Ezra Levant’s Fight the Fines campaign exposes Canada’s civil liberties erosion—Calgary pastor threatened for feeding homeless, $880 fine for minor guideline delays, and dog-walking tickets—mirroring China’s 2017 intelligence law and social credit system. Derek Sloan blames WHO misinformation, citing Dr. Teresa Tam’s alleged pandemic downplaying, and calls for defunding the organization while strengthening ties with Taiwan. Sloan warns of China’s Cold War debt traps in Africa and speculates Trudeau’s subservience stems from hidden compromises or "compromat," suggesting Western engagement must shift to counter authoritarian overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I sum up for you the first four cases in our fight the fines campaign.
As you may know we're doing the civil liberties work that the Civil Liberties Association won't.
So I'll take you through those and tell you about our process and hopefully you'll find it interesting.
Before I do let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
It's all the video versions of these podcasts plus access to Sheila Gunread and David Menzies.
Okay, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, an update on the war against civil liberties being fought by some very Chinese-style police forces in Canada.
It's April 24th and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
You have 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government about why I published them is because it's my bloody right to do so.
For more than a year I've been showing you these dystopian videos of policing in China.
China's very strong censorship.
Since January 1st, China's Communist Party has had full direct access through a backdoor key into the entire internet that passes through their country.
As in if there's a server in China, a company that's based in China, whatever, they must, as a matter of law, just let China in to see and record and capture whatever they like.
It's not like in Canada and the United States where a government needs to go to court to get a search warrant to snoop.
In China, it's just continuous.
Frankly, the companies don't even know what's being taken and not.
It's just continuous access to everything.
Here's our friend Gordon Ji Cheng telling us a bit about this law a few months back, just to refresh your memory.
Clearly, Huawei is a danger.
If you allow Huawei into your 5G network, whether it's a core or non-core equipment, it is going to be able to take data.
And by the way, that distinction between core and non-core probably is meaningless in reality.
China's 2017 national intelligence law requires every Chinese entity to spy if demanded.
So that's Chinese law.
And the second thing is in the Communist Party's top-down system, nobody can refuse a request from the party to do something.
So those contentions by Huawei just don't hold water.
As a matter of law, they are under a compulsion to spy.
So there's also laws requiring social credit before you even get the right to use the internet to use a cell phone to book a plane ticket or train ticket.
Economic Risk Grows00:04:27
Isn't that interesting?
If you show any anti-social behavior, that's what they mean by social credit.
They mean any disagreement you have with the Chinese police state, they'll just simply keep you off the internet, ban you from travel, even from certain apartments in the city.
So they're basically relegating you to a pre-industrialized life of being a peasant picking rice if you're badly behaved.
That's the total control they have over there.
So I've been showing these horror videos from China, which combine authoritarian governments and high-tech gadgets.
Some of the gadgets are made by Western companies.
Some are being made by Chinese companies.
Some are being made by Chinese companies that simply stole the technology from Western companies.
I mean, seriously, after watching the Chinese government in action these past months, would you seriously allow Huawei to build your phone and computer and internet and emergency systems backbone like, I don't know, your 911 system, your military communications.
Imagine letting China build that for you.
Yeah.
Welcome to Canada.
Anyways, the actual virus has come, and I think it's not premature to say it's now past its peak.
The curve has been flattened.
or more to the point it was never that high to begin with.
So we're getting better, thank God the death toll was low.
I'd even say very low, and I'd call it microscopic for people who didn't have a pre-existing condition.
Here's a chart of who has died since the virus came to New York City.
Now this is New York City data.
I showed it to you because no Canadian jurisdiction had this kind of specificity.
You can see that almost no one, seriously, almost no one, you'd almost be more likely to be struck by lightning than to die as a teenager from the virus.
It doesn't happen.
It doesn't, unless you have an underlying condition.
Really, if you're under 60 and you're healthy, you're fine.
That may be cold comfort to people who are over 60 or unhealthy.
Over 70 really is where the worries start.
But statistically, it should be a comfort because now we know we can pull our attention away from people who aren't at risk and give more attention to those who are at risk.
So as the medical risk subsides and we understand it better, well now the economic risk grows.
Like I say, people under 60 are fine, but those are precisely the people who are out of work.
It doesn't make sense to me.
That's the big crisis now, I think.
Did I show you this statistic before?
In Alberta, for every 1% the unemployment rate has climbed, there have been 16 more suicides.
That's the price of unemployment and poverty and depression and stress.
So that translates into about 150 more suicides per percentage of unemployment on a national basis.
And of course, unemployment has jumped by about 15% in the last month.
So 15 percentage points, 150 more suicides per point.
So we're well over 2,000 deaths that could be expected from suicides alone from the mass unemployment.
And that's just suicide.
I should tell you, that's more than the number of Canadians who have died from the virus.
So the economy is now the biggest danger.
That makes me very sad.
Frankly, it feels the same way it felt when Trudeau canceled the Northern Gateway Pipeline and the Energy East Pipeline and the Transmountain Pipeline and the Tech Frontier Oil Sands Project.
That's what, $40, $50 billion I've listed right there just in construction jobs.
Tens of thousands of families who are being told they are not allowed to work.
That's what gets me.
It's one thing if there were an extrinsic problem, no one wants to buy what you're selling.
There's a global downturn in the economy, times are tough around the world.
Those sort of exist now, but when those pipelines were killed, look, there was a massive demand for something and investors were willing and able.
And it was a politician that nixed it.
That's the worst.
I mean, right now the price of oil is so low, some oil futures are actually negative.
That's nuts.
But imagine if we had three or four massive construction projects on the go right now.
Those construction projects would continue to completion because, of course, you don't need the price of oil that's irrelevant when you're actually constructing something.
And by the time these pipelines were operating in a few years, the price of oil would be high again.
In the meantime, building the pipes alone would sustain the economy a fair bit, but we've got nothing.
But my comparison is this part.
You have a job.
You have an employer willing to pay you.
You want to work.
But some politician tells you you can't.
Even though we now see the young people don't really get sick from this, and that if we take care of the elderly, we'll all get through it.
That's what's frustrating.
It's a slow burning pain, but there's another kind of pain, an acute pain, of watching the violations of our civil liberties.
At least it pricks me more sharply.
Cops Smashing Doors00:12:43
It's the difference between a headache and a bee sting, I guess.
I get it when I see things like this.
This is when I get the bee sting pain.
Bing arrested this mother.
You gotta be kidding me.
Wait, wait, wait, here we go.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Where is it?
I've got your hair, sir.
Is this person dance to you?
As a person, I've been a police officer.
I'm a person.
That's from the United States.
That made me so mad.
Why did you handcuff her?
Was she going to attack you?
Was she going to run away or something?
Was she a risk of violence?
Or did you just really want to humiliate her, especially in front of her kid?
I've shown you this outrage from the UK before, cops actually smashing through someone's door because someone heard that there was a party going on in his house, so the guy was actually alone.
Guys, listen to us.
We've got to call, haven't we?
Because we've got to come, otherwise, there might be something going on here.
So we need to double check.
I appreciate you saying about social distancing, so I'm keeping the distance.
Right, so we need to check the rooms, stay away from me.
What's your name?
No matter.
Well, we're going to find out how you're going to be here.
What are you doing in my house?
What are you doing in my house?
I just explained to you.
What are you doing in my house?
I'll explain to you why we're here.
We've had a call.
There's a disturbance.
That's why we're here.
So you kicked me down.
Should you have opened the door?
No.
I've explained that to you.
No, I've told you why I wouldn't open the door is because of what is going round this virus now.
Fuck off and get out of here.
What time satisfied?
Look at you.
You might have it.
Fucking dog.
What time side side?
Everything's alright.
Whoa!
Come on!
Get in here, Dickie!
Come on, have a look!
Just check it.
I will look, Dickhead!
Right!
Yeah!
Yeah!
No going on in here, is there?
So what do you mean, putting me door through, Folly?
Fucking do one!
You're fucking pathetic!
Get out of here!
Have you got anything?
You're an absolute disgrace.
Have you got what else to do?
Thought you want to give my fucking door through?
I hope you're going to fucking...
What are you going to fucking do to that?
Have you got any thoughts?
Oh, shut your fucking mouth, you fucking brainze cunch.
Get out!
Fucking pay what?
20 grand a year to be a fucking knob head.
Fuck off.
Get out.
And my fucking house.
Get the fuck out, lot of you.
Bye.
Bye.
Fucking idiots.
Broke me fucking door.
Look at the fucking state of this.
Huh?
British fucking police.
Look at the fucking state of it.
Imagine the UK, the home of the castle doctrine.
A man's home is his castle.
Not even the king himself can enter a man's home without a search warrant, but these cops heard there were, I don't know, a couple people having a party, so they smashed the door.
One more video.
It's Mark, oh, you're harassing me.
What for?
I've done nothing wrong.
Tell these blade.
What God, definitely should have been.
Oh, shut up.
If you want to fucking step to me and pull for your chest out, something like that, then fine.
I'll lock you up.
We'll do that, shall we?
I'll make something up.
So that cop just says he'll make something up.
What an outrage.
Now these are all foreign videos.
Just like the China videos I've shown so often.
That's not Canada, right?
Well, wrong.
And so I want to tell you a little bit about the battle that we've started to fight.
We can't fight the virus itself.
That's beyond our expertise.
And we can't help the economy other than to add our voice to those calling for an opening up of more businesses.
But we can certainly help on the civil liberty side.
That's what's happening.
We have the Chinese virus, but we also have the virus of Chinese-style social credit, really.
That's what they call it.
Oh, you have a house party.
We'll bash your door into check.
It's not actually a crime.
It's social control.
But the Canadian civil liberties groups, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, whose middle name is Civil Liberties, they've announced that they simply will not fight any cases during this crisis.
They just plain old say it.
They don't have the resources to fight.
What?
I checked.
They have a budget of more than a million and a half bucks, especially for this.
And they have a network of pro bono lawyers.
That means top gun lawyers who agree to do some free legal work as a form of charity.
So the $1.5 million doesn't even have to be spent on the lawyers themselves.
But they literally will not help anyone.
What a joke.
They say that if you get hit over the head with a billy club or fined for sitting by yourself in a park or whatever, just send them an email about it and they'll put it in their big book they plan to publish in a few months.
They won't actually help you.
They won't actually fight the authoritarian virus, but they'll do an autopsy after it's all done and tell us how bad it was.
What on earth?
This is their moment.
This is why they were created.
This is why people donate to them.
This is their very name.
And they're just sitting it out.
Why?
Well, I can't stand it.
And as I think you know, we've reached out to some civil liberties lawyers that we know, like Sam Goldstein here in Toronto, and we put together our own homemade civil liberties association, lawyers across the country.
And we take in cases through our website at fightthefines.com.
There's a form there that people can fill out just to tell their story.
And then Sam calls the people who fill out the form, checks them out, and if it's a case that fits, we'll take it.
And then we assign that case to a lawyer, either Sam himself, if it's in Ontario, or other lawyers in other jurisdictions like Sarah Miller in Calgary.
And then one of our journalists interviews the client and interviews the lawyer and tells the story.
See, we want to win not only in the court of law, but in the court of public opinion also.
We want to have a teachable moment, as the left would say.
Show Canadians that it's okay to say no to a cop who wants to break into your house.
It's okay to say no to a cop who wants to handcuff you for being with your daughter in a park or for walking your dog.
We have to remember that we're free and that a pumped-up pandemic panic doesn't change that.
So since we launched Fight the Fines a week ago, we've had, I think, 11 cases present so far, and nine of them are pretty legit.
So far, we have four cases that have gone through that process I described.
We've had a lawyer interview them, our reporters talk to them, we made a video, we've taken the case, and the others are in the process.
I'd like to show you some snippets of the four cases we've taken first.
Each of them is frustrating in its own way, and I want to ask you, does the policing look like Canada or a bit more like Russia or Iran or, you know, China?
Here's our very first case.
It was a pastor who was feeding the homeless in Calgary.
This is not events.
This is not your picnic in a neighborhood for the fun of it.
We are providing necessities of life to those that you and your bosses refuse to provide.
You've got all kinds of events happening right now, kind of, and yet the calculator's finest are not bothering their churches.
This is the hypocrisy of this city.
This is the hypocrisy of our wonderful fearless leaders.
What is Nahet Ninshe?
The mayor of this city.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Stand back.
Or my f ⁇ ing threatening abuse meeting.
Hey, guys.
Do not tell them not to six feet away.
Six feet away for everybody.
That's for everybody.
That client, Arthur, makes a good point.
This wasn't a fun picnic.
This wasn't like when you invite friends over for a lark.
This wasn't a social event.
This was a feed the homeless project.
It wasn't optional.
It was essential.
It wasn't a party.
It was feeding people who were too marginal even to be allowed in the homeless shelter for whatever reason.
And they sent a dozen cops and that one cop pushing them?
Okay, here's the second case.
This is a man who had police come to his private house and demand to know how many people were having dinner.
You guys have to disassemble.
I'm not, I'm not.
We're not.
We're practicing our freedom of religion.
They can't come against our religion.
But we'll come back then.
Give you another ticket.
I don't care.
That's fine.
I'm not paying it.
Tell your supervisor that, too.
How did they know how many people were having dinner at his house?
Were they spying on him?
How do you feel about that cops coming to your house?
How would you feel?
Here's another case.
This one frustrated me so much.
Some measures put in place, I guess, on the 3rd with the Eastern Ontario Health Unit, some guidelines.
And the officer popped into our business.
It would have been the 5th of April when he popped in, late in the afternoon, to inform us that we weren't in compliance with the new rules that were laid out by EOHU, the Eastern Ontario Health Unit.
And immediately we began reading over the document that he left us.
He had told us that he's not going to be issuing a fine at this time.
He would allow us a little while to read over things and put these measures into place, which would be the plexiglass and the arrows on the floor for social distancing.
So he wasn't going to fine us until he spoke it over with Dr. Paul Romoliotis at the Eastern Ontario Health Unit, and they would determine whether a fine would be put in place.
However, the officer come back within the hour and he fined us $880.
Look at those two.
They're just shell-shocked.
First, they were robbed, and the cops didn't seem to care about that.
And then the cops come by, tell them to put up that plexiglass thing and the tape or whatnot.
But then they came back in less than an hour to find them.
No discretion, no common sense, just punishing two hardworking citizens.
I'm so angry about that, aren't you?
And then our fourth one.
We just released this this morning.
Take a look at this.
It's crazy.
I brought her out to do her business and I was out here maybe five minutes, six minutes.
I came back to the back door.
I don't use the elevator because I don't want to run into any people to the third floor.
And I got to the third door.
There were two policemen standing in front of my apartment with Mask's son, like yourself.
And they had the ticket already made out.
They whipped it out like Matt Dillon and handed it to me.
$880.
I was just outraged.
I didn't go downtown Walmart.
I didn't go downtown Sarnia.
I didn't go anywhere, just out here to this parking lot to let my dog do her business.
As a matter of fact, if you and I were to go into the back door right now and we walk up to the third floor, I can guarantee you we won't run into anybody because they want to use the elevator and I don't use the elevator just for the specific purpose of not running into anybody.
So that senior citizen, I think he's a senior, he's living on his own in an apartment.
He says he never leaves his room other than to walk the dog for a bit.
He takes the stairs down so he doesn't bump into anyone else in the elevator.
They all take the elevator.
So he takes the dog out to the parking lot for a pee and then he goes back into his apartment.
What are the cops saying here that he literally cannot leave his house ever?
And how about his dog?
Is he not allowed to take his dog out to do his business?
Where should his dog go pee?
In the apartment?
If so, is this being done in the name of health?
I bet it was that Trump hat, you know.
I bet that's why he got the ticket.
So those are our first four cases, each one more frustrating than the next.
We have a bunch more that we're working on, some faster than others, and we're getting more every day through our complaints form.
I see the complaints as they come in.
I can hardly wait to show you some of them, but I want to make sure we do it right.
It's bad right now.
I think this is important work, and it's work that the official people aren't doing.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is literally throwing up its hands in the air and not taking a single case.
Seriously, guys, why not just shut down?
The name is false advertising.
You know, it's not the first time we've acted as a civil liberties group because no one else would.
We've been fighting for freedom of speech, often alone in court.
No allies from the Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Association of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, Reporters Without Borders.
They've never once lifted a finger.
Teresa Tam Defends00:14:39
And you know what?
That's fine.
I think we're doing okay on our own.
I think we're doing something important.
And if you agree, well, please help us out.
We're paying our lawyers not a ton, but enough to get them working hard and fast.
You can go to fightthefines.com to chip in.
And almost every day we'll have a new case that we put up on that website.
I actually think we're going to make a difference.
In fact, I see that the Ottawa police have announced that they're going to stop arresting people just for sitting on a park bench.
You can tell that the police are starting to feel public support is falling away.
I don't want public support for the police to crater.
I don't want the police to be Chinese-style bullies.
That's a reason we're pushing back, to let the world know what's right and what's wrong, let the public know, and let the cops know too.
Thanks for supporting us.
Stay safe.
And if you get a ticket, give us a call.
Stay with us for more.
Also, Prime Minister, we've seen a spike in anti-Asian violence in different parts of our country.
In BC, an elderly man with dementia was shoved out of a store by an assailant that brought up remarks about COVID-19.
We now have a Conservative leadership candidate that is asking for Dr. Tam to be fired and is accusing her, the WHO in China, of being in cahoots.
What is your message to Canadians as they see this?
Intolerance and racism have no place in our country.
Canada has succeeded because of our diversity.
It is one of our greatest strengths.
And the millions of Canadians of all different backgrounds who are working together, many, many of them on the front lines to help their fellow Canadians deserve better than this from all of us.
We need to continue in our resolve to be an open, welcoming, respectful country.
And I think all Canadians expect that of every politician.
Well, a perfectly orchestrated duet, a media party journalist blending an alleged attack on a Chinese-Canadian senior citizen out west with a legitimate question as to the ongoing tenure of Dr. Teresa Tam, Justin Trudeau's chief public health officer.
Teresa Tam getting every single possible piece of advice, every decision wrong.
Her advice not to wear face masks, her advice not to close borders, her knee-jerk reaction back in January, calling people racist, that they were concerned about no quarantines, everything you could get wrong she has,
quite likely because she continues to work for the World Health Organization, but by fusing that with a question about an alleged racial attack in Vancouver, well, that just set up that softball right perfectly over the plate for Justin Trudeau to hit a home run in his mind.
But is it true?
Is criticizing Trudeau or Teresa Tam inherently racist?
That's what the Chinese embassy says.
It says even referring to the source of the virus as China is racist and complaining about China's delay in warning the world, that's racist.
Well, we'll talk to the man at the center of the kerfuffle.
The question that was put to Trudeau was about a Conservative Party leadership candidate who has recently publicly called for the firing of Teresa Tam.
His name is Derek Sloan.
He's the MP from Hastings, Lenox, and Addington.
He's running for the Tory leadership, and he joins us now via Skype.
Hi, Mr. Sloan.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for coming back.
Thanks a lot for having me on here.
I'm pleased to be here.
Well, I know that my colleague Kian Bexti did a biographical style interview with you some weeks ago.
So I would refer our viewers to that if they want to catch up a little bit.
I'd prefer to talk with you about this current kerfuffle.
Why don't we start off with your case as opposed to the media liberal criticism of it?
What is your view on Teresa Tam and how did you express it?
Right.
Well, so I should point out that my criticism has nothing to do with obviously her race or her gender.
It has to do with decisions that she made.
And you laid them out very well earlier on in this program here.
We know that Taiwan, very early, December 31st, alerted the World Health Organization of this pneumonia-like flu that was coming out of China.
China, of course, started arresting doctors and other whistleblowers.
The very day after that, January 1st, Taiwan began screening.
And today, they've had under 500 total cases and I think about six deaths.
And you listed some other things that Teresa Tam did.
She believed the information that China was putting out that the virus was not transmissible from human to human.
Taiwan and other countries were giving us some strong indication that that was not the case.
They waited until very late to implement travel bans when the U.S. and European countries and Taiwan were already banning and screening flights and other types of things.
So we wait.
I mean, another thing, she gave away, she was part of a task force that decided to give away 16 million tons of personal protective equipment to China and then turned around and said that, you know, masks are not helpful to us.
So, I mean, I may not have even mentioned everything.
It's hard to remember it all.
But the fact is, is that she gave us poor advice.
And, you know, when that type of thing happens, if we were playing a game of hockey, if you score on your own net, the coach is going to bench you.
And I'm saying we got to bench Tam.
Yeah.
You know, the trick that the liberals and the media use here is the trouble with criticizing China because China is the name of a country.
It's the name of a brutal dictatorship, the Chinese Communist Party.
But it's also the name of an ethnicity.
So criticizing the Chinese virus or the Chinese government is very easily rhetorically elided into a criticism of the Chinese race.
But as you point out, Taiwan, which is also Chinese, they're very hostile to communist China because they know Communist China lies and spreads pandemics.
So, I mean, it's obvious to me that you can criticize the Chinese government without being against the Chinese ethnicity.
And I think you showed it by citing Taiwan.
I think that's a trick.
And I wasn't surprised to see Trudeau use it against you.
But I want to point out that some conservatives have actually jumped on Justin Trudeau's bandwagon.
I see Michael Chong has implied that your criticism was racist.
I'm troubled that we are buying that Communist Party of China line that to criticize China is to be racist.
Yeah, I think it is an issue.
And frankly, I wonder if anybody saw the video that I put out and read the letter that I put out.
All of this stems from a three-minute video I put out on my social media and a letter that I sent out to Conservative Party members.
If anyone watches that video or reads the letter, there is no mention in there about Dr. Tam's ethnic background or anything of that nature.
So, you know, for some of these people who are making comments, I wonder, did they just read the headlines or did they actually read what I put out?
Well, I don't think they even read anything at all.
They just thought, oh, we're starting to lose public support.
Teresa Tam has made so many strange statements.
We need to shift gears.
Here's a quick clip from your video presentation that got the ball rolling.
Here, take a look at this.
One of the issues with Justin Trudeau's handling of this situation has been his reliance on the advice of Dr. Teresa Tam.
Teresa Tam, we sent an email out today asking, does she work for Canada or for China?
And I encourage you to read that email.
There's some interesting information in there.
It was Dr. Teresa Tam, who is on a special panel on the World Health Organization right now.
She also parrots their information at every available opportunity.
We know for a fact that China covered up many details concerning the coronavirus outbreak.
There's been a study that was done in England that suggested if China had come out with the truth, we could have potentially avoided up to 90% of the cases that we have today.
The World Health Organization parroted Chinese misinformation coming out from the Communist Party of China.
And basically what they said was that, no, there's no human-to-human transmission when they knew very well that there was.
They said, no, there's no reason to have travel bans when, in fact, the countries that did early travel bans were very successful in keeping the number of cases at bay.
Teresa Tam followed the World Health Organization every step along the way.
She accused Canadians who were concerned about this virus initially for being racist.
She also suggested that travel bans were unnecessary.
And as late as January 14th, she suggested that human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus was not happening when very credible evidence suggested that it was.
Well, look, I agree with you that the criticism of you was shallow, it was false, and I think it was not informed.
I don't think people actually read your publication, which I thought, I mean, frankly, it's what we've been saying around here for a while.
It's even what Jason Kenney, the Premier of Alberta, has been suggesting that he was not willing to wait for Teresa Tam to approve certain medicines because of her connection to the World Health Organization and its communist Chinese bosses.
I mean, I really don't think it's a controversial position to say that China runs a World Health Organization.
But I just want to press you one more time.
I see that a number of conservatives have thrown you under the bus here, too.
My own hunch is they're just trying to virtue signal and show how holier than now they are.
But I find it dispiriting when conservatives engage in the kind of race-baiting racial politics of the left.
Do you have anything to say about that?
I mean, I know your caucus colleagues with Michael Chong, but he's just one of several who took a swipe at you.
Well, I like to maintain a posture of respect towards my caucus colleagues, but I would say this.
The party is, yes, I support the public face of the party, but the party is made up of the party members.
And I can tell you, Ezra, I have received nothing but strong support from party membership over what's happening right now.
And we're in the middle of a leadership race.
And those members are going to get the chance to elect a true conservative.
And people are letting their true colors show.
And so I'm not going to make negative comments about anybody else.
But this is the time now for those real conservatives out there to get involved and to vote for someone who's not going to apologize for being conservative and isn't going to make somebody else apologize either.
Yeah.
I think that as the risk from the virus itself passes or subsides, I think it'll allow us to address some of the systemic problems here.
We're too obedient to China.
We're too reliant on China for critical imports, anything from medicine to basic medical equipment, even more and more on food.
Putting aside the crisis of the virus itself, let's say three months, six months, a year from now, do you have any changes you would like to see in the Canada-China relationship or even the Canada-UN-Canada World Health Organization relationship that has been clarified because of the last couple of months?
Yeah, so I've already put out a pronouncement that if I was leader of the party or prime minister of the country, I would be reviewing our World Health Organization funding and probably maybe eliminating it altogether, depending on how this turns out.
As far as China is concerned, and again, you know, you've made it clear, I've made it clear, this isn't about Chinese people, this is about the Communist Party of China-led country known as China.
We will see, both in this country, I hope, but in others, a complete rethinking of our relationship with China.
And that's something that needs to occur.
Well, let me ask you one more thing, because we are dependent on the grassroots.
In a way, it's similar to a leadership campaign.
You have to talk to people by email, by video, and you know if you're on the right track, if people spend a few bucks to buy a membership or even chip in a donation.
So in a way, we're in the same kind of business.
And I am always cheered when I see an obviously ethnic Chinese name supporting our campaigns.
Every day, I see more people with a Chinese name supporting the rebel, donating, signing a petition.
And it reminds me of what I said earlier.
There's Taiwanese Canadians.
There's mainland China Canadians who want democracy.
There's persecuted minorities, whether it's Tibetans or the Falun Gong or Uyghurs.
So it's a good reminder to me that just because some white liberals like Justin Trudeau and whoever that reporter was try to make it out that opposing China is being racist, there's actually other countervailing Chinese communities.
So my question to you is, have you thought of or do you have any coalitions with China democracy activists, whether they're the epoch Times kind of people or Falun Gong?
Because if you become the anti-China candidate, you could actually have a lot of Chinese people on your side because they know you're against the government, not the ethnicity.
Behind Chinese Scenes00:06:37
Well, we already have a lot of that.
We have ethnically Chinese people in some very high positions in our campaign.
And you may know this, I know this.
There's a lot of Chinese conservatives and there's a lot of Chinese card-carrying conservatives.
And I can tell you that none of those are upset by this.
And in fact, they're as upset as you and I are about the misinformation coming out of communist China.
I know you're at home right now, and so you got the whole family.
We're all in the same situation.
Let me ask you one more question before we go.
Sure.
I observe something that Trudeau does, and I see Trump do it occasionally.
And I think there's a validity to it.
I mean, a few months ago, Trump wrote a tweet that was gushing with praise for President Xi Jinping of China.
And it felt so false and it rang so false to me.
And I thought, I bet he's doing that because there's something quiet that's happening, either a trade deal or a health deal, or there's probably some private favor that we don't quite see and Trump is making a concession.
Trump is that way sometimes.
And so part of me thinks, well, maybe one of the reasons why Justin Trudeau seems so submissive and obedient to China is because we have some critical moment.
And behind the scenes, we're going to get Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor released.
Or behind the scenes, China's going to send us a bunch of medical gear.
But it's been 500 days since those two Michaels were kidnapped.
And when we sent jets for the medical gear, they were sent back empty.
So I'm wondering if you believe Trudeau is getting tough with China in quiet to let them save face, or if he's the same in private as he is in public, just obsequious and obedient.
I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think anything's going on behind the scenes in terms of some kind of crucial negotiation that's about to break.
I think he's always obsequious and fawning towards other countries.
I think he's concerned in a long game sense that he has to be nice, otherwise they're going to crack down on us even more.
But I don't think there's any specific strategic objective right now or a strategic win that we're about to have.
I wish it was the case, but I doubt it.
I think this is everyday Trudeau, and it doesn't matter what day of the week it is.
It's the same old.
Last question for you, and it's how you started things actually on Taiwan.
And we've watched Taiwan over the last few months with great admiration, how they detected the problem early, how they quarantined travelers, how they had mask production.
We admire that little democracy.
But they have been marginalized by all the world, including by Canada and including by the United States.
I wonder if you were the conservative leader and if you actually became the prime minister, if you would change Canada's relationship with that country, would you consider giving it full diplomatic status?
Right now they don't even have a formal embassy.
Would you visit Taiwan perhaps?
What would you do, if anything, to welcome Taiwan into the community of family, the community of nations?
I would certainly consider that.
And you're right, they've done an excellent job in terms of dealing with this crisis.
And they know as well as anybody the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party.
So I think that I think we as a world community or at least a Western community need to rethink our relationship with China and start giving these other nations in that area more love, so to speak.
And I think Taiwan would be a great place to start.
All right.
Well, we'll leave it there.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
I know you've got your hands full at home like so many of us do.
Derek Sloan, I appreciate your time and keep in touch with us as the campaign continues.
Thank you so much.
All right, there you have it.
Derek Sloan is the MP for Hastings, Lenox, and Addington.
He is a leadership candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada.
Stay with us more ahead on the record.
Hey, welcome back.
In my monologue yesterday about being in a cold war with China, Norbert writes, China is fighting a Cold War against the West and building their communist empire.
They absolutely are, and they're doing a lot of it through commerce, especially in Africa.
They go in with a deal.
They agree to build some huge infrastructure in an African country.
They bring in Chinese crew to do it.
And if that country defaults on the debt, well, China owns the port, the airport, the tower.
They're taking it over through money.
Brennan writes, China should be boycotted.
Yes, but how do you do that when 90% of your medicine comes from China?
When, I mean, I say again, fish.
I know that's a strange thing to say, but you would think your fish comes from the lake, the sea.
A lot of fish in your supermarket comes from China.
Half of the world's apples are from China.
Now, probably not that you eat, but it's, I mean, I just, I don't even want to talk about food from China.
That terrifies me, but we've got to get off of China.
Roland writes, it really makes me wonder what Trudeau admires most about China, forced organ donation, forced labor, forced sterilization, forced censorship or infiltration of our government.
Well, carrot and stick, right?
The carrot is, here's a donation to the Trudeau Foundation.
Here's, I don't know what other the carrots are, but the stick is, well, I suppose taking Canadians hostage.
But I think, have you ever heard of that old Soviet term, compromat?
That means compromising material.
You know, I know our media, if they have compromise on Justin Trudeau, they hide it for him.
Like all the media knew about the blackface stuff, they just didn't publish it because they're on his side.
But what if China, one of the world's leading surveillance states, has everything that every journalist has, probably just by hacking into those journalist computers, plus everything else out there?
What if China actually has some devastating compromat on China?
Given Trudeau's lifestyle, alcohol, drugs, women, I'd say the likelihood is fairly high.