True Patriot Love - Canada Launders $1 Trillion - with Sam Cooper

00:00:00.000 All right, well, earlier today, Brian Istid and I had a chance to speak with Sam Cooper.

00:00:04.420 He's one of Canada's leading investigative reporters covering foreign interference, organized crime, and national security.

00:00:11.140 He first gained attention for his exposing of alleged Chinese Communist Party-influenced networks operating inside of Canada

00:00:18.100 and the links between transnational crime and political systems.

00:00:22.500 Sam is the best-selling author of Willful Blindness, one of my favorite books,

00:00:25.660 and he now runs The Bureau, an independent investigative news platform focused on intelligence, corruption, and sovereignty issues.

00:00:34.580 His reporting has sparked parliamentary inquiries, international scrutiny,

00:00:38.520 and an ongoing national debate about how seriously Canada is confronting foreign interference.

00:00:44.900 Here's that interview.

00:00:49.500 Well, here we are joined by Sam Cooper, Brian Istid,

00:00:53.020 and guys, thanks so much for taking the time today.

00:00:56.320 As I was able to kind of glean to off air, this is a big deal for me.

00:01:02.100 I'm a big fan of what Sam does, and I know many Canadians have had their eyes opened wide.

00:01:08.980 Sam, thanks for joining us.

00:01:10.900 Really glad to be with you today.

00:01:13.280 You know, you really did spark something in a big way when you did the investigative journalism that you do,

00:01:21.360 which, by the way, it seems to be disappearing on this earth.

00:01:26.320 And so to have somebody doing this, looking out for Canadians,

00:01:30.320 and from this perspective, you really opened our eyes wide to foreign interference in a way

00:01:35.180 I don't think Canadians were prepared to hear about.

00:01:40.040 Yeah, I mean, it's kind of become a life project in a way.

00:01:44.320 And in terms of investigative journalism, I grew up in the Vancouver province and Sun newsroom,

00:01:51.980 watching like legends like Kim Bolan, the great crime reporter,

00:01:56.600 David Baines, the great financial crime investigator,

00:01:59.600 that pretty much single-handedly exposed the Vancouver Stock Exchange

00:02:04.280 for, I would say, kind of a Hells Angels front operation for trading.

00:02:08.620 And that kind of stuff has become more and more clear by the year.

00:02:13.160 I think I took the baton and dove into the international nefarious hostile states

00:02:20.040 and transnational networks that have made Vancouver, first and foremost,

00:02:24.640 an absolute convergence for the world's organized crime networks

00:02:29.040 connected to the CCP and the Iranian state, Hezbollah, Mexican cartels.

00:02:33.860 I just learned my investigative chops there.

00:02:38.440 I was motivated, I would say, due to my upbringing to understand why good people in Canada

00:02:45.880 with good incomes, good families, couldn't afford homes.

00:02:49.780 Didn't work, didn't make sense.

00:02:51.660 I figured it out, and I'm keeping it going.

00:02:54.120 And I really appreciate guys like you bringing me on.

00:02:58.060 Like I say, I've been asked to brief the Pentagon.

00:03:01.240 There's some people that want me to get testified down in Washington.

00:03:05.860 The German government, Taiwan, Japan.

00:03:09.460 I'm now writing for around the world and from Canadians.

00:03:12.980 So I think it's a cool Canadian success story, if I can be a little bit immodest.

00:03:18.240 Yeah, no, I think that you're 100% right.

00:03:19.980 It's put us on the map as having, you're putting us on the map as having eyes

00:03:24.380 on the world's nefarious financial doings and how that leads to so many repercussions

00:03:30.640 in the financial system and housing, just in everyday life here in Canada.

00:03:35.080 It was an astute moment for sure.

00:03:38.700 Do you mind, and I'm sure you must be tired of doing this, but just in a nutshell,

00:03:43.360 maybe you could just kind of put a fine point on willful blindness

00:03:48.000 and the state of affairs at the time in the casinos and how you detected this.

00:03:53.020 Do you mind just giving us a quick wrap on that so that anybody who hasn't had a chance

00:03:57.100 to read the book, you will want to when you understand this better.

00:04:01.680 Yeah, definitely pick up the book because people talk about how it just exposes a network

00:04:07.940 and it might make people's head hurt when they dive into it.

00:04:11.860 But I've laid it out in a narrative where it's about, in a way, it's about a young reporter

00:04:16.980 coming of age in a city that makes no sense and figuring it out step by step.

00:04:22.400 So that's exactly how I approached it.

00:04:24.520 You know, around 2009, 2010, I had been reading a lot about the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis

00:04:31.360 and why their American dream had crumbled, you know, Wall Street taking over financialization

00:04:38.040 of U.S. home prices and then it collapsing, the fraud being exposed.

00:04:42.900 And I thought there has to be some element to Vancouver's story about that.

00:04:47.000 The housing prices of, you know, literally, I remember there was websites called like

00:04:52.040 Crack Shack or Vancouver Mansion.

00:04:55.260 And, you know, yeah, you'd see a home that was run down, basically a crack shack

00:05:00.420 in anywhere else in the world for 1.5 million.

00:05:02.840 And to jump to the chase, I figured out that it was a massive amount of money coming

00:05:09.420 from China and Hong Kong.

00:05:11.420 No one could figure out or admit publicly how.

00:05:14.600 And so what I really broke the mold in is discovering the Vancouver model.

00:05:18.800 And that's how portions, large portions of West Canada's economy were being used

00:05:27.240 by transnational organized crime and Chinese state actors.

00:05:30.720 So how it works is massive amounts of drug cash were being walked in into B.C.

00:05:37.600 government casinos, especially in Richmond, a high Asian diaspora municipality, you know,

00:05:44.220 right between Vancouver and the ocean, right by the Vancouver airport there.

00:05:48.980 And literally tycoons.

00:05:51.560 So we're talking billionaires, military figures, Chinese officials, you know, very, very ambitious

00:06:00.020 gangsters who were flying in from Macau in China.

00:06:03.160 They had made a deal, you know, usually on encrypted Chinese WeChat, you know, apps or things

00:06:11.780 like this.

00:06:12.300 They'd made a deal with the local drug traffickers who had warehouses of fentanyl, methamphetamine,

00:06:18.700 cocaine, you know, drug money collected from drug dealers across Western Canada who would

00:06:24.320 drive that drug cash into, you know, Vancouver.

00:06:27.780 It would be warehoused in what's called Chinese underground banks.

00:06:31.200 The wealthy gambler flies in from China or Macau.

00:06:35.400 He meets the gangster banker, you know, in a parking lot outside the casino, literally gets

00:06:42.280 a duffel bag of 500,000 or more or 100,000, walks in the casino against any Canadian anti-money

00:06:51.300 laundering checks and balances, is allowed to gamble.

00:06:53.860 His money is laundered in that way and it cycles back to China where his source of wealth is.

00:07:01.420 That money back in China, you know, there's a few steps here I could miss or go into greater

00:07:05.880 detail, but in a nutshell, that money is going back to China, producing more fentanyl, which

00:07:10.960 is coming back into North America and America.

00:07:14.460 Don't get it wrong.

00:07:15.680 It's going into America from Canada, being sold across Canada.

00:07:20.300 You know, what I grew up in, the fentanyl overdose death zone of downtown Vancouver, 10 years

00:07:27.260 ago that I really started exposing, has moved across Canada.

00:07:31.240 So that's the flow of China's fentanyl cash through BC casinos and it goes across the economy.

00:07:38.460 What a great summary.

00:07:40.360 Thank you.

00:07:40.900 Because it is very involved and I will recommend people get into it.

00:07:46.100 It's an incredible journey.

00:07:47.520 I mean, I can't believe that it's not a movie already.

00:07:50.740 Maybe we'll option the rights, Brian, before we get out of here.

00:07:53.540 But no, it is a fascinating read and it really did crack open what is systemically wrong with

00:08:01.200 pricing houses and the drug problems and what a dumpster fire Vancouver became.

00:08:07.100 It all kind of ties back to this.

00:08:09.260 No doubt.

00:08:12.340 I mean, I'd like to say that, you know, I didn't figure it all out in one whack back in 2016,

00:08:19.780 2017.

00:08:21.320 I, you know, I broke the story of the Vancouver casino money laundering, which became known

00:08:27.380 as the Vancouver model when an Australian professor read my reports and dubbed this mode

00:08:33.880 of underground transactions from China bouncing down to Peru, Mexico, back up to Vancouver.

00:08:40.060 The Vancouver model became an academic typology of money laundering.

00:08:45.100 But I figured out year by year and you're right.

00:08:48.180 The dumpster fire of prices I've now assessed with great confidence that over a trillion dollars

00:08:55.860 in Vancouver model, drug money laundering has washed through Toronto and Vancouver real estate.

00:09:03.000 And there are many sort of story points or milestones to put that together.

00:09:07.820 I'll quickly tell you one, you know, Fintrac, that is without any Canadian bank ever facing

00:09:14.320 criminal prosecution.

00:09:15.540 They mapped in 2023 that during the pandemic, when casinos were closed, the Chinese money

00:09:22.320 launders evolved their methods more, more electronically into Canada's big banks, more

00:09:28.460 directly.

00:09:29.320 They took the casino step out and they showed how this massive map of money laundering had

00:09:35.140 worked into Canadian banks, real estate law offices.

00:09:39.260 So as I say, you know, this is the model that the U.S.

00:09:42.120 Treasury now came out with another model that says 300 billion in Chinese underground banking

00:09:50.180 for Mexican cartels was discovered by the U.S.

00:09:55.100 government in about four years.

00:09:57.360 So, OK, back to Canada.

00:09:58.740 Yeah, a trillion dollars in about the past decade.

00:10:02.220 That's incredible.

00:10:04.200 Brian, I'm sorry, I'm hogging the interview, please.

00:10:06.440 I mean, I know you've got it.

00:10:07.380 We've both got a million questions.

00:10:09.320 That's perfect because I wanted to jump in here.

00:10:11.360 Does that trillion dollars include the PNP out west?

00:10:14.960 Is that factored in there at all?

00:10:16.160 Or yeah, so I mean, the the investor, sorry, out east, out east, not out west, the PNP scheme

00:10:24.360 in PEI in PEI.

00:10:26.900 So that's the the immigrant investor scheme where I would say so.

00:10:31.080 I mean, you know, to get into the weeds a little bit.

00:10:35.540 Absolutely, I mean, my book details how this the original scheme run through Jean Crescent's 0.80

00:10:43.300 showinigan writing among other places that brought in, you know, funneled through Hong

00:10:50.000 Kong, Taiwan and Chinese gangsters sending in, you know, a lot of wealthy people in Canada's

00:10:56.100 fraudulent immigration investor program, which was dominated by people from China. 0.76

00:11:00.940 Yeah, they were run they were running mostly into Toronto, Quebec and Vancouver in the early

00:11:08.800 days.

00:11:09.260 And then it migrated out to PEI, where I would say the same largely liberal, liberal party

00:11:16.440 of Canada associated business networks ran a lot of Chinese investors in into, you know,

00:11:24.240 there's a well known story of hundreds being, you know, connected to, I believe, like a small

00:11:31.620 motel.

00:11:32.620 So yeah, more or less the the funnel of Chinese gangster or corrupt official or underground 0.99

00:11:42.200 banking running through that PNP program in various provinces would feed into in complex

00:11:48.320 ways Vancouver and Toronto real estate.

00:11:51.740 You mentioned a bunch of American agent three letter agencies there that want to bring you

00:11:56.960 in as kind of an SME and debriefing them.

00:11:59.620 Why do you think the RCMP and CSIS are so afraid to do anything or so afraid to investigate

00:12:05.180 or leverage someone with your expertise or Gary Clement or these folks, they have them

00:12:10.520 on as sort of outsiders conspiracy theorists rather than the experts that you are in this

00:12:16.060 field?

00:12:17.060 Well, that's the core question.

00:12:18.480 So the bottom line first, as they say in the military, the RCMP, I would assess at this

00:12:25.820 point is a politically captured organization.

00:12:29.140 I don't think I've even heard from very senior political figures who I won't name out of, you

00:12:35.720 know, respect to them saying the PMO and the prime minister would have to sign off on certain

00:12:41.340 directives for the RCMP to undertake, you know, some of the investigations that I know they

00:12:47.840 should. And I could go through all kinds of anecdotes that I won't. But to target, let's

00:12:52.220 say it came up in the Cullen Commission that a Chinese state connected money laundering network

00:12:59.480 had come up in various agency investigations, but the RCMP didn't investigate. And their mealy

00:13:05.760 mouthed excuse in the Cullen Commission was very memorably, they said, well, there's so

00:13:10.740 many money launders out there, this one wouldn't have made a difference, which in itself, kind

00:13:15.700 of true, probably. There's a lot out there.

00:13:18.380 That's a, that's a sad admission, but it's not an excuse to avoid.

00:13:22.100 Exactly. This is a Chinese state operation. I believe it came up in the Cullen Commission

00:13:27.040 for a reason. I believe I know the people behind that particular probe. I believe they

00:13:33.540 can be found pictured beside Justin Trudeau and certain candidates. I believe one of them

00:13:38.100 is probably sitting on the Canada China Business Council board, if I want to be a little bit

00:13:42.100 direct in what I'm saying. So back to Brian's question. Look, I'd like to make a distinction.

00:13:48.920 I mean, people from the OPP at very qualified and, and, and credible levels have been, I think,

00:13:58.620 wanting to talk to me, whether that goes forward or not soon. York Regional Police had me in to

00:14:04.500 brief their, their officers on why Chinese diaspora citizens feel fearful to reach out

00:14:12.400 to Canadian police about foreign interference. So I have been brought in by both US and Canadian

00:14:19.640 great enforcement and, and security focused units. And I continue to, I'll be flying out to

00:14:26.840 Idaho in the, in the coming months. I just got an email from Wisconsin. So look, I'm a reporter.

00:14:33.560 I'm a journalist. I'm an investigator. I'm a patriot, but I'm also at this point doing some

00:14:37.960 public service work, reaching out to law enforcement that wants to talk to me and whether

00:14:43.060 they can say it publicly or not. Some people very senior on the fentanyl file in Canada have

00:14:49.080 been talking to me behind the scenes, but I don't think you'll hear Mark Carney's government,

00:14:53.860 you know, stepping out, stepping out publicly and saying they want, they want to bring me in

00:14:59.120 for consultation because what I tell them will go to some very sensitive areas.

00:15:03.560 We're hearing more and more that the various labs are being discovered across Canada, not

00:15:09.900 just for fentanyl. There's a massive cannabis operations being discovered. Maybe you could

00:15:16.120 comment on that, but they have also infiltrated larger banking and financial institutions alongside

00:15:22.320 that.

00:15:22.560 Yeah, no doubt. Um, so my reporting at the bureau has, has absolutely, I believe established sometimes

00:15:32.440 with on the record sources, sometimes with people that can't be named that the, the, the, the pot

00:15:40.040 industry in Canada, let's call it an industry, especially in Ontario, British Columbia, I believe

00:15:46.740 Quebec, you know, this has been what I call like Quonset hut factories have been rolled out across 1.00

00:15:54.040 Canada from, from a few miles outside, you know, main cities up to the Tunderlands of the North

00:16:00.260 Canada. For decades, Canada has been a major global exporter of narcotics, starting with a marijuana,

00:16:08.680 as my sources have, you know, stood up in a number of stories I've done for the bureau.

00:16:13.100 And that simply was repurposed, you know, from about, let's say around 2005, just to pick a year

00:16:19.660 into production for, uh, methamphetamine ecstasy. Vancouver has always been a global hub, you know,

00:16:27.280 for, uh, marijuana going down to Mexico, cocaine and meth coming back up. And in the early 2000s,

00:16:35.000 the CCP, the cartels and the hell's angels who work under them and with him, uh, along with the

00:16:42.660 Iranian state actors started to turn Western Canada into a, uh, let's just call it a 0.76

00:16:49.580 Sinaloa-like, uh, synthetic narcotic production hub. So that's across Canada now, completely

00:16:56.280 consistent with the death zones you now see in small and large communities across Canada for

00:17:01.900 fentanyl. Uh, the, the, the scenes that I could only see in downtown Vancouver as a young reporter

00:17:07.600 across Canada, the drug labs for synthetics are across Canada and the money laundering system

00:17:13.720 feeding into the big six banks down to law offices, stock traders, uh, cryptocurrency pick it, pick an

00:17:23.820 industry, oil fields, resources, you know, this is genuine infiltration at all levels, right?

00:17:31.300 It's at all levels. And I could end my answer by saying, I just reported on a great new report

00:17:36.600 from David Luna, former sort of senior U S state department counter narcotics and intelligence

00:17:43.000 official. I've worked with him and others. Uh, he came out with a new report pointing to an un,

00:17:49.080 this is a quote, unprecedented convergence of nearly 700 crime groups on the soil in Canada, connecting

00:17:56.280 to 48 foreign nations. And, uh, he assesses over $200 billion laundered per year through Canada. And

00:18:06.680 if I can explain it this way, as he says, it's not just about drug money laundering anymore. That is

00:18:12.440 the standard understanding of organized crime, needing to convert their drug proceeds into vehicles

00:18:18.520 or homes they could enjoy its liquidity for Canada's legitimate businesses, right? So real estate

00:18:25.000 development, stock trading, everything else. Uh, and so he says, Canada's peak concern is not,

00:18:32.760 is not fentanyl crossing the border into the United States. It's the whole country being leveraged as a

00:18:38.760 money laundering tool. So I think that gets to your answer. And that brings into context, my prior,

00:18:44.840 my own estimate of over a trillion in, in Vancouver, money laundering, Vancouver model laundering into

00:18:51.640 real estate in, in Toronto and Vancouver, we can easily get to that figure where we have David Luna

00:18:57.080 from the U S government now saying likely over 200 billion per year, easily in Canada.

00:19:03.080 Markable. Do you, do you think that, um,

00:19:07.400 um, the money laundering is the main driver of this activity versus the espionage? Would it

00:19:13.800 is, have you thought about, is it a 50, 50, 70, 30 scale? Where do you see that?

00:19:18.360 I haven't done a sort of a Bayesian assessment of the evidence. All the new evidence comes out and

00:19:25.400 I probably could put a number on it, but I'll tell you like this, Brian, um, I, and a close circle of,

00:19:32.840 of Canadian experts say that you can't look at the money laundering and the fentanyl or, or any of the

00:19:39.160 narcotics in Vancouver without looking at the encryption technology hub, a little known story,

00:19:45.800 still not understood that, uh, the Cameron orders, that is the, the trader, the alleged trader, the

00:19:51.800 RCP intelligence boss who was selling five eyes plans to, uh, Hezbollah Sinaloa cartel, uh, you know,

00:20:00.680 CCP allegedly, um, the encryption technology companies, he was leaking, uh, you know, investigation

00:20:08.600 plans to where we're very, we're, we're directly connected to Chapo Guzman and the Sinaloa cartel

00:20:15.080 in Vancouver who chose that location for, you know, a reason. And it's not just, you know,

00:20:21.480 easy criminal profits or a lack of, uh, uh, law enforcement. It's because my, my friends, you know,

00:20:30.280 in enforcement and, and security would say Vancouver has been chosen as sort of a forward operating

00:20:37.400 hostile, uh, base of operations for the Iranian networks, the CCP networks, and the Mexican

00:20:44.200 cartels work with them. They are, uh, uh, an intelligence entity in themselves and they have,

00:20:51.720 I believe a client relationship with the terror networks and the CCP. So you got that triangle of

00:20:57.240 bad actors. Those would be the top ones that are taking over Canada right now. I would say in, uh,

00:21:03.400 the money laundering and the hostile state activity go absolutely hand in hand. So

00:21:08.760 I'll just say 50, 50 right now, you know, when I think about it, but it could be a different answer.

00:21:14.040 Sam, how do as Canadians and as law enforcement, how is it that we heard nothing about this Ryan

00:21:22.120 wedding guy until it was almost all done? It seems to me that this guy might've been one of those key

00:21:28.280 players in the Vancouver market and the West coast for certain yet. It wasn't widely known to Canadians

00:21:35.800 just how, how desperately he was wanted by the FBI and how involved he was.

00:21:41.800 Absolutely. And I got a personal anecdote for that one. I mean, I was in my, in my journey of

00:21:49.160 understanding the Vancouver model. I would say in 2017, 2018, probably 2017, I was of course very focused

00:21:58.280 on Chinese organized crime and the CCP as the let's, let's just call them the upstream actor in all of

00:22:07.160 this worldwide. But I remember, uh, a colleague who, who was on the inside in, in, in Canadian government

00:22:16.600 sent me the story showing Ryan wedding, you know, in his, uh, in his racing suit, going around a gate.

00:22:24.680 I forget what, maybe it was a national post story. And the person who is course is being very careful

00:22:30.760 not to, not to cross classified lines is saying, look at this person's networks. And I, I didn't get

00:22:38.360 it. I was like, this is a Canadian snowboarder. Yeah. He got busted for some weed and various things.

00:22:43.480 He still doesn't look that important to me, but bit by bit, year by year, I understood that he was

00:22:49.160 married to, uh, an Iranian lady in North Vancouver who appeared to be very connected in the Iranian

00:22:55.880 state money laundering networks. I further then learned that Ryan wedding and these people in

00:23:01.240 Vancouver were connected to these encryption technology businesses that I've started to talk

00:23:07.000 about. And they would be, I believe launched by Iranian state actors or connected along with the

00:23:13.640 Mexican cartels. So year by year, I started to understand that I started to, you know, sort of

00:23:19.960 kind of like poke those stories forward. I'd say in the last two years at the bureau.news,

00:23:25.800 Ryan weddings, not in my book, I don't believe, but he, he's made a big appearance on my platform,

00:23:31.320 uh, over the last two years where I've laid out that look, um, he was down on Margarita Island

00:23:38.760 for a reason, running cocaine up to Halifax where a military official, and I believe other officials

00:23:45.800 were corrupted. And the Canadian government knew this. I'm sure that the American government

00:23:51.480 probably put them onto it, but Ryan wedding is absolutely. He was a major player, uh, in the story

00:23:59.560 that's now emerged from Venezuela, how Venezuela and Margarita Island were being used by all the

00:24:05.560 cartels, uh, in a state run narco operation that used state oil planes. And of course, Hezbollah was 0.91

00:24:13.960 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

00:24:19.880 onto the Ryan wedding story yet, but why were Canadians not told? Um, you know, why, why did

00:24:28.600 the Globe and Mail in one of their few stories that I will credit them for, for getting the scoop on me?

00:24:34.440 Why didn't Canadians know that Justin Trudeau was, you know, entangled in a surveillance operation

00:24:40.520 in Vancouver in 2016 with the people that I know that were the subject of my book are high level

00:24:47.480 Chinese narcos, money launders, state actors. Justin Trudeau was there for a reason we still don't 0.95

00:24:53.640 know. Canadians don't know. It's an unanswered question. Same, same as, you know, I believe 0.99

00:24:58.920 Ryan wedding. He's a, he's a powerful guy, but there's people in the Chinese state, Iranian state,

00:25:04.520 Mexican state, who knows, maybe other states that are a lot more important than Ryan wedding.

00:25:10.120 Yeah. I can imagine that, that to me just seemed to be a bellwether moment for Canadians. Like, okay,

00:25:16.840 this is one of our Olympians and he's entrenched in this, uh, where else is this going on? So I think,

00:25:24.520 yeah, I hope that that questioning leads to more revelation, to be honest with you.

00:25:29.320 If I had to, I think you hit the nail on the head there, like for Canadians, I, well, since my book 1.00

00:25:36.520 launched at number one, that's a, that's a data point that there's enough. That is my book came out

00:25:41.880 number one on amazon.com Canada, uh, you know, in 2021, which was huge. I never could have expected

00:25:49.880 that. So there is a portion of Canadians that care, but still not enough people were getting

00:25:55.320 the message, you know, because I advocated, we need a racketeering law in 2021. We need a foreign 1.00

00:26:01.320 interference law. Nothing is in place. So not enough people understand, but I do think the Ryan wedding

00:26:07.480 story can get a little deeper into the psyches of, of Canadians that are resistant to getting or

00:26:14.120 getting their head around that Canada is not the good guy anymore. We're a global narcotics exporter.

00:26:19.800 As I said, it started with marijuana. It's been very slow and sophisticated how cartels and the CCP

00:26:25.720 have come in, but seeing your former Olympian, you know, call the globally significant narco.

00:26:32.120 If you're a Canadian, you don't start to get it. I mean, get your head checked. And there's enough 1.00

00:26:37.000 of them that I don't think we'll get it. I want to, I want to quickly quote your book here,

00:26:41.320 because it's in the same vein as, as what a good segue here. So you mentioned growing up and believing

00:26:46.200 Canada was a bastion of uprightness and stability, corruption wars and spy plots happened in other

00:26:51.080 countries. Do you see this naive disconnect as a main driver of Canada's obsession to voting liberal,

00:26:58.120 despite all the evidence of corruption and criminal activity in the last 10 to 15 years? And it goes back

00:27:04.280 obviously to the seventies of Trudeau senior. But like, what is this disconnect and sort of correlating

00:27:11.320 Trump derangement syndrome elbows upside off that evolved in the last one that I've seen you break

00:27:15.720 down brilliantly? How did we get here with this to be so delusional? Yeah, no, I absolutely the way

00:27:22.680 you framed it is exactly how I thought about it when I was writing the book and how I've increasingly

00:27:28.680 started to see it is, yeah, my education was very blinded. We were still at a point where Canadians 0.99

00:27:36.040 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 0.99

00:28:29.560 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 0.67

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

00:31:42.760 gave the vaccine development

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.

True Patriot Love - February 24, 2026

Canada Launders $1 Trillion - with Sam Cooper

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