Western Standard Opinion Editor Nigel Hannaford and Senior Alberta Columnist Corey Morgan talk about India's alleged interference in Canada's election, and what it means for the country's relationship with the Indian diaspora. They also talk about the Air India bombing, and the Indian government's alleged campaign against Sikh separatists.
00:00:00.000Good day. Today is October 16th, 2024, and you're watching The Pipeline. I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard. I'm joined, as always, by Western Standard opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford.
00:00:20.820We're also going to have joining us later in the show, Western Standard's Saskatchewan Bureau Chief and editing manager of the Saskatchewan Standard, Chris Oldcorn, talked to us about the election there, as well as Western Standard's BC Bureau Chief and managing editor of the West Coast Standard, Jared Yager, talking about BC's election.
00:00:44.360Before we get into there, though, we're going to start with the big story. Cooking in Canada today. Allegations of India currying favor, if you will. That's, you know, that's Nigel's.
00:01:02.800And it was an unintentional pun in our meeting earlier today when we're figuring out what we're going to talk about.
00:01:10.900So, India, I don't think it's any great surprise, has at least some nefarious interference in Canada.
00:01:22.880I haven't seen direct allegations of electoral interference yet. I'd be shocked if there wasn't at least some minor electoral interference.
00:01:31.460The different Indian diasporas are a pretty significant portion of the Canadian population, and diasporas are a hot commodity for politicians looking for votes, and they're a hot target for foreign powers from which the diasporas originate.
00:01:49.620We know how that's happening in India. Sorry, with the Chinese case, very significantly.
00:01:55.380We're hearing more about India now. The allegations being that, you know, a very large proportion, I'm not sure what proportion, of the Indian diaspora in Canada,
00:02:04.980at least a large portion, maybe even a majority of it in Canada, tends to be Sikh, some of which has Kalistani independence movement sympathies.
00:02:18.560And some of that, I think, is perfectly legitimate. People who want an independent homeland for Sikh Indians.
00:02:26.320But some within that movement are obviously very extremists and have committed terrible acts of terrorism and violence.
00:02:33.440And most notoriously, that manifested itself in the, I think, 1985 bombing of Air India.
00:06:17.380But now he's willing to talk about this because, I guess, he's trying to play the triangulate in politics here.
00:06:25.680And I think for a lot of non-seek or non-Indian Canadians, it's difficult to grasp.
00:06:29.440But here's my best attempt to explain it, as best I know, is Trudeau operates, at least, on the assumption that Sikhs do not like Modi in India because Modi is a Hindu nationalist.
00:06:41.860And bashing Modi is good politics with Sikhs in Canada.
00:06:48.100And there are more Sikhs in Canada than other groups from India, by and large.
00:06:56.960And, you know, the Indian government's alleged, and I think credibly alleged, that Canada has also become a safe haven for Calistani militant or even terrorist training.
00:07:08.200Like, there's actually been training taking place here.
00:07:11.360Not just that it's a safe haven for Calistani separatists.
00:07:14.000I'm actually okay with that, as long as you actually keep your politics off our streets.
00:07:17.600If you're in Canada, stick to Canadian issues.
00:07:19.500If you want to deal with your diaspora issue, do it back there, not here.
00:07:24.660But Trudeau then came out today testifying again at the Foreign Interference Inquiry.
00:07:56.160And I have no doubt that other foreign governments hold sway with people, probably in most, at least, of the big parties who have some support in some of the ethnic enclaves.
00:08:06.160But Trudeau goes on the attack just today saying, you know, the conservatives are full of foreign interference, and I can name them.
00:08:13.240And Pierre Polyev responded right away and says, name them, and name all of them.
00:08:19.840Because we know that there's a significant number that the intelligence committee have named that are compromised, are either fully treasonous or unwittingly treasonous in different parties.
00:08:48.360Eleven, they said, were known parliamentarians, witting and unwittingly compromised.
00:08:53.620And yeah, we always assume Chinese, but it could mean India, it could mean Russia, and it could be a lot of things.
00:08:57.580It's the innuendo that's getting tiresome.
00:09:00.300It's the picking a little bit out and blaming the other party without just releasing it then.
00:09:04.940Get it out there because you're causing more distrust.
00:09:08.700You're fostering it, and it's for political purposes.
00:09:12.580You know, Prime Minister Trudeau has never been very good when he goes off script, and that was part of the problem with the inquiry today.
00:09:17.500You don't have a teleprompter in front of you.
00:09:20.960And I suspect, because it was a very clumsy way to try and deal with this, that this might have been his own brainstorm on the spot, and now he's kind of painted himself into a corner.
00:09:30.740It ties in with a lot with the Indian issue, though.
00:09:33.880And when he's playing, as Nigel kind of said, you know, politicize this.
00:09:37.500This has been going on for a long, long time, and it doesn't mean we should ignore it, but when you start throwing it onto the floor, it changes everything, and we start paying a price.
00:09:45.360I mean, we can't forget, India and Canada trade $10 billion a year.
00:09:50.780Again, it seems to always come back to who are the main exporters to India?
00:10:23.020And there was a couple of Sikh individuals who jumped him in the parking lot and laid a beating into him because they disagreed with his views on the Kalistani thing.
00:10:30.960This is real, and it should be addressed.
00:10:33.860But again, it shouldn't be addressed with political motivations like Trudeau's doing.
00:10:37.180And we should be seeing how we can stop this sort of carnage on our streets.
00:10:54.540But, you know, I think this is – Nigel, I think this is – this is the inevitable endgame of mass immigration, open-door immigration, and diaspora politics where we have not – where we brought people in at such a rapid level where they're unable to assimilate into the broader Canadian mainstream.
00:11:17.700And now a ethno-political fight around Kalistan in a part of India that I guarantee you nine out of ten Canadians could not point out on a map where Kalistan is kind of roughly supposed to be in India.
00:11:37.180And yet that is a driving force in our politics.
00:11:41.320It is very important for the NDP, the Conservatives, and the Liberals.
00:11:50.660They're power brokers in any political party now for the most part.
00:11:54.340And they are within the Conservatives too.
00:11:59.680Where do you think the danger is for the Conservatives in maybe the broader question of diaspora politics, but also in, you know, their goal of trying to get close to the Sikh community, to bring them into the party, to get their votes, but to not end up playing diaspora politics to the point where it's influencing our foreign policy and our national security?
00:12:20.820It's certainly an issue to think of, to the point about how strong the Sikh voice is in Canada.
00:12:28.960I had the opportunity to check some notes here.
00:12:31.360And apparently, Sikhs occupy 15 seats in the Canadian Parliament.
00:12:38.720There are, in fact, more Sikh cabinet ministers in Prime Minister Trudeau's cabinet than there are in Prime Minister Modi's cabinet in India.
00:13:00.300The thing was, it was Mr. Trudeau pointed this out back in 2016.
00:13:05.580And you can imagine the, like he's barely been, he's barely newly minted Prime Minister.
00:13:10.560He barely knows where the washrooms are.
00:13:12.180And he's already taking pot shots at the Prime Minister of India, who the Harper administration had developed a very cordial relationship with and, you know, poking him like that.
00:13:49.140It's almost impossible not to play that kind of game.
00:13:53.400You're not going to say anything offensive, but what they can do, what they can do and should do, is emphasize the Canadian-ness of a politician.
00:14:04.680If you're going to serve in the House of Commons, you're serving Canadians, not people in another country.
00:14:14.680It's about enforcing that in your members.
00:14:18.020And that is something that Mr. Trudeau has conspicuously failed to do.
00:14:21.080I think we should mention that to the NDB candidate in that recent Montreal by-election, who ran without Canadian flags on her literature, but had Palestinian flags.
00:14:53.720Well, we're going to put a pin on the India file here.
00:14:58.980And we're going to bring in our British Columbia Bureau Chief for the Western Standard and our managing editor for West Coast Standard, Jared Yager.
00:15:51.420So the most recent poll from the Angus Reid Institute was taken between October 9th and 13th, just after the latest leadership debate.
00:15:59.440And it showed the NDP at 45% and the Conservatives at 40%.
00:16:04.660Now, it's hard to tell whether that was due to policy or whether it was due to other factors.
00:16:13.340Because in amongst that time, I don't know if you guys saw, but the candidate for South Surrey, Brent Chapman, some of his old social media posts came out.
00:16:21.980And so I'm wondering if maybe that influenced the polling a little bit.
00:16:29.340And so, yeah, it's – I mean, the NDP and the Conservatives, they've been going back and forth in the polls for the past few months now.
00:16:36.320And so, honestly, the only poll that matters is the one taken on Election Day.
00:16:42.280But, yeah, right now it's impossible to tell who's going to come out on top.
00:16:46.420Well, I mean, the only poll that matters is the one taken on Election Day.
00:16:52.220That's something you hear candidates often say when they're losing.
00:16:55.500When they're winning, they say, oh, the polls are just showing how great we are.
00:17:52.260Because the NDP has opened up a mild gap here, whereas a week ago it was neck and neck or even a minor leap for the Conservatives.
00:17:59.440No, I think it's definitely having an impact on more of the centrist voters who maybe like some of the Conservative policies, but can't stomach the sentiments being expressed by some of the candidates.
00:18:14.160But John Rustad yesterday at a press conference when he was unveiling his platform, he made a good point.
00:18:19.960And he said people should focus not on the words of Brent Chapman, but the actions of David Eby.
00:18:26.880And to see, like, okay, yes, he said these things and we condemn them, but is it worth sacrificing the province for the next four years just because you don't like what somebody said online?
00:18:39.100Corey, I mean, you've had experience, you were kind of, you were involved heavily in the earlier stages of the Wild Rose.
00:18:48.820I mean, there's some parallels between the Wild Rose insurgency in 2012 as that party, that was a brand new party.
00:18:55.360Although it was probably more well put together and had more of an infrastructure than the BC Conservatives today,
00:19:00.320because the BC Conservatives are very much an ad hoc coalition thrown together at this point compared to Wild Rose then.
00:19:09.580But, you know, maybe you could speak to, you know, you know, what are the dangers for the BC Conservatives when they have this many untested?
00:19:17.180Almost all their candidates are not incumbents except for a few BC Liberals who came over.
00:19:22.600You know, how dangerous is it for a party in this position?
00:19:25.500It's very dangerous because people have a fear of the unknown, and that's when it makes it easy to paint a hidden agenda.
00:19:31.160It makes it easy to, you know, put fear in the minds of the voters saying, we don't know what these people are going to do.
00:19:35.960And if we can find any comments, social media, things like that to reinforce that fear and make it appear that there's,
00:19:42.260this is a Trojan horse full of extremists coming through, it can be very effective.
00:19:47.060I was speaking of that earlier on my show with the Wild Rose case with the Huntsberger issue and people taking his quotes on the lake of fire and such.
00:19:55.940We were doing very well in the polls, and it was dramatic, though.
00:19:59.020It was like voters were giving us support, but it was tentative.
00:20:03.200It was just, it didn't take much to knock them right off us again if they saw something fearful, and it was effective.
00:20:21.300People want to support them, but these aren't long, well-entrenched supporters.
00:20:25.500These are recent supporters coming on board as voters, and they can easily be pushed off of that support if they feel that there's something to fear.
00:20:38.060How much do you think the BC Conservatives are having their boats just lifted by the rising tide of the federal Conservatives right now?
00:20:48.120How much of this is kind of a homegrown, organic rebellion against the EB government and, to an extent, rebellion against the BC United Liberals and their failure to offer a sufficiently different alternative for some time?
00:21:02.020And how much of it do you think is just the rising tide of conservatism and the capital C conservative brand across the country as polyevs lead its eye-watering levels?
00:21:14.660There are a lot of people who don't make the distinction between the Liberals of Ottawa and the Liberals of BC, and that actually caused the Liberals of BC to disassociate themselves from the federal group by changing their name.
00:21:31.240Therefore, it is entirely conceivable, as you suggest, that the increased popularity of the federal Conservatives is going to help the provincial Conservatives.
00:21:44.480Well, I think there's something else going on there.
00:21:47.480It puzzles me that after the tepid response offered by David Eby to the outrages in Vancouver, where the flags were burned and people were proudly claiming themselves to be,
00:22:04.680we are Hamas, we are Hezbollah, death to Canada, and he came out with some sort of weak, anodyne, staff-written condemnation.
00:22:14.480That that didn't cause an exit from the NDP.
00:22:20.220So for that reason, I'm somewhat suspicious of the latest of any poll that has been taken since then that puts the NDP in a large lead.
00:22:32.920Jared, you know, the polling is, I guess, confusing at this point.
00:22:40.220The ability to project onto local races is difficult because the BC Conservatives have never truly contested an election in a serious way in, oh, the 1930s, the last time they were a major party?
00:23:40.740You don't think some of the bigger northern island ridings are going to go over?
00:23:45.900Or do you think the whole island's then orange?
00:23:48.640There's a chance, but I wouldn't bank on it.
00:23:50.920But in the lower mainland here, there's a bit of a blue wave, if you will.
00:23:57.080And two of the ridings that I'm really watching are over in Abbotsford Mission with Raeanne Gasper.
00:24:03.460She's going up against the agriculture minister, Pam Alexis.
00:24:07.200And I was over there a couple of weeks ago, and I saw a pretty grassroots campaign bloom into something more, where, you know, there's a lot of support.
00:24:18.300People were packing the theater for her.
00:24:20.600And so I think people are ready for change over there.
00:24:22.960And also here in Vancouver, David Eby's riding Vancouver Point Grey.
00:24:27.920Paul Rashford, he put up a stellar performance against Eby in the latest debate.
00:24:34.360And, you know, it's not too often you see an incumbent premier get such a negative reaction in his own riding.
00:24:43.140So those are kind of the two I'm watching right now.
00:25:38.980So now they're, I mean, over the, they're largely going to turn out to get out the vote.
00:25:44.740But what are we going to hear from the campaigns?
00:25:46.500What can we expect in the last few dying days of this campaign?
00:25:49.340Well, from the David Eby campaign, you're going to hear a lot of attacks on Rustad against his candidates.
00:25:58.900And I mean, and the policies themselves, but more, more character attacks than anything else.
00:26:04.020And from the conservatives, it's going to be the opposite.
00:26:06.640You're going to see a lot of attacks on, on policy because Eby has a record to, to go up against.
00:26:12.420Just, you know, Rustad, he, he hasn't been a leader for, well, he's never, never been a leader in, in government.
00:26:19.220Whereas with Eby, you just look outside and you can see the product of his, his past time in government.
00:26:27.020So I think, yeah, all the parties are going to double down on what they've already said and really just hammer down those attacks that they've been going out for, for the past few weeks.
00:27:24.460It's, it's, it's, it's just, I mean, it's not good for the news business.
00:27:27.700But, you know, what's been animating the campaign for the last week?
00:27:31.220Basically, both parties had to come out with their platforms, because there's the debate tonight, which is ironically at six o'clock at night, which seems like a weird time to have a one hour debate when people are coming home from work and having dinner.
00:27:45.940And basically, the platforms, there's nothing new in them.
00:27:49.660They had already all made those announcements.
00:27:51.440And so it's basically, the SAS party is campaigning on income tax, and then also not raising the small business tax from one to 2% next year when it's supposed to go back up.
00:28:02.540They completely eliminated the small business tax during COVID.
00:28:05.860And then last year, it went up by a percent, and then it's supposed to go back up by another percent next year.
00:28:11.060Other than that, nothing really exciting.
00:28:13.260We've had some, obviously, some issues in hospitals, including here in Regina, where our two main hospitals are missing a doctor who's required for very key diagnoses.
00:28:23.320So anyone that needs certain tests has to actually go to Saskatoon now, as well as we had two ERs closed over the weekend, requiring people in rural areas to drive over an hour just to get to the nearest open ER.
00:28:34.840So healthcare is the number one concern in the province right now.
00:28:39.300The poll came out just a couple hours ago, showing that basically 61% of people think that healthcare is either the top issue or one of the top issues.
00:28:50.600And unfortunately for the SAS party, only 5% felt that they were doing a good job with healthcare.
00:28:55.940So the NDP is just hammering healthcare every single day with different healthcare-type announcements.
00:29:00.580But they all revolve around hiring more healthcare workers, which is a problem for anyone who gets into government, because there's just not enough going around to begin with.
00:31:44.720However, people can start voting on the 22nd.
00:31:47.320We actually have a week of early polls.
00:31:51.360So there is the opportunity to actually even start voting as early as the 22nd.
00:31:56.560Is there any prospect of the NDP able to turn this around and actually go for a slight win here?
00:32:01.880Or do you think it's pretty cooked in at this point?
00:32:05.260I think it's pretty cooked in at this point.
00:32:07.600The SAS party has not made a public appearance of Scott Moe in four days until tonight at the debate.
00:32:12.580He will have to face immediate scrum after that.
00:32:15.900I think some of that has to do with some questions I've been asking that they don't want to answer.
00:32:19.960But we'll find out tonight when I get a chance to ask those questions.
00:32:24.900But I don't think the NDP is in a position to win this election because, unfortunately for them,
00:32:32.800they have great support in the cities of Saskatoon and Regina.
00:32:36.760But once you get outside of the two major largest cities in the province, their support really tanks.
00:32:44.160I mean, even at their convention last year, they had a seminar on how to talk to rural people for their candidates.
00:32:49.880Like we're talking about a party that talks great to like like people in urban centers.
00:32:57.760But when you drive 20 minutes outside of either of those cities and their message just kind of falls flat on its face, unfortunately for them.
00:33:06.260And there's just there's no way that you can you can become a premier in this province without winning rural seats as well as winning urban seats.
00:33:16.420And on top of that, the SAS party actually does fairly well in Saskatoon as well.
00:33:21.000So there's a lot of battlegrounds there that they're probably going to hold.
00:33:26.620So it's not going to be the city's flipping completely orange.
00:33:30.140I'll put it to either of you two gentlemen on what's going on in Saskatchewan.
00:43:09.240Samidun, I mean, very clearly a front for certain Palestinian terrorist organizations.
00:43:16.220Has finally now been banned by the federal government.
00:43:20.800It's late, but, I mean, they did the right thing in the end here.
00:43:25.520That comes after Jared Yager, our British Columbia Bureau Chief, was the only reporter in the country to obtain footage of Samidun bosses leading a chant of,
00:43:38.680We are Hezbollah, we are Hamas, and death to Canada, or death to America, death to Israel, death to Canada, and burning Canadian flags.
00:43:47.340Now, burning Canadian flags, I think, is an extremely poor taste, but actually, I defend that as free speech.
00:43:53.940Free speech I really don't like, but that's why it's free speech.
00:44:10.960And they have now finally been, and media across Canada, used the Western Standards footage that was taken by Jared Yager when he was on the streets of Vancouver.
00:44:20.760So tip of the hat again to Jared for that, and noting that the work he and the Western Standards done has played a big role in getting these bums banned as a terrorist organization in Canada.
00:44:32.860All right, well, that's it for today's show.
00:44:35.140Thank you, gentlemen, for being a part of it today.
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