The West Block – Episode 32, Season 12

THE WEST BLOCK

Episode 32, Season 12

Sunday, April 30, 2023

Host: Mercedes Stephenson

Guests:

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister

David Frum, The Atlantic

Location:

Ottawa, ON

Mercedes Stephenson: Talking tough on crime: a plan to buy back prohibitive firearms, and a deal with the Americans to crack down on cross border gun smuggling.

I’m Mercedes Stephenson. Welcome to The West Block.

Amid a spike in violent crime and allegations from the opposition that the government is soft on crime, the Liberals take a new approach. Will it be enough?

And déjà vu, it looks like Biden versus Trump part two for the U.S. presidential race. We’ll take a closer look.

A rise in violent crime, including a tax on public transit have many Canadians concerned about safety in their communities. Pair that with debates over gun control, bail reform and worries about human trafficking, and there’s a lot to talk about with the Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino who is here today.

Minister, welcome to the show. Great to have you here in person.

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Thanks for having me back.

Mercedes Stephenson: I know on Friday you had a big meeting with the U.S. secretary in charge of homeland defence, as well as the U.S. Attorney General. You were talking about cross border crime. That’s a big issue, but a lot of Canadians are wondering what you’re going to do to keep them safer in their communities now in the face of this rising tide of violent crime.

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Well first as you said, we concluded a very successful cross border crime forum. Secretary Mayorkas and I, my counterpart in the United States, talked about re-establishing this committee to strengthen collaboration to deal with issues like gun crime. And so coming out of this forum, we have negotiated four new or soon to be updated memorandum of understanding between the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency and their American counterpart enforcement agencies. What this means in concrete terms is more tracing of illegal guns, greater capacity to go after ghost guns, which are designed to evade the long arm of the law. And finally, more joint operations so that we can prosecute those criminals who try to traffic and terrorize their communities with guns. And I would point out as an example, Project Moneypenny, where very recently we saw as a by-product of that collaboration. Over 170 illegal firearms seized. We’ve made progress. We need to make more progress, and this is another example on how we’re strengthening our borders to stop the illegal flow of gun smuggling into our country.

Mercedes Stephenson: Take us through how this works in practice, in terms of allowing you to stop more of that influx of smuggled guns from the United States.

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: In practice, what it means is strengthening the sharing of intelligence. So, one of the things that law enforcement agencies do is they use wiretapping technology to identify the source of where an illegal gun criminal network might start and then stop that illegal flow before it starts. That’s actually one of the tools that’s in our landmark legislation under Bill C-21. The other thing that we can do is collaborate on both sides of the border when it comes to using new technologies to go after ghost guns. Now these are guns…

Mercedes Stephenson: So what are ghost guns?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Ghost guns are—they use 3D technology, 3D printer technology. So this is fast. It’s cheap, and it’s used by gangs on both sides of the border. And we now have technology that can overcome the challenges by tracing the origins of that material, 3D guns, and then we can prosecute and bring those criminals to justice.

Last year, we seized 11,000 illegal firearms at the border. That’s a record, but by strengthening collaboration with the United States, we can go further. That’s how we’re strengthening our borders and stopping the illegal flow of guns into Canada.

Mercedes Stephenson: Do you have any sense what the breakdown is in terms of crime guns, because this question gets asked all the time. It seems like there’s never a clear answer. How many originate in Canada and are either legal gun owners or stolen from legal gun owners versus how many are coming across the border?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: It’ll depend on who you speak with, but I would agree that the majority do come from the United States, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s important to have a forum like this so we can coordinate the RCMP, coordinate the CBSA…

Mercedes Stephenson: But we don’t really know exact numbers?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Well, you…

Mercedes Stephenson: When you’re targeting this?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: You could take statistics that range anywhere between 50 to 75 per cent. There are some who say that that number is even higher. From my point is…

Mercedes Stephenson: From coming across the border?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Correct, which is why it’s so important that we’re taking decisive action and the things that we’re talking about here, so increasing tracing. In the last couple of years, the RCMP have increased their capacity to trace illegal guns by 250 per cent. We’re now going to build on that momentum by strengthening our collaboration with the United States, and this is also going to be backed by $450 million into the CBSA to again, give them more people, more technology and a greater capacity to stop the illegal flow of guns into Canada.

Mercedes Stephenson: Gun Buyback program, you had a big announcement on this last week. Critics are saying it’s moving very, very slowly.  You still don’t have a timeline for when you’re actually going to try to get guns bought back from individual owners versus businesses where it’s pretty easy to check in the inventory and go in. It’s much harder to trace where individual guns might be in the country. Why is it that this far after announcing your legislation you still don’t have a clear plan on how this is going to be executed?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Well I’m going to come to that. But first, let’s take a step back for the benefit of your viewers. This government put in place a national ban on assault style firearms. There are AR-15 style firearms that have been used in shooting tragedies like in Portapique in Truro. We just marked the third anniversary of Port a Pic in Truro. I went to Nova Scotia with the prime minister to receive the final report of the mass casualty commission who issued 130 recommendations, one of which was to call on the government to do more work around strengthening the ban against assault style firearms. Now the logical…

Mercedes Stephenson: And just to be clear, in Portapique, those guns were smuggled in from the United States, though.

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Which is why the first item that we just discussed is another show of our commitment to strengthen our work at the border. But coming back to the buyback program. You can ban them, but you’ve also got to make sure that you remove them from our communities. And so the agreement we reached with industry leaders will help us facilitate the first tranche of the buyback of those…

Mercedes Stephenson: But what about with individual Canadians, which is the far harder part, especially when you have provinces like Saskatchewan and Alberta saying, you know, over my dead body. You’re not going to take this gun.

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Well, we’re going to work with provinces and territories. We support them in the role of their provincial priorities, but what I want to come back to is how we’re going to be in two phases. So first, with the cooperation of gun business owners, we can take a first good bite out of the apple. We’ve already identified with a lot of hard work, approximately 11 thousand registered assault style firearms, which we’re going to be able to get out of communities while making businesses whole. Then after that, we’re going to roll out our program, which will focus on individual gun owners.

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Mercedes Stephenson: But why don’t you have a plan for that yet?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Well first of all, this is a program that is without precedent. It’s national in scale. Budget 2023 allocates approximately $29 million to set up a program and the milestone that we introduced last week…

Mercedes Stephenson: But it’s expected to cost billions, isn’t it?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: We’re going to be transparent with Canadians about the costing of it, but the announcement that we made last week is a significant milestone because we’re going to be able to, with the cooperation of businesses, get those first 11 thousand assault style firearms off our streets and out of our communities. These are guns that have no place in our neighbourhoods.

Mercedes Stephenson: Well let’s talk about bail reform, another big topic with the rise in violent crime, which has been over 30 per cent since your government took over in 2015. There’s a lot of concern about this. People are worried about taking the bus or the subway. They’re worried in their communities. And one of the things that’s been identified and your government has talked about is concerns about bail conditions for repeat violent offenders. You’ve promised to do something about that. I think that was about a month ago. I haven’t seen anything new. Will there be legislation before the end of the session on bail reform?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: The short answer is yes. And I can tell you a little bit about bail because as you know, I’ve worked on the frontlines of the criminal justice system. We’re committed to dealing with this through reforms to our bail laws, including focusing on repeat violent offenders. And I share the concerns about the recent spate of violence, particularly in some larger urban centres like Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary. People need to be able to go from point A to point B, whether it’s to work, or to play, or to socialize safely, including on public transit system. But it’s not just a bail reform. We also need to make investments in law enforcement. This is a government that has put nearly a billion into supporting law enforcement. We’ll have more to say about that in the not-too-distant future. But we also need to address the social determinants of gun crime. And this is where the Liberal Party stands itself in a separate life from the Conservatives. We believe that you’ve got to increase the capacity of local organizations on the ground when it comes to mental health services. This is work I’m doing in partnership with Minister Bennett, the first ever federal minister of mental health affairs. We’ve got to go after the root causes of crime so that we can stop tragedy and loss before it occurs.

Mercedes Stephenson: And there’s certainly root causes with people will say, you know, if someone is repeatedly doing the same things and they’re violent, potentially a danger to society, I hear you saying that you recognize that and you’re going to try to move forward. Another topic that I wanted to talk to you about today is human smuggling, really a great concern to people. It’s also increased and you have people who are taking tremendous advantage of people who are very vulnerable trying to cross the border. And it goes both ways. Into Canada and out of Canada, in the U.S., the RCMP have said they really don’t have a lot of tools to stop this. Are you looking into changing the laws around human smuggling to make this tougher?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Well that’s one of the things that we discussed today at the cross border crime forum last week and we talked about how we can again share information and intelligence with our American counterparts, to identify human smuggling and trafficking rings. I will say that we have already in place, a national human trafficking strategy, which gives, again, more money to law enforcement, more money to victim services so that we can safely reintegrate those who have been victimized. I think another area where we need to do some more work is online, and in particular, with young people, young girls, women who are groomed and then victimized as a result of some of the sexual predators who are out there.

Mercedes Stephenson: We just have a few moments left. But in the U.S., we saw, of course, that raid on the so-called Chinese police stations. Canadians have heard that the RCMP put vehicles—RCMP vehicles outside to deter them. Are there any developments on charges there or what the government is doing to prevent these stations form simply moving to a new location?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Mercedes, I want to be very clear about this, that any form of foreign interference is unacceptable, including these so-called police stations. As you know, the RCMP has issued statements saying that they’ve taken concrete action to shut them down and I have every confidence that they are going to remain vigilant that if there are any other examples of this that pop up, that they’re going to stay on top of it. I would also point out that in Budget 2023, which was recently tabled and which is being debated now by Parliament, that we’re adding another $49 million to the RCMP not only to bust up these efforts to interfere through foreign and hostile initiatives, but support those who are the targets of foreign interference. And I can tell you that transnational repression, the intimidation, the harassment, the targeting of people of various decent from around the world, is a top priority for us. We need to support them and that’s why the setting up of the registry that I launched consultations of a few weeks back that will be concluding on May 9^th, so I’ll have more to say about that.

Mercedes Stephenson: So when will that registry be coming then?

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: As quickly as we can, but we’ve also got to make sure that we do it right. So as you can see, we’re full core press. This is a busy portfolio, but we’re working around the clock with our American friends, continently to keep Canadians safe.

Mercedes Stephenson:  Minister Marco Mendicino, thank you for joining us today.

Marco Mendicino, Public Safety Minister: Thank you for having me.

Joe Biden, U.S. President: “That’s been the work of my first term, to fight for our democracy.”

Mercedes Stephenson: Up next, U.S. President Joe Biden makes it official. He’ll be running for re-election, setting the stage for a potential rematch with former president Donald Trump.

Mercedes Stephenson: It has been quite a week in American politics, starting with a big announcement from President Joe Biden.

Joe Biden, U.S. President: “When I ran for president four years ago, I said we’re in a battle for the soul of America and we still are. But the question we’re facing is whether in the years ahead, we have more freedom or less freedom. Let’s finish this job. I know we can, because this is the United States of America. There’s nothing, simply nothing we cannot do, if we do it together.”

Mercedes Stephenson: Biden’s 2024 re-election video was met with this reaction from the frontrunner for the Republicans.

Donald Trump, Former U.S. President: “There has never been a greater contrast between two successive administrations in all of American history. Ours being greatness and theirs being failure. With your support in the election, we will defeat Joe Biden in 2024. We will restore our nation’s dignity and we will prevent World War III from happening.”

Mercedes Stephenson: If what you just heard former president Donald Trump and President Joe Biden say sounds familiar, you’re not alone. It’s a repeat from the last presidential campaign. But could there be a spoiler with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis jumping in, potentially. And then of course, there’s the Tucker Carlson factor. The popular Conservative Fox News host was fired from the network last week.

To talk about all of this, I’m joined by political commentator and staff writer at The Atlantic, David Frum. Thanks so much for joining us today, David.

David Frum, The Atlantic: Thank you.

Mercedes Stephenson: I took a look at your article in The Atlantic and you always have a lot of insight about this. A lot of folks expected Joe Biden to be a one-term president, and it looks like that may not be the case now. What do you think of how the Democrats are currently positioned heading into this race?

David Frum, The Atlantic: Well you quoted a very key sentence from his opening declaration. And here—let me just underscore why this is so significant. Typically, across the developed world, there’s a party of the right and a party of the left. And the party of the right talks about freedom and the party of the left talks about security and voters balance. Right now do we need more of both of those good things, obviously? Do we need a little more of one or do we need a little more of the other?

Biden has seized the freedom issue because he’s not just running against Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee. Over the past three years, Republicans have used their control of state governments in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe versus Wade, the abortion decision, to fasten a new system of surveillance and harassment on American women. The State of Idaho has put bans in place that prevent minor girls from travelling out of state unsupervised if they might be pregnant. So Biden is seizing the freedom issue and saying, freedom is not just freedom for old people. It’s also freedom for young people. It’s not just freedom for men, it’s freedom for women, too. And that’s going to be a very powerful theme for him in 2024.

Mercedes Stephenson: And Biden has also basically caught onto this economic theme and he’s been able to, you were talking about turnaround some of those negative economic factors and address—that’s traditionally a Republican stronghold. When you look overall at the Republican strategy, where do you see it at?

David Frum, The Atlantic: The Republicans had a strategy at least on paper and they’ve put an X through everything they should have done. They should have replaced Trump. One of the most dangerous and unpopular and—figures in American history now under criminal indictment in the State of New York, probably more criminal indictments to come. And he’s also fighting a civil action in New York, where he’s been accused of rape and there’s a defamation action. He’s not on trial for rape. He’s on trial for defamation. It’s a civil action but if he loses, it will prove—it’ll be proof that the rape that was complained of did happen. He’s got a host of legal troubles. They wanted to replace him. They didn’t. They wanted to find a way to reassure American women that in the aftermath of the striking down on Roe versus Wade, they would not be surveilled. They would not be harassed. Indeed—but state governments are doing the opposite. They needed to not make it too obvious that—I mean, both parties tried to maximize the voting system to their own advantage, but Republicans have done things at the state level that are so blatantly unfair that they actually invite a counter reaction and the people whose votes are supposed to be discouraged say, no. We’re turning out because you can’t outright forbid us. You can only make it difficult. Make us stand in line. We’ll stand in the line. So there are a series of things and the most important thing of all is they were counting on recession in 23-24, and so far, the recession has not materialized.

Mercedes Stephenson: When you look at the frontrunner, it’s Donald Trump, which a lot of people did not expect. Some are saying maybe Ron DeSantis can challenge him. Others say that that is unlikely. How is it that when the Republicans have had all of this time to figure out who they’re going to run and a lot of big money, which you talk about in your article which was opposing Trump that they’ve wound up in this situation where there seems to be nobody who can effectively challenge him, at least that’s announcing so far.

David Frum, The Atlantic: Well to the extent that the Republican Party has a central brain. The central brain did try to stop Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis got—was a re-elected governor of Florida in 2022 with a very handsome majority. He’s raised $80 million of state funds. He’s got another $40 million of money he can use federally. And very strikingly, from the time Donald Trump left office in January of ’21, until a couple of weeks ago, he was absolutely prohibited on Fox News. He never made an appearance. Fox locked him out, a devastating thing. So, the communication structure of the Republican Party, the big money all said we want somebody else probably Ron DeSantis not Trump. And Trump beat them again, as he did in 2016. DeSantis is—has just deflated. He’s now trailing 30 points behind Trump among Republicans and the Fox News embargo has broken down. Fox isn’t—Trump is now on Fox all the time, once again.

Mercedes Stephenson: And speaking of Fox, of course, Tucker Carlson out of that network last week. It came as a big shock to a lot of people. He posted a video on Twitter that some were speculating sounded like maybe a trial balloon that he might jump into the presidential race. Do you think that there’s a chance that will happen?

David Frum, The Atlantic: Well look, people have a lot of ego. You know, Robert Kennedy Junior, the anti-vaxxers running for president. Marianne Williamson, the crank—crystal lady, she’s running for president and people run for president. But just to put this in perspective, Tucker Carlson is a very popular cable news TV host. What that means is on any given night when he was on the air, somewhere around 2.5 million people watched his show. That’s good. That’s making money for him and for his network. There are 330 million in the United States, so that’s—you do the math—that’s 328 million or so who are not watching the show. So, there’s a big difference between what it takes to make you rich and famous on cable news and what it makes—takes to make you a credible candidate for a party leader in a vast country like the United States.

Mercedes Stephenson: Let’s talk about age. This is something that I hear a lot of folks talking about in passing. The two candidates who in the frontrun—frontrunner seats: Biden and Trump are both of a significant age. Joe Biden is currently 80 years old. He’ll be 82 at the start of the 2024 presidential election campaign. And if he finishes his term, he’d be 86. Donald Trump is currently 76. That means he’d be 78 at the tart—start of the presidential campaign—pardon me—and 82 if he finished his term. Is age a factor and why do you think we’re seeing candidates that are running at such an advanced age, which by the way is not ageism or to suggest that people can’t do this job at an older age, but it is realistically very physically taxing and very mentally taxing.

David Frum, The Atlantic: So, half a century ago, a little more, a man named Konrad Adenauer was chancellor of Germany, and he ran for his last term of office at the age of, I think, 82 or 83 or something like that. And his opponents challenged him on the grounds that maybe 82 or 83 is a little old to seek your final term as a chancellor of Germany. And Adenauer ran on the slogan: No experiments. And his message was when he took over the job, the country was bum flat. People were starving. Now he’d been chancellor for 10 years, people had their job—the houses were built. The houses were going up. People had motor scooters and cars, and things were coming back to normal and yeah, older than ideal, but no experiments. And I think something like that is going to be Biden’s message. Yeah, he probably is older than a president—than a person seeking that office should be. The alternative is Donald Trump. And while Biden is a little slower than he was as a younger man, Trump is just as pathological and criminal as he was as a younger man. And facing that choice, they want the older guy.

Mercedes Stephenson: A lot of folks were very excited when Kamala Harris came in as the vice president. First black woman to be in that position. We haven’t seen a lot of her throughout the Biden presidency. Do you think that’s going to change on the campaign trail and they’re going to put her in the window again?

David Frum, The Atlantic: I think the Biden-Harris relationship has been tangled. They have not showcased her, and maybe when you’re a president who’s 80, you don’t like to be reminded that there is a younger person around the corner who might have the job at any moment. But given that she is the running mate, they have to make an asset out of her. She’s either an asset or a liability. And if the Democratic Party doesn’t think she’s an asset, who else is going to? So they need to treat her more like one. And that means showcasing her and that means giving her the kind of jobs that a vice president can succeed at. You know, Biden, early on said we’re going to give her responsibility for the border. Well that’s a formula for failure, because vice presidents have visibility, they have authority but they don’t have power. So you don’t give them a job where power is needed because they can’t succeed. Give them a job where their visibility can make a difference and their lack of power isn’t a problem and then they can succeed. They needed to make her more of a success than they have done to date.

Mercedes Stephenson: David Frum, thank you so much for joining us with your insight today. We appreciate it, as always.

David Frum, The Atlantic: Thank you.

Mercedes Stephenson: Up next, what I’ll be watching as Alberta gets ready for a tight election race.

Mercedes Stephenson: Now for one last thing…

On Monday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is expected to drop the writ, with voters heading to the polls on May 29^th. Many are expecting the campaign to be a wild ride between UCP leader Danielle Smith and NDP leader Rachel Notley. Polling shows a tight race between the NDP and UCP right now, with the two leaders tied at 36 per cent each of the projected vote. But a significant group of Albertans, almost one in four say they are still undecided. During the campaign, all eyes will be on Calgary, where I’m from. The city that must act as a litmus test as Calgary’s true blue ridings would need to swing orange for the NDP to win. A tough sell for some in a predominantly Conservative province but given how voters are split, nothing is off the table. We’ll be keeping a close eye on it, and that’s our show for today. .

Thanks for hanging out with us and I’ll see you next Sunday.