Juno News - Government's indifference to foreign interference is alarming

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.480 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.840 Hello and welcome to you all, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here,

00:00:17.600 the Andrew Lawton Show on True North on this Thursday, June 20th.

00:00:21.920 Hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful day as the week nears its natural end.

00:00:27.220 It's going to be hopefully a great weekend up ahead, getting a little bit warm in some parts,

00:00:31.360 although I think there was a report earlier in the week that somewhere had frost or snow,

00:00:36.000 which if you're in Albertan, you're just shrugging, saying this is business as usual.

00:00:39.520 But nevertheless, you don't want too much of a heat wave when the water issues are still as bad as they are over there in Calgary anyway.

00:00:46.740 But I wanted to take a big picture look today at a topic we've been covering on the show for months,

00:00:51.640 certainly for the last couple of weeks, which is the foreign interference issue.

00:00:56.200 And let me be clear when I say that this should be an issue on which there is,

00:01:00.980 as I remarked earlier in the week, unanimity in the political class.

00:01:05.000 The Liberals, the New Democrats, even the Bloc Québécois, although that one's a little bit dicier,

00:01:09.700 should be able to agree in the importance of protecting Canada.

00:01:13.500 The sovereignty of the nation-state that is Canada depends on being able to be isolated,

00:01:19.860 as it does for any nation-state, from the influence of foreign regimes,

00:01:24.500 specifically those that are hostile to Canada and its interests.

00:01:28.400 But as we've learned through CESIS leaks to the media,

00:01:31.220 most recently through the Parliamentary National Security Committee's report,

00:01:35.460 Canada has not been immune to this.

00:01:37.340 And in fact, some members of Parliament and members of the Senate,

00:01:40.560 parliamentarians broadly,

00:01:42.400 have wittingly, to use the words of the NSI COP report,

00:01:46.280 wittingly collaborated with foreign governments.

00:01:49.140 And if you want to know who those people are, well, you and me both.

00:01:52.300 I've certainly got some suspicions.

00:01:54.600 But the reality is we have not, as Canadians,

00:01:57.940 been given the right to know.

00:01:59.940 Because the Prime Minister's office has decided the information should be redacted

00:02:03.820 and will not disclose even which parties have members of Parliament

00:02:07.960 who could be wittingly or even semi-wittingly collaborating with foreign governments.

00:02:12.800 So, like I said, there's lots to delve into here in terms of who's responsible

00:02:16.740 and who's done this and who's done that and who should have done that.

00:02:19.880 But there's a bigger picture aspect to this as well,

00:02:22.240 which is what a nation's obligation is,

00:02:24.500 what a government's obligation is on this,

00:02:26.960 which seems to be a discussion the current government

00:02:28.940 has had very little interest in exploring.

00:02:32.300 I wanted to welcome to the program our old friend,

00:02:34.300 Brian Lee Crowley,

00:02:35.500 Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute,

00:02:38.040 which does tremendous work on issues of a domestic and foreign nature in Canada.

00:02:42.820 Brian, always good to talk to you.

00:02:44.320 Thank you for coming on today.

00:02:45.520 Andrew, it's always great to be with you on the show.

00:02:48.540 So, let's just begin here with a bit more of a reaction point from you on this.

00:02:54.440 Have you been surprised with all of the work you've done

00:02:57.080 understanding Canada and understanding its place in the world?

00:03:00.120 Have you been surprised by any of this story the more we've learned about it?

00:03:04.660 Not surprised, Andrew.

00:03:06.340 Deeply disappointed, but surprised could not possibly describe

00:03:10.700 the reaction of anybody who has been following this story,

00:03:14.580 not just for weeks or months, but for years.

00:03:17.720 You know, we at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, for example,

00:03:21.060 have been calling on the government to act on foreign interference

00:03:25.920 allegations for a decade or more,

00:03:30.740 because it has been crystal clear that foreign governments have been actively soliciting

00:03:37.860 not only elected members of the House of Commons and senators,

00:03:43.300 but also members of the bureaucracy, members of the media.

00:03:47.540 Pretty much everybody who has any position of influence in Canada,

00:03:52.680 I think, has been in the sights of the Chinese,

00:03:56.880 particularly the Chinese security services,

00:03:59.820 the people charged with spreading Chinese influence throughout the world.

00:04:05.840 And so I'm glad after years of our sounding the warning at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute

00:04:15.600 that finally the public is seized of this issue

00:04:19.160 and that the people who are responsible within our political class

00:04:23.940 are finally being embarrassed into at least acknowledging that there's a problem.

00:04:29.760 You know, there's an old parable that I've heard told a number of different ways.

00:04:33.920 I've heard it as, you know, a scorpion and a squirrel,

00:04:36.360 a scorpion and a rabbit, a snake and a man.

00:04:38.280 But the gist of it is that, you know,

00:04:40.220 one person trusts the snake or the scorpion who assures them he won't bite them.

00:04:44.100 And then at the end of it, when the person gets bitten or stung,

00:04:47.040 the snake or scorpion says, well, what did you expect?

00:04:49.340 That's what I am.

00:04:50.360 And, you know, I take that to heart when I'm talking about foreign interference. 0.99

00:04:54.480 We expect this of China. 0.99

00:04:55.780 We expect this to some extent of India.

00:04:58.220 We expect this of places like Iran. 1.00

00:05:00.300 We expect this of Russia. 1.00

00:05:01.460 You know, so the idea that we should be surprised or blindsided by this in any way,

00:05:07.840 I take your point, is I think an incredibly disappointing one.

00:05:11.220 You know, yes, we can point fingers at who's doing the foreign interfering, 1.00

00:05:14.640 but we should have known they're doing that.

00:05:16.820 We've known for years.

00:05:17.780 We've known since the beginning of the Cold War

00:05:19.400 that foreign interference and infiltration, even in Canada, is an issue.

00:05:23.500 So, yeah, I do look at our lawmakers and say,

00:05:25.700 are you naive or are you collaborators, basically?

00:05:31.500 Yes.

00:05:33.500 Look, I'm a big admirer of the people who put themselves on the line

00:05:39.320 and offer themselves for public office and so on.

00:05:42.800 I think it's a thankless task.

00:05:45.060 And we desperately need people who will do this.

00:05:52.520 That said, we have allowed the reputation of the people in Canada's parliament

00:06:00.700 to be so tarnished and so sullied that it is now impossible, I think,

00:06:06.380 for us to run fair elections in Canada with the reputation of parliament

00:06:12.340 being in the kind of tatters in which we find it today.

00:06:15.700 I think for democracy to work properly, people have to have confidence

00:06:20.960 that if they vote for someone, that that person will actually represent

00:06:25.300 the interests of both his or her constituents and the interests of Canada.

00:06:29.540 And I think it would be completely normal in the circumstances

00:06:33.540 we find ourselves in today for many people to say,

00:06:37.080 I can't have confidence that that's the case.

00:06:39.480 And because the government will not reveal the names of the people

00:06:44.000 whose reputations have been tainted, there's no way to clear the air

00:06:51.660 and there's no way to distinguish parliamentarians who are honourable people

00:06:55.040 who have been defending the interests of their constituents and of Canada

00:06:58.380 from those who have not.

00:06:59.880 And I think that's an intolerable position for voters to be in

00:07:03.600 and for parliamentarians to be in.

00:07:05.820 No, you're very right, Brian.

00:07:07.160 We could be talking about one person, five people, who knows?

00:07:10.960 Because there are degrees of this.

00:07:12.420 There are degrees of complicity.

00:07:14.580 And in the absence of information, we start to view everyone with skepticism.

00:07:19.080 Now, I would say, generally speaking, approaching politicians with skepticism

00:07:22.460 is probably healthy for many reasons, not just this.

00:07:25.460 But it undermines confidence in the system.

00:07:28.180 When you're looking at members of parliament, having seen no expulsions from caucus,

00:07:32.600 having seen no leader come out and say, so-and-so is not going to be permitted to stand as a liberal,

00:07:38.500 it makes us look at everyone and say, are they one of these people?

00:07:42.440 Are they named in the report?

00:07:43.720 And how is a Canadian supposed to have confidence in the system

00:07:46.600 when we have been kept in the dark so much on something that should be of such importance?

00:07:51.740 Well, you know, the answer, Andrew, is that people can't have confidence.

00:07:57.720 That's the problem.

00:07:58.780 We now find ourselves in the position where not only the intelligence services of Canada

00:08:05.360 have repeatedly warned Canadians that members of the political class are compromised,

00:08:11.600 but we now have a committee of parliamentarians, including representatives from all the major parties,

00:08:18.140 including the governing party, who have signed on to a report which has explicitly said

00:08:24.720 that parliamentarians have been either witting or unwitting tools of foreign interference

00:08:31.920 by governments that are not friends of Canada.

00:08:36.660 So we now, I think, can be in no doubt that this has happened.

00:08:44.240 You know, forget about Elizabeth May, who, you know, the media for some reason treat her 0.99

00:08:51.060 as some kind of party leader on the same footing as, say, Justin Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh

00:08:58.780 or Pierre Poglieb.

00:09:01.360 That's nonsense.

00:09:02.520 You know, the Greens are not a recognized party in parliament.

00:09:06.660 She is not an official party leader.

00:09:09.380 The people who know about these things, the parliamentarians who studied these reports,

00:09:15.600 the people who represent the intelligence gathering services of Canada,

00:09:20.160 they have all been telling us that there is a serious problem,

00:09:24.240 that there are specific members of our political class who are compromised.

00:09:28.540 And there can be no doubt that we have to take very seriously the problem of how we clear

00:09:36.740 the air now before an election that is due in roughly 15 months.

00:09:42.520 I think you're right about that.

00:09:45.620 And the problem is, just to bring it into the political realm for a moment, is that you have

00:09:50.500 this weird situation where, on one hand, one of the core issues in the Canadian political

00:09:55.540 system right now is that we have reason to distrust the integrity of the democratic process.

00:10:00.320 On the other hand, we want to vote out the people responsible for allowing that to happen

00:10:04.780 in an election.

00:10:05.720 And it creates this weird dilemma where, you know, the mechanisms of democracy,

00:10:10.220 which we would need to hold a government that has let this problem balloon to account,

00:10:14.560 are the very things that are at issue.

00:10:17.520 Well, yes, the whole point is the use of elections to achieve an expression of popular will

00:10:27.460 about the issues facing the country that this has been destroyed because we cannot know

00:10:34.740 in any constituency in the country now, basically, we cannot know whether the people we're voting

00:10:43.220 for, if they're an outgoing MP, whether they are tainted by this foreign interference scandal.

00:10:49.740 Now, you know, look, there are many honourable members of Parliament, and I'm sure that many

00:10:58.020 of us are able to distinguish some of the people that clearly fall outside that could never be

00:11:05.180 charged with this kind of offence, as opposed to people who are deserving of at least a suspicious

00:11:14.400 look. But the point is, I could have my opinion about that, you could have yours, every other person

00:11:22.820 will have their opinions about it. But we cannot clear the air, we cannot say definitively, yes to this

00:11:28.860 person, no to that person. And that calls the whole democratic institution in Canada into question.

00:11:39.640 And I think that part of the problem is that while the government of the day, the liberal government

00:11:50.700 of Justin Trudeau has been pretty unapologetically pro-Chinese, both before it came to office and during

00:12:02.140 its time in office. The fact of the matter is that there are members of several political parties

00:12:08.380 who have been close to China who believe that Canada's interests lie in a closer relationship

00:12:18.040 with China. And that's a perfectly legitimate point of view to defend. It's not my point of view, but

00:12:23.280 the problem is that potentially every political party is tainted. And it's not clear how Canadian

00:12:34.380 voters should act if they're presented with an election in which these charges hang over Parliament

00:12:42.100 and all the political parties. How can you vote to clean up the mess? I wouldn't know how to advise

00:12:49.220 people.

00:12:50.280 So moving forward, I mean, there are, I guess, two aspects. Well, there are many aspects of this, but

00:12:54.640 you can look at the structural things of what mechanisms and what laws can we put in place to

00:12:59.960 allow for interference to be dealt with. I spoke to journalist Sam Cooper, who basically said we have

00:13:05.360 this huge gap in the law itself where we don't have the systems intended to deal with this. And

00:13:10.140 then you also have the political side, which is how can we certainly expose it and make this a

00:13:15.480 winnable issue? Now, I've seen the change even on this show. When the foreign interference stuff first 0.97

00:13:20.080 came up through the leaks to Global News and the Globe and Mail, we were talking about it and it was just

00:13:25.480 not capturing the audience in the way that other issues were. And I still talked about it because

00:13:30.980 I thought it was important. That's changed a little bit now. And I think people have had more

00:13:35.340 time to digest it. People have now seen it get worse than they knew it was. And that has caused

00:13:41.560 there to be a bit more attention to it. I still don't know if when push comes to shove in an

00:13:45.640 affordability crisis with cost of living and inflation rampant, if this issue, which to a lot of people

00:13:50.920 can seem abstract, would be the one that moves the needle at the ballot box. What do you think?

00:13:56.980 Well, I absolutely think that the next election will be fought primarily on economic issues,

00:14:04.460 cost of living, inflation, the burden of taxation, all of these things, because that always looms

00:14:13.060 large in the mind of voters, especially at a time when all of those indicators are uncomfortable

00:14:20.360 for a large number of voters. But the atmospherics around the election, you know, the sense that

00:14:29.720 Canadians have whether voting actually makes a difference for the better, I think we have a 0.91

00:14:37.140 real problem there. And like you, I've been talking about this foreign interference issue for years,

00:14:44.660 and I despaired of ever being able to get Canadians to pay attention to these things. You know, one of

00:14:51.500 the issues that we have in Canada is being right next to the United States, knowing that no other

00:14:59.080 country will be able to invade us militarily because America wouldn't tolerate that, and believing that,

00:15:07.800 you know, we're nice Canadians, and who would want to hurt us? All of these things together have made

00:15:14.160 Canadians very skeptical at the idea that, what do you mean some foreign government is actually trying

00:15:19.240 to interfere in our politics? Who would want to do anything bad to Canadians? Well, I think Canadians 0.97

00:15:24.660 are starting to understand, you know, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Chinese bullying of

00:15:34.820 Taiwan, with all the things that are going on around the world. And the fact that foreign interference is

00:15:41.760 an issue in many countries, Canada can no longer believe that it is insulated from all of these trends,

00:15:50.640 which are affecting people all around the world. And I think making it something that's really got their

00:15:57.100 attention.

00:15:58.380 Do you get any sense of how Canada stacks up against other countries in dealing with this?

00:16:04.820 Well, we're very behindhand. I mean, you know, the UK, Australia, even New Zealand, the United States,

00:16:15.140 which has had a foreign agents registry for years, all of these countries have been made aware of these

00:16:22.460 problems, have had their own scandals, there have been, you know, academics targeted by China,

00:16:30.680 because they were, the academics were talking about the dangers of cozying up to China. These things

00:16:37.560 have been the subject of controversy now around the world, including amongst many of our major friends

00:16:45.560 and allies. We're late to the game, not because China has been slow to infiltrate Canada. On the contrary,

00:16:55.000 Canada was an early target because China thought we were a soft target. And indeed, why would they not

00:17:04.820 think that? We catch red-handed Chinese scientists at our infectious disease lab in Winnipeg, sending 1.00

00:17:15.260 information, classified information home to China. And basically, we do nothing for two years and then

00:17:21.600 let them go home. China looks at this and says, it's open season in Canada. So we have, I think,

00:17:32.120 no one but ourselves to blame. I don't blame the Chinese. The Chinese are busy trying to promote 1.00

00:17:36.320 their interests around the world. I blame Canada and our institutions and Canadians generally for having 1.00

00:17:45.220 been so complacent for so long that other countries like Australia, like New Zealand, like the UK,

00:17:51.640 like the United States have long since woken up to this problem. And we are very, very late to the game.

00:18:01.980 You know, it's interesting too, to give a bit of a history lesson, as I sometimes do on this program.

00:18:06.740 And I apologize, Brian, that you have to bear witness to it in the first place. But,

00:18:09.820 you know, there's a history of this. People may be familiar with what's called the Gozenko Affair,

00:18:14.640 which, you know, goes back to the 1940s. It's, you know, marked as the beginning of the Cold War

00:18:19.180 in Canada. It was a gentleman at the Soviet embassy that wanted to defect to Canada. He had evidence of

00:18:24.180 a Soviet spy ring in Canada that had infiltrated the political class. And he could not get people

00:18:29.880 to take his documents with this seriously. He went to, I forget the order, but he went to the

00:18:34.740 Ottawa police, the RCMP, he went to the media, and everyone just kind of said, oh, yeah, yeah,

00:18:39.220 we'll get to it. So this idea of being ignorant to this issue has a long, sadly, a long history in

00:18:45.640 Canada. And I guess I would have hoped that in the 80 years since then, we'd have learned our lesson.

00:18:49.780 But I don't think that's the case. Because what have we heard repeatedly throughout the NSI COP and

00:18:55.580 the CSIS leaks is that documents have been put before the government and effectively ignored.

00:19:01.280 Yes. You know, I will say, in the defense of our intelligence services.

00:19:07.840 True. Yeah, they're not the problem. They were the problem then. They're not the problem now.

00:19:11.240 That's a good point.

00:19:11.980 They are not the problem. And in fact, they have been sounding the alarm for years.

00:19:19.200 Which is why they leaked to the media, which is, you know, the last resort if you're an intelligence

00:19:23.560 official.

00:19:24.520 I completely agree. You see, I think what's going on is there's a bit of a civil war, and I've written

00:19:30.280 about this before, there's a bit of a civil war going on within the government of Canada,

00:19:33.920 between the intelligence services, which have been sounding the alarm for years, and getting

00:19:39.800 absolutely no take up by political authorities. And the political authorities basically saying

00:19:48.160 nothing to see here, folks. We don't believe in our own intelligence. And I got to say, Andrew,

00:19:55.520 there's some irony in the fact that this government came to power, criticizing the previous government

00:20:01.860 for not having listened to its own civil servants, you know, and the census and various things. They

00:20:08.960 said that that government doesn't care about their civil servants who are professional people hired

00:20:15.300 to advise Canada, we must take them seriously. Of course, as soon as the intelligence services started

00:20:21.200 to say, listen, folks, we better start taking Chinese interference seriously. So, oh, you know,

00:20:27.180 oh, there's nothing here to see. And we don't think that the intelligence is any good. And it's

00:20:33.960 only intelligence after all. I mean, the way in which they have consistently tried to dismiss

00:20:40.660 what the specialized agencies designed to protect Canadians from foreign interference have been telling

00:20:47.380 them, I think has been nothing short of shameful. So I think the difference between the Gusenko affair, 0.79

00:20:55.780 which you quite rightly invoke, Andrew, remember that it wasn't just the Cold War starting in Canada,

00:21:02.820 the Gusenko affair started the Cold War throughout the West, because we were still living in the 0.89

00:21:10.500 honeymoon period after, you know, Russia and or the Soviet Union and the West had defeated Germany.

00:21:17.380 in the Second World War. And nobody wanted to believe, literally, that the Soviet Union might be now our 0.62

00:21:27.220 enemy rather than our ally. Now that the intelligence services in Canada have known for years that

00:21:34.820 the regime in China does not wish Canada well, they are they're not our enemy, they are our adversary or

00:21:41.460 our opponent. They are busy pursuing their own interests. And Canada is not busy defending its interests.

00:21:50.740 And that's, that's the message that our own intelligence services have been trying to tell us. So Gusenko, you know,

00:21:57.300 the difference between the post-war period and the Gusenko affair and today is that Gusenko went to the equivalent of the

00:22:05.460 the the intelligence services and they turned them away. Intelligence services today have said,

00:22:12.820 my man, you are on the money. And we are going to tell our political authorities and the political

00:22:18.420 authorities shut them down. So I wanted to get you to explain because there is a nuance, but an incredibly

00:22:24.900 important one between enemy and adversary. And people often have difficulty deciding how to frame

00:22:31.380 Canada's relationship with China. And I was hoping you could just elaborate on that.

00:22:35.940 Well, look, we are we are not enemies, we are not at war. What we are is we are different countries

00:22:43.220 with different interests. And we actively pursue those interests. Now, the fact of the matter is that

00:22:52.900 China's interests and Canada's interests are not perfectly aligned. And in fact, we are friends with 0.99

00:22:58.180 Taiwan. China is Taiwan's great oppressor and bully. We believe in the freedom of navigation of the 0.98

00:23:10.740 openness of the seas. China is busy establishing its military dominance over the South China Sea in

00:23:17.780 defiance of international law. And we could go on and multiply the examples. The point is that we believe

00:23:25.220 in a certain number of things which are quite different from the ones that the Chinese believe in.

00:23:30.180 And so when we deal with the Chinese, we have to understand that they are not our friend. 1.00

00:23:38.420 They have things that we want in terms of economic growth and manufacturing capacity and

00:23:44.580 all the things that we would like to be associated with. But we cannot in good conscience, I think,

00:23:51.380 forget the fact that our interests are, in many cases, not just not aligned, but actively opposed.

00:23:58.820 And I think about, for example, the Australians who have a much closer relationship with China than

00:24:06.340 than we do. They are much more reliant on China as a market than we are. And yet Australia has been

00:24:14.260 completely direct and unapologetic about defect defending the interests of Australians and of

00:24:21.700 their nation against the interests of China. And they were early well ahead of us with the foreign agents 0.90

00:24:29.940 registry and tightening up of security surveillance of Chinese agents and et cetera, et cetera. So it is entirely

00:24:39.940 possible to maintain a positive economic relationship with China. I'm not opposed to trading with China.

00:24:50.500 I'm opposed to letting China use its economic strength as a way to get us to forget our interests.

00:24:58.260 And I think it's in that sense that we are we are opponents or adversaries, but not enemies.

00:25:08.100 So as we look at the way forward here, what would you like to see? Because the government,

00:25:14.180 as I talked about earlier in the week in a different episode, loves to play around with when

00:25:18.740 information is privileged and protected and when it's not. They love to play around with when they

00:25:23.460 get to direct law enforcement and when they don't. And they've basically been hiding behind the secrecy

00:25:28.980 of national security without acknowledging the fact that NSI COP is redacting its reports at the

00:25:34.420 pleasure of the prime minister and the same power and authority could unredact it. Do you think just

00:25:39.700 releasing the names should be the first step or is there another path you'd like to see this go?

00:25:46.100 Well, releasing the names is a very important thing to do. But I think

00:25:50.580 beyond that, if we want to avoid things like this happening again, we can't just release the names

00:25:58.660 of people who've been impugned or tainted in the last few years. We have to put in place institutions

00:26:09.540 that continuously protect us from this happening again. And to the government's credit, they have

00:26:16.180 brought in legislation creating a foreign agents registry. I think that's a vital step. But I think

00:26:23.140 we need to do even more. One of the weaknesses that's been revealed to us as a result of these

00:26:30.660 reports from our intelligence gathering services as read and understood by NSI COP is, for example,

00:26:40.260 the nomination process that we use for our political parties is deeply flawed. It is an open invitation

00:26:47.860 to foreign interference. And that means I don't personally think that the government should be

00:26:53.460 running all the political parties in the country. Don't get me wrong. But I think this is a clarion call

00:26:59.780 to the authorities in every one of our political parties to demonstrate to Canadians that their party is

00:27:05.940 not available to be taken over by forces that are hostile in the interests of Canada. So we need

00:27:13.540 we need foreign agent registry. We need reform of the political parties. We need to make the intelligence

00:27:21.380 that is gathered by our intelligence agencies more available to a larger part of the decision-making process

00:27:29.940 in Ottawa. At the moment, it's too much under the control of governments that have partisan interests

00:27:36.980 at stake. And we need to spread that responsibility a little bit more across the entire political class. 0.99

00:27:43.860 You know, in the United States, if something like this happened, you could be 100% sure that one or the

00:27:50.580 other houses of Congress, perhaps both would be having public hearings. And this would be a matter of public

00:27:59.060 record. So we need to do everything we can to tear away the veil of secrecy, not over in the intelligence

00:28:07.300 gathering process that that has to be protected. But when things are discovered as a result of the

00:28:15.780 intelligence gathering process that affect the interests of all Canadians and the and the security

00:28:22.180 and integrity of the sovereignty of Canada, we cannot allow people with a partisan interest in the answer

00:28:30.900 to determine what Canadians will know and when they will know it and what will be protected for security reasons.

00:28:39.620 So I think there is a broad range of things that need to be changed and reformed

00:28:47.140 in order for Canadians to feel safe and to have confidence in their political process.

00:28:53.140 Brian Lee Crowley, Managing Director at the McDonnell Laurier Institute. Always a pleasure to get your

00:28:58.260 well, your time, certainly, but definitely your insights for the better for them. So thank you, Brian.

00:29:02.580 Always a pleasure to talk to you, Andrew. Thank you.

00:29:04.500 All right, Brian Lee Crowley. That does it for us for today. By the way, I should say,

00:29:08.020 so I use NSICOP and NSICOP interchangeably because I hear both used. But without a doubt,

00:29:13.940 anytime I use one, the person I interview uses the other. So whoever I am interviewing,

00:29:20.340 listen to them because they're right in that moment. Without a doubt, I said NSICOP on this one

00:29:26.340 and Brian says NSICOP. When I say NSICOP, someone else says NSICOP. I just go with the generic

00:29:32.100 Committee of Parliamentarians on national security and save it that way. But the two of them are the same

00:29:37.380 thing regardless of how they're pronounced. Anyway, that does it for us for today. My thanks to all

00:29:41.860 of you and again to Brian Lee Crowley for coming on the show. We'll be back next week with more of

00:29:46.580 Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

00:29:52.660 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 20, 2024

Government's indifference to foreign interference is alarming

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