Canadian Election > Chrystia Freeland's Manipulated Media; Kevin Newman Reveals More Suffering in Kabul From Canadian Gov't Incompetence

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Twitter adds warning label to tweet from Liberal candidate

Chrystia Freeland

Ashley Burke · CBC News · 

Posted: Aug 23, 2021 12:04 AM ET

Twitter labelled a video tweeted by incumbent Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland, who is seeking re-election,

as having 'manipulated media.' She is pictured with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau as they make a campaign stop

in Markham, Ont., on Aug. 17. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

A video tweeted by incumbent Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland, who served as deputy prime minister in Justin Trudeau's government, was given a warning label Sunday from Twitter, which marked it as "manipulated media."

Freeland's tweets, posted in both English and French, contain several edits and show Conservative leader Erin O'Toole answering a question about privatized health care during an online question-and-answer session in July 2020 during the Conservative leadership race.

The tweet shows O'Toole being asked if he would bring private, "for-profit" health care to Canada. He quickly responds: "yes." 

However, in the original recording of O'Toole's remarks on health care — which can be seen here at about the 12:30 mark — the Conservative leader also noted that universal access remains paramount. 

The shortened clip used in Freeland's tweet did not include O'Toole's statement on ensuring universal access.

Trudeau retweeted the video and drew on it during a speech Sunday to attack O'Toole on the campaign trail in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Liberals 'spreading misinformation': Conservatives

Conservative Party lawyers have sent a letter to the commissioner of Canada Elections calling for an investigation into the matter to determine who was involved in making the video. The party is also requesting the commissioner ask the Liberals to take down the post.

On Sunday, the party accused the Liberals of spreading misinformation.

"It's disappointing to see the Liberals resort to American-style divisive politics," said Mathew Clancy, the Conservatives' manager of media relations.

"While Justin Trudeau and the Liberals are focused on spreading misinformation, Erin O'Toole is focused on Canada's Recovery Plan and securing the future." 

Answering reporters' questions in Halifax, Trudeau defended Freeland's tweet.

"We posted the entire interview in its entirety and I encourage all Canadians to take a look to see what Erin O'Toole has to say about what he sees on the future of health care," he said.

So, that's a bald-faced lie! But Liberals have no compulsion to tell the truth. Their inherent motto is "The ends justify the means"!

The Conservatives had their own Twitter misstep roughly a week ago. Twitter removed a video the party posted following a copyright infringement complaint and the Conservatives subsequently deleted the tweet.

The Conservatives had posted a video mocking Trudeau by placing his face on a character from the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Some sitting Conservative MPs called the tweet juvenile and a bad idea during a federal election. 

There is more on this story, and I mean 'more on' not 'moron', at CBC

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Kevin Newman: The people we left behind at the gas station in Kabul

Despite claims of "miraculous" progress, we are still failing

to evacuate our people from Afghanistan

Aug 22

The Line

By: Kevin Newman

In the age-old tradition of large lumbering bureaucracies and armies and reporter stake-outs, this was an excruciating weekend of ‘hurry up and wait’. Their only shelter in the dusty and brutal Afghan sun was the red white and blue canopy of a self-serve gas bar. Maybe ten families who had completed the path to Canadian citizenship were told by government of Canada text to come to this spot late Friday with the promise of a Canadian Armed Forces flight waiting on the nearby airport tarmac.

Each family included an average of ten people — so make it a hundred — told it was time to leave for Canada. Others followed, and pretty soon there were five hundred Afghans at the gas station hoping for rescue. Some in the huge crowd were told to wear red to identify themselves on a list Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) had compiled. One even wore a Roots Canada jacket a soldier had sent over to him years ago. But it didn’t matter. No one from Canada was there to meet them.

After being advised to wear red so IRCC officials could identify him, a hopeful Afghan evacuee wears a Roots jacket that he had been given years earlier by a Canadian solider.

There are no Canadian network or newspaper reporters in Kabul currently, so it is the Afghan interpreters themselves who are our eyes on ears on whether any progress is being made at airlifting them out to safety from the encroaching and threatening Taliban. They have been sharing their frustration on social media and with veterans and journalists they know from Canada’s military deployment that ended in 2014.  Eight hours after they received that initial promising text from IRCC, another came telling them the airport had been closed — that there was no chance they could enter the airport from the gas station entrance — and they should leave but take care of their own safety. No one else would. When they tried to move as a group, several Afghans reported they encountered a massive Taliban checkpoint on one side, and former heavily armed Afghan security forces on the other firing into crowds.

For at least another forty hours they sat at that gas station, trapped in the middle, unable to leave, with no further word from Canada on whether they should attempt to return to hiding, or keep praying for a miracle.

It is impossible to piece together, or understand, why no one from Canada would come out of the military protection of the airport to speak to them over the past two days. Because there must have been a whole lot of talking happening on the safe side of the razor wire barrier separating the Afghans from the terminal. Late Friday, a Canadian C-17 carrying more soldiers and a few diplomatic and immigration staff arrived at Kabul’s military air terminal. They had a plan to work with American forces to get some of the gas station people out of the country. There seemed to be renewed confidence expressed in media interviews by Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino that, finally, things would happen.

Instead the Americans started executing rapid-retrieval missions into Kabul to get their own people out, sealed the entrance where Canada’s gas station people were waiting, and co-operation with Canadian forces seemed to disintegrate.

In the meantime, there was a game of numbers to play. With so few Canadian cases on that C-17 ready to return to a third country, the big grey plane was loaded with Afghans that other countries had successfully brought to the airport. A picture and story was fed to political reporters on the campaign trails in Canada declaring broadly that “106 Afghans have been flown out on a Canadian C17” – but National Defence would not reveal if any of those passengers had been Canadian cases.

According to the Globe and Maul’s (Mail's) Stephen Chase there had been none on the only other Canadian flight of 175 to leave the airport twenty-four hours earlier, even as the government boasted of another ‘success’. For weeks, the Prime Minister and his besieged cabinet had also been talking about 20,000 refugees coming to Canada. That too was misleading in its vagueness, according to Global News’ Mercedes Stephenson, as all but a handful are coming from outside Afghanistan and even then, it’s over many years.

There is zero evidence from multiple Afghan sources around the airport that any of those the Prime Minister boasts they’re “rescuing”, (LGTBQ2, human rights advocates, women and journalists) have come from Kabul or any part of Afghanistan in the past month.

With all that, the government continues to claim a C-17 will come and go each day. But do the math. If even a hundred daily Canadian cases make those flights, (nowhere near that many have so far), there is no way the vast majority of applicants will make it here before the window closes for evacuations. Canada’s commitment of men and materials in no way matches the need. So, will Immigration officials those with no hope now of rescue and admit that they won’t get out in time? That number is likely in the thousands. They need to develop a more realistic way to survive the Taliban.

The mystery in this deadly absurdity is the government’s obsession with paperwork. Even today Canadian officials on the safe side of the airport controlling who might get through were reported by eyewitnesses to be taking an “extremely strict” approach to paperwork verification. Only those granted full Canadian citizenship under the government’s Special Immigration Measure are being told they qualify to leave. That requires a lot more work to process and is perhaps less than a tenth of all the Afghans who are known to have applied and are in various stages of completing multiple forms.

Other countries have also been willing to grant refugee status to their interpreters and families, which doesn’t guarantee citizenship, but is it is a much faster way to process many more people, and it gives Afghans more choices should air rescue be impossible. In a news conference, Mendicino claimed his department’s agent in Kabul has authority to overlook the passport and biometric fingerprint requirements. But the evidence on the ground suggests he is being ignored.

As the weekend ended and the brutal sun set, the gas station waiting area was evolving into a humanitarian concern. There were many children, pregnant mothers and the elderly who had gone days without food and water and were losing strength. Some of the single men who were younger, more nimble, and could move alone left the group and made it inside the gates on convoys from other countries and the United Nations. The ten families guaranteed passage to Canada two days ago were still looking for guidance on whether to stay at the gas station. The IRCC chose to delay sending any more interpreter applicants to flights they might not make. Slowly, and painfully, it was dawning on thousands of poor, exhausted Afghans that the promises Canada’s government made to bring them to safety, it was incapable of or unwilling to honour.

Kevin Newman is a retired journalist who reported from Afghanistan. He has been helping the veteran volunteer network trying to save their interpreters and families.

Canada's Dreadful Performance in Kabul Reveals the Pathetic Character of This Government

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Kevin Newman: Kabul shows the unflattering truth:

Canada is slow, risk-averse and selfish

While French commandos in buses got their people out, we sent texts (in English)

telling our friends to head to the airport on their own

By: Kevin Newman

It was a brazen move the first time, but twice?

Ten buses screamed out of France’s embassy in Kabul early this week, past every Taliban checkpoint along the way, and according to eyewitnesses, zipped confidently through a back-entrance gate and straight onto the chaotic tarmac at Hamid Karzai International Airport. Five hundred exhausted and terrified passengers were then loaded onto a French military aircraft which quickly took off. 

And then it happened again on Thursday, four buses this time, under the guard of French special forces. As with the first convoy, Paris newspapers reported the buses carried French nationals stranded in Kabul, and hundreds of Afghans and their families the French embassy had given shelter to since before the Taliban roared into and re-occupied the city. Two ballsy airlifts took them to safety at a French military base in the United Arab Emirates, where hundreds of desperate people were given a hot meal, questioned about their identities and had their documents confirmed. Most were then sent on to Paris, where they received physical and mental-health support as well as cash, clothing, and places to stay as they begin their new lives.

On those same days in Kabul, another country tried to rescue its citizens and hundreds of Afghan interpreters and their families hiding throughout the city. I’ve pieced together what happened to them from texts and video Canadian veterans have been receiving every hour from people they know in Kabul, and I am sharing them with permission. I have verified each of these facts (from the peace of Canada) with multiple sources on the ground. 

Kevin Newman

There were no buses, soldiers or escorts for these terrified people. Thursday they received a short text from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). They were instructed (in English only) to urgently head to the airport on their own, try to find a way through multiple Taliban checkpoints searching for them, and then if they survived that kilometres-long trip, figure out a way through thousands of desperate Afghans trying to flee. 

They were told by IRCC to carry documents to identify themselves to a gate agent, but because those same documents would be used to identify them by the Taliban, it was up to them to decide whether to carry them. With that, IRCC wiped its hands of responsibility. No direction on where to avoid Taliban checkpoints, no specific gates to head to (there are eight), and no Canadians on site to help. In fact there hadn’t been any Canadian officials in Kabul for a week, and when a few arrived hours after that text blast, reporters said they had travelled on an American military flight because their Canadian C-17 needed servicing somewhere else. 

Needless to say, no one got through the airport, so they returned to their safe houses — wondering if their last flight to freedom had left without them. 

It hadn’t. It never existed. Later that night another set of blasts went out again telling Afghans to move on their own to the airport. This time they were told to shout “Canada”  and hope a soldier would hear them and help them through the airport gates. Taliban guards could hear them as well there, which would ensure that the target on their backs they had been trying to hide came completely into focus. 

Two countries, two very different experiences for terrified Afghans, both on the same day. We’ll never know if some of those brave and desperate people didn’t make it through alive with all that futile moving back and forth to the airport in a city surrounded by Taliban. All we know for certain is none of more than one thousand people on the Canadian veterans’ list made it to freedom on Thursday, as France’s evacuees whisked past.

That very same day, Justin Trudeau blamed the Taliban for making it impossible to do better. “Unless the Taliban shift their posture significantly — which is something the international community and Canada are working on — it's going to be very difficult to get many people out,” the Liberal leader said.

But how did France do it? Well, it likely helped that they still had diplomats and military advisors in Kabul to negotiate (maybe bribe?) the Taliban to provide safe passage for their hundreds of refugees. All of our allies had eyes and boots on the ground this week at Kabul’s airport. Canada did not. It closed its embassy and withdrew all its diplomats and military by jet to Ottawa just as the Taliban was rolling into town. The government left no one behind to talk to the Taliban, or our allies, as they organized and negotiated the rescue of thousands. 

Which left the handful of Canadian soldiers who finally returned late Thursday with little if any advance work to rely on. They started from scratch. Their only options were to ask for a lot of very large favours from the thousands of American and British soldiers who had been busy all week rescuing thousands of their own nationals and Afghans. Alliances are meant to share burdens. Canada, in Kabul this week, was only a taker.

We had already given up on about a thousand Afghans in Kandahar who had been allies during our military mission and were in various stages of completing the onerous and complex immigration paperwork for Canada. Those who escaped to Kabul for rescue tried to blend in, 800 of them in safe houses organized by Canadian veterans and funded with donations from concerned Canadians. Public appeals from retired generals and many other ex-soldiers to provide valuable intel they were receiving were largely dismissed, so as a country we had no situational awareness of our own to develop a plan, and rejected the only source of it — from Afghans we trained and veterans who still live and work there. We asked other countries to give us their homework instead.

These early days of this massive rescue effort by Western countries revealed some unflattering aspects of our national character. Canada has been slow to react, risk-averse and selfish. We’ve relied on our neighbours more than each other, turned our backs on thousands who’d proved their loyalty to us, and even blamed criminals for our inability to protect people we know are in real fear of being murdered. Our leaders have declared they wished they could have done more, but gosh, the Taliban won’t let us. Trudeau then batted aside suggestions the IRCC paperwork with its requirement for passport, biometric fingerprints and digital photographs had delayed everything. By Friday afternoon that nonsense was finally dropped. The airport chaos and confusion at the gates grew more alarming.

It was always going to be difficult to leave Afghanistan, but most other countries were a lot more successful at saving thousands of desperate people this week. Canada’s specific evacuation list from Kabul isn’t being revealed by the government, but veterans tracking it say as of Friday afternoon said those who defied the odds and made it onto a flight — any flight — could be counted on two hands. There are still days to try something else and hopefully better. But not many.

Kevin Newman is a retired journalist who reported from Afghanistan. He has been helping the veteran volunteer network trying to save their interpreters and families.