Juno News - Liberal candidate apologizes for China bounty comments

00:00:00.000 A resurfaced video shows Liberal leader Mark Carney saying that Canada will have to adjust

00:00:09.280 to a market where access will depend on the amount of carbon in goods and services.

00:00:14.160 A Liberal candidate has apologized after calling for a Conservative opponent to be turned into

00:00:19.400 Chinese authorities for a bounty. An anti-gun activist with a history of calling for stricter

00:00:24.600 gun laws will be running as a Liberal candidate in Quebec.

00:00:27.780 Hello Canada, it's Monday, March 31st, and this is the True North Daily Brief.

00:00:32.220 I'm Isaac Lamoureux.

00:00:33.420 And I'm Noah Jarvis.

00:00:34.980 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know.

00:00:38.100 Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.

00:00:47.020 Despite lowering the consumer portion of the carbon tax, Liberal leader Mark Carney has emphasized

00:00:52.300 that the amount of carbon in any goods, services, or exports will soon be a determining factor

00:00:57.740 in whether they have access to the free market.

00:01:00.620 Carney made these comments during an online discussion last June, hosted by the Century

00:01:05.220 Initiative and the Globe and Mail. The discussion focused on the future of net zero policies as

00:01:10.280 some governments have signaled shifting priorities. During the panel, Carney went on to say that the

00:01:15.800 future of trade in Canada will soon be crucially dependent on the amount of carbon in a good and

00:01:20.880 a service that is exported. Carney said, quote, it is going to become in a much more difficult

00:01:26.520 trading environment and that's what we're entering and we're entering it for decades. The amount of

00:01:31.080 carbon in a good and a service and in an export. The host of the panel was deputy editor of the

00:01:36.120 Globe and Mail, Dennis Choquette. Choquette said, quote, we've seen lately a lot of backlash to some of the

00:01:42.720 climate policies. The consumer carbon tax in Canada, I think it's fair to say, is vulnerable.

00:01:47.200 I think this week in New York, the governor walked back on a congestion charge quite dramatically.

00:01:53.260 Investors have pulled out $40 billion from ESG funds this year because of concerns about a lack

00:01:58.520 of performance. Carney said that the $40 billion figure may sound like a, quote, big number, but that

00:02:04.460 it's absolutely tiny in the grand scheme of things regarding the net zero transition. Carney said he

00:02:09.880 believes carbon will be the significant factor in whether or not you have market access. Carney recently

00:02:15.160 lowered the consumer portion of the carbon tax to zero. However, his critics have pointed out that

00:02:20.020 Canada's federal carbon pricing law is still in effect and also the industrial carbon tax remains

00:02:25.280 in effect. Carney would later acknowledge this during an interview with CBC's Rosemary Barton

00:02:29.700 last month, claiming that any added cost would only be a, quote, marginal amount. So, Noah, what else has

00:02:35.580 Mark Carney said about his views on net zero and carbon pricing? Well, Mark Carney has been a staunch

00:02:41.500 advocate of the net zero agenda for many years. During his time, you know, living in the United

00:02:47.420 Kingdom, he was the head of COP26, one of the big climate change conferences that global leaders all fly in

00:02:56.140 on their private jets to talk about what they need to do to bring emissions down to net zero. And then they go

00:03:02.740 and build another coal fire plant. But Carney has been very big on the idea that global emissions

00:03:08.660 need to reach net zero by 2050 so that we prevent catastrophe and calamity. And to do that, he has

00:03:16.380 been a very big believer in carbon taxes, which might be surprising to some Canadian voters as one of the

00:03:22.340 first actions that he took was lowering the consumer carbon tax to zero, calling it a policy that Canadians

00:03:29.140 no longer support. However, in his book, Values, Mr. Carney said that politicians who abandon carbon

00:03:37.060 taxes should be held accountable. He said that backtracking on climate agendas should be difficult

00:03:44.420 for politicians and that if they do backtrack on these climate agendas, they should be held accountable.

00:03:51.220 So Mark Carney has walked back the Liberal government's climate agenda, their flagship policy

00:03:58.900 of consumer carbon tax that would drive up the price of all things that produce carbon emissions,

00:04:06.100 and in turn, emitting carbon emissions that much more undesirable. However, the Canadian economy is

00:04:13.220 structured around emitting carbon, as is all other advanced economies, especially if you look at the

00:04:19.460 Alberta economy that is heavily reliant and receives a lot of its wealth and bounty from the oil and natural

00:04:27.540 gas sector where there is plenty of untapped potential underneath the feet of Albertans.

00:04:34.180 So Mark Carney has sent some very contradictory statements about carbon emissions and just the

00:04:41.380 fight against quote-unquote climate change. Mark Carney really hasn't been questioned by the legacy media

00:04:47.940 about his past positions on carbon emissions, whether what he has said in his book, Values, or what he has

00:04:53.860 said as the climate envoy for the United Nations, or what he said this past June.

00:05:00.500 So it remains to be seen whether or not a prime minister, a Carney-led government would overturn

00:05:08.180 the reduction of the consumer carbon tax, the zero. That is a concern that Conservative leader

00:05:14.340 Pierre Polyev has brought up to the Canadian media. And I think it is a concern that a lot of Canadians have,

00:05:21.300 because these contradictory statements really make it hard to understand where the prime minister

00:05:26.340 stands on a very important issue. An explosive report by the Toronto Association for Democracy in

00:05:34.980 China alleges that Liberal incumbent candidate Paul Chiang called for a Conservative candidate to be returned

00:05:40.660 to Communist China for a bounty. The report has prompted condemnation online, including from Conservative MP and

00:05:47.380 candidate Michael Chong. Chiang is running for re-election in Markham Unionville and was quoted in a Chinese

00:05:53.620 language media outlet allegedly suggesting that somebody, quote, can claim the $1 million bounty if a

00:06:00.420 Conservative candidate, Joe Tay, is brought to Toronto's Chinese consulate. National security experts,

00:06:06.580 opposition figures, and anti-CCP Canadians have condemned the alleged comments. Chiang allegedly made the comments

00:06:13.380 to the CCP-funded Hong Kong-based outlet Ming Pao. Tay, a candidate running in Don Valley West,

00:06:20.260 has been a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party and reports have indicated the Chinese authorities

00:06:25.780 have placed a bounty on Tay to be captured. The bounty, reportedly worth a million Hong Kong dollars,

00:06:32.900 has been issued by the CCP-influenced Hong Kong authorities, although no further details have been provided on

00:06:39.380 the specific nature of the reward. This situation follows a series of allegations of foreign interference,

00:06:46.100 particularly from China, which have come to light in recent years. Chiang, the Conservative MP for

00:06:51.300 Wellington-Halton Hills, has been a staunch advocate in the fight against Chinese interference in Canadian

00:06:57.380 democracy. He has long criticized the Liberals for what he perceives as their failure to act decisively

00:07:03.140 in response to these threats. Chiang commented, quote,

00:07:06.500 It's outrageous that after years of turning a blind eye to Chinese Communist Party foreign interference,

00:07:11.940 warnings from experts, and a public inquiry that the Liberals continue to play footsie with foreign

00:07:17.540 interference, putting the security of Canadians at risk. Paul Chiang has since made a vague statement

00:07:23.860 in regret of his comments, calling them a, quote, lapse of judgment. So, Isaac, the issue of foreign

00:07:29.620 foreign interference has been part of the mainstream Canadian discourse for a couple of years now.

00:07:36.180 We've seen allegations, going back even to 2021, that the Chinese Communist Party had influenced

00:07:45.620 certain ridings, the electoral outcomes of certain ridings in the 2021 election and the 2019 election.

00:07:52.900 You have people like former Conservative MP Kenny Chu, who have stated that they were personally affected

00:07:59.620 by Chinese foreign interference. Conservative MP Michael Chiang was alerted by the Canadian Security

00:08:07.540 and Intelligence Services that he was a target of Chinese foreign interference. And there are many

00:08:13.780 other such cases. So, Isaac, after nine and a half years of Liberal governance, how have they handled the issue

00:08:20.340 of Chinese interference in Canada's elections? Well, yeah, Noah, if we take it back just one step before this

00:08:25.940 upcoming general election, the Liberal Party of Canada leadership race, which evidently Mark Carney won,

00:08:31.460 was actually subject to some backlash for not doing enough to combat foreign interference.

00:08:36.980 Former Conservative Party of Canada leadership election organizing committee chair Ian Brody,

00:08:42.500 formerly told True North that China's past meddling in the Liberal nomination was a concern and that

00:08:47.460 something needed to change. He said, quote, Yes, there are good reasons to worry about the Liberal rules.

00:08:53.140 The party has done nothing to clean up the rules that allowed Chinese diplomats to bus

00:08:58.180 Chinese students studying in Canada to Handong's nomination meeting. In fact, they seem to think this

00:09:04.340 is a model for how Liberal decisions should be made. CSIS sources and documents claim that Liberal MP

00:09:10.580 Han Dong received assistance from the Chinese consulate in Toronto during his 2019 nomination

00:09:15.860 race. And we remember users on X showing how easy it was to register to vote in that leadership election

00:09:23.140 using fake addresses, fake names, and so on. As for the Conservatives, former leader Aaron O'Toole

00:09:29.060 claimed that up to nine of his candidates suffered defeats due to a misinformation campaign

00:09:34.820 masterminded by China. Former Conservative MP Kenny Chu, who accused the Liberals of ignoring election

00:09:41.060 interference, explained that demographics are segregated in how they receive information and that it is

00:09:47.380 too easy for foreign actors to expose this. He provided an example saying if Putin wanted to control

00:09:54.020 Canada's Russian population, Chu said, quote, All they would have to do is buy out the media and then pump 0.99

00:10:00.820 this information to these diaspora communities that use Russian social media. This is what I observe

00:10:05.940 to be the case in Canada, and it is still ongoing. And of course, China is the same with using WeChat,

00:10:12.500 and we've seen that brought up in various hearings. Chu tabled a bill to create a public registry for

00:10:18.420 anyone working with hostile regimes. Conservative MP Michael Chong similarly called for a foreign agent

00:10:24.900 registry to be created, but that has still not happened. The Liberals did table a countering

00:10:31.140 Foreign Interference Act in May 2024, which itself caught backlash for being tabled just before the

00:10:37.380 Foreign Interference Commission's Justice Mary Jose Hogue could table her final report on the matter.

00:10:44.020 And despite a previous report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of parliamentarians,

00:10:49.780 showing that elected officials were engaging in political interference, notably for China and

00:10:54.420 India, Hogue said that nobody acted in bad faith. In fact, she disagreed with much of the previous

00:11:00.260 report. So it's not entirely clear what's going on, especially since she said there are no names,

00:11:05.940 but various political leaders have said the opposite. Natalie Provost, an anti-gun activist who wants to see 0.99

00:11:15.380 the Liberals adopt even harsher measures against law-abiding firearms owners, is now a Liberal

00:11:20.900 candidate in Quebec. Provost is a survivor of the 1989 École Polytechnique attack, which claimed 14 innocent

00:11:28.900 lives. Notably, Liberal leader Mark Carney recently mistook Concordia University as the school where the

00:11:35.380 attack took place, but he later apologized after backlash. In her role as an activist, Provost has been 0.99

00:11:42.500 accused of spreading misinformation about firearm ownership. In a Radio Canada interview, Provost

00:11:48.580 presented a fictional rifle she labeled KD-85 as fact. However, the image of the gun was a fabricated

00:11:55.380 April Fool's joke spreading on Reddit. Radio Canada has since deleted the image containing Provost's

00:12:01.860 blunder. Even following gun bans imposed by the Liberal government, Provost has made it clear that the

00:12:07.460 government did not go far enough. Provost has been pushing for even more radical measures, including

00:12:13.380 more extensive firearm bans and a wider reaching gun confiscation program. Her frustration with the

00:12:18.740 Liberal government's approach led her to resign from a government panel in 2019. At the time, critics like

00:12:24.660 the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights accused Provost of being unqualified and biased due to her 0.90

00:12:30.180 lobbying activities. In her resignation letter, she called out the government's failure to tackle the problem

00:12:36.420 head-on, accusing them of being too timid in their attempts to curb gun violence. The passage of Bill

00:12:42.100 C-71, which she considered a half measure, failed to meet her expectations for stronger action. Bill C-71 was

00:12:48.820 enacted in 2019 by the Liberal government, expanding background checks for non-restricted firearms. Critics

00:12:55.220 argue that it's part of an overreaching gun-grab effort by the government that unfairly targets law-abiding

00:13:00.740 owners with a backdoor registry. But it wasn't just the failure of Bill C-71 that pushed Provost to leave

00:13:06.340 the committee. It was the realization that the government was not willing to go as far as she

00:13:10.660 thought necessary to curb gun violence. She argued that the gun buyback program, which is currently

00:13:15.540 a central part of the Liberal government's gun control strategy, would do little to address the

00:13:19.940 root causes of violence while costing taxpayers millions. And obviously, Noah, we've seen that the

00:13:25.060 Liberals have waged war on law-abiding firearm owners, but the vast, vast, vast majority, in many

00:13:31.380 instances, upper words of 90 or higher percentile of crimes are committed with illegal firearms.

00:13:37.220 But how much has the gun buyback program cost Canadians? Well, our good friends at the Canadian

00:13:43.220 Taxpayer Federation asked this very question, and they discovered that the Liberal government,

00:13:48.660 as of September 2024, spent at least 67 million dollars on this gun buyback, with

00:13:55.540 no firearms being collected at this point. Of that 67 million, approximately 11.5 million were spent on

00:14:05.460 consultants, consultants who are probably just telling the Liberals how to, you know, enact this gun

00:14:11.780 buyback, clearly not giving them great advice because, as I previously mentioned, not one gun has been collected.

00:14:19.060 And the guns that they are collecting are from law-abiding firearms owners who were vetted,

00:14:24.980 who had to go through a process to receive their license, to be able to buy their gun, and whose guns

00:14:31.540 are under strict regulatory controls. I mean, it's not like Canada is known for its permissive gun rules to

00:14:39.940 begin with. We're not like the United States where we have the Second Amendment that protects firearm

00:14:46.260 owners in the constitution. However, Canadian firearms owners were under the assumption that

00:14:52.420 so long as they did what they were supposed to do, that they followed the rules, and that they weren't,

00:14:59.540 you know, taking these guns out and committing crimes with them, which by and large, Canadian firearms

00:15:04.900 owners have met those commitments, that the government won't be confiscating their guns. And with this new

00:15:12.900 Liberal candidate that the Liberals have appointed, Natalie Provost, I mean, I'm sure what she had to

00:15:20.500 go through years ago was absolutely awful, but that does not justify taking away the private property

00:15:27.620 of law-abiding citizens to solve a problem that is actually being caused by illegally obtained firearms.

00:15:34.820 As you mentioned, Isaac, the vast, vast majority of firearms that are used in crimes are illegally obtained firearms.

00:15:42.740 that are coming in from the United States. The Liberal government, they had no care whatsoever

00:15:48.740 to stop the flow of illegal firearms in from the United States, potentially taking action to strengthen

00:15:56.100 the border and potentially even putting pressure on the American government to stop the flow of illegal firearms

00:16:03.780 coming into the United States. There was no interest in doing that. The only interest that they did have 0.96

00:16:10.180 was creating a wedge issue for the Conservative Party on the firearms issue. Most Canadians are

00:16:16.660 supportive of firearms restrictions. However, this is under the assumption that many of these legal

00:16:23.220 firearms are used in crimes as if they are in the United States. So I think that when Canadians discover

00:16:30.100 that the vast majority of firearms that are used in crime are illegally obtained firearms, and once they are

00:16:35.620 told that this gun buyback scheme costs already 67 million dollars, more than likely more than 67 million

00:16:42.100 dollars by this point, it is March 31st. So it is probably in excess of 70 million dollars, over 70 million

00:16:51.700 dollars spent on a measure that hasn't produced any results. And you know, for a misguided policy in and of

00:16:58.100 itself, I think many Canadians are are going to find that that is angering and would want a substantive policy change.

00:17:06.580 Whether we're going to get that policy change remains to be seen. It seems as if the Liberal government

00:17:13.060 is going to continue on the same path that they had under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

00:17:18.580 And quite frankly, it looks like they're going to win the election if it is held today. Many things can happen

00:17:24.980 in the election campaign. But if Canada does re-elect a Liberal government, I think firearms owners can

00:17:33.140 expect the government to move forward with their confiscation scheme. And just quickly, Noah, yeah,

00:17:38.180 in the Liberals' most recent budget, they actually allocated an additional 597.9 million dollars

00:17:45.460 over the next three years in taxpayer monies to collect the guns. But of course, they still have

00:17:50.180 not collected a single one. That's it for today, folks. Thanks for tuning in. You can stay on top of

00:17:58.420 new episodes every weekday by subscribing to The Daily Brief on iTunes and Spotify. Also, while you're at it,

00:18:04.580 make sure to hit us with a 5-star rating and please leave a review.

Juno News - March 31, 2025

Liberal candidate apologizes for China bounty comments

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