The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - May 18, 2017


James Bezan on Sajjan’s lies and new Magnitsky Law


Episode Stats

Length

10 minutes

Words per Minute

168.10425

Word Count

1,806

Sentence Count

102

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:09.000 Well, they thought they were going to have an easy day over there today, but not so fast, Mr. Speaker.
00:00:16.640 What is it going to take for the Prime Minister to have any respect for any laws in this country that may curb his out-of-control behaviour?
00:00:25.320 And now, here's your host, Tony Clement.
00:00:31.400 Okay, welcome to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast, the official podcast of the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:00:36.800 I'm your host, Tony Clement, Member of Parliament for Paris-San Muskoka, and with me right now is the MP for Selkirk, Interlake, Eastman, the Honourable James Bazan.
00:00:46.580 James, great to have you on the show.
00:00:47.880 Thanks for having me on, Tony.
00:00:48.720 Well, he's our conservative defence critic, of course, and we've got a lot of issues that pertain to the defence file.
00:00:55.280 First of all, with respect to our defence minister, Harjeet Sajjan, obviously he twice publicly claimed that he was the architect, in quotation marks, of Operation Medusa,
00:01:06.320 one of the largest battles in which Canada has ever participated.
00:01:09.200 So, talk a little bit about the controversy there and why it's important to raise these issues.
00:01:13.100 Well, for some time, I've been concerned that the minister has just a casual relationship with the truth.
00:01:21.700 And it goes back to a lot of his misleading comments that he's made in the House, as it relates to danger pay of our troops that are fighting ISIS,
00:01:28.900 as it relates to the fabricated capability gap with our fighter jets.
00:01:33.000 And he's also gone as far as, you know, lied about whether or not our allies, particularly Iraq and the Kurdistan regional government,
00:01:43.760 were happy with us pulling our CF-18s out of the fight against ISIS, which was proven that they were quite upset and wanted us to keep the jets there.
00:01:52.040 So, you know, he's been lying on those fronts.
00:01:54.640 But then for him to go out and embellish his own service record in Operation Medusa,
00:02:01.660 one of the largest battles that Canada has been in since World War II,
00:02:05.980 while we're fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, and to call himself the architect, wasn't a misspeak.
00:02:13.080 We know that he said this originally back in 2015 in an interview when he was campaigning to be the Liberal member of Parliament.
00:02:21.540 This was during the general election.
00:02:22.860 Yeah, it was during the general election.
00:02:24.800 He was actually still in uniform.
00:02:26.580 He was still a lieutenant colonel at that time.
00:02:29.100 And then he said it again April 16th in Delhi on an official mission there, reaching out to the government of India.
00:02:37.720 But he not only said it, he actually wrote it himself into his speaking notes.
00:02:43.900 And it was checked against delivery.
00:02:45.200 So this was approved by his office.
00:02:48.000 It was his official speaking notes.
00:02:49.340 So this was not a mistake or a slip of the tongue or anything like that?
00:02:51.740 So for him to say it's a mistake even is more infuriating for our veterans and for those that are currently serving.
00:02:56.460 And they have a term for this, calling it stolen valor, because he's trying to take credit for something he didn't do in a battle.
00:03:03.520 Tell us a little bit more about, you know, this is obviously not only about him misleading Canadians,
00:03:09.480 but it's also about the culture within our fighting forces.
00:03:13.060 And tell us what the impact of stolen valor is when you take credit for something that wasn't yours.
00:03:18.260 Well, it happens often.
00:03:20.440 And, you know, if you wear medals, for example, that you didn't earn, you can actually go to jail for that.
00:03:26.080 Like impersonating an officer, you know, it's a violation of the criminal code.
00:03:30.220 But under the National Defense Act, under the ethos of our Canadian military, they are quite clear that, you know, you don't go around and polish up your own ego.
00:03:41.380 And it is frowned.
00:03:42.720 It's not just frowned upon.
00:03:43.720 You can be court-martialed for stealing valor.
00:03:46.740 And any time that you try to take credit when it's a team effort and you try to personally benefit from it is something that is taken extremely seriously by our troops.
00:03:56.580 And so they find this actually very demoralizing.
00:03:59.460 And you tie that into how the minister has lied about how he's treating our troops in Kuwait that are in the fight against Afghanistan and doing the intelligence side of the business, not getting their danger pay.
00:04:12.060 They are demoralized.
00:04:13.300 And so this is starting to, you know, really resonate within our troops, our fighting force, our frontline soldiers.
00:04:22.700 And they don't trust him anymore.
00:04:24.600 And how is he supposed to lead when he doesn't have the trust of the military he's in charge of?
00:04:29.060 How does he actually continue to push out his defense policy when Canadians no longer believe him?
00:04:35.080 And, you know, as you've seen on the Internet, he's turned into a laughingstock.
00:04:39.200 And how is that going to resonate when he goes and meets with our allies in Brussels later this month to talk about defense policy?
00:04:46.940 We're talking with James Bazan, MP.
00:04:49.780 He's the conservative defense critic.
00:04:51.580 You've called on the defense minister, Sajan, to resign as a result of this.
00:04:56.440 And it couldn't come at a less opportune time, really, because he's trying to lead this new defense policy initiative.
00:05:05.220 Meanwhile, they're cutting the budget of the Defense Department.
00:05:08.460 So talk a little bit about how this impacts on his ability to do his job on behalf of Canada and Canadians.
00:05:14.960 Tony, I think you and I agree that he hasn't been an effective minister right from the get-go.
00:05:18.800 He's more of a figurehead than actually someone that's there advocating on behalf of the Canadian Armed Forces.
00:05:23.180 And so the first two budgets the Liberals have rolled out has cut $12 billion from future spending.
00:05:30.100 Defense analyst David Perry said, you know, when you take away money from the military, you know that the defense policy coming down the road is going to be less than ambitious.
00:05:37.340 So any talk that they're going to do in trying to spin that this DPR or the Defense Policy Review is good for Canada, is good for our military, is just going to be spin.
00:05:48.000 And it's not going to at all provide the resources, the training, and the equipment that our troops need on the ground to do the job that Parliament often calls upon them to do.
00:05:57.940 And more importantly, you know, this, again, comes down to his own credibility.
00:06:04.420 His reputation is tarnished and damaged beyond repair.
00:06:07.340 How is he going to go out there and sell it and people aren't going to believe him?
00:06:10.020 Well, that's a very good point.
00:06:11.700 Obviously, the Liberals have been stonewalling in Parliament on this issue, but it's not going to go away, particularly when he rolls out the new defense policy.
00:06:18.280 Yeah, it's all going to be deferred spending.
00:06:19.680 It's all going to be, you know, something way down in the future because we know that $12 billion they kicked down the road now for two decades.
00:06:26.220 So that doesn't make for a modern fighting force.
00:06:29.600 We're going to talk, move gears for the last couple of minutes, talk about the Magnitsky law.
00:06:34.660 Liberals have just announced that they are going to be pursuing this, which is good news.
00:06:38.480 I know you are at the forefront of advocating for this.
00:06:42.140 So tell our listeners a little bit about Magnitsky and why this is important.
00:06:45.500 Well, first of all, I have to give credit to Senator Raynell Anderchuk.
00:06:48.340 This is her private member's bill that she started over in the Senate.
00:06:50.620 I had a similar bill in the House, but we started a parallel system, and her bill actually is the best of all the versions that we've seen of the Magnitsky law over the years
00:07:01.700 because it really dives down into human rights abusers as well as corrupt foreign officials.
00:07:06.440 But Sergei Meninsky was a freedom fighter in Russia working on behalf of Bill Browder and did uncover the largest tax fraud.
00:07:15.720 A real whistleblower within Putin's regime there.
00:07:18.920 $227 million that Putin and his cronies were stealing from Bill Browder, but they were actually stealing from the taxpayers of Russia.
00:07:25.180 And because of his efforts, he was wrongfully convicted in prison, tortured, and killed in Moscow in 2012.
00:07:34.840 And since then, Bill Browder, who's also a human rights fighter, going out there and advocating for governments to make sure that corrupt Russian officials
00:07:46.820 and other officials around the world can't use their legally garnered monies and hide them in offshore accounts, including here in Canada.
00:07:58.160 And Bill Browder just uncovered that over 30 banks were used in the last five years by Russian shell companies to push through over $20 million.
00:08:07.560 So this is not a theoretical thing.
00:08:09.640 It's happening right now in Canada.
00:08:11.080 The proceeds of crime by corrupt government officials overseas is happening right here in Canada.
00:08:17.580 And the effort is to dial up the sanctions on these things?
00:08:20.860 Yeah, travel ban sanctions and making sure that Canada isn't a safe haven and isn't being used.
00:08:26.080 We want to make sure that the Department of Foreign Affairs, the RCMP and CSIS,
00:08:30.240 has the resources to actually go out there and freeze these accounts
00:08:35.880 and make sure these individuals never enter our country.
00:08:38.400 So it is a challenge.
00:08:40.060 But although I'm glad that Minister Freeland has agreed to the Meninsky law,
00:08:47.420 we have to continue to work hard to ensure that it passes.
00:08:52.220 We know the Department of Foreign Affairs is not crazy about it because, as Stefan Dion used to say,
00:08:57.180 I want to talk to Russia.
00:08:58.680 We have a policy of responsible conviction, which all translates into appeasement.
00:09:03.840 And we don't appease dictators and despots.
00:09:07.820 We have to go out there and make sure that those that are carrying out the wishes of their leadership
00:09:12.320 and benefiting financially from it by being human rights abusers,
00:09:16.160 by being corrupt in their own governments, are held to account.
00:09:19.420 And this is the way Canada can do it.
00:09:20.800 And join the rest of the international community.
00:09:23.280 That's where we're made the steps forward.
00:09:23.960 We're the outliers on this, so we're catching up to UK, USA, that kind of thing.
00:09:28.780 Well, listen, congratulations to Senator Andrew Chuck for spearheading that in the Senate.
00:09:33.760 Thank you to you for spearheading it in the House of Commons.
00:09:36.880 We've been talking to James Bazan, a Member of Parliament, and our Conservative Defence Critic.
00:09:41.860 Thanks for joining us on Blueprint.
00:09:43.520 Thanks for having me on, Tony.
00:09:44.620 Thank you for listening to the Blueprint, Canada's Conservative podcast.
00:09:58.100 To find more episodes, interviews, and in-depth discussions of politics in Canada,
00:10:02.340 search for the Blueprint on iTunes or visit podcast.conservative.ca.
00:10:06.700 Thank you.
00:10:14.620 Thank you.