Justin Trudeau faces backlash for potentially repatriating ISIS terrorist Mohammed al-Najjar ("Jihadi Jack"), despite the UK revoking his citizenship, while Canada’s $10.5M payment to Omar Cotter’s family—a suspected ISIS killer—highlights inconsistent justice. Trudeau withdrew CF-18 jets from anti-ISIS missions pre-election and repealed Bill C-24, stripping dual nationals of citizenship, yet no prosecutions have occurred for known returnees like Cotter or al-Najjar. Critics argue his "elite echo chamber" ideology prioritizes appeasement over accountability, contrasting with his dismissive stance toward veterans’ benefits, while pro-China visa holders in Vancouver raise espionage concerns amid global tensions. [Automatically generated summary]
Tells you all you need to know about him, who's in a Kurdish prison.
Now the thing is, he was a dual citizen.
Canada and the UK.
Well, the UK said, oh, really?
Well, then we're going to take away your citizenship.
So now he's just left with his Canadian citizenship.
And that's what Trudeau always said he wanted, right?
As Canadians and Canadians are Canadian.
So now are we going to get this British terrorist?
I'm afraid we are.
I'll give you all the details in a moment.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
You're listening to a Rebel Media podcast.
Tonight, Justin Trudeau gets ready to accept another ISIS terrorist that the Brits refuse to take.
It's August 20th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government will buy a publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Have you ever heard of Jihadi Jack?
He's a terrorist, of course.
Jihadi Jack is not his real name.
That's the nickname the British tabloids have given him.
He was born Jack Letz in Oxford in the UK.
Trudeau's Terrorist Gambit00:09:40
He converted to Islam and went to the Middle East and became a terrorist.
Here he is giving the one-finger salute.
That's an Islamist symbol.
The roots of that symbol are actually anti-Christian.
It's a condemnation of the Christian idea of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
This guy's in deep.
His parents are too.
Obviously, they were devastated that their son became a terrorist, and maybe it was out of love, or maybe it was just some attempt to keep in touch with him or communicate with him, but they helped him financially when he was with ISIS.
And that's the thing.
You can't do that.
You can't send money to support a terrorist, even if he is your son.
So his parents were charged and convicted of financing the Islamic State, too, because they did.
Like so many terrorists, Jack was captured by Kurdish soldiers, and he sits in a prison there now.
The Kurds don't really want him.
He's not Kurdish, but of course the Brits don't really want him.
But under our Western understanding of citizenship, you have the right to come home, even if you're a criminal.
Typically, criminals convicted in foreign countries can come back to their home country to finish serving out their sentence.
If you've ever read your passport, it pretty much says that.
It asks foreign countries to give you courtesies, but it's really a ticket home.
That's what a passport is.
So Jihadi Jack, this hateful extremist terrorist, has sat in a Kurdish prison moaning about his woes.
These terrorists are all, they all sound the same.
They're full of the vilest hatred for you and me when they thought their theocratic dictatorship had a chance, was their path to utopia.
And for a couple of years there, under Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau, it did have a chance.
This is an Islamic State.
It was growing.
It was strong.
You'll remember Obama chose not to wipe out ISIS.
In fact, he refused to attack the oil smuggling caravans that shipped stolen oil from the Islamic State to Turkey for cash.
That was one of the key ways the Islamic State funded its terrorism.
Obama literally chose not to attack the oil convoys because of global warming.
We don't want to destroy these oil tankers because that's infrastructure that's going to be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn't there anymore.
And it's going to create environmental damage.
He said that.
That's not like the Onion or some satire site.
That's why Obama didn't attack the oil tankers.
It literally took Vladimir Putin to go in and wipe out the ISIS oil cash machine.
This is footage from Russian jets.
It's hard to believe America had such a president.
And after two and a half years of Trump, Obama feels like a distant memory to me.
Thank God.
Oh, and Trudeau was part of that appeasement.
The first thing Trudeau did when he was prime minister, actually even before he was sworn in, was to announce that he was pulling out our CF-18 jets from the mission against ISIS.
Trudeau is a terrorist sympathizer, a terrorist enabler.
I'm not saying that Trudeau himself is a terrorist.
Of course he's not.
I'm saying that he literally ordered our Air Force to stop attacking terrorists.
And when the United States withdrew its funding from the Gaza Strip because that money was being stolen and corrupted by the Hamas terrorist group, Trudeau stepped right up to give them $50 million.
So yeah, he's not a terrorist, Trudeau, but like Jihadi Jack's parents, he just happens to support them and he sure seems to spend a lot of time with them.
Here he is meeting with Joshua Boyle, the Muslim convert who went to Afghanistan to meet up with the Taliban and ended up being taken hostage and getting his wife raped.
And then he returned to Canada and he himself violently assaulted her too.
Boyle was actually under police investigation right when this meeting with Trudeau happened.
By the way, Trudeau didn't care.
He knows who his real friends are.
As you can see in Boyle's tweet about that photo, this was not the first time that Boyle had met Trudeau.
Presumably the other occasion was when Boyle was Omar Cotter's brother-in-law.
No one's ever asked Trudeau about that.
But hey, Trudeau says these returning terrorists have a lot of really valuable things to say to us.
I think it's now that in Syria and Iraq they've been declared defeated.
There is a question of them coming back to this country and you can't possibly monitor all of them, can you?
Yes, we have security agencies that are engaged on this file very much, but there's also a lot of community outreach going on.
We know that actually someone who has engaged and turned away from that hateful ideology can be an extraordinarily powerful voice.
Hey guys, you know these ISIS terrorists, they can really help us.
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
So to recap, Trudeau funds terrorist-linked groups like the UN agency in Gaza.
He calls off our troops from fighting ISIS.
He meets with terrorists.
He listens.
He tells us to listen to terrorists.
And you'll remember one of the other things he did almost immediately after becoming prime minister was to go to bat for terrorists who have dual citizenship.
As in, Stephen Harper, like many Western democratic leaders, brought in a law that if someone was convicted of terrorism, so they had to be convicted of it, and they had dual citizenship.
So for example, if they were a Canadian citizen and a Saudi citizen, well, if we convicted them, we could strip them.
Actually, we could strip any convicted terrorist of their Canadian citizenship if they had another citizenship.
So it wouldn't make a terrorist stateless.
It would simply take away his Canadian rights as a citizen.
The terrorists couldn't just game the system and shop around anymore.
A lot of countries have that same rule.
Harper brought it in, but to Trudeau, terrorists are just like you and me, really.
We should be very worried that any prime minister would have the ability to revoke citizenship for people.
It's a slippery slip.
Trudeau belies what is.
Mr. Harper, please come in.
We're going to add a minute to the clock and give you the last one.
The individual in question is already in prison, and we will be able to remove him from the country under this law after he is released.
That's the difference.
But are you seriously saying, Mr. Trudeau, we never be able to revoke citizenship from somebody?
Is that your position?
Because we revoked the citizenship already of war criminals.
And why would we not revoke the citizenship of people convicted of terrorist offenses against this country?
This was a bill put forward by a member of parliament who is himself an immigrant, Devinder Shori.
This is not the standards we expect.
Immigrants, Canadians, all of us who are here, expect that we would have a minimum hard that people would not come here would not be guilty of trying to plan terrorist attacks against this country.
A Canadian Canadian is a Canadian, and you devalue the citizenship of every Canadian in this place and in this country when you break down and make it conditional for anyone.
Any rule of law in this country, and you can't take away some rules when someone die.
Individual wants to do that.
The individual is convicted and should be in jail, and that's why everyone walks a few months from here.
He would have detonated bombs that would have been an assumption of 9-11.
This country has every right to confirm that.
We are not a country dominated by fear.
General and rights.
That doesn't even make sense.
You devalue Canadian citizenship by telling terrorists they can't have it?
No, that's the opposite.
Hey, you voted for this guy, Canada, which brings us to the current moment.
See, like most grown-up countries, the United Kingdom has that rule that Stephen Harper was talking about.
If you have a bunch of citizenships in your pocket and you're a terrorist, the UK will simply say, Yeah, okay, we're out of here.
Go talk to your other buddies.
And so they did.
And so the United Kingdom has apparently de-citizened Jack Letts.
But, you know, he actually did it first to them.
The whole concept of the Islamic State is that it is a theocracy.
It's a rejection of man-made laws, man-made countries.
The Islamic State, by definition, is its own country.
It doesn't yield to the concept of nation-states ruled by presidents or kings.
The Islamic State believed in a world government ruled by Allah, as interpreted by Muslim Imams with the Sharia law as their constitution.
That's why one of the symbolic things Western Muslims often did when going to the Islamic State was to burn their national passports.
Like this delightful Canadian from my hometown, as if he's a Calgary and everyone calls this guy Farah Muhammad a Calgary.
He ain't a Calgarian, but take a look at this.
This is a message to Canada and all the American Tawarit.
We are coming and we will destroy you bid in Allahi Ta'ada.
I made hijrah to this land for one reason alone.
I left comfort for one reason alone.
for Allah Azza wa Jal, and inshallah, after Sham, after Iraq, after Jazeera, we are going for you Barack Obama.
Takbir!
So he's burning his passport there.
Canada Dragged Into Jihadi Jack Controversy00:13:15
So yeah, Jihadi Jack renounced his British citizenship about five years ago, and the British government only caught up to him now.
And they're following their laws.
Jack is not stateless because, as Justin Trudeau said, a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.
And how dare Stephen Harper say otherwise?
So Canada is dragged into this.
You bet, because as far as we know, I mean, Jihadi Jack, I think he set foot in Canada when he was a child.
But he really has nothing to do with Canada, never has.
His father once did, and Jack has apparently therefore inherited Canadian citizenship, but he's never used it.
But boy, he sure wants to use it now because the Islamic State isn't that much fun when you're in prison for being part of a terrorist group that raped and murdered thousands of people.
So here's Jihadi Jack's father, who suddenly deeply loves Canada and suddenly really knows a lot about Canada.
I'm surprised he didn't do this interview wearing a roots hat and flying a little maple leaf and eating maple syrup on a beaver tail, you know, to keep appearances up.
So here's Jihadi Jack's dad, who was convicted of helping his terrorist son just a little too much.
And he's hoping that Justin Trudeau helps his terrorist son just a little too much.
It comes as quite a shock.
It's kind of like you're kicked in the gut.
It's not that we weren't entirely not expecting it, but it's quite a blow.
And I think I'm, you know, my first concern is how Jack will feel when he hears about it.
We don't know if he has, but that's the emotional response.
But actually, I think it's also really disappointing to see that that's how the British government is dealing with this issue.
Jack's obviously not the only person in this case, but it seems that to me that it's just shirking responsibility and passing the buck off to the Canadians.
I mean, you know, we're all Canadians, and I know Canada has a more enlightened approach to some of this and are just as hard on terrorism as anyone.
But I just think that they're passing the buck, really, and it's kind of disappointing.
I really thought we were going to be able to resolve issues here.
Hey, guys, we've all disappointed this terrorist family.
Are you going to apologize?
Maybe give them $10.5 million?
What'd say we help the rape victims and the family survivors of the murder victims of the Islamic State terrorists before we help the Islamic State terrorists?
And maybe Jack's dad knows Canada better than we think, though, because he knows Justin Trudeau is a fellow traveler.
You saw him there.
You saw him say Canada's enlightened when it comes to terrorism.
Trudeau has led dozens, maybe 100, ISIS terrorists back into our streets, our communities, without prosecuting a single one of them.
Remember, under our terrorism laws, police don't have to prove that a terrorist killed someone or raped someone or threw a grenade.
That's close to impossible to prove.
He wouldn't have the evidence.
You can't treat a terrorist war like a regular domestic crime scene.
It's not fit for that.
So our laws are more preemptive.
If you simply go over there to join them, that's a crime.
If you even try to go over there, that's a crime.
If you support them financially, that's a crime.
We don't have to prove what you did over there, just that you went over there or tried to go over there or helped or tried to help in any way.
That's all against the law.
That's terrorism.
And yet Trudeau hasn't charged or prosecuted a single one of them.
Trudeau's a perfect fit for Jihadi Jack, who actually admits he's a terrorist.
I made a mistake, or it was a huge mistake, not just a mistake.
I deserve what comes to me.
I'm not going to try and say I'm innocent.
I'm not innocent.
According to this definition, of course I was a terrorist, Yanni.
That's not the life I want to lead now, Yanni.
That's not why I left.
If I wanted to stay as an idiot, I was, I wouldn't have lived.
Hey, guys, he's not living his best life right now.
So can you send him a private jet?
That was him back.
I was showing you him back in February.
That was back in February also.
He was asked if he feels Canadian.
And he says, no, he's British, like his jolly old pop.
Remember this, because I want to show you something in a moment.
So here's him saying, man, I'm a Brit.
Take a look.
I don't think I'm going to be given Back to Britain, for example, or some Canadian official is going to come and help me, because, like I said, no one really cares here.
You're a dual national.
Supposedly, I did at one point in my life have a Canadian passport.
I don't know if it's still valid.
So, do you feel British?
Do you feel Canadian?
I'm British.
I'm British.
My dad's going to be a little bit more clear.
The UK accepted me.
I'll go back to the UK.
It's my home.
But I don't think that's going to happen.
Oh my God, look at those fake tears.
What a bad actor.
But you heard him.
He's a Brit.
Now, anyways, now that Britain has kicked him out, he seems to have completely changed his mind.
Canada's the place for him because Canada, at least under Trudeau, doesn't prosecute terrorists.
And Jihadi Jack and his parents know that.
Here's the Telegraph of London today.
Jihadi Jack could avoid prosecution for joining ISIL as a Canadian.
The Muslim convert, nicknamed Jihadi Jack, has appealed to Canada to take him after being stripped of his British citizenship.
As it emerged, he will escape prosecution if they accept him.
Reacting to the British government's decision to revoke his citizenship, Jack Letz, 23, who is currently being held by the Kurds in northern Syria after leaving Britain to join ISIL in 2014, said, I was expecting something like this, to be honest.
I've been here for two and a half years and the British government has not helped me at all.
These things have very little meaning to me, to be honest.
I don't think British citizenship is a big deal.
Really?
We know he doesn't think of himself as a Brit, but hey guys, did you know that he always really, really, really considered himself a Canadian?
Never really been here other than maybe once as a kid.
Never said or did anything about being a Canadian before.
You just heard him say that.
But now that Trudeau can save his life and who knows, maybe pay him $10.5 million like he paid another terrorist named Omar Carter.
Did you know, hey guys, did you know that Jihadi Jack always considered himself to be a Canadian?
It's true.
Just ask him.
I mean, ask the terrorist.
He wouldn't lie to us, would he?
I've always felt I'm a mix.
And I've been to Canada seven times.
I spent a lot of time in Canada.
My whole family is Canadian.
And I have no relatives in Britain anyway.
Everyone's in Canada.
And I always expected Canada would help me and they didn't.
I hope Canada does take me from here if they can.
They take me to Canada.
That would be good.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
You just saw him in February saying he's got nothing to do with Canada.
He doesn't even think about Canada.
He's a Brit.
And then the Brits renounce him, but he's so Canadian, guys.
Did you know all his family lives in Canada?
We just saw footage of his British mom and dad.
Hey, he's been here seven times.
Do you think that little terrorist is telling the truth?
Look at his eye contact.
What a shifty-eyed little terrorist.
Well, look, this guy is actually a perfect fit for Justin Trudeau.
He reminds me of a cross between Joshua Boyle and Omar Carter.
Seriously, I could see this guy hanging out with Trudeau, smoking some pot together in the prime minister's office or something.
But look, the election is just two months away, and this could be embarrassing, at least if something were to happen before the election.
So look at Justin Trudeau's reaction.
Canada disappointed after UK reportedly strips Jihadi Jack of citizenship.
Goodale slams UK's unilateral action to offload their responsibilities in case of dual citizen Jack Letz.
Hang on, Trudeau is the one who repeatedly said this was the essence of our citizenship.
A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, even if he is a Brit who joined the Islamic State and has really never set foot here.
I mean, you don't believe his prison lies, do you?
Please tell me you don't believe that liar in prison.
Why is Goodale so mad?
Isn't this a point of pride for him and his boss?
Why is Trudeau mad?
They could have revoked his citizenship, but they chose to repeal that law.
They said they don't believe in that law.
So why are they mad now?
But not too mad.
I mean, yesterday Trudeau refused to rule out helping him.
Look at this headline.
Trudeau refuses to say if Jihadi Jack is welcome in Canada.
He just won't say, eh?
But get this.
It is a crime to travel internationally with the goal of supporting terrorism or engaging in terrorism.
And that is a crime that we will continue to make all attempts to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.
That is the message we have for Canadians, if for anyone involved, Mr. Trudeau said.
Really?
All attempts?
They haven't prosecuted anyone that I'm aware.
I mean, we know what all attempts mean.
Look at the dozens of meetings and people involved in Trudeau's any attempt scheme to get the charges dropped against SNC Labland.
That's what all attempts, any attempts look like.
Has Trudeau actually made any attempts at all to prosecute any terrorists in Canada at all?
He's lying, just like Jack Letz.
The two of them are buddies.
In fact, Trudeau has done the opposite.
He has made attempts to bring that little gem back here.
Let me read to you from the CBC State Broadcaster.
This story is back in February.
Alleged ISIS operative Jihadi Jack begs Canada to let him come here.
Let me quote from this story in February.
Please get me out of this place, Jack Letz asks consular officials.
Oh, hang on, hang on.
So he's actually already met with Trudeau's staff?
Oh, you bet he has.
Let me quote.
This is from the CBC State Broadcaster, so we know it's true.
Speaking by phone earlier this month, a Canadian consular official assured Letz that Canada is working to resolve his plight, according to text transcripts obtained by CBC News.
That verbal assurance was followed by a letter sent to his parents just days ago.
In it, the federal government, we're talking about Canada's federal government's director of consular case management, said the government is making every effort to assist him.
I thought Goodale just said we're making every effort to prosecute him.
Gee, who's lying here?
Let me quote from the story.
We have been in communication with Kurdish representatives to that end and continue our efforts, Carrill Kagner wrote on January 29th.
Yeah, folks, we're about to get ourselves another little terrorist, a creep like Omar Cotter, like Joshua Boyle.
And of course we'll pay him money.
We'll strain our police resources even more to keep an eye on him.
We'll take the wrong side in this moral battle again, helping ISIS instead of helping the Kurds, let alone helping our own veterans.
But Trudeau will get some more Muslim extremist votes out of it.
Trudeau has been working on this file for months, this Jihadi Jack file.
We just saw that.
I think he's just a bit embarrassed that this is coming out before the election.
But once the election is over, he's going to roll out the welcome mat.
Do you doubt it?
Stay with us for more on this with Lee Humphrey.
I've been here for two and a half years.
They haven't helped me at all.
The British government, even if they didn't strip me of my British citizenship, it's almost as if I'm not a British citizen anyway.
You know, being left two and a half years in prison abroad without any help, anything.
Well, there's a clip of Jihadi Jack in a prison, a Kurdish prison.
You know, that sullen, entitled mentality.
When I spoke to the prison psychiatrist who interviewed Omar Cotter at some length in Guantanamo Bay, he said the same thing about Cotter.
This combination of aggression and entitlement and victimology.
We saw it there.
Oh, why have the British, has the British government forsaken me?
Why haven't they brought me back?
And now he's flipped into pure, well, I have such deep ties to Canada.
And folks, he says he's been here seven times.
Do you believe that?
His love for Canada newly found.
Well, call me a bit of a skeptic.
Frankly, I think the best place for him is a Kurdish prison.
I don't know why anyone other than his parents would want to move him.
But joining us now is a man who has fought on our side of the war, not the terrorist side, our friend T. Lee Humphrey, the founder of Veterans for the Conservative Party and the president of James International Security Consulting.
Great to see you again, Lee.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you, Ezra.
You know, this guy's a pathological liar.
I mean, as I think it was Kissinger who said, if someone's willing to kill you, they're probably willing to lie to you, too.
I've seen different interviews of him over the years, and he says exactly what he needs to say in that moment.
I'm a Brit.
I love Britain.
Oh, I'm Canadian.
I love Canada.
Oh, I never really was a terrorist.
Jihadi Jack's Escape Risk00:12:18
Oh, sure, I was a terrorist.
I don't believe a word he says.
I think he's an awful human being, and no one in the Free West should lift a finger to help him.
That's my view.
What do you think?
You know, these folks reject everything about our country, everything about Western democracy, until they discover there's something worse out there.
And then they need it, and then they demand it, and then they use our system to almost always get what they want.
In this case, the Brits, under Theresa May at the time, were smart enough to realize the impact of bringing these terrorists home would have on the United Kingdom and started doing away with the idea of these phony citizens coming back home and causing havoc and being heroes to vulnerable,
potentially future jihadis.
Canada went down that path in 2015, and Mr. Trudeau famously in a debate challenged Mr. Harper and gave that famous a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian quote.
And now here we are stuck with that, stuck with this situation.
And I'm not sure exactly what the Canadian government can do to prevent this if somehow the Kurds magically get this guy on a plane.
Yeah.
You know, it surprised me that it was Theresa May who did this as one of her last acts as prime minister because I didn't see any courage or resolve in her in her term.
Nothing became her as prime minister as the ending of it.
But all they were doing is what their law provided.
We had that same law in Canada until Trudeau showily abandoned it.
I don't know why Trudeau is squawking and Ralph Goodale are squawking.
They're the ones who said they love guys like this.
They're all welcome.
As you said, a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.
I'm not quite sure why Ralph Goodale and Justin Trudeau are angry about this.
Britain's following its law and Trudeau is, you know, enjoying his cake that he baked.
Yeah, I mean, I saw a quote from Ralph Goodell where he said, investigating, arresting, charging, and prosecuting any Canadian involved in terrorism or violent extremism is our number one priority.
And I thought to myself immediately, well, we've had 60-odd Canadians travel abroad, at least 20 that the government's admitted to come home.
Some of them bragging, lots of them with social media that demonstrated not only that they were there, but that they were fighting on behalf of a terrorist entity, whether it was al-Qaeda-affiliated or the Islamic State.
And they've done nothing to bring those folks to justice.
So here we have somebody that went over not from Canada, meaning some of our laws won't even apply to them, but from the United Kingdom in 2014 and denies fighting for either al-Qaeda or ISIL, but has admitted to fighting for some sort of rebel group that was against the Syrian military.
So, you know, I'm really not sure, you know, why Mr. Goodale seems to think that it's a good thing to say we're going to do all these things when he hasn't done it with those terrorists we could easily have convicted that are back here walking around and bragging,
but thinks that if somehow this jihadi jack character gets back here, that they can convince Canadians that their intent would be to arrest and prosecute him.
Yeah, I mean, there was this very famous case of a terrorist murderer in Canada who bragged about it in an interview with the New York Times.
They have a reporter there who specializes in these returning jihadis, and this Canadian terrorist couldn't stop talking.
My read of the Canadian law is crystal clear.
We don't have to prove that they murdered anyone, that they raped anyone overseas.
It would be legally impossible to do that according to our traditional standards of procedure in court.
But as long as we know they did aid or tried to aid or did go or tried to go over there, there are any number of those precursor crimes that are enough to put terrorists away.
The fact that Trudeau and Goodale, as far as I know, Liam, I mean, you tell me if you've heard of one.
I have never heard of a prosecution of any of these ISIS returnees.
And like I say, you don't have to prove they actually raped anyone.
That would be impossible.
You just have to prove that they were over there to help al-Qaeda.
You don't even have to prove that they joined.
And that's enough to convict a terrorist.
Have you ever heard of a prosecution in Canada?
Maybe I missed one.
No, no.
In fact, if anything, some of these would have been fairly simple as the government has records of their departure.
They have cooperating entities, whether it's Turkey, whether it's the United Arab Emirates, where people stopped along the way, in some cases Lebanon.
You have social media posts that have been captured and screenshotted to demonstrate that they were there, that they were bragging, that they were attempting to recruit other Canadians, that they were burning passports and saying they were no longer Canadian, that they were members of the Islamic State.
And no prosecutions have taken place.
In fact, as far as I can tell, there's been no charges laid.
So not even an attempt to prosecute has occurred in Canada.
Yeah.
Well, this is obviously a political issue because the election is just a couple months away.
I see the headline in the Globe Mail, Trudeau won't say.
Andrew Scheer says he won't proactively bring the fella home.
I suppose legally, technically, if you no longer have another citizenship, I think the definition of citizenship is you have a right to return to your own country, even if it's to return to a jail in your own country.
We gave up the option of disavowing him when Trudeau repealed Harper's rule to that effect.
I guess that just means we wouldn't send a plane.
We wouldn't send consular staff.
We wouldn't engage in effort or activity, which apparently Trudeau has done.
I was reading an old CBC story from February where The consular staff have been in touch with Jihadi Jack and his family and written him letters and said they want to help.
So it's not that Trudeau doesn't know what he's going to do.
He's actually been doing it for the better part of a year.
Yeah, the election is key to this.
You know, Trudeau clearly understood what happened with his popularity across the country when he unilaterally decided to pay Omar Cotter over $10 million.
And it became clear that no court had ever ordered a financial payment as a remedy.
But our Supreme Court, on at least two occasions, did say that they recommend it because they recognized they did not have the jurisdiction to order the government, but they recommend it strongly that the government repatriate as soon as they could Omar Cotter back to Canada.
And you can almost see the same thing playing out with this gentleman in the sense that you're right, once the Brits ended his citizenship, it is against international law to leave somebody stateless, meaning Canada's on the hook for this guy.
So you could see at some point a do-good lawyer in Canada eventually getting to the Supreme Court and the same type of ruling coming down.
I think Trudeau will do everything possible to avoid this as an issue until the 22nd of October.
And if he's re-elected, he will move quickly to bring this gentleman home and to resolve some of the other cases, I would imagine, as well.
I think you're exactly right.
I mean, if you go back to his dealings on the Islamic State, even before, but in that brief interregnum between when he was elected as prime minister and between when he was sworn in, he wasn't yet the prime minister.
I think the title is prime minister designate or something.
So Harper was still technically the PM, or not technically, he was de jure, the PM.
Trudeau wasn't even the prime minister yet, and he already announced and he told Barack Obama he was pulling our CF-18 jets out of that battle.
And from that moment on, every single thing he has said or done has been to aid ISIS or its fighters.
And I'm not saying Trudeau is a terrorist, but I don't know what a terrorist sympathizer prime minister would do differently than what Trudeau is doing.
Every single choice he makes goes the other way.
And compare that to his treatment of our veterans, where every single choice he makes about our veterans goes the other way.
I'll never forget that thing he said to that amputee veteran in Edmonton.
The veterans are simply asking for more than we can give.
He would never say that to Omar Cotter or Jihadi Jack.
It just makes me angry.
And I know what you said is going to come truly.
I know the day after the election, if Trudeau is re-elected, he's going to get this jihadi Jack on a plane back to Canada.
Yeah, he has an ideology that I think he truly believes that dropping bombs on bad guys is not what Canada is about.
I think he believes in the UN myth of peacekeeping, and it's truly a myth.
I think he believes in the ideology that you can, for lack of a more detailed phrase, hug these folks back into loving Canada, and that he also is smart enough to recognize the political fallout should he embrace those strategies during this coming election when he's already in very difficult waters because of SNC, his foreign trips, his other ethical violations.
I think truly expected that he'd be up 10, 15 points and cruising to victory at this point.
So he's got to put all that aside.
But it's there.
As you said, before he even was sworn in as prime minister, he let President Obama know that the only offensive thing Canada was doing to kill members of the Islamic State was going to end as soon as they possibly could.
And, you know, that's his ideology: that these folks are really not that bad.
And if we treat them respectfully, you know, they'll be better.
And it's probably our fault that we've gotten ourselves into this in the first place.
And that's his ideology, and he recognizes it.
But like I said, I think he's smart enough to realize this isn't an issue he wants front and center during this election.
You know, I wrote a book a few years ago about Omar Cotter.
It was called Terror Law.
It was called The Enemy Within Terror Lies and the Whitewashing of Omar Cotter.
That's when I met Dr. Michael Wellner, the psychiatrist who interviewed Cotter in Guantanamo Bay.
Conservatives' Proactive Role Needed00:08:00
That's when I read a lot of material about it.
And here's my theory.
I mean, I knew how bad Cotter was.
As you may know, we crowdfunded college tuition for the two fatherless kids of Christopher Speer, the U.S. Army medic who was murdered by Cotter.
It was a big focus for our little rebel outfit here.
Lee, the whole world that I know, grassroots Canadians, patriotic Canadians, conservatives, was outraged by that.
But I genuinely believe that Trudeau and the circles he walks in were so uniformly pro-Cotter that he truly was shocked when he saw the reaction against it.
I mean, think of all the elites, the political elites, the legal elites, the courts, the media, lobbyists, human rights lobbyists, foreign affairs gurus, every single person that Justin Trudeau would ever meet or talk to was a Cotter lover.
And so when it blew up in his face, he was shocked, I believe.
And you later saw him lie and say, oh, I didn't like to do this anymore than that guy.
I hate the fact that I had to do it.
I blame Stephen Harper.
He was blown away.
I wonder if the same thing's going to happen here.
Is it too early to detect?
Is the media party, is the political legal establishment, or all the professors, like all the professors, all the law professors in Canada said Cotter is a victim.
All the media in Canada said Cotter is a victim.
Trudeau was sandbagged by that.
I'm not excusing him.
I'm just saying he has no reality check in his life.
What's going to happen here?
Do you see that?
Sorry for the lengthy preamble, but Lee, I guess my point is: is the same sort of elite echo chamber forming around Jihadi Jack as it was around Omar Cotter?
Or do you think Trudeau is actually wiser now?
I think it's the latter, Ezra.
I think he's learned his lesson because you're right.
He was incredibly shocked.
The initial media elite that allowed him to perpetuate the lie that somehow a court had ordered this or he had no choice.
It was going to be ordered by a court.
It wasn't worth wasting Canadian taxpayer dollars in fighting this.
All those things in his initial response, I think he was absolutely stunned when everyday Canadians rose up by the tens of thousands and said, no, this is wrong.
Yeah, I've never, I mean, maybe it goes to my own isolation from how the other half lives, but in my entire life, and I've been watching the Cotter file for probably a decade now, I have never met a severely normal Canadian, like a real person, who wasn't like a pundit or a lawyer.
I've never met a single Canadian who's pro-Cotter, not one.
And apparently that's all Trudeau knew.
So one of us is living in an unreality.
I think it's him.
Lee, thank you for letting me talk with you about this.
I'm getting mad again because I know how this is going to end.
What would, I don't know, if Andrew Scheer met, I mean, I have my qualms with Andrew Scheer.
If he were to become prime minister, I think you have his ear.
I mean, you're being a conservative activist in the past.
What changes would you recommend would be put into place to stop our growing reputation as a haven?
I mean, Jihadi Jack's mum was talking about Canada being the perfect place for her son because we're getting an international reputation as a soft touch.
Yeah, so a couple of things.
One, I was very happy to see Mr. Scheer say that he would not lift a finger to help.
That's a good start.
It's, I think, a reasonable approach during a campaign when we all know that conservatives are always targeted by the mainstream media on social issues and on being just downright mean and hateful people.
But I would also like him to see, you know, during the campaign to ensure that he says that Bill C-24, which the Harper government had brought in to strip dual citizen Canadians who have been convicted or participated in terrorism of their citizenship,
is, you know, and was repealed by Mr. Trudeau, that that is reinstated, some form of it that will hold up to charter challenges, so that we do have defined laws that say to these folks, we will not be a soft touch.
We will not be a wonderful place for you to come and live.
I'd also like to see him be a little bit proactive in ensuring that the Justice Department, and whoever he selects to be the Justice Minister, is far more proactive with the RCMP and the criminal prosecution of these folks that clearly traveled abroad to participate in terrorist activities with known terrorist entities,
so that we send a message to the world, we send a message to these people that we are not the place that you want to come home to.
And if you want to travel abroad to do that, there's going to be consequences.
You know, if Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives were to announce that were they elected, they would prosecute the 60 or so or whatever, is it 100, is it 20, whatever it is, ISIS returnees that they would prosecute them and explain to Canadians that the laws are already there.
We don't need new laws.
We just need a Justice Department willing to do it.
I joked earlier today, it wasn't even a funny joke.
If Trudeau put the same effort into prosecuting these returnees as he did going to bat for SNC Lavaline, we'd have them all in prison by now, these returnees.
I don't know how that wouldn't be a huge win for Andrew Scheer.
It would instantly rev up and encourage his base.
It would appall all the right people.
I mean, nothing suits a conservative politician more than having a bunch of leftist law professors condemning him in the national papers.
And Canadians would say, what?
We haven't been prosecuting them?
So I think it would be like a triple win.
I don't know if Shear has the courage to do it.
You probably have his ear more than me.
I hope you can put that bug in his ear.
Let's turn this into a winning issue for conservatives, and I mean small C conservatives.
Rather than saying I won't lift a finger to bring Jihadi Jack back, how about explaining what you will lift a finger to do, prosecute the returnees?
I'm just brainstorming, Lee.
I know you're more connected on these matters than me, and that would be my advice if anyone's listening.
And it's worth everything you paid for it.
Yeah, well, if they're listening to me as well, I would agree in this case that we need to say more than we won't help jihadi jack, but what we will do to those Canadians that have already broken our laws.
And I think the Conservative Party is typically the party of law and order.
And I think they'll get there on this as the campaign plays out.
All right, well, I hope so.
And I know you've been an advocate for not only our serving military, but our veterans as well for many years.
It's always a pleasure to have you on the show.
You speak not just from your own wisdom, but from your experience, which has informed your wisdom.
And I thank you for your time.
Thank you, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
T. Lee Humphrey is the founder of Veterans for the Conservative Party and veteran himself and the boss of James International Security.
Stay with us.
Pivotal Time in Hong Kong00:02:38
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my show yesterday about the Hong Kong protest.
And he writes, the sheer number of red flag pro-China demonstrators outside the Chinese conflict in Vancouver yesterday should be given all of us, have given all of us pause as to how much communist infiltration has occurred around Vancouver in recent decades.
Yeah, I saw a social media comment that Anthony Fury published.
It was in Chinese.
It was translated.
It was Canadian Chinese citizens on visas here in Canada saying they'll do anything to stand with Communist China, even get violent, if I recall the social media comment, and he'll risk being deported over it.
So, I mean, obviously, there are a great number of loyal and tremendous Chinese immigrants, obviously, that goes without saying.
But there are too many whose loyalty, according to some of the flags we've seen flown and the protests we've seen in the last few days, that are still rooting for communist China and are perhaps being even directed and controlled by communist Chinese diplomats here in Canada.
It wouldn't be the first time.
As you know, there are more Chinese spies in Canada than from any other country.
And that's both industrial espionage and political espionage.
Peter writes, I think it's a pivotal time in history.
Well, I think since the crackup of the Cold War, everything's been in motion.
I mean, there was a brief period when, as Francis Fukuyama said, we were at the end of history.
Everything's fine now.
We'll all just eat at McDonald's and listen to the same pop music and it's all homogenized.
The end of history.
No, no, no.
History had other plans, whether it was 9-11 or the rise of China.
There's a lot still going on.
Sam writes, you guys are doing a fantastic job of covering Hong Kong.
Kudos to Avi.
Yeah, you know, he was just the right guy for it.
And I called him up.
I said, hey, do you want to go to Hong Kong?
He answered me in like one minute.
And I think he was perfect.
Not only was he geographically closer.
He was in Australia as opposed to coming from Canada.
But I think he's a good fit for it.
He's tough enough to be brave.
He's cheeky.
He's funny.
And he's ideologically, I think he did a heck of a job.
And I was very proud of his coverage.
And we still have several more videos that he's sending us.
I think he's still in Hong Kong.
So we'll have more videos to come.
So please go to HongKongReports.com and thank you for your compliments.
I feel like Avi did a great job.
Well, that's our show for today.
On behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.