The Ben Mulroney Show - Internet trolls exposed, Ontario Bail, Expropriating land and Border security!
Episode Date: November 25, 2025GUEST: Warren kinsella / Former Special Advisor to Jean Chretien and CEO of the Daisy Group GUEST: ARI GOLDKIND/ Defense Lawyer GUEST: Samantha Dagres, communications manager at the MEI - Montrea...l Economic Institute GUEST: Frank Caputo / MP Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo / Former prosecutor If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://link.chtbl.com/bms Also, on youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: @benmulroneyshow Twitter: @benmulroneyshow TikTok: @benmulroneyshow Executive Producer: Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at mike.drolet@corusent.com Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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we like to confuse you or keep you on your toes.
Let's say keep you on your toes.
More positive.
I am Alex Pearson in from Mr. Ben Mularuni.
And this is not a new conversation,
but I am glad that it's a conversation happening more and more.
Because certainly on 640 Toronto and on this network,
we've talked a lot about, you know, these pro-Palestian protests,
you know, the praying in the streets,
the, you know, the Jew hate running rampant across school campuses.
You know, we've talked about the fact that it's not organic, not really a grassroots push, right?
That it's being funded in many parts by pro-terror groups, you know, regimes like Qatar
and endless nonsensical non-profits that pour money into groups or into, you know, specific protesters
so that they can do this.
One of those groups is the Muslim nonprofit care.
This is a council for Islamic relations.
they've been given thousands of dollars to anti-Israel aditiators, and they fuel and go into these
protests, and so far it's gotten zero pushback. But we are starting to see pushback. Even Twitter or
X is starting to push back to find out who's doing this. You know, you can't stay hidden forever.
And as my next guest certainly will reveal in his upcoming book, and he's been warning about it,
I think one of the longest, you know, the days of hiding are coming to an end.
He is Warren Kinsella, former special advisor to a guy named Jean Creche,
CEO of the Daisy Group and author of a book coming out very, very soon called The Hidden Hand,
The Information War and the Rise of Anti-Semitic Propaganda.
Hello there, Warren.
Good morning, my friend.
It's actually been an interesting week.
I mean, the conversations we were having, you know, I guess about what, one and a half,
two years ago, finally almost coming to the front now.
But there's a couple of different stories.
I want to dig into this, United States, changing its tactics with the Muslim Brotherhood
and going after groups like Care and these non-profits that kind of under the guise of goodness
are not generally so good.
No, they're not.
So care is a group that has been around for many years in the United States.
It's really the main Muslim organization in the United States.
It's a charity and it receives millions in donations from far left nonprofits and charities in the United States and also outside of the United States from places like Canada.
And just this week, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, finally brought a criminal investigation.
He directed one into care and into the Muslim Brotherhood, which is kind of the philosophical organization behind all of these extremist groups.
And he's attempting, he wants to identify and disrupt and eradicate terrorist organizations.
So he's kind of put the pedal to the medal and calling Care a terrorist group.
They've, in fairness, they have countersued him, saying that he's dealing with them in a discriminatory way.
So I guess we're going to have this one duped out in court.
But Care, just, you know, in case anybody thinks this is only a problem for the Americans,
Care, for the longest time, had a Canadian branch, which is now called NCCM, and they've changed their name about a decade ago,
but they long regarded themselves as the same organization, quote unquote.
So, you know, there's a real alphabet soup of these nonprofits and charities and NGOs and organizations, lobby groups.
There's a nest of them, both in Canada and in the United States and in Europe, and we owe it to
to ourselves, we're able to democracy to find out who is behind the curtain because we think
that, I think, that a lot of them are been up to no good.
Well, absolutely.
But as you well know, they do have the ears of our politicians.
They have direct access to the prime minister.
And so we're talking about people who have been able to entrench themselves within government
at whatever level we talk about.
But we also talk about, you know, names like George Soros for the longest time even to suggest
that he was funding any of this stuff would, you know, draw the ire.
But we just seem to have too much evidence showing that these groups are being paid to do this.
And they have exceptionally exceptional access to the power brokers.
Yeah. And, you know, as I wrote, as you know, in post media a year and a half ago,
organizations and individuals in Canada are being paid to protest against Israel.
And in some cases, on behalf of Hamas, from Victoria to Montreal, you can get thousands of dollars.
There's an organization of Victoria that had a budget of $20,000 a month to pay people to go to protests.
In Montreal, you can get up to $150 a protest to attend.
And in the United States, like at some places at some of the universities like Columbia, in the United States,
you can get $4,000 a week for doing just eight hours a week.
disrupting society and attacking Jews in the Jewish state.
So this is, it's a big, big problem,
and governments don't seem to be doing anything to investigate it,
and that's got to change.
Well, they're not, and neither of the universities,
and that's why I think it's so angering and maddening
that the police don't actually deal with this and have normalized it.
Then you've got a guy like Elon Musk, who, you know, over the weekend,
we started seeing accounts pop up, you know,
someone would put it, even for politicians,
where accounts were being registered and who was behind it, right?
And it did reveal and long overdue, and I hope they go further.
But it reveals like very small groups of people not in Canada, not in the United States,
but, you know, people working in boiler rooms, spreading all this propaganda that really has,
is just making an actual, is destroying the West.
If anybody is trying to figure out what we're talking about,
if you've got a Twitter account or if, you know, you just follow people,
people on Twitter. All you have to do is go on to there, and it'll say in their profile paragraph
when they join. You just click on that there, and it's going to show you when they joined
Twitter, where their account is based, and how they connected to Twitter. And what happened
over the past few days is Musk, and you know, I've criticized Musk, as you know, and X for
allowing a lot of this stuff to proliferate. Well, Musk and X in the past few days have
improve democracy around the world, and they deserve a lot of credit, because basically what
they opened up was location services. So now you can see where these people who claim to be
in Gaza, for example, are actually located. So there's a news organization, for example, called
Times of Gaza. It's got a million followers. Journalists in the West have been repeating their
stuff and regurgitating their stuff for months now, and its location is claimed to be Palestine,
it's not. They're actually based in East Asia, and they connected to Twitter using the North
Africa App Store. Yeah. Amir from Gaza, you know, he talks about how, like, another one who's
very popular platform account, he said, I'm from the heart of Gaza in the womb of suffering. Well,
he's in the womb of suffering in the United Kingdom. He's nowhere near the front line in Gaza.
Yeah.
So there's hundreds of examples of this came out over the weekend.
And, you know, we have a big thanks to Musk and to X for doing this because it now proves what guys like me have been saying.
And I say in my book, The Hidden Hand, that a lot of the stuff you're seeing online, particularly on these social media platforms, it's a lie.
It's fake.
It's false.
And, you know, right now, the statistics I've, you know, the, you know,
experts I've talked to for the book. Tell me about 55% of what you're seeing now on the
internet. Wherever you look, 55% of it was written by something that's not a human. It's
written by a robot. So, you know, buyer beware when you're going online. Yeah, too bad. So many
believe it and so few in charge actually stop it. Amount of time, Warren, but we will continue to
talk about it because at least we do. And I thank you for it. Thanks, my friend. There you go.
Warren Concella, he's got a new book coming out, probably out, maybe get on the pre-order.
The hidden hand, the information war, and the rise of anti-Semitism.
Big changes happening, whether they're happening fast enough in our criminal justice system.
Well, I mean, we can debate about that.
But we know, you know, the federal government,
in charge of the criminal code, but the Ford government, the provincial government, can make
changes to try to make things better as we wait for those big changes to come in. And one of the
things they're doing is bringing forward changes to how bail is granted. In other words,
they're going to get rid of something called, you know, cashless bail, which I don't even know
how it became a thing. But this, of course, became a thing when Trudeau changed a lot of
our laws, softening them up. And bail became the default position for
judges and justices of the peace, you know, they basically had to give bail even to the most
of violent offenders, right? And then it was all done on a, well, we promise to pay commitment.
So we're talking honor agreements or pinky swears with the worst of the worst, right? So
agreement by the judge and the defendant that you're going to get some freedom, but you have to
behave by these rules or you pay a fine. Except there's rarely follow-up and then there's
no fine, right? So the legislation, which will be tabled today at Queens Park, would change the
rules so that the bad guys and girls or their sureties, you know, the people putting money up for
the release, actually have to pay before the release. Let's bring it Ari Golkind. He is a criminal
defense lawyer. He joins us now. I'd say this is good news. Good morning to you. Good morning, Alex.
All right, let's talk about this. What do you like in this and what don't you like? Sure. And I think,
you know, in that historical overview you started,
there were a couple things I would clarify there in time,
but it's your show that I won't.
This goes back to even before Trudeau,
so not all the buck can be passed there, pun, fully intended.
Now, I can tell you that I'm probably the unicorn defense lawyer
that thinks this is a good thing.
I can tell you you, you speak to most defense lawyers.
They'll tell you bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
I don't think it is.
I think it's a very good step in the right direction.
Why?
At the end of the day, there's a term that I think makes a lot of sense to most people,
which is some skin in the game.
And I can tell you that if you walk down the street today or gone on an over-packed TTC car
and said, hey, when people promised to the court $10,000 to get an attempted murderer
or rapist or home invader or extortionist or arsonist out on bail,
if you said to that packed subway car, did you know that they don't have to put a dollar down?
I think most people on that subway car would say, what do you mean?
So I think this is curing a problem that the public didn't even understand what's happening.
So what you explained to your listeners just a moment ago is that promise to pay for sureties,
people who are guarantors of bail.
That's what the term means.
They sort of assure the court that they will.
They're babysitters, right?
I was going to use a similar term, but I thought I'd try and come up with something more elegant,
but yours is better, that they would babysit the accused, and they promised 5, 10, 15, 20,
if they're wealthy and have a house and Whitby, they promise 100 grand, but they don't put the money down.
And if the accused screws up, screws off, disappears, doesn't attend court, or worse, commits another crime,
I would say it's all too rare, this is my personal opinion, that the government, and this is what Ford has talked about with Doug Downey yesterday,
there's a court called a streetment court. Now, don't ask me what that word means. It's too long. It's too fancy. But there's a court where the government can go after that surety for their promise or what it is. That's a court proceeding that can take forever. All that's happening now, and I have been very outspoken about this, particularly given the public's very real concern about bail, which has to be balanced with an accused person's right to a reasonable bail. Let's say you take the term presumed innocent.
and you take it away from a cliche and somebody's being charged where I as a defense lawyer
can look at the case and go, these charges aren't going to stick, even if they're charged
with something bad. They have a right to reasonable bail. So what is Ford doing? He's basically
saying if you're a surety and you come to court and the bailist said it, let's make up a number,
five grand. And to get that number, you have shown the justice of the piece that you have
$5,000 in the bank or some other kind of liquid asset, okay? To me, all that making that person
put down $2,000 cash, what does it make them do naturally? The same as all of your listeners
today who have kids. If your kids don't have consequences, what ends up happening? Here,
the surety will know, and in my view, will take them much more strict and,
serious approach. Why? Because they don't want to lose their money. And I think if it even works,
Alex, to end my answer, if this even works 30% better than the current system, 25% better,
that's 25 or 30% fewer victims, fewer headlines, and fewer segments like you and I talking
about why the bail system doesn't seem to be pleasing too many people. And it was like that,
you know, once upon a time, because I remember,
sing in bail court almost every day and you'd watch people go up and then you'd see the
sureties go up it was generally a relative and they would plead their case and here's what I've
got and here's what I'll do and then they would arrange for a payment and there was you know there
was kind of that deterrent and then it just kind of disappeared where they were going in and out
and sureties were becoming like buddies of the accused it's another mockery of it and then
the other side is they don't follow up and so part of the legislation would also I guess require
They're the accused to, you know, put some money into the, you know, ankle bracelet in case they decide to cut that thing off.
But, I mean, surely as a criminal lawyer, I mean, your job is to get people released.
But you must know that even when you're arguing these cases, not everyone should be out.
So I'm sure the stories are just, I got mine.
I'm sure you've got yours.
Look, every, look, I have sureties, Alex.
I can tell you that when you say to them, look, how much are you willing to sign for?
No.
They actually get very surprised when the next sentence out of your mouth.
is, but you don't have to put it down.
Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy.
Okay, now you know that this is a big issue in the States with all the crime caused by cashless
bail. As a defense lawyer, where I think the issues might become a little bit more interesting
is will these changes lead to people who should get bail, not getting bail?
That's where I think the issue is from the defense lawyer's side. And I can imagine that's what
the outcry will be if we see people who are homeless, mentally,
ill sureties who don't have $500, I just dealt with a case last week just outside of
Toronto where a Justice of the Peace thought that somebody on ODSP couldn't be a good
surety because they were on ODSP and had no money. That's idiotic, okay? And quite frankly,
I think every defense lawyer in Canada, I mean, Ontario, this is Ford, but it'll stretch,
every defense lawyer in Ontario will be on guard for that. And I think every justice to
piece, will be very careful, not just to detain people because they're poor or don't have
money, even if the surety has $500 in the bank, if they have to go to the courthouse and put
$100 into the kitty.
I think that will make them a more effective surety, and I would argue that until the cows
come home.
100%.
Because, again, if you have something to lose, chances are you're going to protect that a bit more,
but we're also not dealing with the old crimes.
Like, we're talking, you should not be getting bail on a kidnapping charge.
That is so crazy on a carjacking.
These are not the kinds of things you would ever get bail from.
So, again, you want bail on a charge like that.
You've got to fork over $25,000.
Otherwise, stay where you are.
But to that point, the Ford government, and I've only got about 40 seconds on this,
they got to build more jails.
Because if there's not more jails to keep in those who shouldn't get bail,
where are they going to go?
Not only do they have to build more jails,
which is a big argument in my profession and social justice and all of that,
they have to stop allowing the jails that exist like Maplehurst to turn into hellholes
because what you're seeing are cases being overturned because of conditions in the jail
that has absolutely nothing with the crimes the people did or didn't commit that's a huge problem
and in my view that is fixable 100% and apparently they are going to build more so we will try to
get those answers appreciate it thank you good to talk to all right gookine joining us here so
We'll watch for the details on that, but it is an important change, and it wasn't always
like this. And I know that because I covered courts for a long time. So, yeah, it's a good deterrent.
When we come back, what is Ben Mulroney doing and why am I seeing in his chair? We're going to talk
to him. And what reality versus perception, what's he seeing in Israel? Certainly that might have
changed his perspective. We'll talk to him next.
And certainly, you know, I think an election's in the year, whenever we start to hear really big, big, big promises, like high-speed rail coming to Ontario and Quebec.
And so again, you start to hear these big projects that should have been done 50 years ago and you think, okay, maybe there's something up, right?
So maybe we'll start to hear a lot more about it in the spring, you know, a vote for us and you'll get that high-speed rail.
it was actually part of this budget. It's kind of buried in all the news of Bill C-15. And again,
nothing you'll hear about at the water cooler. But what this little tiny bill would allow
the liberals to do is direct expropriation without negotiation in good faith. So in other words,
this would allow them to take your house or your property if it's at all anywhere near this
opposed line, and they're not going to bother negotiating.
You just got to, you get what you get, all right?
Landowners, you get what you get.
And this would be before shovels are in the ground, before details are worked out.
We'll just knock everything down, take the land, and, well, it's all in good faith, right?
Yeah, wrong.
Sorry.
I think we all can guess that the shovel's on a project like this, not going into the ground.
I don't know, lifetimes.
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I hope I'm wrong.
Let me bring in Samantha Degraise
to this conversation.
She's a communications manager
at the Montreal Economic Institute.
So good to have you here.
Thanks. Thanks, Alex.
Lovely to be here.
Okay, let's talk a little bit about
Some of the hidden fine print, like in a big project, let's talk about the project itself, right?
Like, it's an enormous project and how much more study has to go in?
Because I think it's a little weird that they would say we want to take before we actually understand what we're doing.
And so has any study been done on this line?
So, yeah.
So the subsidiary of via rail, which will via HFR, which will be handling the project,
a new Crown Corporation created in this 600-page.
omnibus budget bill, as you said, has been doing some consultations with landowners,
but no expropriations have been made, of course.
I mean, the bill hasn't even passed yet.
But most importantly, we don't even have a track, right?
We don't have any sort of plan and outline.
We know where it's going to go.
We know it's going to go through Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Tuarevier, and
then Quebec City.
So we have an idea, but nothing concrete yet.
But we know how much the government thinks it's going to cost anywhere between 60 and 90 billion.
I'm not laughing at you.
I'm laughing at the price because I'm like, okay, you're going to say 60.
And I'm going to times that by probably 10.
Oh, yes, yes.
Yeah, rounding error to $100 billion, right?
And so this is one of the major projects the Carney government is trying to fast track, right?
So instead of it being greenlit in eight years, it's being greenlit in four years.
but nothing concrete has happened yet.
But what we're seeing is, like you said,
the Crown Corporation's expropriation rules
are different from the regular rules,
which is quite alarming.
Slightly, right?
Because these policy decisions or dreams
have real impacts on everyday people.
And the everyday person has very little say
when the government comes knocking and saying,
hey, this is what we want to do.
Because it's not like you can negotiate.
But the fact is,
They're making no bones about it, that if you're in the way of something they may or may not do, they're going to do it.
And you just take what you get.
That's how I understand it.
Absolutely.
When you get a notice of expropriation, the land is not yours anymore, right?
Like, it's a pretty tough thing to get.
But under old rules, traditional rules, the government wouldn't go straight to expropriation, right?
As you said, there would be a negotiation, an offer made, kind of showcasing good face that, you know, we're not just dispossessing you, even though that's effectively what they are doing.
But we're trying to get you a good deal, right?
Because through the negotiating process, a landowner will not just get fair market value, right?
But they'll get something hopefully close to what they would have sold their land for if they were selling, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But what this bill does is that it goes straight.
to dispossession, right?
We're coming after your land.
There's nothing really you can do.
The recourse has been limited.
For example, under old rules,
if you got a notice, you would be able to object.
And then the minister would call for a public hearing.
Right.
So the community could get involved,
consult with, in this case,
via rail, on perhaps maybe moving the line,
seeing as it's going to be this disruptive,
maybe community members will come and say,
no, this is actually a good idea.
but people would be involved, people's voices would be heard.
That mechanism in this new bill completely thrown aside.
There's no possibility for public hearing.
So what someone would do in this case is that they would send their objection.
And again, another change is that under the old rules,
the minister would receive the objection and would have to respond within 120 days,
which I guess is fast for government.
Well, yeah, well, assuming we can get something in the mail and it's still around.
But let me ask you this because, you know, we've seen this kind of infrastructure bill. Hamilton comes to mind because they were going to be doing this huge transit project hasn't started. But the expropriation certainly was a thing. And once you start toying with communities like this and making such giant changes, even though the main change hasn't started, you know, it really does change communities. But the other thing is what's fair market value? What you think, you know, is fair, Samantha, might not be fair to me, right?
And as homeowners, and for many of us, it's our only investment, you know, if the government's picking and choosing what you get, that is, it's going to have a huge impact on people.
Well, and fair market value is appraised by the government, right?
Like if you and I are trying to come to a deal, we'll negotiate it based on what we both are willing to sell it and buy it for.
Whereas this appraisal may be happened two years ago.
It's based on what the land around yours was worse.
if expropriation takes years, that means, you know, the fluctuation between, say, now and three years from now, the fluctuation
price won't be reflected in what you sold it for.
So landowners are really, you know, there's a huge imbalance, imbalance of power in this case.
And, you know what?
The government might just say, you know, we're going to send you a notice.
And we might not actually need your land, right?
Right, but then what?
It could happen. Exactly. In the meantime, landowners are under so much uncertainty because a notice, if you receive a notice, you are prohibited from doing anything on your land that isn't maintenance effectively.
It's like buying a heritage property and not knowing and then someone coming up and going, I know you wanted to renovate, but live with it, right? It's like what?
And think about farmers, right? Because like we liken the situation to Mirabelle.
Mirabelle was supposed to this international airport in Montreal, which was supposed to service 20 million passengers a year.
They expropriated the equivalent acreage of the city of Montreal, dispossessed thousands of families, destroyed 800 homes and largely farmers, right?
And for what, right?
Like nobody goes to the Mirabelle airport.
It has effectively been shut down for the last two decades.
so there's so there's of course you know it's a government project there's no certainty there
but yeah and in the meantime farmers can't you know modify even build a barn
do that can't sell their land yeah they're kind of in a holding pattern and just before
just before I lose time with you how long can these things last
the prohibition on doing anything for your land can last anywhere between two and four years
but say you get a notice and you don't hear anything from the minister
after two years, it has been deemed abandoned.
So the notice will have elapsed.
So the two years is not a short amount of time to have this property that maybe you've had
in your family for generations.
You have no idea what the future holds?
Yeah.
Okay.
So then what are you watching for and what are you looking for?
Because again, this is not the fine print people read and hear about.
It's not the stuff that's popular in the news, but I've got about 30 seconds.
Where does this stand?
Where does it go?
Well, hopefully they reverse course completely and follow the normal rules of expropriations.
Expropriation is, you know, very traumatic for a lot of people, but the fact that they're going even further and not giving people any room to negotiate, consult, have their voice heard, hopefully this creates some sort of backlash, and it may go back to the normal rules.
Yeah. Boy, oh, boy, what a mess. We'll keep an eye on this one. Appreciate the comprehensive look into it. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Alex.
There you go. That's the voice of Samantha Daghreys, and she's out with Montreal Economic Institute.
And again, government can, boy, can they make a big mess.
So keep an eye on this one. It's always the fine print.
When we come back, who exactly are the gatekeepers making the decisions about who comes in and who does not?
Highly qualified? The best of the bunch?
Oh, wait a little you hear of this detail of who it is.
And we'll do that next here.
I want to talk to you about, you know, our country, national security, borders, you know, all the things that we keep saying are safe and doing all our parts and no risk to the United States as Donald Trump comes after us, you know, for border security and all these things. And we keep saying, yeah, we've got our best foot forward. Again, we're not showing it. But over the last week or so, we've seen some really alarming things and learn alarming things about.
what is happening at our border and who is doing the job of making sure the best of the best are
coming in and those who shouldn't be. And I want to play you some audio of one of the union bosses
over at CBSA, the border, of what they're seeing and who it is exactly making the decisions
to let people in across our border. And you would think, again, lots of experience. But listen to
this answer. And this, of course, is Frank Caputo, the MP for the conservative.
of Cameloup's Thompson and Caraboo, and he's talking with one of the union leaders of the CBSA.
Take a listen.
Students are the primary contact in about 20% of cases.
Is that accurate?
I would say the number might be higher, but yes, there are a lot of them.
There's no way to differentiate between a student generally, unless you have a keen eye,
you really know what you're looking for, between a student and a fully trained officer.
Is that accurate?
There is no way whatsoever, no.
So you have somebody with three weeks training at our border, deciding whether someone comes in or out and whether they're a security threat.
Is that accurate?
That is accurate, yes.
I am flabbergasted that somebody who probably has literally two weeks of training is deciding decisions of what could be potential national security questions.
Is this person a threat to security?
is that a concern generally
that somebody with so little experience
is making fairly consequential decisions?
Yeah, it is a very common concern
I hear from our members, yes.
Has the government ever responded to that concern?
To my knowledge, no, we've brought it forward
with our employer to no avail.
All right, so the voice you're listening to
is the Customs and Immigration Union, President Mark Weber.
Now, I thought what I heard last week was bad enough
when we learned that, you know,
people were being led into this country
based on an honor system,
yeah, no, I swear to God, I'm not a terrorist. It's like, oh, okay, come on in. Now we're learning
like this. They're hiring students and paying them 17 bucks to determine, you know, who comes in
and out. I don't know how the hell we got here. Maybe my next guest can explain it. I don't
know about that, though. Frank Caputo joining us, of course, he is a conservative MP for
Cam Loops Thompson and Caribou, also a former prosecutor. So he joins us now. Hi there. Great to
have you. Great. Thanks for having me, Alex. Always a pleasure. So we've been listening
to kind of these committee meetings over the last a few days, and it's really, it's not the
kind of stuff that makes front page news, but the things we're learning are so shocking
about the most important entry part of this country. And so, how on earth did we find out
about this? Like, how many students are actually working and manning our border?
Well, I'm not sure actually how I got onto this, but I did learn that they were, you know,
The question I asked, Alex, was about 20% at times.
And one part of the clip, he said, actually, I think it might be more.
And at times in the summer, it might be even high to 50%.
I'm not sure how we got here.
But at the end of the day, I know who's responsible.
That's the Minister of Public Safety.
You know, as conservatives, it's not a matter of ages in saying, you know,
young people who are in their early 20s or in early adulthood can't do the job.
It's not a matter of saying that.
You can have students in their 40s and 50s.
I was a student for the correctional service of Canada,
and that's how I ultimately became a parole officer.
Those are supposed to be jobs that are mentored,
where you learn to do the job, things like that.
A student has weeks of training.
So the issue is the training and the lack of oversight.
So a week of that is, I believe, use of force training.
So you have somebody potentially with only two weeks of training.
And rather than being mentored, as they should be, they're being put on the front line.
And those front lines are so critical.
That is the person's first point of entry into Canada.
And as you said, does this person have ties to a terrorist organization?
Are they going to contribute to our skyrocketing crime in Canada?
At the end of the day, I believe this should be front page news.
And I think Canadians have a right to know, and they have a right to demand accountability
for the public safety minister and the prime minister,
and I've seen no accountability for me either.
Well, again, I don't know what people don't understand about this.
I mean, we need, and last check, we are short 2,500 CBSA,
so these are border officers.
That's how short we are.
Now we learn that we're hiring students for as much as $17.
I'm scared to ask you the next question.
Are they foreign exchange students?
Are they international students?
Or who's doing this and making these decisions?
I don't know. I don't know. It's been a long time since I was...
Because it does matter. I mean, at least can they be Canadian?
That I don't have an answer to. I did not ask that question.
And, you know, there certainly is a role for students to learn, be mentored, to be the next people who are on the front lines.
As I said, that's what happened to me as a parole officer. I worked as an internship for three months.
Then I became fully trained. I won a competition. And then I was off to the
races before I went to law school. There's no issue with that. The question is one of
training. The question is one of shortcuts. But I don't know that we should be surprised,
even though every day I feel surprised at committee. But this is a government that has lost
track of 32,000 people. We don't know where they are. Foreign nationals. We don't know
where they are. Same portfolio, CBSA. Right. But we're also talking the same portfolio of where we
don't have trains being checked. We aren't checking. We're stolen cars. Like all these issues with
our border, we know we've got smuggling going on. We know we've got, you know, transnational
organized. There's so much going over our border right now. And so to learn, you know,
that we've got people who have like, what, one week on the job. Sorry, that's not okay. I mean,
am I surprised? No, am I disgusted? Yes. You didn't become a prosecutor or a crown in this country
because you went to law school.
You had to actually get the skills to do it.
You had to get some life experience.
That is required for every job.
I also agree.
These are jobs that you can give younger people.
But those are the jobs, like the clean,
you clean the room or whatever.
But you're not at a front-facing position.
You don't have the judgment yet.
And so again, what can we do about this?
Well, we can certainly hold the government to account,
but I've been one of the many people
who has on the minister to resign,
whether you over the gun confiscation, you know, 22 firearms, I believe, were confiscated in a program
that he doesn't believe himself will work. Just the skyrocketing crime rates, and we get a shrug of
the shoulders. Let's not forget that Bevo would have to resign over orange juice, all right?
When it comes to this liberal government, nobody resigns. Nobody gets fired. If you don't do your
job, the buck stops with you.
You're the minister.
32,000, we don't know where they are.
Our borders, our porous, as you say,
trains don't get stopped until
they come inland.
But one percent of
exports are actually being checked.
This has become a haven for
organized crime. And the buck stops
Minister of Public Safety, Gary and
Antisangery. And the liberals
have simply shrugged at
every step of the way.
Well, you answered part of my question, because if this is an
issue of being Gary and Dennis Sangry, his job. I don't have any hope it's going to get
solved or settled. And the immigration minister, I don't have a lot of hope in her either doing it.
There's two very incompetent ministers. I don't make any apologies over saying that. That's what
they've shown is that they're incompetent. But again, this is being normalized, right?
The fact that we are putting people into these positions. My question then is, and obviously
the unions, they come forward to speak because they want that information.
now, and I'm sure they're feeling the pressure.
But if we were short 2,500 officers and we've been told all these officers are being hired
up to 1,000, like, do we know who is it being hired?
Could it all be students?
We don't know where that hiring is going to come from, because that was promised as part
of the election, and then it was, oh, no, you've got to wait for the budget.
So not a single one of those 1,000 officers has been hired.
And we don't actually know.
I mean, the government will say it's 1,000 officers, but that,
And sometimes they'll wavering, they say, well, a thousand personnel because, you know, you need to differentiate.
But one thing that they don't tell you, Alex, is this.
CBSA can generate, I believe, 700 officers a year that they can turn out in training.
Their training, or pardon me, their attrition is so high that they basically can only keep up with what they're losing through attrition.
So where are these officers going to come from?
I don't know.
But look, I'm going to run out of time, Frank.
I'm going to run out of time, and I don't want to cut you off, but that's the question we need
to know, is where the hell are they coming from? I apologize. I'm out of time, but I thank you for
yours. Thank you very much, Alex. Always a pleasure. We will follow this. That's Frank Caputo
of the conservatives. And again, where there's smoke, there's fire on this file, and we'll find it.
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