Juno News - November 25, 2025


Liberals spend $37 million fighting extremism, avoid mentioning Islam

Topics
Carbon Tax in Canada tax informants and evasion
Hosted by
Isaac Lamoureux
Mentioned
Will Mark Carney Mark Carney Eric Lefebvre Diana Rogers
Veteran association invites members to assisted suicide seminar Conservatives demand Carney disclose and divest from Brookfield

Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

149.0

Word count

2,115

Sentence count

93


Summary

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

Prime Minister Mark Carney is calling for world leaders to ensure that artificial intelligence data centres are carbon neutral, while praising carbon taxes in Europe. The Liberal government has poured nearly $37 million into groups to fight violent extremism, but doesn t mention Islamist extremism and anti-Semitism in its funding targets. The Canada Revenue Agency has gained nearly $500 million from a snitch line that allows Canadians to report their neighbours whom they suspect of tax evasion.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Prime Minister Mark Carney is calling for world leaders to ensure that artificial intelligence
00:00:09.180 data centres are, quote, carbon neutral, while praising carbon taxes in Europe.
00:00:14.500 The Liberal government has poured nearly $37 million into groups to fight violent extremism,
00:00:20.940 but doesn't mention Islamist extremism and barely mentions anti-Semitism in its funding targets.
00:00:27.580 The Canada Revenue Agency has gained nearly half a billion dollars from a snitch line
00:00:33.180 that allows Canadians to report their neighbours whom they suspect of tax evasion.
00:00:38.280 Hello Canada, it's Tuesday, November 25th, and this is the True North Daily Brief.
00:00:43.040 I'm Isaac Lamoureux.
00:00:44.460 And I'm William McBeth.
00:00:45.800 We've got you covered with all the news you need to know.
00:00:48.520 Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.
00:00:53.260 Prime Minister Mark Carney used his platform at the G20 Summit in South Africa to urge world leaders
00:01:02.900 to require artificial intelligence data centres to operate as carbon neutral, in part through the use of carbon credits.
00:01:10.920 Speaking at a working session in Johannesburg, Carney called for the development of standardized,
00:01:15.860 high-integrity carbon markets that would redirect capital flows to regions most impacted by climate change.
00:01:21.700 He said AI infrastructure, given its rapidly expanding energy demands,
00:01:25.600 should be required to account for its environmental footprint.
00:01:28.460 I'd suggest that we can catalyze enormous private sector demand for these credits
00:01:34.420 by committing AI data centre development to be carbon neutral.
00:01:39.540 We need a price on carbon.
00:01:40.840 I salute my neighbour, the European Union, in pricing carbon and putting in place a CBAM.
00:01:47.620 He praised the EU for its Carbon Taxes and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, or CBAM,
00:01:53.440 which apply tariffs to carbon-intensive imports.
00:01:56.660 Carney's comments comes as Canada faces growing scrutiny over its domestic carbon tax,
00:02:02.080 which remains in the industrial portion even after Carney removed the consumer carbon tax.
00:02:07.560 The Prime Minister's remarks also followed the debate around the outcome of the COP30 summit
00:02:12.680 held earlier this month in Bolem, Brazil.
00:02:15.320 The final COP30 agreement did not include any reference to fossil fuels,
00:02:19.380 despite calls from several countries for a roadmap to transition away from them.
00:02:23.420 However, in his closing statement, the COP president announced plans to establish a working group
00:02:29.160 to produce what he described as the world's first fossil fuel transition roadmap.
00:02:34.020 So, William Carney proposed his own version of these, quote,
00:02:38.340 carbon border adjustment mechanisms during the last election.
00:02:41.640 What were some of the criticisms of his plan?
00:02:44.280 Well, I think it's really interesting when it comes to Prime Minister Carney and carbon taxes.
00:02:49.760 Of course, Mr. Carney is no stranger to carbon taxes.
00:02:54.080 In fact, he's been an advocate for many years, some would even say decades,
00:02:58.600 of lots of different measures to reduce carbon emissions.
00:03:02.140 And he was quite vocal about it before becoming Prime Minister.
00:03:06.800 His decision to cancel the consumer carbon tax wasn't ideological.
00:03:11.720 It was political.
00:03:13.360 He saw it as something that was dragging down liberal support, heading into an election,
00:03:18.260 and therefore he decided to get rid of it.
00:03:20.400 That did not mean he no longer supports carbon taxes.
00:03:24.540 And I have to laugh because of how many different names people seem to be coming up with,
00:03:28.920 carbon border adjustments and other things, to simply mean carbon tax.
00:03:33.780 In this particular instance, I think the concern is Canada is already struggling with low productivity.
00:03:39.780 We are seeing a lack of business investment.
00:03:42.060 We are seeing high unemployment, wages being depressed.
00:03:45.920 And all of these things combined are creating tough economic situation for Canadian families.
00:03:50.120 Anything that makes doing business in Canada more expensive is a threat to Canada's economic growth.
00:03:57.980 And I think this carbon tax, whether or not it's applied just on imports or exports or both,
00:04:05.040 would have the effect of putting us at a competitive disadvantage to those jurisdictions
00:04:09.460 that don't have these same carbon taxes, notably the United States.
00:04:13.420 So I think that's something that everybody must keep in mind when it comes to when we're talking about these new carbon taxes.
00:04:19.700 The impact on families could be very real and, frankly, very devastating.
00:04:24.420 The federal government is pouring nearly $37 million into community projects that, quote,
00:04:33.900 prevent and counter violent extremism, yet almost none of the money targets Islamist extremism and anti-Semitism,
00:04:42.400 the top threats according to Canadian and global intelligence agencies.
00:04:47.060 Instead, projects tackling far-right extremism are over-represented,
00:04:51.380 while leaving the highest-risk ideologies almost entirely untouched.
00:04:56.420 Public Safety's latest round of Community Resilience Fund spending supports 19 projects run by universities,
00:05:04.220 non-profits, and municipal partners.
00:05:06.760 The funding was allocated to reduce, quote,
00:05:09.240 hate-motivated crimes and improve understanding of radicalization to violence.
00:05:14.400 But the review of the funded initiative shows none of the projects address Islamist or jihadist radicalization,
00:05:21.380 and only two mentioned anti-Semitism.
00:05:25.320 Last week, CSIS Director Dan Rogers stated that, quote,
00:05:28.540 extreme religious, ideological, or political views persist as one of Canada's most significant national security concerns.
00:05:37.620 The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and CSIS have said individuals inspired by, quote,
00:05:44.820 jihadi ideology, remain the greatest terrorist threat to Canada, a conclusion mirrored in CSIS's 2024 annual report.
00:05:55.400 The discrepancy prompted a forensic audit by TAFSEC, a Toronto-based Jewish advocacy organization.
00:06:02.980 The group carried out a forensic audit of the Community Resilience Fund's 2025 portfolio,
00:06:08.080 which concluded that the federal program is, quote,
00:06:11.560 structurally blind to the surge in Islamist extremism and anti-Jewish violence that is currently mobilizing youth.
00:06:19.300 The audit found that only two of 19 projects mention anti-Semitism,
00:06:24.520 despite the spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes,
00:06:27.480 and none addressed Islamist or jihadist radicalization.
00:06:31.080 So, Isaac, combating anti-Semitism and Islamic extremism have both been blind spots for liberal governments since 2015,
00:06:40.000 with many seeing the failure worsen since the October 7th attacks from two years ago.
00:06:45.460 Is this a case of policy failure, or is there some political calculus driving this approach?
00:06:52.540 Yeah, William, I think you're looking at a mix of genuine policy failure
00:06:57.080 and, pretty obvious, political incentives pulling in the same and arguably wrong direction.
00:07:03.020 On the policy side, the numbers speak for themselves.
00:07:06.060 Intelligence agencies have been warning for years that the deadliest risk to Canada
00:07:09.920 comes from actors inspired by jihadist ideology,
00:07:13.340 and that Jewish communities are a primary target.
00:07:16.320 At the same time, as you mentioned, anti-Semitic incidents have hit record highs,
00:07:19.940 with thousands of cases of harassment, vandalism, and violence reported in a single year.
00:07:25.020 Yet, when Ottawa doles out tens of millions of dollars in prevention money,
00:07:29.640 virtually none of it is earmarked to deal specifically with Islamist radicalization,
00:07:35.160 or with the forms of anti-Semitism that are motivating recent plots and street intimidation,
00:07:41.200 to deal specifically with Islamist radicalization,
00:07:44.360 or with the forms of anti-Semitism that are motivating recent plots and street intimidation.
00:07:50.340 Instead, the money is overwhelmingly routed into projects framed around generic hate,
00:07:55.300 polarization, or far-right extremism,
00:07:58.000 even though there have been multiple disrupted Islamist-inspired plots against Jewish targets
00:08:03.260 in Canadian cities over the same period.
00:08:06.160 So that would be a straight misalignment between threat assessments and program designs.
00:08:11.300 And it's not happening in a vacuum.
00:08:13.140 We've seen the federal government repeatedly fund activist infrastructure
00:08:16.780 that is almost entirely oriented toward one side of the spectrum.
00:08:20.960 Groups like the Canadian Anti-Hate Network have received close to a million dollars in federal grants
00:08:25.720 to study and contain the far right,
00:08:28.540 even as a Canadian court accepted evidence that the organization itself had assisted Antifa,
00:08:34.520 and that the movement has been violent.
00:08:36.880 Other reporting has shown school boards paying the Canadian Anti-Hate Network's co-founder to train staff,
00:08:43.980 despite concerns that their materials smear mainstream parents groups
00:08:47.500 and may actually fuel radicalization rather than calm it.
00:08:51.840 At the same time, far-left networks in B.C. have rebranded themselves
00:08:55.320 with softer pro-democracy language to get closer to institutions and funders,
00:08:59.900 and the federal government has stayed quiet on whether any of that ecosystem
00:09:03.760 should face the kind of scrutiny routinely applied to right-of-center groups.
00:09:08.660 As for the political calculus,
00:09:10.880 the liberals rely heavily on progressive urban coalitions,
00:09:13.820 including activist NGOs and Muslim community organizations
00:09:16.980 that have pushed back hard against terror financing audits
00:09:20.500 and against explicitly naming Islamist ideology as a security concern,
00:09:24.820 calling out jihadist anti-Semitism in clear terms risks accusations of Islamophobia,
00:09:31.640 legislative fights, and backlash in key ridings.
00:09:34.540 By contrast, there seems to be very little political cost
00:09:37.400 in constantly expanding the definition of far right
00:09:40.120 to sweep in social conservatives, parents groups, or critics of gender ideology.
00:09:45.120 So when pulling all of that together,
00:09:46.860 it looks like less of an innocent oversight and more like a feedback loop,
00:09:50.360 wherein policy frameworks that deliberately de-emphasize Islamist extremism,
00:09:55.880 a grant-funded activist sector that keeps government focused on one type of threat,
00:09:59.960 and a governing party that sees more risk in offending its progressive base
00:10:03.260 than in leaving Jewish institutions and the broader public with a gaping security gap.
00:10:07.660 A tax evasion snitch hotline has brought the Canada Revenue Agency
00:10:14.780 nearly half a billion in federal taxes and penalties through the use of informants,
00:10:19.260 which has been a key part of recovering funds since its inception in 2014.
00:10:24.680 The tip line still averaged more than 100 responses annually,
00:10:28.340 despite Canadians generally being of the belief that what others are doing is none of their business,
00:10:33.000 while others noted that there may be attenuating circumstances that may explain the cheating,
00:10:38.520 especially for low-income households.
00:10:41.420 However, an inquiry of ministry tabled in the House of Commons
00:10:44.280 found such confidential tips were said to be a key part of the agency's efforts
00:10:48.680 to fight international tax evasion and tax avoidance.
00:10:52.620 First covered by Blacklock's reporter,
00:10:54.740 the CRA has nabbed roughly $490 million
00:10:57.740 through information from the offshore tax informant program.
00:11:00.980 The program received an average of 109 tips a year
00:11:04.580 that resulted in the identification of almost 950 taxpayers for audits since 2018,
00:11:10.120 said the inquiry.
00:11:11.740 The figures were disclosed in response to a request from Conservative MP Eric Lefebvre,
00:11:16.160 who inquired about the number of tips received from informants
00:11:19.520 under the offshore tax informant program.
00:11:22.000 Managers wrote,
00:11:22.820 So, William, is the use of a tip line justified to catch those taxpayers who are avoiding paying their fair share of taxes,
00:11:47.580 or is this an example of the state urging citizens to rat on each other as ill-intended regimes have done throughout history?
00:11:54.260 Yeah, I mean, I think it's an interesting situation.
00:11:57.740 Inherent to Canadians, I think, is this belief in fairness,
00:12:01.020 that people should pay their fair share of taxes, even if we agree that they're too high.
00:12:07.440 And the idea that some people are avoiding paying their fair share,
00:12:11.600 and therefore the burden falls onto the rest of us who do pay our taxes,
00:12:17.200 I think Canadians really struggle with that.
00:12:19.020 On the other side of the spectrum, this idea that we're incentivizing Canadians to turn each other in
00:12:26.080 to the Canada Revenue Agency makes us all feel really uncomfortable.
00:12:33.080 We've seen regimes around the world where ratting on fellow citizens,
00:12:39.060 turning them in is par for the course,
00:12:42.420 and it's almost always in countries with governments that are oppressive,
00:12:45.580 if not outright hostile to their own citizens.
00:12:49.000 I think, for example, of North Korea,
00:12:51.940 where they call ratting even your own family a patriotic duty.
00:12:56.720 So I think there's a real resistance on the part of Canadians to turn people in.
00:13:02.380 Certainly in COVID, when there were tip lines saying,
00:13:05.020 oh, if you see your neighbor and his children having fun in a public park,
00:13:09.000 you should phone the government and report it,
00:13:11.500 really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
00:13:13.160 In this case, I think there has to be quite a lot of oversight
00:13:16.820 and ensuring that this tip line is never used irresponsibly.
00:13:20.700 It's never used in blackmail purposes.
00:13:23.780 It's never used, for example, for two spouses who are maybe undergoing divorce,
00:13:28.680 and it's acrimonious for one to try and punish the other by filing a frivolous complaint.
00:13:34.580 You're having a fight with your neighbor over there mowing the lawn too early in the morning.
00:13:38.800 You're not reporting your neighbor for that sort of flimsy and vexatious reason.
00:13:43.940 I think we always have to be very careful when it comes to turning each other into the state.
00:13:49.660 That is a thin end of the wedge leading to bad outcomes for a society and for a government for sure.
00:13:56.180 That's it for today, folks.
00:14:00.660 Thanks for tuning in.
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