uh indo-canadian trucking networks to go down into

00:06:43.460 the united states bring industrial loads of cocaine and methamphetamine up across our borders uh they use

00:06:51.140 canada's ports to send that out to australia and new zealand i believe europe where they can make a lot

00:06:56.580 of money for the cartels and the chinese networks and they are uh as you've probably heard running super

00:07:03.380 labs in canada also these will be connected to wedding where they're taking that those chinese

00:07:08.420 toxins the precursors for fentanyl ecstasy methamphetamine producing them in these canadian

00:07:14.020 labs some of them by the way on first nations land and then shipping that product around the world

00:07:19.540 including down into the united states that is true well obviously a wedding uh has not been convicted

00:07:26.580 of murdering anybody's going to have his day in court eventually and he'll try to prove his innocence

00:07:32.500 but do you think that this is going to be a wake-up call that it'll shake canadians as far as the

00:07:38.340 super labs i understand that one was recently shut down and that it'll maybe lead to closer ties with

00:07:44.740 the americans whom according to your sources say that you know canada really has not been a terrific

00:07:51.380 partner in terms of cooperating with the american authorities will something like this

00:07:56.500 maybe change things do you think yeah i'll answer in two parts the first is that my reporting over

00:08:02.900 the past year i'm not trying to be a bad canadian i've been going to u.s sources including derek maltz

00:08:09.380 the former leader of the dea and he said openly and on the record that the rcmp caused a major concern

00:08:17.780 by not cooperating with the u.s government on a super lab in falkland british columbia

00:08:23.540 that i assert is connected to ryan wedding and others the network in canada involving wedding chinese

00:08:30.660 crime iranian crime canadian bikers is massive and the rcmp failed to cooperate this is derek maltz on the

00:08:38.340 record remember a senior official telling donald trump that canada's failing so that's the story

00:08:44.180 of why we uh why we're being accused by president trump of dropping the ball uh why we face tariffs

00:08:50.740 i believe probably some of them justified is it getting better look i'm told that the new fentanyl

00:08:56.500 czar kevin brasso does get the problem that doesn't mean that he's going to come out and say that

00:09:02.180 canada is shipping fentanyl or ryan wedding is shipping fentanyl to the united states but i'm told

00:09:07.860 behind the scenes he's having conversations with uh senior officials in united states and they

00:09:13.460 believe he gets it they believe they're starting to see the let's call it the groundwork for better

00:09:18.740 cooperation but here's the big caveat my american sources and i believe them say there's still a

00:09:26.100 problem at the political level in ottawa where some people in mark carney's government still do not

00:09:31.300 want to admit that canada has a big problem but when we look at ryan wedding you're right he hasn't

00:09:36.660 been convicted but i have no doubt that he's responsible for many deaths from drug overdoses

00:09:43.380 to murders to innocent victims like a family in caledin that were mistaken for indo-canadian drug

00:09:49.780 shippers and got executed i believe he is behind a lot of that we've had i think between 50 and 60 000

00:09:57.620 people dying of opiate overdoses in canada when mark carney the prime minister was asked about it a while

00:10:05.460 back he said well it's not a crisis is that the kind of thing you're talking about a combination of

00:10:12.100 you know just an unwillingness to accept that we're in a very serious position here and that combined

00:10:17.700 with a level of foot dragging which is very troubling and disturbing what do you think yeah that is what i'm

00:10:23.620 talking about and uh i i'm sure you and other astute media veterans and watchers noticed that you know

00:10:30.580 after the mark carney government essentially said that donald trump and cash patel were making fake

00:10:36.100 allegations that canada didn't play a big role in the western hemisphere fentanyl trade we saw reports

00:10:42.180 from the globe and mail saying it's only a minimal amount a so-called investigation that sounded very much

00:10:48.340 like pmo talking points same from the cbc and you know i say the evidence has just mounted up in the

00:10:55.220 months that have passed uh two weeks ago we learned that in may uh a massive shipment i believe 4 000

00:11:02.900 kilograms of containers from china for fentanyl uh you know i believe it's ghb all kinds of these you

00:11:11.220 know toxic drugs were coming into vancouver so that starts to color in you know what i say americans

00:11:18.180 that is washington had the intelligence but due to some level of uh respect for canada as a

00:11:25.220 jurisdiction they're not coming out with all the evidence and information they have to leave it to

00:11:30.100 ottawa to own up to these seizures and super labs and so you see the information slowly leak out so this

00:11:36.580 is what i'm talking about in ottawa i call it a culture of denialism i testified in ottawa that canada

00:11:42.980 has major legal problems where many of the cases involving wedding have simply fallen apart before

00:11:49.140 they get up to trial so you mentioned he's not convicted yeah and he probably won't be in canada

00:11:54.420 because we lack the laws and that's a big problem yeah i mean there's just no excuse for it doesn't

00:12:01.060 make any sense and of course there's also the suspicions that people's palms are being greased by the

00:12:08.500 chinese possibly by the mexicans so we're talking about people handling the container traffic you

00:12:14.340 know at that point i think we only check one out of a hundred i believe you probably know that number

00:12:18.820 better than i that's a true figure in uh in vancouver ports less than one percent coming in is searched

00:12:25.700 and even less of what is going out is searched it's a major problem yeah i mean no wonder they think

00:12:31.620 that they can use canada as base of operations you know is it's just too easy for them to bring in

00:12:39.220 these precursors i mean peter navarro of course advisor to trump was talking about canada being

00:12:45.140 taken over by the mexican cartels you can say well you know he's using overheated rhetoric here but when

00:12:51.860 you start looking at these super labs the the number of them here and then you start looking at the lack

00:12:57.780 of action on the part of our federal government and police authorities when it comes to cooperating

00:13:03.620 with the feds you really have to wonder what's going on and whether the tentacles reach so deep

00:13:08.580 that bribery and you know corruption at the highest levels is a problem do you think that's a possibility

00:13:15.620 look uh i do it it's very it's not with any eagerness that i answer questions like this by saying that

00:13:23.380 my american sources do point to the political level and say yes canada is is now busting some

00:13:30.580 super labs under pressure but are they going after the senior level chinese operators who i assert are

00:13:37.540 very politically involved in canada no they're not and to your point we had an opp senior officer go on

00:13:45.220 you may have seen the clip he said there are seven transnational gangs operative in canada

00:13:51.300 so i believe some of them would be the mexican cartels he's pointing towards and the chinese

00:13:55.540 networks and he said they are involved in government corruption it doesn't get any more point blank than

00:14:02.100 that so from cbsa officers to people working in ports to police officers i have no doubt that there is

00:14:10.180 some corruption involved maybe even wide scale uh and at the political level it could be a question of

00:14:18.020 uh as i testified recently the rcmp lacks the capacity to pursue sensitive cases we even heard

00:14:27.540 in the hoag commission into foreign interference the rcmp acknowledged they got information on a chinese

00:14:34.900 state connected money laundering operation that was believed to connect to influence and the rcmp didn't

00:14:41.940 didn't investigate it they their answer was well there are so many networks that it probably wouldn't

00:14:47.300 have made a difference so if that seems like a there's a smell there's a there's a toxic smell

00:14:52.900 coming off that type of information in my view yeah it's interesting the sinaloa a cartel was on that

00:14:59.060 list of seven that you mentioned and we see how deadly serious trump is about this administration

00:15:05.780 now of course we know what's happening in the caribbean with the attacks on these uh narco boats

00:15:11.700 now we have the president uh reaching out to the uh the president of mexico shine bomb and talking about

00:15:19.300 you know would she approve of military strikes in mexico on some of these uh cartel operations

00:15:25.620 no telling how far he'll go i mean if he starts thinking that that canada isn't doing enough i mean

00:15:31.060 you know you have to wonder just how far the u.s administration would go whether they'd start

00:15:35.940 launching military strikes on our side of the border i mean i is that unthinkable considering

00:15:41.700 discussions you've had with your sources i mean i'm glad you brought it up like that i've been trying

00:15:47.380 to in my reporting and in podcasts tell canadians that the focus on drugs by the american government

00:15:54.580 is geopolitical they believe whether president trump says it or not when he's meeting with

00:16:00.020 xi jinping his intelligence says that china is willfully flooding north america with fentanyl and

00:16:08.660 other drugs they say maduro of venezuela operates a gang that they you can read the indictments they're

00:16:15.860 saying venezuela willfully is attacking united states with drugs even the people that don't agree with trump

00:16:22.900 such as his former national security advisor say regime change in venezuela is the right move

00:16:28.260 because china iran and russia are operating from that base and by the way my reporting shows that ryan

00:16:35.780 wedding was operating through venezuela this is an area also where hezbollah and iran have military

00:16:43.460 operators so to your question yeah i think if we're reading the tea leaves when the u.s government

00:16:50.020 military is hitting boats with missiles uh it's about more than drugs it's about their view that

00:16:57.060 this is the drugs coming into north america are a type of war-like activity and you're right uh let's

00:17:04.980 look at what secretary of state rubio said about mexican cartels just last week he said they have

00:17:10.020 state-like capabilities including intelligence so the u.s government to your to your question

00:17:16.820 they are they're already pushing at the borders of latin american nations canada could never have

00:17:22.980 been put into that category 10 years ago but with mexican cartels clearly operating on borderlands

00:17:31.060 including first nations reserves as i've reported on i do i do ask the question whether u.s special forces

00:17:40.100 want to get together with canadian special forces if they had the let's call them the authorities to

00:17:46.260 move on cartels and i've even interviewed a former canadian special forces operator that says yeah we

00:17:52.100 could do that we have the capacity and the will all we need is the go ahead from uh mark carney and his

00:17:58.740 senior people in ottawa and i'm wondering if something like that could enter into trade talks once

00:18:05.300 assuming they ever get back on the rails whether something like that might come up especially

00:18:10.180 within the context of everything you've been speaking about you know i'm sure yeah please

00:18:16.020 i i'm sure they will you know even mark carney himself if we listen to his sound bites he would

00:18:21.860 after going down to washington or even in the room with mr trump i think he said uh i think we're

00:18:28.500 looking at a deeper integration in in economic and security so absolutely if we fill in the blanks

00:18:35.140 of what you just asked i'm sure they're talking about better interoperability between canadian at

00:18:41.620 least police forces uh because of what i've just said that a lot of people in the us government are

00:18:47.380 very have been upset with the rcmp for uh as i'm told dropping the ball on cases like ryan wedding

00:18:55.620 well i want to thank you for your brilliant uh analysis of that but i also know that you have

00:19:01.140 some strong views on prime minister carney and that certainly aligns with the rest of our discussion here

00:19:07.620 taking us closer to china and i'm wondering whether the reticence on the part of some

00:19:12.900 senior officials in ottawa might you know on dealing with this issue might stem from their

00:19:18.660 willingness to kowtow to the communist chinese what do you think

00:19:22.340 i i think that's the case uh you know my work i did a book in 2021 called willful blindness

00:19:30.420 essentially about how china canada's elites for a long time decades have been opening the door to

00:19:37.780 business investment uh between canada and china and it's not like this trade was really benefiting

00:19:44.260 you know the whole country we have a you know a massive deficit in what we send to them versus what

00:19:49.860 they send us but i argued in my book that sort of business elites especially in quebec that are very

00:19:57.220 supportive of the liberal leaders have you know their own private business dealings with beijing

00:20:04.100 this has been going on for a long time and i talked to dr charles burton very recently and he said

00:20:11.460 you know with mark carney's recent comments about re-engaging with a strategic partnership with beijing

00:20:17.780 uh dr burton said look it sounds like mark carney is going full jean crecien 1990s the team canada

00:20:26.100 missions to china where it was all about increasing trade and it didn't work out well our trade you know

00:20:32.180 are that deficit that is china flooding us with their goods they want to get rid of us get rid of and

00:20:37.700 us not being able to send quality goods back it's only benefited china and so i have deep concerns

00:20:44.900 in many ways one of them is that i feel our last election mark carney benefited from as we know

00:20:52.180 it's documented that chinese propaganda was boosting his chances and as we hear from you know columnists

00:20:58.740 like brian lily have documented that the efforts to get conservatives to cross the floor and give mark

00:21:04.500 carney a majority continues and i just say that's dangerous if carney is trying and he is he's openly now

00:21:11.780 attempting to get closer to china perhaps using it as leverage in that trade battle with washington

00:21:18.020 but that's not the type of leverage you want to get uh on on on an ally that is really i say

00:21:25.700 not not just i reports come out saying washington and beijing are are circling around and getting

00:21:31.620 closer and closer to war surrounding taiwan so it it my headline here is

00:21:36.820 is beijing as a street strategic partner is suicide for canada thank you so much for this willful

00:21:44.500 blindness is the name of the book how can people access that uh that book you can go on uh amazon

00:21:51.220 and the book launched at number one in 2021 in canada and it's still up there in the top 100 so you can

00:21:57.620 pretty easily get it online and you have a sub stack page as well

00:22:01.540 the sub stack is the bureau.news which i started in 2023 now over 30 000 uh non-paying subscribers

00:22:09.780 enough paying subscribers to pay my bills and keep it going right now

00:22:13.940 sam cooper thank you so much for coming on the show we really appreciate it thank you

00:22:19.140 and that is it for this edition of straight up appreciate you tuning in my friends let's

00:22:23.220 do it again soon shall we bye bye for now

Juno News - November 19, 2025

BOMBSHELL U.S. allegations put spotlight on crime in Canada

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