In this episode of the True North Initiative, Candice talks about a story about conservative MP Blaine Calkins being accused of spreading climate misinformation and whether or not carbon dioxide is actually a pollutant. She also talks about the dangers of climate change denialism and the need for government intervention to try to mitigate climate change.
00:00:00.000hey guys we're live Candace Malcolm here with the true north initiative lots to get to today so
00:00:07.860thank you so much for tuning in this Friday evening or afternoon hopefully everyone's got
00:00:14.340some great Christmas and holiday plans coming up and everyone's looking forward to enjoying
00:00:21.600a relaxing week with family and celebrating Christmas I'm gonna wait a few more seconds
00:00:30.240here for people to jump on but if you are not familiar check out the true north initiative
00:00:36.040it is a think tank that I started a couple years ago to focus on immigration and national security
00:00:41.700issues in Canada issues that just don't really get covered fairly in the media they don't get
00:00:46.960the right attention when they are written about they're just usually botched by sort of leftist
00:00:52.720bleeding-heart liberals in the media who don't understand the issues who don't take the threat
00:00:56.620seriously who time after time after time they want to treat terrorists and criminals like they're
00:01:04.300somehow victims you see it all the time in news stories I can't tell you how often I look at a
00:01:09.720story that's you know like a copy wire story that's in from the Canadian press it's throughout the
00:01:15.900mainstream media and they literally paint the story like the like the criminal gangster or the terrorist
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00:01:44.140initiative calm all right lots I want to get to today so let's jump right to it I play this out
00:01:50.800on Twitter earlier today because this is the kind of story that drives me crazy the CBC post this story
00:01:58.120and the headline says conservative MP Blaine Calkins is accused of spreading climate misinformation after
00:02:05.740giving this speech to junior high school students okay so you see that headline you see that tweet and you
00:02:11.860kind of think okay you know what is this conservative saying he's he's accused of spreading climate misinformation
00:02:18.520you know what kind of sort of idiotic thing has a conservative said maybe he's done something you know that just
00:02:26.720crosses the line of what liberals of the CBC deem acceptable speech like questioned the validity of the theory of sort of man made global warming and that's sort of what you're expecting right and then I'm
00:02:29.860going to play the clip because it's really interesting so this is a conservative MP who this is almost like a it's almost like a sting operation here by the CBC it's like they have this like secret camera in this classroom on this MP is speaking to middle school students so here here's what he says
00:02:47.860the carbon tax and I'm against the carbon tax personally because I don't think it's going to do what it says first of all right now the current government is pointing it as attacks on pollution and whether or not you think carbon dioxide is pollution or not is I still think a question
00:03:05.860I'm a biologist I'm a biologist I know that carbon dioxide is actually plant food so there's there's arguments for and against it isn't having an impact as we burn it yes it likely is but we have to decide is the net benefits or the net
00:03:26.860or the pros and cons balancing each other out some people sort of saying that all these extreme weather events are as a result of it some scientists are saying that it's not it's just actually within the normal range of these kinds of weather events there's just more people now than there ever was before so when we have a major weather event more people get affected because we have your chances of it affecting people are that much higher right
00:03:53.860so that's the controversial remarks supposedly controversial remarks made by a conservative MP in this sort of weird undercover video that the CBC has produced so basically from what I could tell the conservative MP made three points
00:04:08.860first of all he is talking about the term CO2 and whether or not it's actually pollution you know he's a biologist by training I don't know much about his background this MP
00:04:21.860I don't know if he was a biologist or if he studied biology in university but anyway he's got more scientific training than most people so from his his scientific opinion is that it isn't right to call CO2 a pollution that's I think a fair comment to make and it's it's obviously something that's contentious among scientists it's not something that there's an absolute correct answer about the second thing he claimed which is that we should look at both the pros and the cons of climate action
00:04:50.860climate action so government intervention in the economy to try to mitigate climate change that's like an obvious point that's made like across the spectrum that's like the ongoing debate as to what we should be doing whether we should do anything where we can do anything
00:05:05.860Jordan Longboard who's an economist from Sweden he writes about this sort of prolific about it he's really strong so check him out he's he's written books and he's been around for a while making the argument that it's better off for humans to try to adapt to the changes in climate as opposed to these sort of abstract broad schemes to try to just change the weather change climate
00:05:31.860um that's sort of like a lot of effort without a lot of impact whereas he's he argues that we'd have more impact if we just try to adopt so the idea of you know questioning the pros and cons of intervention that's something that all public policy makers should be making and then um the third thing that he's talking about here is how um the relationship between extreme weather and weather events today and climate change I think is
00:06:01.840I think that that's sort of another sort of ongoing discussion scientific community as to you know the difference between weather which is the day to day things that happen outside um and climate which is more long term trends and whether we can tie with any
00:06:16.840diffinity today's weather um with the sort of ongoing trends of climate change and so you know you kind of look at that and you're like okay well what's CBC saying that he's spreading misinformation what exactly in those comments are untrue right and so then you you you click on the story this is CBC Edmonton and the headline here says professor accuses Alberta MP of spreading climate misinformation to school kids okay so they found some leftist professor
00:06:46.820who is willing to smear conservative what else is new that's sort of this is like the formula of journalism in Canada especially on the CBC it's like you know you the journalist has left wing opinion they find an expert
00:06:58.520and a so-called expert either a university professor or some like lobbyist or someone who has special interest who runs a special interest group who agrees with their leftist position
00:07:08.580and then they just quote that person and turn it into a news story instead of an opinion piece which it should be
00:07:14.280they file it as a news story even though they don't provide the other perspective there's only one perspective represented here the interesting thing about this story is it's even more dishonest than that
00:07:24.880that's that's a typical dishonest practice by the mainstream media this one's even more dishonest because when you look at what the professor says
00:07:32.520so the whole thing is about how this professor says that the MP is is promoting climate misinformation
00:07:39.620and then you look at the actual quote so the professor's name is Sean Marshall a professor at the University of Calgary's Department of Geography and a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Climate Change
00:07:52.620he says and this is a quote here that the comments aren't false but they just lack content context sorry they're not false they just lack context
00:08:05.320and so then he goes of course plants need CO2 you need you know kids learn that by the time they get to grade 7 or 8
00:08:13.300but the problem is that the plants aren't taking up enough CO2 so he basically just says like yeah that's like what the MP is saying is true
00:08:20.820but you know we need to provide more information to like provide a more accurate picture
00:08:24.880okay but like this is now a debate within the scientific community and also we saw like a short
00:08:32.78055 second clip from what was presumably a longer lecture so who's to say that Blaine Calkins doesn't hold this opinion
00:08:40.080I mean the guy is like debating a straw man version that the CBC dug up so CBC digs something up
00:08:46.800takes a small quote and then they find a professor who's willing to sort of challenge like the broader framework of the debate
00:08:54.200but but the specific points of the MP says he even this professor that the CBC found says that it's factually true
00:09:02.360so he says you know yeah it's true like maybe CO2 is not technically a pollutant and we need it
00:09:09.940um this is how like trees and plants grow that's what they eat they need it and you know it's not true
00:09:18.000and then the same thing it says later on uh talking about um so you know the ties between climate change
00:09:25.400and major weather events uh then the CBC writes this statement also stuck Marshall as a half truth
00:09:31.780and then here's a quote the statement he made is true that we have a greater population that's more
00:09:38.220vulnerable to these kinds of extreme weather events but there's also this huge overprint of climate
00:09:43.660change on these extreme weather events so again the CBC says that Marshall the professor said that what
00:09:52.120the MP said was a half truth but then the quote itself doesn't say that it says the opposite the
00:09:58.780statement he made is true the statement he made is true that's not half truth that's full truth
00:10:04.880so the CBC is taking the CBC writer is taking their own opinion and then like passing it off as a
00:10:11.920professor's opinion even though the quotes that he provides from the professor say like literally the
00:10:16.400opposite the professor says that his comments aren't aren't false that they are true and then the CBC
00:10:21.880spins that as saying that they're not true and that they're spreading false information this is
00:10:27.320I mean this is one of the more dishonest pieces that I've seen from the CBC
00:10:31.620and it's just unfortunate because this is obviously an important topic and one of the frustrations that
00:10:37.560so many conservatives have is that we're not allowed to talk about public policy issues and as soon as we
00:10:42.580do whether it's immigration whether it's climate change whether it's carbon taxes or the economy
00:10:47.940the conservative opinion is presented in the media as if it's illegitimate as if there's something
00:10:54.240somehow illegitimate either that it's when it comes to immigration you know that when we were talking
00:10:59.200about concerns about sovereignty with that UN compact they said that that was a lie well how is it a lie
00:11:05.380to have a concern about sovereignty right that when you talk about illegal immigration or the surge of
00:11:11.620illegal border crossings in Canada or the problems within a refugee determination process the response
00:11:17.560from liberals and liberals in the media is to jump on conservatives and call them intolerant call them
00:11:23.020racist and bigots and all this other stuff that we're used to that's not how you have a debate in a
00:11:27.580country that's how you silence your opposition it's like an authoritarian tactic and then you see the
00:11:33.580same thing when it comes to carbon taxes and climate change if you just simply provide the conservative
00:11:38.680perspective which by the way is probably the mainstream position in Canada which is you know
00:11:45.220a little bit skeptical yes global warming is happening yes humans are contributing to it that stuff is is
00:11:51.700widely accepted and agreed upon I would say but then the question is what do we do about it is it really
00:11:56.920worth taking a huge chunk of our economy what you know what what are the alternatives how is for
00:12:03.400instance all this green energy that's being dumped and subsidized and paid for you know through massive
00:12:09.460taxation in the economy you know is that actually helping is it actually having an impact conservatives
00:12:15.220just generally take a more skeptical look at these big government schemes and as a result they get maligned
00:12:22.920and smeared and their position is painted as illegitimate and you hear that all the time with the term denier
00:12:29.400which is kind of a despicable reference uh to the holocaust by the way but um you know holocaust
00:12:35.880deniers is where they get the term and they just use it to completely discredit the other side and and so
00:12:41.640when the cbc creates a fake news story like i said it very much is just a total it's just totally fake news i mean
00:12:48.120everything about the story is fake news the comments are uncontroversial they're pretty mainstream they're backed up
00:12:54.360even the scientists that the cbc interviewed for the story agrees that that his position is legitimate
00:13:01.400and true he just sort of disagrees and wants to provide more context so it's like a debate between
00:13:07.320scientists it's not like something that's like widely discredited the cbc puts out this fake news story
00:13:13.000making it seem like a controversy and again just delegitimizing conservative positions
00:13:18.120and then you see they teed it right up so like as predicted this is the natural resource minister
00:13:27.400i'm rajit sohi here we go again conservative mp denying climate change like how are they denying
00:13:33.800climate change he's not he's talking about very specific aspects of it and talking about the pros and
00:13:41.240cons talking about you know questions about whether or not you can blame current weather patterns on
00:13:46.840long-term trends that's totally legitimate again they just throw in that term climate change denier
00:13:53.640to just try to discredit them and a lot of people a lot of people don't have time to read the story
00:13:58.920they're not going to think critically about those bizarre quotes that are taken out of context
00:14:03.560and they're just gonna you know see the headline and be like oh conservatives denying climate change
00:14:07.880again and that's not how you have a productive debate that's not how you have a meaningful discussion
00:14:13.640and dialogue when it comes to public policy and so this is a tactic again by liberals media and
00:14:19.480politics to just silence and smear the opposition he had this quote this not only this tweet from the
00:14:27.400natural resource minister but it was also retweeted by the minister of climate change catherine mckenna
00:14:34.520and so they're just kind of promoting their own narrative using the cbc as like a political partisan
00:14:40.600uh campaign tool and it's just so ridiculous so that that's that's the cbc for you in a nutshell
00:14:50.840um and that's not the only example i think of the media media deception uh happening this week there
00:14:57.080are a couple other stories i want to point out first of all um you know the biggest story by far of the
00:15:03.240week uh probably the biggest story of the year it's mounting out to be are these absolutely massive protests
00:15:09.560and convoys that are going on in alberta people are absolutely fed up in the province of alberta
00:15:15.400they have had enough and they're organizing themselves they're getting out and they are
00:15:20.600marching they're showing their frustration not just that the you know somehow the mainstream media is
00:15:26.440kind of painting this as oh they're frustrated over the low price of crude oil as if that's just like
00:15:31.880a natural phenomenon that just happened that like the markets did it and that there's like no political
00:15:36.920implication whatsoever well no that's not what these people are protesting that's not what's happened
00:15:41.880the the protests are against the government the government both the provincial government in alberta
00:15:47.960and the federal government in ottawa and their complete ineptitude in getting canadian products to
00:15:53.960market you know it's not it's it's not like this is just some phenomenon it's hitting all you know
00:15:59.960hitting north america say equally this is a specifically is a specific problem hitting western canada
00:16:05.320because of the politics and the governance in western canada you can tell just by looking at
00:16:11.560like comparing it to what's happening in the u.s right now where you know sure prices aren't as high
00:16:18.120for um oil as they were a decade ago but there's still surging prices lots of markets the united states
00:16:23.800is almost entirely energy independent at this point and you compare that to canada that can't get a
00:16:28.440pipeline built that has tanker bands off the west coast that the trudeau government introduced this
00:16:34.040horrific bill c69 that requires a gender impact analysis basically the end of all pipelines the
00:16:43.320end of all major infrastructure projects in canada it'll be impossible to get things
00:16:48.120approved in this country and you have all that at the same time as prime minister justin trudeau
00:16:53.720and his sort of inner circle ratcheting up their attacks against um anyone who talks out about the
00:17:01.960carbon tax uh you know you have trudeau himself said it's part of his plan to phase out alberta oil
00:17:08.280sands i mean the protests and the convoy is clearly you know people oops people just wanting to get back to
00:17:16.040work people want to get back to work and then you know to add insult to injury trudeau's solution for all
00:17:21.240this is that he's going to try to increase welfare payments to alberta he offered a 1.6 billion
00:17:26.440dollar bailout well again that's not what these people want they want to get back to work and so
00:17:31.480that should be the main story i mean just look just look at some of these pictures this is up in grand
00:17:35.800prairie grand prairie is a small city and you had thousands of people out there um to support the oil
00:17:42.840sands and to try to get a solution to get these people back to work um you know this is calgary
00:17:49.400you know god bless these folks in the middle of a cold alberta winter they're standing outside
00:17:54.920thousands upon thousands in cities across the province demanding action to get them back to work
00:18:02.120no prime minister they don't want welfare they want to get back to work and then you saw the 22 kilometer
00:18:08.120um truck convoy in nisku which is just um a little bit south of edmonton and there were thousands thousands
00:18:17.800and thousands of trucks that did this convoy this parade around nisku just to show you know their
00:18:25.800frustration the fact that they're not working they don't they don't they don't have jobs they should
00:18:29.800be up in the oil sands they should be working instead these people are left to just protest because
00:18:35.000they have nothing else to do imagine the frustration and again i think this should be the top story if
00:18:39.640this was happening in toronto if this was a bunch of left-wing activists or union activists in quebec
00:18:45.800there would just be absolute wall-to-wall coverage there would be a panic among the media there would
00:18:51.320be massive pressure again just again imagine that these were left-wing activists in this number and it
00:18:58.360was a conservative government and you know you just imagine the urgency it would be non-stop coverage
00:19:05.880and urgency you know every columnist would be writing about it every political writer would be covering
00:19:12.440it every journalist in the country would be there to get the story of you know these people you know
00:19:18.440compare it maybe to like the women's march in washington dc against trump that was huge it was everywhere
00:19:25.320you saw it everywhere everywhere you looked you know and it was a pretty impressive rally that
00:19:30.200that obviously tapped into something um that women in the united states were concerned about i
00:19:35.400personally don't agree with their grievances but i'll still say you know it was obviously
00:19:40.200an impressive gathering and rally and it was covered and you know i post this tweet just saying
00:19:46.600like obviously this should be the major news story of the country it should be everywhere
00:19:50.920and um a couple journalists took uh you know had a problem with that and said look we have been
00:19:59.000covering it was a top story two nights in a row well again i'm just talking about how it doesn't
00:20:04.120have the urgency that it would if it was in another part of the country you know the elites who live in
00:20:09.000toronto and montreal ottawa they don't really care what's going on in alberta they don't pay attention
00:20:15.000and when it's a bunch of sort of blue collar um working class people out protesting that they want
00:20:21.720jobs it doesn't really resonate with the elites in central canada because they don't approve of their
00:20:26.840industry they don't they don't care about oil they want oil gone anyway so they see all this is kind
00:20:32.760of a good thing whether they admit it or not and you could see that even with justin trudeau's comments
00:20:38.200remember he was down in argentina and he made those absurd comments that sort of implied
00:20:43.640that construction workers are rapists and that the concern is that they're sexual predators
00:20:50.600so you know he wants to do a gender-based analysis on building projects because of the impact he said
00:20:57.160on large number of construction workers who are mostly male going into rural areas and how that affects
00:21:03.560women i mean he's obviously implying that there is going to be like an increase in sexual assaults
00:21:09.800and that these men are predators which is probably how a lot of central canadian elites look at western
00:21:16.200canadian working class men they think you know these are brutes they're not educated they have jobs
00:21:22.040that they get dirty in and they look down their noses at these people and i think you can see that
00:21:27.000reflected in the coverage and it's just absolutely despicable so i'm you know completely with the people
00:21:33.160in alberta and uh you know it's tough i don't i don't know what's going to happen i don't know
00:21:39.720what the solution for these folks are just because with trudeau i don't think that uh pipelines are
00:21:45.560going to get built so that was the first lie by omission story and not really covering that the second
00:21:50.200lie by omission story that's happening is remember a couple years ago there was a they called her the
00:21:58.360rogue page there was a senate page who as a form of protest uh she was walking through the senate
00:22:04.520chamber and she pulled out this homemade red stop sign that said stop harper on it so it was like an
00:22:10.200act of civil disobedience she was protesting the government that she was working for um but this
00:22:15.400the page program is for students they're usually first-year students at the university of ottawa or
00:22:20.120carlton university and they get this opportunity so they're not like partisan appointments they're just
00:22:25.160you know young canadians basically and so this this uh rogue senator they started calling a rogue
00:22:31.240senate page they started calling her um held up this stop harper sign it was this act of bravery
00:22:38.200and she was like lauded throughout the mainstream media she was everywhere um her picture was on the
00:22:43.400front page of newspapers she was interviewed on all the major national shows you can look back
00:22:48.600she was a guest on cbc power and politics she was on ctv nightly news she was like the hero
00:22:55.000of the elites and the liberal media and basically all that she had done she didn't really have a
00:23:00.840message her message was just so like harper was destroying the country and harper was evil or whatever
00:23:06.440um anyway she was a big hero and uh that happened that was a story we'll compare that to this other
00:23:15.880woman named sarah wheel who was part of the prime minister's youth council and she basically quit out
00:23:23.240a protest over that comment that i was just talking about the construction worker comment so the
00:23:28.440prime minister has his council of young people across the country in various industries this young woman
00:23:34.200here she has here named sarah wheeler she sarah wheels sorry um she she resigned in protest this week
00:23:43.080um because of the prime minister's despicable comments about construction workers and blue collar
00:23:47.880uh men in western canada that's her job is to sort of represent young people um in alberta on these
00:23:55.400issues and so she's 23 years old she's a she was a heavy equipment operator and a heavy haul truck driver
00:24:04.760she's um was appointed to the youth council in 2017 and that's a non-partisan group that advises
00:24:11.880trudeau and his government on issues facing young canadians so she issued her resignation letter i
00:24:18.120shared it on facebook the other day it was sort of going viral she basically just says like you don't
00:24:23.800know what you're talking about trudeau and you know the things that you said about working class men are
00:24:28.520incredibly um offensive and so you know sure there's this story that was in some post media papers this
00:24:39.720was a post media story why sarah will resigned from the pm's youth council but most canadians never
00:24:46.360heard the story most canadians never saw this woman they never um you know she wasn't on the nightly news
00:24:53.080she was an interview she was on the front page of paper sure she didn't resign in such a spectacular
00:24:57.720fashion like the stop harper lady who was clearly you know kind of doing some pr stunt and was trying
00:25:04.680to get attention so the other one was sort of a more um you know a bigger act of political show
00:25:12.920um you know it was super disrespectful and counter to like what her job description was she probably
00:25:19.800broke a bunch of rules and broke a bunch of laws um but anyway she she you know she got heralded as a
00:25:24.840hero uh this lady right here you'll probably never see her face again so uh you know that's just a
00:25:32.760everyday example of lies by omission mainstream media they don't cover stories that make liberals
00:25:38.120look bad in anywhere near the same way that they would cover stories that make conservatives look
00:25:43.240bad i mean just again compare it to that mp that was the subject of a hit piece by the cbc that was
00:25:48.680completely false you know why is the state broadcaster spending its money and resources holding backbench
00:25:55.400opposition mps accountable when you know they're supposed to be holding the government accountable the
00:26:00.520actual people who are running the government the people who have power um and again when there's
00:26:06.280a story that embarrasses the prime minister like a young woman resigning over his ridiculous um comments
00:26:14.840uh you know the mainstream media is just like nowhere to be found so that's uh disappointing
00:26:21.800and that's the sort of media criticism for the day i want to move on to a story down in the us a
00:26:28.280manhattan judge has ruled has given a pretty harsh sentence uh to a 20 year old terrorist who was
00:26:36.440trying to plot uh an attack in new york city so the fellow's name is abdulraham el banasawi and he
00:26:46.520basically um he had an isis plot he was part of an isis plot they wanted to carry out something like
00:26:55.720a paris style massacre in new york city they planned to bomb the subway systems bomb time square and um
00:27:04.680do mass shootings at like concerts and restaurants in and around manhattan so this wasn't just like
00:27:10.760some crazy kid in his basement scheming online this kid actually took steps this young man took steps to
00:27:18.200carrying out his attack he shipped a bunch of explosive devices to an isis isis operative that he was
00:27:24.200working with and he traveled down to new york new jersey to like start to carry out the attack uh what
00:27:30.120he didn't realize was that one of the agents that he was working with was actually an undercover fbi
00:27:35.160agent and so they were able to arrest him back in 2016 and he was on trial now it's a super interesting
00:27:41.640story because you know this is a canadian guy he well i hate to even call him canadian he was born in kuwait
00:27:48.520okay he was partially raised in canada his family moved to canada he was partially raised in canada
00:27:54.360partially raised back in kuwait his parents sent him back to kuwait to go to school and so you know
00:28:01.000by the time he's 1920 he's caught up in this uh crazy isis terrorist scheme and so i've written about this
00:28:10.360guy in the past um his parents and his family and his lawyer tried to claim that he was mentally ill
00:28:16.120and that he suffered from drug addiction that he was addicted to drugs and that's why he did this
00:28:22.120and you know it's just super interesting to compare how this guy was treated in the united
00:28:26.600states like basically he got the same lawyer he's interesting he hired the same lawyer as the guy that
00:28:32.200represented omar cotter um that that lawyer um became so close with omar cotter that when omar
00:28:39.080cotter was released from prison cotter actually went and lived with this lawyer so the lawyer
00:28:45.080um represented this guy down in new york and basically the judge just just ignored the fact
00:28:53.240well not ignore the fact he he threw out the fact that this guy claimed to have mental illness he said
00:28:58.680that he was still fit to stand trial um the guy ended up um pleading guilty to seven counts of terrorism
00:29:06.280and he was uh given a 40-year sentence today so his family his lawyer had asked for a four-year sentence
00:29:12.120and then after that he would be allowed to go into therapy and like drug rehabilitation
00:29:18.760and uh the judge ended that the prosecutors were trying to get life so it was kind of an in-between
00:29:24.920decision 40 years but 40 years in prison is a pretty harsh sentence and you know i think it's really
00:29:32.440interesting because i think that if this case were to be in canada it would have just been totally
00:29:36.920different there's no way there's no way that he would have gotten a 40-year sentence um just given
00:29:44.440the bleeding heart liberal judges in canada the fact that they created this case and i've written about
00:29:49.960this i've written several columns about this in the past um this kid wrote a 24-page handwritten letter
00:29:57.080uh this was back in um march 2018 and i read the 24-page letter i think i actually did a live about
00:30:06.760it when it first came out and the whole point is that it's supposed to show that this guy is like
00:30:13.080remorseful and that he was mentally ill but if you read the handwritten letter that supposedly apologized
00:30:20.040for his actions it doesn't really appall it didn't really apologize for his actions
00:30:24.760it uh didn't really show that he was remorseful it kind of did like a play-by-play of this guy's life
00:30:30.280and i think his life was super interesting just in that he basically he came to canada with his family
00:30:37.000and he started rebelling he didn't like his parents were strict fundamentalist religious muslims
00:30:44.040and he rejected that he wanted to kind of just like become a canadian kid this is what he wrote quote my
00:30:53.000parents forced me to enroll in an islamic school but i wasn't muslim i didn't identify as muslim
00:30:58.520and then he basically talks about how he just wanted to like hang out and be canadian and he
00:31:04.120likes smoking pot i find this kind of interesting like they keep talking about him as like a drug addict
00:31:09.320the drug that he did was marijuana which i think a lot of activists and advocates for marijuana will
00:31:16.040say that it's not addictive um but the parents were so horrified that their son was like becoming
00:31:21.240canadian and doing smoking marijuana that they freaked out and sent him back to kuwait to go to
00:31:28.200like a strict islamic boarding school and he really hated that so he decided to like come back to canada
00:31:36.600and from there he started going to a canadian islamic school in toronto and he says that
00:31:43.560it was at this islamic school that he realized that islam would fix all the problems in society
00:31:49.160in the world and that's when he started to basically radicalize was while he was attending
00:31:54.520a islamic school in toronto which is interesting and he started developing like hardline views
00:32:01.320about militant jihad and um isis and anyway his letter kind of continues to portray that continues to justify
00:32:11.240um why isis is important he'll embass the mainstream media for um portraying isis unfairly
00:32:18.760as barbarics and jihadists so he's like even in his letter that he's supposedly apologizing
00:32:25.320and talking about how he has this like history of mental illness and drug addiction
00:32:29.240he's doubling down on his ideology and he's almost explaining in some way how his parents
00:32:35.160had a hand in radicalizing him and so somehow from this letter we're supposed to take that he
00:32:42.280should be given a second chance and that he can be rehabilitated and that his family can be the ones
00:32:47.480that help him well when i read the letter i felt like it was the family that kind of pushed him
00:32:52.120towards this extremist view of islam and you know they would be the last people that i would want
00:32:57.560this guy to be in the custody of if he were to be released well the judge you know had no leniency
00:33:04.200for that kind of stuff and ultimately just said yo look the guy's a threat um we can't say that he
00:33:10.200is not going to relapse um you know he's not it's not safe to have him out uh in society just given that
00:33:16.760especially the you know heinous crimes that he had plotted what he was willing to do and what he wanted to
00:33:22.280do and you know if it wasn't for the police work the sting operation the undercover cop uh who knows
00:33:29.320what he would have been able to do um and it was interesting because the part of the case by this
00:33:34.200guy's lawyers by nazi's lawyers was that there was entrapment on behalf of the fbi and again that
00:33:41.400was thrown out and he was given a tough a tough sentence and i thought that was interesting because
00:33:47.880i think you compare that this week so the same week that this um the same week that this terrorist
00:33:57.720down in the u.s gets a 40-year conviction there was another story let me see i thought i had it open
00:34:06.280here but i guess i don't there was another story here it is here and this is my column it's just up right
00:34:15.960now on the toronto sun website you guys can check that out uh compares the this trial of this america
00:34:22.920this guy who is on trial in the u.s and compared it to a case in canada that the same so the same week
00:34:30.200the bc appeals court ruled um to maintain a decision so there was a case i don't know if you guys
00:34:36.440remember this um there were two muslim converts a married couple husband wife john nuttle and amanda
00:34:42.600courtney and they were kind of like junkies they were like heroin junkies who became muslim converts
00:34:49.400then they became islamic fundamentalists and they had a plan to blow up um they had a plan to bomb
00:34:58.600a victoria canada day celebration they wanted it to be like the boston marathon bombers that was sort of
00:35:04.120their goal and so they you know worked on a plot very similar they worked with who they thought was a
00:35:10.600local al-qaeda affiliate they built homemade pipe bombs they built ieds and then they planted them
00:35:17.480they actually went down to the legislature in victoria bc and planted these bombs in garbage cans
00:35:23.800so they kind of carried out an act of terrorism in 2015 they went before a jury and the jury found that
00:35:32.200they were guilty the jury of their peers deliberated and ruled that these people were guilty
00:35:38.760of terrorism of these crimes um and then the bc supreme court later that year in 2015 overturned the
00:35:46.040decision and the reason they overturned it was because they claimed that that undercover cop the
00:35:51.160guy that pretended to be the al-qaeda operative the the only reason that these people weren't able to
00:35:55.640actually carry out their attack um they ruled that he was he that that rcmp officer was had entrapped
00:36:03.160them there was entrapment and then today the bc appeals court upheld that decision but it was
00:36:08.360entrapment so instead of getting a life sentence like the jury had rule in this case these two people
00:36:14.840were set free they're now free on bail they're free they're out back out in the public so
00:36:20.440you know very kind of not obviously the cases are different you know there's different facts and
00:36:26.520they're different people but in the u.s with the alber albersari kid they tried to say that he had
00:36:34.840been entrapped and that he was mentally ill and that he was a drug addict and the judge said no he
00:36:40.440still tried to commit terrorism he's going to jail in canada you know you have this married couple who
00:36:46.680were drug addicts as well who um worked with an undercover officer so you know they they the
00:36:53.960accusation the defense was that there was entrapment um in bc and in canada our leading heart liberal
00:37:01.160justice system ruled in favor of the people who had been convicted of terrorism in the past
00:37:06.120and because of it they're now walking free they're not walking free and so you have these two different
00:37:14.200different treatments of people who are who are accused and charged with terrorism and you know it just
00:37:21.240kind of makes you wonder like you know canada is seen as a safe haven and weak link in terrorism that
00:37:26.600we don't take the terrorist threat seriously well you know it's no wonder with with decisions like this
00:37:32.920the jury had already convicted this couple um they wanted to be part of al-qaeda there's video of them
00:37:39.800they literally planted the bombs it's not like it was an abstract idea again it wasn't just like some
00:37:45.080weirdos in their basement plotting and planning and not getting anywhere they took steps they built the bombs
00:37:50.200and then they laid the bombs they took the bombs as far as they knew they wanted to just kill mass
00:37:56.360murder people in victoria on canada day they wanted to kill canadians because of their ideology that's
00:38:03.880terrorism and they had already been convicted the fact that the the judge two judges in bc have now
00:38:10.680overturned this is just so ridiculous unelected judges again um undermining our justice system and
00:38:20.840you know allowing terrorists to walk free in this country how many terrorists are walking free in
00:38:27.080canada because of our bleeding heart liberal justice system i mean we know according to uh canadian
00:38:34.520government reports so there's about 60 returned foreign fighters so like isis fighters who are back in
00:38:39.400canada that they can't charge and can't arrest because they don't think that they'll be able to
00:38:44.200convict them in a judge in a courtroom in canada you have stories like this one out of british columbia
00:38:49.880where terrorists who walk free will walk free because police operations are seen as like an
00:38:55.800affront on justice it's it's just it's so frustrating it's so frustrating to me it makes me wonder like
00:39:03.000you know if someone's charged with terrorism in canada like i i they should be sent to the u.s to go to
00:39:09.160trial the u.s is the country that actually takes terrorism seriously compared to canada and uh
00:39:17.400yeah it's again just totally unfortunate it's no wonder that canada is seen as a weak link
00:39:25.960and a safe haven for terrorists with stories like that with stories like that so i'm gonna leave it
00:39:32.680at that for today hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of christmas break i hope everyone has
00:39:39.400a wonderful wonderful christmas with you and your family my family your family merry christmas and happy
00:39:44.840holidays um have a great week everyone i am going to be away next week i think most people will probably
00:39:52.440be away probably won't go live but we've got a lot of content lined up uh lots of videos and that kind
00:39:57.960of stuff that will be released next week in the following week and check out the column that i was
00:40:02.360just talking about it is in the toronto sun um on the website now it'll be on all the sun papers
00:40:08.280tomorrow morning so thanks so much and merry christmas