The CBC and APTN have just been exposed for running a taxpayer-funded, months-long covert sting operation against conservative commentators, politicians, authors, and even former RCMP officers. Armed with loads of taxpayer funded public money, an indigenous production company called NLT1 Productions and an American far-left TV producer named Igor Vamos set out to entrap outspoken dissident voices to create a show for CBC Entertainment. They did this using completely fake names, fake studios, and entirely fake production companies. The list of targets for this operation mainly focused on censored authors and conservative commentators. But Juneau News can report that this CBC operation even attempted to lure an MP under false pretenses. Aaron Gunn will join us later in the show to discuss what happened.
00:04:58.180For the supposed crime of defending our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald,
00:05:03.060our best Prime Minister, this CBC outfit wanted to humiliate and embarrass a sitting member of
00:05:10.900Parliament, a member of the opposition, in a covert interview sham. Well, MP Aaron Gunn joins
00:05:18.400us now to discuss what happened and his side of the story. Joining me now is the MP for North
00:05:24.180Island Power River, Aaron Gunn. Aaron, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for
00:05:30.520talking about this issue and having me on today. All right so you were one of the targets for this
00:05:37.620CBC backed entrapment scheme to try and humiliate defenders of Sir John A. McDonald. The premise is
00:05:44.800just absurd to begin with but explain to us how how much they tried to get you the process that
00:05:51.560of which they tried to deceive you and your team and and what went down there. Yeah so the first
00:05:57.780thing, it was near the end of March and they started off by actually reaching out to some
00:06:02.960of those closest to me, my old video editor who still works with me today, production
00:06:09.500team, and attempting to bribe them to try to land me as an interview guest. So they
00:06:17.400were offering, basically said, name your price, again using taxpayer dollars presumably to
00:06:23.660try to interview a sitting member of Parliament. They then reached out to our office directly.
00:06:30.840And of course, our original response, they said they were doing a project. They wanted to bring
00:06:36.760balance to the issue of Sir Johnny MacDonald and his legacy and try to elevate voices that have
00:06:42.700been pushing back against the cancellation of Father of Confederation and Canada's first Prime
00:06:48.680minister. So the instinct was, of course, every opportunity that I can take to talk about this
00:06:54.220important issue, to talk about and talk up Canadian history and the incredible story that we have to
00:06:59.900tell here in Canada of our founding, I was looking forward to taking. But then things just started
00:07:06.820to not add up. It was a very elaborate scheme. They had fake companies, fake individuals, fake
00:07:14.760websites. Of course, at the time, we didn't know they were fake. We just tried to look into some
00:07:19.460of the stuff that they had done before because we hadn't heard of this company, and it led to a lot
00:07:24.000of dead ends. So at the end of the day, we decided to not proceed with the interview. Fortunately,
00:07:29.460other well-known Canadians were not so lucky and were all kind of induced individually using
00:07:36.480different methods. So to think that this is the tactics being used by a taxpayer-funded state
00:07:44.220broadcaster. I mean, I always thought the media's goal was the unvarnished pursuit of the truth
00:07:50.820and holding power to account. Instead, they're targeting individual Canadian citizens and
00:07:58.320opposition MPs through deception, through lies, through tricks as some sort of weird social action
00:08:05.040or prank as they put in their funding application that I was just reviewing.
00:08:10.340right and in the emails that your team and yourself had shared with juno news
00:08:16.220with the with what we've been able to uncover was the giveaway for you when they said they
00:08:21.560were doing this on behalf of the cbc and that they said the cbc was under pressure to defend
00:08:27.400mcdonald or to give give mcdonald a balanced shake i mean to me that would have been the
00:08:31.600first sign that i would think this person doesn't know the cbc and they don't really know who they're
00:08:36.040talking to? Yeah, it definitely was a bit of a red flag. Of course, it's kind of just when you
00:08:42.220thought, okay, well, hey, maybe the new liberal government, as they like to portray themselves,
00:08:47.920was actually starting to do things differently. In fact, no, they're actually up to their same old
00:08:51.840shenanigans and partisan gamesmanship. And in this case, really just using taxpayer resources to drag
00:08:59.100our country through the mud and uh you know i think they they're trying to present this as some
00:09:06.180sort of comedy that they were producing and uh i don't think there's anything so uh very funny
00:09:11.660about uh wasting taxpayer money when we're running a 60 billion dollar deficit and we have all sorts
00:09:17.620of issues right across this country what do you think this this will do for the cbc this story is
00:09:23.840getting a lot of attention people are really upset about this it is almost i think frightening
00:09:29.800for some people the lengths to which these fraudsters went to deceive canadians and
00:09:35.900politicians like yourself what do you think this means for the cbc going forward and its perception
00:09:41.040among canadians well what it means first of all is they've got some questions to answer i think
00:09:47.740taxpayers want to know why someone presumably high up at the CBC thought this was an appropriate use
00:09:55.760of their tax dollars. I think we want to know why they were partnering clearly with well-known
00:10:02.680far-left American media personalities to tell the story of Canadian history. And one of the things
00:10:08.600I think is just so ridiculous is the CBC would never spend the time to sit down with someone
00:10:16.660I like me or Lindsay that has defended Canadian history and the legacy of our first Prime Minister for a genuine one-on-one conversation about why we should be celebrating Canadian history.
00:10:28.220They would never open themselves out to actually have an open and honest conversation.
00:10:32.420You know me, I'd be the first one to jump at that opportunity.
00:10:35.140Instead, they resort to these deception tactics, these tricks, these kind of, this kind of gotcha, I don't even want to call it gotcha journalism.
00:10:42.640um it's just so it's uh it's just very revealing i think about where their priorities are it's to
00:10:48.680push it's not to cover the news it's not to tell canadian stories it's really to continue to push
00:10:55.780this radical far far left ideology that wants us to basically pretend that canada before 1960
00:11:02.620didn't exist and we have nothing to be proud of absolutely obviously as an mp you get you get
00:11:09.840sort of an idea as to how institutions can be held accountable how these individuals can be
00:11:15.140held accountable to some extent what can be done about this is there any recourse for people who
00:11:21.940were trapped in this scheme and for Canadians who are looking at this and saying this is a this is
00:11:26.660a disgrace is there any way to make sure that the CBC is actually accountable and someone will answer
00:11:32.600for this well I tell you I wish parliament was sitting this week because I would have very much
00:11:38.680enjoyed to be walking past the CBC journalists that are staked outside of the House of Commons
00:11:44.320every day to ask them some questions about what they think of their organization and the
00:11:49.320journalistic standards that they're engaging in. And just, I mean, another point is, you know,
00:11:53.100I, as you know, produced many documentaries, interviewed more than 300 Canadians, didn't0.98
00:11:58.840receive any taxpayer money, and never engaged in garbage, deceptive garbage like this. What we can0.96
00:12:05.800do as parliamentarians, I'm bringing up in the House of Commons, we're going to be filing lots
00:12:10.900of ATIPS and basically requests from the government, demands of the government for information to try
00:12:17.340to find out how much money was actually spent or allocated towards this project. Of course,
00:12:22.980the unfortunate news for your viewers is that we have a lot less power to demand transparency and
00:12:29.720hold this government to account than we did just a couple of weeks ago since Mark Carney manufactured
00:12:34.320this backdoor majority government and his first order of business was to retake control of
00:12:40.320committees. But I can tell you that we're going to do everything we can, I'm sure, on the Heritage
00:12:44.680Committee to attempt to hear from the CEO of the CBC and perhaps even the Heritage Minister to make
00:12:53.440them answer for what I think is shameful behavior from the state broadcaster and
00:12:59.160ways quite frankly an abuse of taxpayer dollars. Couldn't agree more. MP Aaron Gunn thank you so
00:13:07.280much for joining me and for explaining this situation from your perspective. Thank you for
00:13:12.420having me. Academic Dr. Francis Whittowson an outspoken critic of the Kamloops 215 claim
00:13:18.680something you are all no doubt aware of was lured in by NLT1 Productions. She was flown to Vancouver
00:13:26.160put up in a hotel, taken to a fake studio with operatives operating under fake names,
00:13:32.000and was publicly humiliated by radical indigenous activists and a far-left American TV host
00:13:38.380who claimed his name was Mike Smith. Take a look at this video.
00:13:42.880uh this is a pile of shoes that uh i believe two aboriginal people uh came and dumped on the0.81
00:14:02.320the table this seems to be a setup of some outfit that's doing a reality television show0.86
00:14:09.120that wants to paint me, I guess, as some kind of a racist
00:14:14.700or something that they're going to post on social media.
00:15:04.600Actually, his real name is Igor Vamos, an American far-left activist who worked with an activist
00:15:10.580comedy troupe called The Yes Men. Conservative author Lindsay Shepard was also lured in by this
00:15:16.620fake CBC operation, this time from a fake company called Heritage Figures Canada. They went after
00:15:23.680Lindsay Shepard because she authored a children's book, A Day with Sir John A., that teaches young
00:15:29.020Canadians about Sir John A. Macdonald. Take a look at this social media post from Shepard.
00:15:35.100I found out recently that I was deceived by social activists in an elaborate scheme
00:15:39.240dating back to January. A production group with what I now know has a fake name and fake identities
00:15:43.820gave me a friendly interview about my book A Day with Sir John A. and about Sir John A. Macdonald
00:15:48.640back in February. They connected me with a fake company called Heritage Figures Canada with a
00:15:53.580fake website and hired me to perform consulting work for them. We had what I now know were fake
00:15:58.720meetings, fake documents, fake commercial shoot, fake prototype of a Sir John A. collectible.
00:16:04.100Then in a second filmed interview last week, they turned on me, and it was revealed to have
00:16:08.020all been a setup in order to demonize Sir John A. and smear me. It turns out this is a taxpayer
00:16:13.440funded CBC and APTN project. As you can see here, this is an email from Catherine Wolfgang,
00:16:19.620the director of PR for the CBC. She writes to Lindsay, we can confirm that this project is
00:16:24.900an early production for CBC Entertainment and APTN. No details pertaining to exhibition are
00:16:30.160confirmed at this time. The story gets even worse when you read the published emails between Lindsay
00:16:35.880Shepard and Igor Vamos and Molly Gore, operating under the fake name of Pam Gibson. They lured
00:16:43.380Lindsay Shepard along for months, dating back to January. They positioned themselves to enter her0.62
00:16:50.080home to humiliate her in her own home and even offer accommodations for her child for her baby1.00
00:16:57.280all while lying to her and operating under fake names from molly gore with the fake email and0.98
00:17:04.660name of pam gibson i think we'll only need a half day and our crew can come to victoria so hopefully0.81
00:17:10.820that makes it easy also let us know what accommodations you need with the baby we're
00:17:15.420still sorting the location but just to clarify our options are you open to filming at home
00:17:20.020It'll be quite a small crew, just one or two producers and a camera. Very simple.
00:17:25.180They even went so far as to create fake Johnny MacDonald figurines to go along with this
00:17:30.080elaborate fraud. That's exactly what it is. Complete fraud. You can see the entire group
00:17:36.160here with Igor Vamos, Molly Gore, and the Johnny MacDonald impersonator with a top hat.
00:17:43.840We also know that this entrapment scheme targeted a retired RCMP officer,
00:17:47.780author Jonathan Kaye, author Jerry Amernick, IntegrityTO Executive Director Daniel Tate,
00:17:54.760and one BC leader and MLA in the BC legislature, Dallas Brody. The CBC would never invite Lindsay
00:18:01.680Shepard, Francis Whittowson, or Aaron Gunn, or any of the other targets of this deception
00:18:06.720for an honest debate about John A. MacDonald or the Kamloops claim. They would never do that.
00:18:12.480They had to lie, to deceive, to come up with a months-long elaborate scheme to lure in
00:18:19.660conservative voices, dissidents of the state-approved narrative, in order to try and
00:18:24.940humiliate them. Not to have a debate, but to humiliate them. This is not about whether private
00:18:30.960companies or media organizations have a right to do these Borat-style gotcha interviews. No one is
00:18:37.660arguing that they do have that right of course they do but it is about whether or not our money
00:18:43.740our funds whether it be through heritage canada grants directly to nlt1 productions
00:18:49.820or through the cbc to be used to do this this blatant anti-canadian activism these people
00:18:59.000don't have legitimate political power they are targeting people who have already been censored
00:19:05.160who have already been marginalized for daring to speak the truth. They're not going after the
00:19:10.220government. They're not going after leaders of major corporations. They're going after authors,
00:19:15.900censored academics, backbench opposition MPs. As I stated on social media, I expect to see
00:19:22.440conservative MPs stand up for Canadians and the truth. To demand that the CBC president and the
00:19:29.180APTN president appear before the Heritage Committee to answer for this. I want to know why my tax
00:19:35.600money and your tax money has gone to this anti-Canadian scheme. Well, joining me now to
00:19:42.400provide her side of the story and what happened between herself, Igor Vamos, and this fake
00:19:48.700production company is Dr. Francis Whittowson. Well, joining me now is Francis Whittowson,
00:19:55.640one of the commentators academics and politicians caught up in this entrapment scheme orchestrated
00:20:01.980all the way up to the top with the cbc and aptn francis can you take us through
00:20:08.180how this whole process started and how how they lured you in to this scheme
00:20:13.440so i was uh contacted by a person by the name of pam gibson who i believe her name is molly
00:20:22.140Gore, her actual name. She's connected to the States and this Vamos, this Igor Vamos, the Yes
00:20:28.620Man character. She sent me an email saying she would like to interview me as part of a docu-series.
00:20:35.660She said a whole bunch of things that I was interested in, such as free speech and universities
00:20:40.380and trying to have a more objective understanding of history. And this resulted in them flying me
00:20:45.580to vancouver and putting me up in a hotel i was taken in a car to the studio i didn't even know
00:20:53.340where this was and uh i thought it was a bit strange when i arrived there because they were
00:21:00.380all very overly friendly and uh there was a johnny mcdonald they told me there was going to be an
00:21:06.380actor dressed up as johnny mcdonald because it was going to have a theatrical side to it
00:21:11.980And then when I went in, there was a woman in a blonde wig who looked odd, very made up, and that was Dakota Ray Hebert, who's a Saskatchewan comedian, but I didn't know that at the time.
00:21:28.380I thought this was a legit documentary.
00:21:31.160They gave me a whole bunch of softball questions,
00:21:33.400which I thought were not very knowledgeable about these subjects.0.93
00:21:38.280And then about half an hour in, two Aboriginal men walked in.1.00
00:21:42.220I thought they were sabotaging the interview.0.99
00:21:45.200Gitz, Crazy Boy, and Moccasin, Ryan Moccasin, I found out later.
00:22:21.480And so I said, I need to take my medications. Can you please bring me my bag? And they brought me my bag. And then I whipped out my smartphone and started to live stream what was going on and started to interrogate who turned out to be Igor Vamos, who's the head of the Yes Men. And he told me it was a social experiment and all these kinds of things.
00:22:43.460so this was an elaborate scheme right they created fake companies under fake names
00:22:49.600all to try to bring you in and essentially to try and humiliate you when did you realize and
00:22:55.720when did you connect the dots that the cbc the state broadcaster was going to be involved in
00:23:00.880all of this it gradually came started to come together because there is that's another part
00:23:07.320of the story, a retired RCMP officer contacted me after he saw the video of VAMOS on YouTube.
00:23:16.700He said that he and a number of other retired RCMP officers have been lured to the CBC studio
00:23:22.340in Vancouver, put on a stage in front of what was supposed to be a live studio audience and
00:23:30.260humiliated, absolutely humiliated in front of these people. And when they, he said that the
00:23:36.860CBC studio was involved, I started to think that maybe CBC had something to do with it.
00:23:43.720I thought maybe they were just funding it or something, or they had a, I didn't quite
00:23:49.120know, but Lindsay Shepard got confirmation from the head of PR at CBC, Catherine Wolfgang,
00:23:57.700I think her name is, that it's actually a CBC and APTN production called Counting Coup.
00:24:06.860now explain to me what that title means why why why did they use that title and and is there
00:24:14.700anything behind it yes it is kind of a shocking story in its own right for people don't know what
00:24:20.520that is it's a native american plane saying where you go and you try to intimidate your enemy
00:24:27.680humiliate them to stop that your enemy from attacking you so that's the other thing which
00:24:34.360is kind of frightening is the meanness about it, like the nastiness and the hatred that1.00
00:24:41.480seems to be sort of driving a number of these members of this Aboriginal organization, which1.00
00:24:47.560I believe is called LNT1 Productions out of Saskatoon, which involves these three Aboriginal
00:24:55.280people, A Bear, Moccasin, and Crazy Boy.
00:25:00.640but there's a number of other aboriginal people that are involved as well and it's obviously an
00:25:06.780attempt to try to get back at people who they think have done terrible things but the thing
00:25:12.320that is is really kind of disturbing is that we're not people who are in positions of power
00:25:16.700we are cancelled people who are trying to tell the truth about the Kamloops 215 claim the false
00:25:23.620Kamloops 215 claim and we have encountered massive opposition and attempts to smear us
00:25:30.260you know over the last five years and this is just an outrage for public funds to be used
00:25:36.500against citizens who are just trying to open up discussion on a very important topic for canadian
00:25:42.900society so how do you think this story will evolve do you feel like this is going to
00:25:52.180significantly damage the narrative that these kinds of activists are trying to push i mean i
00:25:58.820imagine that if canadians get to the bottom of this and understand the full story that they
00:26:03.620lured you in to humiliate you they they humiliated former police officers at the cbc studios
00:26:10.880i think this is going to really cause damage to overall an attempt at trying to advance
00:26:18.260reconciliation how is this going to help reconciliation it won't and the whole
00:26:23.800reconciliation industry, as the film, the documentary film Making a Killing talks about,
00:26:30.480this is big money. This is not, you know, attempting to help oppressed Aboriginal people.
00:26:36.620Like I understand completely, this is why people have been manipulated into going along with this
00:26:42.360is because they understand the terrible conditions in Aboriginal communities and
00:26:46.320they want to do something to address that. But this is not what this is about. This is about
00:26:52.180using the legal system, spending billions of dollars to have legal disputes, to create
00:26:58.980animosity and division amongst people, to siphon money away from Aboriginal communities. So we
00:27:06.440really have to look deeply at what is going on here. We need to address the terrible conditions
00:27:12.260that Aboriginal people are facing, but having all these legal disputes, paying all these non-Aboriginal1.00
00:27:17.640lawyers and consultants to foment grievances is just going to increase the suffering of0.90
00:27:23.960aboriginal people and cause conflict conflicts in canadian society what i find remarkable about
00:27:31.080this story is that our tax dollars went to this company this company then hired foreign television1.00
00:27:37.800producers to go in and probably orchestrate and map out how they were going to pull off this
00:27:43.400deception and this scheme i mean this seems like a classic case of foreign interference in our
00:27:50.120politics i don't imagine we're going to get any criticism of it from our government but that's
00:27:54.680what this this that's what this reeks of to me well the yes men are an american company um there's
00:28:02.680also a united kingdom connection as well um her name is amy her first name is amy i'm forgetting
00:28:11.400her last name anyway she's involved with these kinds of productions in in in in the uk so i'm
00:28:18.760not quite sure about this myself i don't know how much american involvement is in this it seems to
00:28:24.840me the more disturbing aspect is public a public funded institution going after people who really
00:28:36.120are not in positions of power. I understand the pranking genre. I think it can be very,
00:28:41.960very effective and quite amusing in certain contexts, but they're not going after Mark
00:28:48.360Kearney. They're not going after David Eby. All the people are actually wielding power and also
00:28:56.040very powerful Aboriginal groups, especially in British Columbia, groups like the British
00:29:01.240Columbia Assembly, First Nations, and the Union of Indian Chiefs. These are people who are now
00:29:09.080involved in co-governance kinds of entities in British Columbia and have tremendous amounts of
00:29:15.000power. But they're not going after that situation. They're going after people who've been cancelled,
00:29:20.440myself, who's been fighting for six years to be reinstated at Mount Royal University and has
00:29:25.400suffered terrible consequences. That's the kind of person that they're trying to go
00:29:31.080after with this kind of pranking genre yes they're using state funds to go after dissidents
00:29:37.100essentially of the government narrative it sounds positively soviet when you put it that way
00:29:42.980it's also about challenging sir sir john a mcdonald they're mocking sir john a mcdonald
00:29:49.680with our money and undermining canadian history they are pushing a false narrative not just about
00:29:57.120the 215 claim which i think many canadians have now woken up to but they're once again going after
00:30:03.900johnny mcdonald and going after people who support mcdonald it's hard to believe it is and one of the
00:30:11.000people who is set up as well who hasn't really been mentioned very much is i think his name is
00:30:15.580jerry armanick i sometimes get his last name wrong i hope i didn't he wrote the book called sleep
00:30:20.340woking which is you know trying to have a factual basis for understanding historical figures he had
00:30:26.640have his book self-published because no mainstream publisher would take it on. He's just trying to
00:30:34.260correct the false information about Johnny MacDonald. And that's the other scary thing for
00:30:38.760him is that they had some things on the screen which were taking Johnny MacDonald's quotes out
00:30:44.500of context. So this is all about not sort of trying to have a distorted version of Canadian
00:30:54.640history not having an open and honest discussion about what actually happened with respect to
00:31:01.440figures like john a mcdonald it's remarkable and we thank you for exposing this igor vamos and this
00:31:09.080story and being the first one to publicize it francis widdowson as always thank you so much
00:31:13.160for joining me thanks for having me on all right everyone that's gonna do it for us today on the
00:31:18.140show a reminder that you can use my code juno news.com slash harrison return to get a discount
00:31:23.580on a Juno News subscription. A further reminder, the common question for the episode is this. Does
00:31:29.300somebody from the CBC need to be fired over this scandal? Let me know your answer in the comments
00:31:33.480below. My name is Harrison Faulkner, and this is Ratio.