Juno News - March 02, 2023


LAWTON： This strikes me as odd

Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Rolo Tomasi Aga Khan Island Speaker
Trudeau wants Big Tech to subsidize Big Media LAWTON： The left is never going to like you

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

162.55

Word count

920

Sentence count

53

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Chinese Politburo is the gift that keeps on giving to the Liberal Party of Canada. They wanted to build a statue to Mao Zedong in Montreal, and the Prime Minister said no. Meanwhile, CSIS director Jodie Thomas was testifying before Parliament on election interference. She said she was given multiple briefings on China's interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I did want to talk just a little bit in the remaining few minutes of the program about
00:00:04.480 what's happening in the China file today. This is the scandal that keeps on unfolding. I don't
00:00:10.820 want to say keeps on giving because, well, basically the Chinese Politburo is the gift
00:00:14.760 that keeps on giving to the liberals. This one was great that they wanted to build a statue to Mao
00:00:20.640 in Montreal. And that I think was even a little too on the nose for Justin Trudeau. He said,
00:00:25.140 okay, hang on. I'm okay with you guys mucking around in the elections, but don't make a look
00:00:30.680 at the statue of Mao in Montreal. I mean, Montreal wouldn't have liked that at all because it would
00:00:35.060 have violated probably Bill 21 or something. But anyway, so the thing that's fascinating here is
00:00:41.980 the national security advisor to Justin Trudeau, Jody Thomas, who has become a bit of a mainstay
00:00:47.380 in Canadian politics with her comments on the Freedom Convoy, her comments on all sorts of
00:00:52.060 other things lately. But Jody Thomas was testifying before Parliament, and she acknowledged that CSIS
00:00:57.580 gave the Trudeau government and gave Trudeau multiple briefings on election interference.
00:01:03.700 How many times was the Prime Minister briefed about Beijing's interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections?
00:01:13.420 The Prime Minister would have been briefed on foreign interference in the elections multiple times
00:01:18.060 between 2019 and 2021 and 2022. We will endeavour to get you those dates.
00:01:26.580 So you will undertake to provide the dates and the agencies and those involved in briefing the Prime Minister?
00:01:35.680 We will endeavour to get the dates for you.
00:01:37.700 Every instance that he was briefed in respect of Beijing's election interference?
00:01:42.280 I will do my best. But again, I was not in this job at the time.
00:01:45.700 Okay, so that's fairly specific. She's saying, I'm going to need to get the dates to you and we'll,
00:01:51.540 you know, send those over by fax, you know, at the earliest convenience, maybe, you know, 2037.
00:01:56.680 But yeah, multiple briefings, multiple briefings Justin Trudeau got on election interference.
00:02:01.460 Now, this struck me as a little odd at first, because I recall Justin Trudeau denying
00:02:05.560 he was given any such briefings. There was this comment in the House of Commons not that long ago.
00:02:11.820 The question is, has he been briefed since November 7th about whether or not a foreign power
00:02:18.360 funnelled money to Canadian federal candidates? Yes or no?
00:02:23.120 The Right Honourable Prime Minister.
00:02:26.160 Mr. Speaker, as I have said a number of times in this House, to this moment, I have not,
00:02:33.100 in all the briefings I've received, there has never been information around candidates receiving
00:02:41.040 money from China in the 2011 election, sorry, in the 2019 election or in the 2021 elections.
00:02:49.360 We have independent public servants who are engaged to oversee the integrity of the elections.
00:02:55.760 They confirm the election, the elections did complete themselves with full integrity.
00:03:03.020 Well, that's a little bit clever. Also a very specific answer. He said something very similar
00:03:08.480 at this press conference as well, which I believe was in November, if memory serves.
00:03:14.240 Our government has always taken very seriously the responsibility of protecting Canadians,
00:03:21.300 of working with our security agencies to do everything we can to keep Canadians and our institutions
00:03:27.080 safe against foreign interference. I have asked my officials to examine these media reports
00:03:35.080 and give all the possible answers, everything they can, to the parliamentary committee that's looking
00:03:44.800 into this. But let me be clear. I do not have any information, nor have I been briefed on any federal
00:03:55.020 candidates receiving any money from China. Again, an oddly specific answer. I have never been briefed on
00:04:05.600 candidates receiving money from China. He's not saying I've never been briefed on interference,
00:04:11.900 although in context of the questions, that was how people took his answers at the time. He said,
00:04:18.480 no, no, no, no one's ever briefing on that one specific thing. So it would strike me that there's
00:04:23.760 a little bit of wordplay there and that odd that CSIS and all of its many briefings, its multiple
00:04:28.400 briefings. I didn't mention that, yeah, there were some financial resources going towards candidates
00:04:33.000 here. I wonder if he was briefed on the donation to the Trudeau Foundation. So far, he has not answered
00:04:38.780 that. So I asked in the title of the show yesterday if this would be the end of Trudeau. And I cautioned
00:04:44.420 that we have had political career-ending scandals from this government, like the Aga Khan Island
00:04:50.580 vacation, like the SNC-Lavalin scandal, like the We Charity scandal, and all of them have proven to
00:04:57.640 have reduced Trudeau's exterior, not to the shine of blackface, but to a hard nonstick Teflon coating.
00:05:05.400 So I don't believe we should say at face value that this would be any different. In fact, the NDP
00:05:11.100 would probably love to have a tight relationship with China, although even they are coming out right 1.00
00:05:15.960 now and saying we need a public inquiry, maybe because they know a public inquiry is going to
00:05:19.880 take years. It's going to release an ambiguous report, and they will still be able to keep the
00:05:25.060 supply and confidence agreement. You're not allowed to call it a coalition government. The supply and
00:05:29.800 confidence agreement going until the next election would be anyway. So I wouldn't even hold out too
00:05:34.160 much optimism that even the NDP is ready to get serious with the Liberals on this.