The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Canadians have no clear answers to the extent of the Chinese Government’s interference.

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your

00:00:11.600 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton. Coworthalikes Brock with new content

00:00:15.300 for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. We ask that you like, comment, subscribe,

00:00:19.840 and share this program. We know there are two people in your social media network that would

00:00:24.580 like to hear this message and a great show lined up for you as well. Of course, if you can't watch

00:00:29.540 or listen to this program in its entirety right this second, download it. Listen to it on platforms

00:00:34.180 like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. You name it, it is out there. We are going to

00:00:39.240 continue our conversation from last week when we had Larry Brock on. We now have Rachel Thomas,

00:00:44.020 the one and only Member of Parliament for Lethbridge. Also, the critic for Heritage is going to talk to

00:00:50.180 us today about that interference from Beijing and the ramifications of that testimony from

00:00:56.800 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Chief of Staff, Katie Telford. Thank you so much for being on the

00:01:00.900 show. Thanks, Jamie. Good to be here with you. All right. You did an awesome job, as usual. This

00:01:05.480 time, going after Katie Telford, asking her some pretty serious questions. And I think her most

00:01:10.780 common answer was, I can't say, or I, it's not appropriate to say this format. I don't think she

00:01:17.940 actually answered anything. So I don't know where we go from here. Yeah. What were your thoughts on it?

00:01:24.620 Let's start there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So, you know, I think you make a good observation,

00:01:28.380 and that is, you know, it's the classic liberal strategy, which is to avoid or deflect. The third

00:01:34.560 would be attack. On this one, they didn't really have much opportunity to attack, so it was just a

00:01:39.680 lot of avoidance, avoidance tactics. So, yeah, we heard a lot of, Katie said a lot, you know, I can't say,

00:01:47.180 but what I can say, and then it would be like some little fluff. It'd be nothing. You know, yeah, totally.

00:01:51.500 And so this is what we saw throughout the entire duration of our time together, which was about

00:01:57.300 two and a half hours, which, you know, kudos to her, two and a half hours of avoidance and 0.75

00:02:02.760 deflection. Like, that does take some skill. That's like Pablo Rodriguez style. Yeah. That's

00:02:08.140 almost to that level. Good point. Yeah, good point. Perhaps the two are, you know, colluding with one

00:02:12.680 another. Anyways, but I think out of this committee, you know, what we were hoping for,

00:02:18.680 of course, was to get some straight answers. That wasn't. From a liberal?

00:02:25.480 Yeah, fair. Straight answer from, I don't know. You ask them what color the sky is, they'll tell you

00:02:29.940 what they had for dinner last night. Like, it's just unbelievable what comes out of their mouths.

00:02:34.420 One can hope. One can hope, you know? One can hope, right. I guess. I guess miracles can happen.

00:02:39.900 Well, you know. So that said, you know, you're probably right. I don't know that we could

00:02:46.280 reasonably anticipate that they were going to give us the straight answers we were hoping for.

00:02:50.920 That said, I do think that we walked away with perhaps some information that is useful to Canadians.

00:02:56.660 And that is, Katie made a couple of comments. One, she said that the Prime Minister reads

00:03:02.580 everything that he is given. So that was her comment. Absolutely everything. You can imagine

00:03:07.760 Justin Trudeau late at night. He's got the light on. Just stack after stack after stack. He doesn't

00:03:14.140 miss a thing. He is on top of everything. That guy, Justin Trudeau, he is a wonderful man.

00:03:20.940 Absolutely. Absolutely. He is on top of it. So that was one comment. You can tell by his answers

00:03:26.780 are not answering questions. I don't mean to keep interrupting you. No, no. And then the second

00:03:32.980 thing that came out in committee was that she said, she said nothing is ever kept from the Prime

00:03:40.520 Minister. Wow. Nothing is ever kept from the Prime Minister. So he should know. He would know.

00:03:45.920 So if he was given these thesis reports from Canada's foremost intelligence agency. He reads

00:03:51.720 it all. And if he reads it all. Nothing's kept from him. Nothing is kept from him. It should be on

00:03:56.080 his desk. Then what is the conclusion? Right. The conclusion is the Prime Minister did know and that

00:04:02.600 he chose to turn a blind eye to Beijing's interference. And why would he turn a blind eye to Beijing's

00:04:07.400 interference? The thesis documents tell us. Because Beijing was interfering in order to make sure

00:04:13.200 that there was a liberal minority government elected. And so Beijing was making sure that

00:04:18.060 illegal dollars were funneling into these liberal campaigns. And Beijing businesses were hiring

00:04:24.200 interns who were then placed in these liberal campaign offices in order to work the election.

00:04:31.560 The Prime Minister chose to turn a blind eye because all of Beijing's interference benefited the

00:04:37.560 liberal party of Canada. That is a complete abomination to democracy. Canadians should be outraged by this

00:04:47.140 revelation and what Katie Telford admitted to. I agree. I can remember the media manufactured outrage

00:04:54.000 when Stephen Harper, way back when, and the robocall scandal. Oh, yes, yes. You remember that outrage?

00:05:00.540 Do you remember a headline day after day in the news getting to the bottom of some people getting told to

00:05:06.060 go to the wrong polling station? Yes, that was wrong. But at the same time, I think there's two

00:05:10.460 different scales here. And probably this should be more serious and more Canadians should be. It's

00:05:18.240 interesting, too, to watch, you know, the truanons, as they're many called on social media, defending the 0.87

00:05:23.820 Liberal Party and the Prime Minister. Basically, just fluffing this off is no big deal. It really

00:05:29.580 is amazing to watch that twisting. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And I think, again, that's one of the

00:05:34.700 concerns that I have, that we have as Conservatives, is not only what happened in the election and, of

00:05:41.420 course, what that means for Canadians and the integrity of the democratic process, but I think

00:05:46.260 also, you know, it raises concerns with regard to media coverage and whether or not there is, in fact,

00:05:51.840 fair coverage offered regardless of political party, regardless of issue, regardless of the time

00:05:57.160 period in history. And I think, you know, there's, we know that trust is at an all-time low, both with

00:06:04.360 regard to institutions and the people that are head of those institutions, as well as those who are

00:06:09.940 elected officials, as well as those that are reporting on the news. Trust is low. And the reason for that

00:06:16.020 is because Canadians just don't know who's telling the truth and who's not. What's credible and what's

00:06:21.820 not? And so I think to fix this, you know, we as elected officials have a responsibility to tell

00:06:27.400 the truth. We, as elected officials, have a responsibility to function with integrity. And

00:06:32.740 I think that starts with the top, which obviously is the Prime Minister. And so he has a responsibility

00:06:37.720 to come clean to Canadians and to be really honest, specifically in this case, with regard to what

00:06:41.860 happened with election interference from Beijing. I think you also brought it up, our colleague,

00:06:46.780 our former colleague, Bob Soroya, served from 2015 to 2019 in Markham Unionville, a very, well,

00:06:55.180 it's in the Greater Toronto Area, but heavily Chinese-Canadian population, who received a message,

00:07:02.480 a text message, apparently, from the Consul General in Toronto, basically saying, you're not going to be

00:07:07.500 a member of Parliament after the election. And that was after 2021, in which he lost. And

00:07:13.680 unbelievable. Yeah, so I think the text message was something to the effect of, you know, I truly

00:07:19.900 wish you all the best after the election. So it was an underhanded, you know, message to say,

00:07:27.220 life's going to change for you. So, you know, I think that's really revealing in terms of the

00:07:33.120 interference that was taking place. And beyond, you know, a text message, which I think is telling,

00:07:38.420 we also have, again, we have thesis reports that have been, you know, given to the media

00:07:44.540 and reported on, and the public has access to that now. And so I think we now have a responsibility

00:07:49.940 to hold this government to account. If they're not going to answer honestly when they come to

00:07:55.340 committee, or if they're not going to allow the right witnesses to come to committee, and try to

00:08:00.260 block that from happening, then I think the only mechanism that is left to Canadians is an election.

00:08:06.140 And we can only hope that it's run in a fair democratic way. And of course, you know, our

00:08:15.740 desire for that election would be that the Canadians would be very aware of the misgivings of this

00:08:23.880 current government, the detriment that this current government is to the Canadian population and to our

00:08:29.780 future as a nation, and that ultimately that they would vote in a new government.

00:08:33.720 Something else you brought up that I want to actually highlight is, again, very shocking that

00:08:42.080 it's actually happening. And it seems weird actually saying this next part out loud, but about

00:08:46.820 government officials asking media providers to remove stories that were shining a bad light on

00:08:54.900 the government. Internal documents have revealed this. How is this happening? And I still can't believe,

00:09:03.700 again, those defending Trudeau and his government for doing it. Can you imagine Stephen Harper

00:09:10.420 saying, you know what, CBC, that article is attacking me, I want it off. It's got to come down. Can you

00:09:17.380 imagine what would happen? Or I'm going to cut your funding. Yeah, there'd be riots in the streets,

00:09:22.600 it would be unreal. And yet, it seems to be no big deal. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a negative toward the

00:09:28.900 liberals. You should take that down. Yeah. And again, you know, I think similar to Beijing's 0.91

00:09:36.360 interference in our election, that is shocking. It is shocking. It's very shocking. And yet somehow

00:09:44.120 this government has a way of, you know, just kind of, you know, putting it under the rug. In the same

00:09:49.100 way, we have government documents tabled in the House of Commons that show that this current liberal

00:09:55.840 government pressured social media companies a total of 214 times in a 24-month period,

00:10:03.480 214 times. That's incredible. Yes. To take down content. Much of that content was simply embarrassing

00:10:09.980 or content that they just didn't want to be made available to the public. And again, the liberals

00:10:16.020 just kind of shrug their shoulders like it's no big deal. It's no big deal to censor what Canadians

00:10:20.420 can access. It's no big deal. Of course. Because, you know, we're liberals. We're super smart and we know

00:10:23.800 it's good for people. Right? Yeah. They shouldn't access things that are critical. They might think

00:10:29.340 negatively upon our great governance. Oh my gosh. You know, with baked in inflation, a housing crisis,

00:10:35.120 veterans with no services, two million case files in immigration backlog. You know, the list goes on.

00:10:41.060 Yeah. Or airports are a mess. And this is exactly it. And so, you know, I'm very thankful for my

00:10:48.580 colleague, Dean Allison. He's the one who put in an order paper question that, you know, really allowed

00:10:53.920 us to get to the bottom of this and, you know, access the information that showed that the government

00:10:58.520 had, in fact, applied this pressure 214 times to social media companies. And then from there, what we

00:11:05.140 did is we actually called for an emergency debate in the House of Commons because it was important to us

00:11:11.040 to make sure that this issue was explored, to make sure that, you know, we could push to bring truth

00:11:16.400 forward, if at all possible. You know, unfortunately, at the end of the day, the Liberal Speaker of the

00:11:22.260 House of Commons, you know, voted against it or opted not to support our call for an emergency

00:11:28.080 debate. So I think that's sad because I think Canadians deserve answers. They have the right to know

00:11:33.600 what information they're able to access versus what information is being kept from them because this

00:11:38.020 government simply doesn't want them to see it. If the government is, through documents and their

00:11:46.080 own documents, blatantly trying to get social media companies to remove content that negatively

00:11:53.540 affects them, isn't that something you see in, like, countries that are, like, on the verge of

00:11:57.720 collapse? Like, I'm not saying Canada is. Please do not take my point wrong. But I'm just saying you

00:12:02.320 don't expect to see this in Canada. Absolutely. Absolutely you don't. However, we do also have

00:12:09.080 another bill on the docket, Bill C-11. The Liberals have been very emphatic that this is the bill that

00:12:15.340 they want in its current state, which has many, many, many flaws. Those flaws have been pointed out

00:12:20.820 by legal experts. And those legal experts would further say that this bill, which is a censorship

00:12:27.240 bill. It will control what people can see here and post online. Experts have said that this bill does

00:12:33.600 start to liken us to a country like China, like Iran, like Russia. These are not countries we want to be

00:12:40.760 likened to. So the fact that the government, you know, is putting Bill C-11 in place, the fact that

00:12:46.460 they already have taken steps to pressure social media companies to take content down, the fact that

00:12:52.520 they have Bill C-18, which will also be a form of censorship within the news realm. Yikes. Like, it

00:12:59.580 just speaks. So their line of, trust us, this C-11 is okay. It's not regulating anything. The evidence. 0.61

00:13:08.540 C-11 is not even law yet. And they're already trying to apply the pressure and make sure that

00:13:13.940 content online is censored. You can only imagine what they'll do once this bill is actually in place

00:13:20.160 and they have legal, legal precedents to start applying pressure and making sure that information

00:13:26.700 is curated the way that they want it to be curated. Exactly. And I think even my opposition, I disagree

00:13:34.020 fully with what the liberals are doing to C-18, but I would want to see this piece of legislation

00:13:39.340 repealed because I don't care what party is in power. No government, regardless of political stripe,

00:13:44.620 should be able to impose their will upon the citizens that they're supposedly elected to

00:13:50.700 represent. It should not be a top-down approach. It should be the people leading it, the people

00:13:56.800 with their voices. Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, I don't care if Pierre Polyev's Prime Minister

00:14:03.080 or Justin Trudeau. No government should have that power. No, and that's just it. Like, the internet is

00:14:07.880 the new public square. It really should be a place where we're able to engage in the exchange of ideas,

00:14:12.660 where we're able to access information, and where we're able to put information out there for others

00:14:18.200 to consider. And we should be able to engage in this way that is totally non-partisan. It shouldn't

00:14:23.920 matter who's in government. That's right. It's just simply a space that is meant for Canadians to engage

00:14:29.700 with Canadians. It's not the government's place to curate material and determine what can or cannot be

00:14:36.080 said or seen or heard. Yeah, absolutely. You look at industries, music industry, we've talked about

00:14:42.760 many times. Even look at the beer industry, right? Look how many craft breweries we have around the

00:14:47.880 country, right? Every community's got a couple. Yeah. And very unique, very different. Yes. And the

00:14:53.580 government, can you imagine if the government had their hands on it? You'd probably get two or three

00:14:57.180 selections, and that's about it. Like our telecom industry. So, you know. There's a whole other

00:15:03.400 conversation. That's another conversation. I don't know how much time we have for that. But the point

00:15:09.180 is the same. You get innovation. You get rapid innovation when people are able to create freely

00:15:15.360 with the least amount of restrictions on that creativity. Absolutely. And I think, you know,

00:15:22.380 that, I think that's why I'm so proud of our leader and his point, which is to say, you know,

00:15:30.020 as Prime Minister, he wants to make Canada the freest country on earth. The freest country on earth.

00:15:35.840 Isn't that great? Amazing. Amazing. And the reason why we should get excited about that is because we know

00:15:41.380 that where there's freedom, innovation and creativity reign supreme. And where innovation and creativity are

00:15:48.520 allowed to take off, we know that innovative ideas come forward. That's right. And we know that that

00:15:53.760 wealth is generated. And ultimately, we know that Canadians are empowered to function within their

00:15:59.340 gifts and their talents and their abilities and to use those to prosper themselves and their

00:16:04.220 families. Absolutely. That's the type of country that we should be building, not the current one that

00:16:07.820 the Liberals are trying to control. Exactly. Competition is a good thing. It has a better product, a better

00:16:13.720 service, a better price. It makes everything better and a rising tide raises all boats. Yeah. I don't

00:16:20.880 know how much better we can end that with, but as you know, the guests get the last word. So the

00:16:25.300 floor is yours. Oh, well, nothing more than just to say it's been a complete privilege to be here with

00:16:29.880 you. And, you know, together we're fighting for a freer Canada for the sake of Canadians. All right.

00:16:35.460 You keep saying nice things like that. We'll have you on every single week. That is Rachel Thomas,

00:16:39.140 member of parliament for Lethbridge, also the critic for Heritage. We appreciate her time.

00:16:42.900 We appreciate your time as well. Remember, new content every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern

00:16:47.740 time. Like, comment, share, and subscribe to this program. Great new content for you. Listen to it

00:16:53.980 too. You can download it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. You name it,

00:16:58.180 it is out there until next week. Remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's the Blue Rants. 0.95

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - April 26, 2023

Canadians have no clear answers to the extent of the Chinese Government’s interference.

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