Investigative journalist EXPOSES Carney’s condo bailout
Episode Stats
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Summary
Mark Carney is offering $3.2 billion to bail out Vancouver developers and bankers stuck with overpriced condos, but what does that mean for the rest of Canada's housing market? Our guest Sam Cooper, author of Willful Blindness, tells us why this is a bad idea.
Transcript
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Conservative leader Pierre Polyev is calling on the Kearney government to scrap its Vancouver
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condo bailout. Prime Minister Kearney has pledged $3.2 billion to bailout developers and bankers
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stuck with 2,200 overpriced BC condos. Polyev says Kearney is trying to reinflate the housing
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bubble at taxpayers expense having created the housing bubble and now bursting that bubble now
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they want to come and bail out the bankers and developers who profited from it and this is
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another example of a tiny club of liberal elites billionaires and insiders getting rich by making
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hard-working Canadians poor and so I would I'm calling for the Carney condo
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bailout of developers and bankers to be cancelled as for the condos themselves
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you know what the solution is for them to become affordable the developers need
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to lower the sale price well that would mean that developers would end up losing
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money here now is Prime Minister Carney's explanation this was last week
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about why the government should buy overpriced condos from developers stuck
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with bad investments and at the same time there's too many completed condos
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sitting empty Metro Vancouver alone around 2,500 finished units are standing
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vacant with no buyers with higher interest rates weaker investment demand
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developers are stuck they don't want to sell at a loss they can't afford to hold
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those empty units indefinitely and the problem is that those empty homes don't just sit idle
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they also disincentivize new construction unsettled lenders and investors create a
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housing market that in effect feels frozen result too many british colombians still can't find the
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homes that they can afford our guest today is journalist sam cooper author of willful blindness
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how a network of narcos tycoons and ccp agents infiltrated the west welcome to the show once
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again sam great to be with you mark what do you make of the vancouver condo bailout and could
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toronto be next well focusing on vancouver it's just a wild story in so many ways we could start
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with mark carney the superstar central banker he is an expert on the concept called moral hazard
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and that is when financially you encourage bad behavior and capitalism by bailing out
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private businesses that have made very bad investment decisions so that's where to start
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you know i think this story of uh carney and bc premier david evey offering you know up to over
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3.2 billion for some still to be developed innovative financial plan to take the take off
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the books of these private developers, some 2000 units or something like that, that are deeply
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overpriced. No one wants them. And I say no one wants them, Mark, because as my book, you know,
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that you read the title shows Vancouver's market has been driven by mystery money from China,
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underground banking from China, and speculation driven by private developers, and sketchy,
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know foreign investors that have basically used vancouver unfortunately as a money laundering
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tool this is very well documented so mark carney the central banker should know that he's rewarding
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people that have profited massively for over two decades on selling essentially condos to chinese
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buyers uh you know up zoning single family land turning condo you know towers into 300 400 square
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foot boxes that no one lives in they're sold offshore in china and hong kong everyone knows
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this and now because china's market has taken a deep dive because it's the same sort of speculative
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criminal driven market there uh that's what's happening in vancouver and mark carney is about
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to bail them out and mark i'll add this there's so many more things i could say yes i do think
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the same thing is going on in toronto my work for the bureau has has has shown how chinese
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underground banking driven mortgage fraud is a major factor in canada's banks and the toronto
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market i've assessed that about a trillion dollars in shady banking largely driven by chinese
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underground banking and organized crime and what's called chinese capital flight other nations too
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That's happened in Vancouver and Toronto for the past decade, and this is pretty well-sourced
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So Mark Carney, as a central banker both in Canada and the United Kingdom, he knows
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that foreign bad actors have infiltrated Canada's banking and real estate system, and I say
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he's rewarding them with this bailout, and I think there's probably a lot of landmines
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But, yeah, it makes you wonder who his carny is beholden to most, whether it's Chinese or whether it's his liberal friends, you know, in the condo developing business in Vancouver.
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And I guess this is payback time, but just the ugliness of it just looks, the optics of it are horrible.
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And I mean, to think that the premier of British Columbia signed on to it, the whole thing
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You know, my book, a national bestseller, still selling well to this day, Willful Blindness,
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published in 2021, it dove into the history of real estate speculation and massive transnational
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casino money laundering in Vancouver British Columbia all driven by Chinese organized crime
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essentially and Mark this has been going on as my book detailed back to the late 1980s where
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developers from Hong Kong uh you know after Expo 86 in Vancouver developed major portions of
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downtown Vancouver and Mark you know I would draw a through line directly to this bailout that Mr
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Carney announced last week because those same major developers their successor companies are
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the ones that sell condos directly to China and Hong Kong and buyers my book shows how they were
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connected to senior levels of foreign organized crime some of these major developers
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connected to the CCP and this is open source records certainly you won't find many people
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in canadian reporting it but i've reported it based on documents and so you mentioned who
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carney's beholden to i say absolutely the ccp and chinese organized crime connected to it
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will have some skin in the game with this bailout and have had skin in bc's real estate game for
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decades but you also mentioned liberal fundraisers mark i mean i don't want to name names today but
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There's been fundraisers for Mark Carney over the past two years, for Justin Trudeau for years before they were held, you know, brokered by the major real estate developers who will be involved in this bailout, who are also kingmakers in B.C. politics and major backers of Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau.
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And I've even seen the donation records. Those people were at the table for the past two years for major fundraisers for Mark Carney.
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And they're the same ones that were lobbying him to open up to the foreign market again.
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And I would say they're probably behind the scenes the ones asking for this bailout.
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Do they have something on Carney? And I'm talking about the Chinese here. I mean, could the prime minister be compromised?
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Well, my work, Mark, has pointed to how Mark Carney, as the former head of Brookfield, was doing a lot of traveling to Beijing and Shanghai and China in 2024, you know, before he stepped into Justin Trudeau's chair in a pretty neat switcheroo, as I call it.
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you know he was over in for Brookfield he secured a 250 million dollar bailout from the Bank of
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China for Brookfield's high-end real estate holdings in Shanghai in 2024 so I mean do I
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is there any known connection to you know Chinese investors somehow in the background getting a
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bailout in Vancouver I don't know about that but Brookfield is in Mark Carney's background
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Apparently, they're a real estate investor in Vancouver.
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Look, Mark Carney has done a lot of dealings privately with China before, as you know,
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Suddenly, Canada is now a strategic partner with China again in everything from, you know,
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EV deals to I am very sure if Justin Trudeau's history is instructive that China,
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Chinese investors and real estate developers were lobbying Justin Trudeau to flood money in from
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China to Canada. It would make sense if those same type of people are lobbying Mark Carney.
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Yeah, that's what it gets really terrifying. I mean, for one thing, if the bailout is fine for
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Vancouver, well, that sets a precedent, right? I mean, why just Vancouver then? You've got to
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look at other cities. Look at Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa. They all have issues. They all have
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toxic assets. They all have developers left holding the bag on a number of condos. I mean,
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and Toronto's double, probably twice as many as in Vancouver that are completed, but remain
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unsold and many under construction that are almost finished. I mean, by the time they're done
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bailing out the real estate sector, we could be spending tens of billions of dollars in order to
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do that. All of that is very dangerous. I mean, is it possible that this is almost a trial balloon
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and let's see if it flies in Vancouver and if we're sort of able to get away with it over the
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summer when a good chunk of the media is not even paying attention, maybe we can, you know, do it in
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other cities. What do you think? That's a great point because that's exactly, in my experience,
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how the Prime Minister's office of Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney work. They float trial balloons.
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as you said they they uh they rammed this omnibus canada surveillance bill through you know on on
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the eve of going off for for summer break you know that that's exactly the type of thing that it seems
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that the mark carney government is trying to do to catch the media sleeping and much of the media in
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ottawa is already asleep so that your point about the precedent in toronto and politicians in toronto
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saying hey what about what about us i think that's dead on the point and i'll tell you why because
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you know i reported for the bureau on i got a leak from an hsb whistleblower that was reporting on how
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their banking branches in the toronto area were writing massive known fraudulent mortgage loans
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to uh chinese individual individuals that were claiming during the coveted pandemic
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to be working these remote jobs in china for insane amounts five hundred thousand dollars you
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know fake data management job during covet when everyone was locked down and there were a lot of
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mortgages issued in toronto to these very that bank had you know they i got the internal documents
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that showed people knew this was fraudulent and i widened out my investigation to show that fin
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trap canada's financial watchdog has studied 48 000 diaspora banking transactions and pointed
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to that same type of fraud running into canada's big banks and going into real estate development
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going into law firms going into mortgages so i do think i'll tell you at a granular level while i
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won't say names today i know that real estate developers very active in vancouver are the same
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ones from the chinese uh communities that are developing in toronto and these would be mark
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the type of people that the title of my book addresses so ccp connected narcos and money
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launders these are people involved in election interference they're people probably donating
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to mark carney and his party i know they are and they are real estate developing in toronto for
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sure so that's a concern i do believe yeah i mean this relationship is getting more incestuous all
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the time. And you raise the issue of election tampering. All that was done for the liberals
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benefit, really. That's probably why nothing was really done to stop it. And you've also linked in
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the Chinese EVs as possibly another bargaining chip. And then you've got the real estate empire.
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It just seems like all of this is aiming towards a closer link, economic ties with China, which
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many Canadians are not very comfortable with, and for good reason. On top of all that, we've got our
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negotiating team down in Washington, D.C., and the CUSMA deal very much on the rocks. So there's a lot
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of plates in the air right now in terms of our relationship with the Chinese and possibly at
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the expense of our relationship with the United States. I do believe that's the case. And, you
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know, to your point that there's probably a lot more going on, I can point to something concrete
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in sort of this Vancouver real estate bailout that struck me, you know, I noticed among the
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real estate developers and marketers that were at this big sort of fundraiser for Mark Carney in
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February 2026, my colleague Bob Mackin has covered it. You know, in the crowd there is a First Nations
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leader who's now on the Canada Infrastructure Investment Bank. This is the very same infrastructure
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Bank that we're told is behind this $1 billion British Columbia government BC Ferries deal
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that's going straight to China. And again, from Ottawa, who's in charge? Gregor Robertson,
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the same one who's also behind the housing minister for this bailout. And I could go even
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further. This First Nations chief seems to be one of the ones that, you know, their lands have in a
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treaty deal you know soon after there's a major mall being sold to a Chinese developer group
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that I won't go too far into the weeds here but that I know people involved in that are certainly
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I say of concern to the U.S. government and to some good police officers and intelligence
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agents in Canada so absolutely it's the type of facts and documented narrative I've covered in
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Willful Blindness I'm seeing it just bursting out of British Columbia right now with the players
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involved. Yeah, it's an interesting, you raised this issue of this very uncomfortable mix of
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business and political interests. You're talking about people like Gregor Robertson and Mark Carney
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who had his dealings with Brookfield and the Chinese. And these people seem to be pretty
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comfortable with the idea that they could have their political interests as well as their business
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in you know business interests and that somehow they can exist uh you know comfortably when in
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fact you've got these massive conflicts of interest i mean and they're it's blatant
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really i mean does that bother you well there's a good clip circulating online where one of the
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conservative mps asks housing minister gregor robertson repeatedly in parliament how many
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investment properties that he owns. Mr. Robertson can't answer the question. You know, as a Vancouver
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City Hall reporter, I started my career reporting on Gregor Robertson's mayoralty in Vancouver.
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And I quickly learned and documented as I did in my book, Willful Blindness, that the real
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estate developers were not only major donors, but were brokers of, you know, getting fundraising
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tables together with major fees. I covered one where each developer that would sit down for lunch
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with Gregor Robertson before, you know, his reelection bid, and I think it was, you know,
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around 2016, 2017, had to pay $25,000 for the privilege of sitting down. So you call that in
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my world a cash for access or potential influence peddling event. And what do you know, people at
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that table would be the same ones now sort of you know fundraising for Mark Carney and I say
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probably lined up to benefit from this bailout so look uh I would not put Gregor Robertson in
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the class of of a Mark Carney in terms of um financial uh wherewithal and knowledge of
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international banking systems and how a bailout of the type of people involved would expose Canada
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probably to financial, I say, integrity risk with our worldwide partners, including in Washington.
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But I do see, I mean, that the appearance of conflicts and potential self-dealing are emerging
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very quickly within days of this announcement by Robertson, Carney, and Premier David Eby in the
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South Vancouver area, where I noted in my op-ed for the Bureau about a 10-minute drive from the
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River Rock Casino that gave Canada, you know, the worldwide moniker of the Vancouver model of
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Chinese money laundering. I think there needs to be some kind of parliamentary investigation on
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all of this. I mean, I don't know the degree to which this is going to blow up in Carney's face.
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We'll have to see in the days ahead. Last word to you, Sam.
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uh well thank you and uh i'll keep digging into this story because i i see that it is
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it's only starting to get legs but it is only getting legs with independent analysts and media
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so far so yeah you need to make sure that canadians and parliamentarians are paying
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attention yeah it's funny you know organizations like the globe and mail have shown very little
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interest in this story. How do people find you online? They can find me at thebureau.news. I've
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been up and running as an independent investigative platform for three years now. Sam Cooper, thank you
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so much for coming on the show. We appreciate it. Thanks, Mark. If you enjoyed this show,
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consider supporting great independent journalism by becoming a premier member of Juno News. Please
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