On Sunday, we saw an explosive interview given by FBI Director Kash Patel on Fox News about Canada. And all of a sudden, the conversation goes to Canada and I wanted to save this topic to talk to Sam Cooper, who is the creator of the Bureau and Canada s top investigative journalist.
00:04:13.240That's what I got from Director Patel's statement.
00:04:17.100I had reported previously, again, a CBSA whistleblower said that there was a massive amount of stolen passports.
00:04:25.440I believe it was connected to Russia's invasion of Ukraine years ago.
00:04:30.240And Canada's government knew that many of those stolen passports were used by threat actors to enter Vancouver's port.
00:04:39.640I had also told you that Vancouver's port is wide open to fentanyl precursors coming in.
00:04:47.220Something like only 1% of the containers that come into Vancouver's port,
00:04:52.160this is the fourth busiest in North America, are searched.
00:04:55.560And on top of that, I had reported the documented concern.
00:05:00.540It's been known for years that Chinese organized crime actors with connections to Chinese military entities of the same type that are operative in Panama
00:05:10.760have significant activity in Vancouver's port, along with Iranian threat actors.
00:05:17.520And, of course, the local Hells Angels are in the mix there, too.
00:05:20.920So, it's almost a surreal feeling or sense that we now have the director of the top counterintelligence agency coming out overtly and saying the exact same things I'm reporting.
00:05:34.700And, Candice, I would add another major story I broke was, you'll remember the Danforth shooting of 2018.
00:05:41.820There were indications that there could be terror links, but the Toronto Police and Ralph Goodale, Trudeau's public safety minister, said those indications were false, not supported.
00:06:25.640American authorities wanted just a couple of grams to search it to see, you know, they were concerned, could this be a weapon of mass destruction?
00:06:45.820I'm told that the U.S. government said, of course, there was a Chinese supplier involved and there could be a Pakistani threat network and the Canadian government would not cooperate with the U.S. government.
00:06:58.600So this, in my view, when I was hearing Kash Patel, I almost heard that case resonating without being said.
00:07:05.200Well, if we could just take a minute to double click on that, because I was writing and reporting with the Toronto Sun at that time, Sam, and I recall, I mean, it's been several years now since I refreshed my memory on the case.
00:07:17.440But I do remember a police report where they went in and they interviewed the parents and the two parents of this young man who they claim was mentally ill, even though he was working a job at a local supermarket.
00:07:29.460So he wasn't like severely mentally ill like the legacy media pretended that he was.
00:07:35.480But basically, his parents were both interviewed and they were interviewed separately and their answers contradicted each other.
00:07:44.220They were asked whether he had spent time in Pakistan.
00:07:46.940And I believe his father said yes and his mother said no, he's never been to Pakistan.
00:07:50.980And then it turned out that he attended a radical mosque in Toronto.
00:07:56.640There was a lot of very disturbing things that the police just refused to look into.
00:08:02.680The legacy media decided that they were the victims of the Danforth shooting, the family, and that we had to rally around the family of the terrorist and that we couldn't call him a terrorist.
00:08:12.100And I remember the point, I've never disclosed this before, but the Toronto Sun, my employer at the time, would not let me report on it anymore because they didn't want me to go down this rabbit hole.
00:08:25.100And I was banned from writing about the story, even though I think it was a huge public interest.
00:08:29.320I think that the police were misleading the public and the legacy media were absolutely complicit in it all.
00:08:34.500I'm happy to dive into this with you, Candice, because I didn't cover it at the time, but it did strike me that there were some very concerning indications.
00:08:44.320People were not even focused on the fentanyl issue at the time, but come on, 33 restricted weapons, 40 kilograms of carfentanil, 100 times more powerful than fentanyl.
00:08:58.660The media, it seemed, came up with the idea that the families were the victims there.
00:09:03.880And so this is what struck me when a DEA source, we're talking to a person that's investigated everyone from terrorists to El Chapo, reached out and said, Sam at the Bureau, you've been hitting the nail on the head in ways that we cannot speak of because this is classified information.
00:09:23.640The dots you're connecting on the Chinese Communist Party and international threat works are exactly true.
00:11:05.460And I was told that, of course, we don't know what was brought up in the White House with Mark Carney, Melanie Jolie and Dominic LeBlanc and our then public safety minister, Mr. McGinty and J.D. Vance and President Trump.
00:11:21.200But I was told that car fentanyl case may have come up.
00:11:24.900I don't know if it did, but I'm told certainly it's of concern.
00:11:28.500Well, it's very interesting, and just in case the audience doesn't quite remember, this was a horrific shooting that happened back in 2018 on the Danforth, which is a popular street in basically adjacent to downtown Toronto.
00:12:08.640And the legacy media just bought that, like hook, line, and sinker.
00:12:11.360And then after that, it was like, no one can talk about this, or you are a racist bigot who's Islamophobic.
00:12:17.100And again, at the time it was with Toronto Sun.
00:12:18.620Look, Joe Warmington is one of the best reporters in Canada, and he did a great job covering this.
00:12:22.480But the fact that my newspaper didn't want me to be talking about this issue at all, they basically banned me from writing about it.
00:12:29.440And the more that I was digging, I was also in communication with people in the scene, people who were even relatives of these poor young girls that lost their lives.
00:12:38.500And people weren't buying what was being sold.
00:12:41.180But it was, you know, all working together, the police chief said, none of this Islamophobic stuff, like anyone even asking questions about the ties to radical Islam that was, you know, that we're talking about near the height of ISIS and the Syrian refugee crisis and all that kind of stuff happening.
00:12:57.440And we were just told to stop talking about it and move on.
00:13:00.740And it was shocking to see the legacy media just go along with that.
00:13:02.880I'm so pleased that you kept digging on it because I did for a while and then I stopped.
00:13:07.880But I agree that there is a lot more to that story.
00:13:11.180And I'm glad he brought up the Oval Office exchange as well, because I found this quite interesting, right?
00:13:16.680During the election campaign, Mark Carney didn't really talk about fentanyl.
00:13:20.240He didn't really talk about the border.
00:13:22.320He kind of ignored Donald Trump's prodding on this issue.
00:13:34.200Fentanyl is an absolute crisis in the United States.
00:13:38.760It's a challenge here, but it's a crisis there.
00:13:41.180So totally different tone from Mark Carney after he wins the election.
00:13:45.660This is him in that Oval Office meeting that you just mentioned with President Trump and J.D. Vance and others on May 6th.
00:13:52.200And here, Prime Minister Carney is thanking Donald Trump for his leadership and saying that Canada is also focused on cleaning up our border and cleaning up our fentanyl issue.
00:14:00.880Thank you for your hospitality and, above all, for your leadership.
00:14:05.900You're a transformational president, the focus on the economy with a relentless focus on the American worker, securing your borders, ending the scourge of fentanyl and other opioids, and securing the world.
00:14:20.960And I've been elected with my colleagues here, with the help of my colleagues here, I'm going to spread the credit, to transform Canada with a similar focus on the economy, securing our borders, again, on fentanyl.
00:14:37.020I've got a much greater focus on defence and security, securing the Arctic and developing the Arctic.
00:14:42.440And, you know, the history of Canada and the U.S. is we're stronger when we work together and there's many opportunities to work together.
00:14:49.320And I look forward to, you know, addressing some of those issues that we have, but also finding those areas of mutual cooperation so we can...
00:14:56.440So, Sam, what did you make of Mark Carney's sort of reversal?
00:15:00.200So, all of a sudden, he's praising Trump and saying that fentanyl is a big issue after denying it.
00:15:04.200And I really didn't hear him talk about that much on the campaign trail at all.
00:15:08.200It's really a stunning clip because pretty much every word that Mark Carney said would be something that the Bureau would have written about.
00:15:17.180And in many podcasts, I would have advocated, this is the stance Canada needs to take, or else our sovereignty is in deep danger.
00:15:26.080We need to acknowledge to the United States that Canada is a big part of the solution here.
00:15:32.380And, you know, we need to step up to the plate.
00:15:36.960So, essentially, you know, if that was Mark Carney's real intention, I'd be very happy.
00:15:44.180In fact, I would have thought that Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives, that was more their campaign message, which Mark Carney just reflected.
00:15:53.480And as I'm, you know, I have a long career in the Canadian media, I would call myself a good analyst of their coverage.
00:16:01.400I found that Mark Carney, his prime minister's office operatives, and the media that are very friendly with them
00:16:08.140had the exact opposite of the narrative that he had just said to Donald Trump in that meeting.
00:16:13.720And that was to deny that Canada is a big problem on fentanyl, to say that the U.S. is unfairly targeting us,
00:16:21.460and essentially, you know, to use the vernacular, big orange man bad, Canada good.