Advertise on podcast: The Hatchet

For the last month, the Trump administration has been claiming that Canada has been interfering in the American midterm elections. And the US ambassador has said that the president will likely blame Canada for losses in Michigan and Maine. So if we’re going to be falsely accused, maybe we should just start doing it anyways. Should we be bribing legislators? Or create an AIPAC for Canada? Maybe we can use the multitude of Canadian Hollywood celebrities to honeypot governors and senators? On today’s episode of The Chopping Block, we take a look at all of our options. And we dig into the war between the American owners of Stelco and the Canadian government. To Learn More: Fact Sheet: Monitoring Canadian Activities in U.S. Politics "Stelco owner says he could sell plant next year after becoming 'persona non grata in Canada'" by Darren Major in CBC News This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hatchetmedia.ca/subscribe

We are very excited to announce a new, weekly show from us at The Hatchet. For a while now, Jordan and I have been thinking about ways that we can bring you news in a more fun and casual format. So going forward, every week, we’ll be putting out episodes of our new chat show, which we’re calling The Chopping Block. And this is the very first episode.Now I’m sure some of our more observant listeners might notice that we’ve used that name for a number of other segments before. But going forward, The Chopping Block will only refer to our weekly chat show, which will come out every Thursday. Just like the rest of The Hatchet, we’ll be focusing on politics, corporate power and policing. And this new show, will be in addition to our regular slate of interviews, columns and documentary episodes. In this first episode, Jordan and I talk about Olivia Chow’s decisive win in the Toronto mayoral election and her complicated relationship with the city’s cops. And then we dig into the avalanche of scandals that the Montreal police are facing. Music: "Bummin on Tremelo" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hatchetmedia.ca/subscribe

So today is the day of the Alberta referendum. And we just wanted to share with you some more of my conversation with Jeremy Appel. Here we dig into Danielle Smith’s origins as a media personality, and what that can teach us about her as a political figure. And specifically we take a look at some of the columns she wrote early on in her career where she espouses ideas like….how smoking can actually reduce your risk of cancer. It’s a really interesting lens through which to understand Danielle Smith and I had a lot of fun talking to Jeremy about it. Featured in this episode: Jeremy Appel To Learn More: Dark Phoenix: The Rise, Fall and Re-emergence of Danielle Smith by Jeremy Appel "Danielle Smith Claimed Smoking Cigarettes Had Positive Health Benefits" by Stephen Magusiak in Press Progress This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hatchetmedia.ca/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit hatchetmedia.ca Monday is the big day. The modern Alberta separatist movement has existed in one form or another since the 1980s. And Monday's referendum represents the closest they've ever come to achieving their goal. And the person who has gotten them this close to the promised land says she isn't even a separatist herself. It's a very strange position overall. Smith is the leader of a party whose membership is increasingly dominated by people who want Alberta to leave Canada. She has a prime minister who has been increasingly willing to give her what she wants. Even though it was the election of Mark Carney that directly prompted Danielle Smith to lower the thresholds for referendums, leading us to this moment. But what is clear is that for all of her contradictions, Smith is the most important political figure in Canada right now, aside from the Prime Minister himself. So what happens to Smith after Monday? And will Alberta separatism continue to grow even if they lose this vote? Featured in this episode: Jeremy Appel (The Orchard) To Learn More Dark Phoenix: The Rise, Fall and Reemergence of Danielle Smith by Jeremy Appel "What Danielle Smith and Bari Weiss Have in common" by Jeremy Appel in The Orchard "Elephant in the room" by Carrie Tait, Grant Robertson & Nathan Vanderklippe in The Globe and Mail Support us at Hatchetmedia.ca  The Hatchet is a podcast and newsletter dedicated to exposing power and money in Canada. We deliver important original and fascinating journalism about how this country actually works.  Music: I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque To hear more, visit Hatchetmedia.ca

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit hatchetmedia.ca Remember 2014? Pauline Marois, the Parti Québécois Premier of Quebec, had just called an election, trying to turn her minority into a majority. She was running on the so-called Charter of Values and hoping to channel the culture war forces towards a third referendum. She had just recruited Pierre Karl Péladeau, one of the province’s most powerful businessmen, as a star candidate, and it really looked like Quebec sovereignty was about to dominate Canadian politics once again. And then she lost. She lost big — giving up a majority government to the Quebec Liberals. Things only got worse for the sovereigntists in the following years. In 2018, François Legault’s party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, came to power, vowing to stop focusing so much on the federalist-separatist debate and instead focus on the economy. By 2022, the PQ was down to just three seats. Today things look very, very different. Last week, CAQ, under the leadership of Christine Fréchette, was completely wiped out. And the PQ’s Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, or PSPP, as he’s often referred to in Quebec, will be the province’s next premier But the death of CAQ and the return of the separatist government are far from the only unlikely stories that have emerged from this election: You have the rise of the Conservative Party of Quebec under former shock jock Éric Duhaime, who captured 19 seats, mostly in the Quebec City region; the survival of the Liberal Party of Quebec, which looked like it might be finished after their leader, Pablo Rodriguez, resigned and replaced by a relative unknown Charles Milliard, and somehow he emerged with 40 seats; and even Quebec Solidaire, the leftist sovereigntist party that mostly competes for seats in the downtowns of Montreal and Quebec City, had a decent night, potentially holding the balance of power in this new minority legislature. But what's undeniable is that Quebec politics hasn’t looked this unpredictable in years. Featured on this episode: Nora Loreto To Learn More: "A post-CAQ Quebec" by Nora Loreto on Substack "Under PSPPressure" by Paul Wells on Substack "After being wiped off political map, what's next for the CAQ?" by Antoni Nerestant in CBC News Support us at Hatchetmedia.ca  The Hatchet is a podcast and newsletter dedicated to exposing power and money in Canada. We deliver important original and fascinating journalism about how this country actually works.  Music: I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque To hear more, visit Hatchetmedia.ca

There’s something that I’ve noticed lately when it comes to how we talk about whatever is happening in Canada these days. Every announcement from the government, every hot take from the newspaper columnists and the talking heads on the nightly news comes with a caveat: WE ARE IN A TRADE WAR. And that means that any investment in Canada right now is viewed as a great investment. Just don’t look too hard at the fine print. And for the most part, Canadians have been willing to go along on this ride. That is until last month, when Prime Minister Mark Carney hung up a “For Sale” sign on Canada’s four largest airports to a room filled with the world’s richest investors. This time, there has actually been some pushback. And I think that’s because it’s less clear who this is supposed to benefit. It’s hard not to think that Mark Carney’s Liberal’s have secured bottomless latitude to extract value out of Canada wherever they see fit — as long as it’s in the name of capital “I” investment. And if you’ve got a problem with that, well, you’re probably not on Team Canada. Or maybe you just don’t understand it. That’s certainly been the party line when it comes to the airport deal — even when we know that in other countries where they’ve tried the exact same thing the results have been crystal clear: prices go up and services get worse. So when Peter Nowak, Canada’s preeminent competition watcher, called me up last week I knew exactly what was on his mind. If our governing monopoly says it’s open season for big business in Canada, where exactly does that leave the rest of us? Peter and I dig into all of that and do a little cross-country check-in on the state of Canadian competition. NOTE: A version of this conversation also appeared in Do Not Pass Go Featured in the episode: Peter Nowak To learn more:  “Watchdog Moves to Block Veggie Merger as Feds Drive Up Price of Competing Imports” by Peter Nowak in Do No Pass Go “Canada, EU Deepen Ties But Diverge on Consumer Protection” by Peter Nowak in Do Not Pass Go “The Anti-Competitive Barriers Holding Canadian Films Back” by Peter Nowak in Do Not Pass Go  “Do Not Pass Go Hits One Year Thanks to Your Support! Here’s What’s Next” by Peter Nowak in Do Not Pass Go “Actually, privatizing Canada’s airports is a bad thing” by Arshy Mann in The Hatchet  Support us at Hatchetmedia.ca  The Hatchet is a podcast and newsletter dedicated to exposing power and money in Canada. We deliver important original and fascinating journalism about how this country actually works.  Music: I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque To hear more, visit Hatchetmedia.ca  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hatchetmedia.ca/subscribe

Allowing big, private money to buy up chunks of our airports has been a long-held neo-liberal dream in Canada. Kim Campbell proposed it during her short-lived government, as did Justin Trudeau in 2017. They were both hoping to follow in the example of Margaret Thatcher’s UK, which became the first western nation to fully privatize their existing major airports back in 1987. Since then, many European countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand, have followed suit, with massive pension funds often purchasing the airports outright or buying up long-term concessions to run them. But the idea has never really caught on in Canada, for one very good reason — Canadians hate it. A recent Nanos poll found that over 50% of Canadians oppose the plan and with only a little over 30% in favour. And that’s because Canadians clearly have an intuitive understanding that airports aren’t the kind of asset that it makes sense for governments to completely sell-off. They are, after all, natural monopolies, giving them enormous power to charge what they want. So why does Carney want to do this? Because it’s not about what’s best for Canadians. Instead, this is a proposal that works for the benefit of major asset managers and pension funds. These giant pools of money are on a desperate search for increased returns, wherever they can be found. And vital infrastructure is a great place for them to do it. Because they know that they can gauge consumers with no consequences. Everyone knows that’s how these kinds of deals work. So it’s especially galling that the government still frames this proposal as a way to lower costs for consumers. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hatchetmedia.ca/subscribe

The Toronto police have had a rough few months. Back in May, while the police service was still reeling from the fallout of the worst corruption scandal in recent history, three off-duty TPS officers were arrested in Barcelona, Spain. In typical fashion, the Toronto police withheld most of the important details from the public, citing concerns for the ongoing international investigation. A police spokesperson called the allegations “serious” but said little else. And they refused to reveal the names of the officers. But soon, the press began piecing together more of what had happened. And a disturbing picture began to emerge. The three officers had been arrested in connection with an alleged violent, sexual assault. But there was one detail that seemed to get under everyone’s skin and garner most of the attention. The fact that when these off-duty police officers were arrested and charged with a serious crime in a foreign country, they allegedly had the temerity to flash their badges. That detail came to dominate the conversation around this story. And how could it not? It’s an almost cartoonish example of how many police officers feel that they’re above the law — apparently, even foreign laws. How could an action like that mean anything other than — “I am one of you. And we protect our own”? But as the coverage of this story played out, I couldn’t help but notice that the emphasis on the flashed badges detracted from what should be the more pressing concern here. Three sworn officers were arrested and charged with sexual assault, assault and resisting arrest. One of them was alleged to have fled the scene and was found two days later at an airport. And if history is any guide, the police will do their best to keep this case shrouded in secrecy. So we wanted to talk to someone who actually went to Spain and spoke to people on the ground about what happened. The details may be disturbing, but it’s important that the public knows about these allegations. Allan Woods is a veteran Toronto Star reporter based in Paris. Normally, he covers international politics. But when this story broke, he made his way over to Barcelona, and put together the most comprehensive report that we have on this story. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hatchetmedia.ca/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit hatchetmedia.ca If you were an openly gay man in Toronto in 1980, chances are that you would’ve thought that life was getting better. After all, the last decade had seen so much progress. Homosexuality had been partially decriminalized back in the late 1960s. A few years later, Toronto had become the first city in the country to ban homophobic discrimination in municipal hiring. Pride parades and festivals were a regular occurrence. There was a thriving queer nightlife and queer press and queer arts scene. George Hislop, an out-and-proud gay man, was running for city council, and even the sitting mayor, John Sewell, was pro-gay. Was there still discrimination and hardship? Of course. But more and more people were coming out of the closet, and even the broader society was starting to slowly embrace people with different sexual orientations. But then, things started to change. George Hislop lost his run and so did John Sewell, largely because of homophobic attacks in the press. In 1981, the Toronto Police launched Operation Soap, raiding multiple gay bathhouses and arresting almost 300 men. And though the community mobilized — taking to the streets and the courts to fight back against such blatant aggression — all of a sudden, progress doesn’t look nearly as certain. And it wouldn’t have been long before you started to hear the rumours — something was going around. Some kind of a disease. You’d notice people around you getting sick. Young men, in the prime of their lives. You’d see the purple blotches peeking out from under sleeves and shirt collars and you’d wonder what the hell could be happening. And then, one by one, you’d see those people start to die. By 1982, the disease had a name — AIDS. But the government wasn’t doing anything to help. And most public officials wouldn’t even say the word out loud. And so you get together with a few other people and decide that something needs to be done. That is, in essence, the origin story of one of the most impactful grassroots organizations in recent Canadian history — the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT), our first so-called “AIDS service organization.” ACT has had a profound impact on the country, and the world at large. It was a beacon of hope at a time when social conservative forces were ascendent across North America. It spawned other important organizations, like AIDS Action Now! and Casey House, that had their own out-sized impacts. And for decades, it was the largest and most prominent entity of its kind in Canada. But late last year, ACT announced that it was closing its doors. And as someone who covered the AIDS epidemic for years, this came as quite a shock to me. So I wanted to dig into what happened and take a look back at ACT’s unique history. And what I found was absolutely fascinating. If we examine ACT over the decades, we see so many examples of the various dilemmas that plague any organization trying to do good in the modern world: Should you set out to help people or allow people to help themselves? Is it better to work within the system or to fight it from the outside? When do charity fundraisers stop being a way to help more people, and become something that exist solely to keep on fundraising? I spoke to Kevin Hurren, who wrote an excellent profile about the history of the AIDS Committee of Toronto for Xtra, that digs into all of these questions. To Learn More “The many eras of the AIDS Committee of Toronto—including its final bow” by Kevin Hurren in Xtra. How to Survive a Plague by David France Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism by Tim McCaskell “The Last Pandemic” by Arshy Mann & Jordan Cornish in COMMONS

The Montreal police have arrested and charged the friends of an unarmed teenage boy who was shot and killed by the Longueuil police last year. Meanwhile, the police officer who killed Nooran Rezayi is a free man. The whole thing stinks of a cover-up. The full force of the state is being deployed against a group of teenagers in order to silence them, smear their reputations and whitewash the unjustified and unjustifiable killing of an unarmed child. And it's all because Quebec’s policing establishment understands what it would mean for the public to see Nooran Rezayi’s death for what it is — a moral outrage, where justice must be served. To Learn More: The Killing of Nooran Rezayi from The Hatchet "11 charged in connection with events leading up to fatal police shooting of teen Nooran Rezayi" by Alessia Simona Maratta & Phil Carpenter in Global News "SPVM cracks down on Montréal-Nord unit suspected of co-ordinated racist behaviour" in CBC Montreal This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hatchetmedia.ca/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit hatchetmedia.ca There’s an unfortunate tendency to talk about the cops as some kind of a monolith. And don’t worry, I’m not about to go on some lecture about how not all police officers are bad. I just mean that we often miss that police forces are complex, political institutions with competing centres of power. There are the police boards that are supposed to govern these forces and maintain civilian rule over the cops; the police chief and upper management that run the force and oversee the day-to-day operations; the rank-and-file cops who actually do the police work; and the union that represents them. Even in relatively well-run police forces, there’s inevitably going to be tension between these different levels. But it’s not uncommon for those tensions to turn into outright infighting and backstabbing, which can have profound implications everyday people. That’s one way to think about what’s been happening in Saint John, New Brunswick. The city’s police chief Robert Bruce has been in his position since 2021. And over the last year, tensions that had been building between him and everyday officers have spilled out into the open in dramatic fashion. A police union rep was dragged out of a city council meeting by force. Numerous harassment complaints have been filed against the chief by the officers working directly with him. And you have a police force where one out of every five officers is on leave, putting a major drain on the city’s resources. But the chief claims that at the heart of all of this is simply the police union playing dirty, and refusing to go along with the change that is necessary to modernize the Saint John police force and make it more accountable. So what is actually going on here? And who’s in the right? Andrew Bates, a reporter from The Telegraph-Journal, joined us in The Hatchet studios in Toronto to help us make sense of this mess.To Learn More: "Chief said wounded officer 'had it coming to him,' lawsuit alleges" by Andrew Bates in The Telegraph-Journal "Chief says he faced 'resistance' to change from union" by Andrew Bates in The Telegraph-Journal"Saint John police union rep forcibly removed from council chambers" by Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon in CBC News "Saint John police Chief Robert Bruce announces retirement amid conduct complaints" by Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon in CBC News

For the last few years, it’s become almost a cliché to talk about how we’re in the middle of a new era of accountability when it comes to sexual violence. Whether it’s the prosecution of Harvey Weinstein or the ongoing revelations from the Epstein Files, the rich, famous and powerful appear to be having their crimes exposed and, on occasion, even punished. Here in Canada it’s been no different. There have been numerous media exposes on the prevalence of sexual violence in arenas as varied as media, sports, business, politics, the service industry and so many others. But when it comes to actually prosecuting these alleged crimes in the legal system, Canada’s track record has been much more mixed. The Jian Ghomeshi trial, which kicked off Canada’s #MeToo movement years before The New York Times expose on Harvey Weinstein, ended with an acquittal. On the other hand, billionaire fashion mogul Peter Nygard is now serving eleven years in prison for sexually assaulting four women in Toronto at the height of his fame and power. Quebec technology billionaire Robert Miller was arrested and faced two dozens charged, including sexually assaulting minors. But last year he was found unfit to face trial due to advanced Parkinson’s disease. And last year’s Hockey Canada trial, maybe the most high-profile case of them all, ended without any guilty verdicts. If there’s one takeaway that I have from all of these trials and the way that they’ve been covered, it’s this — each trial comes to represent the whole in the public’s mind. Each individual case became a litmus test on whether or not #MeToo has gone too far or not far enough. And the trial of Frank Stronach has been no different. Stronach is one of the most recognizable and influential billionaires in Canadian history. The founder of Magna International, an auto parts manufacturer, he has long been considered to be a leading light of Canadian industry. And he never shied away from the spotlight, making himself a near-constant public figure in the worlds of thoroughbred horse-racing and politics, both in Canada and in his birth country of Austria. But two years ago, he was arrested and eventually charged with eighteen alleged sexual crimes involving thirteen women, from a period that spanned from 1977 to 2024. And when the stories first broke, it was hard not to see just how remarkably similar most of the accounts from the alleged victims were. From the outside, it seemed like these charges would lead to a successful prosecution and significant jail time. But today, that no longer appears nearly as certain. Stronach is facing two separate trials, the first of which wrapped up in April. And that trial has been an unmitigated disaster for the Crown. During the course of the trial, it was revealed that the police hadn’t even tried to verify whether or not Frank Stronach was in the country for one of the alleged assaults. Prosecutors were upbraided by the judge for allowing an accuser to knowingly lie on the stand. And the Crown was forced to drop charges related to three of the seven accusers, putting into question the entire course of the prosecution. The judge is expected to deliver her verdict as early as this week. So what happened here? And is any of this indicative of a broader trend or a larger point? Stronach’s defence team certainly thinks so. Here’s what defence lawyer Leora Shemesh said in her closing arguments. “I say with the greatest respect that the pendulum has swung so far the other way that we’ve really lost our ability to balance and respect our constitutional norms. This “Believe all Women” and the “#MeToo” movement and political platforms of not challenging women or testing their complaints really have no place in our criminal justice system.” So is she right? Is this a case of #MeToo gone too far? I’m not so sure. Part of me suspects that if this trial is indicative of anything, it’s about broader failures of police and prosecutors to take their jobs as seriously as they should. That it might be part of a pattern of procedural laziness that has doomed so many other high-profile cases in Canada. Here to talk about it all is Joseph Brean, a reporter for The National Post, who has been covering the trial from inside the court room. We go in-depth about what actually happened during the trial, whether or not it represents broader failures in the justice system and if criminal trials can ever bring justice for historical sexual assaults. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hatchetmedia.ca/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit hatchetmedia.ca There’s this idea out there that often gets bandied about; that the RCMP, from its very inception, has been a tool of political repression. People claim that for most of the force’s 150-year history, the Mounties have been used to clamp down on perceived opponents of the state, whether they’re Indigenous activists, Francophone separatists or leftists of all stripes. And that theory, well, it’s basically true. During World War One and into the 1920s, one of the force’s primary missions was to infiltrate and surveil any group deemed potentially subversive. This typically meant leftists, trade unionists and immigrants from communities deemed untrustworthy, especially Jews, Ukrainians and Finns, even if they’d committed no crimes. When the Cold War came around, the RCMP surveilled over 800,000 Canadians. In the 1970s, Mounties were literally planting false flag bombs that they could then pin on Québécois radicals. And just this year, a CBC News investigation has revealed the ridiculous lengths that the RCMP was willing to go to in order to sabotage Indigenous rights groups in that same decade. Of course, there are many more examples. But what unites these shameful episodes in the history of the RCMP is that they were led by units within the police force dedicated specifically to targeting political dissidents within Canada. These units went by different names: the Intelligence Section, the Special Branch, the Directorate of Security and Intelligence, the Security Service. But all of them were committed to rooting out politically unreliable Canadians — and then, silencing them. After a royal commission issued a damning report about the RCMP’s dirty tricks in 1981, the federal government decided that the Mounties should get out of the business of intelligence gathering and political policing. Of course, they never really stopped, especially when it came to Indigenous groups. But over the past few decades, things have been a little bit better. Yes, the RCMP still infiltrated groups of leftist organizers, and continued to surveil Canadians expressing political opinions that the cops deemed to be too radical. But unlike the 1920s or the 1970s, there typically haven’t been entire branches or units within the RCMP explicitly dedicated to political policing. That is, until now. It’s called the Critical Response Unit. And it operates under the umbrella of the British Columbia RCMP. The unit was created in 2017, in order to crack down on the resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline in Wetʼsuwetʼen territory in northern British Columbia. At the time it was called the Community-Industry Response Group. It was then deployed to repress protests to old growth logging in Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island. Today, it has become a permanent fixture within the BC RCMP. And this unit is now being used to surveil political dissent of all stripes, especially pro-Palestinian protesters on university campuses. And if you think about it for a second, it kind of sounds like a leftist fever dream. A police unit that was founded to protect a gas pipeline and is now spying on pro-Palestinian students? But that’s exactly what it is. Emma Bainbridge investigated this new political policing unit — alongside Tia Dafnos and Shiri Pasternak — for The Breach. And she’s here to talk about what they found. Featured in this episode: Emma Bainbridge (The Breach) To Learn More: "A notorious RCMP unit shaped B.C. universities’ reaction to Palestine encampments" by Emma Bainbridge, Tia Dafnos & Shiri Pasternak in The Breach "Controversial B.C. RCMP unit to police opposition to fast-tracked resource projects" by Shiri Pasternak & Tia Dafnos in The Breach "BC’s Protest-Response Team Is Monitoring Treaty Negotiations, Internal Docs Show" by Amanda Follett Hosgood in The Tyee "Worrying’ and ‘extremely concerning’ C-IRG methods prompt calls for better RCMP oversight, reform" by Brett Forester in APTN News

This is the first installment of "A Few Bad Apples," a new, ongoing series about police misconduct from The Hatchet. Across Canada, police continue to act with impunity. Toronto is amidst the worst policing crisis in its history. And while the details of that were still coming out, three off-duty Toronto police officers were charged with sexual assault in Spain. In British Columbia, the Vancouver police has been interfering in the city’s politics, while the RCMP spies on protesters and dissidents. Murder trials in Calgary and Fredericton have fallen apart because of police incompetence. And in Edmonton and St. John, the police chiefs have been accused of serious misconduct. And then there’s Montreal. Last year, two unarmed people were killed by Montreal-area police forces, including including one of a fifteen-year-old boy. This is why we’re launching a new, ongoing series from The Hatchet called “A Few Bad Apples.” It will be both a podcast and a newsletter. The purpose is to maintain a consistent eye on what’s happening in the world of Canadian policing, in every corner of the country, and not just follow the media trends. And for our first story, we’re going to the South Shore of Montreal, where one of the most horrific stories you can imagine is still unfolding The killing of Nooran Rezayi, an unarmed child, by the Longueuil police. And the blatant attempt to cover it up. Featured in this episode: Ted Rutland To Learn More: "The Killing of Nooran and the End of Community Policing" by Ted Rutland in The Rover "Death of Nooran Rezayi: ten seconds, a report filed, a story still incomplete" by Nouri Nesrouche in La Converse "Two months after Nooran's death, his friends are still wondering how to keep standing" by Nouri Nesrouche in La Converse "Quebec watchdog finishes investigation into police shooting death of teen" by Matthew Lapierre in CBC News This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hatchetmedia.ca/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit hatchetmedia.ca There’s something about the way we talk about crime that I’ve always found frustrating. Whether it’s car theft rings or fentanyl trafficking or targeted killings, we end up having intense political debates about peripheral issues — should we be locking more people up or making it harder to get bail or changing the Youth Criminal Justice Act But we rarely, if ever, talk about the central issue — money. Organized crime groups have to set up sophisticated operations to launder their money and put it to use. But today, there exists a shadow financial system that has made it easier than ever for criminals to launder their money with ease. It's cryptocurrency. And ironically, it’s often the same politicians who run on tough-on-crime agendas — people like Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim or Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre — who are simultaneously embracing crypto, the preferred currency of the modern criminal. What is surprising is how easy it is to turn that crypto into cash. We’re talking about eye-popping sums; hundreds of thousands of dollars at once, without the Canadian government knowing about it. Featured in this episode: Emma McIntosh (The Toronto Star) To Learn More: "Inside Canada’s shadowy crypto banking system that makes it easy to facilitate ‘an unlimited amount of crime'" by Sheila Wang & Emma McIntosh in The Toronto Star "Crypto giants moved billions linked to money launderers, drug traffickers and North Korean hackers" by Spencer Woodman, Agustin Armendariz, Miguel Fiandor Gutiérrez & Sam Ellefson in The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists "Why Canada is seen ‘as a very weak link’ in the global fight against crypto fraud — and what can be done to fix it" by Emma McIntosh & Sheila Wang in The Toronto Star "The trail had gone cold for millions in stolen crypto. Then came the ‘aha!’ moment that unlocked the mystery" by Sheila Wang & Emma McIntosh in The Toronto Star