True Patriot Love - May 09, 2026


Gang Shootings, Stolen Funds, & Cocaine Canada [Weekly Crime Update]

Topics
gang shootings privatizing jails
Hosted by
Shara Micucci Mike Wixson
Mentioned
Surrey Mike Linda Franklin John Tibbetts Brady Wedham Phil Mooney Bitcoin Reagan Bill
Ontario’s 407 Deal Is Still Costing Drivers Alberta Separation Is Getting Real

Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

192.78

Word count

9,194

Sentence count

211

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we review the Surrey Gang Shootings, a car fire in Toronto, and a report from Cocaine Canada on Bitcoin's impact on the Canadian drug trade. We also talk about the recent shooting of a man in Surrey, BC, and the lack of details surrounding it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Is this going to become a legitimized business somehow, guys?
00:00:03 It seems like these guys get away with it.
00:00:05 I mean, it's all done in Bitcoin.
00:00:07 It's distributed.
00:00:08 Nobody has been able to get to the bottom of what they're doing.
00:00:10 They're really wreaking havoc.
00:00:12 And to the tune now of estimates between $40 and $150 million a year in ransom fines.
00:00:20 And they're getting it.
00:00:26 Hi, this is tplmedia.ca.
00:00:28 Don't forget to subscribe, tell a friend, and don't hesitate to support the network.
00:00:32 You keep the wheels on the cart in doing so.
00:00:35 Surrey gang shootings, a crime report in Toronto that has very mixed reviews and interpretations,
00:00:42 and Cocaine Canada, all in this episode as we review what's happening in crime across Canada.
00:00:48 Joining me, Paul Micucci, Brady Wedham.
00:00:50 Thanks, guys, for doing this.
00:00:52 First on the list, guys, the Surrey gang shooting that went down last week and really a scant reporting on the details.
00:01:02 I don't know if you noticed that.
00:01:04 Yeah, so 3 p.m. on May 4th, 2026, a shooting occurred near 130th Street and 76th Avenue in Surrey, British Columbia.
00:01:13 Okay, they found a man suffering from gunshot wounds.
00:01:16 Emergency crews attempted life-saving measures, but the victim died on the scene.
00:01:19 And the reports on this have been, yes, like you said, a bit staggering in lack of details.
00:01:25 Yeah, it's funny because it looked to me like right away, guys, they wanted to talk about this as a gang-related shooting
00:01:31 because it was in that style, very brazen daylight shooting, a lot of video available on it, of course.
00:01:41 But they hesitated, the police hesitated to position that.
00:01:45 I wonder why.
00:01:46 So the last bit of details was the victim was a man in his 30s.
00:01:49 He was reportedly at work at the time of the attack.
00:01:51 He has no criminal record and had not previously reported threats of extortion or attempts to anything like that to the police.
00:01:58 Yes.
00:01:58 But, Mike, isn't this the one where the two masked guys are chasing him down the street?
00:02:03 Yeah.
00:02:03 Yeah.
00:02:04 So in the middle of the day, they're actually.
00:02:06 And bullets are flying everywhere.
00:02:09 You know, they're not great aim.
00:02:11 Right.
00:02:11 But, you know, they finally hit him, obviously.
00:02:13 But, yeah.
00:02:14 And the victim, of course, in the video, you see him scrambling for his life, unable to save it.
00:02:20 However, now the question in B.C., certainly in Surrey, remains, has the police transition?
00:02:29 They've got new things happening with the police force there, new appointments, reallocations.
00:02:34 They feel, the community now feels, I think, like the gang supervision has gone away.
00:02:41 there isn't that much attention on gang violence and in a brazen scenario like that in the middle
00:02:47 of the street anybody could be shot and killed yeah well of course bullets flying everywhere
00:02:53 you hear it quite frankly a lot in the united states where there's you know stray bullets in
00:02:58 like south chicago and places like that go through walls kill children hurt people you're hearing it
00:03:04 all the time so when these guys are running down the road bullets are going through glass windows
00:03:09 buildings cars it's brutal right yeah but but the question i have for all this you know as you
00:03:16 mentioned the the gang the police gang unit right after where are they yeah where are they and where
00:03:24 are they collecting camera footage and then asking for people to come forward is there any rewards
00:03:29 put up to actually ask anyone to come forward and like to nip this in the butt and give public
00:03:35 confidence back because you know we criticize let's go to mexico for a minute we criticize
00:03:41 mexico when we see people you know we go oh my god you see down in mexico those people are in
00:03:46 the hotel and there's cars on fire and they're shooting out in front of the hotel hello what's
00:03:51 the difference here yeah there's not much there's not much difference right there's there's no
00:03:55 warning there's no warning of a car fire to let you know there might be danger there that's that's
00:03:59 one difference yeah but yeah uh and and of course now they're saying i think that they're the walk
00:04:05 away from the gang scenario is a lot of positioning for the police department in surrey because they
00:04:10 don't want to make it look like they've let the gang situation get out of control and they're now
00:04:14 identifying this individual as somebody not related to gang related crime it seems like this
00:04:21 was a mistaken identity thing well that doesn't stop us from needing to investigate gang violent
00:04:27 gang crime and how they executed on the streets they got the wrong guy this time but it didn't
00:04:33 change the act it didn't change the crime no even worse imagine this poor guy you know that was he
00:04:38 mechanic uh whatever he was at work you know he's fleeing for his life because two hooded guys are
00:04:46 you know oh my goodness imagine the the feeling the panic and guys let's see the family you know
00:04:51 his kids whatever like and then it's unexplained yeah but let's say that this is this was a mistake
00:04:57 of mistaken identity every other person that works on that street now has to worry that someone's
00:05:02 going to run in like you're going to have pdsd just from being around it well no the effects
00:05:07 of this are massive and and that they haven't identified it as gang crime doesn't keep it out
00:05:12 of that realm unfortunately looks like gang crime on the surveillance footage anybody running around
00:05:16 with masks on shooting each other in broad daylight in an area where people are working
00:05:20 in a downtown core like vancouver is that's considered gang crime i don't care if you're
00:05:25 putting up signs or not that is a terrorist terroristic gang activity you know it's interesting
00:05:31 because i mentioned i had a business in chicago and yeah it was really uh wild because they didn't
00:05:37 realize until i got down there that when you go down and when you go on vacation you go to
00:05:41 downtown chicago you're really barricaded in you know because of the lakes and the bridges and
00:05:47 everything else the police actually police like south chicago they police different entries into
00:05:52 the city to make sure gangs don't get loose and come into the city to to rob and to assault and
00:05:58 to shoot people you know that's sounds terrible but they really do it's it's they coordinate it
00:06:04 off the they really yeah you're you're you're you're protected as a tourist inside the city
00:06:08 core once in a while gangs break out and there's disruption and they move into the city and then
00:06:15 they come ahead of them they try to get ahead of them and set off alarms to get people to to
00:06:21 go for shelter we reach that point where quite frankly we're we can't control it we can't
00:06:29 barricade it off so we have to create shelter alerts shelter in place alerts so crime in our
00:06:34 if you're in if you're in surrey bc or you're in one of these places now should there be a if listen
00:06:40 i think it's up to the police to kind of come out and say listen we don't have it now
00:06:43 so we better figure out protection zones which they do in chicago the chicago police tell you
00:06:48 as soon as you hear these sirens right move somewhere fast stay low get behind something
00:06:54 that's uh as bulletproof as you can get what a tragic necessity but that's what you're told is
00:07:00 you're when you're a citizen and you know when you're going down the magic mile or you're going
00:07:04 up to have grab dinner when you hear that go off right away you know the alert bells go off and you
00:07:09 move just like you know just like when you're living in oklahoma city and there's a tornado
00:07:14 coming it's the same feeling right you're like okay i need doom i need to i need to try to figure
00:07:20 out where these gunshots are coming from i need to figure out which side of the street i need to move
00:07:25 to and i need to shelter in place right and i'm like this is you know this it's not canada it
00:07:32 shouldn't be what we do in canada but that's in canada that's in terms of protecting civilians
00:07:37 and being an individual and thinking, you know, that helps the safety of that.
00:07:41 What stops gang activity or at least puts a dent in it
00:07:45 is way more severe charges for something like this.
00:07:48 Let's say they catch these two guys.
00:07:50 This isn't just, hey, you know, you're going to get bail
00:07:52 or, hey, you're going to get 7 to 15 years.
00:07:54 Lock these guys up for life.
00:07:56 No, this was premeditated murder.
00:07:57 It was a plan.
00:07:58 They had a plan.
00:07:58 They got the wrong guy, but they had a plan, and they executed it.
00:08:01 We're going to talk about bail reform in a minute
00:08:03 with something else coming up.
00:08:05 But, you know, knock on this government.
00:08:10 We haven't seen any legislation, have we?
00:08:12 No, and we haven't seen one piece of legislation passed.
00:08:15 You know, the Conservative Party has time and time again talked about this.
00:08:21 We haven't seen any real movement on this file, right?
00:08:24 It's just, you know, they have no interest in moving this file.
00:08:27 They like it the way it is for whatever reason.
00:08:28 I have no, I have no idea why this is of interest for them not to change.
00:08:33 and this is where this really goes into the judicial system and and pressing charges and
00:08:39 being firm on our laws it doesn't you know i have a i have a buddy who's uh actually a couple years
00:08:44 older than you gentlemen and um i grew up with this kid and he used to joke because he was a
00:08:49 pretty wild guy but he used to joke at the kitchen table i have 98 charges on my list
00:08:55 anyone who has 98 charges should be locked up for a long time he shouldn't be at the kitchen table
00:09:01 telling me and these weren't petty things these were like robberies assaults like violent crimes
00:09:06 yeah but he was able to hit the streets no obviously he performed enough where he could
00:09:11 sit at the kitchen table and talk like a normal human being the three strikes uh philosophy in
00:09:17 america really probably needs to be put into effect here next on our list guys okay well this
00:09:24 is uh something that's becoming more and more prevalent uh people being extorted for their
00:09:29 online data shiny hunters has struck again as we all know taking hundreds of thousands of files
00:09:37 and hacking major insurance company here in canada and taking valuable information but
00:09:47 not for the purpose of using that information but for the purpose of extortion and it looks like
00:09:54 these guys are doing a hell of a business yeah these are online pirates this is no different
00:10:00 than stealing someone's ship in a port somewhere or in the water they're taking all of your info
00:10:04 they're holding it hostage and they're not going to release it until you pay them a bunch of schools
00:10:09 just got hacked this morning i was watching the news it's coming out now so they're trying to
00:10:13 figure out how bad the hack was but yeah this is is this going to become a legitimized business
00:10:19 somehow guys it seems like this could these guys get away with it i mean it's all done in bitcoin
00:10:23 it's distributed nobody's been able to get to the bottom of what they're doing yeah they're really
00:10:28 wreaking havoc and to the tune now of estimates between 40 and 150 million dollars a year
00:10:35 in ransom fines and they're getting it well they're getting it yeah if if you lock down
00:10:40 someone's business let's say it's a multi-billion dollar software company whatever it is you lock
00:10:45 it down you don't have a second to wait you just pay it and move on and hopefully you'll get them
00:10:49 on the back end. Well, you don't want the bad PR to start with. You don't want it. You really
00:10:53 don't want to violate any of your own privacy laws. I think that's the other major thing.
00:10:57 Oh, yeah. You know, we're all told you have to protect the privacy of your customers, your
00:11:02 clients, your databases. And that's a federally enforceable bit of business there. So if you're
00:11:10 a major corporation and you've just admitted to the world that you have, you know, disseminated
00:11:16 private information you could be under not just civil liable but maybe criminal charges as well
00:11:23 yes so uh we're going to dive deeper on this guys if you don't mind in the next week uh keep an eye
00:11:29 out for our shiny hunters um sort of understanding we're going to sit down and do a deeper dive on
00:11:35 who they are why they're doing this how they're getting away with it what international police
00:11:40 forces are addressing this and how this might affect insurance in the future. Do we need
00:11:46 hacker insurance now? I think we do. I think we're getting to the point where we need software
00:11:50 insurance. Yeah. The next one up, guys, and I'll hand this over. I noticed that I read in
00:11:56 Impulse Scarborough newspaper, the community newspaper there, that the chief of police
00:12:02 visited Scarborough Town Center in Toronto and talked about how crime is down in Toronto.
00:12:09 the crime report that arrived alongside that seems to show maybe differently what are your thoughts
00:12:15 guys uh paul do you want to take it away i've got a bit of a rant so i'll save it for the end okay
00:12:20 no no i you know whenever crime is reported on they tend to pick incidents of positive outcomes
00:12:30 yeah i get it so you go to the most heinous crime and you dwell on the fact that you know in this
00:12:38 case i think it was uh assaults uh public shootings and murders yeah went down right so you know and
00:12:45 they compared it against 2018 to 21 the worst years i think we had for homicides but then they don't
00:12:52 talk about car thefts then they don't talk about uh breaking entries they don't talk about you know
00:12:58 snatching grabs they don't talk about any of those things um so you get the sugar-coated version of
00:13:03 what went down i don't know why they do it it's a very interesting way to do it i i would much
00:13:09 prefer they just go through and tell us the whole news rather than pieces of the news and i think it
00:13:15 has to do with budgets truthfully well it's yeah yeah their budgets keep going up you know our
00:13:21 police budgets have increased we've all all the mayors have you know it's politically uh
00:13:26 i don't think politically you could get away with not approving a police budget right now so
00:13:32 be tough it'd be tough because you know people perceive and you know daytime attacks going up
00:13:38 transit violence going up or youth violence organized crime shootings tow truck wars
00:13:44 gang wars we just talked about and other violent offender issues so they they see those every day
00:13:50 on the news they've seen so to go back and say we can't have more police we can't have more
00:13:54 um and in this case you know uh this uh toronto police chief which i i i quite like i don't know
00:14:01 why he did this um you know he was just on the news and he was getting ready for world cup
00:14:07 and they were showing the high-tech uh units that they're deploying for the world cup
00:14:13 so you know and it's funny i'm watching it and it was really neat because they had these really
00:14:17 uh high-tech drones you know drones we we as human beings know more about drones than we
00:14:22 probably we ever wanted to know about for sure yeah yeah since the ukraine and all the straight
00:14:28 it's a drone world it's a drone world it really is a drone world so you know he's standing out
00:14:32 there and they have this big monster looking spider drone and the guy goes in the air with
00:14:37 it and he starts showing right away i say to myself okay we're in a drone world now we're
00:14:43 going to be doing drone so those people are going to the world cup there will be something flying
00:14:48 above you surveilling you for the whole world cup right they're going to be watching your movements
00:14:54 they're going to be there's probably technology that will be doing metal detection they'll probably
00:14:59 be uh i don't know what they're going to do as far as data but there'll be lots of there'll be
00:15:05 lots of surveillance on the crowd that's moving through the world cup zone and they just said
00:15:09 that they said here's the here's the hub it's these mobile trailers we have a number of drones
00:15:14 are going to be in the air the next thing i wonder okay we're okay with it for world cup
00:15:19 right yeah should we not start thinking about using it well they're not throwing the drones
00:15:26 out after the world cup paul i'll guarantee you exactly but but for those zones that we're seeing
00:15:32 you know i look at analytics and it's you know it's funny because my world my one part of my
00:15:37 world in business is totally analytics so quite frankly i look at it and i think to myself i know
00:15:43 what's capable from the analytics perspective from one side of my business uh acumen why
00:15:50 couldn't they use that so you know if you have a you're just talking about sorry bc and you have
00:15:57 gangs in three bc yeah okay we want to knock down crime and give those people right you land those
00:16:03 command centers drones go in the air right all of a sudden you you're in play that to me that
00:16:09 makes perfect sense but do we want to be in a downtown core where we're constantly being
00:16:14 monitored by random drones if it makes me safer yes well you know so can i throw that could lead
00:16:19 to trouble a lot of stuff can make it safer but it ends up taking away your liberties yeah your
00:16:23 liberties and freedoms depending on how you label freedom but i come back to so if you can't provide
00:16:28 me public if you can't provide me adequate public safety in a transparent correct manner even
00:16:35 reporting on it then i think we have to question what we need to do next because we need to address
00:16:40 it right we can't just say okay it's going down we don't we're doing our job when when it's not
00:16:47 it's not going down it's not going down so we we have to kind of say okay what's you know how do we
00:16:52 help them that being the police achieve this and i think we you know we go to the uk so if you
00:16:57 travel to london for those of you who haven't been lately but when you do go there and you land and
00:17:02 and mike you were just there you know uh last year yep um you land every spot every stop light
00:17:09 has surveillance on it so every major intercession is surveilled heavily surveilled yeah so if you
00:17:16 commit a crime and you break loose like these two guys in surrey running with the mass on
00:17:20 you have tracked you you have no shot again no you have zero opportunity they can take
00:17:27 the speed that you're walking running and identify it from camera to camera because you don't yeah
00:17:31 You know, just your cadence and the way that you're walking and stuff like that, you would have to really dramatically change how you move between cameras, which are between 50 and 100 meters at most without video view surveying you in London.
00:17:45 The first time that shooting, so the first time the gunshot goes off from the very first minute, they triangulate your area.
00:17:52 so the right away though that surveillance there's in london i've seen the hub where they have the
00:17:57 central surveillance there's like 50 people sitting on monitors right like you would in a
00:18:03 casino surveillance room right away it triangulates you so it does like a five mile triangulation of
00:18:10 all the lights and they're live picking looking to pick up that person moving and the two masked men
00:18:16 so right away you'd be picked up they'd be done and then then police know and they're talking to
00:18:20 them you got to go here you go there then you know the convergence is happening right well
00:18:24 you know you raise the point with with uh triangulation that makes me think with drones
00:18:28 that would be a hell of a lot easier than uh what we have now which is helicopters and cruisers on
00:18:34 the ground yeah so if all they did was use them in the in the moment of an incident uh probably
00:18:41 would be more effective i'm thinking than a helicopter and they're very advanced what we
00:18:46 we can do with helicopters and catching criminals is amazing but they've got to get up in the air
00:18:51 they've got to get to where they need to be if there's hubs with drones in the city in key hot
00:18:56 points well there already is you see drones you see drones downtown toronto you see them flying
00:19:02 around so i think this is already somewhat implemented but maybe you're right maybe the
00:19:05 ones that they take um that they have ready for the fifa those are going to be the new ones that
00:19:10 are just rolling around town anything that happens when we put down some sort of restriction or some
00:19:15 sort of surveillance never really goes away it always kind of just sticks around it's there for
00:19:19 a certain event or a certain time it's often there for a reason it's there for the reason
00:19:23 but it doesn't leave days it's probably staying for a reason somebody's legitimized why it needs
00:19:28 to stay and and this is in my mind a legitimate reason okay so we're talking about street
00:19:33 surveillance in the uk there's also online surveillance as well so and i think those
00:19:38 things they may sound like they're different but they're they do are and they're in the same
00:19:42 category it's being surveilled so people are getting arrested for posting stuff on facebook
00:19:46 that the government doesn't agree with by being surveilled so when you add in those cameras on
00:19:51 everywhere and the ability to track people you're now opening up more than just your physical body
00:19:55 being tracked on camera you're adding everything i guess if they can identify you and trick and
00:20:00 link you to other stuff then again if you're looking for a gang gang member that might be
00:20:05 handy but as a civilian that's just behaving and doing the right thing it feels like you're giving
00:20:11 up more stuff when you could just be changing bail reform and pressing harder charges and locking
00:20:16 these guys up forever exactly and that's you you hit a bang on the head at the end if you're not
00:20:22 willing so here's where we're at right yeah i think it becomes the the question of the day that
00:20:26 we have to ask the current government let's say listen if you're not willing to fix the bail
00:20:33 system and fix the penalties and fix your incarceration issues and build some prisons
00:20:39 and do some stuff now i guess we all need to know because at some point then if you got to say
00:20:44 you're not you're the government of the day then we got to ask you to do something and that is that
00:20:50 is when you have to go to the other means right yeah go to the other it's one of the other and
00:20:54 listen i think we'd all rather have done all the legislative changes quicker i think we'd all like
00:21:00 to be there i don't think you i don't think you can find you'll find too many people in canada
00:21:04 at this current moment that wouldn't agree with any legislative change for crime that would reduce
00:21:10 it i think we all collectively pull like 90 percent that's probably the only thing canadians
00:21:15 agree on right now let's slow down this crime and make charges for some reason we don't want to do
00:21:20 it well we don't have the room in jails frankly exactly well that's part of it you have to build
00:21:25 the jails for them so once you do less of changes you have to start to build but yeah the funny
00:21:29 thing is we're in a time the major projects we just did this show on the budget we're in a time
00:21:34 when construction trades have no work so if you're ever going to build jails it would be now
00:21:40 this would be the cheapest most convenient most practical best time to deploy resources to build
00:21:46 jails in canada but yet that's not on the books anywhere we don't see that as a infrastructure
00:21:51 project do we no no so especially especially not the kind of real i mean we're very focused on
00:21:57 rehabilitation rightfully so with our criminals but that takes larger facilities that takes
00:22:02 different kinds of facilities then you can't you can't house everybody committing crimes in a
00:22:07 country in that few uh facilities uh at different levels with different security and it really needs
00:22:15 to be thought through when you said major projects it occurred to me wow man prisons could have been
00:22:20 a major project and we could have been started today and we have a difference tomorrow we have
00:22:24 half empty built buildings we have lots of land to do this there should be no reason why there's
00:22:29 The EV plant would have been an excellent retrofit.
00:22:33 In the United States, they take cities that need employment and projects.
00:22:37 They move prisons into those cities when the mines close down to replicate the employment and the economy.
00:22:43 They make a lot of money.
00:22:44 It's the ecosystem that keeps the economy going.
00:22:46 And quite frankly.
00:22:47 It's a very smart idea.
00:22:48 Yeah, it is.
00:22:49 Well, it's not mine.
00:22:50 You know, it's basically replicate the best, you know, go to a country that's doing it the best, replicate it.
00:22:56 So do you start privatizing jails?
00:22:58 Is that how it gets done quicker?
00:22:59 you know what i'd rather privatize jails than privatize airports right you know what i mean
00:23:09 and i really would but quite frankly because i think those people would be incentivized to
00:23:14 run very efficient jails and to run them properly and to make sure they're they're conducted first
00:23:21 having a lot of issues with uh strikes unions everything that goes with the prison system
00:23:28 currently that structurally kind of challenges it so quite frankly i think it's a good idea
00:23:33 um it works i think it works fairly well in a lot of countries and that's why they do it um and also
00:23:40 you know what it's a tough job and to pay a third party to do it and if they do it well i think they
00:23:46 should be compensated it's not a nice job right like anything i think there was a bad rap given
00:23:51 to it in the u.s because it was the uh the courts were feeding to private prisons and so as long as
00:23:59 we build mechanisms in that are very transparent yeah i wouldn't be opposed to it either yeah you
00:24:05 know and and i'll be honest with you uh i'm not even against the privatization of the airports
00:24:11 if i can get the hell through the lines quicker you won't if it gets private very selfish i know
00:24:17 Conestoga College.
00:24:18 Well, the scammers have been let go.
00:24:20 Oh, goodness.
00:24:21 Is it okay to say scammers?
00:24:22 Did I just get?
00:24:24 This is a wild story.
00:24:26 If you're catching it for the first time and you're not Canadian
00:24:28 or you didn't hear about it in Canada, let me summarize, if I may,
00:24:33 and you guys put me in my place, if you don't mind, okay?
00:24:35 All right.
00:24:36 So now we've created a scenario where you can immigrate to Canada
00:24:40 to be a student and hit a student visa here.
00:24:43 And, you know, that's good for the colleges because we're promoting the heck out of that worldwide and mainly in India and other sort of specified areas.
00:24:54 We've even got agents representing the colleges in these countries saying we can get you an education, education gets you citizenship, and suddenly all the colleges are much busier.
00:25:05 conestoga college up 1500 in profitability and surplus with the influx of um international
00:25:17 students now what do you do with all this money well you you run amok with it of course why
00:25:22 wouldn't you this one drives me nuts brady let's give me the rundown of how money was so essentially
00:25:28 the board uh went uh spending drunk like sailors yeah so um what triggered the intervention um
00:25:36 there was an extensive government on it that uncovered egregious financial decisions okay
00:25:43 weaker miss uh missing board oversight and a misuse of public funds and to the point where
00:25:49 former college on former college's ontario ceo linda franklin appointed as administrator
00:25:54 immediately. She'll be temporarily replacing the board because John Tibbetts used to get $600,000
00:26:01 a year and somehow got an exit package of 83 months pay, which is equivalent to $4.1 million
00:26:07 on his way out. Oh my God. So this guy also, by the way, got a pay raise to $636,000 a year.
00:26:16 Yeah. Took his staff to Italy on luxury trips. I was just going to say, do you want to hear
00:26:20 what the spending irregularities how much do they spend on that 23 000 per person luxury trip to
00:26:25 italy uh that's business class luxury hotel and the transport while they were there um improper
00:26:30 hospitality expenses including alcohol heavy staffed meals so taking the whole staff out and
00:26:36 getting boozed up on the college's dime and repeated expenses approved without proper oversight which
00:26:43 means they were just running the card and not getting anyone to approve these purchases yeah
00:26:47 now at the same time you know colleges which we all know have been going through massive layoffs
00:26:54 and program restructuring right so conestoga actually laid off 500 people right so at the
00:27:03 same time all this is going on so you know this is just a bad this one we did we did an immigration
00:27:09 show if you get a chance with phil mooney and you know what honestly i thought i knew
00:27:13 uh a lot about immigration and what was going on when i finished the show i i was shocked i left
00:27:21 the room and i sat down and i i said to the crew here i said wow i didn't realize what a mess i
00:27:27 knew it was a mess i didn't realize what a mess immigration was at that time right now you layer
00:27:33 on this piece which you know we listen i i would go to dinner parties and people would tell stories
00:27:40 and you know at stories you know when you're having business dinners people tell stories about
00:27:45 a lot of stuff so a lot of things you discount you know it's just talk and conjecture and chat
00:27:50 and they're having a drink or a glass of wine so you know sometimes yeah and they tell them a little
00:27:55 more story the stories of college ceos and college boards became kind of an urban legend for years
00:28:02 after just after covet you know we would we would hear the story of how they would have like these
00:28:08 uh conferences and all the ceos of the colleges would show up in bentley's and maserati's and
00:28:15 and you know you'd hear this and how they were all get out and they would be wearing five thousand
00:28:20 dollar suits like we'd hear all this and and i'd go wow that sounds terrible i'm not in it so i'd
00:28:25 tell you the truth i didn't have much but they would tell this story about how much money was
00:28:29 flowing in that group uh and then you know so obviously it probably was true yeah it probably
00:28:36 it looks like it was yeah it looked pretty large right and as we look back i mean the other thing
00:28:41 is they were cutting 500 people based on at the time this all started to come out they've cut 500
00:28:46 people at that college let's think about the students for a second that arrived at that college
00:28:51 paid so much to do it and now are watching this on tv knowing full well they got scammed well that's
00:28:58 the you know in the show we did on immigration there's somewhere and i use a conservative estimate
00:29:05 so i always say 2.3 million people bill quotes another number which is more than double which
00:29:13 he says will be having to leave canada and they're just that number we're looking at just under five
00:29:19 million people that's the number he quotes but i you know i i say to people the only one i can
00:29:24 really get my hands around to verify is about 2.3 million people that's my number i use but you know
00:29:30 say it's that even that is that's a lot that's a lot of people for a size of country we are
00:29:35 40 plus million yeah but you know you look at it those people are as to mike's point
00:29:41 there are people and i tell it on the show he tells the story there are people who came from
00:29:46 places where they had land that for centuries and centuries decades and decades they had their
00:29:52 family own it they had to lever it take a loan against it to come here they're leaving right now
00:29:58 government is trying to soften the impact of them having to leave after their work terms are up so
00:30:05 they're letting them stay a little longer and work to hopefully pay some of those loans down so
00:30:09 they're not impacted so we're we're kind of have a like a very if you watch the show a quiet
00:30:14 mitigation plan to try to get through this but it is a mess and then this on top of it to your point
00:30:20 with these people sitting that went to this college they got to be upset they got to be upset you got
00:30:26 got to be you got to be waking up at the morning what justice is there in the world at this point
00:30:30 what what justice do i have one we're never going to get the money back two there's no crime being
00:30:35 committed here it seems fraudulent and misused but to this point there's just forced to go home
00:30:41 these are money these are contracts that were executed and uh probably they'll become civil
00:30:48 issues not criminal issues but this is criminal guys it is criminal that that kind of greed
00:30:53 became part of the education system for students.
00:30:58 Let's not forget there's Canadian students
00:31:00 that went to Conestoga College
00:31:01 that were not expecting to be part of a money grab,
00:31:05 an international student money grab,
00:31:07 and did not expect for the board of that school
00:31:09 to be taking these funds
00:31:12 and did not expect to be in a college situation
00:31:15 where they were in classes way too big,
00:31:18 where the population of the college
00:31:20 was way bigger than it should be,
00:31:22 where there was language barriers that made it impossible to learn at the same pace as the rest
00:31:27 of the class all of that impacted Canadian kids that were just going to school here in Canada
00:31:34 all of that and not a charge I almost guarantee you will ever be laid well let's hope that let's
00:31:40 hope you're wrong I never want to hope that you're wrong Mike but let's hope you're wrong in that
00:31:43 because I know that it's this is obviously something extremely crazy and extremely uh taken
00:31:49 seriously from the government because doug ford came out right away and made an announcement yeah
00:31:54 right and that's it this was a serious financial and governance mismanagement like this is a big
00:31:59 time problem yeah this staff and whoever was overseeing this staff from the government down
00:32:03 needs to be held responsible for this or at least accountable for this yeah i mean this guy's got
00:32:10 eight mil in the bank guys let's take it back and try and put it back to the kids or back into the
00:32:15 school. I think he was visiting Italy regularly to find his property where he can quietly settle
00:32:20 and never hear from him again. What are they going to find next? That's the thing that you have to
00:32:24 think about. Like what is when they start to peel back the onion? The tip of the iceberg. Yeah,
00:32:27 you're going to find, or is it just all going to go away? They're going to, because they have this.
00:32:31 Good point. This was the only college, right? Use him as the fall guy, make him seem like all the,
00:32:36 all this is these large amounts and $23,000 trips, and then don't talk about it again.
00:32:41 You know, it's interesting, though, and this is the slippery slope that I think you're going to see on this one.
00:32:47 I think now people, you know, I'm talking about just these dinner parties where people are talking and I'm hearing these stories.
00:32:53 And they're just stories at that point.
00:32:56 But now you have neighbors and friends and all those people are going to start to say, you know, remember Bill when he came to the party and he was driving that Bentley and he works for that school.
00:33:05 And then they're going to say, so this is going to be one of those ones that all of his kids have Rolexes.
00:33:09 Yeah, exactly. 1.00
00:33:10 and there's a lot of countries you know you go to third world countries you got to be careful 0.93
00:33:14 because these are the things that cause the outbreaks of these issues right people what 0.57
00:33:19 happens is you know they they they have countries where quite frankly they see the kids of these
00:33:24 people that do this living a really good life and they say why are they living such a great life
00:33:29 what did they do and then it kind of starts to spiral and it gets out of control so i think
00:33:34 nepal comes to mind i was just going to say exactly it was really a youthful movement post
00:33:39 okay post college but you know young uh professionals mainly that you were like no 0.59
00:33:46 this corruption is completely eating our country and they were venting on social media and then
00:33:51 the government took our social media away and that's what made them finally revolt and said
00:33:54 we're not doing this but they took the interesting part of that in the the full story which you know
00:33:59 we've covered before the the heads of state and the government's kids were actually all over social
00:34:08 living in the u.s showing cars handbags houses all these things and what happened was the the kids
00:34:15 abroad and the kids locally back home there saw it so they shut down social this almost stopped
00:34:22 their own kids which then caused another set of it they they had to they couldn't stop the ball
00:34:27 rolling and this was one that quite frankly i think i think the premier stepped in to try to
00:34:31 stop the ball from rolling but then now we have to see if the ball wills well i think everybody's
00:34:35 rolling or will it will it stop right everybody has the same reaction to this okay that's one
00:34:40 college that i barely ever heard of no offense conestoga yeah well what's what's gone on at the
00:34:45 humber colleges what's gone on at the the major uh city colleges maybe well that's the thing mike
00:34:50 and you know conestoga uh is actually been around for it's it's it's fairly well known quite frankly
00:34:57 and you go my bad conestoga no no yeah you go to i was going to say i come from the i come from
00:35:02 cambridge kitchener and that's that's the school there the same way mcmaster is to hamilton but i
00:35:07 will look them up the same way mcmaster's moved into hamilton conestoga is related to cambridge
00:35:11 and yeah but the thing the thing is like you figure if it happened here you imagine you make
00:35:17 a good point the smaller ones those are the ones you know and i i saw some crazy stuff during
00:35:24 post-covid that they were doing to these kids oh yeah you were hearing about and you're like oh
00:35:29 wow the canadian harvard college of whatever i'm sorry the what the the princeton canadian
00:35:35 what they would well the interesting they would they would graduate these kids and these kids
00:35:40 would be looking for a graduation letter to get work permits to stay in the country
00:35:45 and they would go on international trips the whole faculty and not issue the letters for two months
00:35:51 so the kids would sit there waiting for their their letters to get to work and they had to sit
00:35:56 on freeze waiting you know i had this i had this cover the former labor minister i had the
00:36:02 conversation with her one day i called her up and said you know what this is what's happening you
00:36:07 need to kind of address it right wow yeah it's terrible okay guys one last one on the list and
00:36:13 And then we're going to make sort of a slight detour.
00:36:16 But welcome to Cocaine Canada.
00:36:19 Oh, my God.
00:36:21 Let's see if I got this right.
00:36:22 $4.4 million in drugs seized between the GTA and Quebec.
00:36:28 The RCMP announced just this week the culmination of an 18-month investigation,
00:36:33 Project Castillo related.
00:36:36 This is a project they've been working on for some time now,
00:36:39 resulting in the arrest of six individuals from Toronto and Quebec,
00:36:41 And police seized 150 kilograms of cocaine, 10 kilograms of heroin, and $1.6 million in cash.
00:36:51 They cannot ever get rid of the cash, these guys.
00:36:54 It's amazing.
00:36:55 Rush, rush to Toronto.
00:36:57 The next one on the list, Project Redline Cornwall to Montreal, OPP and Cerite de Quebec dismantled.
00:37:06 Multiple drug networks charging 13 people with 115 offenses.
00:37:10 investigation seized 4.1 million in drugs including fentanyl and cocaine it's so interesting brady
00:37:16 last week as we drove to montreal or when we did it a couple three weeks ago you're blending you're
00:37:22 blending you're doing too much yeah sorry you're doing too much when we were heading off to montreal
00:37:26 you go through cornwall and you think oh nothing's going on here yeah well a lot going on in cornwall
00:37:31 yeah 4.4 million in cocaine seized in halifax rcmp in cbsa intercepted nearly 250 kilograms of
00:37:39 How much? 250 kilograms of cocaine in a shipping container at the Port of Halifax.
00:37:47 So is that like 550 pounds of...
00:37:49 That's a lot of cocaine.
00:37:50 That's a lot of cocaine.
00:37:51 Yeah.
00:37:52 That's an awful lot of cocaine. 0.99
00:37:54 That's enough for the country.
00:37:55 Don't forget, guys, that's only the tip of the iceberg because it gets...
00:37:59 It gets...
00:38:00 What?
00:38:01 I'm just...
00:38:02 How much cocaine is in this country right now?
00:38:04 Well, like I said, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
00:38:06 There's only 40 million people here.
00:38:08 a pretty big well here's the thing don't forget it's all gonna get cut as well probably shipped
00:38:14 out this is an airport right yeah right so now what we're demonstrating to the world i think is
00:38:19 that we are a drug hub thought we had this under control well we went on ryan wedding no no we
00:38:27 remember no so you know i honestly thought that was going to make a difference to what they got
00:38:32 yeah yeah you said that on previous shows but we we armed up our border we shut down the border now
00:38:38 quite frankly they're given the fact that uh kuzma and trade issues we don't have a lot going
00:38:43 on on our border right now so we do have a lot of people guarding the border which is nice
00:38:48 even if we guard the border but you got to look in the shipments too you can't just say hey i'm
00:38:52 standing here if you look nervous i'm going to stop you look you got to actually check these
00:38:56 vats you have to check these shipments but we're not saying ports no we're saying borders right
00:39:02 yeah so we're doing it now we've kind of shut down the border right and we you know the crossing so
00:39:08 for legal crossings and shipments that directly come but it doesn't stop it from coming into the
00:39:13 country right it just stops it from going down to the states exactly so now we're now we're sitting
00:39:18 so now you know we have a lot of people we hired up another thousand it was in our budget we're
00:39:25 gearing up another thousand rcmp we have a lot of people coming on board we had a lot of people last
00:39:29 you're coming on board is it slowing it down this is slowing it down or is this the result of it
00:39:36 that's the other thing like i need to ask that question okay uh in all good conscience is this
00:39:41 the net result are we getting these busts because we've put more activity at the borders uh and more
00:39:47 policing and it's it's getting stopped being held here longer i hope so like i hope so you know you
00:39:52 got to think that they would be slowing down like you think you think at some point they say hey
00:39:57 hey, we're not getting across or we need another method or whatever.
00:40:00 But it does seem, like I said, if someone has the fortitude
00:40:05 or the interest of trying to smuggle 500 pounds of cocaine into the country.
00:40:13 Can I ask you guys something?
00:40:14 Yeah.
00:40:15 What did they do with that cocaine afterward, asking for a friend?
00:40:18 That's a lot of cocaine.
00:40:19 This is like.
00:40:21 They test it and then incinerate it.
00:40:22 Oh, okay.
00:40:24 It gets held for years and then eventually it'll be incinerated.
00:40:27 well it just not nothing wow well guys that's a lot of cocaine you want to resell it i can't help
00:40:35 but wonder if it is used in some ways somewhere in some method as a part of not in that form
00:40:43 well no i don't know maybe oh you mean when they get it maybe oh i see what you're saying okay yeah
00:40:48 no i didn't i thought you were talking about what does the government do with it i do remember a
00:40:51 government when they seize it yeah yeah yeah yeah no no no if they don't seize it i know what they
00:40:57 do with it yeah yeah no no once it sees that's a lot just goes up in smoke yeah they just
00:41:03 incinerate it that's it they would hold it for so many years like they hold evidence and i did
00:41:07 i just remember this uh coke for missiles uh and arms deals okay
00:41:13 forget my conjecture on that one that seemed ridiculous but it does beg the question because
00:41:24 that has been done before.
00:41:26 What happens with all these drugs that they get?
00:41:28 Yes, okay, they incinerate it.
00:41:29 Sure they do.
00:41:30 So, guys, one last thing today, if we drill down,
00:41:34 and it's not really criminal at the moment,
00:41:35 and certainly it's just interesting, but it seems...
00:41:39 It's walking a weird line.
00:41:41 So, you might have noticed in the news in the last couple of weeks
00:41:45 that a gentleman in the Netherlands or a company that he runs
00:41:50 has been putting propaganda out into the Alberta market,
00:41:55 talking about separatism and really muddying the waters in a lot of ways
00:42:00 and creating a lot of stink with these posts.
00:42:04 They investigate, where are these coming from?
00:42:06 And it leads us back to the Netherlands where this guy has built these videos
00:42:11 and even hired people to act in them and used AI voices
00:42:14 and put them into the marketplace.
00:42:17 Begs the question, why?
00:42:20 why is this going on well the rcmp came to us this week guys and said yeah there's no sign of
00:42:26 foreign interference here okay but the guy is still doing it why did he do it it begs the question
00:42:33 so why so he's just so i get it mike because i'm i'm new to this so just fill me in he's egging on
00:42:41 the country to separate so he's trying to put videos into play to get people riled up to
00:42:46 separate yep he's putting them on social and he's monetizing them right that is true and we don't
00:42:54 think there's a problem with that that's that's not foreign interference paul after all and he
00:43:00 lives in another country right he's getting financial gain for yeah influencing a decision
00:43:08 in a country that he doesn't have citizenship in not foreign interference paul okay but you know
00:43:14 know it's how i don't understand so now i ask our researcher christoph i'm actually ranting sorry
00:43:20 christoph for this i was ranting in the office well if it's not foreign interference what is
00:43:25 this guy doing why is he doing it well i'll tell you why he's doing it and i get we got to go and
00:43:29 put ourselves in his shoes for a second to understand why he would be doing it he already
00:43:34 said it it's money has nothing to do with his opinion let's just say this guy's seen a void
00:43:39 there's lots of guys out there that will look for url hunters things like that like they're looking
00:43:44 at what's trending they're trying to make videos or make sort of content that goes along the lines
00:43:48 of trending if he looked and seen that separatism or the independence movement in alberta is a
00:43:54 trending topic and nobody is making content and monetizing it fully and he could have there's a
00:43:59 window there then why wouldn't he do it yeah well apparently that has nothing to do with what he
00:44:04 he couldn't even care about canada no no he's doing it all over the world he can take every
00:44:08 conflict that he can get his hands on and we should hire actors over in norway so and monetize it but
00:44:15 okay that's exactly what he did and you won't believe how much money they estimate the guys
00:44:19 made doing this how much well between 300 and 500 000 on ad on paid ad revenue to him teaching
00:44:28 courses wow it's a lot of money on so you know what he's doing on iran he gets between eight and
00:44:34 $132 per 1,000 views,
00:44:37 and he has done an estimated 40 million views
00:44:40 on 20 coordinated channels,
00:44:42 approximately 40 million views in total.
00:44:45 Those numbers seem high for that,
00:44:47 but we'll run with it just to make sense out of it.
00:44:49 But those numbers don't translate to that high of money.
00:44:52 He's got to be making money somewhere else,
00:44:54 merch, something.
00:44:54 Well, at 40 million views,
00:44:56 if he just got $5 on RPM alone,
00:45:01 that's $200,000 at the low end.
00:45:03 But the point is, he's making money.
00:45:06 These are, and by the way, estimates.
00:45:08 But the purpose was he's making money.
00:45:11 Now, to your point, if somebody's making money, peddling influence,
00:45:15 and even if their influence isn't working,
00:45:18 they are using it and influencing another country and other people in another country.
00:45:25 They may not realize how much influence it actually has
00:45:26 until you see 300,000 signatures.
00:45:28 He doesn't care.
00:45:29 That's what I would think.
00:45:30 He doesn't care.
00:45:31 This isn't even a personal thing to him.
00:45:32 I could be completely wrong.
00:45:33 I'm just trying to make sense out of it.
00:45:34 No, they made it real clear.
00:45:37 I mean, yeah.
00:45:37 So I guess the, you know, and this would be a question for the RCMP.
00:45:41 Did they go interrogate him to find out if anyone in Canada was behind it?
00:45:46 I assume they did.
00:45:48 And I assume they found out no one was.
00:45:50 Right?
00:45:51 So they just, he's just doing it.
00:45:52 He's a faceless channel.
00:45:53 He's doing it to monetize it.
00:45:54 Yeah.
00:45:55 But I do draw a little bit of an analogy.
00:45:57 You know, this is the this is kind of the fissure that we've had with the United States over the Doug Ford commercials.
00:46:04 Right. Is this is kind of the same thing. Right.
00:46:06 You know, we he put the Reagan commercials into the U.S. to say that, you know, trade had to be a good point.
00:46:12 Right. And all of a sudden I didn't put all the time came back right away and said cease and desist.
00:46:18 Pull those commercials or our trade is off. Right.
00:46:21 So isn't that a call? So, yeah, that's a great question.
00:46:24 this one isn't this where you know and if if if the prime minister's office is listening or the
00:46:29 prime minister hello uh i would recommend that you call norway right and you explain to them that
00:46:37 he needs to find this individual and shut him down not to tinker with our sovereignty that makes
00:46:43 perfect sense to me and that should be that should be like too sweet it shouldn't be an rcmp
00:46:48 investigation that should have been and that's the difference honestly difference between americans
00:46:53 and Canadians sometimes a lot there's a lot of difference I know people love it but one of the
00:46:58 things oh they let us know in the comment section daily yeah one of the things you know that I think
00:47:02 Americans react quickly to stuff when you screw with their amendment rights and with their nation
00:47:09 and sovereignty that's when we should have been moving on faster we shouldn't have gone to an
00:47:13 investigation but there should have been a quick call prime minister should have shut up and said
00:47:17 stood up and said he's got to shut him down shut up you got to shut him down in your country of 0.89
00:47:22 origin that makes perfect sense to me I wish we had seen it go down that way guys thanks
00:47:26 for talking crime what an eventful week thank you for joining us thanks to Christophe and to
00:47:31 Nick for making this happen on a weekly basis if there's crimes we're missing if there's things we
00:47:35 should be talking about don't hesitate to reach out and let us know we'll catch you next time
00:47:40 thanks guys thanks