The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - The current government has done an absolute disservice to the safety and wellbeing of everyday citizens.

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

00:00:18.940 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, Co-Worthalikes, Brock, with new

00:00:22.520 content for you every single Tuesday at 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. We ask that you like, comment,

00:00:27.500 subscribe, and share this program. On today's show, I guarantee you the mainstream media is not

00:00:34.560 covering it. The Liberal government's soft-on-crime approach is out of control. Some of Canada's

00:00:40.840 most notorious criminals are living the easy life. So the person who exposed it all is Frank Caputo.

00:00:47.940 He's here to join us today to talk about it. He's the Member of Parliament for Kamloops, Thompson,

00:00:53.360 Caribou, and the beautiful province of British Columbia. Thank you so much for joining us.

00:00:56.580 Thanks for having me, Jamie. It's a pleasure and honour to be here again.

00:00:58.740 Well, I love having you on the show, and you did some pretty extraordinary work

00:01:02.980 just recently, exposing the fact that awful human beings like Paul Bernardo, Luca Magnata,

00:01:12.640 they are now living the easy life, so to speak, in medium security. Tell us about how you came upon

00:01:19.320 this revelation.

00:01:20.800 Well, for those who don't know, Jamie, I used to work in federal corrections. I was a parole officer,

00:01:24.560 so I know this area quite well. And I knew that a member of parliament could actually attend a

00:01:29.080 penitentiary and go in. You technically don't have to give notice, but we did. And I went in,

00:01:33.360 and I was greeted by some people that were fairly high up in federal corrections. And I said,

00:01:39.100 look, I'm here not to gawk at Paul Bernardo. I'm here to see his conditions. And they said,

00:01:44.340 well, his cell's like everybody else's. Can we just take you to a cell? And I said, no,

00:01:47.800 I want to see his cell. So that's how it started. Had a meeting with a couple of union officials.

00:01:54.040 And then off we went to the, what is called is a living unit. And the living unit has what they

00:01:59.120 call ranges. Ranges are where they're kind of like the hallways that house inmates. So we went

00:02:04.880 off to Paul Bernardo's living unit after that.

00:02:07.500 And what did you see?

00:02:10.000 I saw a cell that looked like every other cell. And I've seen a lot of cells. I've been in a lot

00:02:15.840 of jails. Looked like a cell like every other cell. But here's the problem. Paul Bernardo is not

00:02:20.320 like every other offender. So a lot of people don't know this, but when you look at maximum

00:02:25.580 security, if you were rated on a scale of one to 10 in terms of security, it's like an eight and a

00:02:29.580 half, right? Medium is probably like a six. And then minimum is like a two. So the perimeter security,

00:02:36.800 that's the outside security. It's the same for medium and maximum. But what you don't

00:02:40.160 get is the difference inside. In maximum security, it's like there's door after door after door.

00:02:44.900 They clang. It feels, you feel the tension. There's frisks. In medium security, if you took

00:02:50.180 away the fences, it actually looks like a university. Pave it, put a little bit of grass. It looks

00:02:55.860 like a university. You go from building to building.

00:02:59.180 You freely move around.

00:03:00.460 At certain parts in the evening. Yep. Yep. When we walked by, there were inmates that were doing,

00:03:04.260 they called them inmate jobs and golf carts or little, you know, kind of, I don't know if ATVs

00:03:08.620 would be the right, the right term, but you know, just little, little areas to do their work,

00:03:13.900 doing their work. And we walked freely in to Bernardo's unit. And in fact, when we were walking

00:03:20.260 out, I didn't know this, but one of the correctional officers said to me, do you know who just walked

00:03:24.180 by you a little while ago? And I said, no. And he said, that was Luca Magnata. So there's actually

00:03:28.620 that freedom to roam that you would never see in maximum security. So went to the Bernardo cell.

00:03:36.820 Looked like every other cell. See all these kind of like, you know, things that everybody

00:03:41.080 has different things, different ways of arranging their things. It looked just like an ordinary

00:03:45.000 cell. But this isn't an ordinary maximum security jail for the likes of Bernardo.

00:03:51.580 I walked outside. And when I was walking outside, I saw an ice rink. And there were hockey nets that

00:03:57.720 were propped up. And the CSC, the Correctional Service of Canada, to my dismay, when I revealed

00:04:04.620 this, they set out to discredit me. Obviously, as a conservative, they don't want this truth out

00:04:10.360 there. So their term was, we haven't had a working ice hockey rink, something along those lines.

00:04:15.220 There were nets there. And I asked, skates are available. That's what they said.

00:04:19.940 With blades. Right. With blades. Now, they didn't deny that. But they set out to try to discredit

00:04:26.140 me. And the Canadian press obliged and the CBC obliged. I stand by everything I saw. Every word

00:04:33.040 I say. And for those who haven't seen the rink, you can go to my Twitter, go to my social media.

00:04:37.480 The rink is there. And you can actually see the tennis court markings that it goes into. It has

00:04:43.020 halogen lights on top. That was very surprising for me. Again, we can debate, Jamie, whether that's

00:04:49.220 appropriate for medium security. That's actually a separate discussion. The discussion here is

00:04:54.300 whether Paul Bernardo should be having access to these amenities.

00:04:57.460 Exactly. Some of these awful human beings. Because it poses the question, if some of Canada's

00:05:01.060 worst people, Luca Magnata, of course, killed and dismembered his roommate and sent those body

00:05:07.700 parts to different places, one being the Conservative Party of Canada. I think it's no, everyone knows

00:05:13.780 what Paul Bernardo did, those horrific acts. Who's actually in maximum security then?

00:05:18.860 You know, the Commissioner of Corrections was just talking about this recently. And most people

00:05:23.080 who are there are people who are serving their first two years of a life sentence. That's who

00:05:26.780 there are people who generally have issues inside of the jail, as in they get into fights.

00:05:31.420 But the reason that this is the case, it directly corresponds to the Liberal government. They have

00:05:38.980 control of the regulations. And I'm not going to get into legal nerdery here. This is a podcast.

00:05:43.260 I appreciate that.

00:05:43.620 But let's just put it this way. The government controls the regulations. The regulations tells

00:05:48.580 corrections how to do their job. Okay? We'll leave it at that, broad strokes. The government refuses to

00:05:53.900 change those regulations. They could change the regulation tomorrow to say that a dangerous offender or

00:05:59.380 somebody who's committed two first-degree murders shall be housed in maximum security. They don't.

00:06:05.000 Now, they will say that they care about victims. They will say that they care about justice. But

00:06:08.920 when the rubber has to hit the road, they refuse to act. Corrections, in my view, the Commissioner

00:06:14.160 could also issue what's called a Commissioner's Directive. The last one was issued in 2018,

00:06:19.300 so on custody, I believe. And they could do that. Again, crickets. Silence. They won't do it.

00:06:26.840 They say this is the least restrictive penal environment, as in the least restrictive environment

00:06:31.760 to control somebody. I think we should be looking at the just and appropriate environment. And it is

00:06:37.200 not just that the likes of Paul Bernardo are in medium security, especially with the amenities that

00:06:43.380 they have there. I agree. Let's queue up cut one. For those listeners or viewers who haven't seen or

00:06:49.060 heard your social media, I encourage you to go to Frank's feed and check out his video. It is

00:06:55.520 truly astonishing. But let's play cut one. And this gives you an idea of what Frank's video

00:07:01.100 is all about and gives you a bit more context into what we're talking about. Let's play cut one.

00:07:06.040 So let's take this back a second. He is a serial murderer, a serial rapist, a dangerous offender. 1.00

00:07:12.380 And that's when I started to get angry because I walked outside and I had a look and I said, 1.00

00:07:16.840 what's that? Looks like a hockey rink. It was. Inmates can go and they can get skates and they

00:07:24.600 can play hockey. There are hockey nets and everything. If you want to play in the evening,

00:07:28.420 there are halogen lights. It looked just like an outdoor basketball court at a community center or

00:07:32.920 at your local baseball stadium. Like you said, I do agree that the different levels of security have

00:07:40.440 their place. I agree. I'm with you that the fact that you have some pretty awful people

00:07:46.760 almost getting this easy ride after what they did. I think that is way beyond what I think most

00:07:57.680 Canadians will tolerate. Well, I think a lot of Canadians don't tolerate it, Jamie. And one thing

00:08:02.080 we have to say is this. As a Conservative Party, we are a party of the rule of law. We are a party

00:08:07.440 of law and order and a party of justice. We believe in human rights. Nobody's saying lock the door,

00:08:13.920 throw away the key, you don't get a shower, you don't get food or any of that. But there is a place

00:08:18.880 for minimum security and I believe that. There is a place for medium security and there is a place

00:08:22.980 for maximum security. Building on my prior point, there is no human right to a tennis court. There is

00:08:28.680 no human right to the weight room that Paul Bernardo has access to that would be the envy

00:08:34.840 of 95% of Canadians. I was just in maximum security and you know what? They still get recreation. So

00:08:40.640 this whole idea from the Correctional Service of Canada where they say, oh, recreation is important.

00:08:44.860 You're right, it's important. But what happens when people are in maximum security? They still get

00:08:49.980 exercise. So that's just a false narrative that I really think detracts from the greater issue is

00:08:55.420 where should people like Paul Bernardo be housed? Should it be a medium security or should it be

00:09:00.420 a maximum security? And that's a, I stand with you on that one. So we have that section. So those,

00:09:06.880 the correctional side, but then we lead to the actual living outside. What is going on with crime

00:09:14.980 in this country? Unbelievable what happened a few weeks ago. Toronto police, of course, dealing with

00:09:22.420 a massive amount of car thefts. Mississauga as well. I think the stat was about 20 cars a day,

00:09:28.920 roughly in the GTA, stolen, out of control. And I'm sure they didn't mean it this way. I really

00:09:35.840 don't think they meant it this way. But Toronto police put out a bit of a, had a media conference

00:09:41.800 and basically told people to leave the fobs at the front door. So when the criminals come in for them

00:09:48.880 and kick down their door, they don't have to hurt anyone. So let's play cut two. And then we'll,

00:09:53.000 we'll examine that a bit. This is a Toronto police news conference. Again, I don't think they meant it

00:09:57.080 that way, but dealing with the situation they are and the way the liberal government is treating

00:10:02.480 the criminal justice system, I can understand it. So let's play cut two. A message echoed by Toronto

00:10:08.220 police speaking at an Etobicoke safety meeting last month. Constable Marco Ricciardi had a new

00:10:13.600 message for vehicle owners who keep their fobs in Faraday pouches. To prevent the possibility of

00:10:20.520 being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door because they're breaking into your 0.95

00:10:24.360 home to steal your car. They don't want anything else. It seems there are no consequences.

00:10:30.260 Well, I can tell you this. I was a former Crown prosecutor. I taught a sentencing law course at a

00:10:36.400 law school. I can say that in my view, sentencing has dramatically changed. If you want to just look at

00:10:42.620 it, I was actually talking with somebody who knows a lot. If you look at it, or provincial jails,

00:10:46.540 for instance, 70 to 80% are on remand. That means that they haven't yet been sentenced. So that means

00:10:52.020 that at the end of the day, the sentences that are occurring are such that only 20% are serving

00:10:57.160 a sentence after their trial or conviction date or guilty plea date. In my view, we have to start

00:11:04.260 cracking down on what's important. People will say, you know, conservatives want to be

00:11:08.900 discompassionate. They want to be tough on crime. No, we want to be tough on certain crime.

00:11:13.600 You're a person that beats your intimate partner. You're a person that steals cars. You're a person

00:11:19.060 that robs people. You're a person that commits sexual offenses against children. Those are the 1.00

00:11:23.940 people we should be targeting. We're not talking about the one-off people, the people who might be

00:11:28.560 a bit more of a social nuisance, things like that. We're talking about targeting the right people.

00:11:33.180 And the liberals, they don't want to target anybody. They want to make it easier to serve a sentence on

00:11:37.680 house arrest for everybody, including gun criminals. And to this day, I've spoken with

00:11:43.200 the minister so many times about sexual offenses against children and the inappropriate nature

00:11:47.640 of house arrest for that. They don't care. Car theft. Why are we allowing this to subsist?

00:11:55.380 We need to crack down on this. The liberals talk a good game, but when the rubber hits the road,

00:11:59.720 what are they doing about it? Nothing.

00:12:01.420 And I just can't understand that point. If you look at in the GTA, the greater Vancouver area,

00:12:07.600 the liberals hold a lot of those seats. So the fact that they would turn a blind eye to their

00:12:13.880 constituents having their car stolen, their insurance rates going up, not to mention the

00:12:18.820 cost of living crisis that we're dealing with, the inflation, mortgages, all of it. I just don't

00:12:25.220 see where the liberals have any compassion and I don't understand it.

00:12:28.260 I don't either. I think that they turn a blind eye to just about everything.

00:12:32.420 In my riding of Kamloops, Thompson, Caribou, 50% of people don't have a family doctor.

00:12:38.340 The healthcare issue, obviously that's largely provincial, but I'm trying to do my best to

00:12:43.440 address it. But they just kind of go, whatever. If people are visiting food banks at a record

00:12:48.860 number, whatever. Mortgage rates are at 5%. People are paying double and triple, especially

00:12:53.760 on variable rates. Whatever. Our military now, it's just in shambles. RCMP, they're having

00:12:59.760 trouble recruiting. Military, having trouble recruiting. Whatever. When was the last time

00:13:04.160 you saw the Trudeau government say, we have a big problem here and we will address it. It is only

00:13:11.400 reactive. You know what? We're doing something about auto theft. Rah, rah, rah. How did it get to this

00:13:17.320 point? Bail. Bail's another issue. They just constantly turn their backs on all of these issues

00:13:23.460 that are at the forefront of Canadians' minds and they just don't seem to care. After eight years

00:13:29.760 of Justin Trudeau, this is what we're left with. But they're going to hold a summit on it.

00:13:33.500 That's what they're going to do. Usually on auto theft, they held a summit. On housing,

00:13:36.380 they held a summit. The problem is it's their policies that are failing. And they want to come

00:13:42.680 around. They caused the problem. Then they come up with a program that they think will fix it. It

00:13:47.240 won't. But they'll come up with a program. And when that fails, they'll come up with another program,

00:13:53.760 probably hold another summit first. But all the while, Canadians are suffering through that.

00:13:58.760 And as you pointed out, the Liberals just say, well, we need more time. We need more resources.

00:14:03.160 And eventually we'll fix the problem. But real leadership is avoiding the situation in the first

00:14:08.600 place. That's exactly right, Jamie. One of their go-to things is to try to

00:14:12.620 blame Stephen Harper. I mean, Stephen Harper hasn't been in power for eight years. They do

00:14:16.900 this even on the issue of corrections. Well, Stephen Harper had medium security jails and he transferred

00:14:22.380 people there. You know, it's not about Stephen Harper. Take some ownership. You've been here for

00:14:26.920 eight years, right? Life was a lot more affordable and enjoyable under Stephen Harper, I would say.

00:14:31.940 It certainly was. Housing prices were half of what they were. Gangland homicides were probably half of

00:14:38.380 what they were. I would imagine that auto theft was probably half of what it was. And yet the Liberals

00:14:45.700 avoid responsibility and looking at the person or the group that is the ones who have caused this.

00:14:52.840 And if they want to do it, they can look directly in the mirror. Period.

00:14:57.660 And it's tough for those in the correctional service trying to do their job under the leadership,

00:15:04.600 if you will call it that, of the Liberal government. Same with police officers, right?

00:15:08.680 They were arresting people, seeing them out on bail, arresting the people, like people on bail,

00:15:13.280 committing more serious crimes. Like this is demoralizing for everybody. I'm sure Crown prosecutors

00:15:19.440 are shaking their heads too. You know, my wife works with a lot of vulnerable women. She can talk about how 0.78

00:15:25.400 crime is out of control, especially for people who are completely vulnerable, especially women.

00:15:31.140 When we talk to our correctional officers, I've been meeting with a lot of correctional officers. Jamie,

00:15:35.300 I don't know how they get up to go to the job. The pressures that they are under. This Liberal government

00:15:41.700 has, you know, we talk about the broad strokes, medium to maximum, but there are so many policies

00:15:47.300 on the individual level as to like punishments. Let's say you punch out an officer when you're in a federal

00:15:53.820 penitentiary, right? Those types of things. You stab somebody. There were two officers that I sent a card to

00:16:00.140 recently. They were both stabbed by the same inmate. And this is not the first time that this

00:16:06.180 had happened. You know, these things are out of control. We have to give a huge shout out to those

00:16:10.600 officers because they showed up every single day. They try to make as much noise. And it's just,

00:16:15.180 it's just not something that people want to report on. People in federal penitentiaries that protect

00:16:19.060 you and I every single day. When I was at La Macaza, I could not believe how exposed those officers

00:16:24.920 were. I pointed out that... That's the federal person in Quebec.

00:16:28.340 That's the, yeah, sorry. And that's the one that houses Bernardo and Magnata. And in one aspect,

00:16:33.980 the correctional officers have their, they have to look over their shoulder to see people coming.

00:16:39.440 And they have a mirror. But if somebody's distracted, somebody's talking, there literally

00:16:44.240 is nothing there. And there's this one area. It's an entryway to where the correctional officers go.

00:16:50.080 And people think like, oh, they're behind bars. They're not behind bars or plexiglass. Not in this

00:16:54.820 jail anyways. So the likes of Paul Bernardo and Luca Magnata can come through. And there's not even

00:17:00.040 a barrier. And I said to officials, I said, why isn't there even a simple door here? Just to provide

00:17:07.420 a half second of safety for these officers. And you know what? One of the correctional officers looked

00:17:15.040 at me and he said, we asked for that. And corrections said no. So I would love for the commissioner of

00:17:19.980 corrections, Ann Kelly, to go and look at those officers in the eye and say, we will not put a

00:17:23.780 door there. Shame on the Correctional Service of Canada for not doing everything. These officers

00:17:29.040 often deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, with difficulties of life. They are dealing with

00:17:34.780 the Paul Bernardos, the Robert Picktons, the Luca Magnatas of the world. And we fail to recognize that.

00:17:41.040 And now they want to come up with a prison needle exchange program. They want to give

00:17:45.800 needles in jail. Needles. And the correctional officers are just supposed to say, yeah, fine.

00:17:52.860 You can have sharp objects. Well, they already have skates, so.

00:17:56.180 Do you know how many cell phones they found in one maximum security jail in one year?

00:18:02.680 Fireway.

00:18:03.580 Over 150. Cell phones.

00:18:05.540 Cell phones.

00:18:06.000 That's what they found. Okay? That's what they found. Kent Institution. I said, why aren't you

00:18:11.480 putting wire above, netting above?

00:18:13.820 Right.

00:18:15.240 They'll just find another way. No, they won't. You know what you do? You stop this. The amount

00:18:19.860 of drugs that are in jail, the amount of weapons that are in jail, it's a matter of time before

00:18:23.960 somebody dies because of it.

00:18:25.900 That is absolutely incredible. Frank, we're pretty much out of time, but as you know, the guests get

00:18:30.840 the last word, so the floor is yours. Well, in this whole process when it comes to talking

00:18:37.020 about Magnata, Bernardo, one thing that we haven't touched upon today is the victims.

00:18:41.800 Yes.

00:18:42.000 And we can't forget them. Victims of Bernardo, of people like Russell Williams, Magnata, a

00:18:48.840 lot of those people, especially victims of sexual offenses, sexual offenses especially for

00:18:52.980 children, they themselves are living a psychological life sentence every single day that they wake

00:18:58.940 up. They are imprisoned to that trauma. We cannot forget them. We will not forget them.

00:19:05.280 And where possible, I contact victims as much as I can. And I want to let them know that

00:19:09.960 when we do this work, that they are always on our mind.

00:19:14.440 You did raise a good point too. We have talked about it before in the show. I know we're trying

00:19:19.760 to end the show, but as the crime rate increases, so does the amount of victims.

00:19:24.280 100%.

00:19:24.840 That is something, you're right, that gets glazed over all the time.

00:19:28.820 Yeah, it's easy. It is easy to forget because behind every crime there is a statistic and

00:19:34.980 the victim is a statistic. But when you go home and you walk in through your door, you

00:19:40.200 are not a statistic. You're just, you are a victim. And if that means that you've been

00:19:45.100 assaulted, you've been hurt, you've been defrauded, you still have to live with that. And we just

00:19:50.700 can't forget that.

00:19:51.860 And the government ignores that frustration, right? People are doing what they are supposed

00:19:57.120 to do, right? They go to work, come home, maybe have a family, whatever, right? They're

00:20:02.060 playing by the rules, they're paying their taxes. And yet the government, whose responsibility

00:20:05.960 is to protect or provide services for their citizens, are failing miserably, but demanding

00:20:13.760 more in the form of taxes.

00:20:15.700 100%. And when you look at this, we talk about the government is inept at preventing crime

00:20:20.860 when dealing with bail. They are inept at addressing crime after there's a conviction when it comes

00:20:27.440 to sentencing. And they're inept at housing the people appropriately when it comes to corrections. 0.98

00:20:32.940 This is a government that is not addressing the victims and all that they have been through.

00:20:38.960 And that's just on crime. We're not even, we've barely touched housing today. We've barely

00:20:44.200 touched the military. Barely touched any of these things. We're now paying more on our

00:20:48.480 national debt in interest, I believe, than we are in healthcare. It's just untenable.

00:20:54.520 And not only is it untenable, it's unacceptable.

00:20:57.240 Right, Caputo, we have to get out of here, but we will have you back on, maybe to talk about

00:21:01.000 the other items you've mentioned.

00:21:02.980 Thank you, Jamie, for having me.

00:21:04.060 Thank you very much. Thanks for all the work you're doing for the people of Kamloops,

00:21:06.860 Thompson, Caribou, also for the rest of Canadians for exposing what the media, I believe, has not

00:21:12.600 been talking about, and that's extremely unfortunate. And because they aren't, we ask that you like,

00:21:17.160 comment, subscribe, and share this program. There are eyes and ears that need to see and

00:21:22.920 hear this message. Tell your friends they can download this program on platforms like CastBox,

00:21:27.240 iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. New content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern time.

00:21:32.960 Until next week, remember, it's low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's the blueprint.

00:21:42.600 So welcome.

00:21:44.220 Yeah.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - March 26, 2024

The current government has done an absolute disservice to the safety and wellbeing of everyday citizens.

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