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Bob Mackin 

It is too good to be true. 

Canada’s Liberal Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, flogging a scheme to earn at least $20,000 a month, with a minimal investment of $350. 

A company, whose website is registered to a service provider in Chicago, is behind ads on YouTube and related websites that portray Chrystia Freeland as an endorser. The videos are packaged as reports on CTV News Channel and CBC News Network, complete with anchor commentary.

Liberal Finance Minister in deepfake videos seen on YouTube (YouTube)

One of three clips that this reporter spotted by chance on May 31 on YouTube shows Freeland at a news conference April 7 in Toronto. That is where she announced $2.4 billion in grants to boost Canada’s artificial intelligence sector.

But the words on the video were not those that she spoke at the pre-budget photo op. Nor were the words spoken by the TV anchors. 

The videos are actually artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes. What, if anything, are Freeland’s staff and the Liberal government doing  to combat the misuse of the rapidly evolving technology? 

“The videos and websites you reference are fake and present false and misleading information,” said Shanna Taller, media relations advisor for the Department of Finance.
“Cases of unauthorized image use are handled by law enforcement agencies, such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. For further questions on whole-of-government action, please contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.”

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) media phone line voice mail was full and emails were returned as blocked. YouTube has not responded for comment.

In March, the CAFC website contained a new technology bulletin. It warned that deepfake technology uses “machine-learning algorithms to create realistic-looking fake videos or audio recordings. This is most commonly seen in investment and merchandise frauds where fake celebrity endorsements and fake news are used to promote the fraudulent offers.”

“If you see a celebrity or trustworthy figure promoting merchandise or crypto investments, remember that the video can be a deepfake, created with AI technology. Do your research before you buy anything,” the CAFC bulletin said. 

An expert in spotting disinformation said this may be more than a fraudulent investment scheme, but someone seeking to advance their political interests. 

Marcus Kolga (MLI)

“There may be not that many Canadians who are falling for this specifically right now. But, it’s a very worrying sign of what may yet be to come,” said Marcus Kolga of DisinfoWatch.org. 

Kolga said a close look at the videos revealed the audio was not seamlessly synchronized with the movement of lips. But that may not be detected by casual viewers who do not follow Canadian politics on a daily basis. He is concerned that the technology is advancing so rapidly that deepfake videos could become undetectable. 

That would open the door to financial and geopolitical manipulation and disruption on a mass scale. Governments need to enforce existing laws and enact new ones to prevent chaos, he said. In the case of the Freeland videos, Kolga said YouTube and others have a major role to play and should not be earning advertising revenue from carrying deepfake ads. 

“Today, it may be Chrystia Freeland, but tomorrow it could be a Jagmeet Singh, the next day, it could be Pierre Poilievre,” Kolga said. “You just never know, especially when we’re talking about foreign regimes. We know that China was pretty intensely using deepfakes during the Taiwanese presidential election. They weren’t great, if you knew what to look out for, you could tell all the telltale signs of a deepfake were there, again, with the synchronization issues and such. But this technology is only improving and it’s improving not yearly, it’s improving every month.”

In May, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission proposed a $6 million fine for political consultant Steve Kramer who was behind robocalls two days prior to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary in New Hampshire. Those robocalls featured deepfake audio using President Joe Biden’s voice to encourage citizens to abstain from the primary and save their vote for the November presidential election.

Kramer was also arrested in New Hampshire on bribery, intimidation and voter suppression charges. 

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Bob Mackin  It is too good to be

Business, News

Bob Mackin

Between October and March, crews logged more than 7,200 trees in Stanley Park, a fraction of the 160,000 that the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation said would be removed due to the Hemlock looper moth infestation.

Stanley Park entrance on West Georgia (Mackin)

The Park Board is spending almost $7 million on the operation.

Reports by contractor B.A. Blackwell and Associates, obtained under the freedom of information law, showed 3,294 trees greater than 20 centimetres in diameter were logged and 3,035 under 20 cm between Oct. 3, 2023 and Feb. 29, 2024. Additionally, 118 loads of brush and 47 loads of logs were removed during the five months. Another 872 trees were logged in March.

Total volume of logs removed during the five-month period was 2,214 cubic metres. Another 742 cubic metres were taken in March, for a total of nearly 3,000 cubic metres in 63 loads.

“The total net revenue generated from the logs is $30,069.77, after paying hauling costs of $72,275.68,” said a memo from Park Board general manager Steve Jackson to Park Board commissioners. 

Work was conducted over 67 hectares of the park, a quarter of the park’s forested areas. A load of firewood was also transferred to the Vancouver Police Department’s On the Land Cultural Training Program. 

Jackson’s memo said almost 4% of fir and cedar logs, or 105 cubic metres, were set aside for the first nations. “Delivery of this material is still being coordinated and will be paid out of the remaining net revenue.”

Thirty-nine trees were reserved for the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh first nations, who received delivery of six loads of firewood.

The tops or limbs of 19 cedar trees over 100 cm diameter were cut “due to poor and hazardous conditions.”

Planting of 25,000 seedlings took place in March and April, including western red cedar, Douglas fir, grand fir, Sitka spruce and red alder. 

Removal of logs felled across six hectares was deferred to fall 2024, which also delays replanting in those areas.

Stanley Park logging hauler Skytech (Mackin)

Jackson’s memo said crews will continue to deal with hazard trees during the summer months and the city is considering bids on the next phase of work. Tendering closed March 14. 

“The scope will address priority treatments in forest areas at the Aquarium, Brockton Point, Chickadee Trail, and a portion of the seawall west of Lion’s Gate Bridge,” the memo said. 

Top city hall bureaucrats approved the first phase last August behind closed doors and recommended the emergency, no-bid contract with North Vancouver’s Blackwell while city council and park board politicians were on summer holiday. 

Blackwell’s subcontractors include Edith Lake Falling Ltd. and SkyTech Yarding Ltd. of Squamish and Swatez Forestry of Nanaimo. 

It took until February for the Park Board to finally release a copy of the Blackwell report behind the operation. In December, the freedom of information office at city hall sent a $450 invoice to a reporter seeking the arborist’s report, tree inventory and tree removal plan. The office later admitted the tree inventory and tree removal plan did not exist. 

Titled “Stanley Park Hemlock Looper Impact and Wildfire Risk Assessment,” Blackwell’s 37-page report to Joe McLeod, the city’s manager of urban forestry, was dated Jan. 24 — almost two months after the Park Board announced the operation to cut a quarter of Stanley Park’s trees. 

Blackwell reported that pest infestation killed or severely defoliated 20,300 trees with a diameter greater than 20 cm and 166,000 trees that are 20 cm or less in diameter. A majority of trees affected were western hemlock, but Douglas firs and western red cedars had been impacted to a lesser extent. 

Blackwell recommended emergency work between October and March because of decreased public use and to avoid bird-nesting season. 

Norm Oberson, owner of Arbutus Tree Service and a member of the Trees of Vancouver Society board, said the risk of wildfire was overstated in order to expedite bulk tree removal. He said that heightened the likelihood of errantly cutting healthy trees.

Vancouver software designer Michael Robert Caditz formed the ad hoc Save Stanley Park group and is seeking legal advice aimed at applying for a court injunction to stop whatever logging work is left. 

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Bob Mackin Between October and March, crews logged

Business, News

Bob Mackin 

Conservative Party of B.C. vice-president Harman Bhangu became the Langley-Abbotsford candidate the day after a riding association board member launched a court bid aimed at stopping the June 8 virtual meeting.

A majority of 412 members chose Bhangu (220) on the first ballot in the day-long, online election over runner-up Shelly Jan Semmler (150) and third-place finisher Ryan Warawa (42). The official results were not announced on the party website.

Harman Bhangu (left) and John Rustad (right) in Surrey in 2023. (X/Bhangu)

Kari Simpson, the vice-president of the riding association and chair of its nomination committee, filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster on June 7, asking a judge to cancel the meeting. Her petition also seeks a court order for the party to cease any further candidate selection by its election readiness committee (ERC), leader John Rustad or the party board of directors, wherever a riding association exists, until rules and procedures for nominations are determined. 

Simpson, a social conservative who campaigns against sexual orientation and gender identity instruction in schools, also applied for a judge to order the party president, Aisha Estey, to hold an annual general meeting no later than Sept. 3 and produce the current membership list, including contact information, to Simpson or regional director Daniel Semmler, so they could organize the special general meeting. 

Semmler is the husband of the Langley-Abbotsford nomination runner-up. 

Simpson’s affidavit said riding president Krista Budlong notified the ERC about holding a June 1 nominating meeting at the Murrayville Hall. Simpson claimed Estey called Budlong May 9, “with the threat to remove individual board members or the entire board, if we conducted our candidate nomination meeting as announced.”

In a May 14 letter to Estey, copied to Rustad and the board, Simpson accused Estey of breaching the party’s code of conduct and constitution. 

Kari Simpson between “Hockey Andy” and Dr. Stephen Malthouse in 2022 at the B.C. Legislature (Facebook)

“I believe that your ongoing bully-tactics and threats, made to numerous [riding associations], may finally start to convince those board members, who once deferred to you for reasons unknown to most, to re-evaluate their support,” Simpson wrote.

Simpson alleged in the main court filing that last September’s party board decision to create the ERC subverted the party and riding association constitutions and violated their rules. The result is exclusion of riding associations from influencing candidate nominations, “save for riding members voting if there are more than two candidates.”

“There has been no explanation or consultation, when asked, about the origins or who requisitioned this process,” said Simpson’s filing. 

Simpson’s petition said the “same interference has occurred in numerous other ridings,” but did not name the other ridings.

Neither Estey nor Simpson immediately responded for comment. Warawa declined comment.

A source with knowledge of the nomination meeting, but who declined to be named, said numerous voters in the June 8 online nomination meeting shared the same email and/or residential addresses. 

Trucker Bhangu finished third in the September 2022 Surrey South by-election, behind the NDP’s Pauline Greaves and winner Elenore Sturko. On June 3, Sturko defected from BC United to the Conservatives to run in Surrey-Cloverdale because Brent Chapman, the husband of Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay, was chosen a month earlier for Surrey South. 

In the 2020 provincial election, Warawa, son of late Conservative MP Mark Warawa, finished fourth in the Langley East riding. The NDP’s Megan Dykeman won with almost 10,000 more votes. She is seeking the seat in the new Langley-Walnut Grove riding. Trudeau Liberal MP John Aldag (Cloverdale-Langley City) quit the House of Commons in late May to run for the NDP in Langley-Abbotsford. 

The Oct. 19 B.C. election will be contested in 93 ridings, six more than 2020, due to statutory redistribution. Seventy-two of the ridings feature new boundaries. 

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Bob Mackin  Conservative Party of B.C. vice-president Harman

Business, News, Opinion, Sports

For the week of June 9, 2024:

The Canadian Football League’s 66th season is underway. The B.C. Lions kick-off the home schedule of their 70th anniversary season on June 15 at B.C. Place Stadium — where they hope to hoist the Grey Cup in the 111th championship on Nov. 17.

Randy Ambrosie, a Grey Cup-winning offensive lineman with the 1993 Edmonton Eskimos, is the league’s 14th commissioner. He was in Vancouver on June 3 for a wide-ranging, question and answer session with reporters, including thePodcast host Bob Mackin. 

Plus, this week’s Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

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For the week of June 9, 2024: The

Business, News

Bob Mackin

As the anti-Israel protest camp at the University of B.C. continues for a second month, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has weighed-in on a lawsuit against the university’s 2019 cancellation of a conservative author’s lecture. 

Cover of Portland writer Andy Ngo’s book on Antifa.

The Free Speech Club promoted a January 2020 appearance at the Robson Square campus by Portland writer Andy Ngo, a critic of Antifa protests that often feature intimidation and violence. But, in November 2019, UBC’s vice-president of students cancelled the Ngo event due to safety and security concerns and returned the club’s deposit. The Free Speech Club and members Noah Alter, Cooper Asp and Jarryd Jaeger sued UBC for breach of contract and a declaration that the university and provincial government both violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In a June 4 written decision, Justice Christopher Greenwood ruled the province would be struck from the claim. Greenwood wrote that neither the province nor any of its employees had any direct involvement in the cancellation and “the plaintiffs cannot succeed against the province based on the facts or the law.”

Greenwood also said the plaintiffs “face strong headwinds” in convincing the court that the Charter applies to UBC, due to previous decisions that say universities are not equivalent to government. 

The judge pointed to two 1990 Supreme Court of Canada decisions about mandatory retirement that said the University of Guelph and University of B.C. were not covered by the Charter. He also cited a 2016 B.C. Court of Appeal decision against the Youth Protecting Youth anti-abortion group at the University of Victoria.  

“Both the Chambers judge and the Court of Appeal found in [the UVic case] that regulating or prohibiting space controlled by the university from being used for expressive purposes was not sufficient to constitute the performance of a government function,” Greenwood wrote. 

The appeal decision said “[universities] manage their own affairs and allocate government funds, tuition revenues and endowment funds to meet their needs as they see fit. The complex nature of the relationship between the university and the provincial government did not alter the traditional nature of a university as a community of scholars and students enjoying substantial internal autonomy.”

In 2013, Youth Protecting Youth’s space-booking privileges were revoked for a year after it disobeyed the university’s orders against holding an outdoor event where photographs of fetuses were displayed. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association and group leader Cameron Cote accused the university of illegally censoring peaceful pro-life opinion on campus.

Ngo, who is not a party to the Free Speech Club lawsuit, authored “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy” in 2021. The senior editor with the conservative Post Millennial news outlet sued the far-left Rose City Antifa in 2023 for injuries suffered at a 2019 protest. Two people were found not liable. When three other defendants did not appear, a judge awarded Ngo $300,000 in damages by default. 

Protesters against Israel and its war on the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza arrived April 29 and erected barricades and tents on MacInnes Field at UBC’s main Point Grey campus. They demand UBC divest from Israel-related stocks, cut ties with Israeli universities and abolish police from campus. UBC President Benoit-Antoine Bacon has not agreed to the demands of protesters, nor has he ordered them to be removed. 

Protesters have also staged sit-ins at the university president’s office building and the bookstore. Police thwarted their attempt to occupy a building where NDP re-election campaign workers were meeting June 1.

Charlotte Kates of Samidoun on May 29 (CASI)

On May 29, campers and supporters blocked a major intersection near UBC hospital. Charges are being considered against Susan Bibbings, who defied orders to leave the intersection. The West Vancouver mother pleaded guilty in 2022 for blocking highways in environmental protests professionally organized by associates of the California-based Climate Emergency Fund.

The UBC protest camp started with help from 44-year-old Charlotte Kates, international director of the pro-Hamas Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. 

Prosecutors are considering whether to charge Kates for inciting or promoting hatred after Vancouver Police arrested her on April 29. 

On the Vancouver Art Gallery steps April 26, Kates called Iran-backed Hamas “heroic and brave” for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and she urged followers to support those inside and outside Gaza who are fighting to end the state of Israel. Kates also said Hamas and its allies do not belong on Canada’s terrorist list.

Police released Kates on an undertaking to not attend protests, demonstrations or assemblies until a tentative Oct. 8 court date. Samidoun has organized or promoted most, if not all, Lower Mainland anti-Israel protests since Oct. 7.

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Bob Mackin

The son of former BC Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji will not go to jail for sexual interference of a person under 16.   

Instead, a B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled June 4 in Powell River that Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana, 36, must spend the next two years, less a day, under house arrest. 

Crown prosecutor Jeffrey Young had asked Justice Peter Edelmann for a four-to-five year jail sentence. Defence lawyer David Tarnow successfully sought the house arrest sentence.

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana (left) and Judi Tyabji (Instagram)

A jury convicted Tyabji-Sandana last October of the 2016 crime. When he was 28, he had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl. The jury found him not guilty of a second count, invitation to sexual touching of a person under 16. 

Edelmann agreed with Tarnow that Tyabji-Sandana should not be incarcerated because his biological father is Indigenous. 

“There’s no suggestion the accused is a danger to anyone, so he need not be isolated in order to protect the public,” Edelmann said in his oral judgment. “By convicting him, society has already stigmatized him as a person who has committed a serious offence and has denounced his offence.”

Edelmann said the stigma and impact of the charges and conviction have been significant for Tyabji-Sandana, because he is a member of a prominent family in a small community. 

“The fact that the charges became known at the law school, he was ostracized,” he said. “There’s little question his conviction will present a significant impediment to any career he might wish to pursue.”

Tyabji-Sandana must remain at his residence 24 hours a day, every day, except with written permission from a conditional sentence supervisor for “employment or other compelling reasons” or for a medical emergency. Other conditions include: no direct or indirect contact with the victim; remain in B.C.; keep the peace, be of good behaviour and appear in front of a judge when requested; provide DNA samples for the national sex offenders’ registry; and no possession of a firearm for 10 years.

“I hope that we won’t be seeing you before the court, in that part of the courtroom,” Edelmann said to Tyabji-Sandana, a reference to his pursuit of a career in law. 

The judge also addressed the victim, who told the court on June 3 how she suffered through shame and embarrassment and feared that she would be blamed if she spoke up. 

“I know that this has been a very difficult process,” he said. 

“In terms of how these processes can take place in a different way are part of discussions that are ongoing, it is something that does need to change in the future.” 

Edelmann said he took into account pre-sentencing reports that claimed Tyabji-Sandana had suffered intergenerational trauma, poverty and disconnection from his Indigenous roots. The report said that his maternal grandfather was Metis-Cree and his paternal grandmother a Metis woman who became an alcoholic after suffering physical and sexual abuse in an Indian residential school. Tyabji-Sandana’s biological father was not involved in his childhood. 

The pre-sentencing reports also said he was bullied in school and turned to alcohol abuse as a 14-year-old. In 2021, he had attended a residential recovery facility for 45 days, had incidents of suicidal ideation and, on at least one occasion, attempted to take his own life by overdosing. 

Earlier on June 4, Young made a last-ditch effort for a jail sentence. He told Edelmann that Tyabji-Sandana had committed the sexual offence in Powell River while living under stringent conditions set by an Alberta judge stemming from a 2015 arrest in Calgary. 

A Canada Border Services agent in Vancouver intercepted a package that was addressed to Tyabji-Sandana and contained 122 grams of acetyl fentanyl, worth an estimated $348,000. He pleaded guilty in 2018 to attempting to possess a controlled substance and was sentenced to eight months of house arrest and eight months under curfew. 

Tyabji-Sandana made a brief statement of remorse to the court, telling Edelmann that he would “endeavour to be better. Whatever I can do your honour, whatever I can do.”

“There are no winners in this circumstance,” Tyabji-Sandana said. “Sorry, I thought I had more articulate words to say, but at the end of the day I want it to be made right, I want her to live her best life and I am so profoundly sorry for the man-child that I once was to have operated in a wanton, selfish and reckless fashion.”

The jury heard last October that Tyabji-Sandana met a 14-year-old girl when she and a fellow high school student volunteered on Saturdays at Tyabji and stepfather Gordon Wilson’s sheep farm beginning in January 2016. They offered their time in order to collect credits toward high school graduation. The friendship progressed into a sexual relationship later that year. However, Tyabji-Sandana admitted in court that he never asked her age. Similarly, Tyabji and ex-BC Liberal leader Wilson, who are no longer married, testified that they did not know her age, despite being concerned for legal liability if a young worker suffered an injury on the farm. They said they assumed the girl was a senior high school student. 

In the 1991 B.C. election, Wilson became Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA, led the BC Liberal Party to opposition status and appointed Okanagan East MLA Tyabji as house leader. After their affair was revealed, Wilson was eventually replaced as party leader in 1993 by Gordon Campbell. Wilson and Tyabji married the following year and attempted multiple political comebacks. 

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Bob Mackin The son of former BC Liberal

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Bob Mackin

A Crown prosecutor wants the son of former BC Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji jailed for four-to-five years for sexual interference of a person under 16. 

However, Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana’s defence lawyer said he should not be incarcerated because his biological father is Indigenous.

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana (left) and Judi Tyabji (Instagram)

Tyabji-Sandana, 36, was convicted by a jury last October in B.C. Supreme Court in Powell River. The jury found him not guilty of a second count, invitation to sexual touching of a person under 16. 

“When an offence requires priority on denunciation and deterrence, the judge must place greater weight on the offence rather than on personal circumstances of the offender,” Crown prosecutor Jeffrey Young told Justice Peter Edelmann. 

Young called the crime “among the most-serious” in the Criminal Code and the more serious the crime, the more likely the term of imprisonment. Young also said the courts have held that it is “unreasonable to assume that Aboriginal people do not believe in the importance of traditional sentencing goals” when such a sentence is warranted. 

In an emotional statement to the court, Tyabji-Sandana’s victim said that a part of her died when Tyabji-Sandana, then-28, took advantage of her over the course of five months in 2016. 

“I’m here today as a 23-year-old woman, to take my power back from you,” the woman said.

She said she was shamed and embarrassed, spent many days crying alone, pondering what her life was worth and kept the secret for three years until deciding to speak up. 

“There was fear that I would not be taken seriously and that I would be told that this was all my fault it happened,” the woman said. 

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana at a high school graduation event. (Facebook)

“It’s been four years and three months and two weeks since I provided my first statements to police —1,569 days I’ve been waiting for this moment to come. This is where I take my power back,” she said. 

Defence lawyer David Tarnow asked Edelmann not to incarcerate his client, but put him on a community-based sentence instead. 

Tarnow said Tyabji-Sandana learned at age 11 that he had a different father and suffered racism and abuse because of it from his stepfather, Kim Sandana, and schoolmates in Kelowna. He developed a drinking problem when he was 14-years-old and continues to receive counselling. 

Tarnow told Edelmann that Tyabji-Sandana qualifies for leniency because expert pre-sentencing reports about Indigenous identity, known as Gladue reports, said his paternal family was Metis and he suffered intergenerational trauma, poverty and disconnection from his Indigenous roots. 

The jury heard last October that Tyabji-Sandana met a 14-year-old girl when she and a fellow high school student volunteered on Saturdays at Tyabji and stepfather Gordon Wilson’s sheep farm beginning in January 2016 in order to collect credit toward high school graduation. However, in court, Tyabji-Sandana admitted he never asked her age, believing she was mature. Tyabji and Wilson, the former BC Liberal leader, testified that they assumed the girl was a senior high school student. 

She left for a job in a grocery store after three months of volunteering, but Tyabji-Sandana reconnected with her via email. They began a relationship through the summer that advanced to sexual intercourse in September of 2016. 

The victim testified that she told Tyabji-Sandana after their first kiss that she was 15-years-old.

This is not Tyabji-Sandana’s first brush with the law. In 2018, he pleaded guilty in Calgary to attempting to possess a controlled substance and was sentenced to eight months of house arrest and eight months under curfew. 

In 2015, the year before he committed sexual interference in Powell River, police busted Tyabji-Sandana in Calgary after a Canada Border Services agent in Vancouver intercepted a package that was addressed to him. It contained 122 grams of acetyl fentanyl, worth an estimated $348,000. 

The sentencing hearing continues June 4 in Powell River. 

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Bob Mackin A Crown prosecutor wants the son

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For the week of June 2, 2024:

The 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre is June 4. 

Throughout the spring of 1989, university students occupied the vast square in the centre of the capital, demanding democratic reforms. 

Then the People’s Liberation Army violently quashed the protests as the world watched the horror unfold. Nobody knows for sure if the death toll was in the high hundreds or low thousands.

Since then, the Chinese Communist Party has only become more powerful inside and outside China. Xi Jinping has taken away civil liberties from Hong Kongers and is threatening to invade Taiwan. China continues to interfere in democracies, such as Canada, through its United Front Work Department propaganda and espionage program. 

On this edition of the Podcast, hear highlights of interviews from the vault with Tiananmen Square survivor Zhou Fengsuo (2019) and former Hong Kong reporter Fenella Sung (2018). 

Plus, this week’s Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

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For the week of June 2, 2024: The

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Bob Mackin

The Vancouver anti-Israel communist who praised Hamas for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks appeared on a webinar hosted by a group sympathetic to Iran’s hardline Islamic regime. 

At an April 26 rally outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, Charlotte Kates, the international director of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, called Iran-backed Hamas “heroic and brave” and urged followers to support those inside and outside Gaza who are fighting to end the state of Israel. Kates also said Hamas and its allies do not belong on Canada’s terrorist list.

Charlotte Kates of Samidoun on May 29 (CASI)

Prosecutors are considering whether to charge Kates for inciting or promoting hatred after Vancouver Police arrested her on April 29, the day the 44-year-old helped set-up an anti-Israel protest camp at the University of B.C. They released Kates on an undertaking to not attend protests, demonstrations or assemblies until a tentative Oct. 8 court date. Samidoun has organized or promoted most, if not all, Lower Mainland anti-Israel protests beginning since October.

On May 29, Kates was featured on a webinar hosted by the Committee of Anti-Imperialists in Solidarity with Iran (CASI), which she co-founded. Not only does CASI oppose Israel and advocate for Iran and Palestine, but it also favours abolishing military, police and immigration forces in the U.S. and supports “all indigenous, black and immigrant movements that seek an end to U.S. colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy and heteropatriarchy.”

On the Zoom meeting (SEE highlights below) Kates called Hamas “brave and self-sacrificing” for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel and criticized the International Criminal Court war crimes charges against three Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh related to the killing of 1,200 and kidnapping of 240. 

“There can be no equation made between the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people and their leadership and the illegitimate Zionist colonizer,” Kates told viewers. 

Kates applauded the “growing global intifada” involving university students in Canada, U.S. and Europe and said there is a duty to serve the resistance and expand the intifada “until it is a true crisis for imperialism.”

“The achievements that can be framed as legal achievements are not brought about by the objective application of law, but by the changes in reality that have been brought about by the armed struggle,” said Kates, who holds a law degree from Rutgers University, but is not licensed in B.C.

Charlotte Kates of Samidoun (Instagram/Samidounvan)

Kates finished her CASI speech with words similar to her April 26 rant. She implored listeners to “become a meaningful and worthwhile partner” of Hamas and its allies. 

“It is the resistance that stretches from Iran to Palestine, from Yemen to Syria to Iraq to Lebanon,” Kates said. “But that further stretches to Haiti to Cuba to Venezuela to Eritrea to South Africa, and to all of the peoples of the world that are fighting back together to every campus and labour union and organization that is taking the streets and shutting things down for Palestine, to every escalation and action. 

“We can and must build our international camp of resistance that is capable of making the axis of resistance larger, stronger, bigger and broader than ever before, to stand behind and together with the resistance forces as they defend humanity and seek a future in which October 7 is not just one day, but the promise of a future of a world that is free of Zionism, colonialism, imperialism, and their reactionary agents.”

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) 2023 annual report said “axis of resistance” is a phrase used by Iran to describe its regional alliance with Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah and other non-state proxy actors.

“Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack against Israel, Iran has publicly praised the militancy targeting Israel and authorized its proxies and allies, including the Houthis in Yemen, to conduct attacks against Israel and US interests in Iraq and Syria,” the CSIS report said. 

CSIS warned that Iran and its intelligence services actively target the Iranian diaspora in Canada, including “anti-regime activists and political dissidents; human, women’s and minority rights activists; and fugitives wanted by the regime. Iran also targets Israeli and Jewish interests as part of its ongoing shadow war with Israel.”

The agents, proxies and sympathizers Iran uses may be witting or unwitting accomplices, CSIS reported. The objective is generally to silence criticism of the Tehran regime. 

Iran attacked Israel with missiles and drones for the first time on April 14, prompting more sanctions from Canada’s Liberal government on April 25. That was also the day that Kates’s husband,  Khaled Barakat, spoke on a CASI webinar about Palestine and Iran. Barakat was described as a member of the executive committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement. The Middle East Media Research Institute called him a former senior official in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which also appears on Canada’s terrorist list. 

“Iran continues to threaten international peace and security through multiple destabilizing activities across the Middle East region and beyond,” said Global Affairs Canada on April 25. “Iran poses a threat to the region both through its armed forces and through its support for its proxies, which includes funding, arms provision and training and political and ideological support.”

On Jan. 8, 2020, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down Ukraine Airlines Flight 752, killing all 176 people — 63 were Canadian citizens. North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Avenue became a focal point for memorials. 

Iranian dissidents in North Vancouver and around the world protested against the regime following the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old arrested and beaten for removing her hijab. 

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Capilano University spent another $55 million to buy three of the four dorm buildings at the former Quest University, according to a May 29 announcement from the B.C. NDP government.

Student housing at ex-Quest University (NAI)

Last August, the province and university bought the 18-acre campus for $63.2 million from Primacorp after Quest suspended operations earlier in the year. It is expected to reopen under Capilano University management in fall 2024. 

Post-Secondary Education Minister Lisa Beare said in a news release that the ministry provided $48 million and the university the other $7 million for the three-building complex, which will house 333 students. 

Primacorp owned the land under four vacant dorm buildings that contain 416 student residential units. Each was assessed at $11.072 million. The buildings belonged to the company that built them, Southern Star Developments. In an affidavit in November 2020, Southern Star president Michael Hutchison said his company spent $41.7 million to build the residences specifically for student use, with financing from a Bank of Montreal mortgage. 

The NDP government said each building has 89 beds in single rooms paired with a shared washroom, six double-bed occupancy units with washrooms and five accessible single units with private washrooms. Each building has one two-bedroom and one three-bedroom apartment, containing a kitchen and washroom. 

Primacorp paid $43 million for the land and university buildings to rescue Quest out of court protection from creditors in December 2020 and agreed to provide student recruitment, marketing and fundraising services for Quest. Quest’s biggest lender, the Vanchorverve Foundation, had demanded repayment of $23.4 million at the start of 2020. 

Researcher Vivian Krause said police need to probe the full history of land investments in Squamish’s Garibaldi Highlands.

“I beg the premier, b-e-g, to halt the expenditure of public funding and ask the RCMP to investigate,” Krause said. 

Land titles records dated May 8 show Northwest Territories diamond mining pioneer Stewart Blusson owns a nearly 10-acre, vacant parcel worth $4.46 million. Lot 12, as it is known, is near the university at 3348 Mamquam Road.

Blusson reportedly made a $32 million donation to establish Quest University in 2002. His Eden Glen Foundation lost its Canada Revenue Agency charitable status last year over a nearly $5 million gift to a numbered company when it sold one of Quest’s original land parcels in 2018.

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Bob Mackin  Capilano University spent another $55 million

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