Trudeau sobs ⧸ Trump pauses tariffs ⧸ a DRUG WAR or a TRADE WAR？ (ft Sam Cooper & Colin Craig)
Episode Stats
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Summary
US President Donald Trump announces new tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls the move a "very dumb thing to do" and criticizes the move as a "dumb trade move" by the U.S.
Transcript
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so today the United States launched a trade war against Canada their closest partner and ally the
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closest friend Canada Canada seems to think we're in a trade war and not only seems to think we're
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in a trade where they're dramatically provoking the trade war with threats of retaliation it's
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a drug war not a trade war so we'll be announcing the tariffs on Canada and Mexico for a number of
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reasons number one is the people that have poured into our country so horribly and so much number
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two of the drugs fentanyl and everything else that have come into the country you announced
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tariffs on Canada and Mexico you immediately got action from both of them on border security and
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drug interdiction a lot of exactly no no it's not good enough so more needed in 30 days
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something has to happen it's not sustainable let me be crystal clear there is absolutely no
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justification or need whatsoever for these tariffs today Donald even though you're a very smart guy
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this is a very dumb thing to do earlier today Trudeau also referred to the president as Donald
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and said that this was a stupid move on the president's part what's your response to Prime
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Minister Trudeau on that right well respectfully this is not a trade war it's a drug war and with
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all of the intelligence that we've been gathering from our intelligence agencies and our investigative
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people at the FBI and elsewhere the president is extraordinarily disappointed in the actions the
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Canadians and Canadians and Mexicans have taken to fight the drug war make no mistake in 2023 Canada
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which claims it's an innocent party the increased we found increased fentanyl seizures by 2000% in 2023
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and in Mexico we know that the cartels operate basically without inspection by government or police
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officials because they're probably very often especially in some regions controlled by the cartels and we think
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there are cartel influences in Canada if you look at the lack of progress we've made on the drug war make
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no mistake that more than a hundred thousand people died from this last year and the chemicals that are
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being shipped here are coming from China and so these people are killing Americans more than the Vietnam War and
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when our intelligence agencies look at the actions that they're taking they feel like that they're not enough
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Canada has become a node of essentially Chinese infiltration and organized crime activity especially in
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Vancouver and this was hard for people to believe but Vancouver has become a production hub for China and a
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transshipment hub for fentanyl precursors Canadian regulated casinos first and foremost currency shops and real
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estate development were being used at scale for Chinese money launders it's called the Vancouver model
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of money laundering eventually I learned that Chinese state-sponsored so we're talking about
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Chinese intelligence Chinese military was directly involved with these underground Chinese criminal networks
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that were facilitating this massive money laundering which tied into fentanyl triads in that is Chinese
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organized crime in Toronto and Vancouver are command and control for the fentanyl money laundering of
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the type that was run through Toronto Dominion Bank they're the bosses of Mexican cartel money laundering in
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Canada and that's very strange Mr. Trump hasn't said that yet but what he did say the other day when
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people essentially reporters asked are you just trying to you know is this a ploy to get Canada to redo you
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know its trade deal and he said no there's massive fentanyl coming from Canada that fentanyl originates
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in China and so this gets to what Donald Trump is saying from Marco Rubio you know now secretary of state
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a few months ago he wrote to Canada's trade minister Mary Ying and said why is Canada a backdoor for a slave
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produced goods in Xinjiang that have been blocked by the United States and then rerouted through Canada
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transship and and come and stopped again at the US border so that's not about fentanyl but that is about
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a now senior Trump official telling Canada's trade minister you're not doing anything to stop these bad goods from
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China and you're hurting the United States so I do believe that Trump's uh Trump's office at a high
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Chris we're all right you got that estás on me and saidإ gotta make sure the CEO of Korea
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so this is one of my factors for making sure harm Pakistan is hoping that what I think has been
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down revolving per I'm saying that you're going to get historical security
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poll Grey hiking in Korea and I'm never going to thank you she just helped us in 2022
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so here we have to make sure that you're doing this because keep your DEI
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in peace-based society that if there's been a reflection
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subscription. Paying for independent journalism is the only way that we can continue to ensure
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that we have independent journalism, that we know that we need it. We need someone to tell
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the other side of the story. We need journalists to hold our political leaders accountable.
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And unfortunately, the legacy media has been captured. They are funded by the liberal
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government. They are funded by Justin Trudeau. And soon they'll be funded, presumably by Mark
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Carney when he wins the leadership race, as I predict will happen on Sunday night. So we need
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to tell that other side of the story. And I want you to help us build the movement and build the
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future. Okay. I'm going to introduce Sam Cooper because he is just a wealth of knowledge, has so
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much to say on so many topics. And as you know, he's an award-winning investigative journalist and
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a bestselling author. You can find Sam's work as well on Substack over at the Bureau. Previously
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to starting his own independent media outlet, Sam worked for Global News. He wrote for a long time
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for the Vancouver Sun. Incredibly respected journalist as good as it gets. Sam, thank you so
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much for joining the program. Glad to be with you, Candace. Okay. So let's start with Justin
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Trudeau because actually when I first saw images of Trudeau yesterday, I thought it was AI because
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I just didn't think that he would sob like that. Like with the whole bloodshot red eyes sobbing on
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TV. I've seen him sort of have a tear in the past and sort of dab his eyes, but not the waterworks
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like we saw. So what was Prime Minister saying? He was out there saying that he will not remain
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as Prime Minister. There was a rumor circulating around that he would stay on as the Prime Minister,
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as a caretaker Prime Minister during the election. Well, he put those rumors to bed. So let's play
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a clip of him saying that he will not be staying on as Prime Minister. There's uncertainty in the
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situation, not just from what's going on in the White House, but also in Canada with your expected
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departure, possibly days away, and also pending an election. Are you worried about that having an
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impact on Canada's ability to continue negotiating with the United States? And are you considering
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playing some kind of caretaker role up to and including staying on as a caretaker PM for
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that? No, I will not be. I look forward to a transition to my duly elected successor in
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the coming days or week. And then we'll just play one more clip. This is Trudeau breaking down
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into tears while discussing the latest in the Canada-U.S. trade war and his time in office.
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On a personal level, I've made sure that every single day in this office, I put Canadians first,
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that I have people's backs. And that's why I'm here to tell you all that we got you. Even in the very
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last days of this government, we will not let Canadians down today and long into the future.
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So Trudeau, very serious, very upset, maybe just reflecting on his time as Prime Minister
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and all the times that he did let Canadians down. I mean, when I think of Justin Trudeau's time in
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office, I will forever think of him unleashing the Emergencies Act on peaceful protesters in Ottawa
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and the way that he demonized those truckers and those Canadians who are demanding freedom,
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the way that he completely demonized the unvaccinated through the campaign. I went on
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French TV and asked whether we should even tolerate people who refuse to take the jab. Trudeau was a
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divisive prime minister. And I think he's starting to realize, you know, his time has come to an end.
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And I don't think that the history books will look very kindly on Trudeau as prime minister.
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Now, Sam, I, you know, you look at things more from the nuts and bolts in the investigative
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realm, not as much as a sort of a political commentator. But what was your takeaway from
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sort of one of his final appearances as prime minister?
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You're right. I'm very much a sort of a fact driven investigator. But politics is part of what's
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going on in Canada right now. So so many thoughts when we saw those tears. I mean,
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with respect to Mr. Trudeau, he is known for being performative. And I felt that that was a
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performance. Probably, you know, in hockey terms, he was feathering a pass to Mark Carney playing at
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the heartstrings of it looks like a lot of baby boomers or older that have nostalgia for Pierre
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Trudeau, the father and his vision of Canada. And I think we kind of see that vision of Canada
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is sort of fracturing Canada now into a post national state. And so you can say that whether
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Mr. Trudeau is sort of seeing that things have gone off the rails or, you know, he was turning
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on the tears there and claiming to have always acted for Canadians. Well, Candace, you and I know
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the thoughts here are that no, with SNC-Lavalin, with the Chinese interference, with so many
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different stories, him and his top aides, Gerald Butts, Katie Telford, were playing the politics for
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the liberals. And they were able to convince a lot of Canadians that they were doing it for Canadians.
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But I could go on and on. But I think that kind of vision that that he's got the backs of Canadians,
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it has fallen apart when you look at where we are right now.
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Well, even this very situation that we find ourselves in, right, like Trudeau announced
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his intention to resign on January 6th, he could have just called an election. If he was really
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looking out for what was in the best interest of Canadians, we would have already had an election
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and Canadians could have determined who the next prime minister would have been. He didn't.
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He stepped aside or he stayed on as prime minister, but said that he would step aside,
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called a liberal leadership race, prorogued parliament to avoid any kind of accountability.
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That was all for him. That was for the Liberal Party. And so that his party could regain themselves,
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could recollect and come back and try again in the election. And the frustrating thing is,
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it seems to kind of work because in that period, we've seen the liberals gain in the polls. So none
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of that was Canada first. That was all Liberal Party first. And I want to pull this into a comment
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that Donald Trump made. So we showed on the program yesterday that Trump put out a true social,
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kind of connecting some dots and saying he just realized that this is all for partisan purposes,
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that Trudeau is doing this. Now, Trump says it was to, so that he could run again as prime
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minister, he could remain as prime minister. That part is not correct, because Trudeau is gone.
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But there is an element of truth. So he put out another true social yesterday, reiterating this,
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he says, he says that, believe it or not, despite the terrible job he's done for Canada,
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I think that Justin Trudeau is using the tariff problem, which he has largely caused,
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in order to run again for prime minister. So much fun to watch. So the part that he gets wrong is
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that Trudeau is not running again for prime minister. But the essence of the tweet is true,
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because it is for the purpose of the Liberal Party. Again, just to reiterate, it's about saving
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the Liberal Party and trying to ensure that his crew and his posse and his people remain in power
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in Canada. And I'll just throw to one more clip, Sam, before I get your comment, which is CBC
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was out there, of course, defending Justin Trudeau. And saying that Trump's comments are wrong here is
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none other than Rosemary Barton doing what she does best, which is defending Justin Trudeau.
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For the president to, frankly, say those things about Justin Trudeau's staying in power,
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that is obviously an attempt to needle Canadians, to needle the prime minister at a time when
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that kind of response is not very welcome here. And it is particularly not welcome
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at a time when it is true that the prime minister is leaving and we are moving into a different
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political climate. What do you make of it all, Sam? Well, you're right. I mean, President Trump does
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what he does. He makes some comments, some trolling comments. They get something wrong. And yet,
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I do believe his analysis, as you said, is right. Look, Jeremy Nuttall, a great former Toronto Star
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reporter that's been writing op-eds for the Bureau and op-eds critical of President Trump,
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also wrote more than a month ago, Prime Minister Trudeau is hanging on like a low-key autocrat.
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None of this is normal. And absolutely, again, I go back to the feathering the past metaphor.
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Mr. Trudeau, I do think, was feeling a bit pressured by his party, a little bit pushed out. And I feel
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probably he feels that he's gotten back in the good graces of the Liberals by sort of managing
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the situation and passed that baton under the table with Gerald Butts and Katie Telford ushering
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Mark Carney forward. Some have called it a Carney coronation. And I think that's fair. And I do believe
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that an honest analyst would look at the way Mr. Trudeau and the party have acted and said,
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yes, they've managed this crisis that Canada finds itself in quite well for the survival and thriving
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of the Liberal Party. Well, that is exactly what they have done. Now, let's stick with Trump because
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we have an on-again, off-again tariff, right? He said that they were coming and then he paused them
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and then he brought them back. And now it seems like he's pausing them again. So Trump announced that
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there would be another short-term reduction on tariffs on goods traded under the existing USMCA
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agreement, which was the follow-up from NAFTA, and reduced the 25% tariff on Canadian potash down
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to 10%. So we have a clip from yesterday of President Trump saying that he would sign another
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executive order making the US less reliant on Canada, specifically talking about Canadian energy.
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And he said that we don't need energy from Canada. We don't need anything from Canada. Let's play that clip.
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I'll be signing an executive order freeing up our forests so that we're allowed to
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take down trees and make a lot of money and then re-harvest trees. We don't need trees from Canada.
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We don't need cars from Canada. We don't need energy from Canada. We don't need anything from Canada.
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Investing is all about the future. So what do you think is going to happen?
00:18:05.280
Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point. I think it would come down to precious metals.
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I hope we don't go cashless. I would say land is a safe investment. Technology companies.
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Solar energy. Robotic pollinators might be a thing. A wrestler to face a robot. That will have to happen.
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So whatever you think is going to happen in the future, you can invest in it at Wealthsimple.
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And so in response to all of that, we have Canadian finance minister Dominic LeBlanc announcing on X
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yesterday that Canada will delay its second round of retaliatory tariffs as well until April 2nd. So
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Canada will not proceed with the second wave of tariffs on the second round of goods, but believe
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that they would still have the original tariffs on the $30 billion of goods that they announced earlier
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this week. Likewise, Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, said that Ontario will not walk back retaliatory
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measures despite the one month tariff exemption on many Canadian goods. So here is a clip of Mr.
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Ford saying that Ontario will still move forward with specifically the 25 percent export tax on
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electricity sent to Michigan, New York and Minnesota. And he blames Donald Trump for the trade war.
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Any change in your attitude now that the president in the last 20 minutes said that USMCA compliant
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products coming in from Canada would be exempt until April 2nd from the tariffs?
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Well, first of all, Liz, thank you for having me on. I start off every interview with saying
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Canadians love Americans. I love Americans. It's been 20 years of my life. But in saying that,
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no, we're going to put a 25 percent tariff on electricity coming from Ontario to Michigan,
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New York and Minnesota. And isn't this a shame? It's an absolute mess. He's created chaos. He ran
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on a mandate to lower costs, lower inflation, create more jobs. It's total opposite.
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And I think Mr. Ford is right that it is total chaos. It's hard to keep track of all the moving
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parts. We keep hearing different cut out, carve outs and exemptions for these tariffs and this trade
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war. Not good for the economy. I'm not a fan of tariffs, generally speaking. If they can be used,
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perhaps, to help liberalize everybody's markets and get Canada to get rid of some of the protectionist
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pockets we have, it could be good. Not a fan overall, though. And I want to bring it in back
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to this idea of are we fighting a trade war or are we fighting a drug war? And you saw off the top
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several clips of Trump advisors, advisors in Trump administration, telling us that it's not
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really about trade. It's more still about drugs and Trump's initial concerns, which were that
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fentanyl is being made in Canada, being produced, being exported, and that our border is just simply
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not secure. I want to play this clip of Mr. Kevin Hassett, who was a U.S. director of the National
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Economic Council. He was on Fox News and he made it clear that he believes that this is a drug war,
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not a trade war. Let's play that clip. Respectfully, this is not a trade war. It's a drug war.
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And with all of the intelligence that we've been gathering from our intelligence agencies and our
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investigative people at the FBI and elsewhere, the president is extraordinarily disappointed
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in the actions that Canadians and Mexicans have taken to fight the drug war.
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Now, just one more point, Sam. I noticed on X that you responded to that video I just played
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and you wrote this. You said, I honestly don't know if it's a drug war or a trade war. What I do know
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is the average Canadian has absolutely no idea how penetrated our banks, housing, and institutions
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are by organized crime, but the U.S. military and police and intelligence know and are deeply
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concerned. So what is it that American officials know that most Canadians don't?
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Well, Candace, while I crafted quickly that post on X, I was working on an exclusive story for the
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Bureau that really, really I dug into my Canadian and American sources who say that, first of all,
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this is my opinion. I was being honest. I don't know if it's a drug or trade war, but I know it's
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both because organized crime, that is Chinese organized crime in Canada, is working with Mexican
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cartels in extremely complex ways to move fentanyl around the world, but to move it into America.
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And they're using a mixture of different legal commodities with illegal commodities. So the
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fentanyl precursors from China, we all know where they're coming from. They're being sent into
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Vancouver and Mexico, which have weak or accepting structures. And they're being produced in Canada
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and Mexico, and they're crossing all kinds of borders. So when people point to 40 kilograms at
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the northern border and call that a small amount from Canada, my reporting, which is consistent with
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U.S. intelligence, shows that Chinese criminals in Vancouver and Toronto are working with Mexican
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criminals to cross fentanyl across the Mexican border into California. And it gets very complex,
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but if your viewers take away anything, this is the point. A congressional bipartisan panel in December
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released a report saying the Chinese Communist Party is incentivizing fentanyl trafficking around
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the world. The U.S. government knows this, and they are preparing to take a number of measures to stop
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that trade into North America, which they believe China wants to kill North Americans. That includes
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Canadians. And so I, you know, the complexity here is Donald Trump is acting for Americans,
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and yet perhaps he's mixing in some trade benefits to the United States. And that's what's confusing a
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lot of people. But there's no question that Canada is a big part of the fentanyl problem.
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Well, I wanted to pull in another post that you made on X. We like to do a segment on the Candace
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Malcolm show called Fake News Friday. It is Friday. So I thought I would point this out. So you wrote
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that people want to understand why Canada is deemed part of the fentanyl supply chain,
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but they're relying on the politicized Globe and Mail or CBC reporting that consists of Google searches
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and seizure data that really explain nothing of the complexity of global trade-based money laundering.
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And then you will stay tuned. I think that was a preview to the piece that you were just talking
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about. And I want to go back to our friend at the CBC, Rosemary Barton, who is part of that clip
00:24:42.340
that I played earlier. There's a little bit more to it. So I want to play the longer bit where she says
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that President Trump is completely misrepresenting what is happening and that they're making false
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claims about the border and that basically Dustin Trudeau has made enough progress and that she's
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satisfied. Let's play that clip. The other challenge here, as well as the mixed messages
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around what is going on and what they actually want, is frankly the complete misrepresentation
00:25:10.680
and false claims about what Canada is doing at the border. There is no doubt that progress has been
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made over the past month and there are clear data points that they can look at to see that.
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So is it a complete misrepresentation and false claims to say that Canada is not doing what it
00:25:31.620
needs to do to crack down on this international drug trade? I hadn't seen that clip and I don't
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get into ad hominem at all, but Ms. Barton should stick to her lane of talking to political aides,
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political sources. I'll, as much as I can, stick to my lane of talking to high-level intelligence,
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law enforcement in North America and around the world that understands that Canada has been chosen
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as a weak point by Mexican cartels, Chinese transnational crime, Iranian Hezbollah state
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sponsored criminality. And people don't have to really, you know, take my word for it. There's all
00:26:11.220
kinds of reporting such as the Cameron Ortis case that came to the surface in Ottawa where RCMP's top
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intelligence official was leaking the plans of the United States and the Five Eyes to go after
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Hezbollah money launderers in Canada that are laundering billions through the big six banks.
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I don't need to start to talk about the hundreds of billions of dollars that Chinese transnational
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crime is using in real estate money laundering in Vancouver and Toronto. I could go on and on,
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but my message is Ms. Barton doesn't know what she's talking about in that area. In fact, she's
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echoing or parroting the points of the Trudeau government, which I'll leave my comments at that.
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I would say that the Globe and Mail story report that I read similarly, they're out of their depth and
00:27:01.220
really they should, again, if they're political reporters, stick to politics until you've done a
00:27:06.900
decade of work like I have. And I'm respected around the world as the subject matter expert on
00:27:12.580
these matters. Well, it goes to show the importance of independent media because we don't need to
00:27:18.700
parrot liberal talking points. It doesn't matter because they don't fund us. They don't pay us,
00:27:22.900
whereas that's not entirely the case with some of those others. Now, you said that Canada has been
00:27:28.180
chosen by these international organizations as a weak point, I presume. And it's interesting, Sam,
00:27:35.340
because I know that prior to 9-11, Canada was also a hotbed for those funding terrorists. And we know
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that some of the masterminds and the people who paid for and funded al-Qaeda and part of the 9-11
00:27:47.120
attacks were living in Canada. And it seems like after that, Canada did take some measures to try
00:27:52.820
to crack down on this. I know during the Harper years, they expelled Iranian diplomats and cut off
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relations. Now, can you help us understand, like, how has this happened? Why was Canada selected?
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What were the laws that they manipulated or the loopholes that they found that allowed them to
00:28:11.680
infiltrate and set up these organizations and structures? Why wasn't it stopped by the Trudeau
00:28:16.620
government? And why wasn't it stopped, or at least these red flags and alarm bells raised by American
00:28:22.200
counterparts at any other point over the last 10 or 20 years that this was happening to stop it? Like,
00:28:27.520
why is it just happening now? Well, I'll try to stick to about three points here. So one,
00:28:33.640
in my book, Willful Blindness, I track back to Hong Kong in the 1990s, and some Canadian immigration and
00:28:40.680
police officials that discovered a massive infiltration of our immigration system where
00:28:46.140
the highest levels of organized crime in China and Hong Kong were able to allegedly corrupt Canadian
00:28:53.820
immigration officials were able to technically breach Canada's border vetting systems. And so you had
00:29:01.700
incredibly wealthy criminals from China, in fact, working with the Chinese Communist Party,
00:29:08.140
setting up in Vancouver and Toronto, buying tremendous amounts of real estate. And that leads to
00:29:13.820
a lot of the infiltration that we see now in the fentanyl trade war or drug war, whatever you want to call
00:29:21.160
it. So we again, we have these triads that are using Canadian real estate banks, they're into
00:29:26.800
technology, they're into farmland, they're into everything. We see, remember, we see these super
00:29:32.080
labs tucked up in rural areas should be in Ontario, as well as British Columbia. This doesn't happen by
00:29:38.480
accident. So the real key here that my story the other day pointed to, the headline was the fentanyl
00:29:46.600
crisis is a trade based money laundering crisis. And, you know, your question was, why have these
00:29:54.920
organized crime groups being able to set up in Canada, essentially, my police sources say, for
00:30:01.120
decades, they have known our Charter of Rights, which is a great document for protecting the rights of
00:30:07.620
Canadians, that is not always maybe in the case of some people that went to Ottawa during the pandemic.
00:30:14.240
But this was meant to protect the Canadians from overreach. What has happened, the unintended
00:30:21.340
consequences is, essentially, it's impossible for the RCMP to do complex investigations on cartels
00:30:28.840
and Chinese triads, even to get wiretaps when our American partners tell us, you have the Sinaloa
00:30:35.520
cartel operating in Vancouver, can we do a tap? No, the Charter of Rights blocks it. So essentially,
00:30:40.980
my sources are saying, you can spend a billion dollars for a couple of choppers and hundreds
00:30:47.120
of police on the borders. That's really just theater. If you can't prosecute serious organized
00:30:53.800
crime, and we can't in Canada, you know, the problem will continue and the US government knows it.
00:31:01.080
Well, it's interesting, because when you look at the problem on the southern on the American's southern
00:31:05.840
border with Mexico, it really is that there are large hordes of people crossing in illegally. I
00:31:11.580
mean, it's slowed down considerably, thank goodness, under President Trump. But in the past, you see
00:31:16.160
these huge caravans of people just walking in, and you see footage, and it's unbelievable. So you
00:31:21.740
understand on the southern border, what they do need is more patrols and more surveillance. But the
00:31:26.760
Canadian problem is different. It's distinct, it's unique. And as we have heard, a lot of these drugs
00:31:32.260
come from China, they come into the Vancouver ports, I believe last time you were on the show,
00:31:36.180
you talked about this, they come in through the ports, they cross in the borders, and there's just
00:31:40.240
not the same level of inspection happening at the borders and at the ports. And that's part of the
00:31:45.060
reason why that's allowed. So I guess my next question is, what should Canada be doing to start
00:31:51.320
cracking down on this and show that we are taking it seriously? We don't want this happening in our
00:31:55.440
country anymore. Well, you point to really great visual there, we have seen, you know, Latin America,
00:32:01.980
South America, essentially marching through the Mexican border. And that's, it's easy to see that
00:32:06.860
concern there, maybe even easier to stop. But in Canada, our ports are, I won't, it's not an
00:32:14.060
exaggeration to say that serious organized crime from Iran, China, Mexico, working with the Hells Angels
00:32:21.020
in Canada, has significant control of the port of Vancouver. I'm told by sources in British Columbia
00:32:29.880
and Ontario, that Indian diaspora, even maybe more slanted towards the sick community, has its
00:32:37.640
effective control of trucking industries in Canada. So, you know, it's a very sophisticated grasp of
00:32:45.320
organized crime to move drugs around. And the banks, perhaps even a greater tool combined with real
00:32:52.900
estate in Vancouver and Toronto, I'll give you one, one stunning data point from this story that I posted
00:32:59.000
yesterday, a non police official, but someone with great insight into mortgage regulation, estimated
00:33:06.360
over a trillion dollars in this sort of underground banking and money laundering through Toronto real
00:33:13.600
estate in the past 12 years. And so again, my sources in the United States and Canada, we're talking high
00:33:21.100
level police and intelligence say, this is what the US government is really concerned with. That is in a
00:33:27.060
sophisticated way, Canada's supposed G7 economy is being used by the most dangerous and
00:33:34.120
sophisticated organized crime in the world. And I think that calls back to the official, I believe his name was Kevin
00:33:39.700
Hassett, seemed to be a very measured and intelligent person saying that our US intelligence has deep concerns about
00:33:47.740
Canada. And I think those are the concerns that our banks, housing, and I hate to say it, our political class may be
00:33:58.840
Well, not maybe, I mean, we know that there are, the government themselves said when they launched this foreign
00:34:04.600
interference report and probe into parliament, that there were parliamentarians, there were elected
00:34:09.600
officials in Canada that are operating with influence from foreign governments. Now, of course, the report
00:34:15.820
that came out didn't offer much else other than that. And it sort of leaves us perplexed. I noticed in the
00:34:20.840
story that you put up about the trade based money laundering and the fentanyl crisis with these Chinese,
00:34:26.280
Mexican and Canadian crime rings, that you included a famous picture of Justin Trudeau at a Vancouver dinner with
00:34:36.280
all of those Chinese guys. They're all in there. So, you know, when you say that this is connected to the top, and that
00:34:44.060
even, you know, the Prime Minister of Canada may be rubbing elbows with some of the people who are involved in this
00:34:51.280
nefarious activity. I mean, that's so concerning to so many Canadians. Like, it's hard to even wrap your head
00:34:56.380
around that optic. What do you think is happening? And how did this, how do we, how is it this case that
00:35:04.420
we have a Canadian Prime Minister who is rubbing elbows with the bad guys?
00:35:09.420
It's, it's incredibly concerning and hard to believe. And I think that maybe that's my problem. I have been
00:35:15.640
perhaps a voice in the wilderness saying, look, we don't need to point to specific figures in that
00:35:21.880
picture. But I detail in my book that I could point to one person and say, you know, major New Zealand
00:35:29.120
money laundering conviction or fine. Another person I know from BC Lottery Corporation money laundering
00:35:35.380
surveillance photos. Another one I know that my source from the recent story says connected to 900
00:35:41.860
million in wire transfers from Hong Kong that were followed by FinTrack and the RCMP. And that is why
00:35:50.840
my source said, it's not just myself as an investigative open source reporter that can make
00:35:57.420
these connections. The US government, the RCMP, I believe probably others are have seen those same
00:36:05.800
fundraising meetings with Mr. Trudeau surrounded by known organized crime or Chinese intelligence
00:36:11.860
suspects. None of them are convicted. They're suspects. But certainly the optics are incredibly
00:36:18.200
concerning when Mr. Trudeau shaking hands with someone that's the subject of a major police
00:36:24.240
intelligence and FinTrack report. So what does that say about the money flowing into Mr. Trudeau's
00:36:30.200
Papineau rioting or the liberal coffers? I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that if someone
00:36:36.600
is a Chinese organized crime suspect that has direct relations with Beijing donating to our prime
00:36:46.520
Well, it's interesting because if Pierre Polyev, leader of the Conservative Party, is seen with anyone who the media
00:36:52.240
deems is too far to the political right, they make huge hay out of it and try to say that Polyev is courting
00:36:58.580
extremists and that he's some kind of a dangerous threat. And here we have photographic evidence of the prime
00:37:04.660
minister shaking hands with known criminals and attending fundraisers. It's not like someone just, you know,
00:37:10.620
showed up in a photo line to take a picture with them. It's like he's sitting there talking to the meeting with
00:37:14.680
them, trying to get money from them. It's unbelievable. And it makes me wonder, like, this whole trade war
00:37:20.600
narrative, all of the sort of pearl clutching and the fervent nationalism that we've now seen from the
00:37:27.140
political left in Canada, making it seem like Donald Trump is the biggest enemy to the country, it almost
00:37:32.960
just seems like a total political distraction, because they don't want to talk about the meat of
00:37:37.420
the issue. They don't want to talk about the concerning elements, so much of which, you know, you
00:37:42.160
painstakingly point out to your readers, say, I'm thank goodness that you're there doing that work. And
00:37:46.600
it's not easy, I know. But like, what do you think about the whole the whole narrative, the whole
00:37:51.860
sort of like Canada, resurgence in Canadian national pride, and Team Canada approach, as opposed to just
00:37:58.840
talking about the issues that you and I are talking about right now? Yeah, I mean, to what you said,
00:38:03.740
I go to a viewer comment that was liked maybe 50 times on that recent story was, okay, I'm glad that
00:38:10.500
Sam or Mr. Cooper, we can read your fact driven reporting. Clearly, Canada has a fentanyl problem,
00:38:16.600
by the same token, President Trump is using a sledgehammer. And so I believe that Canadians
00:38:22.840
that have no responsibility, obviously, for, you know, our government turning a blind eye to money
00:38:29.440
laundering or fentanyl, or rather being inactive on known threats, the average Canadian is not to
00:38:36.000
blame. If they're to blame for anything, it's maybe not paying enough attention to, you know,
00:38:41.100
solid reporting on the issues. And so I just think it's a very confusing situation where the,
00:38:47.460
you know, at those dinner table conversations, there will be some people in the know that as you
00:38:52.800
and perhaps I, if we share something, I think we could probably agree that Canada has turned a blind
00:38:59.260
eye to severe foreign interference, severe organized crime to do with terrorism to do with fentanyl
00:39:05.660
trafficking. And yet the average Canadian has no idea, they still have this opinion that we're this
00:39:11.620
upstanding, you know, the, the under the the under, what would we say, we punched over our weight on
00:39:19.000
Juneau Beach during the World War Two. And we still have that image of ourselves, but it's kind of been
00:39:24.520
shattered. And so if you point to the left and say, okay, now they're saying we need an army. Now they're
00:39:30.060
saying we need, you know, a self-defense citizen force to be ready against, you know, an abusive
00:39:36.460
neighbor. Where were they two years ago or five years ago, 10 years ago, when, you know, people were
00:39:42.040
saying, let's fund our army more. They were saying, no, we don't need it. We'd rather focus on whatever
00:39:47.280
culture war of the day. Right? Well, I love, I love the enthusiasm about, you know, let's protect
00:39:52.880
Canada. Let's assert our own sovereignty and protect our own sovereignty. But not just to the Americans.
00:39:58.040
How about to, like you said, the Iranians, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the Sikhs, and everyone
00:40:03.240
else trying to take advantage of Canada's niceness and our charter of rights and freedoms to build
00:40:09.120
criminal enterprises all around us. Well, Sam Cooper, it's always such a pleasure to have you
00:40:13.140
on the show. Thank you for joining us. And everyone go check out his subset called The Bureau and
00:40:17.240
subscribe to support independent journalism. Thanks, Sam. Thanks. Have a great weekend.
00:40:21.340
Thanks. You too. Okay. Changing gears a little bit. I want to talk, this is one of my favorite
00:40:26.320
topics and something that I want Canadians to pay more attention to. And I think that even
00:40:31.000
our politicians need to wake up to this. I'm talking about, well, first of all, the huge
00:40:35.880
movement in the United States to make America healthy again. It was picked up and spearheaded
00:40:40.600
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat who teamed up with President Trump and they brought forward
00:40:46.520
this message. And here in Canada, we have Colin Craig, who runs Second Street, my former colleague
00:40:52.700
at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And he wrote a piece in The Hub the other day saying,
00:40:57.380
make Canada healthy again. So I want to bring Colin on to talk about his work, talk about the state of
00:41:03.200
healthcare in Canada and how we can make our own country healthy again. Colin, thank you so much
00:41:08.240
for joining the podcast. Well, thanks for having me, Candice.
00:41:11.220
We talked about the story on the show a few weeks ago. 77% of young Americans are unfit to serve in the
00:41:17.760
military due to being overweight, using drugs, having mental health or other health issues. The same
00:41:24.080
thing is true in Canada. There was a really alarming report in the National Post talking about how young
00:41:31.020
Canadians are just not quite healthy. So Colin, what made you write this piece and how can we start this
00:41:36.760
movement to make Canada healthy again? Yeah, it's something I've been interested in, Candice, for a long
00:41:42.180
time and I've been following it. And, you know, even during COVID, I thought there was a real missed
00:41:46.780
opportunity. I mean, a lot of people that had to be hospitalized for COVID had underlying health
00:41:52.360
conditions. And in many cases, those were preventable. You had government saying, stay indoors,
00:41:57.620
stay indoors, stay indoors, when in fact, what we often needed was more vitamin D from the sun,
00:42:03.680
getting out, going for a walk, being in shape, you know, the types of things that could improve your
00:42:09.700
immune system so that it could help fight off COVID. And I don't want to go down the COVID path
00:42:14.440
too much. But I thought, you know, like, when are we going to talk as a nation about sort of the
00:42:19.840
benefits of seeing a healthier Canadian population and how that would have an improvement on the
00:42:27.120
healthcare sector? So, you know, without a doubt, I mean, you and I have talked about it before. I've
00:42:31.760
talked with your colleagues, we've had columns published with your organization talking about how to fix the
00:42:38.020
healthcare system. And in economic terms, that's the supply of healthcare. But I think in this
00:42:43.560
country, we don't talk about demand enough, and how if we simply lived healthier, we could reduce
00:42:48.800
demand, and that would take pressure off the healthcare system, and ultimately reduce wait
00:42:53.080
times for people, whether you're waiting for cancer treatment to get your knee operated on,
00:42:57.320
waiting in an emergency room, whatever, we could take a lot of the pressure off the healthcare system.
00:43:02.280
Well, you're absolutely right. Because by the time you go and see a doctor, I mean, you might be
00:43:06.700
waiting for quite a long time. We've seen so many reports, really concerning reports about Canadians
00:43:11.040
not having access to a primary care physician or a family doctor, people waiting outside in the snow
00:43:17.080
for hours and hours to try to sign up for a doctor. But oftentimes, by the time you go and you are sick,
00:43:22.860
it's kind of too late. So I think a lot of the movement that I see in sort of the younger generation
00:43:27.700
and people who are very online is trying to get healthy before you even need that and trying to
00:43:33.800
understand and address the lifestyle changes that you can make so that you can live a happier,
00:43:38.580
sort of healthier, longer life of being healthy. And I love that movement. I love the idea of
00:43:44.180
waking up, you know, I listened to a podcast called the Andrew Huberman Lab and the Huberman Lab by Andrew
00:43:50.240
Huberman, who's a professor over at Stanford University. And just kind of like basic lifestyle
00:43:54.360
things, he encourages you to get up and watch the sunrise, you know, to delay your first cup of coffee and
00:44:00.120
try to wake up naturally with the sun, to exercise every day, to eat sort of healthy,
00:44:05.500
minimally processed or non-processed foods, and just kind of taking control of your own health.
00:44:10.360
And I've done that with myself and my kids. And I think you're totally right that it started with
00:44:13.700
COVID. Because when COVID happened, it was like, well, not only do we have to make sure that we're
00:44:18.920
healthy, but we also can't necessarily trust the things that we're being told by health officials.
00:44:23.500
And I would much rather, you know, take my advice from people who are super healthy and live
00:44:29.200
healthy lives than watching some of these like super unhealthy or overweight public officials and
00:44:35.140
doctors. So a long way to say, I totally agree with you. And I'm totally on board. What do you think
00:44:40.320
the biggest thing that Canadians can do to get healthy is?
00:44:44.860
Yeah, and I should note, I mean, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist or anything like that. I'm
00:44:49.320
someone with an interest in it. And I think probably there's two things that we can really do
00:44:54.140
to improve our health. One is just be conscious, as you just noted about the foods that we're eating,
00:45:00.780
what we're putting into our body. Peter Atia, he's a Canadian, actually a doctor who's provided a lot
00:45:07.120
of advice to Hollywood celebrities and others, people that are interested, not just in living longer,
00:45:12.520
but having a longer quality style of life, right? So you're not living to 100 sitting in a senior's
00:45:18.900
home, but you're active, you know, you're mobile, you've got more muscle strength, whatever.
00:45:23.560
So he's really done a lot of time and energy studying that. And in terms of diet, he said,
00:45:28.280
the number one thing you can do is to stop drinking sugary drinks. And, you know, you look at some of
00:45:35.700
them and the amount of sugar that's in those things. Personally, I don't touch them. I have many ways
00:45:41.060
that I could improve my diet. I'm not perfect. But that I think is one thing that we would all be wise
00:45:47.400
to cut back on or certainly consider eliminating. That's on the diet side. The other thing is the
00:45:55.340
exercise side. And it's something even as simple as just exercising every day, going for a walk.
00:46:02.740
And, you know, Peter Atia talks about, you know, it's not just getting steps in or going for a walk,
00:46:08.460
but you want to push it a bit to the point where you get into the zone two level where,
00:46:12.600
you know, he describes it as being, it's challenging to talk. So if you're going with
00:46:17.620
a friend, you probably don't want to be talking the whole 30 minutes because it's a little bit
00:46:21.560
hard for you to get up to that level and try and do that. So, I mean, those are a couple of things
00:46:26.200
that I've read that I think are important. But, you know, more than anything, when I stand back and
00:46:31.320
look at the big picture, you know, as I said, if we all lived healthier or a good portion of Canadians
00:46:37.860
lived healthier, we could take a huge amount of demand off of the healthcare system. The
00:46:42.780
Canadian Diabetes Association notes that about 90% of the diabetes cases are type two. That's
00:46:49.660
generally the type that you're going to get because of lifestyle decisions. The Canadian Heart and
00:46:54.920
Stroke Association notes that about 80% of premature heart stroke or heart disease cases could be
00:47:02.280
prevented. The Canadian Cancer Society notes that about four in 10 cases of cancer could be prevented
00:47:09.360
through lifestyle changes and environmental changes, those types of things. So you're not going to,
00:47:15.400
I'm not saying that everyone is somehow going to become healthy just by changing their lifestyles.
00:47:20.140
Unfortunately, some of us have genetic health problems that cannot be avoided. And there's freak
00:47:25.880
accidents that happen too and so forth and people can end up with serious health problems. But there is a lot
00:47:32.100
of pressure on our healthcare system that is due to lifestyle decisions that we're making. So if we
00:47:38.760
can find a way to get governments to carefully kind of nudge people in the right direction, while walking
00:47:44.540
that line where governments aren't intruding in our lives, we don't want that, you know, you don't want
00:47:48.940
the government knocking on your door canvas at 6am saying, you know, it's time to go for a run. No one
00:47:53.680
wants that. But if there's, you know, ways that we can kind of nudge people towards healthier living,
00:47:58.220
we can take pressure off the healthcare system. And that's kind of what I talked about in column
00:48:02.660
too, is just sort of, how do you walk that line or what are some ideas?
00:48:06.340
Yeah, I agree that you don't want government to like force people into activities. And this isn't
00:48:11.360
necessarily like a political, a politically driven movement. But then when you look at what's
00:48:17.040
happening in the US under the Trump administration, specifically with RFKJ or RFK Jr., is that he's into
00:48:24.920
looking at some of the sort of I don't know if it's unintended consequences, or if it's real
00:48:29.740
corruption. But the idea of like, we don't always really know what's in our food, we don't know
00:48:34.460
how much of our food supply is like poisoned with chemicals, or you know, the pesticides that are used
00:48:42.100
on food and how that gets into the food supply, and the impact that that might have on ourselves and
00:48:47.180
on our bodies. And so there definitely is a political element to all of this. I'm as a mom,
00:48:52.180
I'm like, so paranoid about what my children get. And they know at this point, when they go to a
00:48:56.740
birthday party, I get to look through the goodie bag at the end, because most of the stuff I'm
00:49:00.780
throwing out. And I'm actually really like, happy with my children, because they understand that
00:49:05.700
anything that has artificial dyes in it, mommy's gonna say no. And now they get that. And then they
00:49:10.760
themselves won't even ask for it. And they'll throw it out proactively. So you can tell your children
00:49:15.680
they get it. Like, I don't want them eating artificial dyes. Partially just because I don't know,
00:49:20.740
like I've seen enough studies and read enough to know that there's, you know, it's not quite black
00:49:24.760
and white, whether this stuff is healthy. And, you know, thankfully, Canada does a better job,
00:49:28.980
I think, than the US in banning some of these dangerous chemicals in our food. But I think that
00:49:34.180
people are really waking up, especially the younger generation. You know, there's a number of
00:49:38.380
really powerful sort of health influencers who have medical backgrounds, who understand the chemistry
00:49:43.560
of it all. And they're the ones raising, ringing the alarm bell. And I think that there's a lot of
00:49:47.720
room for that in Canada. And it's a bit of a missing element. Now, I know I brought you on
00:49:52.780
because I want to talk about some of your studies that you've done over at Second Street. You had
00:49:56.240
one report saying that 15,474 Canadians died while waiting for health care last year, just so tragic.
00:50:03.940
Another one saying that Canada could easily grow our health sector by $21 billion. So I'll let you,
00:50:11.320
you can choose which one of those three topics you want to talk about there, Colin.
00:50:14.560
Sure. Yeah. So in terms of waiting list deaths, you know, just to be clear, that's a wide array
00:50:19.860
of cases, everything from someone dying while waiting for cataract surgery, to on the other
00:50:26.160
side, something that, you know, you potentially could die from not getting cardiac surgery,
00:50:31.440
heart surgery in time. So, you know, sometimes when we put this data out, people kind of go,
00:50:35.940
you know, these are just cardiac or cataract cases, or people waiting for hips and knees or
00:50:40.200
whatever, you're not going to die from that. To which we always say, well, wait a second here.
00:50:44.940
Do you want to spend the final year or two of your life with cloudy vision or stuck in your apartment
00:50:50.340
with chronic pain because you're waiting for your hip operation? It's no way to treat people in their
00:50:55.620
final years of their lives. So we certainly wouldn't dismiss those. They're very troubling.
00:51:01.540
And in some cases, you could imagine how someone, you know, if they've changed their lifestyle,
00:51:06.680
you know, related to what we were just talking about, if you're stuck with chronic pain in your
00:51:11.980
apartment, not moving around, you're not getting exercise. And maybe that does contribute to a
00:51:17.060
premature death, maybe a heart attack or whatever. So the numbers are very troubling. There's certainly
00:51:23.100
cases of the latter, as I mentioned, people dying while waiting for heart procedures, cancer treatment,
00:51:29.620
and so forth. So it's troubling. And one of the comparisons we draw, Candace, is, you know,
00:51:34.840
you think about what governments do to private businesses across this country. Every single day,
00:51:39.340
you have government health inspectors going into private businesses and doing health inspection
00:51:46.680
reports. And even the most trivial thing will get written up and published publicly. You know,
00:51:52.740
you can go online here in Alberta, and see that there's a daycare in Airdrie, I believe it was,
00:51:59.500
where they were missing a paper towel holder. So they got written up, it's posted online for a few
00:52:05.820
years. What happens when someone dies on a waiting list, and the government's healthcare system doesn't
00:52:13.020
provide treatment in time? Does anyone write that up? And the answer, of course, is no, governments do not
00:52:18.240
hold themselves to this high standard that they expect everyone else to meet. So we think it's
00:52:22.940
important to have more transparency in that area, draw attention to what's going on. So ideally,
00:52:28.440
governments can understand more about the weaknesses in their systems and act reform to improve it.
00:52:34.980
Well, I mean, it's so interesting. And I want to circle back because this piece you wrote about how
00:52:40.940
Canada could easily grow its health sector by $21 billion. Now, everybody knows, and this is maybe
00:52:46.960
another outgrowth of COVID, that Canada's healthcare is good at certain moments. Like if you have a child
00:52:53.460
that is very sick, and they get rushed to the front of the line, there's amazing doctors and nurses and
00:52:59.820
healthcare practitioners that will take care of them. And Canada is like second to none, when it comes to
00:53:05.500
dealing with sort of that acute emergency care. It's kind of the other side, right? The chronic things or
00:53:11.700
the non-emergency things that we just don't seem to have access, like go into an emergency room in
00:53:17.880
Toronto, and you'll be horrified, you feel like you're in a homeless shelter, or some kind of a
00:53:22.160
refugee camp. And so, you know, we know that we need more money into the healthcare system. The problem
00:53:27.660
is that we're, our governments are broke, right? Like, we're so overspent, so stretched. And so this idea
00:53:33.720
is we know we need more money. The question is, like, where are we getting it from? So why don't you
00:53:38.000
walk us through your proposal here? Yeah, so I think there's a few things to consider. And one
00:53:43.740
of which is that we have a system that is one of the highest spending in the world. There's a lot
00:53:51.020
of money in the system. And as you mentioned, there's a lot of good people that work in the
00:53:55.640
system, they're doctors, they're nurses, they got into it because they want to help patients, they do
00:53:59.580
their best. The problem is the structure of the system itself is broken. And I think a great piece
00:54:06.320
of evidence of this, Candace, is, you know, we can't as Canadians look at any province that go,
00:54:11.520
wow, they're really hitting it out of the park with their healthcare system. It's an A-plus model.
00:54:15.780
There's no very little wait times, you know, everyone's satisfied. We don't have a system like
00:54:20.420
that. It doesn't matter if it's conservative, liberal, NDP. I mean, you can generally find
00:54:25.260
dysfunction in the health systems that those governments are running. So the problem is the
00:54:31.880
structure. All provinces generally have the same structure. And one of the structural problems that
00:54:37.320
we have in this country is that we basically ban private comprehensive health insurance.
00:54:44.880
And we make it extremely difficult if people want to pay for healthcare outside of the public system.
00:54:50.740
And so when we look at universal healthcare systems that perform better than Canada, countries like
00:54:57.440
Sweden, France, Norway, Australia, there's lots of universal healthcare systems that do better than
00:55:04.140
us. They all give patients a choice, use the public system, or you can pay privately or use private
00:55:11.060
comprehensive health insurance, whereas we ban the latter. And, you know, the results speak for
00:55:16.420
themselves. It puts more pressure on the public system because everyone has to use it, or you have
00:55:21.360
to fly to another province or another country to take care. So all that to say the report that you had
00:55:28.040
just mentioned, we asked the question to Canadians, well, what if you could purchase private health
00:55:33.660
insurance instead of depending on the public system? And we put in front of them some different
00:55:39.180
rates as to what it would cost depending on their age and gender and so forth. And we calculated that
00:55:44.640
Canadians were willing to spend over $21 billion a year on insurance. So that would take a lot of
00:55:52.360
pressure off of the public healthcare system, create lots of opportunities for healthcare workers would
00:55:58.000
help us grow our system, so that ultimately, we have more healthcare in this country. And it makes
00:56:03.980
access to healthcare easier into simply having people languishing on grading.
00:56:08.940
Well, I know, I know, I know, like so many people, you know, if you're an emergency, this happened to
00:56:13.700
my husband a few weeks ago, he cut his thumb at work, he was downtown Toronto, and he had to just be
00:56:18.240
taken to the nearest hospital, he needed a few stitches. And it was just unbelievable. Like he waited
00:56:23.920
almost 12 hours just to see a doctor. And the concern was that he had hit an artery or something. I said,
00:56:29.880
you know, you should just get in the car and drive to New York, because you would have gotten
00:56:34.540
stitches a lot faster if you're just driven to Buffalo, honestly, it's wild. And so in those
00:56:39.500
situations, just having another option is no need. Interesting. I want to point to a recent poll that
00:56:44.840
was done by Abacus Polling about politics. And it shows that the so this is Abacus Polling, we're
00:56:50.960
talking about what are the major issues facing Canadians. And one of them is healthcare, one of
00:56:55.940
the top issues, you can see it's the third row down. And they ask who do you trust more to handle
00:57:00.420
this 30% say conservatives, 26% say liberals. So I think that maybe conservatives have a window and
00:57:06.780
an opportunity to push the needle on this topic and say to Canadians, you know, there is another
00:57:11.540
option. There is a way, as you said, other countries that have universal healthcare, right? Universal
00:57:16.620
healthcare just means everyone has access to a public system. It doesn't mean that the public
00:57:20.020
system is a monopoly and that you cannot have an alternative. And I hope that that is one area
00:57:25.000
that Pierre Polly and the Conservatives will push on. Well, Colin, Craig, thank you so much for
00:57:30.320
joining the show. It's always a pleasure to have you and everyone go check out Colin's work over
00:57:34.040
at Second Street. Thanks a lot, Candice. Always appreciate the chat. Okay. All right. Thank you
00:57:38.940
so much. That's all we have time for today, folks. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Candice Malcolm.
00:57:43.220
This is the Candice Malcolm Show. We'll be back again on Sunday. I hope you'll join us for a Sunday
00:57:46.880
evening broadcast to announce the new unelected Prime Minister of Canada. Thank you so much and God bless.