Juno News - The RCMP is doing Trudeau’s dirty work

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.020 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.880 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:15.640 This is another live edition of the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North,

00:00:20.140 Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, on Wednesday, June 22, 2022.

00:00:25.820 I promised you yesterday we would do a full show devoted to what I think we are allowed to now call the RCMP scandal.

00:00:34.780 I feel like we can elevate this to scandal proportions.

00:00:38.720 Now, admittedly, this puts it in a large category of incidents that all seem to involve many of the same people,

00:00:45.580 namely Justin Trudeau and some of his closest and longest serving cabinet ministers, in this case, Bill Blair.

00:00:52.460 But let me know what you think.

00:00:53.900 I would say this is the RCMP scandal, maybe the RCMP affair. You can kind of pick up one or two

00:00:59.720 of those words if you like. I don't like gates. We have too many gates. So I'm not going to call

00:01:03.840 this Lucky Gate or RCMP Gate or Brenda Gate or anything like that. But it certainly is a scandal.

00:01:10.760 And I want to just give, it's a very simple scandal too. And this is what I love about it,

00:01:16.480 because oftentimes, like SNC-Lavalin, for example, another great liberal scandal,

00:01:21.560 there's a lot of confusion and it gets very muddled and it becomes very easy to evade

00:01:26.540 accountability because you have to sort of explain a lot of context with SNC-Lavalin it was okay well

00:01:32.660 there was this company that was doing stuff and there was this prosecution of the company and

00:01:37.240 there was a deferred prosecution agreement and Trudeau wanted the minister of justice and

00:01:42.740 attorney general to offer it and Michael Wernick was involved and I mean certainly it's a clean

00:01:47.880 narrative and you got a lot of the information out. But for a lot of people, they've never had

00:01:52.780 the misfortune of having to care about SNC-Lavalin. This is a very easy case to understand.

00:02:00.740 There's an inquiry into the massacre that took place back in 2020 in Portapique, Nova Scotia,

00:02:06.760 in which some guy pretended to be a police officer, went around and just killed people

00:02:11.220 senselessly. It was a terrible, horrible tragedy. But instead of just mourning, the Liberal government

00:02:16.440 used it as a springboard for gun control measures that are still in place, that they're still

00:02:22.080 championing. And what was happening is the RCMP wanted to do what the RCMP generally does, which

00:02:28.120 is not talk about what was going on in an ongoing investigation. I know it's sometimes annoying to

00:02:33.720 journalists, but it's the standard protocol, specifically when it came to which guns were

00:02:38.680 being used, which guns had been involved in the crimes, how they were acquired and all that sort

00:02:43.800 of stuff. Well, the Liberal government wanted the RCMP to reveal that because they thought it would

00:02:53.100 help them sell their gun control plan. And we know this because Brenda Luckey, the RCMP commissioner,

00:02:59.860 had a meeting in which she expressed she was disappointed that the RCMP in Nova Scotia were

00:03:05.860 not doing that. And she acknowledged that she, quote, made a promise, unquote, to Public Safety

00:03:13.440 Minister Bill Blair and the Prime Minister's office to, as the Halifax Examiner aptly puts it,

00:03:19.500 leverage the mass murders of April 18th, 19th, 2020 to get a gun control law passed. John Broussard

00:03:27.200 in the House of Commons, the Conservative MP for, I believe, Barry Innisfil, he summed it up pretty

00:03:33.440 well what the key issue at stake is here in question period this afternoon take a look

00:03:38.480 so mr speaker this is this is critical because according to the commander's notes

00:03:43.740 in the mass casualty commission report the commissioner lucky promised the prime minister's

00:03:49.940 office and the public safety minister's office that they would release the information in an

00:03:54.780 active investigation that that she was in that she was discussing it would appear that somebody

00:04:01.520 from the Prime Minister's Office and the Public Safety Minister's Office

00:04:05.560 was directing Commissioner Luckey to interfere in an active police investigation

00:04:11.020 when the investigators on the ground said they didn't want to.

00:04:14.000 Who in the PMO and the Public Safety Minister's Office directed?

00:04:18.080 Commissioner Luckey.

00:04:19.780 The Honourable Minister.

00:04:24.360 Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

00:04:25.680 And I'm very pleased to confirm that no one in the Prime Minister's Office

00:04:29.660 or the public safety office exerted any pressure or direction on the commission of the RCMP.

00:04:35.660 The commission of the RCMP engaged with our officials and she has already confirmed

00:04:39.940 for the Mass Casualty Commission that no such direction or pressure

00:04:44.160 was ever given by any member of this government.

00:04:49.360 It's hard to square what was pretty clear in the actual documents that we've been able to see

00:04:55.980 versus this very clear denial from the government.

00:05:00.400 And remember, this is not a government

00:05:01.660 whose ministers are used to giving concrete

00:05:03.500 and clear yes or no answers to simple questions.

00:05:06.340 So they must be confident

00:05:07.820 they've covered all their bases.

00:05:09.320 In a statement yesterday by Commissioner Brenda Luckey,

00:05:12.340 she said, I want to acknowledge the information included

00:05:14.860 in the foundational document

00:05:16.860 issued by the Mass Casualty Commission.

00:05:19.420 She goes on, I would never take actions or decisions

00:05:22.240 that could jeopardize an investigation.

00:05:23.920 I did not interfere in the ongoing investigations.

00:05:27.860 She says the sharing of information and briefings with the public safety minister are necessary,

00:05:32.980 particular during a mass shooting.

00:05:35.380 She says it's standard procedure, doesn't impact the ongoing investigation.

00:05:39.500 She takes police independence seriously.

00:05:41.320 It goes on and on and on.

00:05:42.940 She says that she regrets the way she approached the meeting, the meeting that was conveyed

00:05:49.040 in those documents and the impact it had on those attendants.

00:05:52.680 my need for information should have better weighed against the seriousness of the circumstances

00:05:57.780 they were experiencing. I should have been more sensitive in my approach.

00:06:02.460 So she's not denying that it took place. She's saying, well, you know, they felt it differently.

00:06:07.920 This is like the old Trudeau line of they experienced the meeting differently.

00:06:12.120 In any case, I'm ranting here. We'll have plenty of time for that after. I want to bring in

00:06:15.920 Andy Brook, who is an absolute Twitter legend and has also served this country

00:06:20.820 in the RCMP and he knows this issue and many others very well. Andy, it's good to talk to you.

00:06:26.700 Thanks for coming on today. Thank you very much, Andrew. It's a pleasure. Now, you know, as a

00:06:30.860 journalist, I must say I'm always very annoyed when I feel police after something happens are

00:06:36.760 being too tight-lipped, but they do cling to that idea of not sharing information for ongoing

00:06:42.900 investigations. And I know it can be annoying as a journalist, but it's standard practice here. So

00:06:47.680 the idea that they were going to deviate from that based on a promise by the rcmp commissioner

00:06:53.740 to the government tied to legislation i i there's no earthly policing justification for that is there

00:07:01.600 i think to take one step back in in your monologue and you raised it it's a good point

00:07:09.800 This promise that was made by the commissioner to someone or both to people in Bill Blair's office or the PMO, the promise that originates from handwritten notes that were made by a superintendent that was present in this meeting that occurred with Commissioner Brenda Luckey.

00:07:30.340 And there was a very few people in the meeting. I'm just looking at the list here. It seems to be, appears to be the commanding officer for H Division, H Division being Nova Scotia. Leather, Leather is a chief superintendent. He'd be the criminal operations officer. Incidentally, he disappeared kind of out of the picture very early in that investigation. I noticed that as it was happening.

00:07:51.620 There was also the Nova Scotia Communications Director, Leah Scanlon, and a superintendent, Darren Campbell.

00:07:58.400 It was Darren Campbell's notes, which the commission refers to, handwritten notes, and they're referred to as being made immediately following the meeting.

00:08:09.100 And that's not referred to anywhere else.

00:08:11.440 It's not referred to in Parliament.

00:08:13.020 It's not referred to in any of these media reports we see.

00:08:16.580 The fact that Darren Campbell made, Superintendent Darren Campbell made those notes immediately goes to the credibility of what's written in those notes.

00:08:25.800 The statement by Commissioner Brenda Luckey was made, what, yesterday, you know, in response?

00:08:31.620 I mean, that carries a lot less weight, and I can comment on that more if you wish.

00:08:36.520 Yeah, and I think you're right.

00:08:38.440 And when you parse the statement from Commissioner Brenda Luckey, and I don't want to read the whole thing again, but, you know, the key aspects here, she's acknowledging this meeting took place.

00:08:47.740 She says it was tense.

00:08:49.140 She regrets the way she approached it and the impact it had on those attendants.

00:08:53.040 There is nothing in there that is a denial.

00:08:55.620 Now, she does say she didn't interfere in the integrity of the investigation, but that's a judgment call.

00:09:01.420 I guess the question that I would ask is fundamentally, is that request, if it took place as conveyed in those meeting notes, is that interference?

00:09:11.080 Sure. Yeah. I mean, the people, the group H division has conduct of, has the jurisdiction for that case.

00:09:22.460 Brenda Lucky, other than being informed, has no business sticking her nose in.

00:09:25.860 And the fact, just from the tenor and the tone that you get from reading Superintendent Campbell's notes, that even at one point they were saying at the end of the meeting that the deputy commissioner that was present had to talk people down, that there were people, people, multiple people brought to tears.

00:09:41.840 I mean, these are people that are probably not easily brought to tears.

00:09:44.780 So you can leave it to your imagination how intense that meeting was.

00:09:48.900 And you have to ask yourself, what's driving Brenda lucky to be that intense with somebody?

00:09:54.540 That's not the Brenda Luckey. Now, I don't know Brenda Luckey. I know people who do know Brenda Luckey. That intensity is, there's something behind that, which goes to the political interference point. And you made a point, I want to make sure I catch the point you made.

00:10:11.400 that's in that whole statement and i'm looking at a copy of it right here on my screen

00:10:16.000 she at no point denies the allegation of political interference the person the people that wrote this

00:10:21.160 and the eyes that are passed under you know that nice paragraph at the end where she's sort of

00:10:25.760 mea culpa about how she handled the situation that's just a diversion the glaring point the

00:10:31.660 takeaway from that statement is the fact that she does not deny and it's preceded by words i would

00:10:37.660 never take actions or decisions that could jeopardize an investigation. She doesn't say she

00:10:42.740 didn't. She just says she wouldn't. Yeah, you're right. That's an interesting thing to point out

00:10:48.900 there as well, Andy. I mean, this is a question, I don't know how much you are able to answer this,

00:10:55.580 but you can probably answer it better than I can. What is the relationship between the public

00:11:00.060 safety minister and the RCMP commissioner supposed to be? Because oftentimes we hear from both sides

00:11:06.060 how it's very independent and and i mean even going back to the freedom convoy for example the

00:11:10.780 government would always lean back on oh no no we we don't direct the rcmp we don't tell them what

00:11:15.340 to do and in this case it's it's a very clear cut example of the minister the prime minister's

00:11:20.940 office telling the rcmp what to do about an active investigation and and yes i think it's very

00:11:27.500 understandable as brenda lucky says in her statement here that there would be information

00:11:31.980 flowing between the commissioner and the minister, but information is not direction. And it seems

00:11:39.380 like if a promise is being made, we're passing beyond just briefings about an act of shooting.

00:11:46.160 That's correct. Yeah. And the key, that's another key word in that statement is briefings. It's,

00:11:50.600 there's, there's like, I was trained in forensic interviewing. So, and the premise of forensic

00:11:54.360 interviewing is, is that you can't hide deception. It doesn't matter how clever you are with language

00:11:59.620 or anything you cannot hide the fact that a document is deceptive or what's behind it is

00:12:04.980 deceptive and the statement by commissioner brenda lucky in my opinion is deceptive the uh the

00:12:10.660 briefings that's that one word says there was a lot going on there especially when you look at how

00:12:15.360 the whole thing is structured she also goes on to say this is standard procedure well maybe under

00:12:20.540 this government what has become the new standard procedure is not what would have been and back to

00:12:25.820 your question that you asked me, a commissioner should be absolutely independent, rock solidly

00:12:32.740 independent from any sort of political interference. And when I served in the RCMP, I was involved

00:12:41.180 in a case that had a great deal of political override to it. At no point was there ever

00:12:49.200 any interference ever. And that was a national case, international conspiracy. If ever there

00:12:57.420 would have been any interference, there would have been on that case, and there wasn't. And I

00:13:00.820 was the lead officer in that. There were, I mean, there have been examples where police complaints

00:13:07.880 have been filed against the government. I believe the RCMP, I might be mixing up the cases, but I

00:13:14.000 believe the RCMP at one point may have looked into the SNC-Lavalin affair. I believe at one

00:13:19.060 point they might have even looked into some other things. And it's not to say that they were ever

00:13:23.060 close to the point of charging anyone connected to the government. But the reason I share that

00:13:27.640 is because the RCMP is supposed to be so independent from the government that they

00:13:31.900 could be in a position to investigate and, if necessary, lay charges against the government,

00:13:36.320 whichever government that is. So you don't have that independence at all, in my view,

00:13:42.220 if you're at the point where promises are being made tied to legislation. I mean,

00:13:47.140 ideally, I would assume that police are there, regardless of what the gun legislation is,

00:13:52.320 they're going to enforce the law, they're going to uphold the law. So they should have no vested

00:13:56.760 interest whatsoever, in whatever the liberals decide to ban on the firearms front. And I guess

00:14:03.720 that's the thing here, were they doing it because they supported the legislation? Or were they doing

00:14:08.000 it because they supported the government? Either way, they're pushing beyond the neutrality they're

00:14:13.160 supposed to have? I don't know. I mean, we don't know the answer to that. Clearly, the government

00:14:18.260 was looking at using this horrific, the worst ever shooting rampage in Canadian history as some sort

00:14:26.320 of springboard for their legislation. It's just, it's horrific. It's blood chilling, the fact that

00:14:31.180 they didn't consider that. And recently, we've seen that with Uvalde, Texas. What was it, the day after

00:14:35.780 they announced that they have the new legislation or made the announcement that new legislation was

00:14:40.200 going to be tabled i mean you don't do that but this government does and i believe this commissioner

00:14:48.320 and there are many colleagues of mine serving and retired who shared the opinion i'm about to

00:14:54.420 express is that she submitted a long time ago to political interference and pressure she yielded

00:15:01.840 to that i mean we've seen recently in the emergencies act we've seen back to snc lovelin

00:15:06.040 uh the systemic racism narrative um and there's and there's another one here which uh you know

00:15:13.000 i'll steer away from other than a mention unless you choose to pursue it but what's happening here

00:15:18.200 is a mass murder so when you see the mp uh that you had on the on the opening clip

00:15:24.040 i looked at the rest of his questions in question period and i looked at the rest of bill blair's

00:15:29.540 and answers um they talk about a criminal investigation yes this is a criminal investigation

00:15:35.520 but let's be really specific here this is 22 people killed it's the worst ever of this type

00:15:42.680 in canadian history it's a mass murder and this government and this is not the first time this

00:15:49.360 has done this there's another mass murder in canadian history flight ps752 which this same

00:15:55.540 commissioner refused to open up a criminal investigation

00:15:59.120 which is in disregard for all the provisions of the criminal code and in fact even it goes against

00:16:08.060 a supreme court a case law now i'm involved with that and i won't go any further than that right

00:16:13.280 now but i from my own unique perspective i look at the statement by commissioner lucky that i see

00:16:18.520 right beside me here on the screen and i look at the letter that was written by commissioner lucky

00:16:23.380 in july of last year to the families and if you look at the style of writing as i've been trained

00:16:28.980 to do and you look at how she answers it's very very similar there's a lot of stuff in here that

00:16:37.280 just meant to divert attention but the bottom line and you caught it was that she does not

00:16:41.180 deny the allegation of political interference i believe that is where your answer lies

00:16:46.480 mr blair can stand up in parliament and say no one repeatedly all the times he wants he's not

00:16:51.100 fooling you know he's not fooling myself for example andy brooke former rcmp officer thanks

00:16:57.720 for coming on today and thank you for your service sir we'll have to get you back on to talk about

00:17:01.020 the uh the flight as well because i know that's a very important issue so thank you thank you so

00:17:06.100 much andrew it's been a pleasure all right that was andy brooke joining us live always good to

00:17:10.840 get the policing perspective on on this and you know i've heard from a lot of police officers

00:17:15.020 that don't hold brenda lucky in very high esteem and it's not because of her you know record as a

00:17:21.600 police officer i think it's because it does seem and i think andy used the word submitted it does

00:17:26.780 seem like she's become essentially an unofficial member of cabinet by now. And there have been a

00:17:31.920 number of examples on this. And it's not just the RCMP. I think there's a lot of institutions in

00:17:36.600 general that seem to be operating as agents of the liberals rather than in the independent manner

00:17:43.080 they're supposed to be. Before I bring on my next guest, I want to play another clip from

00:17:47.660 Question Period today of Bill Blair, again, giving what seems on the surface like a clear answer,

00:17:53.760 but one that does not go in line with the documentary record

00:17:59.060 that the inquiry in Nova Scotia has unearthed.

00:18:02.360 Take a look at Dane Lloyd's question to Bill Blair.

00:18:06.640 Speaker, it's becoming increasingly clear

00:18:08.580 why this government wanted to have a secret inquiry on this.

00:18:11.400 In a statement yesterday, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Luckey

00:18:14.040 did not deny that she promised the Minister of Emergency Preparedness

00:18:18.380 that she would release information surrounding the Nova Scotia mass shooting.

00:18:21.780 People are not in the habit of making promises unless they're asked to do so.

00:18:26.240 Do the Minister of Emergency Preparedness or his staff at any time ask the Commissioner to publicly release information regarding the Nova Scotia mass shooting, yes or no?

00:18:40.480 Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The very short answer to the Member's question is no.

00:18:44.700 and and and finally i would i would point out again to the to the commissioner's statement

00:18:49.080 in which he said i take the principle of police independence extremely seriously

00:18:53.360 and it has been and will continue to be fully respected in all interactions mr speaker that's

00:19:00.580 the facts so i will say and i mentioned this earlier i'm not used to getting yes or no answers

00:19:09.740 So it's oddly unsatisfying because on the one hand, it's a yes or no answer.

00:19:14.440 On the other hand, it's just so clearly not accurate and consistent with the evidence that's been put forward by people in that meeting, by someone in the meeting and picked up by the committee.

00:19:26.100 Dane Lloyd, who asked that question, the conservative emergency preparedness critic who has the unenviable task of trying to hold Bill Blair to account in question period, joins me on the line now.

00:19:36.880 Dane, again, I'm not used to seeing yes or no answers.

00:19:40.860 You got the answer, but did you really?

00:19:44.160 Well, thanks for having me on, Andrew.

00:19:45.640 I think this is my first time on your show.

00:19:47.360 Real pleasure.

00:19:48.680 It's a pleasure to have you.

00:19:49.680 Thanks for all the work you're doing.

00:19:50.940 Thank you.

00:19:51.580 And we're going to continue to fight on this.

00:19:54.300 I mean, the minister gave a clear no answer, but I think there's still questions.

00:20:00.120 I mean, did the minister, did somebody from his office do it that he's not aware of?

00:20:04.380 Is the minister not telling the truth?

00:20:06.880 Did the commissioner proactively reach out to the government and say, hey, I would like to get this information released so that we can help with your gun control agenda?

00:20:16.220 I mean, the minister's answer doesn't settle anything.

00:20:19.500 I think it just leads us down more paths that we're going to explore this.

00:20:24.360 One thing that came up in the SNC-Lavalin affair is that there was a lot of wink-wink, things that were not explicitly demanded at a lot of points.

00:20:33.800 I mean, in some cases, they were explicit.

00:20:35.400 And I have to wonder if that was the case here. It gives Brenda Luckey and Bill Blair the cover

00:20:40.840 to say, no, no, no, we didn't demand this or we didn't ask for this. But we do know that Brenda

00:20:45.260 Luckey conveyed to her subordinates that she had made a promise. I mean, it may not have been that

00:20:50.460 the government ordered it. It could have been that there was just this relationship where it was

00:20:55.040 implicit. And I know I'm speculating here, but I am seeing a lot of situations where this thing

00:21:01.320 could have happened while their denials might technically be accurate yeah you know i think

00:21:08.240 there's always the question of is the government just being very technical about this matter

00:21:12.140 um i think the fact of the case is it's not a he said she said scenario there were multiple

00:21:17.340 witnesses at the meeting with commissioner lucky and and at public safety committee we're certainly

00:21:21.700 hoping to bring all of those witnesses to corroborate what superintendent campbell and

00:21:26.700 what civilian Leah Scanlon said in the commission's report, that it was Minister Blair and the

00:21:33.120 Prime Minister's office that were actively interfering in the communications related

00:21:37.160 to the case, interfering through the commissioner to get evidence released in the case. And so we

00:21:42.180 want to bring those people forward. And as we get more evidence, and as the evidence is proven by

00:21:47.580 further testimony, it's going to mount pressure on the government to come clean about what really

00:21:52.680 happened. And we're not going to be satisfied until Canadians get the full truth on this.

00:21:57.520 I know your job in the shadow cabinet is typically to hold the ministers to account. Your job is not

00:22:02.420 to be the RCMP watchdog. But when you look at this situation, where do you think the wrongdoing

00:22:07.580 took place? Do you think it was in the RCMP or do you think it was in the minister's office and in

00:22:13.660 the prime minister's office? Well, I don't think, you know, as partisan as the RCMP commissioner

00:22:20.340 appears to be in this case, if the allegations are true, I find it highly unlikely that it

00:22:28.780 wasn't the minister's office or the minister's or some agent of the government that proactively

00:22:33.940 sought to get this information through the commissioner. So I think absolutely it falls

00:22:40.040 on the government on this. I find it highly unlikely that the commissioner cooked up the

00:22:44.800 scheme herself, especially considering the testimony says that she stated quite

00:22:49.860 emphatically that she had promised the minister of public safety and the prime minister's office

00:22:53.860 that she would get this information and that she would get it publicized so i i think this

00:22:59.300 definitely is coming out of the government i don't think this is something that the commissioner

00:23:02.340 just cooked up on her own but that doesn't let the commissioner off the hook because by doing this

00:23:07.360 the commissioner is compromising her non-partisan status and it's really eroding the trust that

00:23:12.320 canadians have in our institutions and i was just on a panel with evan solomon and i gotta say evan

00:23:16.940 Solomon was really going after the liberals very hard on this and the liberal on the panel said

00:23:21.500 you know the conservatives and people should stop questioning on this because it's undermining trust

00:23:26.460 in our institutions to which I push back that it's preposterous the very trust that we have

00:23:31.740 in our institutions is predicated on a democracy where people have the right to question and to

00:23:37.080 hold these institutions to account and so for the liberals to say that we shouldn't be asking

00:23:40.980 these questions uh completely misses the mark and really undermines democracy and undermines

00:23:45.700 or institutions far more than any questions that I might ask as a member of the opposition.

00:23:50.480 Well, and I know another issue that you've been trying to hold the government to account

00:23:54.060 on has been the invocation of the Emergencies Act to respond to the Freedom Convoy.

00:23:58.240 And we don't need to get into that in too much depth.

00:24:00.440 But I would point out, as I said earlier in the show, that when it came to that, the

00:24:05.140 government was all about, oh, no, no, the police are independent.

00:24:07.620 We don't direct them.

00:24:08.560 We don't call the shots.

00:24:09.820 When there were blockades of infrastructure related to anti-pipeline protests, same thing.

00:24:15.300 We don't direct police. It's not our job. The RCMP is independent. And then when it comes to this story, it seems like, well, you know, maybe the RCMP could help us with this gun control thing we want to put forward if they would just, you know, give the give the public a little bit of this information that they don't want to give, which may on the surface seem inconsequential to a lot of people.

00:24:34.480 But I think fundamentally, it's the dynamic and the relationship of are the RCMP able to make these decisions in a silo or are they making them because it's what the PMO wants for legislative and political advantage?

00:24:47.900 And it is a convenient divergence from when the government wants to claim total RCMP independence in all of these other cases.

00:24:56.080 Well, we all know that governments like to have their cake and eat it too.

00:25:00.020 But one thing, you know, the Liberals, you know, haven't set it out right.

00:25:03.640 But what they're implying is that Superintendent Campbell in his handwritten notes is lying.

00:25:08.880 And it's very interesting that in the SNC-Lavalin case, it was the handwritten notes of former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould that really sank the government's agenda.

00:25:17.680 So we're seeing how valuable these handwritten notes that are taken at the time can be in these cases.

00:25:22.900 But I find it very interesting that Superintendent Campbell noted that the commissioner told him that there was pending gun control legislation coming up.

00:25:31.880 These notes were taken at a meeting on April 28th, and the government announced their ban on 1,500 versions of firearms on May 4th.

00:25:43.720 So if the superintendent is lying, how could he have known that the government just six days later was going to be announcing gun control legislation unless the RCMP commissioner did, in fact, tell him that in the meeting?

00:25:56.740 And how would the RCMP commissioner have known if the government had not told her that this was coming up?

00:26:01.920 So I think, you know, there's a lot to dive in here.

00:26:05.480 And I think the government's very worried about this.

00:26:08.060 Yeah, that's actually a fantastic point.

00:26:10.040 And I'm glad you mentioned the timeline.

00:26:11.760 I mean, Andy Brooke mentioned earlier in the show that there's a lot of credibility given to notes

00:26:16.080 that are taken immediately after a meeting, which Superintendent Campbell's were. But you are right.

00:26:21.060 I mean, the firearms legislation, the gun control he was talking about there was not yet in the

00:26:25.960 public domain. Now, obviously, it's possible that the RCMP would have been invited to consult on

00:26:30.960 on this and whatnot. But the point is, for that to have trickled down to the Nova Scotia RCMP

00:26:36.900 suggests, yeah, it likely did come from Commissioner Lucky.

00:26:41.280 And in that moment, it has the ring of truth, as they say,

00:26:44.240 that it came in the context of, you know, calling them to the carpet

00:26:47.800 and calling them to task for not doing what the Liberal government

00:26:51.560 wanted them to do in those briefings.

00:26:53.840 Well, another thing that I find interesting,

00:26:55.500 and I know you're talking about this with your previous guests,

00:26:57.500 but it's pretty clear from what the RCMP Commissioner

00:27:00.200 in her explanation or attempt at an explanation

00:27:02.660 that was sent out last night,

00:27:03.780 that she doesn't deny that she made this promise to the government.

00:27:08.540 What she's denying is that she interfered in the case.

00:27:11.980 And what I think is interesting is that she might not have interfered in the case

00:27:16.500 in the sense that she had any real impact.

00:27:18.540 It appears that the Nova Scotia superintendent actually stood his ground

00:27:22.080 and pushed back against the commissioner and chose not to release this information.

00:27:26.160 I don't think it was made public until several months later.

00:27:29.420 So is the government trying to claim, well, we didn't interfere in the case

00:27:32.740 because they weren't successful, but they still attempted to interfere in the case,

00:27:37.000 I think that could be maybe the technicality the government's trying to get off on,

00:27:40.660 is that they just weren't successful in interfering, therefore they didn't interfere.

00:27:45.380 But that doesn't mean that they didn't try.

00:27:48.140 Do you think Commissioner Lackey should resign?

00:27:51.520 I think that we need to have a full investigation on this.

00:27:54.620 And if it's shown that the commissioner attempted to interfere in an active criminal investigation,

00:28:01.340 particularly for the purpose of advancing the political agenda of the government then absolutely

00:28:07.700 i think the minister the commissioner would have to resign so if these allegations are true she

00:28:12.160 should be gone uh she's not the only one who should be gone i mean uh if these allegations

00:28:17.620 are in fact true uh then i think there'll be a minister uh at least a minister who would also

00:28:24.240 who would also have to lose their portfolio over this yeah i mean i looking at this just on the

00:28:29.120 serve as I don't see how Bill Blair and or Commissioner Lucky survived to the end of the

00:28:35.700 week politically. But I also know this government has a habit of avoiding this and making someone

00:28:41.640 else the fall guy or fall gal from it to be gender equal here. So, I mean, I don't know. I mean,

00:28:46.960 maybe we'll be told when Justin Trudeau gets back from Rwanda that this is all just a learning

00:28:50.540 opportunity for us. But I don't see how when you have this in black and white, there could be a

00:28:55.400 situation where no one is held accountable for it? Well, what I think is going to happen, and for

00:29:01.760 your viewers who might not know, Parliament's probably only going to be sitting for one more

00:29:06.160 day, and then we rise for the summer recess. Now, that doesn't mean that at Public Safety Committee

00:29:11.000 we're going to let down our guard. I mean, we're already moving forward with a motion to bring the

00:29:18.460 Commissioner and bring other witnesses to the Public Safety Committee over the summer so that

00:29:22.020 we can keep investigating this issue. So conservatives are not going to be dropping the

00:29:25.960 ball on this. We're going to keep up the fight to get the truth on this for Canadians. But what I

00:29:31.060 think we're going to see from the government is they're going to use the absence of question

00:29:34.080 period, the absence of parliamentary debate to just continue to stonewall the way they have,

00:29:39.460 to deny, to deflect, to blame other people. But as you keep pulling on those strings, and I think

00:29:45.180 this is what I saw with the Emergencies Act, you know, my biggest reflection is that for months we

00:29:49.840 were asking the exact same questions I was asking the exact same questions of

00:29:53.440 the government month after month after month and then as you keep pulling on

00:29:57.820 those threads eventually you get something and that's when we found out

00:30:02.200 that you know what the Minister of Public Safety had been saying about

00:30:04.900 police recommending we kept pulling on the threads asking each of the police

00:30:08.500 and then we determined that the police had never recommended that the

00:30:12.480 Emergencies Act be used and so I think it's the same thing in this case is

00:30:15.640 we're gonna keep pulling on threads but I think we have a very strong case here

00:30:19.480 because we have these handwritten notes.

00:30:21.100 We have multiple witnesses.

00:30:23.140 And once you see these dominoes start falling,

00:30:25.320 I think it's going to get very quickly, go very quickly.

00:30:28.320 But to get that first domino to fall,

00:30:30.460 it might take a little bit of time and continual pressure.

00:30:32.780 And that's what we're going to do.

00:30:34.760 Conservative emergency preparedness critic, Dane Lloyd.

00:30:37.160 Dane, thanks for coming on today.

00:30:38.360 Good to talk to you.

00:30:39.420 Thank you so much.

00:30:41.060 Thank you.

00:30:41.740 Yeah, that was Dane Lloyd.

00:30:42.540 We played a clip of him getting, like I said,

00:30:45.000 an odd binary answer from a cabinet minister in question period.

00:30:49.480 But as we look at this and look at the documentary evidence beyond just the blanket denial from

00:30:54.220 Bill Blair and the non-denial apology from Commissioner Brenda Luckey, it's clear there's

00:31:00.020 something here. And I think it's that classic idiom of there being fire where you find smoke.

00:31:06.000 I know that's not the wording of it, but you know what I mean? You know, let me just close on this

00:31:10.400 thought here. I think what we've seen in the Liberals is, for starters, perpetual scandal,

00:31:16.400 whether it was the, I don't know, the Kokanee situation or the Aga Khan Bahamas Island or

00:31:22.700 SNC-Lavalin or We Charity or RCMP or other related things like this, a continual stream

00:31:30.440 of scandal. And there don't seem to be political consequences to the liberals for any of these

00:31:37.000 things. And part of it comes down to timing. I mean, Dane mentioned that we're heading into

00:31:41.640 the summer months. Parliament's about to rise. We're not going to have question period.

00:31:45.300 Very similar thing happened with the Wee scandal, remember, where the Finance Committee was investigating it, Parliament gets prorogued, all the committees get dismantled, and the documents, there was that famous press conference of Pierre Paliyev and Michael Barrett, the ethics critic, getting up there with all the blacked out, redacted documents that they were given as part of this, oh, you know, supposedly transparent disclosure of documents.

00:32:08.400 But the summer months were ultimately helpful to the government for just resetting, moving on, and not having to have real accountability through the political process.

00:32:19.060 A very similar thing happened with the investigation into the biosecurity lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

00:32:25.860 Very similar thing.

00:32:26.900 Elections, summer, it all sort of interferes here.

00:32:30.080 And again, the timing is what it is.

00:32:32.880 I don't think the timing itself is deliberate.

00:32:35.380 I think it's just very convenient.

00:32:36.940 And the problem is when summer breaks and winter breaks last so long, it's easy to have periods where Parliament is just not in session when there's a scandal going on.

00:32:45.260 But there's a bigger story here that has often been missing, which is the corruption of institutions at the hands of the Liberal government.

00:32:53.460 Every supposedly independent institution effectively is deputized and becomes deputized by the government.

00:33:00.900 When the RCMP get up there and start talking about, oh, systemic racism, just after the government starts talking about systemic racism, and when they're talking about, oh, this type of firearm and this type of firearm, after the government's decided to ban them, I mean, in this case, you had a police officer that wouldn't do that, it sounds like, and was then chastised and reprimanded for not doing that.

00:33:22.820 But all of this is akin to an example of corrupting the RCMP for political gain.

00:33:30.880 And whatever your issues are with the RCMP as an institution, I mean, whether it's that

00:33:35.040 they're too secretive, they're too closed off, they're not transparent, all of these

00:33:39.000 are fair criticism.

00:33:40.320 I've had access to information requests with the RCMP that have taken years, and in the

00:33:45.380 end, they don't even hand over the documents.

00:33:46.920 So it's not an institution that does a particularly good job at being transparent.

00:33:53.360 And then all of this makes you wonder if this is perhaps why.

00:33:57.600 Because they have allowed themselves, and maybe it's institutional, maybe it's just Brenda Luckey, I don't know, but they have allowed themselves to become part of the liberals.

00:34:07.500 And it's not that you want police that are going to be pushing back against the government.

00:34:10.820 You want police that you can trust will just do their jobs irrespective of what the government does.

00:34:15.600 If the Liberal government decided to ban a bunch of guns, the RCMP would say, okay, we're enforcing

00:34:20.240 the law. If the Liberal government decided they were going to legalize and unprohibit a bunch of

00:34:25.380 guns, the RCMP would say, okay, we're going to enforce the law. It's not for police to be a

00:34:31.760 counterbalance on policy, nor is it their job to be a champion of policy. So when they are as an

00:34:38.700 organization making decisions, not in a silo, not about the investigation, but based on what would

00:34:45.880 be in the best interest of the government's legislative agenda, that is political corruption

00:34:52.200 through and through. Whether it happened because Brenda Luckey just wanted to do it, because she

00:34:57.100 unilaterally made a promise, or because there was a wink-wink, or because she was explicitly directed

00:35:01.940 to, does not matter. It is political corruption in the RCMP. Dane Lloyd said that the allegations

00:35:08.160 are true, she's got to go. Bill Blair certainly should not be far behind her. That does it for

00:35:12.860 us for today. We'll be back later this week with more of the Andrew Lawton Show, including

00:35:16.600 the continuation of the Conservative Leadership Series. I'm trying to remember, I think, yes,

00:35:23.080 the next in the series is Patrick Brown, but we've got interviews with all of the leadership

00:35:26.960 candidates coming in the weeks ahead, so don't miss those. Thank you very much for all of your

00:35:31.380 kind words about it. And just one shameless plug to end off the show here, the Freedom Convoy,

00:35:36.800 the inside story of three weeks that shook the world comes out friday and this morning i learned

00:35:42.740 that we were the number two best-selling non-fiction book on amazon last week which is a

00:35:49.340 great honor now as much as it's an honor i want us to get to number one at least once so if you

00:35:54.020 haven't bought your copy yet do head on over to amazon or your local bookstore on friday and pick

00:35:59.060 up a copy and thank you so much to all of you who already have we'll be back later this week with

00:36:03.120 more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North. Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

Juno News - June 22, 2022

The RCMP is doing Trudeau’s dirty work

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