Juno News - Former Liberal MP SLAMS Carney’s Iran stance as “facile” and dangerous

00:00:00.000 The Carney government's position on the war in Iran has shifted for a fourth time.

00:00:10.740 Now, he is saying the attack by the U.S. and Israel on Iran is illegal. 0.98

00:00:16.040 That suggestion has been dismissed as stupid by a former prime minister of Israel. 0.98

00:00:21.200 After initially offering unconditional support for the mission, 0.99

00:00:24.740 Carney now expresses regret over the violation of international law.

00:00:29.520 Let's listen.

00:00:30.500 The United States and Israel have acted without engaging the United Nations or consulting allies, including Canada.

00:00:38.040 So where to from here?

00:00:40.400 With a rapidly spreading conflict and growing threats to civilian life.

00:00:45.940 Canada reaffirms that international law binds all belligerents.

00:00:50.300 We condemn the strikes carried out by Iran on civilians and civilian infrastructure across the Middle East.

00:00:56.640 And we implore all parties, including the United States and Israel, to respect the rules of international engagement.

00:01:04.160 Carney wavered at his initial support when he met with opposition from his own caucus and cabinet.

00:01:10.440 Both the Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister favor a ceasefire and diplomatic solution.

00:01:16.000 Meantime, liberal backbencher Will Greaves condemned the mission, saying we can no longer trust the Americans.

00:01:22.140 And in moments when the world is most dangerous, how do we avoid sliding into automatic alignment with countries that we can no longer trust and which do not have Canada's interests in mind?

00:01:34.580 Listen, we can be clear-eyed about Iran's human rights record and its abuses and the destructive role that it has played in the Middle East and still insist on consistency, restraint, and the protection of civilians. 0.96

00:01:46.580 Because that's what credibility looks like in a fracturing world.

00:01:49.560 But Canada cannot endorse the unilateral and illegal use of military force, the killing of civilians, or the kidnap and assassination of foreign heads of government.

00:02:00.960 Well, it was endorsed, and then it wasn't. 1.00

00:02:03.660 In response, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett described Carney's latest position as stupid. 0.95

00:02:10.020 Prime Minister Mark Carney, he has said of the Israeli-American strikes in Iran that they would appear not to be consistent or to be inconsistent with international law. 0.95

00:02:22.080 What's your response to this criticism? 0.82

00:02:24.200 That's just stupid because Article 51 of the UN Charter explicitly says that our nation has a right of self-defense. 0.99

00:02:31.360 Are we supposed to wait for Iran to fully develop their nuclear weapons, their missiles, and be ready to shoot? 0.99

00:02:38.860 And at that moment, are we supposed to attack them or an hour before or a week before?

00:02:44.360 What we're doing is self-defense.

00:02:46.700 This is called self-defense. 0.91

00:02:48.320 Preventing from a genocidal, crazy Islamist regime acquiring a nuclear weapon is flat 1.00

00:02:54.360 self-defense. 0.82

00:02:55.100 And that's exactly what we're doing.

00:02:57.100 President Trump, meantime, has been harshly critical of both Spain and the UK for their

00:03:01.700 lack of support for Operation Epic Fury.

00:03:05.060 He also says the future of Iran's leadership is getting more uncertain by the day.

00:03:09.720 Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead.

00:03:12.500 So, you know, we had some in mind from that group that is dead.

00:03:18.000 And now we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports.

00:03:23.800 So I guess you have a third wave coming in.

00:03:25.900 Pretty sure we're not going to know anybody.

00:03:28.180 Our guest today is a former Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary in the Paul Martin government,

00:03:33.380 Dan McTague, who also worked on files, including Iran. Welcome to the show, Dan.

00:03:39.220 Mark, it's great to be here, and thank you for the introduction.

00:03:42.200 Let's talk a little bit about what's going on now. We've seen shifting positions by the Prime

00:03:47.060 Minister, depending it appears on what day it is. I mean, he was initially completely supportive

00:03:53.560 of the action now taken by the United States and Israel against Iran. Then within a day or two,

00:03:59.920 began to change. We saw the Foreign Affairs Minister and the Defense Minister express support,

00:04:08.480 not for the mission itself so much, but for a diplomatic decision, a diplomatic resolution,

00:04:14.640 a ceasefire. And now we have the Prime Minister coming out and basically describing the action

00:04:19.760 as illegal. What do you make of this? This doesn't look good for Canada, does it?

00:04:23.760 Well, no, but you've got a guy who takes an international approach rather than a Canadian

00:04:27.280 approach and doesn't see things the way uh we've seen it for many many years and that iran is a

00:04:32.400 very dangerous uh obstacle to world peace and to engagement and simply having them there will not

00:04:39.840 lead to uh any type of uh resolution to some of the greatest tensions that we face in the world

00:04:45.760 from the murder of thousands of israelis on october the 7th to bombings around the world to

00:04:53.760 financing the proxies whether it be hoodies hamas or hezbollah something had to be done this should

00:04:59.840 have been done 47 years ago and the fact that it wasn't probably because america was still reeling

00:05:04.000 from its reputation post uh the vietnam period but i'm old enough to remember that time and knew

00:05:09.920 that canada always had uh you know we at some points broke off diplomatic ties with iran because

00:05:15.120 we knew they killed canadians in prison uh madame kazemi was one of my files and uh we had to

00:05:22.160 basically shut down our embassy there because these people are villainous they are uh they're

00:05:27.840 very uh they do not believe in human rights and the uh their way of doing things is violence our

00:05:33.360 way or the highway unless you wanted to convert and become part of us so uh the actions taken

00:05:38.640 were necessary um i don't care who did it i'm just happy it was done i thought reagan would have been

00:05:44.080 the one to do this but that we got vacillating positions taken by europe and its friends and

00:05:49.920 allies and new buddies speaks volumes about the rather facile approach that Mark Carney has taken

00:05:56.640 and his government has taken to a very serious matter, the likes of which could end in making

00:06:00.960 the world a much safer place for everyone. Yeah, I mean, you sense that there's a Pollyanna view

00:06:06.400 that, you know, we can all respect international law. I mean, you're talking about a country that

00:06:10.480 shot down a civilian airliner just a few years ago, 2020, that killed 55 Canadians. And now,

00:06:17.200 of course, we hear that the regime has murdered somewhere between 35 and possibly 40,000 of its

00:06:24.160 own citizens in the last few weeks over their opposition to the regime. So we're talking about

00:06:31.040 a very bloody, vile, violent regime. I don't think you can play namby-pamby with these people.

00:06:40.560 There's no Marcus of Queensbury rules when you're dealing with people who want to get 0.59

00:06:44.240 a nuclear bomb and they have sworn to destroy israel in the united states i just don't understand

00:06:50.480 how their position can be weakened like the one that we've seen from mark carney over the last

00:06:55.600 day or two what do you think well this is not about weapons of mass destruction but our responses 0.99

00:07:01.040 looks like a weapon of mass stupidity and i think what we're seeing here is a government that is 0.97

00:07:05.040 prepared to take a position that isn't a position at all and we change with the uh with the direction 1.00

00:07:10.720 of the wind but I can tell you that for a lot of Canadians this is really the line on the sand

00:07:15.440 either we stand up with what is right and what needs to be done or we continue to have the world

00:07:20.320 subject to the kind of terrorism and its funders and its enablers like Iran and you know if we're 0.81

00:07:28.080 not going to listen to our constituents you know I got places out here in Richmond Hill and others

00:07:32.720 where Canadians of Iranian origin are absolutely committed to seeing the destruction of this regime 0.99

00:07:39.040 not the people and the only one that can do it is donald trump uh and that will keep the chinas 0.99

00:07:44.640 and the russias who have you know rather perverse views of the world who don't believe in any types

00:07:50.240 any semblance of human rights but for the lefties to come out and try to say that this is a bad

00:07:54.720 thing i mean you have to really know where they're coming from there was an alliance between the

00:07:58.800 ayatollah uh the uh islamic regime in iran and the marxists and they all came together coalesced

00:08:05.680 in 1979. And we're still feeling the echoes of that in ways that are certainly deadly for Canada

00:08:12.780 to say, oh, we're going to change our mind is, in my view, one of the reasons why the country is not

00:08:18.360 taken seriously. Unlike my time, where our foreign policy meant something and we could definitely

00:08:23.020 punch above our weight because we didn't vacillate. Do you think Carney bowed to opposition in his

00:08:28.540 own caucus or opposition of the Toronto Star or opposition from the UK and Spain? Either way,

00:08:34.640 He took a strong position to start and within 48 hours was already wobbly on that.

00:08:42.560 I guess my question is, who did he bow to?

00:08:45.320 Was it his own caucus? Opposition in his own caucus, you think?

00:08:48.600 Who knows? This man makes all sorts of declarations and says all sorts of things only to reverse himself.

00:08:54.040 He wrote a whole book of values about what he said about stranded assets and GFANS and all sorts of other things.

00:08:59.320 It would appear that he wants to walk away from that while doing exactly that, but by other means.

00:09:04.640 Mark Carney has to peel back a few layers of the onion to really figure out that at the end of the day, he's just doing the same thing Trudeau did by different means while trying to make it look more Socratic, a little bit more involved with polemics and dazzling little things about how great his credentials are to the unknown.

00:09:22.960 And of course, the elbows group out there that believe that because he happened to snow the public in terms of what he did in the 1998 budget balancing, which was a crock, that he had something to do with the 2008 mitigation of Canada's, you know, exposure to the global meltdown.

00:09:39.520 Again, a crock.

00:09:41.280 Everything about this man is completely diametrically opposed to what he actually does.

00:09:46.640 And right now, we've had him for over a year as a prime minister.

00:09:48.700 and what has he had to show truly economically socially in terms of improving the country

00:09:54.200 everything he said has turned out to be hollow and false and misleading and as a result i don't

00:09:59.680 take him seriously he can change like i change underwear for god's sakes maybe he does it more

00:10:05.620 frequently than i do and that's not necessarily a good thing but he has a real problem and the

00:10:10.360 people who believe and follow him have an even greater problem because they're willing to believe

00:10:14.540 anything he says, even if it's contradictory to what he said yesterday.

00:10:17.980 Yeah. In the meantime, we have our relations with the Americans ahead of the CUSMA negotiations,

00:10:24.620 which might suffer as a result of Canada taking a position against this mission. I mean, to me,

00:10:32.060 this is kind of a no-brainer. We've got these talks coming up. We want to mend some fences

00:10:37.500 with the Americans. We want to ease the talks and we want those talks to go our way. We want to

00:10:43.340 remind them that we're a friend and an ally. And then you've got this liberal MP, Will Greaves,

00:10:49.900 coming out and saying, well, we can't trust the Americans anyway, so why would we just automatically 0.77

00:10:54.380 support their mission against Iran? This is not good. And I think Peter McKay, who was on the show

00:11:03.500 yesterday, talked a little bit about the threat to our relationship with the Americans by taking

00:11:10.140 a position that runs counter to this mission that they are conducting with the Israelis.

00:11:17.020 What do you think?

00:11:19.340 I think Canada is risking taking a loud position when it doesn't have many sticks in the fire.

00:11:30.460 We're playing a big game and boasting a lot for Chicken Little.

00:11:33.900 And I don't disparage Canadians. It's just that when you rely on the Americans for your defense,

00:11:39.100 when you rely on the americans for your economic well-being when you rely on the americans

00:11:43.500 uh for you know support in some of the initiatives we're taking locally and generally

00:11:48.860 and then you turn around and you know give them a good kick in the backside that might be cool

00:11:52.860 and trendy for the albozos out there who can't think further than the amount of grift or money 1.00

00:11:57.820 to get from the federal government borrowed money for the off the next generation but when it comes

00:12:02.060 down to it you are basically trading away economic security reliability and a relationship that is

00:12:08.940 golden and is the envy of the world and tossing in the garbage because you don't like donald trump

00:12:13.660 look the people who are opposed to this kind of thing uh shouldn't be making decisions on behalf

00:12:18.780 of the country and the country is going to suffer as a result of its willingness to go along with

00:12:22.780 people who have their own little left-wing trendy agendas all of which lead to an absolute dead end

00:12:28.300 economic social and otherwise and is going to lead canada down a very dark path of economic distress

00:12:34.620 I want to shift gears a little bit, talk about the EVs. As you're aware now, I guess Canada's

00:12:42.620 agreement with China on accepting something like 49,000 of these vehicles. I went live and I think

00:12:50.060 24,500 of them, I believe have already been delivered if I'm not mistaken.

00:12:55.340 Is that right? And what do you think about that?

00:12:58.940 Well, yeah, the agreement was to kick in on the 1st of March. So yeah, say good night to your

00:13:03.820 automotive sector i feel very sorry for those who are working in automotive sector across ontario

00:13:08.700 some parts of quebec some parts of british columbia because you're out of work if not now

00:13:13.340 this pink slips are going to come and there's no doubt in my mind next couple of years the big

00:13:17.740 automotive manufacturers are gonna have to think twice not just because of the evs from china which 1.00

00:13:22.220 of course bring with it significant security baggage but also because we have to consider

00:13:27.980 that Mark Carney's, you know, little ways of trying to impose or shove EVs down our throats is

00:13:34.660 to bring out an emissions cap of 75% on tailpipes. Nobody in the world would do something like that

00:13:40.520 because the technology doesn't exist to obtain that. What he's trying to do indirectly is to,

00:13:45.980 by direct means, is to indirectly bring about an EV mandate by saying, unless you have a big

00:13:51.260 that mac pick uh truck uh running on one cylinder there's no way you can make an eight cylinder

00:13:56.940 vehicle uh drop those kind of emissions so we are basically putting ourselves into an economic

00:14:03.340 manufacturing energy and now social political straight jacket the likes of which we are not

00:14:09.660 going to get out of so as long as canadians think oh we don't need kuzma oh we'd like to have our 0.96

00:14:16.140 Our little, you know, our little freebies for a dentist and for all sorts of other little things.

00:14:21.640 And who cares? I got a pension. I don't care.

00:14:23.840 I live and can eat granola on some island somewhere out in Vancouver or that area.

00:14:29.820 That's great to have that, except that you're bringing the entire nation to its knees and future generations know it.

00:14:36.760 Why do kids want to leave this country in favor of other locations?

00:14:39.340 because they know there's no future in Canada

00:14:41.500 thanks to the greed and the short-sightedness 1.00

00:14:43.940 of the woke left ESGDI fools 0.99

00:14:47.820 who've been leading us down a very dark path. 0.95

00:14:50.860 Yeah, I mean, those vehicles are not here yet, by the way.

00:14:54.500 March 1st was when they were allowed to come in,

00:14:56.320 so they'll be making their way here,

00:14:58.180 and I'm sure there'll be a lot of people

00:14:59.240 driving $12,000 nonsensical cars.

00:15:02.520 Listen, buy yourself a go-kart.

00:15:04.000 Buy yourself a golf cart.

00:15:05.480 Get your toaster, your four-size toaster,

00:15:07.180 put some wheels on it, and drive around.

00:15:09.340 take your little eeve little phone here and maybe put some wheels on that and drive around

00:15:13.500 these things are not efficient they're not effective and don't ask people to pay for them

00:15:17.020 but uh like a lot of my friends when we were starting out love little hyundai ponies and

00:15:21.580 things like that they were garbage these are garbage and they're going to wind up in landfills

00:15:25.020 mark you and i should start our own little company on future electric vehicle battery uh you know

00:15:30.300 landfills because that's where these things are heading in very short period of time they won't

00:15:33.740 be like my 2003 chev silver route with 450 000 kilometers on it that's 22 years old you will see

00:15:39.260 none of these on the road you will see them at landfill sites coming to a place near you

00:15:44.300 yeah that sounds like a good business idea is the disposal of these of these batteries

00:15:49.820 great opportunities come from fools gotta be handled in an economically sound way

00:15:55.100 and i'm sure that the government will give us millions of dollars to do it absolutely it's 0.95

00:16:00.140 just have to hold out your hand and you receive and it doesn't matter because it's the next 1.00

00:16:04.540 generation that has to pay for our stupidity and our largesse. Well, I guess you could always ask, 1.00

00:16:10.860 well, what next for Canada on the EV front? I mean, you know, is this just the first tranche,

00:16:17.260 the 48, 49,000 Chinese vehicles? I mean, does it expand from there? I mean, do you see this

00:16:23.580 as just the thin edge of the wedge in terms of our relationship with the Chinese?

00:16:27.180 increases yeah it does increases for six percent every year other vehicle manufacturers will

00:16:33.260 probably say well that that's the case why don't you just let the let the floodgates open and have 0.88

00:16:37.500 everybody make jillies or byds or other uh vehicles look china made a decision around 2005 to 2008

00:16:45.980 that it couldn't beat us when it came to internal combustion engines so it decided to go down the

00:16:51.180 the slope of electric vehicles now of course we know in their that country they're powered

00:16:55.500 by coal plants in canada they have to be cold they have to be charged by electrical infrastructure

00:17:00.620 which isn't there you don't have enough uh of the grid you don't have the materials you don't even

00:17:04.940 have the manpower to do something like this but we uh we're we are definitely willing to uh subject

00:17:10.540 ourselves to all sorts of weird uh toxic novel ideas about what we can and can't do while in a

00:17:17.340 cold country on a first day of many months where we finally had a little bit warmer weather these

00:17:21.580 things are going to prove to be absolutely useless and sooner or later you're not going to get your

00:17:27.260 five thousand dollar rebate you're not going to get other people to subsidize their buildings

00:17:30.940 subsidize the infrastructure to make them subsidize the uh the cost to buy them sooner or later you're

00:17:37.340 gonna have to pay for them and if you think they're environmentally friendly remember how

00:17:40.860 they're built because nothing gets built without severe amount of refining and mining which tends

00:17:45.900 to be the dirtiest in the world building a battery can be considered the most polluting

00:17:49.740 real pollution i don't talk to co2 which is not a potent but real pollution and if that's okay

00:17:54.620 look at the lakes in china look how they're all you know acid texasified and there's there's

00:17:59.660 nothing there if we want to destroy canada go ahead just keep those woke elbows up because uh

00:18:04.540 we're basically inviting our own demise as a nation economically and socially dan mctaig powerful 0.96

00:18:11.580 stuff once again thank you so much for coming on the show we appreciate it good to be here mark

00:18:15.580 thanks for having me. Dan McTague. Well, if you enjoyed this show, you can support

00:18:20.820 independent journalism by going to junonews.com and signing up as a premier member. We greatly

00:18:27.360 appreciate that. We'll see you next time.

Juno News - March 04, 2026

Former Liberal MP SLAMS Carney’s Iran stance as “facile” and dangerous

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