Juno News - December 05, 2018
The True North Report: The Jaspal Atwal Cover-Up
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Summary
Candice Malan with the True North Initiative joins me to talk about a new report from the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a progressive think tank, on the dangers of toxic masculinity in Canada's rural areas. She also talks about Justin Trudeau's recent comments on women in rural areas, and why he needs to go back to basics.
Transcript
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Hey guys, we're live. Candice Malcolm here with the True North Initiative.
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I wanted to come live today because I want to talk about this new report that was released yesterday.
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I kind of went through it a little bit on Twitter.
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There's a lot to get through, and I think that the issue is really being misrepresented, to be honest, on the media, in the media, by both conservatives and liberals.
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So I want to go through it in a little bit more depth and talk about, again, you know, it was 10 months ago that Justin Trudeau embarrassed all Canadians with his antics in India,
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and really basic questions about what happened, who was in charge, who was responsible, have yet to be answered.
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So this report, I think, the single's in, it takes aim at some of the key players that were involved.
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And unfortunately, we haven't really gotten any closer to the truth.
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There's a lot of deflecting and, you know, pushing blame elsewhere.
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But there's a couple of key pieces of information that we did learn yesterday that we will go through.
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It's been a really busy couple of days here, a couple of weeks, I should say, in the media.
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You know, you kind of think, you know, it's December.
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Things are going to slow down a little bit for the holidays.
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And part of it is because Justin Trudeau is off gallivanting around the world, as per usual,
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and he just can't help but embarrass Canadians pretty much wherever he goes, whatever he does.
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So he was in Argentina, and he was talking at a G20 meeting, and he goes on some ridiculous feminist rant
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about how construction workers pose social impact in rural areas, sort of implying that, you know,
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you get a bunch of Canadian men in a rural part of the country and that, what, wreak havoc
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and just sort of, like, rape and pillage or something like that, pretty insulting accusation
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against anyone who is involved in that kind of work, or anyone who spent time in rural Canada
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pretty much would contest some of those findings.
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It's kind of like a very simplistic left-wing analysis from, like, a sort of what you'd expect
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from, like, a high school student or maybe, like, first-year university social justice warrior
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talking about toxic masculinity. Well, that's our prime minister.
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So that video was making the rounds, and then there was a post today that went viral.
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I shared it on both Facebook and Twitter about a young woman who does work up in one of those
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rural areas that gets serviced by oil workers and construction workers, and she had pretty much
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the opposite analysis as Trudeau. I've got a construction worker on here that found the comments disgusting.
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I think we all did. It's like, you know, Trudeau's just so out of touch. He's living in his little
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protected bubble. He comes from a very elite family in Montreal. I don't think he's really
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spent a lot of time interacting with the kinds of Canadians that he so readily disparages. So
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that was super disappointing. And then Jess and Trudeau jumps out, seemingly out of nowhere,
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to engage in a Twitter conversation with a comedian. I use that term very loosely, comedian,
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because I don't think Trevor Noah is very funny. He's the guy that took over for Jon Stewart
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on The Daily Show, and pretty much the ratings have, like, tanked ever since Jon Stewart left.
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I mean, this guy obviously had big shoes to fill, but he's just really not funny. Like, his show is
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basically just, instead of comedy, instead of telling jokes, he just rants from a far-left
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perspective, complains about how horrible and racist we all are in North America. For some
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reason, Justin Trudeau wanted to impress this guy, so he sent out a tweet pledging $50 million
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to support some global citizen initiative to help celebrate the 100th birthday of Nelson Mandela,
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except for, I mean, look, you could argue that the cause is worthy. It's like going to educate
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young girls and women in poor countries. You know, you could argue that perhaps there was
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some merit in Canada giving that money away. But, you know, there's sort of layers of problems here.
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It's like, number one, Justin Trudeau is just virtue signaling on social media again. Number two,
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he's obsessed with celebrities and appealing to these far-left global elites that really,
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you know, you couldn't be further away from the reality of everyday Canadians by trying to
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show off to some, you know, elite movie star or TV star that lives in New York City.
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So, you know, why are you pledging our taxpayer money to these causes to try to impress your friends
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in the American media? It's like, Trudeau is just so desperate for approval that, you know,
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he goes to these pathetic lengths. And, you know, the tone in the tweet was very much like,
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you know, it was his money. It was his grand gesture. And you saw a lot of other celebrities,
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like, applauding him for it. It's like, well, this isn't his money. It's our money. And there's a lot,
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there's a lot of problems in Canada. There's a lot going on that are equally worthy that might not
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get the attention of these elite left-wing celebrities. But they would be helpful,
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nonetheless. And you can just, you know, off the top of your head, name, you know, veterans. How
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about Aboriginal communities? How about struggling oil workers? How about struggling car manufacturers?
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How about, you know, the closed plant in Oshawa? How about the ongoing oil crisis in Alberta,
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the record high unemployment rate? I think it's 8% unemployment in Alberta, which is unheard of.
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Half the offices in Calgary are sitting empty because of Trudeau's policies. And yet this guy's
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just flippantly pledging, pledging away our money to these ridiculous causes. So shame on Justin Trudeau.
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Let me know where you guys are watching from. Let me know who it is that I am talking to. And I think
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we've got enough people on that we can just go, go for it. So yesterday, the federal government
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released this report. It's called the Special Report into Allegations Associated with Prime
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Minister Trudeau's Official Visit to India in February 2018. So I'll just provide a quick bit
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of background on that trip. I was one of the reporters that was, you know, following it really
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closely, reporting it from day one. There's a lot of backstory to Trudeau going to India. Again,
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his trip was kind of like twofold. Number one, I think that his inner circle and his,
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the people that work around him recognize that, you know, they like having Trudeau on the global
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stage. They like having him become the focal point of the international media. The international
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media, at least at first, were very praising of Justin Trudeau. They saw him as this sort of like
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liberal global rock star that was going to counter mean conservative Donald Trump. And so he would
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get very favorable coverage when he'd go on these international junkets. And I think they thought
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that this was just another opportunity to spotlight, you know, the gorgeous Trudeau family, those kids
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and his wife and, you know, put them in costume and just have them out in the open. That was the plan.
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Of course, it horribly backfired because of the second element that was going on in India,
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which is that the Trudeau liberals, the liberal government general, and to be fair, other parties
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do this too, the NDP and the conservatives federally both do this as well. But they love to court the
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ethnic vote, phone bank policies or vote bank policies, vote bank politics, as it's called over
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in India, where you basically just, you know, make inroads with a specific ethnic community,
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you make all kinds of like really inside promises, special handouts and special deals. And then these
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people from this community will come out in droves and vote, they'll sign up every niece and nephew
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and cousin and every person from the religious community will go and vote for a block for one
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candidate. And it can really have a big impact. So they're hyper organized, and they respond to
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bribes, essentially, public bribes. And so the Trudeau government is notorious for this kind of
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vote bank politics. And basically, going to India was just one big election campaign strategy to court
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the Indian diaspora and Canada, specifically Sikh voters. And the Trudeau liberals have been accused
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for the past few years of aligning themselves and courting the most extreme elements of the Sikh
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community. So imagine a Sikh community, you know, in Canada, the vast majority of people are just,
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you know, solid, good Canadian, hardworking people. We love Canada, they're grateful to be in Canada.
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Then within that, you know, there's a very small element of people who are hyper political,
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they believe in bringing their sort of tribalist ethnic politics from India into Canada, and then
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using Canada as a launching point to kind of combat and go after all grievances from India.
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And so we have this group, they're called the Kalistanis, they want to have their own independent
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country called Kalistan, that would be carved out of India, carved out of Punjab region. So they want
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Sikhs to have their own ethnic state. And this was a sort of popular political movement in the 70s and
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the 80s in India. It kind of hit its peak in the 80s, there's a bunch of ethnic rioting, there was
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sort of a pogrom against Sikhs. So a lot of Sikhs were killed. The Indian government considers these
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people terrorists, whereas the people themselves, you know, they consider themselves freedom fighters
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for their cause. So difference of opinion there, a lot of the Sikhs ended up moving to Canada.
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And it was kind of like a time capsule, right? So in India, the issue was resolved, you know, there
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was a lot of reconciliation. And the issue is mostly dead. I talked to so many people from India,
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they're kind of surprised that this issue is still alive and well in Canada, because it's dead in
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India. It just, you know, the movement is gone. But so many of these people moved to Canada at the
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height of that tension. And then and then you all probably know about the worst terrorist attack that
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ever occurred against Canadians, the air India bombing, this terrorist mastermind from within
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this community blew up an airplane that was flying from Toronto, Montreal, over to Delhi killed about
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300 people. And that was in the mid 80s. And it was, you know, still remains the worst terrorist atrocity
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in our history. So Canadians have been involved in this, they've been kind of pulled into it.
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And there's still a very active community of Kalistanis that live in mostly in suburbs of
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Vancouver and Toronto. They celebrate the people who carried out this terrorist attack, they celebrate
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the people who died in India during that ethnic sort of feud that happened in the 80s as well.
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And so it's hard for us in Canada, because, you know, we don't want to be insensitive to people in
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this community. But at the same time, they have parades, and they're carrying around banners and
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posters that are celebrating terrorists who killed Canadians. You know, it's no longer just free speech,
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that's sort of incitement and terrorism. So this is all background, this is all background.
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The report was released yesterday. And interesting, because it has the timeline here, I've got the
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report here, I can share the link if folks are interested in reading through it, it's pretty long report. But
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basically, it's got the timeline. So in April 2018, the parliamentarians initiated a special review.
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So this is a committee within Parliament that was asked to look at the intelligence and national
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security issues that happened. So foreign interference and the use of security intelligence
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in this scandal, and included the Privy Council Office, the Canadian's thesis, the Royal Canadian
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Mount Police, so the RCMP, and Global Affairs Canada, so it's the Department of Foreign Affairs.
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And so that the report was released or the report was initiated in April, it was finished in May.
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And so this report was finished in May, and it was given to the Prime Minister's office.
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So the Prime Minister's office has had this report for almost six months. And yet it wasn't released
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until yesterday. There were two updates that were provided in October, and then it was finally
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released yesterday, December 3rd. So kind of interesting, you have to wonder why the Trudeau
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government held on to this report, what was going on in Trudeau's own personal office, and why he
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decided not to release this report. So it finally did come out yesterday. And if you watch the mainstream
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media, and you look for your information there, you'll kind of get two different narratives that
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came out. So the more sort of establishment mainstream liberal perspective was that this report
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showed a failing on behalf of the RCMP. The RCMP really dropped the ball. There was sort of just
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a lot of confusion between these different departments that I listed, the CSIS, RCMP,
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and Global Affairs Canada, that just failed to communicate the fact that there was a problem. So
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I guess just going back a bit more background, is that Trudeau goes to India, he makes a total
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full of himself with all his silly costumes. But then in the midst of it all, we learn that he had
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invited a terrorist as part of his entourage that was attending events with him. I was a journalist that
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broke that story first. I had the pictures of Sophie Trudeau and a whole bunch of other liberal MPs and
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cabinet ministers posing with an individual named Jasper Atwal, who was a convicted terrorist. He is
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living here in Canada. He's part of this Sikh Kalistani group of separatists and terrorists. In the 80s,
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he tried to assassinate a visiting Indian politician. So an Indian cabinet minister from the Punjab region
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was visiting Vancouver Island and he tried to kill the guy. He shot him. The judge called him, called it
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an act of terrorism and he sort of served his time. So that was the big scandal. How on earth did a terrorist
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get involved in Trudeau's inner circle? How was he led into an event, you know, to pose, take pictures
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with Sophie Trudeau and other liberal cabinet ministers? He probably met the prime minister.
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So that was sort of the first angle that was looked at in this report. And then there was a secondary
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angle, which is that in the aftermath of this news report coming out and sort of all the, you know,
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news stories, international kerfuffle of this cause. The national security advisor, a guy named Daniel Jean
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at the time, came out and gave an off the record briefing to reporters. And in that briefing, he basically alleged
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a massive conspiracy theory. He basically alleged that there were rogue elements in the Indian government that
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orchestrated the invitation of Jasper Atwal in order to embarrass the Trudeau liberals, in order to
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embarrass Justin Trudeau. So you're going to have these two elements. One, why is there a terrorist in
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India? Two, why is the national security advisor who is a bureaucrat, who is nonpartisan, who is not a
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political appointee, but a civil servant, a queer civil servant, why is he making these allegations? Is there any
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truth to them? Was it was, you know, security? And until it was intelligence used inappropriately? Was was his
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were his actions political? So these are the kind of questions that were supposed to be answered in this report. And so
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the report was let out yesterday, again, the media pointed out that the RCMP massively screwed things up. And then on the
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other side, there were a lot of people, a lot of conservatives complaining that this report was just
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heavily redacted, and that we didn't really learn anything. It was just an empty document. Conservative
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leader Andrew Scheer posted a screenshot of just a whole bunch, he picked one page of the report that
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was just heavily redacted. And he was like, you know, this is the kind of transparency that the Trudeau
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liberals are giving us. Now, it's true that a lot of the information was redacted, but it was a 50 page report,
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and there was a lot of information. Again, I was one of the journalists that was following this
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story, probably the closest. And I did learn a lot from reading through that document. So let's go
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through some of it right here. This is this is the main piece of information that the liberal media picked
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up on. I tweeted this out, I can provide a post to it as well. I don't know if you guys can see it very
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well. But it's basically a timeline. So once Jasper Atwell was added to the event list to go to this
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event on February 20. This is how the RCMP had a timeline. So an RCMP officer basically determined
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that Jasper Atwell was on the invitation list, and that he had a criminal conviction for attempted
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murder. And then he was later acquitted for assault. And then for some reason, so on February 13, he knew
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this. And then for some reason, he didn't pass along the information. It says that on February 14,
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he left a voicemail somewhere, but there was no action because the officer was away on leave.
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And then basically, that the information was received at the end of a shift, and it wasn't passed
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along. So a little bit of just laziness and incompetence on behalf of the officer there.
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And that's this is sort of what the media is jumping on saying like, oh, the RCMP dropped the ball,
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and sort of blaming it on them. I don't think that that's entirely accurate, because the report itself
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also says that the RCMP and CSIS both basically looked into it, and they determined that this guy
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was not a threat. This guy was not a national security threat, and that because his criminal history was
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so far in the past, that even though he had been a terrorist in the 80s, he was no longer considered
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a terrorist now. So here, this again is from the report. You can see right at the top there,
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it says, the RCMP stated that Mr. Atwell was not considered a threat despite his criminal history,
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and blank, that part was redacted. But again, so it's hard to say that the RCMP dropped the ball
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when their own determination was that he wasn't a security threat. So I don't think you can just
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simply say, oh, it was the RCMP's fault here, because they did come to the determination that
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they wouldn't have changed their security protocol, that they didn't consider him a threat,
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even though he did have this criminal background. So I don't think we can so easily blame it on the
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RCMP. From my analysis of reading this report, I think that the prime minister's office, PMO,
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is basically, it was their fault. They're the ones that dropped the ball, and we'll get to that in a
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minute. A couple of interesting points. This is just, again, background. So part of the report talked
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about recent Indian messaging on Sikh extremism, says, according to government officials, there are
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issues raised with great regularity in bilateral meetings at all levels. And the focus was basically
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about the concerns that I raised at the beginning of this video, about the Canadian Sikh community
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having this radical element. You know, a small percentage of Sikhs in Canada are part of this
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extreme Kalistani network that want to have Sikh nationalism and a Sikh independent state called
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Kalistan. And that they're sort of organizing terrorists and political events out of Canada,
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doing fundraising, that kind of thing. So those are the things that were raised. According to this document,
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the last point there, in April 2017, India's chief minister of Punjab referred, refused to meet with
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the minister of national defense, who was traveling to India at the time. He accused him and four other
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Canadian cabinet ministers of being Kalistani. So there's this feud going on between the Canadian
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and Indian government, where the Indian government is not only accusing the liberals of sort of courting
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and, you know, fostering extremism in the Sikh community, but that these extremists are actually
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part of the Trudeau government, part of the inner circle of the Trudeau government, which is really
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alarming. It's really alarming stuff that the Trudeau government is basically accusing, or sorry,
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the Indian government, the chief minister of Punjab, so it's like it's like the equivalent of the
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premier of a Canadian province, is accusing the Canadian government of being infiltrated by
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essentially extremists and terrorists. I think that's pretty alarming. And that was something
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that was sort of a major takeaway for me. Another thing that we learned was that all the attention was
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on Jasper Atwal. All the attention was on the fact that this guy, this one individual who had tried to
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kill an Indian cabinet minister was in India. That was a story that I broke in the sun. And then subsequently,
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it was also written about in the CBC and other news agencies. But he wasn't the only person
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who was flagged and pulled. We also learned that there were three individuals who had their invitations
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rescinded. We only know the name of Jasper Atwal. The other two remain anonymous. And that part,
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again, is redacted from this report. But it says right here, Canada's High Commission in Delhi sent emails
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to three individuals, and then their names are redacted. It says rescinding their invitations.
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And the first name, direction came from the Prime Minister's office, the second from the PCO,
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and the third from the Canadian Mission. So, you know, it wasn't just a one-off mistake that Jasper Atwal
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slipped onto the guest list. There were three of these guys. There were three individuals who were,
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you know, raised security issues. So that's interesting. The third thing that I wanted to raise is that
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if you read the CBC, and if you sort of subscribe again to the liberal narrative and talking points,
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they talk about how it was a low-ranking MP, a backbench rookie MP from Surrey British Columbia,
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sorry, PCO, someone's asking. It's the Privy Council office. So in Canada, there's sort of like the
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permanent bureaucracy, and then there's the political appointees. So the Privy Council is
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the equivalent to the Prime Minister's office, but they're the permanent bureaucracy that always work,
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you know, they're the civil servants that always work in Ottawa. And then the Prime Minister's office
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will change according to who the Prime Minister is. I know there's a lot of acronyms when it comes to
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dealing with federal government stuff. I try not to use the acronyms, but sometimes it's just easier.
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So, again, this MP from Surrey named Varandeep Surrey, he's the one that came out and apologized and
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said that it was his fault that he released, or that he invited Jasper Atwal and kind of fell on the
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sword or, you know, was thrown under the bus by the trio of government. In this report, though,
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it says that the MP also claimed, I think this was when he was doing a interview with Indian media,
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or perhaps Punjab media, he said that he didn't invite the person. And so his claim was that there
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are no spots on the list. All I did was forward anyone who wanted to attend, who would express
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interest. So they forwarded the names, he said 25 to 30 names from different industry, various industries.
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So basically, all you had to do in order to get invited to Trudeau's India Junket was email your
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local MP, say, hey, I want to go on this trip with Trudeau. The local MP's office would forward
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the names to the Prime Minister's office. And then it was the Prime Minister's office who created the
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list. And we learned that there's 423 of these individuals who basically just asked if they could
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go to the event with Trudeau in India. And then that entire list was added. So the Prime Minister's
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office themselves were the ones that created the list. It's kind of rich for them to turn around
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and try to blame it on a rookie MP. The rookie MP says, you know, all I did was just, you know,
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kind of follow this protocol. So again, this is just trying to get to the bottom of who to blame,
00:25:14.160
the blame game. I think it's pretty clear, though, that, yeah, you can blame the RCMP here,
00:25:18.960
you can blame a local MP there. But at the end of the day, it's Trudeau's responsibility to make
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sure that he's not inviting a terrorist. It's his staff, it's his office, it's the Prime Minister's
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office who are in charge of these kind of like political decisions. Don't invite people who the
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Indian government hates, don't invite people who the Indian government considers a terrorist.
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Those would be the kind of decisions that Trudeau's staff should have made. So let's move on to the
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part that I find most interesting that really isn't being covered at all in the media, which is that
00:25:50.400
the comments and that briefing, that bizarre briefing made by the National Security Advisor,
00:25:58.240
Danielle Jean. So this is really what the crux of the report that was released yesterday
00:26:04.480
talks about, and it wasn't really covered that much in the media. So if you remember,
00:26:10.720
after this whole scandal broke, where Jasper Atwal was at this event with Trudeau, and we're trying to
00:26:15.840
figure out how on earth the Kalistani terrorist was invited, there was this really bizarre story that
00:26:22.560
came out in the CBC, and it was about rogue elements, rogue elements in the Indian government.
00:26:30.000
And the allegation was that these elements in the Indian government were purposefully trying to make
00:26:37.200
Trudeau look bad, and that's how Jasper Atwal got invited to this event. So here is the CBC story.
00:26:44.880
Rogue Indian political elements may be trying to make Canada look weak on Sikh extremism source.
00:26:54.640
So that source in this story was an anonymous source, and we later learned that the source was none other
00:27:02.560
than Danielle Jean, who was the National Security Advisor. Interestingly, he retired like a couple weeks
00:27:09.920
after this whole thing happened. But it was really one of the most bizarre conspiracy theories
00:27:17.440
that I've ever seen, and bizarre that, again, a non-political, non-partisan,
00:27:24.160
is supposed to be impartial career civil servant was the one behind it, because it was really like
00:27:29.760
grasping at straws. It was a cover-up. So we learned a lot about, well, I should say we,
00:27:39.040
the report aimed at answering a bunch of questions about this guy, like, you know,
00:27:44.800
what did he use intelligence? Did he disclose any classified information? You know, why did he
00:27:53.520
decide to do an off-the-record briefing? Who was discussed? Who was involved? All those things were
00:27:59.040
supposed to have been answered. Unfortunately, the report doesn't really get to them, and maybe that's
00:28:03.920
part of the problem. Some of it was redacted. But basically, they wanted to find out, you know,
00:28:11.840
why he did it. So his explanation, Danielle Jean's explanation, was that he wanted to push back
00:28:17.760
against what he thought were false stories. Again, why is it the National Security Advisor's
00:28:25.120
role to try to push back against false stories? That doesn't really make any sense. Again, that's not
00:28:29.840
his job. He's the top security advisor. He's supposed to be looking at national security,
00:28:36.320
intelligence and national security. So, you know, we're talking about terrorism or, you know,
00:28:42.880
foreign governments plotting things that could put Canada at harm. We're talking about national security
00:28:49.680
and our safety, the safety of the prime minister. That doesn't really have anything to do with combating
00:28:55.760
news stories that you might not agree with the premise or that you might find to be a bit
00:29:00.880
misleading in India. And that was that was his whole thing. It was pushed back against what he
00:29:06.000
considered misleading information in the Indian media, which I just I don't I don't understand
00:29:13.440
why he thinks that that's his role. But one of the things that we did learn was that
00:29:18.640
so he insisted that he was briefing journalists on his own initiative, that it wasn't sort of a
00:29:26.960
favor that he was doing for Trudeau's staff or Trudeau's inner circle, it says right here.
00:29:32.160
He maintained in public and in the committee that he briefed journalists on his own initiative.
00:29:36.400
He also stated that he consulted the PMO prior to the briefing. The committee has email evidence that
00:29:42.720
shows that he was in contact with several PMO officials prior to the briefing. And he stated during
00:29:48.080
his testimony that he spoke to the PMO principal secretary prior to his briefing. The committee does
00:29:55.280
not know the content of that conversation. So the PMO officials means Trudeau's political staff, so
00:30:01.600
liberals who were appointed to be Trudeau's staff. And when they talk about the PMO principal secretary
00:30:08.320
for people who follow Canadian politics closely, that's Gerald Butts. That's Justin Trudeau's best
00:30:14.000
friend from the time that they were at McGill together. And he's sort of the advisor to the
00:30:19.680
prime minister. There's been media reports that say in private liberal MPs call him prime minister
00:30:25.920
butts because, you know, that's how much power he has. That's how much say he has. And we know also that
00:30:31.280
he's sort of a radical left-wing activist who has advocated for all kinds of crazy things, including
00:30:39.440
basically shutting down the oil sands in Alberta. So, you know, he's sort of Trudeau's hyper-political
00:30:46.720
go-to guy. And he's having private conversations with this bureaucrat prior to the bureaucrat briefing
00:30:54.160
that raises all kinds of red flags, obviously, especially when the committee was unable to
00:30:58.480
determine what they talked about. So, you know, on the one hand, we have Daniel Jean, who up to this
00:31:04.400
point was a respected, independent guy, claiming that, you know, it was totally his own idea. Now,
00:31:09.920
on the other hand, he's having these closed-door meetings with Gerald Butts, which makes, you know,
00:31:14.880
makes your mind lead to thinking, you know, what were they scheming about? What were they talking about?
00:31:20.560
You know, how much of this is coordinated? How much of this was a cover-up
00:31:24.800
to protect Justin Trudeau after this, you know, incredibly humiliating episode is playing out. So,
00:31:31.440
you know, there's a lot of information in this document that was trying to determine just,
00:31:37.120
you know, Jean's motives and what he was doing. Because again, it was highly unprecedented.
00:31:42.000
There weren't really any other examples of stuff like this happening in the past,
00:31:45.600
and it just didn't really seem to fit in with his role as being the national security advisor. So
00:31:52.640
they basically came to these conclusions that it was highly unprecedented for the national
00:31:58.720
security advisor to give this kind of briefing to the media, that the reason why he would have
00:32:05.440
done the briefing, it was unclear to the committee. He didn't understand why it had to be Daniel Jean,
00:32:10.160
why it couldn't have been someone else. They said that was unclear. They said that Jean didn't notify
00:32:15.920
other officials from CSIS, the RCMP, or the Department of Foreign Affairs as to why he was
00:32:23.040
briefing journalists. He didn't explain. He didn't tell them prior. He didn't have any kind of
00:32:28.800
communication before that. And then the committee also couldn't determine why he would brief reporters
00:32:33.920
off the record. So this is all not good for the national security advisor. Sort of, you know,
00:32:42.160
it doesn't come right out and say that he did something wrong, but it just leaves a lot of
00:32:49.040
questions that they didn't understand why he did it. And that, you know, raises important concerns.
00:32:55.200
And I think that that, again, just leads us to think that this was a cover up. We can't conclusively
00:33:02.880
say that there is any evidence that his conspiracy that he pushed about rogue elements in the Indian
00:33:08.400
government was true. We, there's nothing that we can point to and say, oh, this is what he was
00:33:13.760
talking about. Or, oh yeah, there's a record of this kind of concern. Or, oh, he talked to officials
00:33:19.280
in foreign affairs who had a file that was about this. You know, there was no information. It was
00:33:25.200
just completely on his own. And the basic idea was that he was trying to combat media stories that he
00:33:30.480
didn't like, essentially, which is just a total misuse of power, misuse of resources. And I think that
00:33:37.760
the report, you know, the conclusion that you can draw is that it's completely unsubstantiated,
00:33:44.160
that from best we can tell, he was just, you know, part of the cover up, essentially. And that's
00:33:52.000
unfortunate when you have your senior civil servants in the government. You know, this is what in the
00:33:58.320
U.S. they would call the deep state. This is the permanent bureaucracy meddling in the day to day aspects of the
00:34:05.680
political appointees, the people who are actually democratically elected and then appointed by,
00:34:12.080
you know, the Trudeau government. Trudeau himself was elected. And then you have these shadowy figures
00:34:17.200
that usually remain nameless. And that CBC story I showed you doesn't list his name. It just names
00:34:22.800
him as an anonymous, high-ranking source. And that's the kind of thing that makes people really,
00:34:27.760
you know, skeptical about the media and the reports that they put out when, you know,
00:34:34.880
it's all based on an unnamed source. And then the unnamed source, when you look into it and when you
00:34:39.760
get a report like this, it goes to show just sort of how out of left field it was and how unsubstantiated
00:34:47.360
the whole thing was. So I think at this point, it's fair to say that the whole rogue elements in the Indian
00:34:55.120
government was nothing but a overstatement, fake news, I would say, but there's nothing really to it.
00:35:04.160
Daniel Jean can argue that, you know, it was his own idea to brief reporters, but it really seems like it was part of a
00:35:10.320
political cover-up. We know that he was having private conversations with Gerald Butts prior,
00:35:16.160
and then he basically came out and bailed Trudeau out of a pretty embarrassing mess, or at least they
00:35:21.600
tried to. That story came out late on Sunday after this whole scandal broke. So, you know, there are
00:35:29.920
still answers that remain, questions that remain unanswered. I don't think we're going to get any more,
00:35:35.120
though. I think this is pretty much all there is to it. There was a bunch of recommendations
00:35:40.160
that were provided by the committee. Those ones were redacted, so we don't know exactly what they
00:35:44.880
were. The ones that were public were all pretty basic, like, oh, you know, MPs should have better
00:35:50.080
briefings when it comes to national security protocol. And yeah, obviously, we should screen and vet
00:35:58.400
invitation lists to public events with the prime minister so that, you know, more terrorists don't
00:36:04.000
end up hobnobbing and taking photos and taking selfies with the prime minister and his family and
00:36:12.000
the inner circle. So that stuff's all pretty basic. I could have told you that, you know, the day this
00:36:17.120
stuff was happening, you know, lo and behold, it takes federal government 10 months to come out with
00:36:22.080
that report. Five of those months it was just being held by the federal government, by the Trudeau
00:36:28.320
government for whatever reason. And then I'll just do a final criticism here because I think
00:36:34.400
it's pretty brutal. So in the midst of this report coming out yesterday and journalists kind of going
00:36:39.680
through this long report trying to figure out what the heck it's saying, the CBC released its own
00:36:46.960
report. So, you know, the timing of it is just really suspicious. So federal government, after five
00:36:53.360
months being held by the prime minister's office, they pick, you know, a Monday in December to release
00:36:59.520
this report. And so while all these journalists are busy looking out at the 50-page report from
00:37:05.520
parliament, the CBC releases their own report, which is that they filed an access to information to
00:37:11.360
receive a bunch of emails that were sent among the various government departments talking about
00:37:17.200
Jasper Latwal and talking about this security breach. And so the CBC released it at the exact same
00:37:23.200
time on the same day. I don't know if that was intentionally done. I think it's pretty suspicious
00:37:28.240
that it would all come out on the same day. You know, again, I've worked in the media a lot and
00:37:34.400
usually you file an access information report, then the government gives it back to you. And it takes
00:37:39.680
you a little bit of time to go through all the information. Sometimes you get thousands of pages
00:37:44.960
and you have to have a couple of people going through it, reading through it, figuring out what
00:37:49.520
parts newsworthy. And then, you know, you plan from there and you decide when you're going to release
00:37:55.120
it. So it doesn't just happen like instantaneously. And yet, you know, somehow, even though this happened
00:38:01.520
10 months ago, somehow we had both of these reports dropping simultaneously on the same day at the same
00:38:08.800
time. So you can draw your own conclusion from that. I thought it was pretty suspicious. And so this
00:38:14.720
was a CBC story that came out yesterday. Newly released emails showed Trudeau officials struggling
00:38:20.640
to get ahead of the Atwal story, of course, from the perspective of the Trudeau government. You know,
00:38:26.960
they were just doing their best, struggling to come to terms with what was going on. This was the
00:38:32.400
famous picture that I broke there of the terrorist Jaspal Atwal with Justin Trudeau's wife,
00:38:37.760
wearing her silliest Indian wedding dress there. And so again, a lot of it was redacted and the CBC
00:38:48.160
dutifully echoes Trudeau's talking points here by blaming it on that backbench MP, MP Randeep Suri.
00:38:56.800
So, I don't know. I think this was all just meant to further confuse the issue, make it seem like
00:39:02.800
the whole issue with India, instead of placing the blame on Trudeau and his inner circle and
00:39:09.760
the whole problem with these guys trying to court the most extremist groups in society and rubbing
00:39:15.840
elbows and recruiting people who were even considered terrorists. The story changes, the narrative changes
00:39:23.600
to, oh, you know, they were scrambling to do the best they could. And the problem was like,
00:39:31.920
coming from multiple angles, blame the RCMP, blame CSIS, blame bureaucrats, the Department of
00:39:38.080
Global Affairs, blame anyone, blame a backbench MP, anything they can do to divert attention away from
00:39:44.480
the fact that it was Trudeau and his inner circle that really dropped the ball and really not only
00:39:50.000
embarrassed themselves, but embarrassed every single Canadian when we had to see, you know, this guy,
00:39:55.840
these people playing Mr. Dress up on the world stage and courting extremists and people who
00:40:05.520
our allies in India consider to be terrorists. So, I think that was a pretty much a low point
00:40:11.600
in the Trudeau government's, in Trudeau's time in office. You know, there's a lot of low points. He
00:40:16.880
keeps managing to outdo himself and stoop even lower. I think that the India trip though was like the end of
00:40:24.400
his honeymoon and it was the start of Canadians really seeing just how truly incompetent and silly
00:40:30.320
and foolish our Prime Minister is. And he hasn't quite been able to shake it yet. So, I'll leave it
00:40:36.640
at that. Thanks so much for watching guys. I will try to share, I'll share a couple of those links that
00:40:42.080
I mentioned to the report if anyone wants to dig through it. It's pretty dense, but it does share some
00:40:49.520
insight into what was going on behind the scenes. And I encourage you to check out the True North
00:40:54.480
Initiative. Check out our website. We've got a whole bunch of exciting content and things going out over
00:40:59.120
there. We also have, if you want to support independent journalism in Canada, we have two
00:41:05.680
different clubs that you can join. So, they're monthly clubs. You donate monthly and you get all kinds of
00:41:12.240
cool content. You get swag. You get early access to our videos, eBooks, books that we put out. You get
00:41:19.200
a copy of my latest book. And, you know, you just get to be part of the True North Initiative, which is
00:41:26.480
doing a lot of great work and got big plans for 2019 as well. We're going to start doing a bit more
00:41:33.520
investigative journalism, start putting out more reports. And so, I really encourage you to check that
00:41:39.120
out. Our website's truenorthinitiative.com. We put out a new video every single day. And we are
00:41:46.720
entirely independent. We're Canadian. And, you know, you get the other side of the story. So,
00:41:52.720
check that out, guys. Thank you so much for watching and have a great evening.