The Ben Mulroney Show - A mish mash of college issues, Tim Horton's swag and a teen smarter than you!

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

- ERIC KAM / TMU economics professor - Evan Budz / Burlington student - Reni Barlow/ Executive director at Youth Science Canada   Evan Budz  – Burlington student/ 15 years old  ALSO   Reni Barlow/ Executive director at Youth Science Canada If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Twitter: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ TikTok: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show on this Thursday, September 25th. We hope everybody is having a great day. You know, we're getting closer to the weekend. I can taste it. I can seize it. I can seize it. And I'm very much looking forward to it. I was looking forward to, you know, basking in the glory of the end of a great

Blue Jay's season, but they're sputtering their way into the postseason. I mean, they squandered, I think at one point, correct me if I'm wrong, guys, but they had a five-game lead over the Yankees, right? And the magic number kept getting smaller and smaller, and then it stopped, stop moving. And now they are statistically tied with the Yankees for the top of the AL East. And they've got to be perfect for the rest of this season. How many games are left? Four games left.

Well, they got, there's no room for error. I mean, they can lose, but only if the, if the, if the, uh, if the, uh, if the Yankees lose, because they, they have the tiebreaker, right? So that means that if they end with the same, uh, record, the Js win the AL East, right? But so. No room. There's, they had the room for error. No room for error.

So, and look, they've done, they were supposed to finish in the basement. They were not supposed to win anything this year. So there's a lot to be proud of in this team. And, you know, anything can happen in the, in the playoffs. That's why they play the game. so it's by no means over, but if you get to, you know, we're not beggars anymore, so we get to be choosers, and it would be nice to have momentum going into the playoffs. However, there are some things that we like to hang our hat on here.

And my brothers know, if my brothers are listening, they're going to chuckle at this, because they know that it doesn't matter what I'm working on. It doesn't matter how doggedly I'm fixated on a task at hand. I could be zeroed in, laser-focused, like a Navy seal. And then if all of all, all they have to say is a hot dog is a sandwich and I lose my mind. I lose my mind. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't go back to what I was doing before. And they, they know that that is a, it's a Pavlovian response.

Hot dog is not a sandwich. So when I hear the story of the Blue Jays fans love affair with hot dogs, we got to talk about it just for a moment. So they have this, they've got, what is it, like a loony, loony dogs? Looney dog day. I have yet to enjoy this. I'm going to at some point. But, okay, in 2003, fans scarf down 693, 865 dogs over 11 Tuesdays, an average of 1.73 a piece per game. That's a decent chunk of every single person. And you know that with that many people, there's a couple of vegans in there. There's a couple of vegetarians in there. So although actually, Dave, do they offer that they don't have, it's the same. So it's a same, so it's a

meat dog. It's a meat dog. Okay. Last year they raised the bar going from, you know, just under 695,000 to 727,000, almost 728 in 13 games. That's about 1.883 per fan. Well, this year, oh boy, they blew past that record. Jan's vaulted to 733,000 in just 12 games. Because we like round numbers, that's two per game per person. Two per game per person. That is amazing. That who needs mental health resources in the city of Toronto when you have Looney Dog Day at the Blue Jays games? They are doing yeoman's work there. So, yeah, we take the wins where we can get them, right? And congratulations to the Jays.

And I guess Schneiders, is Schneider's the hot dog provider? Congratulations to Schneiders. You made a lot of bellies happy and definitely bigger. Okay. And we do have to change the subject and talk about something a little more serious. because where we go from here is the question, but we have to look at where we are. And where we are talking about the impact of unchecked immigration

on our colleges and universities. What happens when schools start depending on immigration? Not opening themselves up and availing themselves, making themselves available to those populations, but quite literally depending on immigration to survive. In the province of Ontario, Some colleges are finding out the hard way, and it's costing jobs, it's costing programs, it's costing stability.

So let's look at two colleges specifically, northern and loyalist colleges. They're, I guess they're north of, where are they? Very much further north. Very much further north, right? Okay, so these are in northern communities, right? This is not a big city thing, right? they have relied so heavily on international students that most of the enrollment in their programs, 60 to 84% of most of their programs, are international student enrollment.

Many of those programs weren't about education. Again, that's what it is. A lot of the kids, they don't even go to class. They are using this as a pathway to residency and to citizenship. and that is not the sit that that that's not how the system is intended to work um the school if we look specifically at northern college the schools open new programs and even entirely new campuses and my producer did a story when he was with global news about this sort of thing not necessarily at these schools right no i went out to conestoga and and and by the northerns

and timens and uh loyalists is in belville okay And we know that these colleges, they took advantage of the rules that were out there because they just opened up the floodgates and they're like, great. We can bring in students. They're paying three times as much as any other student. And it limited the number of spaces for Ontario students, which was a real problem, but they got more money. And then they expanded because they're like, look at all the money we're pulling in.

Conestoga pulled in over $100 million extra one year. Yeah. But you went there and it was, you did not feel like you were here. Yeah. And that sounds like. Well, no, let's be very clear what we're talking about. And again, we have to have important conversations. And there's nothing less helpful than for somebody to not listen.

They hear a couple of words and it triggers them into a response that they already have pre-programmed. if you if they feel that what you are doing is criticizing anything that they believe is important to them then they will stop you and they won't listen and they'll say oh you hate immigrants nope not at all i'm married to one yeah well i mean i wouldn't be here work not for my family immigrated to canada that's that's not what we're saying if the system we're working as intended if the system we're producing uh great results then that would be that would be have as many immigrants as we I mean, I would love to live in a world where we could, the population of Canada could shoot up to a hundred million tomorrow.

Honestly, I would, because that would help us compete, right? That would, but the way that we have accelerated Canada's growth has been done in a way where we haven't been prioritizing the needs of the country, the needs of the people here. And by the way, it's short-sighted. Are these kids getting an education? No. The studies are saying They're not even going to class

Some of them are coming here And they're not learning English If you were going to come to Canada One of the glories of coming to Canada If you're coming from a non-English speaking country Is you are going to learn The International Language of Business You will have more a chance to succeed

If you take advantage of what it means to be Canadian And as international students That is not supposed to be part of the bargain But you can take advantage by forming communities and enjoying time and meeting people from diverse backgrounds. But if the entire school is made up of people from your country, you will default to the easiest lane. And that lane will be hanging out with your own and spending time, speaking in the language

of wherever you came from. And that's what I saw at Conestoga. I figured a week ago and we could get video around the community center they have, this, their central area, and we just sort of blend in and take, but no, we stood out like Sorathans because we were the only two people who were not Indian there. Yeah, yeah. And you look at the numbers, and it's, in Connozoga at one point was, I think it was 83% were from India. And that's just, yeah, it's crazy. And the sad thing is, is that a lot of them were, they had all these promises made to them. And yes, there are a lot of the people, a lot of students that came over,

and they played the game, the shell game, and how much money they had to come over and actually not going to classes, but there's a lot of them who came here hoping for an education and they were sold a bill of goods. They sold a bill of goods, yeah. It's not good. Canada did not live up to their end of the bargain. Absolutely. There's a lot of blame to go around. But the fact is when schools of higher education are not educating, they are just a vehicle to bring in money and spend that money, then we have lost the plot and the student body rather than being there to be educated is just a vehicle to make some money and now a lot of them are losing jobs there's going to be 10,000 jobs are on the line now because of this yeah we're going to

fix that thank you very much and would you wear Tim Horton's hat or sweater if you don't work there well Timmy's his banking on it we'll talk about it next this is the Ben Mulrooney chart we're talking about the power of a brand that The power of, and Canada doesn't have a ton of these global brands, right? You know, the logo, when you see the logo, you know exactly what it is. And I was walking around this building and three people yesterday stopped me to have a conversation about Tim Hortons and how Tim Hortons was selling their own swag. Oh, someone said, oh, you buy a Tim Horton's water bottle now. I was like, well, that's not unsurprising.

And then someone else said, no, no, they've got like a store now. You can go to a Tim Horton store and you can get shirts and hats and all sorts of stuff. And I had to sit with it for a while to realize just how this is a departure from how they normally do things. I mean, look, I come from a world where I would go to a lot of corporate events and I would go to a lot of sponsored events. And so you would see the corporate logos on all of the swag that you would get. So if you went to a corporate event that was sponsored by Tim Hortons, you'd get a water bottle that probably had the word Tim Hortons on it with the corporate logo as well.

So it's not that uncommon to me, but I realize most people haven't lived the life I've lived. And so in the city of Toronto and one of the biggest malls in the country, they have opened up a flagship Tim Horton's store. And I don't, I think it's a little weird. And to be fair, at the beginning of this show I pushed my love of Tim Horton's food

on everybody who would listen and so now we're talking about something that maybe they should rethink so they've got mugs and they've got shirts that have inside shows that say double double and roll up the rim

and this holiday season they're opening up a pop-up it's going to be in the Eaton Center in early November and it's not for coffee or timbits It's just branded merch, mugs and sweaters and t-shirts and ornaments and even pet toys. And they launched an online version of this store last year. And look, some people love their Tim Hortons. Some people love it. We hear these stories about people who are like, eat at McDonald's every single day.

And they have the same thing every single day. And if you offered them merch, they would take it. And marketing experts are saying this is less about selling shirts and more about brand exposure. And I think that's fine. Like I'm I'm also like a lot of the people listening I'm older than the kids I have no problem wearing Tim Horton's If somebody gave me something

I was like oh free shirt I'll wear that And and and let's open the lines And I want to hear from you I hear out the Ben Mulroney show I would love to hear from you If you would get out of your Get off your couch Get in the car and drive to a Tim Horton store

store not Tim Horton's store not to get coffee But to get yourself to get yourself a sweatshirt or a t-shirt or a mug that you could then wear for them. Do you have any clothes that are branded with anything else? I mean, that's what I'm saying. No, I got tons of stuff like that because as I said, I've worked in a lot of corporate events.

You know, I worked at the Olympics, right? So tons of the stuff with corporate sponsors. Look, here fundamentally this is what I think. You will, you're going to go to a store and you are going to pay the company to buy their, clothing to advertise for them. You are essentially going to give them free advertising. It's not free.

It's going to cost you, whatever it costs to buy the sweatshirt. And you're going to advertise for Tim Hortons in a company that you probably don't own stock in. I think it's a little backwards. And I think that whole thing is just a little bit backwards. And the only company in Canada that I see as having done that well was, and I can't believe I'm saying this, It was the CBC, but only after they got rid of their old logo and it became retro. Then all of a sudden they started slapping that on everything and people were wearing it. And I kind of wanted to get one.

But I worked at a different company. I just didn't think that would work very well. Let's welcome Ben to the conversation. Ben, thanks so much for calling. How are you doing? I'm well. I wouldn't wear it. Just in terms of what Tim Horton used to be all the way up until the 90s when they would still hire

red seal bakers and making their products and the actual individual locations and the quality of their product was far superior than what it is today um i wouldn't walk i wouldn't uh wear one of their things is to be a walking billboard for them with a substandard product now now are you the type of person because i now that i'm thinking about it a little bit i realize that i do have a number of i'd have a number of a piece of swag at home hats and shirts specifically of smaller companies that are up-and-coming or struggling to get market share. And so I wear that stuff all the time. Small company, small entrepreneurial companies that I think are worth supporting.

Sure. That's fine. Like, I'm in Hamilton. There's still a place that used to be what Tim Orton's is called Grandads. And they make, like, you know, when they make their donuts, there's a lineup out of the door. And something like that is fine because it's still essentially a Canadian company. Tim Horton's today, it's not. It's owned by some sort of South American conglomerate investment firm, right?

And it shows in terms of just what they are now and in terms of their hiring practices and all the issues that go along with it. But why would you want to go ahead and advertise that for that type of a company that's kind of ruined the brand? Well, yeah, if you want me, if you're going to give me some stock in the company to walk around as a living, breathing billboard, okay, we can talk. But I'm not going to give you that for free and pay for it. that's just that's not how I'm built but Ben thank you very much for the call oh and not for nothing I do want to point out that talking about the young the entrepreneurial spirit there is a there is a place in Toronto that has been popping up on my social media feed that I'm absolutely going to go to this weekend it's called dad's breakfast and coffee has anybody heard of this it's on Dundas Street West apparently they make the best new breakfast sandwiches in the city I will be the judge of that this weekend I'm absolutely going it looks yeah it looks incredible. It looks incredible what they do. They've got one. They've got a panco-crusted piece of like fluffy piece of egg that they then fry and then they put all this other stuff on top of it. But I would see, I would wear a shirt for dads. And if we were ever in a partnership with

Tim Hortons and they were a sponsor of a segment on this show, sure, I'd play the game. Absolutely. And I've already gone on a record that I say I wear or I like, I love their, um, the farmer's rap, for example. So, of course, I would, I wouldn't have a problem having that sort of partnership. But this idea, and also, I think he's right. This is not the Tim Hortons of days gone by. They are owned by a larger company. It is not the same thing as it used to be.

We've got another call. Let's welcome Selena to the conversation. Hi, Selena. Yes, hi. How are you? I'm well, thanks. I used to buy swag from them, like, not necessarily hats or shirts, but the mugs and things for Christmas.

You put a gift card in. Why they need a flagship store, like the average person's not going down there to buy that. Like they already have, you already have a display in your location. Yeah, and I do love the mugs. I've got one of those red ones that say Tim's on it and the Tim's is like sort of carved into it. Okay. Yeah. And my son, he would like to buy these things and he was 12 and he would like to go out into the world for a bike ride.

I'm like, okay, take your phone, be careful, you know, all that stuff. Well, he gets there, he buys a mug. And he asked him to wash it out first because he wanted to put his drink in it. And the cashier spit in it. Spit, wait. Yeah, he spit. And the son was like, what? And so anyways, he kind of put the spit one back on the shelf and took another one,

because you know those displays are outside of the cash, right? And he came home crying. I'm like, this is a 10-year-old. Like, what am I called and complained, went with my kid to the store? Oh, well, you need to call the manager. Called the manager. Okay, well, you need to email head office. Email head office, all the details.

Oh, well, what store was it at? They gave you, no, you know what, they gave you the run around. If there's an employee in the store that did something like that, it's incumbent on the manager to deal with it. You don't have to go to corporate for that. Yeah, and if you're the weekend manager, then tell the daytime matter, I shouldn't have to come back. I'm telling you it's this guy right there.

So I will not purchase Tim Horton at all. Well, thank you, thank you very much for the call. Let me tell you the quick, I mean, I told you earlier, I had Tim Horton's hat that I wore for a while, but the only reason I wore it was because I got it in Afghanistan at the Tim Hortons in Kandahar. And it said it on the back. And it was more because it was sort of a place that I'd been. Oh, yeah. Oh, exactly. It's unique. Hey, John, welcome to show. You got about 35 seconds.

Okay, hey, Ben. No, I would not get anything from the Tim Horton stuff because I just wouldn't. However, I was mentioning it's your screener there. I got a cottage up from Bob Cajun, and I do wear a coerth a dairy t-shirt. I just bought a core with a dairy sweatshirt. I went into the place. I probably went to the same one. And I got a light blue coorthodary sweatshirt. Of course I want to support that. Best mint chip on the planet. Well, shout out to the Crow family who owns it.

Still independently owned. There you go. There you go. That's one we can in support. And by the way, this is not an attack on Tim Horton's in any way, shape, or form. I think they know the love that I have for them. Coming up, did a low-level bank employee have full access to the prime minister's accounts? We're going to dig in next.

Welcome to the Ben Moor Rooney Show. Really appreciate you joining us on the adventure that we have every day on this show. We have a lot of fun. And even though we talk about weighty issues, we do so with really interesting, important, intriguing people. And I got one of those, one such people joining me now. Please welcome Eric Cam, TMU economics, a professor. The professor is in the house. Welcome, my friend.

Benedict, did that important, interesting person cancel? what happened? No, no, it's you. And you've always been reliable, my friend. I appreciate it. Okay. Did, we tease this before the break and somebody might have said to themselves, this can't be right.

But yeah, some lowly, low level guy at a bank somehow gained access to Mark Carney's bank accounts. Yeah. And it's not, that's not trivial, right? Because it's not easy to do. Banks, as we know, normally limit. and they log access. But insider misuse does happen. I did a little quick research on it.

And on a very personal story, I have to tell you that not that long ago, friends of mine, I won't mention names or the bank, were telling me about personal information that they probably shouldn't have been investigating but found it very easy to find. So when I read this, to be honest with you, my first thought was I'm not shocked,

and bank should do a whole lot more in terms of ensuring not only Mr. Carney's information, But Joe Q public's information as well, which should never be broadcasts. And but who was this guy? Because he was working for, it was part of criminal enterprise, wasn't it? Yeah. I mean, yes, it was a broader band of illegal behaviors. But at the end of the day, this was a person that had bank access, a bank employee,

and really probably didn't have much more than anybody else had, except, well, was probably a little bit smarter than your average bear and figured into how to hack the system. And that should really terrify a bank when you consider all of the personal information like lending loans and credit scores that they have on all of their customers. This is a really bad harbager. But maybe this is a nice wake up to the banking system to step up their security. All right. Let's talk about the pinch that we've all been feeling in the past 10 years. Although there are some people who would point out, if I say that we're all feeling, someone would say, oh, you know, the rich are immune.

they don't feel the pinch and everybody feels the pinch don't they they just feel it in different ways well yes and you're you know listen you're not going to talk to anybody who's going to say I'm having a tag day for billionaires so that's not where I want to go with this but the reality is in an economic

downturn as significant as Canada's has been over the last decade with real GDP basically stagnant when you look at things Ben like asset value volatility profit margin pressures liquidity decisions, this is going to affect, in fact, the wealthiest of us.

So when you see examples now of people selling shares off, even at a loss, what they're telling you is that they don't like where they're sitting in terms of debt and leverage. And what they want to do is increase their liquidity, put more cash in the bank, so they have it for a rainy day. Now, again, you're going to say that rainy day will never happen. That's relative. Their rainy day isn't the same as your rainy day, but it still may be their rainy day.

Yeah, yeah. And so exactly, everything is relative. But, and, you know, the knock on effects of something like this, because you got this Barry Zekleman, wealthy, very wealthy man. He was going to, he wanted to, he wanted to buy Algoma steel. And he had to, not only did he have to park that, but he ended up having to sell the positions that he had because he just wasn't sitting in a place where his balance sheet made a lot of sense to him. So it went from Algoma Steel. You know, he wanted to keep it in Canadian hands, I guess. And now that's not that, the knock on effect of this, of this poor economic climate that we're living in could translate to, you know, this great Canadian company possibly being owned by someone other than a great Canadian. Oh, you know, Bennett, it doesn't take you very long to think about just off the top of my head, which is not deep of knowledge today, but market liquidity, impact, capital flow shifts, confidence effects, and investment strategies. If these people are starting to sell off their stock to increase the amount of cash they're holding, what signal does that send to the broader market and lesser investors? I mean, if wealthy people are feeling sectoral impacts and policy pressures, imagine what Joe Q investor is thinking today. I've got to move on to the next one.

We've got to Toronto's condo sale drought. And it's not, Toronto is, what happens here is specific to Toronto, but it can have ripple effects around the country. Apparently, it's worse here than in other parts of the country. How bad is it in Toronto? It's actually, well, it depends on what side of the outhouse you're standing. I mean, if you're an investor and you own these things,

then when you look at investor pullback, right, we know that there are people just exiting the marketing droves due to declining things like rental yields and increased costs. There's a massive oversupply of units. They can't sell them, they can't rent them, but that doesn't stop maintenance fees from rising. So that really leaves you behind the eighth ball. But again, if you are somebody looking to possibly purchase a condo

or even rent a condominium, the times have never been better. And this is a buyer's market. But in general, we know that the housing market and the condo market too, is a harbinger of things that come for the economy. And so if this is going to result in things like increased mortgage defaults and strains on the banking sector, here we go. One more bad message for an economy already feeling the struggles then. I've got to wonder what's going to happen to these towers that are halfway done, two-thirds of the way done. They have to finish them, right?

You can't just leave them in the sky waiting for them to rot. They have to get finished. And I wonder what happens to people's deposits who paid for, you know, put a deposit to. down and those buildings are complete, technically completed. And to me, there's what's going to happen in the next few years to this glut is to me the most important story. Well, Ben, when you were still a young lad in Ottawa, you don't remember, but there was a building at Bay in Adelaide that stayed half-finished for a very long time.

And it actually almost single-handedly led to a construction industry slowdown and massive investor losses. But again, you know, the market can shrink. It has shrunk. And if you're one of the people holding, and if you're, by the way, a foreign investor and you bought hundreds of these things, then you're in real trouble. But again, maybe we just look at this a little bit glass half full. If you're a renter, now is the time to actually be tough. You do hold some collateral and don't just take the first thing offered to you. Ask for a month free. Ask for lower rent because those opportunities are out there, and they haven't been for a long time. That's really, really interesting.

And, you know, how do we square the circle, Eric? How do we deal, how do we have the conversation about our cities are too crowded? There's too many people here. And, oh, we have a housing shortage, but we also have this glut of condos. An excellent question. How do you square the circle? I don't know, but these are sectoral ships. They're going to take many years to sort.

sort out. You know, the problem with these condos and the problem with this situation in general is that Canada has 90% of its population living an hour and a half from the United States. So the square of the circle would be if there's a massive ton of industry and a massive ton of condos being built in Wall, Wall, Ontario, Ben, but that's just not going to happen. So how long do you think we have, we're going to be staring at these troubling financial headwinds in front of the condo sector? I think for a very long time in Toronto, the biggest city in Canada, there is a massive, massive oversupply. And there just may be entire condo buildings, Ben, not units that are going to stay empty for a very long time.

And that really isn't good. People can say on the left, it's fun to see the investors get whacked a little, but that's really fullheartedly thinking. Because when investors get whacked, the economy gets whacked and the economic growth problem is only going to get worse. Well, of course, I mean, those people who gleefully look at investors as if they are the problem. Investors in a lot of cases are the solution to the problem. What I mean by that is if they own the condo, there are taxes to be paid on that. And those taxes go to the social services that the people on the left are very, well, it's not just people on the left, people on the right depend on those social services.

You cannot have social services if you cannot pay for them. That's exactly right. And so if you're going to just erode the tax base further, it furthers money. I believe, something I once told your father, if you cheer a recession, you are just intellectually homeless. On that note, my friend, thank you so much. Stay healthy, Benedict. All right, up next, I'm going to try and sound smart.

I fail often when I do that. But next to our next guest, I don't have a chance, and he's a teenager. You've got to tune in. This kid is going to make you feel very, very bad about your own kids. Welcome back. to the Ben Mulrudey show. Let it never be said that we don't celebrate Canada on this show, that we don't highlight Canadian accomplishment. We don't just sit here and scream at clouds. No, when there is someone of note that rises above, when they are the Crem de la Crem,

when they are champions among champions, we highlight them especially when they are Canadian. Local Burlington student Evan Budds represented Canada on an international scale and earned first prize at one of the world's leading STEM events. It was the 36th, the European Union contest for young scientists. It was held in Latvia from September 15th to the 20th. And if I sat here and told you what he did, you would know that I had no idea about the words that were coming out of my mouth. So instead, we are going to welcome the champion himself to the show.

Evan Budd's, congratulations, and welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you very much. So, Evan, so you built, you developed an autonomous bionic sea turtle robot for ecological monitoring using AI. That sounds made up, but you did make it up. Exactly. So basically with my project, I've created a robot that can swim underwater

similarly to a sea turtle using some of the similar locomotion principles and designed it to conduct autonomous ecological monitoring. So essentially being able to operate in an underwater aquatic environment and detect different types of threats that may occur. From invasive species to coral bleaching. it's absolutely amazing let's also welcome to the show um the executive director at youth science

canada rennie barlo uh reny congratulations you you've got to be very proud we are very proud of evan and and also sarah who finished second that's exactly i i i i buried the lead we we took we took two thirds of the podium uh this is a reny i've got i want to get back to evan uh in a moment but i want to ask you you know there's there's all there's talk that that future is STEM, you know, STEM, STEM, STEM. And, you know, Canadians could be forgiven if they thought that a championship like this might be out of our reach when we are constantly hearing stories that, you know, on key fronts in the education system, the outcomes of our public school system are not necessarily where we want them to be. Yeah, in STEM, Canada is one of

world leaders. This is not actually the first time that we have won two core prizes at UIS. We've actually done that now for four years in a row. Oh, wow. And we have been the only country out of all the EU countries and the others participating to win two core prizes. So Canada is a world leader in Eustown. Well, let's talk about the leader amongst leaders, Evan Buds. Evan, I was looking into sort of some of the things that you've done in the past and you identified a real problem in in people drowning in backyard pools. And so last year you developed a life-saving idea and to solve that problem. How did you come up with this award-winning invention or idea?

So for my bionic sea turtle, I really became inspired for the ecological monitoring component after I was doing some reading in various news articles and research literature, where I found out about how big of a problem coral bleaching specifically, has been becoming for ecosystems across the globe. Specifically, one third of coral reefs are marine species, are sustained by one third of marine species, and they're so important to a variety of different factors. And with coral bleaching impacting,

there's really a significant risk for a detrimental damage to be caused, which is why it's so important to be able to identify where it's specifically occurring, to allow targeted recovery methods to be excellent. I mean, so, so I can imagine, Evan, that a lot of this happens, first it happens in your head and then you start putting it down on paper or maybe you start, you know, rough drafting it in a computer, but at some point, you need to build this out in the real world. And where do you get the materials to Tony Stark your way through something like this? Well, for me, it's been a lot using various online resources, various hobbyist shops that basically have a variety of different components. electronics, chassis materials to construct the device. And as well, it's been a lot of 3D printing and CAD design to create a variety of the more unique parts

than I need to accomplish some of the specific goals with my project. I'm like the flippers to the general support structures that I need. And Rennie, when your organization encounters a young person like Evan, what role do you play in his development? Well, the primary role we play is that there are about 100 regional STEM fairs across the country that students can take their projects too. Evan participated in the Bay Area Science and Engineering Fair in Hamilton. And so that gives students an opportunity to showcase their work and then they get chosen to go to the Canada-wide Science Fair. And that's where Evan was selected to go to Latvia.

And then beyond that, our focus is primarily on helping students learn to learn. communicate what they've done and do that effectively with judges and visitors. Evan, so you're 15. Your whole life is ahead of you, and you've already accomplished so much. What do you want to tackle next? Well, I'm looking at my robot in terms of expanding some of its capabilities, in terms of different threats to detect, and just in general, looking at some more problems that are of interest to me. That's one of my favorite parts of participating in the science fairs and science expos as it allows me to look in my community or look in the world for a specific challenge

that I'm interested in, for virtual lifeguard that was the drowning. And for my turtle, it was the ecological threats and go and work on that to develop a device that could potentially help to address that specific challenge. Have you given any sense or any idea, have you given any thought, rather, to where you want to go after high school, what you want to do? I'm really interested in sciences and engineering, so definitely going to university and hopefully a career within those disciplines as well. I wouldn't say I have a very specific field planned out as like, I'm only in grade 10,

so keeping my options open and I'm really excited to explore all that science has to offer. You know, my sons, Evan, and I'll say this to you already as well, my sons are 15, and I'm going to get home tonight and I'm going to tell them what you've accomplished. And then, and I will be talking to them whilst they are sitting on the couch and have probably been there for a very long time. It's, uh, your parents must be very proud. Yeah, they were, they were very happy and I'm so grateful for all of the support. They provided me throughout this project. So many long nights of testing my, my robot and my grandparents backyard pool and trying to solve all the different challenges that I encountered. So I'm really thankful for

their motivation and support throughout my endeavors. Rennie, you never know where that next prodigy is going to come from. And I like to poke fun at my sons on this show. They're the most incredible, wonderful boys that any father would ever have the privilege of calling his own. But, you know, there are late bloomers out there. What do you tell people, oh, my daughter, for example, she's really finding math challenging these days.

What do you tell someone like that? Well, I think the thing is to look at the areas that you're personally interested in. As Evan said, you know, he has interests related to the environments and helping people and so on. Look at the things that you're interested in and find the connection between science, technology, engineering, math, any subject, and develop those connections. So we actually have a tool to help that on mystempace.ca. and it's an AI-powered project idea generator called Spark that people can test it. What's the website again?

It's mystemspace.ca. Mystemspace.ca. Well, Evan, I'm congratulations to you and as well as to Sarah from Calgary, who her project was neurobiologically informed, targeted schizophrenia treatment, a multi-oemic fMRI approach. How old is she, by the?

way? She's 16 and essentially what she did was to develop a new prototype drug to treat schizophrenia. Of course. Of course. You know what this was? Today, this is not an interview or anything. Today it's about this is the origin story of somebody who is going to be, is going to change the world. Evan, thank you very much. Just promise me you will use your powers for good. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Because you can either be Tony Stark or you can be Victor von Doe. I suspect he's going to be Tony Stark. We're renovating a hotel, expanding our resort, and breathing some life back into the lake house. All while raising a family.

It's messy, it's real, and it's all up. Exciting. I can't tell if that's your exciting face. This isn't just construction. This is our life. Who needs sleep? Building Bomber, all new Sundays, on Home Network. Stream on Stack TV.

I do.