The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Trudeau’s Attempt to Defy Parliament

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

00:00:06.720 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, for the likes of Rock. It is the

00:00:10.840 summertime, but I do thank you very much for joining us. But we are not stopping. We are

00:00:14.960 not slowing down. We are providing new content every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time.

00:00:20.380 We do appreciate your help in liking, comment, share, subscribing to this program. Help us push

00:00:26.340 back against the ever-moving liberal agenda. If you can't watch it all now on Facebook,

00:00:30.360 you can download it, listen to it later on on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play,

00:00:34.420 Spotify, you name it, it is out there. Today's topic, something we have talked about before

00:00:39.140 and a guest we've had on before. And I think this is something we need to keep talking about

00:00:43.560 because it has, for the most part, disappeared from a number of headlines across the country

00:00:48.560 and the mainstream media. It has to do with the two scientists that were fired and then

00:00:53.520 subsequently walked out of the Level 4, the Maximum Security Laboratory in Winnipeg,

00:00:59.980 talking about the transfer of intellectual property to China without permission of the

00:01:06.360 Public Health Agency of China. And we're going to bring in our good friend Michael Chong. He's

00:01:09.760 the Member of Parliament for Wellington-Halton Hills. He's also the critic for foreign affairs,

00:01:14.360 the shadow minister, if you will, the man of the hour, Michael Chong. Thank you very much for

00:01:17.880 coming on again to talk about this very important topic.

00:01:21.280 Great to be here, Jamie.

00:01:22.100 Now, it's kind of happened. A lot of it has happened towards the end of the parliamentary

00:01:28.520 session. Just as June was starting to roll in, the warm weather had started to arrive,

00:01:32.920 restrictions on some of the lockdowns across the country were starting to ease, people were

00:01:36.700 getting out and about. So I don't think many people have been following this as closely as I

00:01:41.940 think they should based on the severity of what this actually means. So the RCMP are now investigating

00:01:48.140 two scientists that were dismissed from that top security infectious disease laboratory in Winnipeg.

00:01:54.740 Now, they're talking about the potential leak of sensitive information to China. And the House of

00:02:04.240 Commons, the parliamentary committees tried a number of times to get access to the documents as to why

00:02:09.360 the firings happened. What is going on? The government locked it every road they could, including

00:02:15.860 taking the Speaker of the House of Commons to court to stop the release of those documents.

00:02:21.760 Yeah, Jamie, it's appalling what's happened. We don't know a lot. What little we do know makes it clear that

00:02:31.180 the Trudeau government has failed to protect the safety and security of this country, has failed to

00:02:36.920 protect national security, and was asleep at the switch when a number of things took place in the last

00:02:43.140 several years. We know that seven government scientists at the government's lab in Winnipeg

00:02:48.560 collaborated with Chinese scientists on some of the world's most dangerous viruses that we know that 1.00

00:02:54.460 because they published at least six studies together for the period from 2016 to 2020. We know that some of the

00:03:02.840 research of the government's lab in Winnipeg was paid for by China's government, which I think is a big lapse in

00:03:10.740 security. We know that one of the government scientists in Winnipeg made at least five trips during a two-year

00:03:17.060 period to collaborate on research with these scientists in China. We know that one of the Chinese

00:03:24.800 scientists in China gained access, was granted access, to work in the government's top-level secret lab in

00:03:32.780 Winnipeg, and that this scientist from China was actually a member of China's military. How on earth

00:03:40.320 a Chinese military scientist, a Chinese member of the People's Liberation Army was granted access to work in a top-level

00:03:48.640 secret government of Canada lab is beyond me. We know that there are shipments of various materials from Winnipeg

00:03:57.840 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and we know that CSIS raised alarm bells about all of this. This is just some of what we know,

00:04:05.760 but there's so much we don't know, and we have been trying to get information to get to the bottom of this. Look, you know,

00:04:12.960 as members of Parliament, particularly members of the official opposition, you know, we assume that the

00:04:19.120 government is doing its job to protect national security. We assume that the government is protecting the safety

00:04:26.160 and security of Canadians. But when we get information that suggests otherwise, we have a responsibility,

00:04:31.920 we have a constitutional duty to get to the bottom of the matter in order to hold the government

00:04:36.880 accountable and to ensure that these kinds of lapses in security, lapses in national security, don't take

00:04:44.000 place again. But the government has refused to respect an order of the House of Commons and is refusing to

00:04:50.000 hand over these documents. Now, this isn't the first time Canada has seen China act in bad faith 0.91

00:04:58.080 towards us. We saw a few years ago with our agricultural products, exports from Canada to China,

00:05:03.280 a number of exports were stopped. We've had the two Michaels, I think it's going on two plus years now.

00:05:09.520 We've seen even with most recently, the CanSino agreement that put Canada behind at least 100 days

00:05:16.880 because they put all their eggs in that basket and all of a sudden they pulled out and there's

00:05:21.280 Canada struggling to get vaccines way behind a number of other countries. Why do we continue

00:05:27.200 to keep getting burned by China? And why does this government keep allowing this to happen? 0.98

00:05:32.400 Well, I think it's in part because of the Prime Minister's naivete toward China. I also think it's in part

00:05:39.600 because they came to office wanting a closer relationship with China. Clearly that was the wrong approach

00:05:46.320 and they've been reluctant to abandon that approach. You know, you mentioned CanSino. It's a

00:05:51.040 good case in point. You know, it was just a year ago in May that the Prime Minister announced a great

00:05:55.840 fanfare, this partnership on a vaccine with China, with CanSino in China. And what's so appalling was

00:06:05.280 the conspiracy that followed to cover up the fact that China took us to the cleaners. The Prime Minister

00:06:14.240 made this announcement in mid-May of last year with great fanfare. This was the great hope for the

00:06:21.120 nation that we were going to secure a vaccine to vaccinate Canadians through this partnership

00:06:27.280 between the National Research Council of Canada and CanSino. That was announced in mid-May.

00:06:34.080 Only two weeks later, a couple of weeks later, the Prime Minister became aware of the fact that

00:06:41.040 the Chinese government had refused to uphold their end of the deal with the CanSino agreement and refused

00:06:49.520 to allow a shipment of products to begin testing that was slated to have gone to Halifax, to Halsey

00:06:59.520 University in Halifax. So the Chinese government, only two weeks after this big announcement, put a wrench

00:07:05.680 into the plans and clearly wasn't going to uphold its end of the bargain. But the conspiracy is this.

00:07:11.200 The Prime Minister did not make this known for several months afterwards. You know, we're in the

00:07:18.800 middle of a pandemic. The government needed to be transparent and upfront with Canadians about what

00:07:23.600 its plans were to secure vaccines. And the fact that they've withheld that information from Parliament,

00:07:29.280 they withheld that information from the Canadian public is beyond appalling. It, I think it speaks to a pattern of

00:07:36.960 cover up from this government that, you know, thinks Canadians are so naive just to believe that

00:07:44.480 they can be trusted.

00:07:46.320 Even at the beginning of the pandemic, I think it was like something like 16 million tons of

00:07:51.200 PPE that Canada shipped to China to help out.

00:07:54.160 But it, it also is a very disturbing pattern. When, when you see China's influence around the 0.94

00:08:01.600 world, how they start to operate, especially what is going on in terms of their control with mining

00:08:08.240 in a lot of sectors, especially around the African continent, how, how they are, are really dominating

00:08:13.920 that area. And, and that Canada really is kind of slow to the party in terms of standing up or even

00:08:21.360 having a solid policy, because I think, uh, as we mentioned off air, and I'll let you get back into it. Our, our, our,

00:08:26.880 our, as the opposition, as the conservatives, our foreign policy towards China aligns

00:08:31.760 closely with a lot of our allies, whereas the Trudeau government is, is totally out in left field.

00:08:36.800 Well, I agree entirely. Um, this government, the Trudeau government has been slow

00:08:40.880 to react to the threat that China is posing to Canadians, posing to this country. 0.99

00:08:46.400 Uh, other countries have been much quicker in reacting to the threats from China. I just think 0.70

00:08:52.640 of, for example, Australia. Um, Australia had a much closer relationship with China than Canada

00:08:59.040 ever did. Australia is much more reliant on exports to China than Canada ever was. Yet Australia woke up

00:09:06.880 to these threats early on and has taken a strong hard line against these threats. In fact, it was just

00:09:13.680 recently that the Australian government announced it was canceling two belt and road initiatives

00:09:18.720 between Australia and the People's Republic of China, um, in response to these threats. The European

00:09:25.520 Union similarly has been much quicker to react to these threats. Um, after China sanctioned a number

00:09:32.640 of European parliamentarians, the European parliament, uh, took swift action and suspended a

00:09:39.520 landmark key, uh, agreement between the European Union and the People's Republic of China. It was

00:09:47.280 an agreement that had been struck late last year to great fanfare and agreement, um, an agreement on

00:09:53.360 investment between the European Union and China. Well, the European Union was quick to react to these

00:09:59.120 sanctions earlier this year and suspended the agreement in a big blow to China's president, President Xi.

00:10:05.520 The United States has been much quicker to react, uh, to these, uh, these threats and has been, uh,

00:10:11.760 imposing sanctions and making it clear to China that these threats, these cyber attacks, these threats

00:10:17.280 to citizens are unacceptable. The Canadian government, um, has not cancelled a single agreement between

00:10:24.640 Canada and the People's Republic of China. Um, recently, uh, they have not, uh, put in place strong

00:10:31.520 measures, uh, to counter these threats, uh, and they're unilaterally alone in many cases. You know,

00:10:36.640 we haven't joined the American administration and, and, and not participating in the Asia and the China

00:10:43.600 led Asian infrastructure investment bank. Uh, we've not, uh, joined with Australia and the European Union

00:10:49.520 in ripping up some of these agreements that are clearly a threat to our economy. We've not joined our

00:10:56.640 four closest intelligence and security allies and banning Huawei or restricting Huawei from our,

00:11:02.320 the core of our 5G network and so on and so forth. So, you know, this government is failing to protect

00:11:08.240 our national security. It's failing to respond to these threats and it's failing to act multilaterally

00:11:12.960 with our allies.

00:11:13.760 Even when the pandemic started, they, they, the government federally had three main responsibilities.

00:11:19.360 One was the border, the other vaccines and the other rapid tests, and, and they failed on all

00:11:24.160 three. And, and here we are, Canada, we're, we're quickly catching up. But when you look at the,

00:11:30.560 the level of openings where other countries are, uh, they are way ahead of us. And it's unfortunate

00:11:35.680 because the, the federal government not only let us down on each one of those, but also blame the

00:11:41.360 opposition as the reason why they were failing on each and every one of those. It was really quite

00:11:46.080 remarkable.

00:11:46.560 You know, it's, it's, uh, the last 18 months have laid bare the state of this government's

00:11:53.120 management of our institutions. You know, we still don't have a governor general. One has been

00:11:59.200 announced, um, but she's yet to be installed. We, we haven't had a governor general for months,

00:12:04.720 um, because of scandal. Uh, we, uh, eight of the most senior members of the Canadian military

00:12:10.080 have been forced out or resigned in scandal. In fact, the former head of our military has now

00:12:16.080 been criminally charged. Uh, we have a government that could not implement a payroll system to pay

00:12:24.160 some 250,000 employees when companies like Walmart pay millions of employees every day across many

00:12:33.680 jurisdictions with complex, uh, uh, payroll arrangements, often part-time and, uh, part-time

00:12:41.360 work and, and lots of employees joining with high rates of turnover by the nature of their business.

00:12:46.640 We can't seem to procure, uh, equipment for our military without it turning into a fiasco

00:12:52.800 and the procurement of vaccines, I think, uh, demonstrates, uh, how unprepared this government

00:12:59.280 was on the fact that they dismantled the early warning system, uh, for a pandemic just months

00:13:06.080 before the pandemic hit us. Uh, you know, you could go through the list and now they're preventing

00:13:11.440 parliament from doing its job by denying us the very information we need, uh, to hold the government

00:13:17.120 accountable and to do our job under the constitution. And so the list is long. Uh, I think it's laid bare,

00:13:23.920 uh, the mismanagement of this government and my belief that this government does not deserve

00:13:29.440 another mandate. I fully agree with you on that one. So what happens if there's an election? What,

00:13:34.480 there's a whole bunch of talk whether or not election will be called. I guess there's only a

00:13:37.760 few people in the prime minister's office and the prime minister himself that actually know the answer

00:13:41.760 to that question, but what happens to that, to this process, should an election be called and

00:13:46.400 parliament dissolved? Well, the four orders of the house and its committee, uh, will dissolve with the

00:13:53.120 dissolution of parliament and the general election. Um, so that's the first thing that would happen.

00:13:59.600 However, the question of, um, the government violating, uh, the constitution and, and the

00:14:06.960 rights of parliament guaranteed under the preamble to the 1867 constitution and guaranteed

00:14:12.960 under section 18 of the constitution arguably remain into the next parliament, which will reconvene

00:14:20.240 after the next federal election. And so it remains to be seen whether we will take that up again,

00:14:25.920 or whether, whether the government will have complied by then, or whether the courts will have,

00:14:30.320 the court, the federal court will have ruled by then. So it's, there's a lot of unknowns here.

00:14:34.160 Um, the government, I think needs to do the right thing and comply with the orders of the house,

00:14:39.920 um, and withdraw its, uh, its attempt to defy the rule of parliament.

00:14:44.720 Yeah. Does this not this pattern that you, you just described a few minutes ago, does this not,

00:14:49.520 should this not concern Canadians for some reason? I think there hasn't been as much outrage or at

00:14:54.720 least talk about what's going on. Even at the beginning of the pandemic, we saw the liberals been

00:15:00.560 bringing a piece of legislation that would have given them extreme power, the complete control to

00:15:05.440 tax and spend wherever and whenever they wanted on whatever they wanted up until 2022.

00:15:11.040 We've seen them try to change the rules of the house of commons in the last parliament and in this

00:15:17.760 parliament. And, and we've seen the, the internet censorship bill bill bill C 10, which would regulate

00:15:24.640 the content that an individual can see on the, the internet. This is a pattern of deep concern,

00:15:33.200 I think to every Canadian and, and, and it's a path that I'm not sure many want to take. 0.98

00:15:38.560 Yeah, I think, I think these are these, all these events, um, together point to a pattern of a profound

00:15:48.560 lack of belief by the Trudeau liberals in democracy, a profound lack of belief in our parliamentary system

00:15:57.360 of government. You know, the one, the most egregious, um, example of this is one you just mentioned,

00:16:03.440 which is that the government attempted to introduce legislation at the beginning of the pandemic

00:16:08.000 that would have suspended parliament's, uh, right to approve spending and taxation for some 20 months.

00:16:19.840 The original legislation that they proposed would have given the prime minister, um,

00:16:26.240 the unfettered right to spend a tax as he saw fit himself, uh, till the end of this calendar year,

00:16:36.000 till the end of 2021. The fact that they even thought this was remotely appropriate to, uh, to introduce

00:16:43.360 this legislation, I think demonstrates their view of parliament, um, that it's an afterthought,

00:16:49.120 that it is a consultative body, but not one that actually makes decisions, not one that they are

00:16:55.840 accountable to, not one that they have to abide by. And the recent example where they are thumbing their

00:17:02.160 nose at another federal law, the implementation act, when they say they don't have to immediately

00:17:08.480 implement, uh, a recent bill that was adopted by the House of Commons and Senate with respect to,

00:17:16.240 uh, capital gains taxes on the transfer of small businesses is another example of this.

00:17:23.280 And, you know, they are seriously undermining not only the rule of law when they thumbed their nose

00:17:28.640 at this recent legislation that was passed by parliament, uh, they are also undermining, uh,

00:17:34.240 the other fundamental principle that our society is based on, which is a belief in democratic institutions,

00:17:39.600 a belief in parliament. Um, and, and in the long run, few things matter more than those essential principles.

00:17:45.520 I forgot who wrote this, but I remember someone saying, you know, the unfortunate part of,

00:17:51.680 of liberals in government is that liberals will always liberal. And, and it just seems a disturbing

00:17:56.640 pattern, especially in 2015, where Justin Trudeau was, you know, kind of the, the knight in shining

00:18:02.800 armor riding into Ottawa. I'm going to clean up this mess. And then he only tightened control from the PMO

00:18:08.880 and basically pushed parliament, its committees, their, their, the will to the side and the, the,

00:18:15.200 pretty much the government itself is being run, uh, out of that prime minister's office. Just a few

00:18:20.320 people making decisions for everybody. Yeah. This is a government that promised to do things differently

00:18:25.920 when it came to power in 2015 and quickly did the opposite. You know, this is a government that

00:18:30.800 promised to introduce electoral reform. We all remember the promise that the 2015 election

00:18:36.720 would be the last election run on the first past the post system. Well, they abandoned that promise.

00:18:41.920 They promised to respect parliament. Well, one of the first things they did was to break

00:18:46.400 the law. It, you know, and it's something that went under, went under reported at the time.

00:18:51.840 The reform act had just been passed in, uh, the previous parliament in June of 2015. Uh,

00:18:58.480 the prime minister and his senior ministers knew full well what that act did and what it said. It

00:19:04.560 came into effect right after the 2015 election. It required the liberal caucus to vote four times at

00:19:12.800 its first caucus meeting, but the prime minister and the government house leader, uh, actively counseled

00:19:20.640 liberal members of parliament to break the law and to disregard the requirement to vote.

00:19:27.440 Um, you know, and that was a start of a pattern. They came to office with this arrogant, uh, attitude

00:19:34.480 with this corrupt attitude about the law. They broke the law. That is a full fact. I'm not being

00:19:41.200 hyperbolic when I said that they broke the law. They failed to uphold section 49 of the parliament of

00:19:48.160 Canada act, which was the section of the parliament of Canada act that had been, that had been amended

00:19:53.600 by the reform act only months earlier, an act that they were very aware of. Um, subsequent to that,

00:20:00.000 they've thumbed their nose at a number of other areas of law. And the pattern continues to this day

00:20:04.560 with the most recent adoption by parliament of this bill that, uh, changes small business,

00:20:11.040 uh, capital gains taxation. Uh, and, you know, again, the government is thumbing its nose at the

00:20:18.880 law. And as we talked about earlier, they're thumbing their nose at four orders of the house of

00:20:23.280 commons and its committee to hand over documents. You know, as I said in the house in June,

00:20:27.840 you know, why on earth are we spending $400 million a year in parliament, uh, if our decisions are not going to be

00:20:37.040 be followed, why do we spend billions of dollars on the buildings, $5 billion at last count for the

00:20:44.880 new center block, uh, if the processes and procedures in the house of commons and senate don't mean anything?

00:20:51.840 Why do we have a parliamentary democracy if the government views the house of commons and the

00:20:56.080 senate simply as consultative bodies rather than as decision-making bodies that bind the government?

00:21:02.000 I couldn't agree with you more. I love it when you get fired up, Michael Trong. We're,

00:21:06.320 we're pretty much out of time. As you know, I always give the guests the final word.

00:21:10.480 You summed everything up so well. I, if you have anything more, I'd love to hear it.

00:21:16.080 Quite simply this, uh, we've had six years of the current government and power,

00:21:22.080 and while they can point to some record of accomplishment, I think on the whole,

00:21:28.720 they do not deserve another mandate. I think it's clear there's a pattern of a reckless disregard

00:21:35.040 for the rule of law, a reckless disregard, disregard for our parliament and for the elected

00:21:41.840 will of the people as expressed by their members of parliament. I think they have seriously weakened

00:21:47.440 the institutions of this country. As I mentioned earlier, we still have no governor general because

00:21:52.400 of scandal. Uh, the former clerk of the Privy Council resigned in scandal. Uh, we had the former

00:21:59.360 minister of justice and attorney general pushed out in scandal. Uh, we have eight of the most senior

00:22:04.960 members of our military resign or have been pushed out because of scandal. We had the former head of the

00:22:10.080 armed forces now criminally charged. Uh, and we have a government that just thumbs its nose at parliament.

00:22:15.200 Um, this is a government that has mismanaged our institutions. And so people need to

00:22:20.240 cut through the noise and clatter of the day to day reportings on politics and see the bigger picture,

00:22:26.240 which is a government that is sending this country on the wrong path. And that's why I don't believe

00:22:32.240 they deserve another mandate. Michael Chong, you are amazing as usual. Thank you for that. Again,

00:22:37.600 I love it when you get fired up. Nobody can argue with you on that one because you are

00:22:40.880 so on point to the member of parliament for Wellington Halton Hills, also the shadow minister for foreign

00:22:45.920 affairs. Always a pleasure here hearing his perspective. And we didn't even get to touch

00:22:50.320 on some topics, but maybe again, we'll have you on. We do appreciate Michael's time. We appreciate

00:22:55.440 your time for joining us on the summer, many parts of the country. The weather is amazing,

00:22:59.520 but you are here. You are focused. You are here to help like comment, subscribe, share this program

00:23:05.040 because that liberal agenda, it is the summer, but it is still moving. We need to push back against it.

00:23:10.080 You can help us do it. There's somebody we know in your social media network that wants to hear the

00:23:14.480 conservative message. This is your chance to help ensure that Erin O'Toole is the next prime minister

00:23:20.000 of Canada. Again, if you can't watch it all now, listen to it, download it, have it later on,

00:23:25.280 on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it. It is out there. We will be

00:23:30.560 back next Tuesday, 1.30 PM Eastern time with brand new content. Join us then. Remember,

00:23:36.400 low taxes, less government, more freedom. That is The Blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - July 21, 2021

Trudeau’s Attempt to Defy Parliament

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