Ezra Levant exposes 34 unredacted Canadian military documents revealing deep PLA ties, including 18 joint 2019 exercises—one canceled despite Trudeau’s 2018 approval. The records contradict Defense Minister Harjit Sejan’s claims and show cabinet visits to Beijing post-hostage kidnappings, with nearly 200 Canadian troops deployed to Wuhan in October. Mainstream media ignored the leaks, while Five Eyes allies raised concerns, suggesting Canada’s foreign policy prioritizes corporate interests over national security, fueling fears of Cold War-style vulnerabilities. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I give you a recap of the day after we released our top secret Canadian military documents showing the close participation between the Canadian Armed Forces and China's People's Liberation Army.
It's interesting the political reaction, even more the media reaction.
Who's upset about this and who couldn't care less?
I'll also tell you how we're trying to talk to the Conservative Party about the subject and hopefully they'll talk to us.
That's all ahead.
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And more importantly than that, even it keeps Rebel News strong because we don't take any money from Trudeau.
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Okay, here's the show.
Tonight, the China Files go viral.
It's December 10th, 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 about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Well, I'm going today with just some written notes on a piece of paper.
It's been another incredibly busy day.
We're talking about the China files.
What are those?
Well, we have a little website called thechinafiles.com where you can see for yourself 34 pages of secret Canadian military documents.
I say they're secret because they are marked secret and they were supposed to be blacked out before being sent to us.
But for whatever reason, they weren't blacked out.
They were just grayed out.
They're completely readable.
And in fact, the gray parts are what the government obviously thinks are the most interesting parts.
Was this an accident?
Or was this someone inside the government trying to get information out?
Don't laugh.
We know in the past when damaging information about Justin Trudeau has been released to the CBC or CTV or Global, they sit on it.
Anyone who gave us information would be sure we would publish it in the public interest.
I'll give you the example of the Trudeau blackface photos that every journalist in Ottawa seemed to have a copy of, but they didn't publish until an American source did so.
So we published the China files.
And if you haven't read them yet, I encourage you to do so.
All 34 pages are available at thechinafiles.com.
And if you're a little bit daunted, let me invite you to read the first two pages and the last two pages.
They're the easiest to understand.
The first two pages are just the calendar of the activities of the Chinese embassy in Beijing.
You can see that even after China kidnapped two Canadian hostages, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, it was business as usual.
Cabinet ministers like Catherine McKinna jetting in for global warming parties.
The Canadian Armed Forces sending nearly 200 troops to a propaganda exercise in China.
It was like nothing had changed after the kidnapping.
The second part that's easy to understand and even more infuriating is the last two pages of the document where you can see a list of all of the Canadian Armed Forces People's Liberation Army joint events, joint exercises, military exchanges.
The big news yesterday was that Trudeau did not want the military to cancel a winter warfare training session at CFB Pettawawa in Ontario.
That's what started the whole battle within the military.
The military didn't want to train the Chinese at CFB Pettawawa.
The Trudeau side did, and they had a battle about it.
In the end, as far as we know, that event was canceled.
But as you can see in those last two pages, there were 18 events.
So at worst, only one of seven was canceled and 17 more preceded.
Why are we training one and two star Chinese generals at our military colleges in Ontario?
It's an incredible question, I think.
Other people seem to think it's incredible too.
As you can see, our website was visited hundreds of thousands of times, and over 100,000 people watched our video on YouTube alone, plus many more in other places like Twitter and Facebook.
It's clearly the most important story we covered of the year, maybe ever in the history of rebel news.
It feels that way to me.
I'm very pleased that the National Post and the Globe and Mail also covered the story.
The Globe did some deep reporting on it and did a very lengthy report in today's newspaper.
The National Post sort of copied a little bit of what the Globe did, a little bit of what we did, and that's fine.
I don't believe that we should own this story.
It's in the public interest.
That's why we put the entire primary document, 34 pages on the internet.
We want other journalists to carry it.
Now, as far as I know, at the time I'm recording this, the CBC has not said a word about it.
Isn't that strange?
Anything leaks in the U.S. government that embarrasses Donald Trump, that's top of the news for the CBC in Canada.
And it doesn't have anything to do with us.
But 34 pages about this battle over China in our military?
CBC doesn't care.
Americans seem to care.
They seem a little unnerved at the idea that their northern neighbor, who they have helped defend throughout the Cold War and the war on terror, their NORAD ally, their NATO ally, wants to train Chinese soldiers in Canadian bases.
You can see that Breitbart.com did a huge story on it.
Theblaze.com, that's Glenn Beck's project.
Many other American websites wrote big pieces on it and linked to the primary documents.
Here in Canada, less so.
I mentioned the Globe and the Post touched it.
I was interviewed on the radio by John Gormley today.
But generally, it's been foreigners who seem to care more than the Canadian press gallery.
And I'll give you this as an example.
This morning, Aaron O'Toole, the leader of the Conservative opposition, had a press conference at 9 a.m. Eastern Time on Parliament Hill.
He invited all the media, either in person or via phone call, to participate.
He made a brief statement about the documents.
I was pretty excited.
I was following along because they were our documents.
Six journalists were chosen to ask questions.
I'm not sure how they were chosen.
I presume it's the press gallery because two CBC reporters were chosen.
Two Canadian press reporters were chosen.
Half the questions were in French, so I don't think it was a random selection.
But not one single question at a press conference about these documents the day after the documents were released.
Not one single question mentioned the documents.
The reporters were incurious.
They support the Chinese government's position.
Even if they support the Chinese government's position, wouldn't they at least ask about the documents?
None of them did.
There were two questions put to Aaron O'Toole about his criticism of China, but they were in the form of scolding him.
One question said, Well, what about all our business opportunities?
It was more a lobbying question for China.
And then this question, which sounded like a scold saying, Hey, if you talk mean to Xi Jinping, he'll do bad things to the two hostages.
I'm not sure what he could do worse than holding them in prison for two years.
Take a look at this.
This was how the there were only two out of six questions that mentioned China.
None mentioned the records that we released yesterday.
And here's a typical question from today's press conference.
Thank you.
Merci.
The next question is from Cormac McSweeney, City News.
Please go ahead.
Your hands are open.
Yes, Mr. O'Toole, I just wanted to ask you a question that you were asked earlier in French, but I want to get you on it in English.
What would you have done differently to deal with China that would have left Canada in a better situation than it is now in terms of the Michael Cobrig and Michael Spaver case?
I would have been dealing with China with eyes wide open from day one.
Mr. Trudeau has been dangerously naive.
Those are words of some of our former diplomats who've said that.
And his close associations with fundraising, the transition team, has him out of step with the reality of China.
Even two years ago, when the two Michaels were first taken hostage, he called them regular consular cases.
We knew that these weren't regular consular cases.
We knew that this was diplomatic hostage taking, and we said that should have been taken more seriously from the start.
We remember his minister, his handpicked Mr. McCallum, contradicting himself, also trying to kow-tow to Beijing.
We would have looked to work with the United States and other countries on a Magninsky sanction approach.
We want to resolve disputes with China, but we have to show we're serious, we're willing to stand up for our citizens and our values.
And just as a follow-up, I want to get your direct reaction to the news this morning that officials in Beijing have said that Michael Cobrig and Michael Spaver have already been indicted and tried.
And then just as a follow-up to your answer there, don't you think that sanctions at a time like this would put them at even greater risk given the situation that Cobrich and Spaver are in?
No.
Two years of inaction and kow-towing by the Trudeau government has led to, as you said, Cormac, the trial.
There is no justice system in China, the show trial, the indictment of two citizens.
A weak and timid approach has failed.
It is time to work with our allies and show that we're going to have a more serious approach with respect to Beijing.
I know that that will have a more serious impact than the two years of waffling under Mr. Trudeau.
Beijing thinks the Trudeau government is weak, and he proves them right at every step.
So working with countries like Australia, who has more at risk with respect to China and the United States, we must show a united front of democratic countries that will say this type of conduct in terms of diplomatic hostage taking, in terms of the police state in Hong Kong, with respect to the internment of Uyghurs on the cover of the Globe and Mail today.
We cannot turn a blind eye to the reality of communist China.
It's time for Prime Minister Trudeau to wake up.
Yeah, I think Canadian journalists are that incurious.
They're that tamed and trained.
That's what happens when you slosh about $600 million to the newspapers and $1.5 billion to the CBC.
They're house pets.
They're house pets.
They're not curious.
Well, today in question period, the Conservatives continued on the file.
Of course, it's the two-year anniversary of the kidnapping of the two Michaels.
The Conservative Party asked Christy Freeland questions about that.
She had no good answer.
But then James Bazan, a Conservative MP who's on the military file, asked Harjit Sejan about the winter weather training that our U.S. allies and others complained about.
I want to show you the full exchange.
Take a look at this.
It'd be great, Mr. Speaker, if the minister would actually answer the question.
Yesterday, top secret government documents revealed that this Liberal government was a rape when our chief of defense staff stopped communist Chinese troops from receiving winter warfare training on Canadian soil with our soldiers.
Even after acknowledging there were national security concerns raised by our five Eye partners, the Liberal government said there's still a desire to maintain an ongoing relationship with China.
Why is the Prime Minister bowing to the Chinese communist regime and turning his back on our closest allies?
The Honorable Minister.
Mr. Speaker, our government will always stand up for Canadians at home and abroad, and this includes our relationship with China.
And let me be very clear.
We do not train with the Chinese military.
But I understand the member's concern, Mr. Speaker, because it was a previous government that actually signed a cooperation plan initiative in 2013 under Rob Nicholson when he was the Minister of National Defense.
And that member was a parliamentary secretary of defense at that time.
Thank you.
The Honourable Member for Selkirk, Interlake Eastman.
Mr. Speaker, the Defense Minister knows full well that the Chinese government back then to the Chinese government today is completely different.
And Canadians are shocked and outraged by the Prime Minister posing up to the regime in Beijing.
That's his own, that even the Defense Minister accurately described as being engaged in hostage diplomacy.
We already know the Prime Minister naively admires the communist dictatorship and now wants to train Chinese troops at Garrison Petawawa so that they can learn tactics that our Five Eye allies warn would cause a dangerous transfer of military knowledge.
It is sickening that the Prime Minister has complete disregard for our armed forces, our national security, and our democratic way of life.
The Honorable Minister.
Mr. Speaker, and this is because of the agreement that they had signed, this is one of the reasons why we actually changed our approach because of the concerns that the member outlined, Mr. Speaker, because we will always stand up for two Canadians who are arbitrarily detained.
This is one of the reasons why we actually stopped our training with the Chinese, Mr. Speaker.
And this is exactly what we're doing.
And I would ask the member right now to stop turning this into a political issue because that's exactly the steps that we have taken.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Well, that looks pretty convincing, doesn't it?
But if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have looked at the China files or watched the video, you'll know it was a lie.
Stephen Harper did not invite the Chinese spies to Canada for winter warfare training.
Wonder About Chinese Training00:04:02
Here's a tweet from the Canadian Army about two years ago showing winter warfare training, a joint exercise between the Canadian forces and the Chinese in China two years ago.
And it was two years ago, according to this tweet, that the invitation was made by the Liberal government to the People's Liberation Army to do it again next year at CFB Pettawawa.
It's right on there where they were going to do it.
That would be quite a feat for Stephen Harper, who left office in 2015 to make an invitation to China three years later in 2018.
It wasn't Harper who did it.
It was Hajit Sejan and Justin Trudeau.
And it's a little bit outrageous for Sejan to take credit for canceling it, when in fact, as we saw in the records, it was the Liberal government that was pressuring the military to keep it going and demanded that no other activities be canceled.
Like I said, the very last two pages of these 34 pages in the records show there were 18 joint exchanges and training sessions between the People's Liberation Army and the Canadian Armed Forces in 2019.
18 of them.
Only one was canceled over the objections of the Liberals.
I think this is an important story.
We still haven't heard from any other people on it.
We haven't heard from the government of India that is probably wondering why we would be training China in how to fight in winter conditions when right now India and China are battling in the high Himalayas.
I wonder what they say democracy activists for Tibet and the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
I wonder how they feel about this sort of training.
What does the United States Department of Defense have to say?
What does NATO have to say?
I think we're going to have to be the ones who ask that question because if this morning's press conference is anything to go by, the media party doesn't care.
Now I should tell you that I personally reached out to Aaron O'Toole to interview him on the subject.
Pretty straightforward questions, the kind of questions that he probably wished he got this morning instead of the scoldy questions from the media party.
I also reached out twice to James Bazan.
I'll let you know if they ever get back to me.
So far, Mr. O'Toole's press secretary has said he's too busy.
I wrote back asking if he really is too busy, and that's fine, I'll talk to his critic on the subject, or if this is a continuation of the wrong-headed Andrew Scheer policy of simply not talking to rebel news.
I don't think that worked out for Andrew Scheer.
It didn't ingratiate him with the press gallery, with the media party, who love sticking their knives into him.
And it missed the opportunity of Andrew Scheer revving up the conservative base, which is one of our large audiences.
Aaron O'Toole had no success in his press conference this morning.
In fact, it was a negative success.
He was scolded by the media.
If he were to come on Rebel News or one of his deputies, we would ask him straightforward questions.
I'll tell you what one of them is right now.
Do you think we should cancel any of the other 17 exchanges?
No gotcha questions, nothing embarrassing.
I wonder what he'll do, but in another way, I don't really care because I know what we'll do.
We'll continue telling the other side of the story, doing important research, breaking massive international scoops, which this story is.
I look forward to talking to MPs of any stripe about this subject, conservatives, or if a liberal even wanted to talk about it, which I would understand why they wouldn't.
We'll continue to be the best independent source of journalism in this country, as we were before Aaron O'Toole and likely will be after him.
I hope he comes on the show, though.
Joining me now to talk about this is our friend, Spencer Fernando.
Welcome back.
Spencer On China's Influence00:09:26
Well, as you can see in thechinafiles.com, that's where I recommend you go to read all 34 unredacted pages.
Actually, the first two pages and the last two pages are the easiest to understand.
The first two are just a calendar for all the activities of the Beijing embassy.
It shows Catherine McKenna flying in for a party.
It shows the military games where 200 Canadian soldiers were sent to Wuhan in October.
Very easy to make sense of it.
It's a calendar.
The last two pages are equally incredible.
It's a list of the 18 military exchanges with the People's Liberation Army and the Canadian Armed Forces.
One of those 18 was canceled under pressure from the Americans.
The other 17 proceeded.
Well, let me read you a great headline, my favorite headline on the whole matter, and it's from our friend Spencer Fernando, who writes, in a sane world, Trudeau wanting communist China's troops on Canadian soil would be the end of his political career.
And joining me now via Skype from Winnipeg is Spencer Fernando.
Great to see you again.
You're so right.
Reading that, it just clicked.
Yeah, but no one's even suggesting that.
Not in the media, not in the opposition.
Am I right?
Yeah, it just goes to show how far I think we've gone in accepting things that are unacceptable in this country.
And, you know, in a way, Trudeau kind of primed everybody for this right from the beginning, even before he was elected.
You know, I bring it up every time.
But we remember when he said that he admired China's basic dictatorship and people said, oh, he's joking or it's a dumb comment.
Everything that we've seen since then shows that he was being quite serious about that.
Yeah, I mean, Trudeau may have a prankster side to him, but he's not particularly funny or ironic.
When he says something, I think he means it.
When he said he admired China's basic dictatorship, I mean, he may have quickly realized that was a dumb thing to say, but he wasn't being funny.
He wasn't being sarcastic.
He wasn't being ironic.
He actually believes that what these documents show is that that idea has trickled into the whole foreign affairs establishment.
That's what it looks like to me.
Yeah, and I think this goes with a lot of their instincts anyway.
You know, I've said before, I just spoke to Carlene Nation earlier, and I mentioned how, you know, we, in this country, there's an attitude a lot of people seem to have, which is that Canada should always be subservient.
We should always be weak.
We should always give in.
And they start from a point of weakness.
And so I think, you know, that's obviously Trudeau's attitude when it comes to China.
And then it's the attitude of much of the establishment.
What's interesting, though, is that that weakness, for some reason, doesn't extend to countries that actually share our values.
I mean, you look at Trudeau.
He's happy to lecture India about protesting there.
He's happy to lecture the United States, you know, a country more powerful than China and right next to us.
So it's interesting, they only seem afraid or cowardly when it comes to China, but when it comes to our allies, countries that actually share our values, they seem tougher for some reason.
You know, that's a great point.
And I should say that the idea of winter warfare training, who would be the possible victim of Chinese winter warfare?
Well, God forbid, it could be Canada or the United States, but that's unlikely in the near future.
But even as we speak, China and India are having a slow burn battle high in the mountain heights of the Himalayas.
So that's practical military knowledge that would be transferred to fight against our friends in India.
It's very troubling.
Hey, let me ask you about something.
Earlier today, Aaron O'Toole, the Conservative Party leader, had a press conference specifically about these records.
And I tuned in to listen.
There were six questions asked, half in French, half in English.
The CBC had two, Canadian press had two.
A couple of them were about China.
They were more scolding Aaron O'Toole for suggesting we should get tough.
One of the questions was something like, well, don't you know that's going to provoke China?
They'll be even worse.
But other than those that just were scolding O'Toole on China, not a single question, Spencer, made reference to these records.
Now, I'm biased because it was us who got the records and us who published us.
So I'm excited about that personal aspect.
But putting that aside, it is quite staggering to have 34 secret military pages that show this.
Help me understand why not a single member of the Ottawa Press Gallery thought it was worth even asking about.
Well, I think there's probably three reasons.
The first I would say is that a lot of these companies are owned by big, you know, in some case, many media companies that are owned by corporations that probably have interest in getting close to China, right?
So that's part of it.
The second reason would be the usual covering for Justin Trudeau, which the media has been doing for some time.
And then the third reason is, you know, a lot of the kind of identity politics stuff where you see a lot of the people in the media and they think any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party is somehow racism, even though, of course, the first and the biggest victims of the Chinese Communist Party are people living in China, right?
And actually, people living in Canada as well, you know, people, Chinese people who've come to Canada for a better life and now they're being harassed and threatened.
They're having their family members threatened.
They're being coerced within Canada by agents of the Chinese Communist Party.
So it's all those things together.
And I think they just, you know, there's kind of been this attitude where people don't want us to have an enemy or don't want us to have a country that we oppose or that has different values.
And they can't really see when that started to happen.
They can't see that China's an adversary.
They can't see that China, the Chinese Communist Party, their interests are directly against the interests of Canada, the United States, our allies, you know, countries with similar values.
And China is a lot different than it was even, you know, four or five years ago.
It's moving in a very concerning direction.
So I think it's a mix of people who are either compromised or naive and just some kind of a whole bunch of those things all at once.
Yeah, I think you're right on with all three of those.
The money, like the Bloomberg media, for example, totally invested in China.
Disney, the entertainers, always looking at China.
The NBA, anyone in entertainment, anyone who wants eyeballs loves China and will shut up about politics.
You're so right about Trudeau sympathizers.
They don't want to upset the young prince.
And just the ethnic politics, you're spot on with those.
Last I checked, now I haven't checked in the last hour, but the last I checked, the CBC has yet to even mention these records.
Maybe you've seen something in the last hour or so, but the Globe and Mail ran with it pretty big.
The National Post mentioned it.
I actually did some radio in Canada.
It did pop up in question period.
But from what I've seen, unless that's changed in the last hour, the CBC is going quiet about secret documents.
That's got to be a first.
Yeah, and I don't think people would be too surprised, to be honest.
I mean, CBC tries to cover for Trudeau quite often, and they try to cover for the establishment.
It's not just about them being pro-Trudeau, but they're pro-the kind of establishment that's in power in the country.
So this is obviously embarrassing for the establishment to have this exposed and concerning.
So CBC will try to either slow walk it or just, you know, not cover it at all.
But, you know, at the end of the day, they don't get too many views, to be honest.
So if they don't cover it, most people are still going to see it anyway.
Yeah, isn't that the truth?
You're just killing it on Twitter these days.
I love following you on Twitter.
You're very fast, also.
You're fast on the news, which I really appreciate.
I love spencerfernando.com.
And I'd like to say to my viewers, and we've said this every time Spencer's on, every time our friends from True North are on, there are only a small number of truly independent journalists in Canada who don't take the Trudeau money.
And so while I deeply appreciate your support for rebel news, if you have a few extra bucks, it's very valuable to have other voices that are independent like Spencer Fernando.
And may I encourage you just to check out his website.
Spencer, tell us before you go, is there anything you're working on right now?
Is there something you're looking into or researching or covering or you just recently published you want to tell our viewers about?
Yeah, I'll be writing more about the China story, obviously, or what Aaron O'Toole is saying, how the media is covering it.
I think that's kind of the big story right now.
But, you know, I think the interesting thing is going to be how Canadians react to it.
You know, there's definitely been, in the past, foreign policy doesn't play a big role in Canadian elections.
I think that's going to change.
You know, people who normally don't follow foreign policy, which is, I mean, most of us, even including myself quite often, the way China's treated our own citizens, the way they're treating this country, and now what Trudeau's doing, I think a lot of people are starting to wake up to the fact that something's seriously wrong here.
So we'll see.
But I think it's going to be interesting to see how this affects the upcoming election.
Well, I hope you're right.
I hope people do wake up to it.
Spencer, great to see you.
Thanks for joining us today.
No problem.
All right, there you have it.
Spencer Fernando from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back on the China Files.
Brian writes, Trump was right again when he called Trudeau two-faced and Canada a security threat.
Oh, I hate to say it, but you're right.
Government Payroll Show Doubts00:01:14
What's frustrating is that Trudeau's views seem to have trickled down throughout the entire bureaucracy.
Sharon writes, why wouldn't we be training the Chinese army?
There are overlords.
We need to teach them how to be more efficiently defeated us.
You know, it's like that movie from the Cold War.
I don't know if you remember it called Red Dawn, where America was invaded with Russians and Cubans.
That's how it feels a little bit.
Brett writes, and crickets from the CBC, as you predicted, Ezra, what a disgraceful media.
Yeah, I mean, the CBC runs interference for the Chinese Communist Party all the time.
Years ago, I remember they were attacking democracy activists in the Falun Gong, like smearing them.
It was so malicious, I thought, who is calling the shots there at the CBC?
But, you know, state broadcasters tend to act alike, whether they're Pravda, Xinhua, or the CBC.
That's why you just can't trust them.
And unfortunately, these days, most of the media are on the government payroll.
Well, that's our show for today.
You got to go to thechinapiles.com if you haven't yet.
It's the document.
I grant you some parts of it are hard to read, but that calendar at the beginning and that list of 18 exchange programs at the end, that's very easy to read.