00:02:18.360the classical definition of election interference is it must be clandestine. It has to be covert.
00:02:26.140There could be covert funds flowing. And so these statements by Melanie Jolie,
00:02:33.180my first thought is this is not the brightest geostrategic or political thinker in the country.
00:02:39.120It's almost like the type of thing the FBI would love to get on tape, the way she implicated
00:02:45.080herself. So she gave Washington a very clear hammer to hit Canada that those statements
00:02:51.100sound pretty incriminating. Now, do they prove that Canada is clandestinely interfering
00:02:56.560in the midterms? No, but they prove that Canada has targeted red states in an electoral framework
00:03:06.420and is putting pressure on those states from a business perspective by blocking products produced
00:03:12.600there such as i'll say bourbon or other products that that are not going on canadian shelves so
00:03:19.080look i don't think it's a cia case i just think it's a very overt case of what the politicians
00:03:25.240call you know an air war campaign so look i mean uh it's hard to see them uh going to court with
00:03:32.920minister jolie or any others but certainly it looks it looks like a type of interference and
00:03:39.800And Mark, I'll add, you know, I'm reminded that in my book, Willful Blindness, I wrote about how the Chinese global ties, which is a CCP organ, warned that if an airmail tool conservative platform was a suggestion, won the Canadian federal election, this would lead to punitive meshes against Canada.
00:03:58.700I wrote in my book, that sounds like a type of air war. And I was also reminded that John McCallum, our ambassador to China, if you'll recall, in summer 2019, Mun Wanzhou is in a Vancouver, you know, house arrest.
00:04:14.980Our Michaels are in China in jail by the secret police. John McCallum trots out and says, look, if China hits Canada with any more punitive measures, it will only help elect the conspiratives.
00:04:28.480So my point here is that, again, that would seem to be a very open statement by Mr. McCallum. But I later found documents, as you know, to report on election interference.
00:04:39.820classified intelligence said john mccallum may have been pressed by chinese actors to make
00:04:46.140statements about the man wanzhou case so my my end point here is underneath these high-level
00:04:51.720statements we could even ask the question you know is minister jolie's getting you know sweet
00:04:58.620nothings whispered in her ear from people that are friendly to china in that type of trade war
00:05:04.820sort of uh conversation well people have become somewhat uncomfortable at least some canadians
00:05:11.380with the rather cozy link between the carney government and people like obama the democrat
00:05:16.820party in general as you know they hired a democrat operative maya johnson as coo of
00:05:25.300carney's office i guess that's her title and her role is a little fuzzy but for somebody so0.81
00:05:31.140deeply connected with the Clintons. And when the Americans are not stupid, they can see0.99
00:05:38.900who this guy is surrounding himself with and who is aligning himself with.0.98
00:05:43.060And so there's a sense that maybe there was even some contact between the Democrat Party
00:05:49.300and Mr. Carney in a bid to walk away from that deal back on August 21st, ahead of the
00:05:55.620the midterm elections, which that deal may very well have given Trump a boost, you know,
00:06:01.680going into the election. And so all of these things are suspicious. And even if there's no
00:06:08.020there, there, there is smoke and where there's smoke, I mean, there might be some fire. I mean,
00:06:12.040are we venturing down a dark path here by getting too cozy with one party and by playing politics
00:06:18.740ahead of the midterms? Well, I agree with you. The case of the Democrat operative being now a
00:06:24.780senior Carney advisor it's not hard to see grand strategy there and the fact that we have you know
00:06:31.360Bill Clinton now out on the campaign trail talking about how President Trump slamming Canada with
00:06:37.580rhetoric is deeply wrong whether right or wrong for Bill Clinton to say it is clearly campaigning
00:06:43.260Barack Obama the same message and then I was reminded where we have this senior democratic
00:06:49.400operative now on Carney's team. I remember with the whole Hillary Clinton email scandals where
00:06:55.280there was, it looked like one of these liberal pollsters was talking back and forth with
00:07:00.520sort of some Washington Democrats, very clearly showing that, look, it's no surprise that the
00:07:07.280Democrats and the liberals in the behind the scenes, they're very friendly. And to me, it has
00:07:13.020almost seen objectively that, look, of course, the Republicans and the conservatives probably would
00:07:18.880have a more natural ideological affinity but i see what seems to be more networking and maybe
00:07:25.340even more sort of uh you could even ask the question about think tanks and maybe even money
00:07:31.000flowing potentially between networks in the democrats and the liberals which i think would
00:07:36.160raise some questions if as you say could the carny liberals be getting sort of uh you know
00:07:42.560any pointers from the democrats going in the midterms obviously to me that that could be a
00:07:48.120concern if you're the Republican. Yeah, I mean, the Democrats may have even advised Carney to
00:07:53.140target Republican states. Who knows? I can envision something like that happening, especially since
00:07:58.400one of his key advisors is a former Clinton operative. But there you have it. Sam, you've
00:08:06.500also written that Canada and its attempts to forge closer alliances with countries like China and
00:08:12.740Russia is putting itself at risk, becoming more vulnerable to national security
00:08:19.680attacks from those very same countries, which are seen largely as bad actors.
00:08:24.740I mean, is there a danger here that as we distance ourselves from the United
00:08:28.820States in favor of trying to establish closer ties with a country like China,0.85
00:08:34.100that we're in fact putting ourselves at risk here because of the long history0.66
00:08:38.540of those, of, uh, malfeasance by some of those other countries?
00:08:42.740I think that's absolutely a risk, and it's a clear and present, almost proven risk right now. Mark, I've been reporting for the Bureau for the past three years on a document called the NSI COP 2019 Foreign Interference Report.
00:08:56.760Only myself that I know in the world as a journalist has exclusive unredacted access to this explosive intelligence.
00:09:05.140And what it says was the Justin Trudeau government was being warned in blaring alarms and reports from CSIS that Canada's government has ignored national security to pursue trade with China.
00:09:18.100The same thing with India. The document spells out how an Indian diplomatic plot to target diaspora in Vancouver was disrupted by the Justin Trudeau office, basically stopping a CSIS operation.
00:09:34.340And as I reported for the Bureau, in the wake of that, we've had assassinations in Canada that are alleged to be potentially involved in Indian geopolitics and transnational repression.
00:09:47.200So my point here is that Mark Carney's, the Liberal Party that Mark Carney took over from Justin Juro did not address those warnings from 2019, has not meaningfully or at all, I believe, improved our national security.
00:10:03.320And by doubling down on trade with China, it simply opens a wider gate in many ways from the, we don't know, the RCMP has a deal now with Chinese police that Mark Carney won't tell us about, trades deepening.
00:10:19.700We now have Chinese journalists with greater freedoms, you know, to report in Canada. All of these I've reported are deep national security risks. And we don't have answers in Mark Carney's new national security plan about a plan, a plan to make a plan, how he'll address the threats from China, first of all.
00:10:37.720But I also reported nations like Turkey, India, Russia, Iran, all of them acting on our soil, some of them potentially lethally, and Canada really hasn't done much about it.
00:10:51.300Yeah, I mean, it makes you wonder that if we keep going down that path, to what degree we're going to be seen as a major security risk to our southern neighbors.
00:11:00.640I mean, that's already happening. If you listen to some of the statements made by people like Tom Holman, for instance, they're worried about the northern border. They're worried about things happening here, about our relations, our growing friendship, if you want to call it that, with countries like China and others.
00:11:22.840and to the degree that Canada will be used as a staging ground
00:11:27.280for security attacks on the United States.
00:11:30.160I think that's something that could become a major irritant in the years ahead,
00:11:34.360far more than, say, the trade problems that we now have with that country.