True Patriot Love - CAF Espionage Charges & New Combat Uniforms Explained

00:00:00.000 well in the last couple of months we've heard a lot about what's going to be happening with

00:00:08.280 the canadian armed forces here in canada a lot of promises a lot of budget and uh frankly a lot of

00:00:14.940 involvement around the world in peacekeeping and of course to join us to talk more about this and

00:00:20.160 maybe wrap up uh the year uh for the military with a view on the military brian istid joins us thanks

00:00:26.680 so much for being here man thank you for having me now by the way you'll find all kinds of great

00:00:31.560 shows with brian on there and uh coming up in the new year your very own interviews and uh

00:00:36.940 ongoing show so delighted to have you on man thank you yeah it's great to be here i'm excited

00:00:41.940 okay so look uh a few things a couple of things we'll get to today one of them and we'll get to

00:00:47.200 it a bit later on uh canadian armed forces new military uniforms for women uh frankly a more

00:00:53.440 gender inclusive uniform long overdue maybe but first of all this one caught my attention thanks

00:00:59.220 to you actually uh brian you you kind of pointed it out to me that uh there is an investigation going

00:01:05.700 on an arrest has been made um that has been deemed an espionage charge um matthew robar is the gentleman

00:01:16.220 who's been charged with this tell me a little bit about this case overall where did this come from

00:01:21.860 how did this happen and and tell me what's going on yeah perfect so he's a cf income

00:01:28.900 mem intelligence operator so he's a non-commissioned member uh so below the rank of officer intelligence

00:01:36.380 operator working for canadian forces intelligence command so i would have worked in a similar

00:01:40.760 environment as this gentleman uh about five or six years ago with the same levels of clearances

00:01:46.840 um similar i don't know what files exactly he was working on it doesn't really matter but it's it's

00:01:52.160 the internet is telling me that he's facing eight charges under the national defense act

00:01:57.060 um with additional defenses under canada's foreign intelligence and security of information laws which

00:02:02.200 were very conveniently changed as recently as the spring of 25 to be much more inclusive in my opinion

00:02:11.000 to dissuade other whistleblowers from coming out talking about anything that they saw or did in

00:02:16.940 their time under um dnd so i'll just walk through a few of the charges here yeah that'd be great

00:02:23.040 yeah so he's charged with communicating special operational information to a foreign entity

00:02:28.520 what does that mean that that that's the first one that caught my attention sorry and i may stop you as

00:02:34.060 we go along with some of these what what does that actually mean that sounds like he's handing off the

00:02:38.580 microchip to the enemy so special operational information is the important designation that

00:02:45.000 was just changed i believe it was in march or april of this year to be basically include anything and

00:02:52.040 everything that uh you could have seen written about overheard at the water cooler anything at all

00:02:59.340 you know what i mean that's deemed special operational information is now a threat to national security

00:03:05.640 to divulge it to um even an allied an allied nation you know what i mean without the requisite levels of

00:03:12.320 bureaucracy and clearances and diss lists and uh terror lines and all the other secret squirrel stuff you

00:03:19.660 know what i mean that goes on in terms of being able to say anything about specific levels of information

00:03:23.480 but this specific special operational information or also say from now on soi designation um is is very broad

00:03:32.380 so what does that mean to answer your question i have no idea it could be almost anything it could be

00:03:39.140 something extraordinarily devastating about the locations and activities of specific troops on

00:03:44.940 specific operational missions it to down to um the uh a designation of some kind of technical piece of

00:03:53.720 equipment that someone could be using operationally that could be deemed soi now because they use a certain type of

00:03:59.380 um laser or a sight on a rifle or a laptop or anything like this this is very in my opinion

00:04:07.320 very deliberately broad to keep people from talking to media in general so okay he gets arrested back on

00:04:15.680 december 10th and investigators uh canadian forces national investigation services is in charge of this

00:04:23.340 uh with support from royal canadian mounted police now that that and we'll get back to the charges but

00:04:30.660 he gets arrested on that date was this the first charge that was made and who made that charge do you

00:04:35.440 think was it the rcmp or or military police well if it's a charge under the nda it has to come from

00:04:41.240 the military police uh i know that it was a joint investigation um and i certainly hope it was being

00:04:47.060 more led by the rcmp than it was cfnis cfnis has a a horrific track record of bumbling bungling

00:04:55.380 investigations and just misrepresenting evidence or just doing anything and everything you can to

00:05:02.040 basically dissolve an investigation from the beginning and i can give copious examples of this

00:05:07.520 from the past but the any of the charges he was uh charged with under the nda specifically was coming

00:05:13.940 from internal military okay what other charges did they get him on uh breaching the foreign

00:05:19.280 interference and security of information act three counts of conduct to the prejudice of good order and

00:05:25.680 discipline which in my opinion is a is a throwaway bullshit charge there's there's a few charges under

00:05:30.800 the nda this being one of them that's sort of a catch-all so if you want to go after somebody 0.92

00:05:36.680 administratively for something and you want to you know what i mean be able to grind them um in a

00:05:42.140 court-martial or or uh something like that you know what i mean you go after these catch-all charges

00:05:47.000 so that uh you can find a way to sort of make their life cumbersome and miserable administratively and

00:05:52.680 these are one of those ones i'm not saying that's happening here i don't have all the information

00:05:56.780 but those are those are sort of those are dinky charges in my opinion uh he's got firearm storage

00:06:03.520 violations which can be quite severe depending on the violation that shocked me as well does that mean

00:06:08.380 that when they arrested him his weapon was out of its uh safe or what does that mean

00:06:12.700 that's a good question um if he was charged with that under the nda i'm thinking that it would have

00:06:19.820 been weapons that he would have been using operationally so if he was in ukraine for

00:06:25.280 instance um he would have been issued a a personal weapon and he could have neglected to lock it up you

00:06:33.060 know what i mean securely in the vault or mishandling uh ammunition you know what i mean like it says

00:06:40.520 firearm storage violations so it's it's something to do with not properly securing your weapon or

00:06:46.220 ammunition um probably in theater is my guess otherwise it wouldn't have been an nda charge you

00:06:51.480 would have faced criminal charges for personal weapons probably right okay uh any other charges in

00:06:57.760 there yeah he's got one he's got one count of feigning disease i don't even understand how how

00:07:04.480 is that even a crime is that a crime is that a is that a law uh i so i'd never heard of this and i had

00:07:10.520 to look this up after i saw it so this is very interesting because feigning disease is something

00:07:15.600 that you probably could have charged most of the senior leadership of the military with during the

00:07:21.360 covid years because of how many people were milking the sort of covid sniffle to not have to come to

00:07:28.160 work for the better part of two years so what is like what does this mean i wish i had a better answer

00:07:33.480 for you he it sounds like and my guess is that he was probably being asked to do things that he didn't

00:07:40.500 want to do or um just he was trying to get out of doing something to some degree so he he feigned a disease

00:07:47.940 or a sickness to have to not do it and how you would go about proving that he didn't have the

00:07:52.780 sniffles or something i don't know but i i did i did kind of giggle at this one a little bit because

00:07:57.760 i just brought me back to how many people could have been charged with this that i saw in 2020 to 2022

00:08:03.920 no in in this office alone i mean we could put people in the chair for that so i don't i don't

00:08:11.760 really understand that one that one was interesting um the other thing i want to point out is i noticed

00:08:17.840 the improper storage of firearms fell under the criminal code uh and the firearms act so it might

00:08:23.900 have been personal i'm i'm not sure um so now it leads me to this question an investigation is going

00:08:31.500 on as you point out uh our military police have a a record certainly you know a couple of of real

00:08:38.060 key cases over the last number of years where they they've uh kind of bungled the case uh in some

00:08:44.940 cases to the tune of millions of dollars in damages yeah the the perfect example of recent memory is is

00:08:53.340 the case with danny 410 uh major general retired danny 410 being charged with um sexual uh inappropriate

00:09:03.440 you know what i mean sexual misconduct sexual allegations that were uh going stemming back to

00:09:07.720 1988 at his time in rmc so like it's very obvious that's uh and i'll speak in generalities because

00:09:17.380 nothing is true all of the time but i think it's very obvious that in the last five years specifically

00:09:23.520 there's been probably closer to 10 but five for sure that there's been a lot of witch hunts

00:09:29.440 targeting male members senior senior male members of the leadership that weren't sort of towing the

00:09:35.240 line within the canadian armed forces as a so to what trudeau was asking or the mnd was asking um

00:09:42.240 and and they just decided to use these bogus charges which ended up resulting in a lawsuit against

00:09:50.460 the calf that was successful on behalf of danny 410 so it's it's just like five million dollars in that

00:09:56.260 uh in that suit against the canadian armed forces yeah because because it was baseless and the same

00:10:02.700 thing uh another member is going through uh steve whalen who i've worked with in iraq in 2018

00:10:08.220 um and i i chatted with him very briefly sort of about it a couple years ago um and and it's it's

00:10:15.060 just destroying the careers and reputations of these people because they're something is going on in my

00:10:20.500 opinion behind the scenes where these people are not towing the line with the folks that are asking them

00:10:25.380 to and they're just turning around and using the mps as a weapon luckily for the for the people

00:10:31.500 accused not very successfully because they don't they often don't know what they're doing so how did

00:10:36.540 uh matt for example matthew find himself in this position what led to this in now you can't you

00:10:44.820 don't know i don't know but in your opinion how did this come about so this there's a bit more to

00:10:52.700 the story if you if you go back and read prior articles there's there's there's about a dozen

00:10:57.740 or so articles on this now and a few of them go into the history of some of the administrative

00:11:02.300 problems that he was facing potentially i say potentially it's probably but um due to some of

00:11:09.440 his behavior around the time of the convoy and the mandates so there was a number of military members

00:11:17.140 myself included you know what i mean that could have been sort of deemed a troublemaker

00:11:21.380 or they were seen at the convoy or their name was mentioned in a meeting somewhere um and i again

00:11:26.760 i include myself in this list because it happened to me but i think he was vocal about some of the

00:11:32.140 things going on around the mandates and the convoy and his voicing his disagreements sort of pretty

00:11:37.200 openly in front of probably some of the leadership so he was already facing some kind of career

00:11:42.540 repercussion or consequence or administrative targeting on his back for the things that he was saying or doing

00:11:48.940 does that excuse any of the things that he's being accused of doing for sure no and if he's done the

00:11:55.000 things that put other troops or other national security interests in danger then there absolutely

00:12:00.020 needs to be consequences for that but there is more to this story and i hope that we do get to learn it

00:12:05.840 if it's all held inside of a court martial we probably won't get to know unfortunately but they're

00:12:12.540 definitely the public should be aware that there's more to this than they're than they'd have to do a

00:12:17.280 deeper dive and should make up their own mind if it's a court martial the details of the case are

00:12:21.960 not shared with the public not usually no yeah well so that'll leave us in the dark as to what

00:12:28.120 happened here i mean do you feel that something major was uh shared it sounds to me like he was

00:12:35.920 sharing it with an ally that this was a processing a process a failure on his part perhaps do you feel

00:12:43.720 like this is something first of all if he gets charged does he go to jail so if you're convicted

00:12:51.160 under the nda convicted yeah under a serious of a serious offense uh that uh can result in jail time

00:12:58.500 you go to club what's called club ed or uh the military jail that's in edmonton uh and yeah you can do

00:13:06.880 you can do time in jail and it's definitely not a good place to be you'll be polishing garbage cans

00:13:12.020 until uh you can shave in them but yeah to answer your question you can do jail time in the military

00:13:17.920 and then as well also face potential jail time on the civvy side uh when you get out that's a pretty

00:13:25.580 heavy burden on somebody taking a position like this like you had uh you also served uh i guess with

00:13:31.980 military police what what is your confidence that this is going to be first of all when this gets to

00:13:37.440 court do they have a case in your opinion and and uh will they be able to put something

00:13:43.400 together that that makes sense of this for all of us man that's a good question i i don't i don't have

00:13:51.320 enough details to say whether uh or not you know what i mean this is going to be a successful

00:13:56.300 prosecution based on the investigation but if if he has done what they're saying what they say or

00:14:04.080 they're they're allude to that he's done which is potentially passed information off to members of

00:14:09.680 the ukrainian military intelligence um special operations community it's pretty vague in terms of

00:14:16.180 details but if he was sharing things that he shouldn't have then there should absolutely be

00:14:19.960 consequences for that like this is not especially in theater you can't be messing around with the safety

00:14:25.060 and security of operational information of canadian members or or any any forces members uh and ukraine is

00:14:31.860 highly kinetic environment for a long time like those risks are real uh i look forward to finding

00:14:38.240 out more about what happens and of course this won't go to court for some time meanwhile he's locked up

00:14:43.260 uh he's been released on condition so he had to sacrifice his passport and probably any personal

00:14:50.080 firearms based on some of these charges as well as uh the risk of flight and whatnot so he's he'll be

00:14:56.800 out until this goes to court so he's gone as far as i can home he's gone to his home wherever that

00:15:02.660 is here in canada awaiting trial i think i think he's in pet i think he's in petawawa as far as i can

00:15:07.700 tell let me ask which is a prison all in itself that's punishment enough in my opinion oh that's

00:15:13.620 that's interesting that you say that sorry it's all those people in petawawa i'm sure that they feel

00:15:18.300 the same way as we take a look at the housing conditions that our military is living in and

00:15:22.240 some of the uh just conditions of the military overall on that point in the new year you and i

00:15:28.760 will sit down with our very own paul micucci here and uh answer to the notion that our minister of

00:15:35.620 defense has put out there that we're ready to defend ourselves in a situation uh in a theater of war uh

00:15:41.840 we'll talk about that and in the smirk on your face already is enough uh but in in uh in the new year

00:15:48.180 we'll get to that i did want to touch on this before we go today though uh a new military uniform

00:15:53.640 is being put into play that some think is way overdue and uh is commensurate with uh the other

00:16:00.600 equipping that we do and uh and so and so forth in our military but uh this week it broke that there

00:16:06.960 would be a gender conforming uniform that uh would arrive for women uh in the military what are your

00:16:14.600 thoughts on this i think this is a great move by the canadian armed forces and long overdue there's

00:16:20.400 a number of women that i've served with um that have indicated sort of that they had you know it

00:16:27.340 wasn't like they were writing to their senior leadership or anything saying hey this is what

00:16:32.520 we need but when you have conversations you know what i mean stuff comes up and they were mentioning

00:16:35.940 that especially the women that were in really good shape athletically because i've worked with a 1.00

00:16:39.940 number of them that were very impressive uh intellect you know what i mean emotionally mature

00:16:45.460 people very physically fit like the kind of person that you want in uniform and when you dress them in

00:16:50.160 this sort of one size fits all sort of uh potato sack that they issue you on basic training it's not a

00:16:59.400 good look and it's it's a it's a huge step in the right direction even though it seems like a small

00:17:04.540 thing to um to be targeting i guess you know what i mean but it's it definitely is something that will

00:17:11.440 add some pride a morale boost to the female members that can wear a uniform and look good in it and be 1.00

00:17:17.480 proud to wear it i think this is a big win even if it's not necessarily the most interesting topic or

00:17:22.740 subject this is a this is a smart move and this should have been done a long time ago maybe i'm the

00:17:27.200 only one that thinks this and and no disrespect to the military here in canada at all but i've often

00:17:31.980 thought that our our canadian armed forces uniforms looked a little outdated yeah and they until very

00:17:40.480 recently that's an opinion by the way yeah yeah and there are so there are different uniforms too

00:17:46.540 depending on which element uh and what your trade is and they and they do some of them fit very

00:17:51.560 differently um and like hey if you're if you're a young fit you know what i mean outgoing motivated

00:17:57.480 savvy soldier like your uniform should reflect that and it these things do matter to people like

00:18:03.760 unfortunately or fortunately they do and i think this is big i think this is cool and i think the

00:18:09.040 women are going to be be proud of the way they look it looks like there's a lot of changes uh 0.99

00:18:14.860 underway a lot of money has been promised uh we're now focused on housing as i mentioned before

00:18:19.560 uh properly equipping our military it'll be interesting in the new year for us to catch up

00:18:25.160 and have a discussion about where we are where we actually need to be compared to you know reports

00:18:30.580 that we're hearing from our minister of defense that we are ready to go in a time of war um and so

00:18:37.400 we'll talk about more uh on that topic in the new year meanwhile brian i wish you a happy new year

00:18:42.360 thank you so much for joining the team and being here with us we appreciate it thanks very much i got a ton

00:18:47.420 more to share too about the specifically about housing and personal stories of folks i know who

00:18:53.000 are are still ongoing and dealing with all this stuff so i'm i'm pumped for the new year and i got

00:18:56.900 i got lots to talk about i'll never shut up i like it man thank you so much we'll see you uh bright and

00:19:02.240 early in the new year yes sir thank you happy new year we'll see we'll see you uh right here on tpl don't

00:19:07.820 forget to subscribe go to the new website you'll really like it tplmedia.ca subscribe there for extra

00:19:14.040 content and all kinds of fun uh meanwhile comment share it with a friend and we'll see you next time

True Patriot Love - January 07, 2026

CAF Espionage Charges & New Combat Uniforms Explained

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