Juno News - New docs confirm CSIS took an interest in Danforth shooting

00:00:00.000 I want to chat to you today about some documents I've recently received from

00:00:09.320 CSIS concerning last year's Danforth shooting. At the time it was a story that

00:00:14.680 people had a lot of questions about. It captured the national imagination. Why

00:00:19.680 did this happen? Everyone wanted to know. And right in the immediate aftermath of

00:00:24.760 the incident there was quite a cone of silence around it. A lot of questions not

00:00:28.880 being answered. Denials or refusals to answer by national security officials by

00:00:33.880 Toronto police on the ground and people just said come on just answer these

00:00:37.520 questions. Now there's been a lot of speculation even conspiracy theories

00:00:42.260 throughout all of this and I always obtained look law enforcement whether

00:00:46.220 it's in this story or any other story that comes around they should tell us as

00:00:50.240 much as possible. Maximum disclosure right out of the gate because otherwise human

00:00:55.460 nature abhors a vacuum and people are going to start to speculate and ask

00:00:58.700 what is going on here? Well I have new documents from CSIS that show that they

00:01:04.140 took a six month interest in the case so they have various reports and

00:01:09.160 correspondence dating from the very morning right away after it happened 7 a.m.

00:01:13.320 the next day following that evening attack dating all the way until December.

00:01:17.940 Six months of heavily redacted documents and by heavily redacted I mean as you can

00:01:23.500 see in some of these pages there's very little information that's that's actually

00:01:28.100 on these pages but what they give you is a sense that there's dates and time

00:01:31.820 stamps and yes they were talking to each other some of these documents are

00:01:35.100 classified top-secret for Canadian eyes only and you can tell sort of the

00:01:40.400 general gist that there were situation reports being compiled there were

00:01:44.840 meetings being had but you don't know what was discussed in those meetings what

00:01:48.020 was found in all of those reports. So what is noteworthy about this and what

00:01:52.760 can we say from it? Well there's not a lot we can say from it but what is

00:01:56.420 interesting is at the time Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale's office was asked

00:02:00.140 hey is CSIS involved in this in any way? Now they had said there's no national

00:02:04.800 security nexus to this at all they remained firm about this and everything

00:02:09.080 we have out there facts about this case suggest that that is an accurate

00:02:12.560 statement and then they were asked hey is CSIS involved and they would not

00:02:16.400 confirm they wouldn't say yes or say no kind of very odd because look if they're

00:02:20.920 involved just say yeah they're doing routine stuff. It's unclear from these

00:02:25.040 documents and I've spoken to a few people in intelligence circles whether

00:02:29.000 or not this means this was a routine thing natural protocol you see a guy

00:02:33.280 doing a shooting and you go okay well let's get CSIS involved because there

00:02:36.920 are shootings all the time and we know they're sort of local gangs and so forth

00:02:41.180 and CSIS does not at all get involved in them there's no documentation nothing's

00:02:46.280 going to show up so this confirms for the first time CSIS did have some interest in

00:02:51.440 looking into this the only sort of specifics we know from the information

00:02:54.860 that was not redacted is that they sought atmospherics on the shooting can't

00:03:00.940 really tell you any more about what that means basically you know specifics about

00:03:05.080 about the actual moments when the shooting went down and also that they were

00:03:09.440 running checks whatever that means presumably some sort of checks on Faisal

00:03:13.240 Hussein and backstory and him and so forth he of course is the deceased shooter one of

00:03:18.800 three not one of three shooters other two deceased were tragically the victims

00:03:22.720 Julianna Kozis and Rhys Fallon and 13 other people in Toronto unfortunately

00:03:27.800 wounded by this shooting so a small snapshot into how responses to all of this

00:03:34.220 unfolds and just a little window into answering some more questions about one

00:03:39.380 little question one little issue that I don't know Ralph Goodall maybe could have

00:03:42.680 just answered at the time the former public safety minister and stop there being

00:03:46.620 this other window of people asking further questions so we don't know

00:03:49.920 exactly what CSIS found what they were doing seems like they wrapped things up

00:03:55.200 after six months and the most amount of their action was in the days

00:03:58.800 immediately following which seems to be typical protocol here although it is

00:04:02.900 interesting as I noted in the write-up reports I had done on this that they

00:04:07.620 certainly dragged their feet in releasing these documents they went through

00:04:11.100 all the you know running the clock they could to beat the traditional rules and

00:04:14.520 access to information laws and they cited many half a dozen provisions in the

00:04:19.320 Access to Information Act as to why they should be disclosing a lot of this

00:04:23.460 material so there's also stuff that they have that I just did just not get so

00:04:28.980 there you go a small little snapshot and window into one new kind of angle of the

00:04:34.460 way people are still asking some questions about this stand for shooting

00:04:37.680 getting a lot of the particulars but as the Toronto Police Service report that was

00:04:41.880 released not too not too long ago a number of months ago this calendar year a

00:04:46.800 year after it had taken place they said they've looked everywhere to find things

00:04:50.940 about motive to find whether there are other people involved and they just say

00:04:54.540 no there's really nothing we know about this to this date it seems like this was

00:04:58.380 just one guy acting alone they found the 9-11 conspiracy videos in his

00:05:02.980 apartment that was kind of news found another couple sketchy things to suggest we

00:05:07.060 had an oddball here but still those questions kind of remain what is the

00:05:11.380 motive still to this day the families ask and still there is no answer

Juno News - November 30, 2019

New docs confirm CSIS took an interest in Danforth shooting

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