00:01:34.020And with all of the intelligence that we've been gathering
00:01:37.360from our intelligence agencies and our investigative people at the FBI and elsewhere,
00:01:43.580the president is extraordinarily disappointed in the actions
00:01:46.780the Canadians and Mexicans have taken to fight the drug war.
00:01:50.080Make no mistake, in 2023, Canada, which claims it's an innocent party, we found increased fentanyl seizures by 2,000 percent in 2023.
00:02:02.160And in Mexico, we know that the cartels operate basically without inspection by government or police officials because they're probably very often, especially in some regions, controlled by the cartels.
00:02:14.660and we think that there are cartel influences in Canada if you look at the lack of progress we've made on the drug war.
00:02:20.840Make no mistake that more than 100,000 people died from this last year
00:02:24.220and the chemicals that are being shipped here are coming from China.
00:02:28.540And so these people are killing Americans more than the Vietnam War
00:02:32.060and when our intelligence agencies look at the actions that they're taking, they feel like they're not enough.
00:02:37.240Canada has become a node of essentially Chinese infiltration and organized crime activity, especially in Vancouver.
00:02:48.720And this was hard for people to believe, but Vancouver has become a production hub for China and a transshipment hub for fentanyl precursors.
00:02:58.680Canadian regulated casinos first and foremost currency shops and real estate development
00:03:06.720were being used at scale for Chinese money launders it's called the Vancouver model of
00:03:11.960money laundering eventually I learned that Chinese state sponsored so we're talking about Chinese
00:03:17.620intelligence Chinese military was directly involved with these underground Chinese criminal
00:03:24.340networks that were facilitating this massive money laundering which tied into fentanyl uh triads in
00:03:32.820that is chinese organized crime in toronto and vancouver are command and control for the fentanyl
00:03:39.060money laundering of the type that was run through toronto dominion bank they're the bosses of mexican
00:03:44.740cartel money laundering in canada and that's very strange mr trump hasn't said that yet but what he
00:03:50.660did say the other day when people essentially reporters asked are you just trying to you know
00:03:56.180is this a ploy to get canada to redo you know its trade deal and he said no there's massive fentanyl
00:04:02.100coming from canada that fentanyl originates in china and so this gets to what donald trump is
00:04:08.340saying from marco rubio you know now secretary of state a few months ago he wrote to canada's
00:04:14.420Trade Minister, Mary Ying, and said, why is Canada a backdoor for slave-produced goods in
00:04:22.200Xinjiang that have been blocked by the United States and then rerouted through Canada, trans-shipped
00:04:28.940and come and stopped again at the U.S. border? So that's not about fentanyl, but that is about
00:04:34.980a now senior Trump official telling Canada's Trade Minister, you're not doing anything to stop
00:04:42.600these bad goods from China and you're hurting the United States. So I do believe that Trump's
00:04:48.120Trump's office at a high level is concerned about China.
00:10:33.280I've made sure that every single day in this office,
00:10:37.400I put Canadians first, that I have people's backs.
00:10:41.440And that's why I'm here to tell you all that we got you.
00:10:47.540Even in the very last days of this government,
00:10:50.320we will not let Canadians down today and long into the future.
00:10:55.880so trudeau very serious uh very upset maybe just reflecting on his time as prime minister
00:11:02.780and all the times that he did let canadians down i mean when i think of justin trudeau's time in
00:11:08.400office i will forever think of him unleashing the emergencies act on peaceful protesters in ottawa
00:11:13.680and the way that he demonized those truckers and those canadians who are demanding freedom uh the
00:11:18.520way that he completely demonized the unvaccinated through the campaign i went on french tv and asked
00:11:23.880whether we should even tolerate people who refuse to take the jab. Trudeau was a divisive prime
00:11:29.800minister. And I think he's starting to realize, you know, his time has come to an end. And I don't
00:11:34.940think that the history books will look very kindly on Trudeau as prime minister. Now, Sam, I, you
00:11:41.320know, you look at things more from the nuts and bolts in the investigative realm, not as much as
00:11:47.240a sort of a political commentator. But what was your takeaway from sort of one of his final
00:11:51.480appearances as prime minister. You're right. I'm very much a sort of a fact-driven investigator,
00:11:57.120but politics is part of what's going on in Canada right now. So, so many thoughts when we saw those
00:12:02.520tears. I mean, with respect to Mr. Trudeau, he is known for being performative. And I felt that
00:12:08.540that was a performance, probably, you know, in hockey terms, he was feathering a pass to Mark
00:12:14.500Carney, playing at the heartstrings of, it looks like a lot of baby boomers or older that have
00:12:20.900nostalgia for Pierre Trudeau, the father, and his vision of Canada. And I think we kind of see that
00:12:27.180vision of Canada is sort of fracturing Canada now into a post-national state. And so you can say
00:12:33.560that whether Mr. Trudeau is sort of seeing that things have gone off the rails, or, you know,
00:12:40.360he was turning on the tears there and claiming to have always acted for Canadians. Well, Candace,
00:12:45.720You and I know the thoughts here are that, no, with SNC-Lavalin, with the Chinese interference, with so many different stories, him and his top aides, Gerald Butts, Katie Telford, were playing the politics for the liberals.
00:12:58.580And they were able to convince a lot of Canadians that they were doing it for Canadians.
00:13:05.280But I think that kind of vision that he's got the backs of Canadians, it has fallen apart when you look at where we are right now.
00:13:13.760Well, even this very situation that we find ourselves in, right, like Trudeau announced his intention to resign on January 6th, he could have just called an election. If he was really looking out for what was in the best interest of Canadians, we would have already had an election and Canadians could have determined who the next prime minister would have been. He didn't. He stepped aside or he stayed on as prime minister but said that he would step aside, called a liberal leadership race, prorogue parliament to avoid any kind of accountability. That was all for him.
00:13:39.980That was for the Liberal Party and so that his party could regain themselves, could recollect and come back and try again in the election.
00:13:49.000And the frustrating thing is it seems to kind of work because in that period, we've seen the Liberals gain in the polls.
00:13:55.000So none of that was Canada first. That was all Liberal Party first.
00:13:58.880And I want to pull this into a comment that Donald Trump made.
00:14:02.120So we showed on the program yesterday that Trump put out a truth social, kind of connecting some dots and saying he just realized that this is all for partisan purposes, that Trudeau is doing this.
00:14:11.960Now, Trump says it was so that he could run again as prime minister, he could remain as prime minister.
00:14:17.020That part is not correct because Trudeau is gone.
00:15:47.940And yet I do believe his analysis, as you said, is right.
00:15:51.400Look, Jeremy Nuttall, a great former Toronto Star reporter that's been writing op-eds for the Bureau and op-eds critical of President Trump, also wrote more than a month ago, Prime Minister Trudeau is hanging on like a low-key autocrat.
00:16:09.760And absolutely, again, I go back to the feathering the past metaphor.
00:16:14.140Mr. Trudeau, I do think, was feeling a bit pressured by his party, a little bit pushed out.
00:16:19.340And I feel probably he feels that he's gotten back in the good graces of the liberals by sort of managing the situation and passed that baton under the table with Gerald Butts and Katie Telford ushering Mark Carney forward.
00:16:34.940Some have called it a Carney coronation.
00:16:38.220And I do believe that an honest analyst would look at the way Mr. Trudeau and the party have acted and said, yes, they've managed this crisis that Canada finds itself in quite well for the survival and thriving of the Liberal Party.
00:16:53.200Well, that is exactly what they have done.
00:16:55.140Now, let's stick with Trump because we have an on again, off again tariff, right?
00:16:58.980He said that they were coming and then he paused them and then he brought them back.
00:17:02.520And now it seems like he's pausing them again.
00:17:04.640So Trump announced that there would be another short-term reduction on tariffs on goods traded under the existing USMCA agreement, which was the follow-up from NAFTA, and reduced the 25% tariff on Canadian potash down to 10%.
00:17:20.800So we have a clip from yesterday of President Trump saying that he would sign another executive order making the US less reliant on Canada, specifically talking about Canadian energy.
00:17:33.100and he said that we don't need energy from Canada.
00:18:00.080and so in response to all of that we have canadian finance minister dominic leblanc announcing on x
00:18:07.680yesterday that canada will delay its second round of retaliatory tariffs as well until april 2nd so
00:18:15.120canada will not proceed with the second wave of tariffs on the second round of goods but believe
00:18:19.520that they would still have the original uh tariffs on the 30 billion dollars of goods that they
00:18:23.840announced earlier this week likewise doug ford premier of ontario said that ontario will not
00:18:29.840walk back retaliatory measures despite the one-month tariff exemption on many canadian
00:18:35.120goods so here is a clip of mr ford saying that ontario will still move forward with specifically
00:18:41.120the 25 export tax on electricity sent to michigan new york and minnesota and he blames donald trump
00:18:47.920for the trade war any change in your attitude now that the president in the last uh 20 minutes said
00:18:54.000that usmca compliant products coming in from canada would be exempt until april 2nd from the
00:18:59.520tariffs well first of all uh liz thank you for having me on i start off every interview with
00:19:05.360saying canadians love americans i love americans spent 20 years of my life but in saying that
00:19:11.120no we're going to put a 25 tariff on electricity coming from ontario to michigan uh new york and
00:19:18.640minnesota and isn't this a shame it's an absolute mess he's created he's created chaos he ran on a
00:19:25.280mandate to lower costs lower inflation create more jobs it's total opposite and i think mr
00:19:33.440ford is right that it is total chaos it's hard to keep track of all the moving parts we keep hearing
00:19:38.000different cut out uh carve outs and exemptions for these tariffs and this trade war not good for
00:19:44.480the economy i'm not a fan of tariffs generally speaking if they're if they can be used perhaps
00:19:49.680to help liberalize everybody's markets and get canada to get rid of some of the protectionist
00:19:53.840pockets we have it could be good not a fan overall though and i want to bring it in back to this idea
00:20:00.160of are we are we fighting a trade war or are we fighting a drug war you saw off the top several
00:20:05.360clips of trump advisors advisors in trump administration telling us that it's not really
00:20:10.880about trade it's it's more still about drugs and trump's initial concerns which were that fentanyl
00:20:16.720is being made in canada being produced being exported and that our border is just simply not
00:20:22.320secure i want to play this clip of mr kevin hassett who was a u.s director of the national economic
00:20:28.720council he was on fox news and he made it clear that he believes that this is a drug war not a
00:20:33.840a trade war. Let's play that clip. Respectfully, this is not a trade war. It's a drug war. And
00:20:40.260with all of the intelligence that we've been gathering from our intelligence agencies and
00:20:45.700our investigative people at the FBI at elsewhere, the president is extraordinarily disappointed in
00:20:52.080the actions that Canadians and Mexicans have taken to fight the drug war. Now, just one more
00:20:58.820point, Sam. I noticed on X that you responded to that video I just played and you wrote this. You
00:21:03.340said, I honestly don't know if it's a drug war or a trade war. What I do know is the average
00:21:07.360Canadian has absolutely no idea how penetrated our banks, housing, and institutions are by
00:21:13.400organized crime, but the U.S. military and police and intelligence know and are deeply concerned.
00:21:19.440So what is it that American officials know that most Canadians don't?
00:21:24.940Well, Candace, while I crafted quickly that post on X, I was working on an exclusive story for the
00:21:32.200Bureau that really, I dug into my Canadian and American sources who say that, first of all,
00:21:40.500this is my opinion. I was being honest. I don't know if it's a drug or trade war, but I know it's
00:21:46.320both because organized crime, that is Chinese organized crime in Canada, is working with
00:21:52.700Mexican cartels in extremely complex ways to move fentanyl around the world, but to move it into
00:22:01.100america and they're using a mixture of different legal commodities with illegal illegal commodities
00:22:08.060so the fentanyl precursors from china we all know where they're coming from they're being sent into
00:22:13.740vancouver and mexico which have weak or accepting structures and they're being produced in canada
00:22:20.380and mexico and they're crossing all kinds of borders so when people point to uh 40 kilograms
00:22:26.700at the northern border and call that a small amount from canada my my reporting which is
00:22:32.540consistent with u.s intelligence shows that uh chinese criminals in vancouver and toronto
00:22:38.700are working with mexican criminals to cross fentanyl across the mexican border into california
00:22:45.900and it gets very complex but i i if if your viewers take away anything this is the point a
00:22:51.980A congressional bipartisan panel in December released a report saying the Chinese Communist Party is incentivizing fentanyl trafficking around the world.
00:23:02.600The U.S. government knows this, and they are preparing to take a number of measures to stop that trade into North America, which they believe China wants to kill North Americans.
00:23:16.360And so I, you know, the complexity here is Donald Trump is acting for Americans, and yet perhaps he's mixing in some trade benefits to the United States. And that's what's confusing a lot of people. But there's no question that Canada is a big part of the fentanyl problem.
00:23:36.300Well, I wanted to pull in another post that you made on X.
00:23:39.120We like to do a segment on the Candice Malcolm show called Fake News Friday.
00:24:14.040So I want to play the longer bit where she says that President Trump is completely misrepresenting what is happening and that they're they're making false claims about the border and that basically Dustin Trudeau has made enough progress and that she's satisfied.
00:24:30.000The other challenge here, as well as the mixed messages around what is going on and what they actually want, is frankly the complete misrepresentation and false claims about what Canada is doing at the border.
00:24:46.360There is no doubt that progress has been made over the past month, and there are clear data points that they can look at to see that.
00:24:54.220so is it a complete misrepresentation and false claims to say that canada is not doing what it
00:25:01.420needs to do to crack down on this international drug trade i hadn't seen that clip and you know
00:25:06.320i don't get into ad hominem at all but uh ms barton should stick to her lane of talking to
00:25:11.940you know political aids political sources i'll as much as i can stick to my lane of talking to
00:25:18.800high-level intelligence law enforcement in north america and around the world that understands
00:25:25.200that canada has been chosen as a weak point by mexican cartels chinese transnational crime
00:25:32.880iranian hezbollah state-sponsored criminality and people don't have to really you know take my word
00:25:40.000for it there's all kinds of reporting such as uh the cameron ordus case that came to the surface
00:25:46.640in ottawa where rcmp's top intelligence official was uh leaking the plans of the united states and
00:25:54.160the five eyes to go after hezbollah money launderers in canada that are laundering billions
00:26:00.160through the big six banks i don't need to start to talk about uh the hundreds of billions of dollars
00:26:06.400that chinese transnational crime is using in real estate money laundering in vancouver and toronto
00:26:12.640I could go on and on, but my message is Ms. Barton doesn't know what she's talking about in that area.
00:26:18.060In fact, she's echoing or parroting the points of the Trudeau government, which I'll leave my comment at that.
00:26:24.880I would say that the Globe and Mail story report that I read, similarly, they're out of their depth.
00:26:30.640And really, they should, again, if they're political reporters, stick to politics until you've done a decade of work like I have.
00:26:38.100And I'm respected around the world as the subject matter expert on these matters.
00:26:44.340Well, it goes to show the importance of independent media because we don't need to parrot liberal talking points.
00:26:50.040It doesn't matter because they don't fund us.
00:26:51.900They don't pay us, whereas that's not entirely the case with some of those others.
00:26:56.080Now, you said that Canada has been chosen by these international organizations as a weak point, I presume.
00:27:03.760And it's interesting, Sam, because I know that prior to 9-11, Canada was also a hotbed for those funding terrorists.
00:27:11.200And we know that some of the masterminds and the people who paid for and funded al-Qaeda and part of the 9-11 attacks were living in Canada.
00:27:19.300And it seems like after that, Canada did take some measures to try to crack down on this.
00:27:23.560I know during the Harper years, they expelled Iranian diplomats and cut off relations.
00:27:29.560Now, can you help us understand, like, how has this happened?
00:27:33.480Why was Canada selected? What were the laws that they manipulated or the loopholes that they found
00:27:39.640that allowed them to infiltrate and set up these organizations and structures? Why wasn't it stopped
00:27:45.900by the Trudeau government? And why wasn't it stopped, or at least these red flags and alarm
00:27:50.400bells raised by American counterparts at any other point over the last 10 or 20 years that
00:27:55.400this was happening to stop it? Why is it just happening now? Well, I'll try to stick to about
00:28:01.320three points here. So one in my book, Willful Blindness, I track back to Hong Kong in the
00:28:07.2601990s, and some Canadian immigration and police officials that discovered a massive infiltration
00:28:13.880of our immigration system where the highest levels of organized crime in China and Hong Kong were
00:28:20.380able to allegedly corrupt Canadian immigration officials, were able to technically breach
00:28:27.040Canada's border vetting systems. And so you had incredibly wealthy criminals from China,
00:28:34.740in fact, working with the Chinese Communist Party, setting up in Vancouver and Toronto,
00:28:40.160buying tremendous amounts of real estate. And that leads to a lot of the infiltration that
00:28:46.340we see now in the fentanyl trade war or drug poor, whatever you want to call it. So we again,
00:28:51.900we have these triads that are using canadian real estate banks they're into technology they're into
00:28:57.820farmland they're into everything we see remember we see these super labs tucked up in rural areas
00:29:04.380should be in ontario as well as british columbia this doesn't happen by accident so uh the real
00:29:10.300key here that my story the other day pointed to uh the headline was uh the fentanyl crisis
00:29:16.860is a trade-based money laundering crisis.
00:29:42.160that went to Ottawa during the pandemic.
00:29:44.020But this was meant to protect the Canadians from overreach. What has happened, the unintended consequences is essentially it's impossible for the RCMP to do complex investigations on cartels and Chinese triads, even to get wiretaps when our American partners tell us, you have the Sinaloa cartel operating in Vancouver, can we do a tap?
00:30:07.900No, the Charter of Rights blocks it. So essentially, my sources are saying you can spend a billion dollars for a couple of choppers and hundreds of police on the borders. That's really just theater. If you can't prosecute serious organized crime, and we can't in Canada, the problem will continue. And the U.S. government knows it.
00:30:30.220Well, it's interesting because when you look at the problem on the American's southern border with Mexico, it really is that there are large hordes of people crossing in illegally.
00:30:41.340I mean, it's slowed down considerably, thank goodness, under President Trump.
00:30:44.920But in the past, you see these huge caravans of people just walking in and you see footage and it's unbelievable.
00:30:51.260So you understand on the southern border, what they do need is more patrols and more surveillance.
00:30:55.920But the Canadian problem is different. It's distinct. It's unique.
00:30:59.620And as we have heard, a lot of these drugs come from China.
00:31:43.320It's not an exaggeration to say that serious organized crime from Iran, China, Mexico, working with the Hells Angels in Canada has significant control of the port of Vancouver.
00:31:55.260I'm told by sources in British Columbia and Ontario that Indian diaspora, even maybe more slanted towards the sick community, has its effective control of trucking industries in Canada.
00:32:11.220So, you know, it's a very sophisticated grasp of organized crime to move drugs around and the banks perhaps even a greater tool combined with real estate in Vancouver and Toronto.
00:32:24.200So I'll give you one stunning data point from this story that I posted yesterday.
00:32:29.380A non-police official, but someone with great insight into mortgage regulation, estimated
00:32:36.140over a trillion dollars in this sort of underground banking and money laundering through Toronto
00:32:46.540And so again, my sources in the United States and Canada, we're talking high-level police
00:32:51.460and intelligence say, this is what the U.S. government is really concerned with. That is,
00:32:56.620in a sophisticated way, Canada's supposed G7 economy is being used by the most dangerous
00:33:03.400and sophisticated organized crime in the world. And I think that calls back to the official,
00:33:08.280I believe his name was Kevin Hassett, seemed to be a very measured and intelligent person saying
00:33:13.980that our U.S. intelligence has deep concerns about Canada. And I think those are the concerns that
00:33:20.080our banks, housing, and I hate to say it, our political class may be infiltrated by organized
00:33:27.400crime. Well, not maybe. I mean, we know that there are, the government themselves said when they
00:33:33.220launched this foreign interference report and probe into parliament that there were
00:33:38.040parliamentarians, there were elected officials in Canada that are operating with influence from
00:33:43.720foreign governments. Now, of course, the report that came out didn't offer much else other than
00:33:47.820that. And it sort of leaves us perplexed. I noticed in the story that you put up about the
00:33:52.180trade-based money laundering and the fentanyl crisis with these Chinese, Mexican and Canadian
00:33:56.980crime rings, that you included a famous picture of Justin Trudeau at a Vancouver dinner with all
00:34:06.340of those Chinese guys. They're all in there. So when you say that this is connected to the top
00:34:13.200and that even, you know, the prime minister of Canada may be rubbing elbows with some of the
00:34:19.140people who are involved in this nefarious activity. I mean, that's so concerning to so
00:34:24.280many Canadians, like it's hard to even wrap your head around that optic. What do you think is
00:34:30.380happening? And how did this, how do we, how is it this case that we have a Canadian prime minister
00:34:35.420who is rubbing elbows with the bad guys? It's, it's incredibly concerning and hard to believe.
00:34:42.420and i think that maybe that's my problem i have been perhaps a voice in the wilderness saying
00:34:48.340look uh we don't need to point to specific figures in that picture but i detail in my book
00:34:53.780that i could point to one person and say uh you know major new zealand money laundering
00:35:00.100conviction or fine another person i know from bc lottery corporation money laundering surveillance
00:35:05.700photos. Another one, I know that my source from the recent story says connected to 900 million
00:35:12.980in wire transfers from Hong Kong that were followed by FinTrack and the RCMP. And that is
00:35:20.440why my source said, it's not just myself as an investigative open source reporter that can make
00:35:27.200these connections. The US government, the RCMP, I believe probably others have seen those same
00:35:35.560fundraising meetings with Mr. Trudeau surrounded by known organized crime or Chinese intelligent
00:35:41.980suspects. None of them are convicted. They're suspects. But certainly the optics are incredibly
00:35:48.000concerning when Mr. Trudeau shaking hands with someone that's the subject of a major
00:35:53.280police intelligence and FinTrack report. So what does that say about the money flowing into Mr.
00:35:59.420Trudeau's Papineau riding or the liberal coffers? I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying
00:36:05.160that if someone is a Chinese organized crime suspect that has direct relations with Beijing
00:36:11.360donating to our prime minister, who would not call that a concern?
00:36:16.320Well, it's interesting because if Pierre Polyev, leader of the Conservative Party,
00:36:19.760is seen with anyone who the media deems is too far to the political right,
00:36:24.680they make huge hay out of it and try to say that Polyev is courting extremists
00:36:29.180and that he's some kind of a dangerous threat.
00:36:31.940And here we have photographic evidence of the prime minister shaking hands with known criminals and attending fundraisers.
00:36:39.180It's not like someone just, you know, showed up in a photo line to take a picture with them.
00:36:42.360It's like he's sitting there talking to them, meeting with them, trying to get money from them.
00:36:46.220It's unbelievable. And it makes me wonder, like, this whole trade war narrative,
00:36:51.440all of the sort of pearl clutching and the fervent nationalism that we've now seen from the political left in Canada,
00:36:58.140making it seem like Donald Trump is the biggest enemy to the country, it almost just seems like
00:37:03.340a total political distraction, because they don't want to talk about the meat of the issue. They
00:37:07.720don't want to talk about the concerning elements, so much of which, you know, you painstakingly
00:37:12.880point out to your readers, Sam, thank goodness that you're there doing that work. And it's not
00:37:16.780easy, I know. But like, what do you think about the whole the whole narrative, the whole sort of
00:37:21.980like Canada resurgence in Canadian national pride and Team Canada approach as opposed to just
00:37:28.620talking about the issues that you and I are talking about right now. Yeah, I mean, to what
00:37:33.020you said, I go to a viewer comment that was liked maybe 50 times on that recent story was, okay,
00:37:39.380I'm glad that Sam or Mr. Cooper, we can read your fact-driven reporting. Clearly, Canada has a
00:37:45.580fentanyl problem. By the same token, President Trump is using a sledgehammer. And so I believe
00:37:51.860that Canadians that have no responsibility, obviously, for, you know, our government turning
00:37:58.100a blind eye to money laundering or fentanyl, or rather being inactive on known threats,
00:38:04.200the average Canadian is not to blame. If they're to blame for anything, it's maybe not paying
00:38:09.300enough attention to, you know, solid reporting on the issues. And so I just think it's a very
00:38:14.940confusing situation where the, you know, at those dinner table conversations, there will be some
00:38:20.620people in the know that as you and perhaps I, if we share something, I think we could probably
00:38:26.500agree that Canada has turned a blind eye to severe foreign interference, severe organized crime to do
00:38:33.540with terrorism, to do with fentanyl trafficking. And yet the average Canadian has no idea. They
00:38:39.380still have this opinion that we're this upstanding, you know, the under, what would we
00:38:46.900say we punched over our weight on juno beach during the world war ii and we still have that
00:38:51.940image of ourselves but it's kind of being shattered and so if you point to the left and say
00:38:57.060okay now they're saying we need an army now they're saying we need you know a self-defense
00:39:01.700citizen force to be ready against you know a an abusive neighbor where were they two years ago or
00:39:08.660five years ago ten years ago when you know people were saying let's fund our army more they were
00:39:14.180saying no we don't need it we'd rather focus on whatever culture war of the day right well i love
00:39:19.780i love the enthusiasm about you know let's protect canada let's assert our own sovereignty and
00:39:25.220protect our own sovereignty but not just to the americans how about to like you said the iranians
00:39:30.660the mexicans the chinese the sikhs and everyone else trying to take advantage of canada's niceness
00:39:36.020and our charter of rights and freedoms uh to build criminal enterprises all around us well sam cooper
00:39:41.380it's always such a pleasure to have you on the show thank you for joining us and everyone go
00:39:44.740check out his subset called the bureau and subscribe to support independent journalism
00:39:48.660thanks sam thanks have a great weekend thanks you too okay changing gears a little bit i want to
00:39:54.900talk this is one of my favorite topics and something that i want canadians to pay more
00:39:59.300attention to and i think that even our politicians need to wake up to this i'm talking about well
00:40:04.580first of all the huge movement in the united states to make america healthy again it was
00:40:09.300picked up and spearheaded by robert f kennedy jr a democrat who teamed up with president trump
00:40:15.220and they brought forward this message and here in canada we have colin craig who runs second street
00:40:21.700my former colleague at the canadian taxpayers federation and he wrote a piece in the hub
00:40:25.940the other day said saying make canada healthy again so i want to bring colin on to talk about
00:40:31.300his work talk about the state of health care in canada and how we can make our own country
00:40:36.340healthy again colin thank you so much for joining the podcast well thanks for having me candace
00:40:40.980we talked about the story on the show a few weeks ago 77 of young americans are unfit to serve in
00:40:47.380the military due to being overweight using drugs having mental health or other health issues the
00:40:53.540same thing is true in canada there was a really alarming report in the national post talking
00:41:00.180about how young canadians are just not quite healthy so colin what made you write this piece
00:41:04.900and how can we start this movement to make Canada healthy again?
00:41:09.380Yeah, it's something I've been interested in, Candice, for a long time, and I've been following
00:41:12.980it. And, you know, even during COVID, I thought there was a real missed opportunity. I mean,
00:41:17.620a lot of people that had to be hospitalized for COVID had underlying health conditions,
00:41:22.580and in many cases, those were preventable. You had governments saying, stay indoors,
00:41:27.220stay indoors, stay indoors, when in fact, what we often needed was more vitamin D from the sun,
00:41:33.300getting out, going for a walk, being in shape, you know, the types of things that could improve
00:41:39.240your immune system so that it could help fight off COVID. And I don't want to go down the COVID
00:41:43.860path too much, but I thought, you know, like, when are we going to talk as a nation about
00:41:48.180sort of the benefits of seeing a healthier Canadian population and how that would have an
00:41:55.500improvement on the healthcare sector? So, you know, without a doubt, I mean, you and I have
00:42:00.500talked about it before. I've talked with your colleagues. We've had columns published with your
00:42:05.540organization talking about how to fix the health care system. And in economic terms, that's the
00:42:11.360supply of health care. But I think in this country, we don't talk about demand enough and how if we
00:42:16.720simply lived healthier, we could reduce demand and that would take pressure off the health care
00:42:20.660system and ultimately reduce wait times for people, whether you're waiting for cancer treatment to get
00:42:25.560your knee operated on, waiting in an emergency room, whatever. We could take a lot of the pressure
00:42:30.460off the healthcare system well you're absolutely right because by the time you go and see a doctor
00:42:35.740i mean you might be waiting for quite a long time we've seen so many reports really concerning
00:42:39.900reports about canadians not having access to a primary care physician or a family doctor
00:42:45.180people waiting outside in the snow for hours and hours to try to sign up
00:42:49.100for a doctor but oftentimes by the time you you go and you are sick it's kind of too late so i
00:42:53.900think a lot of the movement that i see in sort of the younger generation and people who are very
00:42:58.860online is trying to get healthy before you even need that and trying to understand and address
00:43:04.620the lifestyle changes that you can make so that you can live a happier sort of healthier longer
00:43:10.220life of being healthy and i love that moment i love the idea of waking up you know i i listened
00:43:15.740to a podcast called the andrew huberman lab and the huberman lab by andrew human who's a professor
00:43:20.860over at stanford university and just kind of like basic lifestyle things he encourages you to get
00:43:25.500up and watch the sunrise um you know to to delay your first cup of coffee and try to wake up
00:43:30.300naturally with the sun to exercise every day to eat sort of healthy minimally processed or
00:43:36.220non-processed foods and just kind of taking control of your own health and i i've done that
00:43:40.780with myself and my kids and i think you're totally right that it started with covet
00:43:43.980because when covet happened it was like well not only do we have to make sure that we're healthy
00:43:49.260but we also can't necessarily trust the things that we're being told by health officials and i
00:43:53.820And I would I would much rather, you know, take take my advice from people who are super healthy and live healthy lives than watching some of these like super unhealthy or overweight public officials and doctors.
00:44:05.240So a long way to say I totally I totally agree with you and I'm totally on board.
00:44:09.640What do you think the biggest thing that Canadians can do to get healthy is?
00:44:14.640Yeah, and I should know what I mean. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist or anything like that.
00:44:18.960someone with an interest in it and i think probably there's two things that we can really do
00:44:23.920to um improve our health one is just be conscious as you just noted about the foods that we're eating
00:44:30.560what we're putting into our body um peter atia he's a canadian actually a doctor who's provided
00:44:36.560a lot of advice to hollywood celebrities and others people that are interested not just in
00:44:41.520living longer but having a longer quality style of life right so you're not living to 100 sitting
00:44:48.000in a senior's home, but you're active, you know, you're mobile, you've got more muscle strength,
00:44:52.380whatever. So he's really done a lot of time and energy studying that. And in terms of diet, he
00:44:57.300said, the number one thing you can do is to stop drinking sugary drinks. And, you know, you look at
00:45:05.160some of them and the amount of sugar that's in those things. Personally, I don't touch them.
00:45:09.020I have many ways that I could improve my diet. I'm not perfect, but that I think is one thing
00:45:15.620that uh we would all be wise to to cut back on or certainly uh consider eliminating that's on the um
00:45:23.700the diet side the other thing is the exercise side and it's something even as simple as uh
00:45:28.740just exercising every day going for a walk um and you know peter atia talks about you know it's not
00:45:35.220just getting steps in or going for a walk but you want to push it a bit to the point where you get
00:45:40.660into the zone two level where you know he describes it as being it's challenging to talk so
00:45:46.600if you're going with a friend you probably don't want to be talking the whole 30 minutes because
00:45:50.460it's you know it's a little bit hard for you get up to that level and and try and do that so i mean
00:45:55.160those are a couple things that i've read that i think are important but um you know more than
00:45:59.580anything i when i stand back and look at the big picture you know as i said if if we all lived
00:46:05.140healthier or a good portion of canadians lived healthier we could take a huge amount of demand
00:46:10.060off of the healthcare system. The Canadian Diabetes Association notes that about 90%
00:46:16.840of the diabetes cases are type two. That's generally the type that you're going to get
00:46:21.140because of lifestyle decisions. The Canadian Heart Stroke Association notes that about 80%
00:46:28.080of premature heart stroke or heart disease cases could be prevented. The Canadian Cancer Society
00:46:34.720notes that about 4 in 10 cases of cancer could be prevented through lifestyle changes and
00:46:41.000environmental changes, those types of things. So you're not going to, I'm not saying that
00:46:46.060everyone is somehow going to become healthy just by changing their lifestyles. Unfortunately,
00:46:50.280some of us have genetic health problems that cannot be avoided. And there's freak accidents
00:46:56.120that happen too and so forth and people can end up with serious health problems. But there is a
00:47:01.620lot of pressure on our healthcare system that is due to lifestyle decisions that we're making.
00:47:07.880So if we can find a way to get governments to carefully kind of nudge people in the right
00:47:12.780direction, while walking that line where governments aren't intruding in our lives,
00:47:16.960we don't want that. You know, you don't want the government knocking on your door canvas at 6am
00:47:20.960saying, you know, it's time to go for a run. No one wants that. But if there's, you know,
00:47:25.380ways that we can kind of nudge people towards healthier living, we can take pressure off the
00:47:29.720healthcare system. And that's kind of what I talk about the column too, is just sort of how do you
00:47:33.680walk that line or what are some ideas? Yeah, I agree that you don't want government to like force
00:47:38.980people into activities. And this isn't necessarily like a politically driven movement. But then when
00:47:46.200you look at what's happening in the US under the Trump administration, specifically with RFKJ or
00:47:51.920RFK Jr., is that he's into looking at some of the sort of, I don't know if it's unintended
00:47:57.720consequences or if it's real corruption but the idea of like we don't always really know what's
00:48:02.800in our food we don't know how much of our food supply is like poisoned with chemicals or you
00:48:10.260know the pesticides that are used on food and how that gets into the food supply and the impact that
00:48:15.200that might have on ourselves and on our bodies and so there definitely is a political element to all
00:48:20.400of this I'm as a mom like so paranoid about what my children get and they know at this point when
00:48:25.980they go to a birthday party I get to look through the goodie bag at the end because most of the
00:48:30.220stuff I'm throwing out and I'm actually really like happy with my children because they understand
00:48:34.700that anything that has artificial dyes in it mommy's gonna say no and now they they get that
00:48:40.020and they themselves won't even ask for it and they'll throw it out proactively so you can tell
00:48:45.020your children they get it like I don't want them eating artificial dyes partially just because I
00:48:50.040don't know like I've seen enough studies and read enough to know that there's you know it's not quite
00:48:54.240black and white, whether this stuff is healthy. And, you know, thankfully, Canada does a better
00:48:58.460job, I think, than the U.S. in banning some of these dangerous chemicals in our food. But I think
00:49:03.760that people are really waking up, especially the younger generation. You know, there's a number of
00:49:08.160really powerful sort of health influencers who have medical backgrounds, who understand the
00:49:13.060chemistry of it all. And they're the ones raising, ringing the alarm bell. And I think that there's
00:49:17.040a lot of room for that in Canada. And it's a bit of a missing element. Now, I know I brought you
00:49:22.420because i want to talk about some of your studies that you've done over at second street you had one
00:49:26.180report saying that 15 474 canadians died while waiting for health care last year just so tragic
00:49:33.460um another one saying that canada could easily grow our health sector by 21 billion dollars so
00:49:39.940i'll i'll let you uh you you can choose which which one of those three topics you want to talk
00:49:43.700about there colin sure yeah this is the in terms of waiting list deaths uh you know just to be clear
00:49:48.260that's a wide array of cases, everything from someone dying while waiting for cataract surgery
00:49:54.720to on the other side, something that, you know, you potentially could die from not getting cardiac
00:50:00.660surgery, heart surgery in time. So, you know, sometimes when we put this data out, people kind
00:50:05.400of go, oh, you know, these are just cardiac or cataract cases or people waiting for hips and
00:50:09.700knees or whatever. You're not going to die from that. To which we always say, well, wait a second
00:50:14.000here. Do you want to spend the final year or two of your life with cloudy vision or stuck in your
00:50:19.740apartment with chronic pain because you're waiting for your hip operation? It's no way to treat
00:50:24.840people in their final years of their lives. So we certainly wouldn't dismiss those. They're very
00:50:30.780troubling. And in some cases, you could imagine how someone, you know, if they've changed their
00:50:36.020lifestyle, you know, related to what we were just talking about, if you're stuck with chronic pain
00:50:41.460in your apartment not moving around you're not getting exercise and maybe that does contribute
00:50:46.260to a premature death maybe a heart attack or whatever so the numbers are very troubling um
00:50:52.260there's certainly cases of the latter as i mentioned people dying while waiting for
00:50:57.860heart procedures cancer treatment and so forth so it's troubling and one of the comparisons we draw
00:51:03.220candace is you know you think about what governments do to private businesses across
00:51:07.860this country every single day you have government health inspectors going into private businesses
00:51:14.420and doing health inspection reports and even the most trivial thing will get written up
00:51:20.260and published publicly you know you can go online here in alberta and see that there's a daycare in
00:51:27.460airdrie i believe it was where they were missing a paper towel holder so they got written up it's
00:51:34.180posted online for a few years what happens when someone dies on a waiting list and the government's
00:51:40.500health care system doesn't provide treatment in time does anyone write that up and the answer
00:51:46.260of course is no governments do not hold themselves to this high standard that they expect everyone
00:51:51.460else to meet so we think it's important to have more transparency in that area draw attention to
00:51:56.340what's going on so ideally governments can understand more about the weaknesses of their
00:52:00.980systems in fact reform to improve it well i mean it's so interesting and i want to circle back
00:52:08.180because this piece you wrote about how canada could easily grow its health sector by 21 billion
00:52:14.340dollars now everybody knows and this is maybe another outgrowth of covid um that canada's
00:52:19.220health care is good at certain moments like if you have a child that is very sick and they
00:52:25.140get rushed to the front of the line there's amazing doctors and nurses and health care
00:52:30.420practitioners that will take care of them and canada is like second to none when it comes to
00:52:35.140dealing with sort of that acute uh emergency care it it's kind of the other side right the chronic
00:52:40.820things or the the non-emergency things that we just don't seem to have access like go into
00:52:46.580an emergency room in toronto and you'll be horrified you feel like you're in a homeless
00:52:50.420shelter or some kind of a refugee camp um and so you know we know that we need more money into the
00:52:56.340healthcare system the problem is that we're our governments are broke right like we're so overspent
00:53:01.780so stretched and so this idea is we know we need more money the question is like where are we
00:53:06.340getting it from so why don't you walk us through your proposal here yeah so i think there's a few
00:53:10.820things to consider um and one of which is that we have a system that is one of the highest spending
00:53:18.660in the world there's a lot of money in the system and as you mentioned there's a lot of good people
00:53:24.660that work in the system they're doctors they're nurses they got into it because they want to help
00:53:28.420patients they do their best the problem is the structure of the system itself is broken and i
00:53:35.220think a great piece of evidence of this kindness is you know we can't as canadians look at any
00:53:40.340province that go wow they're really hitting it out of the park with their health care system
00:53:44.100it's an a-plus model there's no very little wait times you know everyone sounds like we don't have
00:53:49.460a system like that it doesn't matter if it's conservative liberal ndp i mean you can generally
00:53:54.660find dysfunction in the health systems um that those governments are running so the problem is
00:54:01.380the structure all provinces generally have the same structure and one of the structural problems
00:54:06.900that we have in this country is that we basically ban private comprehensive health insurance
00:54:13.620And we make it extremely difficult if people want to pay for health care outside of the public system.
00:54:20.620And so when we look at universal health care systems that perform better than Canada, countries like Sweden, France, Norway, Australia,
00:54:30.620there's lots of universal health care systems that do better than us.
00:54:34.620They all give patients a choice. Use the public system or you can pay privately or use private comprehensive health insurance.
00:54:41.620health insurance whereas we ban the latter and you know the results speak for themselves it puts
00:54:47.140more pressure on the public system because everyone has to use it or you have to fly to another
00:54:52.260province or another country to prepare so all that to say the report that you had just mentioned
00:54:59.380we asked the question to canadians well what if you could purchase private health insurance
00:55:04.340instead of depending on the public system and we put in front of them some different rates as to
00:55:09.620what it would cost depending on their age and gender and so forth and we calculated that
00:55:14.340Canadians were willing to spend over 21 billion dollars a year on insurance so that would take a
00:55:21.620lot of pressure off of the public health care system create lots of opportunities for health
00:55:26.900care workers would help us grow our system so that ultimately we have more health care in
00:55:32.180this country and it makes access to health care easier into simply having people languishing on
00:55:38.420readings well i i know i know like so many people you know if you're in an emergency this happened
00:55:43.300to my husband a few weeks ago he cut his thumb at work he was downtown toronto and he had to just be
00:55:47.940taken to the nearest hospital he needed a few stitches and it was just unbelievable like he
00:55:53.300waited almost 12 hours just to see a doctor and the concern was that he had hit an artery or
00:55:58.980something i said you know you should just get in the car and drive to new york because you would
00:56:03.780would have gotten stitches a lot faster if you just driven to Buffalo. Honestly, it's wild.
00:56:08.640And so in those situations, just having another option is no need. Interesting. I want to point
00:56:13.360to a recent poll that was done by Abacus Polling about politics. And it shows that, so this is
00:56:19.600Abacus Polling. We're talking about what are the major issues facing Canadians? And one of them is
00:56:24.960healthcare, one of the top issues. You can see it's a third row down. And they ask, who do you
00:56:29.240trust more to handle this? 30% say Conservatives, 26% say Liberals. So I think that maybe Conservatives
00:56:35.420have a window and an opportunity to push the needle on this topic and say to Canadians,
00:56:40.580you know, there is another option. There is a way, as you said, other countries that have
00:56:44.340universal healthcare, right? Universal healthcare just means everyone has access to a public system.
00:56:48.900It doesn't mean that the public system is a monopoly and that you cannot have an alternative.
00:56:52.820And I hope that that is one area that Pierre Paulyev and the Conservatives will push on.
00:56:58.340Well, Colin, Craig, thank you so much for joining the show.