The News Rundown

This New York farmer is overwhelmed by illegal crossings from Canada, caught on camera

An American farmer near the US-Canada border has caught dozens of illegal border crossings coming in from Canada, going viral when he posted footage and pictures from his trail cameras showing dozens of people, mostly Indian migrants, crossing the border on foot into the US.
Chris Oliver's farm sits just east of the Dundee, Que., border crossing around 110 kilometres southwest of Montreal. It is part of an area that runs roughly 100 kilometres from Cornwall, Ont., and east to Champlain, N.Y., that sees some of the highest rates of U.S.-bound illegal crossings anywhere along the Canada-U.S. border, according to court records and U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
The U.S. Border Patrol intercepted just over 8,000 people, mostly from India, crossing between June and August through an area called the Swanton Sector, which includes Oliver's farm. That was nearly quadruple the number over the same period last year.
Canadian and U.S. law enforcement say human smuggling organizations operate throughout this stretch of rivers, brush and farmlands. The patterns of movement caught by Oliver's trail cameras suggest his farm may currently be one of their chosen routes.
In some videos, the same male individual appears talking or using a cellphone and leading groups which primarily move through the area in the late evenings or early morning hours like clockwork, says Oliver.
One video stands out for Oliver. It's from 1:27 a.m. on Sept. 5. A group of three men and two women walk out of the night and across the frame. One of the men leads the group, holding a cellphone and, with his free hand, gripping the hand of another man as if guiding him as they walk in the dark.
This happened less than 12 hours after the RCMP apprehended a Pakistani national suspected of planning a terrorist attack in the U.S. Canadian and U.S. court records allege Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, was using human smugglers to cross into the U.S. through this area between Quebec and New York state.
Matthew Eamer, a recently retired detective with the Ontario Provincial Police, was a lead investigator with the integrated border enforcement team out of Cornwall, Ont. The team includes the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency and other bodies.
He was part of the team that disrupted a human smuggling organization linked to the deaths of four Indian and four Romanian family members who drowned in the St. Lawrence River during a failed human smuggling attempt last March.
Eamer says investigators always worried about a radicalized individual like Khan finding a way across the border. Eamer said: "Some of them are economic migrants that they're just looking for a better life in another country. But there's some people with malicious intent."
Eamer says Canada's current laws targeting this type of human smuggling focus on the conspiracy part of the action — that there is a clear intent on physically getting someone across the border.
He says the federal government could amend the Criminal Code or the Immigration and Refugee Act to make all aspects of a border run a criminal offence — whether driving, harbouring, or aiding crossings in any way, similar to U.S. laws.
Another video from Plattsburgh NY shows a group of immigrants from India pile out of a taxi minivan beside the Clinton County government building in this small town half an hour from the Canadian border. They are quickly swarmed by a half a dozen fellow Indian immigrants who’ve waited hours for this "business opportunity" ie, taxis offering to take them south to New York City.
This is just one clear example of the informal economy that’s sprung up following a significant increase in unauthorized crossings across the usually sleepy northern border over the last year and a half.
So far this year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have had nearly 20,000 encounters with migrants between ports of entry on the northern border. That’s a 95% increase from last year. It’s not entirely clear what’s driving this increase, but nearly 60% of those encounters were with Indian nationals.
Shivam, a 20-year-old driver from India who goes by only a surname, said in an informal interview: “I rent a car, I come here. So people coming, I’m just helping them.”
Shivam himself crossed into the U.S. illegally a few weeks ago, through the thick woods connecting Canada to upstate New York. He says it was challenging: “I had to walk through the forest and at night it’s dark and there’s lots of trees and bushes and the forest is full of mud because of the rain,” Shivam says. He’s now awaiting a hearing in front of an immigration judge after claiming asylum in the U.S. But he admits, he came here mostly for work, and because “I get more opportunities in the U.S. compared to Canada.”
This has become a huge issue with illegal Canadian border crossings into the US fuelling a sort of reverse Roxham Road, the border area in Quebec where many people had previously crossed from the US into Canada over the past several years. Now we're seeing it in reverse, and the US government is unlikely to be as lenient as Trudeau has been.
Travellers have been worried that this might lead to a crackdown on security, with the threat of visa-free travel being taken away in the name of combating terrorism. The Canadian government needs to take this seriously, otherwise all lawful travellers across North America will be impacted.
Supplementals:

The Jasper wildfire was one of Canada’s biggest news stories this summer and initially of course blame went to climate change.
Now that the House of Commons is back in session the standing committee on environment and sustainable resources is seeking answers from environment minister Steven Guilbeault.
The committee hearing at first started to resemble question period, where Steven Guilbeault attempted to pin the blame on the Conservatives but that was quickly shut down.
The discussion then turned to whether or not the federal government had a hand in what made the Jasper wildfire so bad.
In the eyes of Guilbeault and the ministry there was no stopping the fire.
Guilbeault told the committee that Jasper was one of Canada’s most “fire prepared” communities.
As the fire was running through the park in early August we detailed the research and warnings done by various people including researchers Ken Hodges and Emilie Begin who were warning of such a fire since 2018.
Emails exchanged in February of this year were also tabled at the committee where people inside the ministry of environment discussed canceling prescribed burns due to the public’s concern over drought conditions and the media’s concern for fires.
The issue at hand here is on display in the email, executive director for Parks Canada wrote, “public and political perception may become more important than actual prescription windows.”
This is one email in the chain of many but it is displayed in hard evidence that Parks Canada was concerned more about perception than actually what the park needed.
The reason this email is so important is not that it puts the blame on one person or one part of the ministry, it’s because it showcases that from the beginning there was an aspect of this fire that wasn’t talked about by the media.
That aspect is the decisions made by Parks Canada in terms of forest management for our national parks.
Avid outdoorsmen and First Nations folks alike have said the same thing about this fire.
Before it’s too late changes need to be made at Parks Canada to ensure that the people who are experienced in the back country have the necessary say to influence policy of what should be done before another town burns down.
The most striking admission of Guilbeault’s testimony this week was that Jasper was the most prepared town and yet 30% of the town burned and this fire should be viewed as an example of preparation and success.
Conservative MP Gerald Soroka asked Guilbeault, “Minister, if this is an example of preparation and success, what does failure look like?”

Parks Canada was warned in 2018 and it happened and unless changes are made it can happen again.

Supplementals:

Seaspan says government needs to financially support shipbuilding or ferries will not be built in B.C.

BC Ferries has been in the news again over the past week, with the announcement that they're looking to commission the building of 7 new ships to eventually replace older ship models that have been in service for decades. While this may seem exciting for frequent boarders, these new ships are years away, maybe even a decade away from service. What's more, is that even though there's a huge opportunity to support local BC jobs with the building of these ferries right here on the West Coast, it's something that will likely never happen again.
It shouldn't be impossible for BC to build its own homegrown ferries, but it comes down to rising domestic costs for skilled labour, according to Seaspan, which is the owner of B.C.’s largest shipyards. Seaspan says it would like to bid on upcoming B.C. Ferries contracts for major vessels, but it’s impossible unless the province provides incentives to shipbuilders.
In a Thursday statement with the headline “B.C. ferries will not be built in B.C.,” the company notes that other provinces, such as Quebec, support their shipyards by requiring vessels to be built domestically and providing tax credits, forgivable loans and grants surpassing $1 billion.
Canadian shipyards are also up against tough global competition, since they can’t compete with low-wage countries that have lower employment, environmental and safety standards, Seaspan said. “In B.C. the wages that we pay our skilled trades workforce are substantially higher than in these other countries. This contributes to a significant competitive disadvantage for B.C. shipyards and workers.”
Yards in Victoria or Vancouver once turned out large and small ferries for B.C. Ferries’ fleet, but in recent years, those contracts have been going to shipyards operating in Europe, including in Germany, Poland and Romania. It’s not uncommon for international yards to receive support from their respective governments.
With B.C. Ferries hoping to order seven new major vessels, the province should “seize the opportunity” to ensure some are built in B.C., and “generate the significant socio-economic benefits with capital projects of this size,” the company said. Seaspan said it would like to participate in building some of the new vessels, especially the final two.
It’s currently building non-combat vessels for the Canadian navy and coast guard in North Vancouver, contracts that prompted the company to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to modernize its facilities.
Seaspan spokesperson Dave Hargreaves said: “What [BC Ferries] needs is a strategic decision, which can only be made by the B.C. government … to decide to build in B.C. and then reap all the economic benefits and innovation benefits and supply chain benefits and other strategic benefits that arise from building here in B.C.”
Here are the issues with building local that make it an impossibility: other countries even within the EU can get ships built at a much lower cost that here in Canada, due to subsidies those foreign governments give their shipyards, but also due to the much higher wages that skilled trades workers get in BC, partially due to how expensive it is to live in BC.
BC Ferries in their press release, said that cost to users at the end of the day is a primary issue and therefore, no bidder will be incentivized to include significant Canadian/BC domestic content in their bids.
Here is the other main issue, we've been down this road before in BC, and it didn't end well. In the late 1990s, the Glen Clark NDP government tried to revitalize B.C.’s shipbuilding sector by requiring BC Ferries to have three new fast ferries built in B.C.
This subsidized ferry building program ended up being a political disaster. The project ended up costing $460 million -- twice the original estimated cost – was three years behind schedule, and the boats that the program delivered were total duds. They were only in service a short time before they were removed from service and sold for $19 million.
While B.C.'s shipbuilding industry has come a long way since then, we still have to ask why Seaspan is aggressively pursuing this topic in the media, and it all comes down to timing. With a provincial election less than a month away, both David Eby's NDP and John Rustad's BC Conservatives are neck in neck and have been making new promises almost daily. It stands to reason that one or the other party might look at this story and think that a BC government should look at subsidising this program to build ships locally.
However, if it does come down to it, both parties are better off using the money for something else. While it would be nice to be able to invest money into BC shipyards, as we've seen in the past, it can end quite disastrously, and we'd be better off not returning to the NDP of the 1990's.
While we can respect Seaspan for their hustle in trying to drum up more business, it'd be a shame if taxpayers were on the hook for it once more, at a time when the budget can hardly afford to expand further, and without BC Ferries customers wanting to pay even higher prices at the terminals.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

CSIS says a former parliamentarian may have worked on behalf of a foreign government

Most of 2023 and the first half of this year was dominated by questions of foreign interference in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections. That topic has faded from the memory of many and we’ll get to the media’s coverage on that but first there are new allegations that a former parliamentarian is suspected of "having worked to influence parliamentary business" on behalf of an unnamed foreign government.
This emerged in the ongoing foreign interference inquiry on Friday and there are now more questions than answers as always.
"It is suspected that the foreign government sought to thwart the candidate's bid given their support for issues perceived to be contrary to the foreign government's interests," says a written summary presented to the inquiry.
There was another case as well where it appears as though a foreign government tried to get a Liberal candidate defeated.
CSIS could provide no additional details about the countries or people involved.
CSIS had also been asked to compile a list of all known examples of foreign interference in Canadian politics. So far we know the following.
Pakistan tried to influence federal politics.
Foreign interference that resulted in a briefing to security-cleared representatives of the Liberal Party of Canada shortly before the 2021 election, and to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shortly after.
A foreign government actively supporting a candidate in a 2019 Liberal nomination race in Don Valley North.
The government of India being suspected of using proxy agents to — according to a CSIS document tabled at the inquiry — "clandestinely provide financial support to specific candidates from three political parties in a federal election. The receipt of funds cannot be confirmed, nor the candidates' potential awareness of the origins."
These two cases and the revelations of some of the countries on the list muddy the waters and give us a real kick to get our affairs pertaining to foreign interference in order.
Former CSIS Director David Vigneault also mentioned “cognitive warfare”, a method being employed by China against Taiwan to send the message that its annexation is inevitable.
It also became clear on Friday that Justin Trudeau’s staff shielded him from Chinese election interference reports.
There was a prepared “targeting paper” for the Prime Minister and his staff but it was never shared by then National Security and Intelligence Advisor Jody Thomas.
The running theory on this is that it was done to help downplay or avoid another political crisis for the Trudeau government.
The testimony at the public inquiry is revealing new things but the scale and shock of it has faded largely from the public's memory.
It ran the media cycle in the first half of this year but has since largely faded away.
There was the supposed list of MPs and the downplaying of that by Green MP Elizabeth May who said there was no list.
The media of course also had its own role in downplaying the situation in that “naming names was never the answer!”
And that there would need to be some kind of due process to actually fix the problems, and yes, there would be, but the names would at least shine a light on what was happening.
The media continues to run interference by saying that all opposition party leaders should be briefed so they can take handle on the issue from within their caucuses.
Aaron Wherry of the CBC points to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre refusing to get briefed on the matter but as we have detailed in the past Poilievre did this so that he could keep talking publicly about the case.
The reality of the matter is that this has been happening for years, the infiltration of our country by foreign actors, mainly China.
We detailed it back when this podcast was producing episodes in the single digit range which goes back to 2017.
It has never been a glamorous story for the media to cover so they didn’t. It still isn’t but the Trudeau government is approaching the usual 8-10 year expiration date of federal governments so the media needs to talk about stories that shift the narrative in that direction.
Foreign interference is as important as always. It’s been happening for years and will continue to happen until we take our own national security seriously.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“Minister, if this is an example of preparation and success, what does failure look like?” - Conservative MP Gerald Soroka questioning Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault on the aftermath of the Jasper wildfire.

Word of the Week

Clandestine - planned or done in secret, especially describing something that is not officially allowed.

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Show Data

Episode Title: Clandestine Crossings
Teaser: Border crossings from Canada to the US are on the rise, Steven Guilbeault is under fire for the Jasper fire response, and Seaspan lobbies for ferries to be built in BC. Also, the foreign interference issue gets completely ignored.
Recorded Date: September 28, 2024
Release Date: September 29, 2024
Duration: 51:3
Edit Notes: None

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX