True Patriot Love - February 17, 2026


Police Legend Describes Corruption And Cowardice In Canada


Episode Stats

Length

53 minutes

Words per Minute

165.23508

Word Count

8,772

Sentence Count

5

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

9


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 all right welcome everybody to uh another show here i get to sit down with legendary gary clement
00:00:11.840 35 year veteran from the rcmp uh thank you for joining us gary thank you very much for having
00:00:17.760 me brian perfect so uh just in case some of the audience may not know who you are do you mind a
00:00:23.200 quick intro just to give a quick highlight to add some context into where this interview is going to
00:00:27.600 go yeah i'd be happy to i i was fortunate i did 30 years rcmp four years as chief of police 15 years
00:00:36.080 running my own company and then i'm now a senior advisor for global aml at versa bank in canada
00:00:44.320 in my career i was forced i did a lot of undercover work got into organized crime infiltrated some of
00:00:52.240 the highest levels in british columbia in the 80s and then in 90s actually i got involved with a group
00:01:00.240 that was smuggling they made between 600 and 800 million dollars in revenue from smuggling alcohol
00:01:08.800 and tobacco uh indirect ties to the genovese crime family i was working between the u.s and canada
00:01:15.520 including las vegas and messina new york and then up the rest up into canada so we set a trucking
00:01:23.840 company so that was very interesting and then i had the opportunity on the ground floor uh to start
00:01:29.600 the proceeds of crime program i worked with uh i think a a gentleman that was ahead of his time rod
00:01:36.320 standler who saw that like me after my undercover operation i realized uh taking the three minutes of
00:01:44.160 glory doing a picture of seizing all the drugs and throwing people in jail wasn't cutting it because
00:01:50.240 they walked out still had all the revenue so uh we were only fooling ourselves so we got into proceeds
00:01:56.560 of crime and we started tested the laws at that time that were solely inadequate and pushed government
00:02:04.000 to try and get some new legislation so i did that and then uh later on i was able to go to hong kong
00:02:11.040 where i got uh i would say a probably a master's degree in triads i worked very closely with the
00:02:19.120 hong kong triad bureau uh there was a gentleman there who is was the recognized uh world expert on triads a
00:02:27.760 gentleman by the name of peter ippow folk and peter i i was very fortunate to actually get taken under his
00:02:36.400 wing and uh on his training so it was uh uh really interesting and for me i found it fascinating and
00:02:44.560 then i worked with brian mccadden from he was over there in external affairs focusing on immigration and
00:02:51.680 we looked at the flow of individuals from hong kong because this was uh pre-1997 and there was this
00:02:59.680 everybody wanting this safe passport and we had what we called at that time an entrepreneur program
00:03:06.560 which yeah i think was 250 000 you could virtually buy a passport and because being a member of a triad
00:03:15.600 organization or organized crime group was not a a mere law in canada it wasn't a prohibitive ground
00:03:23.840 so we were letting all kinds of individuals uh primarily vancouver toronto and that's the reason
00:03:30.480 today that vancouver is the i call it ground zero for asian-based organized crime and the go-to
00:03:38.240 transshipment point for drugs around the world so much to unpack there i so i um i came across your
00:03:48.800 story sort of i guess i'll call it the prequel through sam cooper's book that i read not long
00:03:52.880 ago um and then i came across an interview you did with the fellows from blender who i uh respect quite
00:03:59.680 a bit and i got into your story even more there in which i had to buy your book undercover which you
00:04:04.240 kind of alluded to all your years undercover on the force there um there's there's so much to unpack
00:04:08.720 here uh there's so much stuff i want to get to but if i could just bring it back kind of to the
00:04:13.840 beginning again a little bit here what kind of first inspired you to join the police force or
00:04:18.880 what made you believe that this is a calling something that you you mentioned a little bit
00:04:23.600 in the book that maybe you always thought you were going to do this and can you explain maybe how that
00:04:27.360 came about yeah i don't know there's you're predetermined in life or not but i you know i
00:04:34.240 can remember as a youth having uh i was in bunk beds with my older brother and i was on the bottom
00:04:42.400 bunk and i can remember my wall up to the his bunk was covered with rcmp postcards um then when i i had
00:04:51.840 moved uh from a place in southwest ontario to elmira ontario in middle of grade 12 um and i was had two
00:05:01.520 two thoughts of mine one was to become a lawyer and the second because i was so uh anti-drugs at the
00:05:09.200 time because i was seeing what it was doing to some of the youth in there and probably classmates of
00:05:14.640 mine in the school was to take on uh narcotics and i naive enough to believe that i actually could make
00:05:22.080 some changes in the world um so that probably is what pushed me into it i got involved lions club at
00:05:29.680 that time had a a group that was formed a youth group that was a group to sort of advocate against
00:05:37.520 drugs and i became part of that group early on uh i was approached actually to to co-chair that
00:05:44.480 and so i mean i was only probably 16 and 17 at the time and so that really i guess propelled my interest
00:05:53.120 and that's why when i went in my goal was to go into narcotics uh it definitely wasn't to be a
00:05:59.600 uniformed police officer not that i don't respect it but uh i wanted i believe there is a vast difference
00:06:06.400 between contract uniform work to federal policing type drugs and and the major organized crime
00:06:14.080 involvement yeah i echo all of the sentiments you just said sort of at the uh towards the end there
00:06:21.200 the difference in sort of the contract and undercover specialization route because i in my career as
00:06:26.800 well as a military police officer i specialized immediately you know what i mean to do that's a
00:06:31.520 whole other thing we'll probably get to in a little bit but something we chatted about before we started
00:06:35.840 that um i wanted to clarify sort of at the outset here is that some people interpret some of your
00:06:40.720 interviews or your op-eds or your your book maybe as being a negative indictment of the rcmp or your time
00:06:46.240 there but uh as i'm aware like that's not the case um would it be possible to or are you just please
00:06:55.200 share with us maybe one of your most proud moments of the rcmp and you know what i mean and how you look
00:06:59.120 back on it now sort of from the outside in well i think some of my proudest moments are i was actually
00:07:06.640 running a couple of my units the integrated proceeds of crime in ottawa which was a combined force model
00:07:14.000 uh wherein i was able to get not only uh customs but also tax investigators working with us which i was
00:07:21.920 told was impossible but we were able to do it and i saw what could happen if you've got a combined force
00:07:29.680 of combined talents working together which i always believe was the only way to do effective police work
00:07:35.680 uh at the federal level and so you know that's i always believe that uh for me being proud was
00:07:43.760 supporting the personnel uh that i worked with and i can tell you i i had the satisfaction of knowing a
00:07:50.240 number of the people that uh worked with me for a number of years ended up being fairly senior officers
00:07:57.440 in opp uh ottawa carl or ottawa police service now and rcmp i mean so that for me is if you're mentoring
00:08:07.680 properly and supporting your personnel and they go places i think that's what makes you feel good
00:08:13.840 uh my own successes in undercover uh that was teamwork we had great teams i had great individuals that
00:08:23.760 work with me and no one person can take credit it is a team environment yeah exactly um if you had to
00:08:33.840 if you had to go back to maybe one case or one individual let's say a criminal or or someone that
00:08:40.000 you were investigating is there anything that stands out in your mind still to this day as the
00:08:44.480 maybe you would have done differently or or just one person or one case that you worked on that's
00:08:48.960 forever kind of going to stand out to you well the one i think that really hit me was and it always did
00:08:54.320 i i think we finally put it to bed but uh i mentioned it in the book gary taylor hanlon um i was a
00:09:03.280 gary taylor hanlon uh i was uh getting information from him and uh a girl by the name of a little
00:09:11.440 girl by the name monica rose jack went missing i had been away i think was testifying in court in
00:09:16.080 toronto i came back and there was this composite on uh in the radio room then i pulled it down and
00:09:23.040 basically said what did this ah do now and they said well he's involved in the uh missing girl
00:09:30.400 um i was aware that he was going to be up in that area because he told me whenever he left somewhere
00:09:38.720 where he was going um we knew he had a propensity for young girls uh he had been investigated for a
00:09:46.800 previous young girl in matski and so um i passed that information said that i was 100 convinced he did
00:09:55.040 it and that uh i could reach out to him and he definitely would because we had built this
00:10:00.720 relationship pop he would meet with me and i said they have to understand was before the charter i said
00:10:06.640 guarantee he will take me to the body um i got pushed aside on it uh told i wasn't going to have
00:10:14.240 anything to do with it and it took 40 years for that individual to be brought to justice
00:10:20.080 um i think for me that was i wrote on it uh that's what brought the cold case back uh to me a
00:10:27.840 sergeant reached out to me and said you've been writing all these mammals do you really think it's
00:10:33.120 this guy's guilty i said i don't think i know he is and but it's sad that it took that long for
00:10:39.040 somebody to listen to me i wished i unfortunately that's because i went to ottawa and i wasn't in a
00:10:46.480 position to push it uh to the level i could but i wished i had pushed it a lot harder yeah i think
00:10:54.240 um to echo again your sentiment a lot of the times that i felt handcuffed by the bureaucracy in in my
00:11:02.000 career as well was just no matter how many things or the gut feeling that you want to follow that you
00:11:07.920 kind of know what's right and and you want to pursue something the processes and the bureaucracy and the
00:11:12.400 red tape often severely limits your ability to do anything and the way you're articulated in the
00:11:18.000 book i thought was quite quite interesting and profound um that's why i i'm again i i love you
00:11:24.320 being here and being able to share these stories which kind of which is a good segue into where i
00:11:28.320 wanted to go now so given the problems the rcmp seems to be facing with recruitment retention um
00:11:35.520 um just the negativity that's associated where do you see this uh what solutions you know what i mean
00:11:43.280 do you think the rcmp should consider moving forward to tackle some of the issues that they've been facing
00:11:47.520 um in canada let me preface this by saying you know and and i'm sure you can think back and it's the same
00:11:57.040 way but when i started in policing um we didn't have computers um we you know it was gut feelings hard
00:12:06.880 work and how things were done today we're dealing with transnational organized crime which is entirely
00:12:13.840 different from what it was 20 years ago we're dealing with uh elite capture uh from foreign interference
00:12:22.800 operations uh we're dealing with narcotics and in ways that i don't think canada ever anticipated
00:12:30.800 and so the rcmp when it was built it was built uh more along the lines of a community type police service
00:12:40.160 uh with some federal requirements uh you know having a big drug section was a must just about across
00:12:47.440 canada etc etc we're in a new world today and unfortunately what's happened is the majority of
00:12:56.400 our position or of the positions in the rcmp are in contract and contract is a different beast than
00:13:04.160 federal policing and unfortunately also if you to look at vip security which the rcmp also does is
00:13:12.560 totally different than investigation and so we we actually we train a lot of officers to do uh
00:13:20.080 investigative type work when in fact that isn't going to be their soul or probably is never going
00:13:25.520 to touch them so we need to start looking at the rcmp as a federal force contracts are exactly that
00:13:34.160 their contracts and if we look use ontario and quebec as an example um ontario does its own contract
00:13:42.000 policing it has the ontario provincial police and municipal police services as does the province
00:13:48.320 of quebec the argument is the rcmp wants to keep all of this the federal government wants to keep it
00:13:54.480 but the reality of it is we're keeping it at the cost of federal policing because you have to excuse me
00:14:01.440 you have to keep contracts filled this other downside of it is because um salary increases for the most
00:14:09.280 part are based on as you well know in the military promotions and so a lot of good investigators are
00:14:16.880 going into federal policing roles but because they are highly skilled they get promoted back into uniform
00:14:24.640 and so you're not keeping that expertise like the fbi or the dea what in the united states or or
00:14:31.760 homeland security because they're bouncing back and forth also where the dilemma falls in a lot of
00:14:38.160 the leadership ends up coming through that uniform stream uh they end up reaching the higher levels
00:14:46.080 and all of a sudden they find themselves overseeing major transnational investigations which they
00:14:52.880 themselves have never got their hands dirty on it doesn't work we uh we are starting to be looked at very
00:15:01.280 negatively by the five eyes uh united states looks at us very negatively i can tell you that i've spoke to
00:15:09.120 a lot of current and former investigators and they don't want to work with us and there's some other
00:15:15.600 reasons for that our justice system is failing miserably stinchcomb and jordan as you know stinchcomb is based on
00:15:24.720 full disclosure on everything um jordan is 18 months to get to a prelim uh 30 months to get to a trial
00:15:35.520 it's impossible uh when those uh when the supreme court passed that we didn't have the type of crime
00:15:42.480 we're dealing with today and it's virtual impossibility on a transnational organized crime case
00:15:48.640 to get prepared in these time frames and the other side of it is that working within um internet in
00:15:55.600 the international arena oftentimes they have intelligence that they'd like to pass but it would
00:16:02.480 co-opt a major long-term investigation of theirs because they don't pull their investigations over six
00:16:10.800 months or a year they may go on five years and because of our stinchcomb full and frank disclosure
00:16:16.880 we aren't able to work with them on it because it would be injurious to international relations so
00:16:23.200 oftentimes charges aren't laid we have over the years look to united states where we could to have us lay
00:16:31.840 charges and the only reason that happens is because we know and i can use the example of when we took
00:16:38.800 down the miller organization which was the last undercover i did involving the smuggling of alcohol and
00:16:45.680 tobacco most of the charges we allowed to be laid in the united states because the few we laid in canada
00:16:53.440 the sentences were in the months not years we're in the united states uh larry for example was charged
00:17:01.440 under rico statute and they started 88 years and there's the difference we just don't have that leverage
00:17:09.440 in canada and transnational organized crime knows that they take advantage of us they they make sure
00:17:17.040 that when they set up money laundering organizations they make them complex so that makes it far more
00:17:24.400 difficult for canada to gather all that evidence to get to court and so that's the reason we're in the mess we're in today
00:17:32.080 how much of the bureaucracy and red tape that you're describing in addition to institutional sort of
00:17:40.960 rot um is due or can be i'm gonna think about how i'm gonna say this for one second sorry but
00:17:50.160 do you think that the folks that are actually capable of making decisions will uh very senior officers
00:17:56.160 politicians and that circle do you think that any of the delays in organizing or reorienting the force
00:18:03.280 is deliberate you know i'd like to think we're above that but you know i hate to say it um this message
00:18:14.080 has been delivered over and over again closest we came to actually thinking that the political there
00:18:20.960 was a political will was just prior to the former prime minister justin trudeau walking out he he
00:18:28.000 advocated that the rcmp need to get out of contract policing i think that was the first time i heard the
00:18:33.280 words out of a politician's mouth um you know we got rose colored glasses and you know yeah you put the
00:18:40.240 uniform on and it's a pride of canada but we've got to start looking at uh reality and our reality is we're
00:18:48.800 failing the public in our ability to take on transnational organized crime the fact of what
00:18:54.960 we just saw in toronto with the corruption and the police officers being uh basically tied into
00:19:02.000 organized crime if anybody believes today that that's the only group that's tied into organized
00:19:09.120 crime and i'm not just talking about police i'm talking about all of our institutions then we really
00:19:14.080 do have rose colored glasses we we know about from the hogue commission the elite capture we know
00:19:20.480 about some of the politicians and how they're approaching it canada needs to wake up and although
00:19:26.800 i'm not a hundred percent trump supporter i can definitely say some of what the president has been
00:19:32.560 stating especially when it comes to our ability to work with the u.s in the law enforcement sphere he's
00:19:39.600 right on the money and that's that's unfortunate given your wealth of experience the hong kong
00:19:48.000 liaison position and then later working with dean baxendale on that amazing book under siege that i
00:19:54.000 just finished as well like how serious and how um is this train basically moving on the tracks now and
00:20:02.400 it's unstoppable or do you think this political interference this kind of quote-unquote invasion you
00:20:07.360 know what i mean of some of this organized crime activity are are we able to get a a handle of this
00:20:13.600 like where is this heading i think you know unfortunately the criminal networks are entrenched
00:20:22.480 we've got a lot of dirty money in this country the chinese um what concerns me more than anything is
00:20:30.800 um i'm not saying we we can't do business with china but you have to understand who you're doing business
00:20:38.240 with everything is for the state um if you're you know i mean there is a reach out that we would share
00:20:46.480 the latest is we'll work with law enforcement law enforcement is part of the prc government they're not as
00:20:55.120 they don't have a rule of law so anything we're going to be doing is is going to further china's ability
00:21:02.880 to uh expand their belt and road initiative in my view um i've said this many many times i believe that
00:21:10.640 the prc government a number of the individuals are the worst transnational organized crime group
00:21:17.520 this world has ever faced uh if you watch right now what's going on how xi has basically cleaned out
00:21:24.560 the military uh and he now from what i read and i can only say from what i read but he's got 100
00:21:33.600 control of of the prc government military that should cause everybody to pause and have some concern
00:21:41.200 um anything we do and you know i agree that they they're advancing their technology and they're able
00:21:49.120 to move forward at a very rapid pace a lot of that is because the the number of corporate espionage going
00:21:56.960 on in north america and probably europe is astronomical when it comes to prc government nortel was decimated
00:22:06.000 because of the prc government um so any of these uh vehicles we're going to be letting in i i believe
00:22:13.760 they're mobile listening devices there's only one way to describe them um so yeah we have to be careful
00:22:20.800 i think what we do with the prc we also have to recognize that they have a different uh agenda than
00:22:30.080 what most of our politicians and our leaders have and if you understand that and accept that and we
00:22:37.440 start having a uh foreign interfere or foreign registry and act on it with some teeth in it we might stand
00:22:46.240 a chance if not i think we're uh in serious trouble i'm i'm glad you brought up the nortel thing because
00:22:52.960 i was posted to ottawa during the transition of headquarters moving from 101 colonel by sort of
00:23:01.040 right next to the redo center there to the new uh carling campus which was the ex nortel um i guess
00:23:07.920 corporate headquarters and in the in the infinite wisdom of the department of national defense in
00:23:14.720 canada we decided that we would move our most secure top secret conversations into a building that was
00:23:22.480 uh used to basically collapse the intellectual property of a company and bankrupt them because
00:23:27.840 they were spied on probably within the same building so it's i man it's so many of the things
00:23:34.960 you say like the the career parallels i see in here not just from the book but what you're saying now is
00:23:41.120 is so wild to think about as a as a junior guy the things i was struggling with it's a little bit of
00:23:46.000 it kind of is a bit of a relief i guess to know that i wasn't losing my mind seeing all these glaring holes
00:23:50.800 um but one of the things i just wanted to go back to that you i just you touched on at the end there
00:23:54.960 was the the farra um rules and i i think it was in 2024 we not uh correct me if i'm wrong here but 2024
00:24:03.520 we just enacted foreign interference rules uh we did a there was legislation passed or there
00:24:11.280 or it was drafted it was only drafted it's never been passed and and then we had an election right
00:24:17.680 after passing it which had probably a lot more interference um can can you speak to like what's
00:24:23.520 going on in the background there and what's causing this delays and like is anything going to come of
00:24:26.960 this well i think first of all our politicians have to soon start being a little more pragmatic
00:24:34.400 and start speaking truth to power uh and what i mean by that is when we get i think fairly solid
00:24:45.200 information about individuals that are tied to the prc government we can't just condone it and do
00:24:52.800 nothing as we've done i mean the uh justice hoag um touched on the surface i think if you anybody read
00:25:00.800 the report uh she definitely pointed out that there was individuals that on the surface appeared wouldn't
00:25:08.560 name them but on the surface appeared to have been a leak captured um you know it's time canada dealt with
00:25:15.760 this stuff um all as we're doing by not dealing with it as you encourage it's almost tacit approval
00:25:23.120 i guess this way i'd describe it if you don't deal with it it's it it just continues what's what's
00:25:30.640 interesting um is that we have inquiries into the political interference or corruption and bribery and all
00:25:38.480 the thing that goes on and we find out that there's a lot of stuff going on there and then nothing
00:25:42.080 happens and then we have inquiries into the inquiries about why nothing happens and then
00:25:47.200 and then still nothing happens and meanwhile the whole time you've got this this theater show of
00:25:54.160 carny taking over with this elbow this deranged elbows up campaign that we're going up against
00:26:00.160 america you know what i mean are we're going to take on america and and beat them or whatever because
00:26:04.720 they're they're trying to buy us the whole 51st state rhetoric all that nonsense meanwhile in the
00:26:09.120 background there's hundreds of millions of dollars billions of dollars funneling in from another
00:26:14.000 country that we're doing nothing to prevent that we are actively you know what i mean involved in the
00:26:19.920 sort of overt and covert corruption going on in the background do you see any consequences for any of
00:26:26.720 the politicians this this crosses the aisle as well this isn't just liberal uh conservatives are
00:26:32.240 mentioned this as well do you see any consequences for any of these individuals involved
00:26:37.280 at this juncture i'd say no i just actually put out an op-ed today through the bureau and actually
00:26:46.160 talked about exactly that that neither prime minister carney nor pierre polyev have taken
00:26:53.440 this seriously and i've asked the question why not why hasn't somebody realized what this is doing to
00:27:00.560 canada and i mean i think you can appreciate at my age this isn't going to impact me but i think it's
00:27:06.480 going to impact our children and their children um you know bottom line is if you were to look at the
00:27:12.640 mosaic of canada we have really changed probably since you were a youth and i was a youth and that's
00:27:19.600 that's understandable that that's to go but it's fine to change but then you have to make sure that the
00:27:26.480 culture within the country doesn't completely fall apart and that's my concern is how are we you know we
00:27:34.080 we've got the irg the iranian revolution guard we know that's in this country uh we know that the
00:27:40.880 hezbollah has been funded from this country um we know that china is uh infiltrating taking over a lot
00:27:49.120 of property uh pi is just one small example but it's and it's sort of a flash in the pan as far as
00:27:58.480 it makes news one day not usually traditional media uh gets involved and then it dies um and you
00:28:07.440 have to ask yourself why uh i know people have got filthy stinking rich by uh putting on blinders but
00:28:16.480 what about the rest of the country and then where i get a little upset as i hear you know the message
00:28:22.320 coming out of government that canadians are going to have to tighten their belt uh you know it's going
00:28:28.000 to get a little tough over the next few years yeah well let's ask ask the question why that's happening
00:28:34.240 and let's do something about it yeah i i was sick to my stomach hearing the headlines that you just
00:28:40.560 mentioned there um it's kind of re it's reinforced with this lack of anyone in senior leadership um
00:28:50.400 organizations you know i mean ccs rcmp i worked with cse a little bit too i i can't really speak
00:28:56.240 for them they didn't really come up much in the book if at all if i remember correctly but why
00:29:00.640 why are the heads of these organizations so afraid to do it like snc lavalent affair for example why
00:29:07.920 is the rcmp terrified to uh press charges or or properly investigate people who are obviously on the
00:29:16.000 take corrupt committing probably criminal offenses and we're just told to sort of
00:29:20.000 all nothing to see here move along is like what where's the where's this fear coming from is it is
00:29:25.440 it just a they're worried about implications for their career their bottom line both like where do
00:29:30.400 you where do you see the disconnect i've said for a long time the the rcmp unfortunately is tied to
00:29:36.800 government um far too tight there's you know they can argue an arm's length relationship but anybody
00:29:44.720 that follows the news knows i can i can pull up a picture of uh the former prime minister trudeau with
00:29:51.600 his arm around uh the commissioner uh we know about uh uh the former commissioner and how bill blair
00:30:00.880 uh really was almost i would say almost acting as the unofficial commissioner uh and now we've seen with
00:30:09.360 the current commissioner you know it came out in the uh press of his uh prime minister carney and
00:30:15.920 the commissioner with their arm around each other and smiling doesn't really give the impression of
00:30:21.280 objectivity and if you look at a number of the things that have occurred what happened down on the east coast
00:30:27.360 with the the the killing spree that happened down there i don't think uh truth has ever fully come out
00:30:35.360 on that but there was huge amount of mistakes made and you know i hate to say it but the there was a
00:30:42.240 lot of cover-up on that uh the public inquiry was just a way of uh i guess making it appear that
00:30:50.720 objectivity surfaced i don't believe it did um you know and things happen and things go south and
00:30:58.240 whether you're in the military or in police you occasionally have things go south the only way you
00:31:03.440 improve though is that is admit that mistakes were made and deal with how to improve and not
00:31:10.640 not try and brush it aside and unfortunately that's what we're doing a lot of right now in this country
00:31:16.160 yeah the um i've been harping for a couple years now about the mistakes being made and being able to
00:31:22.480 own them as a leader not just excuse me in policing or uh in government as well you know i'll bring it back
00:31:30.400 to something i mentioned a few times just bear with me if anyone's heard me say this before but
00:31:34.320 when when the lockdowns and everything was going on and i was working in intelligence and then
00:31:39.280 week after week month after month and lockdowns just maintained but there was no evidence to show
00:31:44.480 that they were helping there was actually a lot of evidence to show that they were harming
00:31:48.240 uh they were doing nothing but probably also harming uh there was no point at which any of the
00:31:53.040 leadership was willing to step up and say hey um you know what i mean we kind of we probably overreacted
00:31:57.920 here we did it with what we thought was your best interest and now we're going to ratchet it back
00:32:01.840 in in 2020 because i can speak from a personal experience sitting in high level intelligence
00:32:08.160 meetings with the chief of defense intelligence and you know what i mean the people they're briefing
00:32:12.720 the mnd and stuff like that at no point was there ever going to be an attempt to ratchet things back
00:32:17.600 and say hey kind of you know i mean we overreacted and and uh i think people probably would have been
00:32:22.480 pretty forgiving if that was the case if they had just said hey it's now sort of july or august of
00:32:27.680 2020 like here's your lives back we kind of know that this is only affecting a certain number of
00:32:31.520 people anyway i digress i just i see those parallels very interesting uh that they're going on and like
00:32:38.640 while um documentations of ministerial level people in pei you know what i mean selling land for cash
00:32:46.640 and and nobody no not only is nobody losing their job you know what i mean but no one's going to jail
00:32:52.240 and it just it's very disheartening as a young person in canada who has these mounting housing
00:32:58.560 costs mounting everything costs really while taxes are skyrocketing thinking that there's ever really
00:33:03.440 a way to get ahead financially when you're just watching all the sort of corrupt people around you
00:33:08.960 cash in and then laugh in your face when you try to confront them about the obvious things that are
00:33:14.400 going on in broad daylight and it's maybe this little diatribe is is is just mine i don't think so
00:33:20.080 but i i can speak from personal experience of how frustrating and sickening it is as a canadian to
00:33:25.520 watch the country follow the path that you just described this transition that we've seen since
00:33:30.640 your childhood and my child my childhood um but the the the p2p or sorry the pnp in the pei uh pnp was
00:33:41.760 the the the pnp um immigration experiment that's going on in pei in case those are not paying attention
00:33:48.080 um what's like what's what's the craziest thing of that that you are still sort of sitting on today
00:33:54.080 that you might want people to know in case they don't know well i think the provincial nominee
00:34:00.320 program it was very similar to what the federal uh pro entrepreneur program was uh back in the 90s
00:34:07.760 and it was a way for the province to sort of have a say in how many people they allowed in the province
00:34:13.520 um the sad part of that was there was a group of individuals that uh i think got rich off it
00:34:21.520 it didn't uh do a lot for the province uh in fact most of the individuals that came in never even
00:34:28.640 set foot in prince edward island they went to toronto or vancouver uh the i think the one that
00:34:36.240 is most aggrievous for me is the monastery situation and you know i think the audience has to understand
00:34:43.520 i think a lot of the monks and nuns that are there are there for monastic reasons we have no reason to
00:34:50.160 doubt that however there's that underlying uh i guess overarching control that is being put in there
00:35:00.800 by my view is it's definitely tied to the prc government we know from the sikion who's the number
00:35:08.720 direct ties to the deli lama that they are not tied to the deli lama and the we know that yeah they
00:35:16.080 they have land that if you look at it just within the monasteries meet the the uh guidelines but what
00:35:24.240 everybody put their blinders on is people were being paid cash for property all around it it was
00:35:30.720 alleged that it was part of the the monks and nuns were buying this themselves let's get real for it
00:35:36.800 anybody that knows anything about a monastic group they're supposed to take on a life of poverty
00:35:41.520 so all of a sudden they're coming in with bags of cash why cash why did uh you know tens of thousands
00:35:50.640 to hundreds of thousands of dollars in brand new hundred dollar bills get deposited in night deposit
00:35:58.000 at the bank of nova scotia in prince edward island um you know how is that part of a monastic group
00:36:05.920 and if you understand anything about money laundering hunt brand new sequentially numbered hundred dollar
00:36:12.000 bills can only come from a financial institution it's not money on the street or anything like that
00:36:18.800 so you got to really ask what is going on why was money from what we were uh provided in uh statements
00:36:28.080 coming from toronto or at least on the appearance it looked like money was coming up from toronto uh
00:36:34.160 uh driven up i'm not talking any other way there was driven up dropped off and then cash was going
00:36:41.200 into these night deposit atms all of this raises a lot of questions and um you know what is the ultimate
00:36:50.240 goal and you know as as i would say as canadians were very naive um you know i i love this uh statement
00:37:00.640 that says silence at this stage isn't restraint it's complicity and that's the best way i can describe
00:37:08.960 this um the honorable wayne easter has uh joined our call for a federal public inquiry on this um
00:37:18.880 it's i think for the most part falling on deaf ears um i'm you know a sad part of it is if it was done
00:37:28.480 objectively with the right people and with no constraints on it i think what would be found
00:37:35.760 out would be startling to the to the public and probably an embarrassment to a lot of politicians
00:37:43.040 i agree do you think that the banking industry should take more responsibility and or be more
00:37:49.280 held accountable for the obvious woeful blindness they've been displaying over the last 20 to realistically
00:37:55.920 25 years this has been going on banks have and i think public has understand has spent billions of
00:38:02.480 dollars with their aml controls and everything um they you know i mean if you were to look at the size of
00:38:10.000 compliance departments today i think most people would be shocked how much they're spending
00:38:14.960 however they're still in the business of profit they're still in the business of individuals getting
00:38:21.120 bonuses based on profit and i think when you look at the size of some of the banks that we have in this
00:38:28.160 country having control of all the front line having control of all the sales departments and really you
00:38:36.720 know having a total vision of what's going on i think we saw with the td bank fiasco can show how
00:38:44.640 quickly that can go off the rails and so are are they doing a hundred percent job unfortunately no i don't
00:38:53.840 think it's intentional um but individuals are individuals there's individuals that will turn a
00:39:00.640 blind eye and how do you control a large organization to make sure everybody's on side that being said it's
00:39:08.720 no excuse in this day and age i believe the systems are there and we've just gotta in my view every bank
00:39:17.840 has to take it seriously and you know i guess take no prisoners they're finding something that's not
00:39:24.560 being done properly and an individual is turning a blind eye they should no longer be working in the bank
00:39:30.080 do you think that it's possible to put people in positions of power that will actually have a spine
00:39:39.520 the way that you've demonstrated throughout your career not just in policing but through these sort
00:39:44.800 of secondary and tertiary investigations and now working with the banking industry like again these
00:39:51.040 senior people that are in my opinion capable of actually influencing and making real change do you
00:39:56.720 think that once the person gets there their their spine just evaporates through um their their
00:40:03.760 personal ambitions or is there is there a way that we can sort of hold these people accountable and put
00:40:08.480 people in positions of authority that will will actually dig into any of this i'd like to think the
00:40:15.920 answer to that is yes because we've you know we've seen it through the number of wars that can
00:40:22.080 nations have fought in that there is leaders that can come forward and and have a spine um i think
00:40:29.680 there's individuals out there that are very aligned with what we're saying that we need to see some uh
00:40:37.760 i guess individuals that speak truth to power um i think the the it's broken down the system breaks
00:40:44.400 down by not putting the right people in right at the start um i mean let's be honest if you're the prime
00:40:50.240 minister uh it's kind of nice to have somebody that is like-minded somewhat political and thinking
00:40:58.400 uh makes your life a lot easier and and i think we got to get away from that um i sort of subscribed
00:41:04.480 to the philosophy when i ran my units that if i went into a room and asked for an opinion and everybody
00:41:10.800 repeated what i said then there was too many of us in the room uh i would rather have i wanted opposing
00:41:18.640 opinions so that you make sure you make the right decision and i think that's where it's fallen down
00:41:26.160 people take individuals that speak up and don't coincide with what you've said as a leader
00:41:32.720 as not being part of a team and that's so wrong absolutely so wrong yeah i couldn't agree more and
00:41:40.320 in canada just for those who aren't aware we have a real deficiency of protections for whistleblowers
00:41:46.560 in this country as opposed to our southern neighbors in the us where uh legally you have more
00:41:52.560 protections um and abilities to i guess not have your life or career ruined although obviously it
00:41:58.480 does happen on both sides of the border but at least in the us there are in theory more protections
00:42:03.440 whereas we don't have those um given how much leadership and real world boots on the ground
00:42:10.080 experience that you have would you ever consider running for office yeah i think that ship sailed
00:42:16.560 when uh i think when you get to be 72 years of age uh uh it's it's sort of time to i i like doing what
00:42:24.800 i'm doing now and i like trying to push uh the agenda i write to a lot of mps and uh whether they
00:42:32.960 appreciate what i'm saying i'm not sure but i will continue doing that um it has been brought
00:42:39.280 past i've been asked in the past um my argument has always been i'm not a politician um and i right now
00:42:49.200 in the political climate we got i don't think i'd fit in very well um because i would not play politics i
00:42:57.040 i think those days uh as i said if you're you you only go with restraint then it's complicity
00:43:04.960 and i don't think we can afford that today um we really need leaders that will speak truth to power
00:43:12.400 and if you don't you have things happen like what we're seeing with transnational organized crime
00:43:18.400 infiltrating law enforcement infiltrating our other sector no doubt about it the military was
00:43:24.800 has had individuals that have been infiltrated into it i can guarantee every department in the
00:43:31.360 government has individuals that have been infiltrated we saw it in in our health services area
00:43:37.520 with chinese in our labs and nobody gets alarmed about this we didn't lay charges we did nothing
00:43:45.840 that's got to stop because we are not sending the right message yeah exactly um i know the story only
00:43:54.000 broke yesterday for me anyway maybe a little bit earlier but uh can you speak to like the
00:43:59.600 transnational organized crime connections and this in this massive toronto police arrest and
00:44:04.720 what you think maybe was going on there well this is i think you have to really this didn't happen
00:44:11.040 overnight this is something that's been going on obviously for a while um it's how far they're
00:44:18.960 infiltrated into organized crime i don't think i we have enough null or in information on that to say
00:44:25.840 um we do know that if they were tied to what was going on in the towing industry that was definitely
00:44:32.880 organized crime the fact that they allegedly were doing narcotics um you don't do that uh without
00:44:42.160 having some uh agreement from organized crime uh just doesn't happen so where they're at and you know
00:44:52.560 who the organized crime groups they were involved with are uh that still will probably come out in
00:44:57.600 court or hopefully it will um but it goes on i mean we otis was what we saw in the rcmp head of
00:45:05.520 intelligence for the rcmp and look at the damage he did but these are the things that i guess caused
00:45:13.120 me concern today the u.s authorities have said for a long time that they don't want to work with
00:45:21.920 canadian law enforcement because they can't be trusted uh that we have we have leaks um this is just
00:45:30.400 showing that they do exist otis was probably the first major one and that was very significant and
00:45:37.360 now we're seeing this uh and as i said uh to think this is the only group where you know if you take i
00:45:45.040 think law enforcement is about combined about 30 000 in canada i don't care what profession you're in
00:45:52.720 corruption exists and so unfortunately my experience is members law enforcement have to get over this
00:46:04.240 blue wall and when they see some smoke there's usually fire and they need to bring it to the
00:46:10.720 attention of individuals and as you said sadly whistleblower protections in this country i think
00:46:17.040 we're the lowest in the g20 and that's pretty sad that is pretty sad for a country that we're supposed to
00:46:25.280 be uh the most innovative etc etc and we do nothing when it comes to being the head of the curve on
00:46:35.600 law enforcement head of the curve on our our laws we're way behind and protecting our whistleblowers which
00:46:43.520 unfortunately is going to bring a lot of rot to light if that ever comes to being
00:46:52.480 that's so wild you mentioned this i think a couple times now do you think that our
00:46:58.080 level of compromise is going to literally affect our position within the five eyes community
00:47:05.360 i think it already has i don't just say it i think it's going to i think it already has affected
00:47:11.440 there's been concern voice for some time um i'm dealing with uh somebody that was very high up in
00:47:19.200 intelligence in the u.s and uh he's expressed on a number of occasions uh real concern
00:47:27.760 i i do remember um backtracking about 30 seconds in the same vein there where you were talking about
00:47:33.840 just like there's so much compromise being posted in ottawa for six or seven years
00:47:39.040 in my career there was a lot of talk about just how many intelligence agents existed in ottawa
00:47:45.760 internationally right um so not not just referring to people from china or iran or russia like the
00:47:51.360 countries you would normally think of those are probably the most heavily represented but it was
00:47:55.360 nobody really had a number that they could put their finger on of how many people were probably
00:47:59.520 there the the estimations i remember hearing was anywhere from one to five thousand you know what i mean i
00:48:05.360 i who knows like that's such a broad uh swath of uh you know what i mean like one thousand to five
00:48:11.760 thousand is a huge number who knows maybe it's ten but this is this is kind of a bit of a bit of a
00:48:18.480 dark conversation as important as it is and as much as i respect your opinion i we're kind of getting
00:48:23.040 towards the end here i i want to know and we'll try to end this on maybe more of a more of a happy note
00:48:28.080 here so if you could speak to your younger self um just about to go to depot or maybe your first day
00:48:35.200 of depot or maybe someone else that's just starting there now or maybe they're in they're in the tps
00:48:40.480 stream or opp or whoever it doesn't matter if you if you had were able to give maybe a couple of
00:48:44.880 pieces of advice to someone just starting now what would you say well probably the one thing is
00:48:51.120 make sure you're going into it because it's somewhat of a calling
00:48:54.160 um if you're looking at it solely as a job because you're getting a a reasonable paycheck
00:49:01.680 you're going to be sadly disappointed um and i don't think you're going to have a happy career
00:49:07.680 if you go into it with the idea it's a bit of a calling and you really have it fixed in your mind
00:49:13.520 that you you want to do some good in society whether it be in the uniform uh sector or in a federal
00:49:21.360 policing role um it can be a great career uh the other thing i would say is just remember you have
00:49:27.360 to manage your own career the idea that someone's going to manage it for you it doesn't happen and
00:49:33.120 the last thing i guess i would say is look the world changes very quickly ongoing learning is something
00:49:38.800 that i think is essential and if you're waiting for your organization to give you all the training
00:49:44.000 and education you're going to be sadly disappointed um do like i did i get out i got a lot of certifications
00:49:53.040 and that's why you're able to speak on subjects still understand them and know what's going on in
00:50:02.240 the world because as i said we are a changing world and it's going to change faster yeah very well said
00:50:09.920 the the that sentiment echoes perfectly throughout the military as well managing your own career
00:50:15.200 seeing it as a calling all those things i i couldn't agree more um just finally to sort of wrap up
00:50:21.600 here where can people find you and uh what anything you got on on the go that maybe people should know
00:50:26.560 about well i guess the only thing is i think you read my my first book on undercover we the other one's
00:50:34.640 about to be released it is available but it's called undercover 50 years of dirty money organized
00:50:41.280 crime in the rcmp and i've done a lot of updating on it and a lot of new recommendations based on some
00:50:49.440 of what we talked about today the our other book on canada under siege um you know i'm hoping that's
00:50:57.440 going to lead to a a public inquiry we're still pushing for it um it's a it's for somebody that
00:51:05.680 wants to really understand just how much a a foreign country can impact uh another country i i right it's
00:51:13.920 i i recommend it highly it's not not because of what i wrote in it but both dean baxendale and
00:51:20.320 michelle's you know katsu used to be at the thesis uh contributed heavily to that book and we got had
00:51:28.880 some of the uh best and i don't want to call them whistleblowers concerned citizens that came forward
00:51:37.120 to us and it really shows what can happen when you get a province or a collective group of people
00:51:45.040 that want to make changes and they come together you have to educate them the first one we had
00:51:50.240 a lot of naysayers we were called mccarthy as far as you know we were being against the the chinese
00:51:59.840 rather than looking at it for what it was and we that was never the intent i can tell you the last
00:52:06.320 time we were down there the people saw the light and realized that what we're trying to do is protect
00:52:13.280 their idyllic setting that they have
00:52:17.840 thank you so much gary this has been uh this has been a lot of fun for me um selfishly i'd love to
00:52:23.440 have you back on again there's so much about the specific organized crime money laundering
00:52:28.000 expertise from your career that i i want to dive back into so uh again thanks so much for for being
00:52:33.600 here and hopefully i can talk to you again well thank you very much and the only thing i'll just end by
00:52:39.120 saying recommendations without urgency are just political insulation yeah go go folks go pick up
00:52:47.360 the book undercover i i picked it up i couldn't put it down that's one of the coolest books i've read
00:52:51.840 in a long time so this has been fun man i appreciate you very much thank you for your service thanks
00:52:57.040 buddy same to you thanks so much great bye now