Shaun Newman Podcast - #1047 - Sam Cooper & Col. David Redman

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

This episode marks the 4th part of the Alberta Women's Independence Network podcast series titled Alberta United: The Collaborative Vision Series which explores what an independent Alberta could look like. It uses Col. David Redman’s Frontier Centre report Canada 2024: A Confident and Resilient Nation or a Fearful and Fractured Country as a framework. Redman outlines six core pillars for nation-building, with today’s focus on National Security.Sam Cooper is one of Canada’s leading investigative journalists and the bestselling author of Wilful Blindness. Sam has spent nearly two decades uncovering the hidden networks between foreign state actors, organized crime, money laundering, and Canadian institutions. He runs thebureau.news, an independent investigative journalism platform where he continues to expose threats to Canada’s national security and sovereignty. Retired Lieutenant Colonel David Redman served 27 years as an officer in the Canadian Army, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel with extensive operational command experience, including multiple international deployments and commanding large-scale logistical operations in Germany, the Balkans, and across Canada. After leaving the military, he became the head of Alberta’s Emergency Management Agency, where he led the province’s counter-terrorism planning after 9/11, developed Alberta’s pandemic influenza plan, and managed major emergencies for over a decade. Pet is a member of the Alberta Women's Independence Network.Watch the Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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This is James Lindsay. This is Vance Crow and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Tuesday. How's everybody doing today? All right. Well, today's episode was recorded live last week and I thought I put it out on the podcast. It was an interesting conversation.

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Take your 10 seconds, scroll to the top, give it a star, and help the podcast out. All right, that's all I got for you today. Let's get on to that tale of the tape. Our first guest, one of Ken, is a leading investigative journalist and best-selling author of Willful Blindness. Our second guest spent 27 years as an officer in the Canadian Army, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

And our third is a member of the Alberta Women's Independence Network. I'm talking about Sam Cooper, retired Lieutenant Colonel's David Redmond and Pet. So buckle up, here we go. All right, folks, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. We're live today. Yeah, for those of you who know me, I don't think I need to introduce myself. But I am the host of the Sean Newman podcast. And this live episodes that we're doing today marks the fourth part of an Alberta

Women's Independence Network. That's a mouthful podcast series titled Alberta United, the Collaborative Vision Series, which explores an independent Alberta and what it could look like. It uses Colonel David Redmond's Frontier Center Report, Canada, 2024, a confident and resilient nation or a fearful and fractured country as a framework. And Redmond outlined six core pillars. for nation building with today's focus being national security. Now, I've got a whole group of guests sitting in the background.

I'll introduce them and then I'll bring them on. So we got Sam Cooper, one of the Canada's leading investigative journalists and bestselling authors of willful blindness. He spent nearly two decades uncovering the hidden networks between foreign state actors, organized crime, money laundering, and the Canadian institutions. He also runs the bureau.com. News, an independent investigative journalism platform where he continues to expose threats through Canada's national security and sovereignty. We also have retired Lieutenant Colonel David Redman. He's served 27 years as an

officer in the Canadian Army retiring as a lieutenant colonel with extensive operational command experience, including multiple international deployments and commanding large-scale logistical operations in Germany, the Balkans, and across Canada. After leaving the military, he became the head of Alberta's emergency management agency where he led the province's counterterrorism planning after 9-11, develop Alberta's pandemic plan and manage major emergencies. for over a decade. And then we also have a member of the Alberta Women's Independence Network joining us, Pet.

So welcome aboard, everyone, and thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Now, I hope I got the introductions right. Forgive me if there's a couple things I miss there. We've got an hour today, so we're going to try and keep it as tight as I can. Of course, if you first time tuning into this series, they've done three other parts. Part one was Unity with Lieutenant Colonel David Redmond, Angela Taback, and John Bolton. Part two was Protection of Rights and Freedoms.

The Critical Compass hosted that with Evacchipiak. And then part three was personal and community well-being with Jason Levine and Tom Marazzo. Levine. Sorry about that, folks. Now, I've been giving a list of questions. I'm going to throw one out there. And then the three of you, feel free to jump in. We can start with the Colonel, if you like, because, I mean, it is based off your framework.

but here's the first question. Given your investigation and connections with law enforcement over the years, what is your understanding of the current internal security situation in Canada? And since the framework is built around Alberta independence, maybe Alberta as well. So can I share my screen? You should be able to, yes. Okay, I'll try. Can you see that?

I cannot see anything just yet. And of course, alive, we got to have technical difficulties. Isn't that the way it goes? All right. So I think I think I got it now. That should be it. And now we'll hope you can see that. Yeah, you bet, you.

Okay. So I'm going to be really, really fast. We talked about the fact that it's based on the paper. And the paper is trying to build for whatever nation you're in, a vision for your country that looks 25 years out built on those six national interests. And they're not random. Those are what every country in the world uses. It doesn't matter whether you're a dictatorship or a democracy.

Those are the six pillars that define a country. So let's talk about national security and make sure that for our audience, we have a complete picture. The first thing is it's built on geopolitics. So no matter what country you are, you have to actually realize where your country is situated and who's around you. And so in geopolitics, we have to recognize the fact that whether we're talking about, in Canada or Alberta, we share a continent with a superpower. Then there are nine more pieces that make up national security. Real intelligence services that are your outward-looking agencies that help you define

what are the threats to your country. Border services, which are intended to define the region that you're protecting, because any country, the first two overarching principles that define a country is when a group of people who share common interest and values live in a geographic region they are prepared to defend. So border services, then immigration services to make sure you only allow people into your country which share your common ethics and values. Then a distinct program for critical infrastructure protection that defines what is actually critical

and puts in place the security required to defend it. And we went through this in detail after September. level. Policing, all of the policing services then that take care of the people that live within your borders, a judicial system that reflects and protects the ethics and values of your citizens, emergency management agencies that cover all of the hazards, natural and human induced that can happen in your region that you are defending as a country, then looking outwards, making sure you have allies that help you defend your national interests, all six of them. And finally, you must have a force of last resort, which is an armed forces in the case of Canada, the Canadian armed forces,

which you can call on when things are difficult in any of the nine that I first listed. So I'll unshare my screen. The whole point of this is that you make sure you know all 10 of those and that you are in fact capable of defining and defending your ground in your country. Because if you're not, the whole thing is moot. And I would put it to you, and I certainly know that Sam is going to talk in detail, that I believe 10 out of 10 have been compromised for the last 11 years by the government we have in power. Sam? Yeah.

Well, thanks. You read my mind with that assessment. You know, I was struck when I've never seen your slides before and I, that was very well laid out, very incisive. And to my mind, I was thinking 9 out of 10 or 10 out of 10, Canada is doing horrible on. And so I could probably talk for about three to four to 10 hours on each of those. But as you were speaking, again, thank you for laying it out. that way. I think all Canadians need to understand that, first of all, if we're talking about

sharing a border with the world's greatest power, that we should be seen as a good neighbor and a good ally on all of those factors, my information is the U.S. government is rightly looking to Canada as what they call a semi-domestic sort of, how would you say, let me put it this way. the U.S. government is already getting pretty, I would say, almost unilateral in Mexico. We just had a, I reported this story yesterday that nine or 10 current or former Sinaloa government officials have been prosecuted in the United States, you know, because the government is part of the cartels and vice versa. And I have the concern that that sort of corruption is starting to make its way into many of Canada's institutions. I'll never argue at this point that it is as bad as Mexico, not even close,

but I will argue that the inroads of the cartels, the triads, the IRGC, this is Iranian intelligence and their clerical elites that are deeply involved in narco-trafficking and organized crime in our major Canadian cities, all of these factors from the Mexican cartels to the Iranian guards and mafia to the Chinese Communist Party and the CCP up top are active in our political systems, in our law enforcement. I know, you know, the Ryan Wedding story shows that they infiltrated Canada's Navy in the Halifax port area to move cocaine that it was coming up from Venezuela, you know, along with Hezbollah and into a Canadian port. So you can't make this stuff up. I think, you know, let me, I want to throw a little credit to my brave Iranian-Canadian colleague

Nagar Mostaheddy. This week she broke the story that an Iranian guard intelligence official, a senior figure, was about to be led into Canada. So that points to your border issues slide. Under the cover, basically, of now being a soccer official, the man had a temporary resident permit. And but for Nagar's brave reporting exposing this. the man, I believe, would have been led into Canada. Fortunately, he was turned away at the border because this would have embarrassed Canada's government. Of course, Marco Rubio, being a very astute and powerful official

in a powerful government, had already turned the man away reportedly. And, you know, why I point to Nagar's reporting on the Iranian Guard, I can tell all our listeners and viewers. I'm working on stories that point to what looks like Iranian Guard-connected members involved in what seems to be or what appears to be the most dangerous fentanylondering networks in some of our cities. So, you know, I could talk again, I'll make my last answer brief. Again, why Nagar's reporting on an Iranian official that almost got into Canada and she's

the one that exposed. There could be, and looks like there's already hundreds inside our cities due to the, you know, the breaches that have not only the last 10 years, but probably the last two decades. This made a lot of sense to me because in my book, Willful Blindness, I pointed to Chinese triad members, a Hong Kong government official who was a triad member that got special immigration access to Canada, and we still don't know why. And I think there's a lot of these cases in Canadian cities with Chinese individuals that are involved in political interference, espionage, organized crime, money laundering,

you know, fentanyl trafficking and money laundering. I think probably Chinese war crimes, there are so many of these people on our soil, and this just shows that we have failed in national security. It's not getting better now. It's getting worse because Mark Carney in many ways, with his strategic re-engagement, has now made plans to partner with the very entities that are, infiltrating our country. Pet, you've been listening.

I don't know if you want me to turn to you. I can keep going with these two, but if you have thoughts, please hop in and share them. Thanks. Just a quick question about that. Why do you think our government, I mean, after potentially two decades of this,

we can't argue that this is incompetence or not knowing what to do. Why do you think this is continuing to go on in Canada? Happy to start. If you go back, some of us were around for Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and he was a strong believer that the best form of government was communism, and his three personal idols were Mayo Saitung, and Nikita Cruzchev, and Fidel Castro. And he raised his son to believe the same thing. And so it is intentional, starting in 2015, the work with the Chinese government.

And I'll share one more slide in a little bit, which is as a military officer and as an emergency manager, the first thing you always do when you're looking at a situation is you assess the enemy forces against you. And so if we're talking about either Canada or Alberta, the forces that are aligned against us, and I've built a slide for it, is people who want to damage your democracy. So let's be clear. China is the number one actor worldwide trying to destroy democracy. They have stated very clearly they want to be the sole superpower by 2049. So let that sink in. Canada is not their target other than as a route to destroying the other world superpower of the United States. So they want to get into Canada. And everything that Sam listed there in terms of the cartels and everything else is on my slide.

There's a complete list of enemy forces which they're using, the United Workfront Department, all of the types of actions they can do, the cartels, everything else that's being funded. The IRGC, we have the largest concentration of IRGC anywhere in the world outside of Iran in our country. But this isn't new. On September the 11th, we knew I became the head of counterterrorism in the province of Alberta for two years. And we knew at that time that the largest money raising place in the world for ISIS and Al-Qaeda was Alberta, Canada. Let that sinking. Because we were economically prosperous.

So what our government for the past 11 years has been doing is facilitating the people that are coming in here to damage our country. For many reasons, all of them centered around self-gain, in my opinion. And so, yes, I believe it's intentional. and I don't believe we can overcome this challenge until we remove the current government from power and reestablish every one of those 10 agencies, probably by gutting, certainly the senior leadership, which are now complicit.

If I can just, I'm curious, the sole superpower by China, 2049, if somebody wanted to find that, where would you send them, David? Where can we find that statement? Pick up your smartphone. Google China. its intentions and it's 50 year plan

anybody can Google it they aren't making shy about it they've said it repeatedly the CHP and one other follow up I guess is I forget how you put it but Alberta is the large was the largest money launder in 2001

the largest money raising location in the world for both Al Qaeda and ISIS at the time was Alberta. And in fact, it was focused on Fort McMurray. And the reason behind it is there was lots of single young men with lots of money. And so they specifically put in prostitution rings, drugs trafficking, all of the illicit ways of making money in order to funnel it back. It used to be they did it under the radar. They were trying not to be seen while they were making money through all.

of the things that Sam has listed in terms of types of illegal activity in our country. But they're blatant about it now. They make no bones about the fact that they're funding the IRGC, that they're funding the cartels in Western Canada with the precursors for all of the fentanyl products. And let's be clear, the United States of America, our biggest trading partner and our strongest democratic ally in the world, knows this. Marco Rubio, Sam referred to him, is an expert. brilliant man. And he has been warning us for over a year that there will be consequences because we are challenging their national security.

If you read their national security strategy that they published on December 5th, it is very clear on how they're going to proceed to protect their national security and Canada's in the crosshairs because we're not doing our part. Sam, all your research, you know, centered around not Alberta independence, but just since the goal of this is to talk about how you can get things right. I'm just wondering on your travels and all your things, maybe I haven't read you enough because you probably do point sometimes to Alberta. But I feel like it's, it's BC and it's other places. Did you stumble into what David just said or did you already know all that? Well, David has a lot more granularity on sort of the, how this is happening in the oil patch. And that would agree with, you know, some of my research. I've done, you know, increasingly, including when coming out to your forum, Sean, you know,

I've been able to meet with more of my sources in Alberta. And I can say, you're absolutely right, that Vancouver started as my main focus of Canada's vulnerabilities. Sean, you've had Scott McGregor, my friend and colleague on, you know, a former Canadian military intelligence guy that pretty much wrote the book on what's called hybrid warfare. And that's what David speaks about where the CCP, the Iranian guards, working with the Mexican cartels, now with the Calistani networks, etc. The worst organized crime from around the world has made unprecedented convergences, with domestic organized crime in Canada,

and they're enriching those hostile regimes, and they're getting together on geopolitical objectives. So Scott McGregor calls Vancouver the center of gravity for transnational organized crime and hybrid warfare, which is, you know, some people would say that the geopolitical objectives of the criminals are even more important for nations like China. But as to Alberta, you know, increasingly,

with the Ryan Wedding, story and the way that broke, you know, I was making connections between the Falkland Super Lab, you know, just over the Rockies, you know, just past Salmon-Arm and Sycamuse. The biggest fentanyl lab ever discovered in the world, according to my DEA sources, whereas you wouldn't know that from Mark Carney's government. There's many more of these types of labs across, you know, British Columbia and into Alberta. But more importantly, the money laundering networks moving between, you know, Calgary and Vancouver, you know, pills coming up from sycamuse over the mountains into Calgary. That is a very live concern. And I'll just give you

the scoop today. I'm working on a new book and that's sort of the nexus of Chinese triads set up in Edmonton and Calgary working together with the Chinese importers of precursors into the Vancouver port, As you know, this is the concern of the US government that Vancouver is essentially an offload point for the CCP and the Sinala cartel for fentanyl, methamphetamine precursors. Those channels are moving right back and forth into Alberta. And I know your provincial government and your police there, I would say, are more astute and concerned about cracking down on this than many of the other agencies in Canada. And I just hope through conversations like this and my work, you know, we can get. Canadians understanding that you need to get behind your local police forces and your good local

politicians to get working on this because the RCNP in Ottawa don't seem to be very focused on cracking down on these threats, which in my understanding, the transnational organized crimes usage of Canada as a money laundering tool is not only the main concern of Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump and that government, at a bipartisan level, level, it's the greatest threat to Canada's sovereignty. And the espionage and interference that comes with it, you know, you can't separate them. They're the one in the same sovereignty threat to Canada. Before I try and direct us to how to solve these problems, or what you would do in the hypothetical of a successful Alberta independence vote, okay? And then you can tailor it to

Canada, if you like, but just overall, how do you, like, because you've painted a pretty dark picture, right? Which shouldn't shock any of the listeners. But, you know, failed at national security. You both are not in your head. 2015, it became intentional. And we've been in this, you know, I don't think you said anything positive there. And I'm like, okay, fair enough. But before I jump to Solutions, Pet, you just listen to that. Any questions before I move on? Or thoughts. Oh, lots of thoughts and questions. But I guess, given the federal liberals, use of orange men bad and everything against the U.S. right now. I mean, they're not shedding any

light on this. And as we've just outlined, it seems to be intentional. What are the repercussions of this if this does not stop from the U.S.? Who's clearly implementing some sort of a Monroe 2.0 doctrine? What are these consequences that are outlined in their national defense document? So I'll start if you wish. The United States has made it very clear that security trumps trade. After September the 11th, the American ambassador to Canada was a chap named Paul Saluci, and he repeatedly made speeches for four years, and he always opened with security, Trump's trade.

So if people haven't figured that out, that was in 2001. They kept saying that. and this administration in the United States is laser focused on their national security. And so they will not allow Canada to be the challenge to their national security by allowing their largest enemy a foothold on the North American continent. So if you truly believe in your heart, anywhere in Canada that's watching this podcast, that Kuzma is going to be renewed on July the 1st, you are not reading the statements made by Marco Rubio and the entire administration that security trumps trade.

Read the national security strategy published on December 5th by the United States government. It tells you exactly what's about to happen in the next year. Canada will be punished severely for not taking any of the 10 elements of national security seriously. Just for the everyday person, David, when you say it won't be, or you know, basically July 1st, pay attention that day, what are the repercussions for that agreement not being, you know, agreed to or followed through on or however you want to put it? So everybody understands that it's a 10-year process. Everybody understands that it's up for renegotiation every year for that 10 years when one partner says they're going to cancel. And so everybody turns to me and says, oh, it just doesn't end on a dime. You know, we've got 10 years to work through this.

It won't be immediate. Then they haven't been watching the Trump administration very closely because the agreement can stand just as it is now. And we just put 500% tariffs on every good in Canada. Trump will use the national security clauses quite correctly that Canada is a threat. And we'll say, while we're renegotiating Kuzma, there will be a lot. will be immediately tariffs on every good coming across our border because Canada refuses to take its own national security seriously. Therefore, we are forced to defend Canada, and therefore, we will put tariffs on every good in order to recoup the money we need to pay our armed forces

to defend Canada. So for the everyday average person, pain and financial pain. Yeah, everything goes up. And if Canada, is not already in a recession. I'm predicting a depression within a year if we don't start to take this seriously. Okay, well, at this point, I'm going, well, this has been a hopeful 25 minutes. So let's shift gears here, okay?

The whole thought process on your 25-year vision, your idea, your pillars, is that you can change the direction of not only, the country, but if you're sitting here listening and you're for Alberta independence, the ladies are like, this is brilliant. Like, we should be talking more about this. So when you list out all the problems, security, it's just like Swiss cheese at this point of how many problems we got coming in in different areas and you two can go back and forth explaining them. But if you were to set your eyes on a different task of say, what specific measures would you recommend? Now, for this

case in point and an independent Alberta, but even if you want to go as broad as Canada, in the first two to five years to protect itself from internal threats that you both shared, cyber, terrorism, civil unrest, internal, international, organized crime, I don't know, you can go as far

as short as you want. What would you do? I would say that, I mean, you got to, there's some things that are blindingly obvious that Canada shouldn't be doing. You know that movie, all the right moves. Well, Mark Carney, very clear, is doing all the wrong moves to get a trade deal with the United States that is both fair

and profitable for both countries. And I agree with David. I'm hearing from Washington where I'll actually be going to speak on a panel with the Hudson Institute in May speaking about these very issues. The bipartisan concern with Canada's actions under Mark Carney, not just moving closer, diving into Beijing's orbit, are off the charge. And, you know, I think you have to raise the theory now that the Chinese Communist Party very clearly had a, you know, an interest in Mark Carney's election. Their propaganda was promoting him as the tough fighter against President Donald Trump.

And so they're getting what they want. And you see the Chinese propaganda, you know, if you can read, Google Translate is very good now. You can read Mandarin language reporting both in Canada and a country. abroad, their messaging aligns very well with Mark Carney, whether we're talking about the Davos speech or, as I have analyzed, a more important speech, Mark Carney over in Beijing, speaking to the Canada-China Business Council in January, 26, about his new EV deal, etc. So what do we, what would you want to do strategically to renew and unify Canada and get a good trade deal, or whether you're just looking from within Alberta,

don't invite rolling spy vehicles into your country that not only will undercut your industry, it will tighten the border with the United States. So I'm not just talking about it. They've already promised they won't let those vehicles travel into physically their nation. Of course they won't let them be sold into, but the 50,000 rolling high-tech Chinese intel gathering vehicles,

geo-collecting across, you know, Canada, across that unguarded border, the United States is not going to accept that. There will be, it's a guaranteed, you know, sort of economic hit that Canada will take, and it will lead to stronger actions. So I've already reported also, we've talked about Marco Rubio. He wrote a letter to former trade minister, Mary Ng, you know, who rocketed up Justin Trudeau's ranks, quite possibly. I won't say everything that I know about that case from intelligence sources, but as a favored candidate of the United Front Work Department,

jumped from Trudeau's office where she had power over, I believe, judicial appointments and all kinds of goodies and became a cabinet minister within a year of replacing John McCallum, the compromised China, ambassador to China. You know, my point here is that Mark Carney is making the same types of personnel moves as Justin Trudeau was making.

We can see that with floor cross owner Michael Ma. So, you know, I'll end my answer here to you, Sean. You do everything pretty much the opposite of what Mark Carney and the Liberal Party of Canada are doing right now, because if you read his speech to the Canada China Business Council, you could go down and probably pick 15 to 20 things that are taking Canada in the wrong direction away from our Western allies and towards Beijing.

And it spells ruin economically and security-wise for every Canadian. David. I agree with absolutely everything Sam just said. Sam, just a throwout right now, I've read everything you've written. I believe you are one of the most courageous actual journalists in our country. And I can't say anything but thank you for everything you're doing. Sean, can I just share a screen? And if I can just park an idea with you, Sean,

make sure I don't forget the word task force, okay, because you ask for a solution. All right? So I'm just going to try and share one more time here. One more slide, just one. And now I know the sequence I have to click here. It shouldn't be so hard. So can you see that slide? Yeah, state actors, global actors, internal actors.

Okay. So the whole discussion that Sam and all the investigating reporting that he's been doing, China is the number one state actor, and I told you why, in my opinion, they're very clear. They want to be the sole superpower. But if you note my notes at the bottom, note with a star means China has connections and in most case it's massive funding. Okay. And there's a hashtag which is Manifest Destiny, which the United States has had since it was first form, which it believes all of North America ultimately will be part of the United States of America.

So these are challengers or in more, you know, firm tones, enemy forces at times, to, the national security of Canada. The global actors, I think many of you have seen them, that we've talked about them, and Sam certainly investigated many of their connections into our country, and then the internal actors who are actually operating right now in Alberta and across Canada. And so for folks that are watching,

just take a time to gander at that. Well, I switch back to the thought of a task force. Back in September 11th, by September the 12th, that midnight on September the 11th, the Premier of Alberta, a guy named Ralph Klein at the time, formed the task force on security. He brought the 26 brightest people across all sectors of our economy. So I mean the private sector, which owned 85% of critical infrastructure in our country. He brought them, plus all the elements of government involved in security,

and I mean federal, provincial, and municipal, in an effort to try, I'm just trying to do two things at once. I'm not doing it well. Okay, I'm stopping sharing. So I've gotten rid of my slide. And he brought the people together. So the whole idea of a task force, so you're asking for solutions. And so I'll talk about Canada first and Alberta second.

Canada needs to have a task force on security. They need to bring a group not larger than 50, probably between 20 and 30, who are the brightest minds in our country. And if you go back to my very first slide, which showed all 10 elements that make up our national security, we need to start with a geopolitical group. And then we need a task force on each of the sub-elements with working groups that break out in order to reestablish. Now, this is a three-year process. That's certainly what we followed after September 11th.

And in fact, it only took two years to build the complete counterterrorism process with critical infrastructure protection that caused the United States to ask Alberta to go repeatedly to Washington, D.C., to help them build their new Department of Homeland Security. Okay, remember DHS didn't exist before September 11th, and I spent a ton of time in D.C. Working with them to build that new organization based on the results of our task force, which isn't just what's wrong. It's an actual then plan, which you then fully implement across all sectors of your economy, private and public. sector. We need to rebuild every one of those 10 elements on that slide. And I go back to what Sam said, it can't be done while this liberal government is in power. And so until Canadians understand, and unfortunately, if you ever watched Regina Gorman, who was tortured to death for nine

months as one of the first members of solidarity in Poland in 1981, she said the only time that people actually started to sign up for solidarity is when they had to line up for bread every day in Poland. I believe, unfortunately, that's where Canada is going. So what I'm trying to say is we need to be ready to establish those task force, Canadian, and if you wish to talk about the independence of Alberta, Alberta, you better be ready to have every one of those 10 if you intend to be an independent country because you can't be an independent country without an intelligence service, without a border service, without an immigration policy and immigration services. If you want to be an independent country, you have to take national security seriously,

or you will be part of the United States in less than a decade. Well, if I may, Sam, just before you hop in, one of the things you said in your first appearance on this series, David, is the two most important things are unity and national security. And if you become your own country, then you look at all the actors, and by what you and Sam have said today, we'd be surrounded by nefarious actors. And they're already here internally.

Correct. Sam. Yeah, Sean, I would just add, I mean, everything that David laid out, I agree with totally, and he's done it in a granular and mindful way, obviously been thinking about this for years

and talking to colleagues in the United States that know these concerns. So I did an op. last week for the Bureau when I was presenting to Washington State Counter Narcotics Association that was in Idaho. And I tried to simplify it by saying there's something in the United States called the DEA Special Operations Division. And this is a little known agency that has some of the best counter narcotics intelligence

in the world. Of course, it's working with the complete U.S. intelligence community. and, you know, military community. It has access really to the solutions to Canada's problems because it has files on global leaders, you know, global narcos, you know, Mexico, the leaders that are working with the cartels, Russia, Iran, China, the DEA in this unit, which is like a hub of intelligence sharing

and getting together all the U.S. powerful agencies, they were able to take down El Chapo an incredible task. And guess what? Their investigation ran through Chapo's internet servers in Canada. And as I wrote in my op-ed, you know, I'm trying to simplify that the readers can grasp on to a narrative that will sort of make what David said just pop out. Canada's weakness was that Chapo was, this is an almost an unknown story. He was running encryption technology services through Canada.

And the DEA and their special operations division ran a special operation to make El Chapo want to move those over to Netherlands, where the U.S. government can work with Netherlands law enforcement. And so they did that. They penetrated Chapo's network, and they did it by flipping his IT guy, a Colombian IT guy who's obviously a confidential source, who will never be named lest he be killed. So Canada, and what's the real cherry on the top? DEA wants to work with Canada. It wants us to unroll those money laundering, intelligence, narco networks that have invaded our cities and taken us to the brink of losing our sovereignty, I believe.

What's standing in the way? I think political will, corruption, and some laws that Canada needs to rewrite, you know, so that we can go after these hostile state networks. using a type of racketeering and anti- foreign interference law. So the solutions are there and they're actually simple enough. It's about working with, you know, allies and aligning some of our sacred cow laws that are blocking, you know, all these agencies that David has said, we need to get in line with the task force.

Well, they need to be to work with laws in Canada that would allow them to work and actually clean up our country. which is why we're talking about Alberta independence because it seems the federal government is the enemy of getting this all done and they've seemed to have figured out a way to stay in power indefinitely and while they're in power none of this will be addressed until people are literally hunting squirrel for food which was in the newspapers recently I don't know if anybody noticed It was a Privy Council Office forecasting report. Yes. And I would just say, look, I want to be clear that I really hope Canada can solve its problems and Alberta stays.

That's my own personal belief and opinion. I'm talking about solutions for the nation. But I absolutely believe, look, if Canada can't fix its problems, then the people that want Alberta to be its own entity and solve them, they would have a just cause. I got to be honest. Well, if I go through the thought process here, you go in order to get national security to where it needs to be, and you just grab what David has written, showing us on a screen and put it up. Right now you don't have a government that's going to put it in. Would we all agree?

Like the federal government isn't going to listen to anything you just said, David. The Liberal Party will not. So I always like to be very focused. The Liberal Party will not. Thank you. The Liberal Party will not. And in order to get the Liberal Party out right now, it seems things will have to get worse. And you point to Poland and breadlines. So that is a very dark future in order to get out a government that doesn't want to change things.

So if you pull it back to Alberta independence, what you talk about, I think, David, is have your eyes wide open because your actors, the nefarious ones are all over. So if you're going to proceed with this idea of voting yes and wanting to get out, understand you need to have the best approach possible to national security. Because without it, you'll just become another failed state that allows all these nasty things to continue on. Absolutely correct. And I'll take it one step higher. The reason I wrote the paper was for my grandchildren. I've said this over and over and over again. I want a 25-year positive vision for Canada as a nation. And for the independence folk in Alberta, if you wish to use it for the independence of Alberta,

it's the same, 25-year vision, but you actually have to define in that paper all six national interests and how you're going to achieve them. Short of that, you'll be a failed state within a decade, probably much, much less, because we have both, we have three things happening at once. We have the United States, which is growing completely impatient with our complete lack of focus on national security. We have a federal liberal party, which is intentionally, in my opinion, destroying national security. And we already have all the actors that I listed on that one slide in Alberta. So you need to figure out national security before you become independent or the United States will not allow Alberta to stand

alone and the rest of Canada will be doing everything it can to ensure that Alberta will not stand alone. You need the complete list of all 10 functions but let's start with number one geopolitics. The United States has no interest in Alberta standing alone as a sovereign entity on their manifest destiny continent. So I've always believed that Canada as a whole has in the past and can in the future resist the desire of the United States manifest destiny. The reason we built the railroad was for exactly that, but without the whole totalitarian, we will just help the United States move manifest destiny forward. That's my opinion. And I get your point, Colonel Redmond. It's just if it's going to to be between we have in the school of realism, right, and superpowers, it seems our choices are

two to align with our Western democratic partner to the south or be taken over by China and cartels. And so it seems like- And so my answer is you've missed one. Remove the Liberal Party of Canada, ensure they cannot damage our country again like this in the future and rebuild Canada. So there's three options. The question is which one can be achieved in a manner that will meet the requirements of the United States or I'm with you, I would far rather be an American than learn Mandarin. But I would rather, like my parents did, both in uniform in World War II and my grandparents and all my great uncles did in World War I. And like I tried to do in my career defend the country I love.

If you build the 25-year plan, no different than if you go back, forgive me, David, you mentioned the name of it, but you mentioned being assigned a task force in 2001. You did such a great job for not Canada, as I understood it, but Alberta, that the United States said, hey, how would you come teach to some of what you just did? Because we like what you're doing there. So you build out the 25-year vision. You've already done that. And you give it to both Alberta and Canada, and your hope is Canada takes it.

We want to stay in Canada. Let's go. And Canada, as we've been talking about here, unless we get to breadlines, it doesn't look like the political will is there. What you're saying to Alberta independence, folks, that if you're serious about this, get serious about a 25-year plan so you can build something that David goes, that makes sense. you've identified the six pillars and let's go. And so that's why when Kathy and Angela first came to me, I will talk to anyone and everyone if in the future we can either have a Canada or a democracy that resembles a strong and vibrant democracy built on the six national interests.

And just to go back, I was taught those national interests as a young officer in the Royal Military College of Canada in 1975. We used to talk about this stuff all the time. And when I wrote the paper, it was to re-engage the citizens from a bottom-up approach to redefining and demanding that politicians are able to talk about unity, national security, good governance in a democracy, rights and freedoms, economic prosperity and growth,

and societal and personal well-being. And to actually pull citizens back in the United States, those discussions and so once again when when Kathy and Angela first approached me I said of course because I want the bottom-up citizen engagement to force politicians to talk in these terms and I wrote the paper to give citizens the words the six national interests and all the sub-bullets if you read the paper they're all in there plus the slide packages to have a useful discussion this isn't Dave's idea this is what we used to talk about in this nation all the time I

I just want our nation to talk about it again. But today we're talking national security. And remember, geopolitics is number one. And the reason Canada existed as a country, coast to coast, now coast to coast, as people call it, was in order to stand in the way of manifest destiny because we are different. I lived in the United States as an officer serving. I saw the differences between our countries. I lived all over the world.

and people would touch my Canadian flag and say, thank good the Yanks are here, it's Canada. We're different. We have a different history. And so I offered all of this and the task force concept, which has been used over and over and over again, I've been in part of many of them, to try and pull the discussion to a higher level.

Sam, pet, any thoughts? You know, like we got about 13 minutes left before we got to let everybody out. So I would say, Sean, I mean, again, I'm just enjoying learning from David because I haven't thought about the matters, you know, along the, well, he has just let us know for decades. He's been thinking about these issues. And I haven't really looked at it through the potential Alberta as its own entity lens so much. I've just been diagnosing Canada's problems.

And in a way, pointing to what I believe are some low-hanging fruit solutions, no-brainers. like, let's get an anti-racketeering law. If you're not doing it, do you want racketeering to occur? Which seems to be, I would think probably some people in the current government, I have a suspicion that that's where they sit, along with some high-level lawyers in Canada, unfortunately. But my point here is, you know, I feel like a family member of the United States. Canada cannot continue as a sovereign nation without,

I believe the silent majority making their voices heard that we will always be, you know, family members, brothers and sisters of Americans. We are a bit different. I don't know how much. But I believe that, you know, if Canada had followed the right path, the world, let's say, the Western democracy, you know, value systems that I love and believe in and fight for so much, the world would be stronger and better if Canada and, you know, United States were two powerful separate entities, both making that case around the world,

both extending force when needed. That is, Canada should be able to project force by now. And so, look, again, my hope of hope and what I work for is that Canada will turn that wheel around if we don't do it within a year or two. Best of luck to the people in Alberta that want independence, I think you probably get your wish. Or, as David says, that manifest destiny will be back on because the United States will not allow China, Iran, Russia, etc., and the cartels to threaten them. That's where we are now. And so, again, I want to say, I believe in a strong Canada and the United States together.

I hope Canada can renew. And I do agree with David that the liberal government has been given so many chances to prove that it actually cares about Canada as a sovereign entity. And I just think they're proving, I've come to. a firm conviction now that it really is the Canada-China-China Business Council's interests, along with liberal prime ministers that are setting the tone for this country, and that means that Beijing's elite is setting the tone, and that can't continue. I was just going to say, you know, I think a lot of Albertans, there's a couple things.

One is a lot of Albertans want to stay in Canada. But everything we just talked about, they're going, I don't know what option will work. Get the government out. Great. how do we do that? I keep coming back to breadlines. I'm like, it's got to get really freaking bad. And for a lot of people, it's already really bad.

So then they look at independence. And the thing that I take, because I got to interview you, David, you know, what was that? A few months ago. And I'm like, they need a plan. They need a vision. And if you don't have that, I've already ran into a ton of Albertans that are like,

I don't know. I'm not just doing this to do this. And so what David keeps reiterating over and over to anyone who will listen, including Canadians or Albertans is, and it seems like others are listening to is like, get your six pillars in order. You get that in order. You got something to work with. And others are going to take notice, including probably David.

Like, holy crap, that actually looks like a sound plan. Without a plan, we will probably, no doubtedly perish in one way. I hate to sound so dark, but I don't mean perish as everybody dies. Just like we're talking about a big decision. we need to address some of the elephants in the room, and I think you two are doing a wonderful job of it today. Maybe we can bring Colonel Redmond out of retirement, given he's the man with the plan.

Listen, I'm an immigrant to Canada from a communist, former communist country. So to me, what has happened and transpired here is absolutely devastating because Canada is my home. And I think a lot of Albertans who are, for independence, aside from wanting independence from Ottawa and this kind of unjust Westminster system, is this might be the only way to snap Canadians out of it

when they're confronted with, okay, the country is now falling apart, which would be just before breadlines and squirrels. So I don't know, thank you gentlemen for coming and sharing all your wisdom. But that's what I have to say about it. Sam or David, any final thoughts before we let you out? Sean, I would let David have the last word.

I want to learn some more from them today. But Sean, you talk about, you know, seeing bread lines or getting bad. You know our colleague, Mark Cahotas, believes that Canada may slap on capital controls. And look, look at what we're hearing from Ottawa, some non-lawful. not something that doesn't make sense a sovereign wealth fund that's really a sovereign debt fund that would appear to increase the potential of conflicts between mark carney and large infrastructure projects over and above what's already there with brookfield and china as i've already laid out but you know it's being said that there was a PCO report that pointed to a dark future where

young people will the brain drain will happen uh you know people will be foraging in the woods to make ends meet in the pantry. And what have we heard at the liberal convention? We had a liberal brainiac talking about slapping some sort of leave exit ban on young talented Canadians. So the signs are lining up that the future, as it is right now with the government in place, is not looking very good for people that can see around corners. It's not looking good. David, I'm going to give you the final word before I let us all hop on. off. Any final thoughts? First of all, Sam, I'd love to just sit down and drink beer with you for a full afternoon one day and just have a great conversation. So let's try and leave on a positive note.

One of the things as a very young captain I learned the hard way is you can't fix anything until it's completely broken because the people that are breaking it won't let you. So there has to be what was called a significant emotional event when I was a young officer back in the late 1970s. I believe that significant emotional event is coming. It'll be coming by July the 1st, and it'll be coming through the Kuzma discussions. And I think Canadians will start to realize just how broke this liberal government has done to our country. So my positive is, please read the paper. Please try and find a way to re-engage in the political discussion as a in our country. Use the six national interests to frame your thoughts, but frame your thoughts

with all the sub-bullets too. So you have a complete vision, but understand the holes that you have in your background or your knowledge. I have huge ones, like when we get to things like economic prosperity and growth, I always grab a whole bunch of industry guys. So try and build in your mind where you would love to see Canada or Alberta be in 25 years and then figure out the steps that have to be taken to get there and you'll have a far more positive discussion in your own heart and you'll bring it to others in a far more logical thoughtful measured manner so whatever way you you roll whether it's for independence or for a unified rebuild Canada i wish you luck and happy to talk any time but i'm taking the month of may off i need a mental

hellness month. I'm really spiraling with my unfortunate past life. So I tell you what, I think before you said any of that, I think I left on a positive, if I'm being honest with myself. You've given me what would make David Redmond go, that actually makes sense. And that is a plan. That is taking care of the things that need to be taken care of. And there's an old saying where there's no vision that people will perish. And, um, To me, as we marked the end of the fourth part of the Alberta Women's Independent Network, there's probably an acronym there somewhere, titled Alberta United, the Collaborative Vision Series. These discussions are important.

And I appreciate all four, all three of you hopping on to do this. And I look forward to seeing what the future ones bring, if I'm being honest. And then just thanks again for hopping on. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Sean. Thank you.