The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - April 25, 2017


The terrible situation in Syria


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

149.99162

Word count

895

Sentence count

66

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, we discuss the chemical weapons attack on civilians in Syria and what the Canadian government has to do about it. We also talk about the impact on Canadian troops stationed in the region and what they should do in response.

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 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.
00:00:31.140 And we're back on Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:35.680 I'm your host, Tony Clement.
00:00:37.020 I want to talk about another issue that's very topical in the news, and that's the situation in Syria after the chemical attacks that were initiated by Assad and his regime,
00:00:47.220 and then the U.S. missile strike that occurred a few days later.
00:00:50.940 Of course, this Syria has been in the news for years now with the civil war, meaning that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.
00:00:58.580 It's just a terrible situation, a terrible human rights tragedy, as well as a geopolitical mess,
00:01:03.840 because you've got all these interests that are preying in there, of course, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia,
00:01:11.620 and, of course, the growth of ISIS in Syrian territory.
00:01:15.200 We've seen in the past warnings issued to Bashir Assad to not use chemical weapons.
00:01:23.220 Unfortunately, he again ignored that warning and just a few days ago launched a chemical attack on his own people using the nerve gas sarin.
00:01:34.660 When that occurred, the U.S. government reacted with the missile strike involving 59 Tomahawk missiles.
00:01:41.740 And I want to tell you what the Conservative Party of Canada position is as an initial conversation starter on this.
00:01:48.700 We did support, we strongly supported the efforts of the United States to prevent Syria's military from launching further chemical weapon attacks.
00:01:59.180 It's very clear that the way Assad's mind works, if he gets away with something, he does it over and over again. 0.61
00:02:04.980 And that, of course, would create a war crime. 0.78
00:02:07.860 Use of chemical weapons is considered a war crime.
00:02:10.200 It has been so since the First World War. 0.79
00:02:12.940 And the global community cannot sit idly by when these deadly nerve toxins are being deployed and unleashed on innocent civilians.
00:02:22.180 So that's our position.
00:02:23.780 It's a very clear position.
00:02:24.880 It's a very concise position.
00:02:26.340 Unfortunately, we are not really sure from day to day what the Prime Minister of Canada's position is.
00:02:30.740 Justin Trudeau, when first confronted with the evidence of the sarin attack by the Syrian government, claimed that there wasn't enough evidence to make a decision as to whether Syria was responsible for the attack.
00:02:44.420 When that evidence was forthcoming, then he kind of scuttled away for a while.
00:02:50.960 Donald Trump and the U.S. government reacted.
00:02:53.380 And we weren't sure for a period of about 48 hours exactly what the position of the Canadian government was.
00:02:59.120 Eventually, he came out in support of Donald Trump's use of Tomahawk missiles to disable the airport from which these attacks originated.
00:03:10.940 And that's a good thing.
00:03:12.760 But we really need to know what the position of the Trudeau government is going to be going forward.
00:03:17.960 This is obviously a touchstone issue in the Middle East.
00:03:21.460 Syria is the fount of a lot of instability in the region. 0.96
00:03:26.980 There's no question about it.
00:03:28.220 And so we have to be clear.
00:03:29.960 The government, the Trudeau government, has to be clear on its intentions.
00:03:32.920 Where does it stand?
00:03:34.360 And, of course, what the impact is there going to be on that?
00:03:38.920 Because we do have Canadian troops in the region.
00:03:42.560 And, of course, it affects their ability to do their job as well as the Canadian government's ability to do their job as well.
00:03:49.340 So that's where we are on that.
00:03:50.820 And I think it's not too much to ask that we have a clearer position on this.
00:03:55.740 This situation is going to evolve over time.
00:03:57.800 There's no question about it.
00:03:59.300 And there are already calls for more intervention.
00:04:03.800 I thought that Donald Trump was actually fairly restrained on this.
00:04:06.920 Don't forget Hillary Clinton's position on this was bomb every airport and basically disable the entire Syrian air capacity. 0.90
00:04:20.900 Of course, that would have elicited some sort of response from the Russians, amongst others.
00:04:25.740 I think what the United States did was concise.
00:04:30.300 It was very focused.
00:04:31.920 It was commensurate with the issue at hand.
00:04:36.580 It wasn't going over the bounds.
00:04:38.720 And I think in that sense, it was the most appropriate response.
00:04:42.960 So we'll see what happens in the future.
00:04:44.600 But when it comes to articulating an interest for human rights, for making sure that we're safe from terrorism, Canada's conservatives are on the side of certainly working with our allies to reduce the terrorism that emanates from the region.
00:05:02.940 And at the same time, have a clear path to a change of government in Syria so that the civil war doesn't go on and on and on for years more, affecting more hundreds of thousands or millions of people.
00:05:14.140 So that's our position.
00:05:15.660 Very interesting issue.
00:05:17.360 Very heartfelt issue for a number of Canadians.
00:05:19.380 I know I was getting a lot of emails and other communications on this.
00:05:24.080 But I think that ultimately, our position is the right position.
00:05:27.440 And we certainly hope that it has an impact on the ability of Bashir Assad to attack his population again using deadly nerve toxins. 0.71
00:05:57.440 And we'll see you in the next podcast.