Ezra Levant reveals Russia’s economy grew to $4.8T in 2022, surpassing Germany, defying Western sanctions narratives fueled by oil, gas, and wheat exports. Meanwhile, Niger’s junta, led by General Chiani, aligns with Wagner Group despite al-Qaeda setbacks, signaling a broader Sahel shift toward anti-Western blocs like China-Russia. Leaked CSIS documents expose $100M+ pro-Beijing election interference, targeting outlets like Red Maple News—linked to RT—and Justin Trudeau’s allies, including Olivia Chow, whose Cantonese apology video frustrated pro-democracy voters. Levant warns foreign influence erodes trust, advocating for a FARA-style disclosure law and public inquiry, but doubts quick reforms amid systemic bias, urging truth over endless Ukraine war support that risks turning Ukrainians into "cannon fodder." [Automatically generated summary]
I want to tell you two facts about Russia and Ukraine that I don't think you would know if you only consumed Canadian media.
The first is a shocking new report about Russia's economic strength published by the World Bank.
And the second is a Russian connection in a coup in Africa.
I'd love your thoughts on these.
But first, I want to make sure you're signed up for what we call Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
I'm going to show you some interesting footage from that African country of Niger or Niger.
I'd love you to be able to see it.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's $8 a month.
And you get all the videos that we show.
And you help support Rebel News.
Because, as you know, we don't take any dough from Trudeau.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, how is it possible?
In the past year, Russia's economy has overtaken Germany to become the largest in Europe.
It's August 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
I'm careful when talking about Ukraine, not because it's politically sensitive.
We talk about politically sensitive things all the time, and hopefully we thread the needle correctly, but rather because there is so much propaganda out there, which is how wars go.
I don't need help coming up with an opinion about the war.
I need help coming up with facts about the war.
As I've told you before, the only method I think I can really rely on is when either side, NATO or Russia, makes an admission against their own interests, as in when they tell you bad news about themselves.
That's the difference between dog bites man and man bites dog, isn't it?
But even then, by the way, I could be propaganda.
I sense that Russia has deliberately published bad news about their state of affairs to give a false sense of confidence to the NATO side.
I'm still puzzling over that one-day mini-rebellion by the Russian mercenaries called the Wagner Group.
Have you heard about them?
It was quite dramatic.
There was a column of tanks heading to Moscow.
It looked like maybe a coup was going to happen, the humiliation of a local Russian general.
But then it was over as soon as it started.
And Putin and the Wagner Group's boss, his name is Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Apparently, they came to some deal in some way.
And the Wagner mercenaries moved to Belarus, Russia's ally.
And by the way, if you look at the map, the Belarus border is a lot closer to Kiev than the Russian border is.
I'm confused by that whole thing.
That's what I mean about the fog of war and propaganda.
I think for a moment there, some in the West thought that Putin would undergo a regime change.
I don't know.
Do you know what to make of that?
I'm not embarrassed to say that I don't really understand.
And I suppose the one thing I can think of, I don't know, is that by definition, mercenaries work for money, right?
And if the West has dumped in over $100 billion into Ukraine with very little oversight, it wouldn't shock me if the CIA did the math and realized that paying, I don't know, a billion dollars to Progozhin to rebel and embarrass Putin and maybe knock him off might be a lot more cost-effective than spending a billion dollars or more weapon systems to fight against Progozhin and Putin.
Like I say, I have no idea.
So I've been reluctant to weigh in, certainly not daily, like the mainstream media has done.
It was fascinating.
As I mentioned, when I was in Hungary the other day, Viktor Orban, the prime minister there, was giving a keynote speech about the case for peace.
And I was certain he was going to talk in depth about the Ukraine-Russia war.
I mean, there's over 100,000 Hungarians in Ukraine.
It borders Hungary.
And he didn't.
He barely mentioned it.
He had talked about a lot of other things, and he's a NATO ally, by the way.
I think most of the world is not as obsessed by the Russia-Ukraine war as our mainstream media is.
I mean, it's an important story, to be sure, and it's a terrible story, of course.
But I think, especially here in Canada, we have more war cheerleading than we have war reporting, which strikes me as sort of un-Canadian.
I mean, here's the Trudeau we all thought we knew.
I haven't made up my mind, but the onus is on Mr. Harper to demonstrate that a shift from a non-combat role that we've established right now to a combat role is the right thing for Canada, the right thing for Canadians, but also the right thing for the international community.
There are an awful lot of things that Canada can and should be doing.
I mean, think about Canada's reputation around the world and what we've done around refugees.
Whether it be the Vietnamese boat people, whether it be the Ismailis in Uganda, in East Africa, whether it be even more recently the Tamil community fleeing civil war in Sri Lanka.
Canada has been a place that draws in and helps refugees in a significant and serious way.
Now, in this situation, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of displaced peoples in the region who aren't looking to all leave the region.
That's where their homes are.
They need support to get through this very, very difficult time.
Canada has a capacity and an expertise in doing just that.
Why aren't we talking more about that?
Why aren't we talking more about the kind of humanitarian aid that Canada can and must be engaged in, rather than trying to whip out our CF-18s and show them how big they are?
It just doesn't work like that in Canada.
He hates the military.
He always has.
He likes to talk about peacekeeping, even if he doesn't actually send peacekeepers around the world.
I mean, all liberals have been skeptical of the military.
Jean-Cretain refused to send troops to Iraq after 9-11.
That may have unintentionally been the right choice.
It was just his anti-Americanism.
Of course, Pierre Trudeau was an underminer of the military.
He was the original underminer.
So to see Justin Trudeau now chant the war chants is a little bit odd.
Though, of course, we haven't really been able to follow through in action.
We really haven't been able to help in any material way.
We've sent some money, but we don't really have any weapons to give.
We don't have any weapons to use, not even to train with our fellow NATO allies.
We were not there.
It reminds me of this.
Where would you put Canada in that as they're not?
Slightly delinquent, I should say.
Canada, but they'll be okay.
I have confidence.
Just slightly delinquent.
Canada does not meet the 2% standard.
Should it have a plan to meet the 2% standard?
Well, we'll put them on a payment plan, you know?
We'll put Canada on a payment plan, Ron.
I'm sure the Prime Minister would love that.
What are you at?
What is your number?
The number we talk about is 70% increase over these past years, including, and for the coming years, including significant investments in our fighter jets, significant investments in our naval fleets.
We are increasing significantly our defense spending from previous governments that cut it.
Okay.
Where are you now in terms of your number?
One fourth.
And continuing to move.
They're getting there.
They know it's important to do that.
And their economy is doing well.
They'll get there quickly, I think.
Trump said it.
And so does Joe Biden in his own way.
The whole world knows that Canada doesn't really carry our fair share when it comes to the military issues of the world, certainly not NATO.
So yeah, who knows what's really going on?
Only trust admissions made by parties that embarrass themselves, but even be skeptical of those.
They could be false flags or disinformation.
That whole mercenary revolt, I still don't know what that is.
Purchasing Power Parity Insights00:06:08
So I was surprised when I saw this, though.
In fact, I had to dig for a bit to prove it.
I heard a rumor on TikTok of all places that Russia last year had overtaken mighty Germany to become the largest economy in Europe and now the fifth largest in the whole world.
Come on.
I mean, I honestly did not believe it at first.
And if it were true, by the way, why hadn't I heard about it in the mainstream media?
I mean, it sounds like big news.
How could it be, though, given the sanctions against Russia and how close Russia was to toppling over and how this war was burning up all their money?
It was close to imploding.
That's what the news, that's sort of the narrative of the news.
But I managed to find the source, and it is nothing less reputable than the World Bank.
Take a look at the World Bank's 2021 rankings of countries by gross domestic product measured using the purchasing power parity method.
I'll use an example to explain what purchasing power parity means.
Let's say someone earns $200,000 a year in Toronto or Vancouver, but someone else earns $175,000 a year in Red Deer, Alberta.
Who's richer?
Well, the obvious answer is the people in Toronto and Vancouver, right?
They're making $200,000 a year, except that's just in nominal dollars.
But taxes are lower in Alberta, and the cost of housing is much lower in Alberta.
Cost of a lot of things is lower.
So on a purchasing power parity basis, the person making $175,000 a year in Alberta is wealthier in terms of what they can buy.
It's basically taking a basket of goods and services and comparing how affordable that same basket is in a bunch of different countries.
It's sort of like that Big Mac test.
Have you ever heard of that?
How much does a Big Mac cost in each country?
Sort of a measure of wealth and prices.
Anyways, that's what gross domestic product purchasing power parity means, in case you were wondering.
It's sort of a way of leveling different countries so you're comparing apples to apples.
So here's what the World Bank says.
This is from 2021, before Russia invaded Ukraine.
It had a GDP of just under $4.8 trillion using the purchasing power parity method.
It was right behind mighty Germany.
Do you see that?
Germany had a GDP of just over $4.8 trillion.
As you can see, the top countries were China, the U.S., India, and Japan.
Now, obviously, this is the whole country together.
So that's more than a billion Chinese people together are wealthier than the 330 million U.S. people.
Interesting, India is about the same population as China, but it's only about one-third as wealthy.
Lots of interesting stats in there, don't you think?
Very interesting.
And remember, this is all based on their ability to buy a car, a meal, a house, adjusted purchasing power.
But still, let's compare apples with apples.
So let's use the exact same study, the exact same chart by the exact same World Bank a year later.
So we just looked at 2021.
Here's 2022.
China is still the wealthiest country in the world.
America is still number two.
In fact, China increased its lead over America a little bit.
India and Japan are next again.
But look at that.
Russia has overtaken Germany.
Not by a lot, but it's ahead now.
How?
How did that happen given that the West, United States, UK put sanctions on Russia?
Given that Russia is spending money on a brutal war, how did they get richer than Germany?
And how did we not hear about this?
Well, that last part is easy to answer, isn't it?
I think the first part is sort of easy to answer too, if you're allowed to think critically.
Russia has valuable things, oil, natural gas, minerals, wheat.
Lots of things that people around the world need no matter what.
China and India will import oil and gas and food from anyone.
They don't care about social license or carbon taxes.
I mean, the liberals in Canada lie to us, saying no one will buy our oil and gas if we don't impose environmental policies like carbon taxes.
We need social license.
That's nonsense.
OPEC and Russia dominate world energy markets and they couldn't be more abusive to both the environment and the people too.
No one cares.
China, we, North America buys oil from Saudi Arabia and Iran.
We used to buy from Iran.
China still buys from Iran.
So yeah, Russia has things that people want and will pay for, things that we in Canada could produce, but we're deliberately sabotaging.
We are shutting down oil and gas and fracking.
And they're going to shut down farming next.
Imagine doing that while Russia is producing and selling what people need and want.
We're cracking down on oilmen and farmers.
I think this would come as shocking news, Russia's increase in its economy to most people who are convinced that Russia is teetering on the edge of collapse and it's going to rise up and depose Putin at any moment now.
I don't think so.
In fact, I think the economy in the West is worse.
Yes, we're richer than Russia per capita, sure, but they're growing their economy and they just leaped ahead of Germany's industrial might.
And that's in part because Germany is so obsessed with foolishly expensive alternative energy.
Don't kid yourselves.
But this is contrary to Trudeau's narrative, isn't it?
It suggests that Trudeau's virtue signaling is just virtue signaling.
But look at this.
I want to show you a second factoid, a second data point.
It's from Sky News in the UK, which is actually a mainstream media source.
But I think that the UK mainstream media, because it's very competitive over there and it's not yet colonized by the government in the same way, I think it's still miles ahead of our media when it comes to balanced reporting.
Niger's Unpopular French Problem00:05:06
This starts off about Niger or Niger, as they call it, as a country in Africa that just had a coup.
But then it ends talking about Russia.
Now, this is three and a half minutes long, but I learned so much from this.
Can I play for you this video about Niger or Niger as I've known the country?
And listen to what they say about the American senior diplomat dispatched from the Biden administration and listen to how they end and what they talk about Russia.
Take a look.
Victoria Newland was a very senior American diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State, second only to Tony Blinken.
She didn't get very far when she went into the capital of Niger.
She couldn't get to see the previous president, the Democratic elected president, President Mohamed Bazoun.
He's under house arrest, it seems.
Nobody's seen him since the coup of last week.
And General Chiani, who's taken over, the Milijunta, wouldn't even meet her.
She got to see some representatives of Chiani, but not him himself.
And so she made some blandishments and threats.
She offered something.
She said that American aid would be suspended, and there's 230 million of that.
They're not listening.
The fact is that the coup leaders really don't care what the outside world thinks at the moment.
They're not impressed by the Americans, the French, the United Nations, or the economic community of West African states.
It's a very poor country.
Niger itself is a big place, very big country, but it's pretty poor.
It's 177th on the World Bank Index of 196 in terms of wealth.
Most of it, 80% of it, is Sahara Desert.
And of course, with climate change, the Sahara Desert is expanding.
Most of the people live in the southwest where the capital is in Naime.
About 25 million people, but they live on subsistence farming.
The only thing that Niger has really got is uranium, but uranium can be found in many other parts of the world.
Meanwhile, Niger is surrounded by a very unstable region.
The whole of the Sahel area is now increasingly unstable.
There have been military coups in Guinea.
There has been a military coup in Mali, a military coup in Burkina Faso.
And those three countries are now offering support to the military coup leaders in Niger.
And the Malian and Burkina Faso delegations have arrived in Niger in order to offer their support.
And so three military leaders in particular are just standing together and defying the rest of the world to do whatever they can.
And the answer is they can't do very much.
The only countries that could make a difference militarily would be Nigeria, which has quite a big military, but not a very good one these days, or Chad, which also has quite a large military.
Nigeria is pretty reluctant to get involved militarily, and Chad has said it definitely won't.
And so, ECOWAS, the economic community of West African states, will meet on Thursday to talk about what to do next.
The answer is they won't be able to do very much physically.
They may well take some sanctions, but they will only hurt the population of Niger even more.
In addition to all of that, we've seen in the developments of Niger recently Russian flags appearing.
This was a rally that was held on Sunday.
Suddenly, there were lots of Russian flags.
That was a staged rally, but nevertheless, it was tapping into something which the Niger leaders I think are onto, which is the French are very unpopular.
The West is very unpopular.
They're explicitly turning to Russia for help.
And Chiani, the leader of the military junta, has said he wants the help of Wagner mercenaries.
And the Wagner mercenaries have said, yes, they will help.
They tried to get into Niger yesterday.
They seem to have been slightly repulsed by al-Qaeda of all people, but they certainly will be arriving and they will help.
The point about the whole region is that there are power vacuums developing all across the Sahel.
And when there are power vacuums, the only people who will gain from those vacuums will be jihadists like al-Qaeda and Islamic State, who are very active in the region, and Russian mercenaries like Wagner.
It's all very destabilizing and it doesn't look good for the future.
Victoria Newland really is the big deputy boss of the U.S. foreign policy.
They won't even meet with her.
Imagine that.
She flies all the way to Niger or Niger.
And they send, what, the intern to meet with her?
I think American prestige around the world is falling.
And that breaks my heart because I love America.
I think they're the most noble country in the world, really.
I think Trump riveted the world.
Everyone was watching.
He was a showman.
He was in command.
And even when he was eccentric or even erratic, it redounded to his benefit.
What I mean by that is the world was sort of scared of him, if nothing less.
It was a form of respect.
Don't trifle with Trump.
You'll have no idea what he'll do to you.
It's different with sleepy Grandpa Joe Biden and certainly his deputy deputy.
No one even cares to meet with her, and certainly not wagging their finger at Niger and Niger, whose coups seem to be rooted in part in shucking off Western influence in the name of anti-colonialism.
They're mad at France, but they're mad at all the West.
I'm not sure that Joe Biden has any place in Niger.
But the Russian flag at the end.
Foreign Agent Registry Influence00:12:33
That's an interesting statement of allegiance, isn't it?
I don't like authoritarian rulers, not in Russia, not in Niger, not in Ukraine, and certainly not in America or Canada.
And yeah, by the way, Joe Biden is acting like a banana republic boss, trying to criminalize and jail Donald Trump, his rival and former president.
And yes, Trudeau acted like a banana republic authoritarian too, when he put our whole country under martial law and started seizing bank accounts.
Maybe Niver, Niger, sees that and says it'll join the other team, one that's getting economically stronger, China and Russia, and maybe militarily stronger too.
What do you think?
Stay with us for more.
Well, this just in, folks.
It seems that Beijing-controlled media in Canada was used to enable election interference.
Now, I know that sounds preposterous and outrageous until you consider the fact that there are or were Chinese police stations operating in our great dominion.
So if there is unofficial Chinese law enforcement occurring here, then hey, why not Beijing orchestrated propaganda ploys too?
Incredible.
And joining me now for more information on this story is Rebel News contributor Andy Lee.
Hey, Andy, welcome to the Ezra Levant Show.
Hi, thanks for having me.
Well, thank you for joining me.
Wow, you know, I remember back in the 80s, I used to listen to a band from England called China Crisis.
But China Crisis is more than a title for an English new wave band.
It's what's happening right now in Canada, it would appear.
And it seems to be getting worse and worse.
Andy, what is this latest affront all about in the first place?
Yeah, I don't know if it's getting worse and worse, more that it's coming to the forefront.
I think it's been going on for a very long time.
So, yeah, so Sam Cooper has, you know, received some more CSIS documents, leaked some CSIS documents that outline that there's a campaign, a pro-Bijing campaign.
It's apparently massively funded.
This isn't entirely surprising.
And we've done some work and some original reporting on some of those media outlets that are tied to the Chinese Communist Party and the United Front Work Department.
So we did put out an article, and I'm going to put out more on one establishment that's called Red Maple News.
The president of Red Maple News also works for Russia Today.
She goes overseas.
She goes to the political conferences for the United Front Work Department.
And she also volunteers for Justin Trudeau and has got some, you know, some personal invite to Parliament Hill from Justin Trudeau.
So, but I mean, this isn't, again, it's not shocking.
There's a lot of these media outlets.
Mostly they operate in foreign language media.
They go a little bit under the radar.
Behind the scenes, they work with Xinhua and China News Service and things like that.
Now, these are entities, of course, that are considered foreign missions in the United States.
These are the kinds of establishments that definitely, in one instance, this particular volunteer for the Liberal Party who met with Justin Trudeau, she did go to Parliament Hill and then she went and reported that back to China News Service.
So she's obviously working for foreign missions.
So these are the kind of people who could be subjected to a foreign agent registry if we ever get that piece of legislation in place.
So we've been doing work on that.
But Sam Cooper's documents outline something a little bit new, and that was that mainstream media has also been targeted in what he called a massively funded foreign influence campaign.
So that was a bit of a bombshell revelation.
And again, not surprising that we've got, you know, Chinese-based news outlets.
And this volunteer who works for Trudeau, she does have an office in China.
So, you know, she is partly based out of China.
So not entirely shocking that she would be cozying up to political leaders and trying to push some pro-Beijing messaging and things like that and doing some work for the United Front.
Not shocking, but a little bit shocking to find it in our domestic stations right here at home.
It's just incredible.
First of all, I won't even get into the abhorrent conflict of interest here with this individual.
But, you know, I think it's all making sense, Andy.
Some 10 years ago, Blackface said at a meeting with exclusively women in Toronto that he had admiration in his heart for the basic dictatorship of China in terms of getting things done.
I mean, the idea that a future Western leader would have admiration for the tyranny of China.
Trudeau's meeting last week with a group of Toronto women was an example.
Even with Sun TV watching for any slip, he was asked which country he most admired and referred to China.
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green as fast as we need to start investing in solar.
I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harford must dream about of having a dictatorship that he could do everything he wanted that I find quite interesting.
It's astonishing in and of itself.
But when it comes to getting things done, you have to wonder, what did he mean by getting things done?
Like, you know, electoral interference that's going to benefit blackface in the long run?
Is that what he was talking about?
And I guess that's my question.
All this tinkering and meandering, as far as you can tell, Andy, has it been effective for the liberals?
It's very, very difficult to gauge.
We know that interference happens.
They say that it wasn't enough to affect the election results.
I think it's very, very hard to gauge, again, because there is, you know, a lot of these electoral campaigns and things like that that are pushed by people who might have ties to the Chinese Communist Party or ties to the United Front.
And when I say that, I mean that this isn't under dispute.
Some of them have got personal invitations that I've seen from Xi Jinping inviting them to meetings overseas like this.
So this isn't in dispute that they have dual loyalties if they're not outright here working for China.
So a lot of them run hometown associations.
We know that they stem from some main ones and then they branch off.
And there's hundreds of these.
I mean, they consist of tens of thousands of members who are probably sympathetic to those causes.
I'm not going to say that every Chinese community association is a United Front operation.
That's not the case at all.
And a lot of them literally do good work in the community.
And that's how they sort of get away with this is they fall into this gray zone where maybe they're not outright committing something that might be considered criminal in our country yet, unless we get some sort of stronger legislation.
But they do definitely have some underlying motivation and some, you know, some loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.
So we know that that's how many members?
Tens of thousands.
Does it benefit the liberals?
They usually throw their weight behind the liberals.
Not always, though.
I mean, they're chameleons.
They'll fall behind whoever they think is supportive of their cause.
And one of them that they threw their weight, of course, behind was Mr. Key, right?
So he was a PC.
MPP.
And so a lot of these community associations have thrown their weight behind them.
They also throw them behind conservative Senator Royo.
So, you know, they'll throw their weight behind who they think will, you know, fulfill whatever their needs are, which are usually to get more sympathetic views towards China.
So that's what we're dealing with.
And we also got a little bit of a taste of what they can do during the recent protest against a foreign agent registry.
So this was, you know, it was an event, a demonstration that was planned on Parliament Hill on June 24th.
It was done in commemoration, apparently, of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
So it was sort of used as a front, this celebration, to also say that we should reject all modern day forms of exclusion.
And what they mean when they say that is that we should reject a foreign agent registry.
And of course, a foreign agent registry would apply to a lot of these people.
So they put out calls.
They managed to get buses.
They were funded by community associations.
And they got a ton of a couple of thousand people.
So that gives you an idea of how quickly and how many people they're able to mobilize.
Is it enough to sway an election?
Hard to say.
Is it enough to sway a riding or two?
I think certainly.
And no doubt, when you look at the campaign against Aaron O'Toole, and I have looked into that network a little bit and found some foreign media outlets that were picking up on negative WeChat posts against Aaron and amplifying those messages.
And Aaron, by most means, was a moderate conservative leader.
I wouldn't say he was a hardliner or that anybody would expect him to take a particularly hard line on China.
And we know that Pierre has the potential to be a much maybe firmer leader, I would say, and a lot more aggressive in his foreign policy and things like that.
So when you look at the attack campaign that went up against Aaron O'Toole, and that's not, again, it's not speculative, that was confirmed by CESIS that this happened.
And Aaron was briefed on it.
I think we can expect a much stronger reaction against Pierre.
And I can expect it to be in the tens of thousands.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I mean, geez, what a waste of effort having a campaign against Aaron O'Toole, given how weak he was in the 2021 campaign.
It reminds me of the knock against the Los Angeles Police Department in that in the case against O.J. Simpson, the LAPD framed a guilty man.
But anyway, enough about yesterday's man, Aaron O'Toole.
You mentioned we don't have a foreign agent registry.
Andy, that seems to be a no-brainer to me.
Other nations have this.
Why don't we have it?
Well, that's a good question.
Why don't we have it?
The last one who tried, the last person who tried to introduce one, of course, was Mr. Kenny Chu, and he was a conservative MP.
And he ended up becoming a victim of a WeChat disinformation campaign himself and ended up being unseated in the federal election, unfortunately.
And that piece of legislation that he had introduced died with him.
Now, that's not a coincidence that they happened to go after him so vehemently.
And again, you have to understand a foreign agent registry, it's a piece of common sense legislation.
And it doesn't necessarily say that these activities are illegal.
What it says is that if you take the case of, say, Justin Trudeau's liberal volunteer, you know, if you want to apply it to her, well, yes, if she is reporting on behalf of foreign missions like Xinhan News and China News Service, and if she's going overseas, you know, meeting with the United Front, meeting with Xi Jinping, and not just meeting with him, she actually gives speeches in the Great Hall and direction and things like that.
So she's, you know, got very, very deep ties to the regime.
Politicians Under Scrutiny00:08:38
What it says is that you need to register and let us know what you're doing.
If you're getting money from the government, how you're interacting with them, give us your disbursements.
It's not saying that it's illegal.
It's saying you have to be upfront about those activities.
And if you're lobbying on behalf of a foreign government, it doesn't mean it has to be the Chinese government.
You have to let us know.
And if you don't let us know, and if we catch you doing it, then we'll subject you to FARA.
And this is how, of course, New York was able to nail the people who were running their overseas Chinese police stations as they used FARA against them, which is something that we don't have.
Yeah, no, all we're asking for is transparency.
And when it comes to all this Chinese interference, Andy, I mean, we have a brand new mayor in Toronto, Olivia Chow, and I believe it was the National Post and very few others that reported that she was at a guest at an organization that was pro-Beijing government, received a gift from them.
And it was astonishing because to her credit, Ms. Chow once upon a time was going to bat for the rights of the people in Hong Kong.
But I guess if there's an election on the line, sorry, guys, it's strictly business.
And if this can generate more votes, so be it.
You know, Andy, we're running out of time here, but what I want to, first of all, my take on this, I think in the big picture, there is a tragedy afoot here because we don't have great turnouts at election time in the best of times.
But I'm worried that people hear about all this election interference and it's like they think, oh, you know what?
As I say in Vegas, the fix is in.
It's all predetermined.
What does it matter if I even come out?
It's a predestined fate.
So I'm just wondering if you think, as I do, this might lead to so much voter frustration that they won't show up at the ballot box on election day.
And finally, if you had the ear of the authorities in terms of doing something to prevent this or to be at least transparent, what would the Andy Lee plan be?
Yeah, well, that's, I mean, that is the frustrating part about all of this is it is undermining voter confidence and the integrity of our democratic processes and our election systems.
And, you know, our national security advisors have tried to assuage some of those fears and things like that and say that our elections were secure.
And like I said, I don't believe that even if some ridings were maybe overcome through disinformation campaigns, it would have made a difference in the last election.
That being said, it could make election.
So it's not to be discounted or taken lightly or dismissed any longer because new groups up every day, right?
When I say there's hundreds, I mean like there's new ones coming up every day.
A new one was just launched in Vancouver.
And a lot of times they do have pro-Beijing messaging and they'll find counselors or provincial MPs or mayors or federal candidates and they'll throw their weight behind them.
So, you know, I think the first thing to do is get some more of this information out there in a form of a transparent public inquiry.
I've always been a big proponent of that.
I think that even if we can't see the information and some of it will be classified, it will shine a little bit more light and it will also restore public confidence in the process, which is very, very important.
We have to be confident in our democracy.
So I think that that's part of it and to do it in a non-partisan way.
And unfortunately, the last choice I felt for the special repertoire was a poor one.
And he obviously had a long history with Justin Trudeau and China.
And when pulled in front of committee, it was acknowledged that he had not seen all the information.
And he had put out some conflicting information in his report that contradicted what CESIS told Aaron O'Toole.
Also contradicted some of these leaked CSIS briefings, which brings the point of did he see the CESIS briefings?
Were they presented to him?
Were they not presented to him at all?
So that's part of it.
And then part of it is that we need a FARA.
We need a Foreign Agent Registration Act.
Like if we had one, that would have cut so much off right before it started.
Because they're not going to bother if they know that they're openly conducting activities.
They're not going to be risk going through what the fellows in New York went through, right?
We know who's running these so-called overseas police stations, and there's been no action on them.
But they certainly could have been subjected to more serious action if we had a FARA-type piece of legislation in place.
So that's part of it.
And also, politicians need to stop engaging with these news outlets.
I'm not the first person to figure out that most of these foreign media outlets are just covers or satellite stations for state TV sources, right?
I refuse to believe that.
I refuse to believe that CSIS didn't know it.
Of course, they know it.
Of course, these briefings have passed through the PMO and have come to somebody's attention, but they continue to engage with them.
And they understand that these are news outlets that in other countries are designated foreign agents of the Chinese government.
So I think that we can expect them to quell their activities a little bit and cool their heels in that regard.
Or I'd like to see that, anyways, from our politicians being a little bit more responsible.
Olivia Chow is a great example, actually.
And I don't know, Olivia Chow is not a Chinese agent.
She's not.
I don't believe that for a minute.
I actually believe that she's firmly pro-democracy.
I believe that in my heart, I don't think that she's working for the Chinese state.
But she's a great example in how she had no qualms at election time of tapping this association, the Fujing Association, which is known pro-Beijing.
The people who run it are not everyday Canadian citizens.
These are the sort of people who go overseas, get invited to political conferences, and go and meet with Xi Jinping.
Okay, so this is not your standard behavior for a Canadian citizen when you're invited overseas to go meet the supreme leader of China.
We have to hear exactly what's going on there.
So Olivia is a great example of somebody who got caught up tapping these networks.
And when she got caught, she was very, very sorry.
She actually put out an apology video, but it's too bad she put it out only in Cantonese.
I had it translated.
I actually asked her, I want to reach out to her and ask her if she could read it in English.
But this is what people say.
And some of the articles and her supporters say, well, this is a necessary evil for politicians to tap these networks to win that support.
Well, why is this a necessary evil to support a group that you know is pro-Beijing and maybe goes against your own moral beliefs?
As I believe that it shouldn't be a necessary evil in a democratic country, right?
100%.
Winning an election, you shouldn't need to tap that network to feel confident that you're going to be able to get that vote.
And a lot of the stuff that I go through is done with Chinese Canadians who are pro-democracy.
And, you know, we go through this stuff and they're appalled to see their leaders, you know, using these, you know, these United Front organizations and things like that to win elections.
It's very, very disheartening.
Well, Andy, I got to tell you, in the here and now, in the short term at least, I remain very pessimistic that Blackface is going to do anything tangible because I personally think the primary beneficiary of Chinese interference is indeed the Blackface liberals.
And so I think we might need regime change here in Canada before we get any traction on this file.
Need More Truth About Ukraine00:03:06
But it was a wonderful piece you authored.
I look forward to your follow-ups and let's keep an eye on this.
So thank you very much, Andy Lee, for joining me today.
Yeah, thanks for having me anytime, Dave.
Got it.
Special thanks to my friend David Menzies for doing the guest segment.
Hey, let me just leave with you with a final thought on Ukraine.
Like I say, I stumbled across that statistic about its economy growing, and I was very skeptical.
I didn't retweet it or anything until I chased down the original source, the World Bank.
And I mentioned that to another senior journalist I bumped into in town, very senior, at a very large publication.
I won't say who.
He didn't believe it.
He was stunned.
He said, no, no, their economy's in a shambles, he said.
And this is a smart dude.
I think it's because we have been told only one side of the story.
By the way, I later sent him the documents and I had a bit of a back and forth with him.
But my point is, there's a smart guy in the media, skeptical guy, often a contrarian.
He was certain that Russia was just on the brink of collapsing and that, of course, their economy was dashed.
And of course, it's absurd to think that Russia could even exceed Germany.
Germany has been an industrial heartland for 100 years.
And it was incredible to watch him realize that everything he thought he knew was wrong, if these World Bank figures are correct.
And I'm quite sure that they are.
And to watch him sort of recalculate disillusionment there, because I think that so many people, and this guy is not a bad guy in any way, he's not an ideologue.
And to see him say, oh, so that's the truth, I could see other questions in his mind, like, oh, so maybe victory isn't just around the corner, and maybe a diplomatic solution might be something we should even consider.
And maybe when we say we're going to stick with this war till the end, what does that mean when your enemy is actually getting stronger?
I think we need a lot more truth about Ukraine.
And I think we need to do what's best for the Ukrainian people.
Obviously, our interest as Canadians is to do what's best for us.
But if we're going to meddle overseas, and it looks like we are, what's actually the best thing for Ukrainian men and women?
Is it to continue to send them in as cannon fodder to be chewed up by Putin's military?
I just can't think that doing the same thing for another 18 months is the way.
You tell me.
You tell me if wanting peace, if you can want peace without being a Putin shill.
In fact, isn't peace something you only make with your enemies?
I don't think you make peace with your friends.
You're already at peace with them.
It's a tricky one, but watching my counterpart at another media company see the scales fall off his eyes was quite something.