The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Trudeau’s misuse of the Emergencies Act

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

00:00:10.720 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, Kawartha-Legs Brock, with new content

00:00:14.860 for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. We ask that you like, subscribe, comment,

00:00:20.140 share this program. Help us push back against the ever-moving Liberal agenda. Of course,

00:00:24.160 if you can't listen or watch it in its entirety right this second, download it, listen to it

00:00:28.100 on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it, it is out there. We've got

00:00:33.540 another great show for you today. We're going to follow up on what we talked about last week with

00:00:37.940 Raquel Dancho, the Member of Parliament for Kildonan St. Paul, also the public safety critic for His

00:00:43.760 Majesty's loyal opposition, and that was the Emergencies Act. Was or is the bar met to have

00:00:51.440 the government invoke the Emergencies Act on the convoy in Ottawa just a few months ago? And to

00:00:57.680 continue that conversation, we have a good friend of the show, Dane Lloyd, the Member of Parliament

00:01:01.000 for Sturgeon River Parkland. He's also the Emergency Preparedness Critic. Thank you very much for coming

00:01:05.720 back. Well, thank you for having me, Jamie. Lots more things happened a week ago. In one week,

00:01:11.680 we have got a lot more information. And let's start with the one that's kind of hitting the headlines

00:01:16.120 we talked about this week in question period even. It's the fact that through the whole thing,

00:01:22.000 Bill Blair, the Emergency Preparedness Minister, and one time the Public Safety Minister, said

00:01:26.620 there was no police, the government interference inside the whole process. Nothing. But then you

00:01:35.260 start getting more and more testimony that's coming out that's saying, yeah, you know what,

00:01:39.460 there doesn't seem the bar not being hit, right? The Ambassador Bridge was cleared. Cootes, Alberta

00:01:46.380 was cleared. Your working committee, no firearms that were claimed to be in Ottawa, were found,

00:01:52.140 were seized. It just keeps unraveling that the bar had not been met. Well, yeah. And I think we're also

00:01:58.980 talking about two different things here. So yesterday in question period, we were talking

00:02:03.580 about recent audio recordings that had revealed an April 28th meeting with RCMP Commissioner Luckey

00:02:09.940 and her subordinates, where she quite clearly said that the Minister's office had requested that they

00:02:15.640 released confidential evidence about the ongoing Nova Scotia mass shooting investigation. And we have

00:02:22.020 to remember that the Minister, and she also said the Minister was involved. She was talking with the

00:02:25.880 Minister about this. It was a request from the Minister. And yet, you know, all during the summer

00:02:31.180 before this audio recording was revealed, the Minister and the Commissioner all claimed that there

00:02:35.880 was no political interference of any kind. There was no attempt to interfere in the RCMP communications.

00:02:40.220 But the audio recording says otherwise. So we're fighting to get to the bottom of this.

00:02:45.340 But it also, you know, comes back to what we're talking about with the Emergencies Act.

00:02:49.620 We've seen from the government that, you know, they've been playing fast and loose with the truth.

00:02:53.880 We were told when the Emergencies Act was invoked that it was law enforcement that had asked the

00:02:59.220 government to do this. But lo and behold, as we ask law enforcement everywhere from Parliamentary

00:03:04.480 Protective Service, the Ottawa Police, the OPP, all the way up to the RCMP, none of them will actually

00:03:09.760 admit. In fact, none of them have said that they asked the government to invoke the Emergencies Act.

00:03:15.160 And just this week, we have further evidence of confidential evidence that just came to light

00:03:20.360 that RCMP Commissioner Lucky, on the day I believe the Emergencies Act was invoked,

00:03:25.460 told the Minister of Public Safety that they had not exhausted all of the avenues, all of the legal

00:03:30.680 tools and authorities that they had available to deal with the protests. And so we all know that

00:03:35.900 one of the justifications that needs to be fulfilled before invoking the Emergencies Act is the

00:03:40.620 government has to prove that there were no other powers or authorities available, no tools in the

00:03:45.840 toolbox available before invoking the Act. When the RCMP Commissioner is saying there were still tools

00:03:50.400 in the toolbox that hadn't been used, it's blowing a big hole in the government's argument for invoking

00:03:55.680 the Emergencies Act.

00:03:56.820 Absolutely. Considering we were told that public safety was at risk, that all these things,

00:04:01.840 there was that one time, I remember in the media reading that there was Russian interference and

00:04:07.360 dark money coming to fund the protesters and all that has so far turned out to be false.

00:04:14.400 Well, I think, you know, this is a case, I think the government was in a black spin. 0.85

00:04:18.900 They didn't know what to do. They were going to throw as much mud at the wall as they could and

00:04:22.720 hope something stuck. So we were hearing everything from there was possibility that the Russians were 0.60

00:04:28.940 funding the convoy, which the CBC actually had to apologize for airing that, you know, suggestion

00:04:35.620 that that had happened. We've seen allegations that there were firearms in the protest, an

00:04:41.180 allegation that has never been proven. We had members of the government and members of the NDP

00:04:45.320 standing up in the House and claiming that convoy protesters tried to burn down a building full of

00:04:50.020 residents in downtown Ottawa. The OPP came out later and said, no, these two people had no connection

00:04:55.560 to the convoy protests. It had nothing to do with the convoy protests. And so the more we look into

00:05:00.360 this, the more we realize that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation that this

00:05:04.600 government has been pumping on this issue. And I don't think this commission report is going to look

00:05:09.340 very favorably on the federal government. So the committee is the committee still looking into the

00:05:13.900 the the emergencies act. I know there's the inquiry, but also the committee, you said,

00:05:18.680 is doing some work? Well, there's really a two track process here that was set up under the

00:05:22.160 legislation. And, you know, you have to remember this legislation was set up as an accountability

00:05:25.720 mechanism to ensure that governments did not abuse Canadian civil liberties and national security

00:05:31.100 situations. And so the act is working as it should be. We have the committee track, which is made up of

00:05:36.620 parliamentarians, which is currently doing an open review. And then we have the committee of inquiry

00:05:42.440 headed by Justice Rouleau that's also doing important work. And I believe that both these committees

00:05:47.180 have an essential function in our democracy. Rebuilding trust in our institutions is so

00:05:53.080 important because we've seen how the Liberals have wrecked Canadians' trusts in the institutions

00:05:57.800 because of what we believe to be their abuse of the Emergencies Act. And so part of this process

00:06:03.240 is about rebuilding trust, showing transparency, showing accountability. And we need the government

00:06:07.620 to reveal all the documents, all the cabinet documents. And as we see this evidence, I think

00:06:13.360 Canadians can start to rebuild their confidence in government, not talking about partisan government,

00:06:19.500 but just government in general, because I frankly don't have a lot of confidence or if any confidence

00:06:23.720 in this Liberal government that they had any evidence to justify the use of the Emergencies Act.

00:06:27.780 It certainly doesn't look like it as we're following this along. So again, just to clarify for those

00:06:31.580 listening and watching, the inquiry has a little different powers than the committee does as well.

00:06:37.100 The inquiry can go dig a little deeper, so to speak, without the political non-answers.

00:06:41.720 Yeah, and you know, something that's frustrating about the Parliamentary Committee, but you know,

00:06:45.560 it's an essential function of the committee, is that it's made up of membership from all parties

00:06:50.760 and senators. And so you're going to get that back and forth and debate, and you're going to get

00:06:54.160 parliamentarians from different perspectives trying to get their perspectives on the agenda,

00:06:58.560 trying to prove their point. One thing I like about having the Commission of Inquiry,

00:07:02.160 though, is we have somebody who has been given a great deal of power to compel witnesses,

00:07:06.660 to compel evidence. There is less of the back and forth debating and the parliamentary and political

00:07:11.200 theatre. And so I think they both have an important role to play. But I'm very interested

00:07:16.260 to see some of the evidence that's coming out from this Commission.

00:07:19.300 And something I guess we should mention as well, we did last week, is to basically say,

00:07:24.380 right now, what we're trying to figure out in the inquiry and the standing committee

00:07:27.840 is whether or not that bar has been met. Was there enough information? Was national security,

00:07:33.660 safety of the country, at risk in order to invoke the Emergencies Act? So far,

00:07:38.480 my opinion, I don't think it has. I know some media are saying it hasn't either. But at the same

00:07:43.380 time, there are people who are angry with the convoy, people living in Ottawa who had their lives

00:07:48.500 disrupted, their roads blocked, etc, etc. But regardless of how you feel about that, it still

00:07:54.360 goes back to the main point, was the standard met?

00:07:57.540 Yeah. And I'm not going to try to make the argument that there was no threat to public safety. I think

00:08:02.580 certainly when you have a large group of people that are upset about something, you know,

00:08:06.660 there's always a possibility that, you know, there could be an outbreak of violence, you know,

00:08:12.200 maybe some elements going in there that, you know, could have posed a threat. But we deal with

00:08:17.520 public safety threats all the time in Canada. And it doesn't require invoking an Emergencies Act

00:08:22.280 that froze people's bank accounts, that prevented people from moving freely in the city, that

00:08:28.040 basically allowed the government to mass arrest people in that situation. And I think, you know, we have

00:08:36.580 public safety issues in this country, there are illegal tools available to law enforcement. And the

00:08:42.100 evidence is showing that they didn't use all the tools available to them. And and so I don't think the

00:08:47.520 Emergencies Act threshold was met.

00:08:50.000 Well, hopefully Canadians are watching this. The other thing I want to talk about was something I

00:08:53.860 said off the beginning, and then I kind of went on two different trails. So I appreciate I appreciate

00:08:58.460 your patience in this. So the other part is what happened in Nova Scotia, there was Canada's worst

00:09:03.120 mass shooting. Too many people lost their lives too young. And we were told there was no government

00:09:10.780 interference in the police investigation. It turns out through notes that were made public notepads

00:09:17.020 from pretty high ranking members backed up by other members that were in meetings with the

00:09:22.960 commissioner, that it seems that there was some, at least gives the impression that political

00:09:29.560 interference was happening in order for the Liberals to gain traction to bring in their firearms

00:09:34.880 legislation.

00:09:36.280 Well, yes, I think, you know, it's very unbecoming of the government in the days after the mass shooting

00:09:42.200 to be thinking to themselves, how can we leverage this to help our pending gun control announcement

00:09:48.440 and going to the commissioner of the RCMP and requesting that certain information be revealed

00:09:54.080 to the public so that it could assist the government in this political announcement, I think is a very

00:09:59.240 dangerous precedent that's being set. And we questioned the government about this based on the notes from

00:10:04.800 Superintendent Campbell, which said that promises that the commissioner claimed that she had made promises

00:10:09.360 to the government that she had received requests from the minister as in the minister's office to

00:10:13.480 release this information. And the commissioner said, no, no promise was made. The minister has said

00:10:19.220 that there was no interference of any kind. That's pretty unequivocal when you're saying no interference

00:10:23.200 of any kind. And yet the minister could have just been straightforward with us back in June and said,

00:10:29.120 yes, we did make a request to the RCMP that this information be shared because we thought it was

00:10:35.100 important information that Canadians would want to know about. We know from the commissioner's audio

00:10:40.620 recordings that the request did come from the minister's office. So it's curious to me why they're

00:10:45.680 trying to try to hide this. So either the commissioner is lying. She was telling her subordinates that a

00:10:52.260 promise was made, that a request was made that had never happened, or the minister is lying and saying

00:10:57.160 that there was no interference and, you know, there can't be, both can't be true. And so we got to fight to get

00:11:02.440 to the bottom of this. Absolutely. And this is just extremely frustrating that how the liberals seem

00:11:07.840 to handle this kind of situation. You have a tragedy. You have Canadians in mourning. And as you

00:11:14.400 said, they're thinking about how they're going to leverage it in order to advance their political

00:11:19.520 agenda and then to kind of pawn it off as, no, we had nothing to do with it. And I think if it wasn't

00:11:25.880 for this audio recording, some of the media might have shrugged too and just moved on as well.

00:11:30.480 Well, you know, I think what the liberals are good at is they just try to like slow pace these stories

00:11:36.920 and then just hope that the media and the opposition loses interest and that it goes away.

00:11:41.160 And, you know, we had the notes of Superintendent Campbell versus the word of the minister and the

00:11:45.060 commissioner. But these audio tapes back up what Superintendent Campbell was saying. And we have to remember that

00:11:50.800 these audio tapes were partially destroyed. These are partially destroyed audio tapes. So there is audio

00:11:56.400 out there or could have been audio out there that would have said far more about the situation.

00:12:00.720 But because the audio was partially destroyed, we will never know the full story from the audio side.

00:12:06.480 So we have to rely on the notes of Superintendent Campbell and the audio that we have to draw conclusions.

00:12:12.320 And I think the very clear conclusion that I draw is that there was far more involvement of the

00:12:17.240 minister's office and the minister himself than they let on back in June.

00:12:20.640 And potentially the prime minister. I believe Commissioner Luckey said something about having

00:12:25.120 to call the prime minister or at least the prime minister's office and give a report, which is quite

00:12:29.600 telling as well.

00:12:30.440 Well, the prime minister was involved as well. Certainly, if Commissioner Luckey is to be believed

00:12:34.680 on her audio call that she was in regular communication with the prime minister. And, you know,

00:12:39.420 there's nothing inappropriate about a prime minister or a minister keeping up to date, sharing information.

00:12:44.720 Especially in tragedy like that.

00:12:46.120 Of course. We would expect that of our leaders, that they would be involved. But to have

00:12:50.420 ministers' offices and ministers and prime ministers attempting to micromanage the communication

00:12:55.560 strategy, a communication strategy that could jeopardize an open investigation. And we have to

00:13:01.660 realize the reason why the RCMP didn't want to reveal the nature of the firearms involved was because

00:13:07.400 there was firearms that were traced to the United States. Firearms that were traced to somebody in the

00:13:12.700 United States and they needed to figure out how that person in the United States got the firearms over

00:13:17.580 the border and into the hands of this mass killer.

00:13:20.260 And if those firearms had been revealed to the public, it could have jeopardized that investigation,

00:13:25.040 a cross-border investigation with the FBI. And we could not allow that for that to happen. So the ultimate

00:13:30.600 justice for families is to ensure that those responsible, everyone responsible for these deaths is

00:13:35.920 held accountable. And, you know, attempting to jeopardize and allowing an investigation to get

00:13:41.480 jeopardized to make political points is not justice for these families.

00:13:44.780 And now we learned last week, last Friday, a few days ago, that it's now illegal to sell, transfer, buy a handgun in Canada.

00:13:53.400 Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, this Liberal government is big on symbolism, although this is having a massive

00:13:58.920 impact on firearms, legal firearm owners in Canada. But, you know, I was looking at the news over the weekend and

00:14:04.480 this handgun freeze didn't do anything to stop the shootings that we've seen in our cities.

00:14:09.000 Shootings that are carried out by, you know, predominantly gang members, predominantly hardened

00:14:14.840 criminals who are using illegally, well, smuggled handguns coming in from the United States.

00:14:19.840 So we see what this gun freeze that the government's put in. It's having a huge impact on legal firearms

00:14:25.040 owners, but it's having absolutely no impact on the real problem, which is the hardened criminals that

00:14:31.260 are using firearms on our streets.

00:14:33.300 All right. I think we're going to pick up that topic next week. Talking about public safety,

00:14:36.960 talk about illegal firearms and shootings in our cities and the increased rate of crime.

00:14:43.920 People are feeling less safe across Canada. I think we're going to pick up on that next week.

00:14:47.720 As you know, Dane, I always give the guests the last words and the floor is yours.

00:14:51.140 Well, thank you for the opportunity to come. I really appreciate your podcast and the work

00:14:55.760 that you're doing to keep Canadians informed on what's going on. So thank you for having me again.

00:15:00.420 All right. Dane Lloyd, member of parliament for Sturgeon River Parkland in the beautiful province

00:15:04.480 of Alberta. Also the emergency preparedness critic. He's doing a great job. Watch his committee work

00:15:09.360 on his social media. He is really lighting it up and bringing some of these issues into the forefront

00:15:13.900 and into the media stream. So we do appreciate him and we appreciate you for joining us here today.

00:15:19.100 Please like, comment, subscribe, share this program. Of course, we have new content for you every single

00:15:24.960 Tuesday at 1 30 p.m. Eastern time. If you can't watch or listen to it, download it on platforms like

00:15:29.700 CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it. It's out there. Tell your friends about it because

00:15:33.980 they have two friends that might be interested in what as well. Until then, low taxes, less government,

00:15:38.360 more freedom. That's the blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - October 27, 2022

Trudeau’s misuse of the Emergencies Act

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript