The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - March 11, 2021


Another Liberal Cover-Up


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

165.62688

Word count

3,115

Sentence count

169

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Shadow Minister for National Defence joins us to discuss the allegations that the Minister of National Defence knew about allegations of sexual assault within the ranks of the Canadian Armed Forces, but did nothing to stop them from coming to light.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprint.
00:00:09.460 It is Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:12.760 I'm your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton-Coworth-Olegs Brock, with new
00:00:16.920 content every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time.
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00:00:37.560 And because of that, we need you to like, comment, subscribe, share this program.
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00:00:46.000 the Conservative message, something you might not hear from the mainstream media.
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00:00:55.000 lined up for you every single week, including this one.
00:00:58.200 And we have James Bazan.
00:00:59.680 He's the Member of Parliament for Selkirk Interlake Eastman from the great province of Manitoba.
00:01:04.680 He's also the Shadow Minister for National Defence.
00:01:07.020 We do appreciate James joining us today.
00:01:10.300 Hey, thanks for having me on the show, Jamie.
00:01:11.880 Well, you are a friend of the show.
00:01:13.860 You have been on before.
00:01:14.700 We do appreciate your participation in the past and today because we have learned some
00:01:20.080 pretty serious allegations that the Defence Minister may have been covering up alleged sexual
00:01:25.120 assault within the higher echelons of the Canadian military, something he knew about many times
00:01:30.600 and something the former ombudsman for the military brought up in committee and the fact
00:01:34.860 that that person tried to reach out to the minister and was just basically given the door.
00:01:39.100 Yeah, so last week at the Defence Committee, Gary Walborn, who is by far one of the most respected
00:01:47.460 public servants that we've ever had.
00:01:51.320 He was loved by the military and by veterans for the work he did as the National Defence Ombudsman
00:01:57.380 and the work that he did as the Veterans Affairs Deputy Ombudsman.
00:02:01.220 You know, he served in the Department of National Defence.
00:02:03.060 He served in transport.
00:02:04.000 He had a long and distinguished career.
00:02:06.400 And, you know, he had no skin in this game to come back out of retirement because he left
00:02:12.480 in, I guess, somewhat dismayed back in 2018 over what transpired when he went to Minister
00:02:22.020 Sajun to raise the issue of allegations of sexual misconduct against General Vance.
00:02:28.660 And, you know, so what we learned is that March 1st, 2018, Gary Walborn sits down at a table
00:02:36.700 with Minister Sajun.
00:02:39.240 And when he tried to present the evidence of the email that he had from the complainant,
00:02:47.360 Minister Sajun pushed away from the table.
00:02:50.580 He refused to look at the evidence.
00:02:52.340 And yesterday he was bragging in the House of Commons that he was a former police officer
00:02:58.220 and he knew how to do an investigation.
00:03:01.220 Well, guess what?
00:03:01.960 I don't know of any cop or anybody that is involved in looking at investigations that
00:03:08.600 would turn away evidence.
00:03:10.360 And here the minister pushed away from the table and refused to touch it.
00:03:13.300 He's more interested in protecting his job than protecting the women and men who serve
00:03:19.340 our country in uniform.
00:03:20.620 So it's just, it's dismaying, it's disgusting, it's disappointing, you know, pick a D word 0.99
00:03:27.280 here.
00:03:28.160 And, you know, essentially, we have a situation where the minister has failed to do his job.
00:03:36.360 He has responsibilities under the National Defense Act.
00:03:39.420 That is the management of the entire Canadian Armed Forces.
00:03:43.000 The chief of defense staff answers to him through, as the National Defense Act lays it out.
00:03:50.620 So the chief of defense staff has to go to the minister.
00:03:53.300 The minister is the only one that can discipline the top soldier.
00:03:57.040 And here he completely and utterly failed to do his job.
00:04:01.680 And of course, here we are three years later and only looking at it now.
00:04:05.300 So if the former ombudsman's testimony is true, if Mr. Walburn's testimony is word for
00:04:13.600 word, as you mentioned, the defense minister is a former police detective.
00:04:18.360 He should know a lot better.
00:04:20.440 This information, if the timing is correct, if this is true, came out at the height of
00:04:25.100 the Me Too movement.
00:04:26.560 An investigation should have been started immediately.
00:04:28.940 The defense minister should have known this.
00:04:30.760 How he just delayed it and tried to cover this up is, as you said, disgusting.
00:04:37.220 Yeah, no, and you got to remember that he was also in the middle of his own little scandal
00:04:41.560 over the description of Operation Mendoza, that he was the architect.
00:04:46.360 And also right about that time, General Vance had suspended Vice Admiral Mark Norman because
00:04:53.060 the Trudeau government were going after him for leaking cabinet confidences, which ultimately
00:04:58.960 he was cleared for.
00:05:00.000 So General Vance was doing a lot of the dirty work for the government, including on fake
00:05:04.720 capability gaps and, you know, backing up Minister Sajan.
00:05:09.220 So I figure there's a little quid pro quo there and that they were trying to protect the chief
00:05:16.500 of defense staff because of things that were going down.
00:05:18.880 But, you know, at the end of the day, you have allegations of sexual misconduct here.
00:05:23.760 We have women who are fearful of coming forward with any complaints that they have and bringing 1.00
00:05:31.220 forward any evidence.
00:05:32.580 And especially when it deals with the upper echelons of the Canadian Armed Forces, when
00:05:37.820 your top commander is the one facing allegations and who has the ability to block any investigation
00:05:45.540 if it goes through any other avenue.
00:05:47.640 And so what Gary Walburn did after that, and of course, you know, Sajan went running to the Privy Council office.
00:05:54.260 They contacted Gary Walburn the next day.
00:05:56.640 They were trying to get the evidence.
00:05:58.660 But he had sworn an oath to the complaint that he would protect her and maintain confidentiality.
00:06:05.260 And he couldn't turn that evidence over unless he knew the minister was going to do his job.
00:06:11.480 And that would have been, you know, opening a board of inquiry, having a supernumerary justice come in from the
00:06:18.420 outside to do the investigation.
00:06:19.860 They could have asked, as we saw with Admiral Art McDonald, have the Chief of Defense Staff step aside
00:06:27.980 so that he couldn't interfere in the chain of command and allow the investigation to go forward
00:06:32.040 underneath the provost marshal.
00:06:34.160 You know, there's all sorts of avenues that are available to him.
00:06:36.700 But all we got was that he pushed away from the table.
00:06:40.500 So Sajan talks to the game that he has zero tolerance.
00:06:43.500 Well, guess what?
00:06:43.960 He took zero action.
00:06:45.320 And for the last three years, he's been involved in a cover-up.
00:06:47.720 So according to documents tabled in the Defense Committee, which I believe you are the vice chair of,
00:06:53.560 so it looks like the defense minister canceled 17 meetings with the former ombudsman, Gary Walburn,
00:07:02.680 that it looks like these documents are tabled in committee.
00:07:07.560 And it shows the ombudsman's calendar very clearly that it was the defense minister who did not want to deal
00:07:15.700 with this issue or many others dealing with veterans or a whole slew of issues.
00:07:22.140 You're right, Jamie.
00:07:23.060 And he has multiple areas that he's responsible for, and he reports as well to the defense minister.
00:07:28.980 And so anytime he has to bring forward any grievances that military members have dealing with issues of,
00:07:35.260 wrongful medical release or misconduct and sexual misconduct, those issues he always takes to the defense minister.
00:07:44.540 So 17 times, Minister Sajan refused to meet with him.
00:07:48.020 After the March 1st meeting, Minister Sajan never met with him again.
00:07:51.940 There were seven requests that came from Gary Walburn, and every single time, Sajan said no.
00:07:59.660 And so this was, you know, not at all serving the brave men and women in uniform.
00:08:05.180 This is about his own personal agenda.
00:08:07.760 And I think that is a disgrace.
00:08:10.580 And, you know, that type of shameful behavior brings dishonor upon the office of the defense minister.
00:08:16.720 And we know that, you know, these allegations, Jamie, went right into the Privy Council office.
00:08:21.840 They were talking back and forth.
00:08:23.220 The former clerk of the Privy Council acknowledged today in the Globe and Mail that one of the memos circulating in the news now is that he was the one that was writing back and forth with Janine Sherman, who is the vice or the deputy secretary to cabinet.
00:08:41.760 And they wanted to put things in writing.
00:08:44.240 So, you know, there's memos drafted, there's briefing notes.
00:08:47.200 And I'm sure that they went right to the top of the prime minister's office, because we know one of his top aides, Elder Marquias, was also briefed on this by Mr. Sajan's chief of staff.
00:09:02.400 So, you know, there is just so many connections that Trudeau had to know.
00:09:06.260 And now he, of course, has confidence in his minister of national defense, who has, you know, yesterday being International Women's Day, he failed to stand up for women in the Canadian Armed Forces.
00:09:19.440 Now, according to National Post, this is written a couple of days ago, March the 5th.
00:09:23.040 It's basically calling what's going on in the federal government a culture of secrecy within the Trudeau government.
00:09:30.260 And we've seen it on a whole bunch of issues, whether we're talking about quarantine hotels, whether we're talking about vaccine procurement, they still won't release documents that many other countries have done within their structure, showing the citizens what exactly they've agreed to, the taxpayers.
00:09:47.240 And we're seeing it, as you mentioned, with Mark Norman.
00:09:50.160 We've seen it with our fighter jets, as you've talked about earlier, the capability gaps that were basically created by General Vance and others.
00:10:01.020 This is just an ongoing, it just seems, tidal wave of diversion and just trying to hide from the truth.
00:10:11.500 You know, it's deception at its purest form.
00:10:15.900 It's common throughout the Trudeau government.
00:10:19.200 And unfortunately, you know, Minister Sajan has taken a page right out of Trudeau's playbook here.
00:10:25.480 And, you know, it is a failure of duty.
00:10:31.000 It undermines the confidence and trust that members of the Canadian Armed Forces have in the minister.
00:10:38.620 And because of his actions, the confidence of Canadians in our Armed Forces as well is being shaken to its core.
00:10:45.680 So this has been very difficult on the morale of our troops, because they all take an oath to protect us and the minister has failed to protect them.
00:10:55.720 And so it's our job as parliamentarians to get to the bottom of this.
00:10:59.220 We don't want to, you know, politically interfere in the military investigation that's taking place right now.
00:11:04.500 We want them to get to the bottom of what's happened, both from the standpoint of General Vance as well as Admiral MacDonald.
00:11:10.760 We want to ensure that there is justice for all.
00:11:14.740 But the policies, the procedures and the cover-up need to be fully investigated by parliament.
00:11:20.540 And at the end of the day, I don't know how Minister Sajan can continue on in his job.
00:11:27.380 But the way he can do it is because Justin Trudeau has confidence in his minister.
00:11:32.500 Do you see the minister resigning?
00:11:33.800 Do you think there'll be a right, kind of the prime minister seeing that there was some serious errors made here and they will be asking the defense minister to step down?
00:11:45.560 What we're seeing is Minister Sajan is denying any wrongdoing at all.
00:11:49.040 And of course, as long as he has the support of Justin Trudeau, they're going to continue on with the cover-up.
00:11:53.460 They're going to do everything in their power to try spin this story, including like they're calling the, you know, they referred it to the Privy Council Office to do the investigation.
00:12:03.460 Guess what?
00:12:03.900 The Privy Council Office is not the RCMP.
00:12:05.980 The Privy Council Office is not CSIS.
00:12:08.020 They're not like the FBI.
00:12:09.500 Like they have no investigative powers at all.
00:12:11.240 They're just a nucleus of the bureaucracy of the civil service here in government in Ottawa.
00:12:17.940 And, you know, the deputy ministers all report into the Privy Council Office.
00:12:21.980 So when the clerk of the Privy Council Office is asking to put things in writing, when you have correspondence going back from the minister's office, as well as from the deputy minister's office into the PCO and up into the PMO, you know, everybody's implicated here in not getting to the bottom of this and making sure that the right steps were taken so that we could address sexual misconduct, you know, head on.
00:12:46.140 We have a program in the military called Operation Honor and General Vahence was in charge of making sure that sexual misconduct was dealt with appropriately and quickly.
00:12:58.140 And yet here he's caught in a scandal and the minister is giving him full coverage in this cover of it.
00:13:06.100 It just it makes my mind spin looking at how much evidence has already been brought to light, how many complaints of sexual misconduct and allegations have been brought forward on these top commanding officers and that we still have a defense minister that's sitting on his hands.
00:13:22.520 Now, this is just another step in, I think, how the Liberals have been treating the veterans and the military.
00:13:29.380 We all remember that town hall meeting where that veteran, I believe, from Edmonton stood up and asked the prime minister a very serious question.
00:13:36.500 And he basically came back with you're asking veterans are asking more than what Canada can give, which we all know was absolutely horrible.
00:13:45.420 And the fact that he was never called out properly, I think, from the media and others for that comment, that that says a lot.
00:13:53.100 But also the fact that we're having issues with we still haven't had an agreement on fighter planes yet.
00:13:59.400 Our naval procurement and our shipbuilding is in trouble.
00:14:02.320 We can't seem to get proper firearms for our military and the and the list goes on.
00:14:08.420 They are the Liberals are failing our Canadian military every step of the way.
00:14:13.860 Yeah, and it goes right to the top.
00:14:15.840 And it's it's just pure incompetence.
00:14:18.840 And as long as they dither and delay, the cost of procurement goes up every time that we see a stoppage in the design phase of our surface commands.
00:14:29.640 You know, it increases exponentially by billions of dollars.
00:14:33.820 We see what the fighter jet program is that now, you know, the minister is looking at the bids that came in months ago, and he's still trying to analyze and everybody knows what what what these fighter jets can do.
00:14:46.440 And I know that they got a scoring, but that is a relatively straightforward process to look at, you know, what the fighter jets capabilities are.
00:14:53.460 Do they meet meet the statement of requirements of the military or Royal Canadian Air Force put forward?
00:14:58.980 And, you know, how does the industrial technical benefits come back to to benefit the aerospace industry here in Canada?
00:15:05.660 So, you know, there's things that have to go process you go through, but my gosh, you know, we're sitting with a fighter jet force that is very antiquated and way past its due date.
00:15:21.760 It was supposed it's supposed to be retired before 2025.
00:15:23.740 And and right now they're not talking about buying a new fighter jet until 2032.
00:15:28.800 And, you know, as much as Minister Sage and I talk about this capability gap that we don't have enough fighter jets, and that's why he went with 88 fighter jets and bring in these old used Australian fighter jets.
00:15:40.060 He can't find the pilots to fly them.
00:15:43.640 You know, the we have under 60 fighter pilots at this point in time, and so how are we going to put these these planes in the air, we don't got people that want to join the Royal Canadian Air Force and tell you recruitment is going to be a lot more difficult as long as we be these liberals in charge of defense.
00:16:01.580 James, I know you got to go you got question period coming up very shortly.
00:16:05.700 I always give the guests the last word so the floor is yours.
00:16:08.580 Well, you know, Jamie, I just appreciate what you're doing and doing the blueprint, but I know that as we drive forward, you know, we've got our convention coming up here with our leader, Aaron O'Toole, and then we're going to be coming forward with platform as soon as this election gets called whether it happens in spring or happens in a year from now.
00:16:29.520 We are developing policies that will position our party in a great light to be there to, you know, provide the tools, the equipment, the training and maintain the operational readiness of the Canadian Armed Forces is famous for, as well as recognize the great work that they've been doing.
00:16:47.580 The men and women in uniform have done this incredible job in Operation Vector and Operation Laser and making sure that all of us are getting vaccinated in a timely manner, making sure the logistics are taken care of, and still being on guard to defend this from whatever threats that may be, whether it's natural disasters domestically of floods and forest fires,
00:17:08.100 or, you know, having to go on international operations like we do in Ukraine or NATO presence in Latvia and so many other places around the world, like Afghanistan that we have done in the past or Iraq.
00:17:22.240 So, you know, they're ready to be deployed. They are the best of the best. And, you know, we deserve to do the best for them since they always are standing on the wall to protect us.
00:17:33.940 Thank you very much, James Bazan. You're a strong advocate. You're a great critic and also a strong voice for your constituents back in Manitoba, in Selkirk, Interlake-Eastman. We do appreciate that and all the work you're doing keeping this Liberal government in check.
00:17:48.040 Thanks, Jamie.
00:17:49.080 Thanks for joining us and good luck in Question Period. Remember, new content every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Please like, comment, subscribe, share to this program.
00:17:59.520 And also, if you can't watch it or listen to it right now, you can download it later on on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it. It's out there together.
00:18:09.560 We can push back against the ever-moving Liberal agenda. And, of course, remember, as always, low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's the Blueprints. Thanks for joining us.
00:18:18.460 We'll see you next time.