Canada Launders $1 Trillion - with Sam Cooper
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Summary
Sam Cooper is one of Canada s leading investigative reporters covering foreign interference, organized crime, and national security. He first gained attention for his exposing of alleged Chinese Communist Party-influenced networks operating inside of Canada and the links between transnational crime and political systems. Sam is the best-selling author of Willful Blindness, one of my favorite books, and he now runs The Bureau, an independent investigative news platform focused on intelligence, corruption, and sovereignty issues. His reporting has sparked parliamentary inquiries, international scrutiny, and an ongoing national debate about how seriously Canada is confronting foreign interference.
Transcript
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All right, well, earlier today, Brian Istid and I had a chance to speak with Sam Cooper.
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He's one of Canada's leading investigative reporters covering foreign interference, organized crime, and national security.
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He first gained attention for his exposing of alleged Chinese Communist Party-influenced networks operating inside of Canada
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and the links between transnational crime and political systems.
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Sam is the best-selling author of Willful Blindness, one of my favorite books,
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and he now runs The Bureau, an independent investigative news platform focused on intelligence, corruption, and sovereignty issues.
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His reporting has sparked parliamentary inquiries, international scrutiny,
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and an ongoing national debate about how seriously Canada is confronting foreign interference.
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Well, here we are joined by Sam Cooper, Brian Istid,
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and guys, thanks so much for taking the time today.
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As I was able to kind of glean to off air, this is a big deal for me.
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I'm a big fan of what Sam does, and I know many Canadians have had their eyes opened wide.
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You know, you really did spark something in a big way when you did the investigative journalism that you do,
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which, by the way, it seems to be disappearing on this earth.
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And so to have somebody doing this, looking out for Canadians,
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and from this perspective, you really opened our eyes wide to foreign interference in a way
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I don't think Canadians were prepared to hear about.
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Yeah, I mean, it's kind of become a life project in a way.
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And in terms of investigative journalism, I grew up in the Vancouver province and Sun newsroom,
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watching like legends like Kim Bolan, the great crime reporter,
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David Baines, the great financial crime investigator,
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that pretty much single-handedly exposed the Vancouver Stock Exchange
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for, I would say, kind of a Hells Angels front operation for trading.
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And that kind of stuff has become more and more clear by the year.
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I think I took the baton and dove into the international nefarious hostile states
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and transnational networks that have made Vancouver, first and foremost,
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an absolute convergence for the world's organized crime networks
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connected to the CCP and the Iranian state, Hezbollah, Mexican cartels.
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I was motivated, I would say, due to my upbringing to understand why good people in Canada
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with good incomes, good families, couldn't afford homes.
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And I really appreciate guys like you bringing me on.
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Like I say, I've been asked to brief the Pentagon.
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There's some people that want me to get testified down in Washington.
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I'm now writing for around the world and from Canadians.
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So I think it's a cool Canadian success story, if I can be a little bit immodest.
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It's put us on the map as having, you're putting us on the map as having eyes
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on the world's nefarious financial doings and how that leads to so many repercussions
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in the financial system and housing, just in everyday life here in Canada.
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Do you mind, and I'm sure you must be tired of doing this, but just in a nutshell,
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maybe you could just kind of put a fine point on willful blindness
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and the state of affairs at the time in the casinos and how you detected this.
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Do you mind just giving us a quick wrap on that so that anybody who hasn't had a chance
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to read the book, you will want to when you understand this better.
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Yeah, definitely pick up the book because people talk about how it just exposes a network
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and it might make people's head hurt when they dive into it.
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But I've laid it out in a narrative where it's about, in a way, it's about a young reporter
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coming of age in a city that makes no sense and figuring it out step by step.
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You know, around 2009, 2010, I had been reading a lot about the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis
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and why their American dream had crumbled, you know, Wall Street taking over financialization
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of U.S. home prices and then it collapsing, the fraud being exposed.
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And I thought there has to be some element to Vancouver's story about that.
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The housing prices of, you know, literally, I remember there was websites called like
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And, you know, yeah, you'd see a home that was run down, basically a crack shack
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And to jump to the chase, I figured out that it was a massive amount of money coming
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And so what I really broke the mold in is discovering the Vancouver model.
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And that's how portions, large portions of West Canada's economy were being used
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by transnational organized crime and Chinese state actors.
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So how it works is massive amounts of drug cash were being walked in into B.C.
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government casinos, especially in Richmond, a high Asian diaspora municipality, you know,
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right between Vancouver and the ocean, right by the Vancouver airport there.
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So we're talking billionaires, military figures, Chinese officials, you know, very, very ambitious
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gangsters who were flying in from Macau in China.
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They had made a deal, you know, usually on encrypted Chinese WeChat, you know, apps or things
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They'd made a deal with the local drug traffickers who had warehouses of fentanyl, methamphetamine,
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cocaine, you know, drug money collected from drug dealers across Western Canada who would
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drive that drug cash into, you know, Vancouver.
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It would be warehoused in what's called Chinese underground banks.
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The wealthy gambler flies in from China or Macau.
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He meets the gangster banker, you know, in a parking lot outside the casino, literally gets
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a duffel bag of 500,000 or more or 100,000, walks in the casino against any Canadian anti-money
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laundering checks and balances, is allowed to gamble.
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His money is laundered in that way and it cycles back to China where his source of wealth is.
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That money back in China, you know, there's a few steps here I could miss or go into greater
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detail, but in a nutshell, that money is going back to China, producing more fentanyl, which
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It's going into America from Canada, being sold across Canada.
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You know, what I grew up in, the fentanyl overdose death zone of downtown Vancouver, 10 years
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ago that I really started exposing, has moved across Canada.
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So that's the flow of China's fentanyl cash through BC casinos and it goes across the economy.
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Because it is very involved and I will recommend people get into it.
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I mean, I can't believe that it's not a movie already.
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Maybe we'll option the rights, Brian, before we get out of here.
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But no, it is a fascinating read and it really did crack open what is systemically wrong with
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pricing houses and the drug problems and what a dumpster fire Vancouver became.
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I mean, I'd like to say that, you know, I didn't figure it all out in one whack back in 2016,
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I, you know, I broke the story of the Vancouver casino money laundering, which became known
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as the Vancouver model when an Australian professor read my reports and dubbed this mode
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of underground transactions from China bouncing down to Peru, Mexico, back up to Vancouver.
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The Vancouver model became an academic typology of money laundering.
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But I figured out year by year and you're right.
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The dumpster fire of prices I've now assessed with great confidence that over a trillion dollars
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in Vancouver model, drug money laundering has washed through Toronto and Vancouver real estate.
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And there are many sort of story points or milestones to put that together.
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I'll quickly tell you one, you know, Fintrac, that is without any Canadian bank ever facing
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They mapped in 2023 that during the pandemic, when casinos were closed, the Chinese money
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launders evolved their methods more, more electronically into Canada's big banks, more
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They took the casino step out and they showed how this massive map of money laundering had
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worked into Canadian banks, real estate law offices.
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So as I say, you know, this is the model that the U.S.
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Treasury now came out with another model that says 300 billion in Chinese underground banking
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Yeah, a trillion dollars in about the past decade.
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Brian, I'm sorry, I'm hogging the interview, please.
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That's perfect because I wanted to jump in here.
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Does that trillion dollars include the PNP out west?
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Or yeah, so I mean, the the investor, sorry, out east, out east, not out west, the PNP scheme
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So that's the the immigrant investor scheme where I would say so.
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I mean, you know, to get into the weeds a little bit.
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Absolutely, I mean, my book details how this the original scheme run through Jean Crescent's
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showinigan writing among other places that brought in, you know, funneled through Hong
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Kong, Taiwan and Chinese gangsters sending in, you know, a lot of wealthy people in Canada's
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fraudulent immigration investor program, which was dominated by people from China.
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Yeah, they were run they were running mostly into Toronto, Quebec and Vancouver in the early
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And then it migrated out to PEI, where I would say the same largely liberal, liberal party
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of Canada associated business networks ran a lot of Chinese investors in into, you know,
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there's a well known story of hundreds being, you know, connected to, I believe, like a small
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So yeah, more or less the the funnel of Chinese gangster or corrupt official or underground
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banking running through that PNP program in various provinces would feed into in complex
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You mentioned a bunch of American agent three letter agencies there that want to bring you
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Why do you think the RCMP and CSIS are so afraid to do anything or so afraid to investigate
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or leverage someone with your expertise or Gary Clement or these folks, they have them
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on as sort of outsiders conspiracy theorists rather than the experts that you are in this
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So the bottom line first, as they say in the military, the RCMP, I would assess at this
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I don't think I've even heard from very senior political figures who I won't name out of, you
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know, respect to them saying the PMO and the prime minister would have to sign off on certain
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directives for the RCMP to undertake, you know, some of the investigations that I know they
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should. And I could go through all kinds of anecdotes that I won't. But to target, let's
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say it came up in the Cullen Commission that a Chinese state connected money laundering network
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had come up in various agency investigations, but the RCMP didn't investigate. And their mealy
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mouthed excuse in the Cullen Commission was very memorably, they said, well, there's so
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many money launders out there, this one wouldn't have made a difference, which in itself, kind
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That's a, that's a sad admission, but it's not an excuse to avoid.
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Exactly. This is a Chinese state operation. I believe it came up in the Cullen Commission
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for a reason. I believe I know the people behind that particular probe. I believe they
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can be found pictured beside Justin Trudeau and certain candidates. I believe one of them
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is probably sitting on the Canada China Business Council board, if I want to be a little bit
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direct in what I'm saying. So back to Brian's question. Look, I'd like to make a distinction.
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I mean, people from the OPP at very qualified and, and, and credible levels have been, I think,
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wanting to talk to me, whether that goes forward or not soon. York Regional Police had me in to
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brief their, their officers on why Chinese diaspora citizens feel fearful to reach out
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to Canadian police about foreign interference. So I have been brought in by both US and Canadian
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great enforcement and, and security focused units. And I continue to, I'll be flying out to
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Idaho in the, in the coming months. I just got an email from Wisconsin. So look, I'm a reporter.
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I'm a journalist. I'm an investigator. I'm a patriot, but I'm also at this point doing some
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public service work, reaching out to law enforcement that wants to talk to me and whether
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they can say it publicly or not. Some people very senior on the fentanyl file in Canada have
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been talking to me behind the scenes, but I don't think you'll hear Mark Carney's government,
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you know, stepping out, stepping out publicly and saying they want, they want to bring me in
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for consultation because what I tell them will go to some very sensitive areas.
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We're hearing more and more that the various labs are being discovered across Canada, not
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just for fentanyl. There's a massive cannabis operations being discovered. Maybe you could
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comment on that, but they have also infiltrated larger banking and financial institutions alongside
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Yeah, no doubt. Um, so my reporting at the bureau has, has absolutely, I believe established sometimes
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with on the record sources, sometimes with people that can't be named that the, the, the, the pot
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industry in Canada, let's call it an industry, especially in Ontario, British Columbia, I believe
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Quebec, you know, this has been what I call like Quonset hut factories have been rolled out across
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Canada from, from a few miles outside, you know, main cities up to the Tunderlands of the North
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Canada. For decades, Canada has been a major global exporter of narcotics, starting with a marijuana,
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as my sources have, you know, stood up in a number of stories I've done for the bureau.
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And that simply was repurposed, you know, from about, let's say around 2005, just to pick a year
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into production for, uh, methamphetamine ecstasy. Vancouver has always been a global hub, you know,
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for, uh, marijuana going down to Mexico, cocaine and meth coming back up. And in the early 2000s,
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the CCP, the cartels and the hell's angels who work under them and with him, uh, along with the
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Iranian state actors started to turn Western Canada into a, uh, let's just call it a
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Sinaloa-like, uh, synthetic narcotic production hub. So that's across Canada now, completely
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consistent with the death zones you now see in small and large communities across Canada for
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fentanyl. Uh, the, the, the scenes that I could only see in downtown Vancouver as a young reporter
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across Canada, the drug labs for synthetics are across Canada and the money laundering system
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feeding into the big six banks down to law offices, stock traders, uh, cryptocurrency pick it, pick an
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industry, oil fields, resources, you know, this is genuine infiltration at all levels, right?
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It's at all levels. And I could end my answer by saying, I just reported on a great new report
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from David Luna, former sort of senior U S state department counter narcotics and intelligence
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official. I've worked with him and others. Uh, he came out with a new report pointing to an un,
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this is a quote, unprecedented convergence of nearly 700 crime groups on the soil in Canada, connecting
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to 48 foreign nations. And, uh, he assesses over $200 billion laundered per year through Canada. And
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if I can explain it this way, as he says, it's not just about drug money laundering anymore. That is
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the standard understanding of organized crime, needing to convert their drug proceeds into vehicles
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or homes they could enjoy its liquidity for Canada's legitimate businesses, right? So real estate
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development, stock trading, everything else. Uh, and so he says, Canada's peak concern is not,
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is not fentanyl crossing the border into the United States. It's the whole country being leveraged as a
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money laundering tool. So I think that gets to your answer. And that brings into context, my prior,
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my own estimate of over a trillion in, in Vancouver, money laundering, Vancouver model laundering into
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real estate in, in Toronto and Vancouver, we can easily get to that figure where we have David Luna
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from the U S government now saying likely over 200 billion per year, easily in Canada.
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um, the money laundering is the main driver of this activity versus the espionage? Would it
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is, have you thought about, is it a 50, 50, 70, 30 scale? Where do you see that?
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I haven't done a sort of a Bayesian assessment of the evidence. All the new evidence comes out and
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I probably could put a number on it, but I'll tell you like this, Brian, um, I, and a close circle of,
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of Canadian experts say that you can't look at the money laundering and the fentanyl or, or any of the
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narcotics in Vancouver without looking at the encryption technology hub, a little known story,
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still not understood that, uh, the Cameron orders, that is the, the trader, the alleged trader, the
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RCP intelligence boss who was selling five eyes plans to, uh, Hezbollah Sinaloa cartel, uh, you know,
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CCP allegedly, um, the encryption technology companies, he was leaking, uh, you know, investigation
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plans to where we're very, we're, we're directly connected to Chapo Guzman and the Sinaloa cartel
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in Vancouver who chose that location for, you know, a reason. And it's not just, you know,
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easy criminal profits or a lack of, uh, uh, law enforcement. It's because my, my friends, you know,
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in enforcement and, and security would say Vancouver has been chosen as sort of a forward operating
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hostile, uh, base of operations for the Iranian networks, the CCP networks, and the Mexican
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cartels work with them. They are, uh, uh, an intelligence entity in themselves and they have,
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I believe a client relationship with the terror networks and the CCP. So you got that triangle of
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bad actors. Those would be the top ones that are taking over Canada right now. I would say in, uh,
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the money laundering and the hostile state activity go absolutely hand in hand. So
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I'll just say 50, 50 right now, you know, when I think about it, but it could be a different answer.
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Sam, how do as Canadians and as law enforcement, how is it that we heard nothing about this Ryan
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wedding guy until it was almost all done? It seems to me that this guy might've been one of those key
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players in the Vancouver market and the West coast for certain yet. It wasn't widely known to Canadians
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just how, how desperately he was wanted by the FBI and how involved he was.
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Absolutely. And I got a personal anecdote for that one. I mean, I was in my, in my journey of
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understanding the Vancouver model. I would say in 2017, 2018, probably 2017, I was of course very focused
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on Chinese organized crime and the CCP as the let's, let's just call them the upstream actor in all of
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this worldwide. But I remember, uh, a colleague who, who was on the inside in, in, in Canadian government
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sent me the story showing Ryan wedding, you know, in his, uh, in his racing suit, going around a gate.
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I forget what, maybe it was a national post story. And the person who is course is being very careful
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not to, not to cross classified lines is saying, look at this person's networks. And I, I didn't get
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it. I was like, this is a Canadian snowboarder. Yeah. He got busted for some weed and various things.
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He still doesn't look that important to me, but bit by bit, year by year, I understood that he was
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married to, uh, an Iranian lady in North Vancouver who appeared to be very connected in the Iranian
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state money laundering networks. I further then learned that Ryan wedding and these people in
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Vancouver were connected to these encryption technology businesses that I've started to talk
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about. And they would be, I believe launched by Iranian state actors or connected along with the
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Mexican cartels. So year by year, I started to understand that I started to, you know, sort of
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kind of like poke those stories forward. I'd say in the last two years at the bureau.news,
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Ryan weddings, not in my book, I don't believe, but he, he's made a big appearance on my platform,
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uh, over the last two years where I've laid out that look, um, he was down on Margarita Island
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for a reason, running cocaine up to Halifax where a military official, and I believe other officials
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were corrupted. And the Canadian government knew this. I'm sure that the American government
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probably put them onto it, but Ryan wedding is absolutely. He was a major player, uh, in the story
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that's now emerged from Venezuela, how Venezuela and Margarita Island were being used by all the
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cartels, uh, in a state run narco operation that used state oil planes. And of course, Hezbollah was
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a major part of that. And I don't think they've even put the CCP piece. That's a top of all of it
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onto the Ryan wedding story yet, but why were Canadians not told? Um, you know, why, why did
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the Globe and Mail in one of their few stories that I will credit them for, for getting the scoop on me?
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Why didn't Canadians know that Justin Trudeau was, you know, entangled in a surveillance operation
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in Vancouver in 2016 with the people that I know that were the subject of my book are high level
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Chinese narcos, money launders, state actors. Justin Trudeau was there for a reason we still don't
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know. Canadians don't know. It's an unanswered question. Same, same as, you know, I believe
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Ryan wedding. He's a, he's a powerful guy, but there's people in the Chinese state, Iranian state,
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Mexican state, who knows, maybe other states that are a lot more important than Ryan wedding.
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Yeah. I can imagine that, that to me just seemed to be a bellwether moment for Canadians. Like, okay,
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this is one of our Olympians and he's entrenched in this, uh, where else is this going on? So I think,
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yeah, I hope that that questioning leads to more revelation, to be honest with you.
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If I had to, I think you hit the nail on the head there, like for Canadians, I, well, since my book
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launched at number one, that's a, that's a data point that there's enough. That is my book came out
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number one on amazon.com Canada, uh, you know, in 2021, which was huge. I never could have expected
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that. So there is a portion of Canadians that care, but still not enough people were getting
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the message, you know, because I advocated, we need a racketeering law in 2021. We need a foreign
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interference law. Nothing is in place. So not enough people understand, but I do think the Ryan wedding
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story can get a little deeper into the psyches of, of Canadians that are resistant to getting or
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getting their head around that Canada is not the good guy anymore. We're a global narcotics exporter.
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As I said, it started with marijuana. It's been very slow and sophisticated how cartels and the CCP
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have come in, but seeing your former Olympian, you know, call the globally significant narco.
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If you're a Canadian, you don't start to get it. I mean, get your head checked. And there's enough
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of them that I don't think we'll get it. I want to, I want to quickly quote your book here,
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because it's in the same vein as, as what a good segue here. So you mentioned growing up and believing
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Canada was a bastion of uprightness and stability, corruption wars and spy plots happened in other
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countries. Do you see this naive disconnect as a main driver of Canada's obsession to voting liberal,
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despite all the evidence of corruption and criminal activity in the last 10 to 15 years? And it goes back
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obviously to the seventies of Trudeau senior. But like, what is this disconnect and sort of correlating
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Trump derangement syndrome elbows upside off that evolved in the last one that I've seen you break
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down brilliantly? How did we get here with this to be so delusional? Yeah, no, I absolutely the way
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you framed it is exactly how I thought about it when I was writing the book and how I've increasingly
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started to see it is, yeah, my education was very blinded. We were still at a point where Canadians
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couldn't see, you know, violent home invasions impacting the mass society. The period I was
00:27:44.920
writing about was when the big circle boys, the Chinese, you know, tried connected to the, you know,
00:27:50.600
their military structures was only terrorizing Chinese diasporas. So the diasporas knew very well
1.00
00:27:58.440
that the game had changed in Canada and the CCP was here. We were never taught and will not be taught
00:28:05.000
that in our schools. As you say, I think we're very much a product of the Pierre Trudeau ideology that
00:28:12.360
is still the dominant ideology in Canada. And that is, we were taught, I remember very well in civics
00:28:19.160
class, Canada is a multicultural toss salad of nations from around the world and pretty much a utopia
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in comparison. Maybe I'm being a little bit broad there. We were told America's a melting pot.
00:28:36.520
I'm not sure they encouraged us to make a value judgment, but I do get the sense that we were being
00:28:42.280
encouraged in sophisticated ways that the Pierre Trudeau way is working and it's the way to go. And
00:28:49.080
that just goes to the multicultural angle. But I mean, in terms of Canada being the good guy,
00:28:55.480
yeah, we never got the sense in school teaching that corruption could be growing. I mean, where's
00:29:02.680
the current events teaching in schools? And so at this point, I'm kind of getting to the place where
00:29:10.600
I almost do see the argument that a sort of a little bit of cultural Marxism is making its way into
00:29:17.480
Canada's educational system and has. And there's other reporters that are, you know, to get on a little
00:29:24.200
tangent detailing how it looks like entities like the Muslim Brotherhood are getting fairly involved in
00:29:30.920
school curricula in Ontario. So, I mean, part of my job is telling people. The last thing I would say is,
00:29:40.760
I give my father, you know, a lot of credit. He was always kind of a contrarian in my mind until
00:29:47.320
he and his brother, they grew up in Saskatchewan from a family that sort of grew out of the
00:29:54.920
Pioneer Co-op sort of enterprise. The WW Cooper store had started that and sold the Pioneer. So,
00:30:04.360
they were a little bit wealthy for Saskatchewan. They sent them off to L'Institut Rose in Switzerland,
00:30:10.520
which is a very the elite of the elite schools in Europe. You know, I believe North Korean dictators
0.99
00:30:17.720
might have been educated there along with European aristocrats. And what I got out of that is my
00:30:24.920
father came back very educated to the ways of the world and infused in me sort of a critical mindset
00:30:32.520
that what you're getting from political parties around the world, elites around the world,
00:30:39.960
you gotta do your own homework, put it that way and step back and do your own research.
00:30:46.840
I remember that. Oh, sorry. Sorry, one last thing. So, in that same vein again, how much of this do you
00:30:52.600
think is Hanlon's razor? You know what I mean? Malice versus incompetence. And one of the best examples I
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00:30:59.400
can give having a background in the military and law enforcement when D&D did its shift from 101 to Carlin
00:31:06.200
campus and decided to install all of our most top secret conversations in the building that had just
00:31:12.200
been ravaged by intellectual property violations on behalf of the CCP and Huawei. So, how many mistakes
00:31:20.600
can we make over and over of this so-called incompetence where it's just kind of obviously
00:31:26.760
becoming a plot? Where do you, what's your take on that? Yeah. I mean, when I look at the
00:31:32.360
the Winnipeg Level 4 lab breach and the fact that Health Canada and I guess National Research Canada
00:31:48.760
joint project to CanSino Biologics, who I'm absolutely sure CSIS would have briefed some
00:31:58.760
people across Canada's government that CanSino, a PLA entity set up through the United Front System,
00:32:05.720
you know, rather sort of graduates of the United Front community cells planted, you know, around schools
00:32:13.320
in Toronto that are also involved in election interference, et cetera, et cetera. You know, this PLA
0.98
00:32:20.280
entity was involved in the lab breach networks. It gets a vaccine contract from the Government of Canada.
00:32:28.440
That can't be incompetence. I believe this at certain key locations at this point, you point to other
00:32:35.640
breaches, other continuing schemes. Mark Carney now going back to the poison well. I believe, you know,
00:32:45.080
I could point to people within the Liberal Party of Canada and more importantly, the business networks of
00:32:52.200
Montreal and Quebec that effectively enough credible people in Canada say this and know this by now
00:32:59.640
that effectively support and elect Liberal Prime Ministers. I believe those business networks and
00:33:05.480
key bureaucrats and politicians are involved in malice.
00:33:11.160
Now, it's a fair question, you know, because incompetence does count for something in some of
00:33:17.800
these areas. But like Brian points out, it's a repeated scenario that seems to become more goes
00:33:25.320
deeper and deeper and deeper into our society as Canadians. I remember that feeling myself growing
00:33:32.440
up. We're a melting we're not a melting pot. We're a collective society. You know, we want you to bring
00:33:37.560
your culture here. We want you to bring, you know, your religion and your beliefs and your family values
00:33:43.880
to Canada. And that's what Canada will be. And that seems to quickly have pivoted to virtue signaling
00:33:50.280
over reality. So we're out there telling the world that we're great leaders in peace and love and
00:33:55.400
grooviness. Meanwhile, we are out there providing a laundering operation for some of the most unsavory
00:34:03.240
parts of the world and providing, you know, a drug scenario, a housing problem that is affecting both
00:34:10.440
Canada and the United States. Maybe it's time to stop virtue signaling and actually have a really hard
00:34:17.080
look at how we're operating financially, how we are operating at the enforcement level for police.
00:34:25.160
What do you see, Sam, the next three to five years in Canada looking like? Do we see interference
00:34:32.760
starting to get revealed and curtailed? Or is it just going to run deeper in the water?
00:34:38.200
Yeah, that literally is a question that keeps me up at night. I, you know, Alberta separatism,
00:34:49.880
you're looking at what looks like a growing sort of Brexit type political movement that could gain
00:34:56.440
steam. You know, I would, if you're looking at 30% of the population polled as maybe being for
00:35:02.760
separatism, I would kind of assess that the, the movement underneath that is, is stronger and
00:35:09.640
broader. So you could be looking closer to a, you know, 40, up to 50. I don't know. But that, that,
00:35:17.240
that's a huge piece of the puzzle for the question you just asked. In terms of foreign interference,
00:35:22.760
I see it growing. I see, I see Chinese miners, well purported miners, behind them will be Chinese
0.99
00:35:31.320
transnational crime, money laundering, intelligence operatives, uh, have a, have a hold on some
00:35:38.120
critical mineral sort of important puzzle pieces in the north. This is more, you know, watch,
00:35:44.040
go to the bureau.news. After this interview, you'll see more and more reporting from me on these
00:35:49.320
complex operations from China that under Mark Carney's government can only gain pace. A couple of
00:35:56.520
examples, Carney making a deal for cooperation between the RCMP and China's Ministry of Public
00:36:03.240
Security. Gary Clement, my contributor, my friend, myself, have done a number of reports by now at the
00:36:13.400
bureau, including, uh, citing recently, uh, Hong Kong groups internationally saying this is suicidal.
00:36:21.800
This will put our diasporas directly and increasingly under greater, I would say,
00:36:28.920
life safety threats than before with this type of dealing with Carney. And I could list
00:36:34.600
a number of other. Well, we, we just sold a mine, uh, outright $5.9 billion. I think the number comes to
00:36:42.120
mind. Uh, and that was to a Chinese, uh, um, I guess, fully Chinese company. We will be in partnership
00:36:51.000
to some degree, but they will have controlling share. Uh, and, and that's just one example.
00:36:56.200
And this is part of the strategy, it seems of our government. Uh, and Brian, you and I talked about
00:37:01.560
this, that, okay, we're going to fortify by selling and, and, uh, selling off our resources,
00:37:07.320
uh, that we so desperately need to get people employed, working on, uh, create a market for
00:37:12.920
ourselves. This bypasses that market from Canada to China, to the rest of the world. And we lose the
0.74
00:37:19.240
glean on that and probably the financing. I I'm with you. I think that in the next three to five years,
00:37:25.480
we see a lot of officially gained, um, properties from multinationals that probably shouldn't be
00:37:33.400
involved in our country. Yeah. If we go down the path that Mark Carney is on right now, I see the,
00:37:39.880
the, the not zero potential that Canada ends as an entity, because what he's doing is the exact
00:37:46.760
opposite of what a Canadian nationalist and federalist should be doing right now. He, uh,
00:37:53.960
I, I wrote another story for the Bureau this morning of German, Germany's most powerful
0.56
00:37:58.760
industrialists are now essentially giving marching orders to chancellor mayors saying on his trip this
00:38:05.960
week to Beijing, he needs to speak to Xi and say, China's not a competitor. It's a cheater. They
0.99
00:38:12.440
give us market share. And then they, it's almost like a trap operation. Once they invite you in,
00:38:18.120
they steal your IP, they leverage you in all kinds of ways there. Uh, you know, I could go on and on
00:38:24.680
it, Mark Carney's plan to use Beijing as a hedge against whatever, whether transient or, or a more
00:38:32.680
sort of forceful stance in Washington, Mark Carney's plan to be like the anti-Trump or, or use China as,
00:38:40.360
as a balance. It, it can only end in, in tears, right? And so if you're a real federalist, a real
00:38:47.320
nationalist at this point, you need to be advocating for, uh, we need to put Canadian minds on the
00:38:54.520
ground in the North, start trading critical minerals with our partner, the United States,
00:39:00.520
who may go to war with China, you know, over their threats to Taiwan and Japan. Let's start to, uh, get
00:39:06.840
over. Of course we still care about the environment, but we guarantee the sovereignty of this nation by
00:39:13.400
putting more minds, more projects in the North, uh, more investment, investment from friends
00:39:21.320
or should be friends like Japan, Taiwan, Germany, UK, the United States. This is how we build a
00:39:27.640
powerful Canada. And it's going to take 20 years to get up on our feet and able to able to talk some
00:39:34.200
sense to the United States. If we feel they're being a little bit misdirected, we can be a strong
00:39:39.400
partner. That's only with a new government. And maybe people that are thinking like the three of the
00:39:45.320
people, three of the people on the screen right now, I think you two probably share a little bit
00:39:50.280
of my views. We're going to need a very unflinching policy for Canada. If we go down the path that
00:39:57.240
Mark Carney's on, and my rant is over, this country may not exist in five years.
00:40:02.120
I, I read, um, Mark Carney's book, uh, uh, the fall or so of last year, and it just came across as a
00:40:11.320
climate change, um, elitist manifesto bent on everything being ESG sort of oriented with a lot
00:40:18.680
of gender ideology kind of peppered in there. And I, I agree with everything you just said with sort
00:40:23.720
of the direction that we're sort of barreling towards this cliff. And again, like with having
00:40:28.680
a background in the military and intelligence and cyber intelligence, there were, there were a lot
00:40:33.000
of warning signs. I wasn't on the China team, but I was on the cyber team. And there were so many
00:40:38.920
warning signs of the level of influence and, uh, ability and capability that China had with cyber.
00:40:46.280
And I think a lot of people don't understand that cyber as a capability is not just shutting off a
00:40:52.120
power grid or, or shutting off the water in an area. Like it's, it's the ability to sort of penetrate
00:40:57.720
and conduct these very long standing psychological influence operations that you mentioned very
00:41:03.400
aptly in one of the interviews I saw you do recently about the elbows up campaign. And I, I,
00:41:09.800
your book honestly changed my life in a, in a bunch of ways in the way that I see Canada. And, uh,
00:41:15.480
I, I think you're bang on with everything you just said, and it, it paints a rather bleak picture,
00:41:19.640
but I, and it keeps, it keeps me up at night too, a little bit, but I'm glad folks like you,
00:41:24.520
um, are, are doing what you can. And it, it, it means a lot to me. And I think I speak for a lot
00:41:29.880
of other, maybe in the veteran community that we're very thankful. Thanks. Yeah. I'm glad you kind
00:41:35.160
of, you made it more clear that I was hinting at cognitive warfare. I do think that we, even someone
00:41:42.120
such as myself, whose job, whose self assigned job every day is to understand this more and more, you
00:41:48.680
know, that's what drives me as a journalist in my career arc, get to the bottom of something,
00:41:54.440
refine your understanding and explain to people in a way that maybe you can, you know, if it's
00:42:00.520
important, they, they may, they may think about it when they vote, but I do believe that in the world
00:42:07.160
and especially in Canada, our elections are being significantly influenced by Chinese cognitive
00:42:13.480
warfare. And people don't need to take my word for it. There's any amount of great officials in
00:42:19.560
Taiwan or think tanks in Taiwan that will tell us if we want to listen as Canadians, how, how deeply
00:42:27.960
and psychologically their nation is under cognitive warfare attack and has been for decades and the
00:42:34.520
impacts of that, how it makes its way into everything from, uh, going to the, the ballot station to
00:42:42.040
family conversations, you know, China is in there and it's more easy to understand in Taiwan, which is
00:42:48.840
essentially, you know, racially, uh, the same community in a lot of ways. But I do think China
00:42:54.760
through AI, uh, through, uh, I saw Twitter or X's, you know, one of their executives say there's tens of
00:43:02.760
thousands of bots on, on X from China. They are deeply into our systems. And I think that Canadians,
00:43:10.200
uh, I saw a poll just, just this week that something like half think the U S is the real threat.
00:43:17.320
Few think that China's a real threat. Look, that's a Chinese cognitive operation. And the real problem
1.00
00:43:23.640
I have with it is that Mark Carney and the liberals either acquiesce or are involved in it because I
00:43:30.200
think the Mark Carney campaign, we can, I can point to real data points that, that show that Chinese
00:43:36.360
propaganda supported him. And I think his message aligned exactly with what Chinese propaganda was
00:43:43.080
in terms of Mark Carney being the strong fighter against the belligerent president Trump and
00:43:49.080
liberals are just riding that horse and they'll ride it until they take Canada to the ground.
00:43:53.960
It's so interesting that instead of being outraged that our prime minister was going to do deals in
00:43:58.760
China, everybody thought, Hey, he's got his elbows up. What? What are we doing?
00:44:05.800
Yeah. So what do we get out of it? Elbows aren't going to put food on the table.
0.99
00:44:10.920
Uh, it's, uh, it's so interesting to have that perspective. Uh, the bureau dot news. You're
00:44:17.800
enjoying this. It's honestly, uh, fulfillment of, of, of, of my life's work and my career path. Even
00:44:26.600
when I was at, uh, you know, as a younger reporter, let's say when I was still in Vancouver in my head,
00:44:33.480
in the very deepest recesses of the creativity, I was thinking, you know, if I'm going to stay in
00:44:39.400
journalism, um, I see the way journalism is going, uh, ads are down, they're buying out the best
00:44:48.040
reporters every year, the kind of, uh, ideological, uh, thinking that appears to come from the government
00:44:57.000
is making its way into newsrooms year after year. So I thought if I'm going to stay in this, which is
00:45:02.120
a love of my sort of, uh, you know, professional path, I'm going to have to be entrepreneurial at
00:45:07.320
some point. Yeah. I did that. I think I did it at the right time based off the success of my book.
00:45:13.240
And as I say, I think I'm, I'm writing the living book of future books, but there I'm the publisher
00:45:19.160
at the bureau and I'm, I'm using all my capacities, uh, you know, working with the best journalists and
00:45:25.000
lawyers in Canada for 20 years. I'm ready to do it on my own. And, uh, look, it's a growing,
00:45:31.800
it's a, it itself is at this point, a Canadian media success story, uh, and it's growing.
00:45:37.960
Yeah. It's, it's enjoyable, uh, to, I think both Brian and I would endorse going there and being a
00:45:45.080
regular, um, because it is that, uh, taking that granular element that, uh, an investigative journalist
00:45:54.040
was meant to do like you do, and then making it accessible to, to the average Canadian like myself,
00:45:59.560
uh, and even to more intellectuals like, uh, Brian. And I, so I, I certainly appreciate that.
00:46:05.320
And I wish you, and, uh, we all here at TPL wish you great success with it. Um, we, we want you to,
00:46:12.840
to stay in touch with us because as you, uh, get out there, you seem to be the spearhead on so many of
00:46:20.600
these topics, uh, that it's nice to have that, uh, that close connection. I really appreciate you doing
00:46:26.120
this today. Yeah. You know, it's, uh, uh, I really appreciate the questions from both of you and
00:46:31.240
the deep understanding. So it's really enjoyable and we'll, we'll have to do it again for sure.