00:17:45.280And the idea that, you know, this stuff was known, it was in the intelligence community,
00:17:50.160the National Security Advisor knew about it.
00:17:52.380And then only this week do we get this expulsion of a Chinese diplomat that was, again, not just, you know, representing China, but doing so in a way that was very much working against Canada.
00:18:05.220Well, look, you're absolutely right that, you know, a lot of people in the media seem to be giving the impression that this is something that's been known for maybe a week.
00:18:17.320But on the contrary, this was in reports from CSIS, reports that reached the political level, that reached the national security advisor to the prime minister,
00:18:28.160that said that there were Chinese diplomats in Canada working to intimidate an elected member of Canada's parliament.
00:18:35.860And it's only now, two years later, that we're taking action.
00:18:40.900And of course, you know, the Prime Minister having kicked a diplomat out, in my view,
00:18:46.580not because he thought that it was important to kick the diplomat out, but because he thought
00:18:51.220it was important to respond to public opinion. Once it became known, he said, well, I guess I
00:18:56.580better take some action. But the fact is that at least the people around him, if not the Prime
00:19:02.340minister himself knew all about this two years ago and the fact that it's taken them this long
00:19:10.340to react to say to china you know you can't actually ask us to accredit diplomats to
00:19:16.900represent you in our country and then have them break our laws try and intimidate our elected
00:19:22.500representatives uh uh and we are not going to allow that your your diplomats who do this are
00:19:28.500going to be sent home i i i i'm i'm kind of speechless that uh the prime minister uh has
00:19:35.460taken so long and uh before he made the decision made it very clear that he was hesitating quite a
00:19:41.460lot uh because he worried about what the chinese might do in response which i i i think is pathetic
00:19:49.220behavior by the prime yeah yeah no and melanie joe lee the foreign minister had made some comments
00:19:55.380And I don't have the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of, you know, we want to talk through China, what our options are.
00:20:01.180I'm like, why are you talking this through with China for you?
00:20:03.480I mean, for starters, I think there's only one option.
00:20:06.140But secondly, it shouldn't be part of a consultation at that point.
00:20:08.820I mean, it was still from when this news became public, even if we give the government the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know before that, which I don't.
00:20:16.960But even from when the news went public, we're talking about a significant period of time before this guy was on a plane back home.
00:20:23.460Well, and there is no better way to telegraph to the Chinese that the government of Canada is frightened of them and is frightened to take actions that would protect the interests of Canadians because they're afraid of what the Chinese will do in response.
00:20:40.600And frankly, you know, this is exactly the reason why so many of us said with respect to the two Michaels, when China basically kidnapped two Canadian citizens to punish us for the arrest of Meng Wenzhou, the CFO of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms company, you know, we were saying to the government of Canada over and over again, don't let this affect the way that you behave towards China.
00:21:08.960You cannot say to China, well, as long as you're holding two of our citizens, we won't do anything that upsets you.
00:21:15.960This is exactly why, you know, countries say, for example, they won't negotiate with terrorists.
00:21:21.580Because as soon as you say, oh, you're going to hurt my people, well, then I will do whatever you tell me to do.
00:21:29.400You create incentives for bad actors to do bad things because they know that you will let them get away with it.
00:21:36.060And so, you know, the whole behavior of Canada, not just towards this diplomat who was intimidating Michael Chong through his family, but the behavior with respect to the two Michaels and many other ways, we have sent the message to China, you can walk all over us and we will do everything we can to avoid responding.
00:34:05.840Melissa Lantzman, who is the Conservative MP,
00:34:08.120He tweeted out, a bunch of liberal politicians got together to talk about how to fix their abysmal record of passport delivery and unacceptable wait times.
00:34:16.140And instead, they landed on kick Terry Fox out of the passport and cancel the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
00:34:22.220Let's replace them with a man holding a rake and pictures of a boy about to go swimming.
00:34:30.460So actually, the boy going swimming is about to go into the Atlantic to swim across the
00:35:53.780but I believe a father goose standing guard,
00:35:55.580which is a familiar sight, because whenever there's a mother goose, you got to run because
00:35:59.340there's a father goose nearby and they will like dive bomb at you. I once had to kick one in Detroit
00:36:04.300because he was flying at me. But nevertheless, the thing about this is that they had like sort
00:36:09.320of just seeded this area to the geese, like the geese won. And instead they had like set up all
00:36:15.500this caution tape and put signs so you couldn't actually go in the store the way you normally
00:36:20.300would. You had to like walk around. And this is what happens when a goose decides that they are
00:36:25.360going to camp out somewhere, we all just capitulate because the geese actually run the country. And
00:36:30.560sometimes when you look at, for example, what the liberals passed at their convention, you'd
00:36:34.040wonder if the geese would do a better job than some of the people involved. But all of that is
00:36:39.000to say, I'm actually prepared to say the goose should be on the passport, even if we don't like
00:36:42.540them. They are generally our overlords. But then, yeah, like the guy raking and the guy swimming,
00:36:48.840and there's like a weird, so on, maybe we put the, put them back up there.
00:36:54.360Page 36 specifically, 36 and 37 on the passport, there's like a polar bear on the right.
00:37:01.600And on the left, there's like a, it's like a penguin, but it kind of looks like a ladybug.
00:37:07.220And if you tilt your head ever so, it looks like the hunchback of Notre Dame.
00:37:10.920So, and then underneath him, there's a fish.
00:37:13.740So it's probably a penguin and not Quasimodo.
00:37:16.040But the whole point is I actually wonder if AI could have done a better job at a fraction of the price to the federal government.
00:37:23.700Just to like play around, I tried to spit out a couple of AI generated images and they all look like very weird like Soviet passport designs, which, you know, maybe these days is more accurate.
00:37:34.280But anyway, that's it for us for today.
00:37:37.260We will be back on Friday with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show on True North.