The Ben Mulroney Show - A new Liberal political misstep? // Coming together in times of crisis

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Guest: Andy Gibbons, Principal at Walgate Advisory, former VP WestJet Guest: Regan Watts, Founder Fratton Park Inc., former senior aide to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty  GUEST:  PETE BOMBACI — Genwell 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 Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Like I said, we got the band back together. Please welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show. Andy Gibbons' principal at Wallgate Advisory

and former VP at Westjet and Regan Watts, the founder of Fratton Park and former senior aide to Jim Flaherty. Gentlemen, I've missed you. Same Ben. How are you? I'm good. Are you driving? No, I pulled over because Ben, I am in Ottawa. I'm sorry.

For listeners and viewers of the Ben Mulrooney show, they know that is where Andy Gibbons is from. And by the way, where Nicholas Mulrooney, the youngest Mulroney was born and raised. Yes. And the traffic here, they don't have time saver traffic in Ottawa because the traffic here is bumper to bumper. And, you know, there's more civil servants than I realize. to live in this town because I cannot move so I've just pulled over to the side of the road. That is wise. We want you to be safe and we

need you. We need you. All right, let's jump right into the story that is consuming a lot of people. Look, we know about horse trading. We know that deals get done on a handshake and but what we saw in the past few days as it relates to

what is believed to be an about face by the liberal government on their support for the expansion of Billy Bishop, where Doug Ford seemingly had a handshake deal with Mark Carney to have federal support to reinvigorate and allow jets at Billy Bishop Airport. And in exchange, his MPPs that represented a belt of rural Ontario that the all-to-trained the slate to go through, he was going to get them to quiet their issues with it.

Well, now, if the liberals have revoked their thumbs up, for the airport. He is going to make life harder. Doug Ford is going to make life harder on Alto. I don't think anybody wins here. Regan, we'll start with you. So this is an interesting story, Ben. And I think horse trading is something that is a tale

as old as time in politics. Whether it's Canada, the United States, Great Britain, doesn't matter what country. As long as there's politicians, there will be bartering to be had. I think the federal government has mismanaged, this issue in the sense that there was clearly a appetite to explore expanded jet potential jet use and expanded runway at Billy Bishop Airport. You know, they announced the changes because

of to the runway because of safety. People who are listening or watching might not know that they had to expand the runway because of the safety of aircraft and wanted to make sure they could land and take off safely. That's perfectly legitimate. But there was a sense that the feds were on board with this and Ben you even commented it on your intro of the story i'm not sure the feds were ever totally on board um but when it comes to premier ford and his mp's um you know they are they are horse traders extraordinary and so when you know and this was a file that they clearly wanted to move forward and so they you know they may they passed legislation that allowed them expropriate the ownership of billy bishop airport uh and control and interest from the city of

Toronto to the brimpshire government that's the right legislative move um but neither Billy Bishop Airport and its owners, nor reporter airlines, nor the government of Canada, nor the government of Ontario made the public case to the people in the community as to why jets needed to land on the airport, why they needed to quadruple the number of passengers that are going through that airport every year. Currently it's about 2 million, they wanted to go to 10 million, which is absolutely insane. And anybody, last point, Ben, last point, Ben, anybody who's driven along Lake Shore in the city of Toronto, and that includes you near the Chorus Studio knows how absolutely bonkers the traffic is along that corridor.

And so quadrupling the amount of air traffic with no change to the road traffic and no change to the rail traffic is absolutely insane. And that it fell apart doesn't surprise me one bit. Yeah, there is a lot of blame to go around here. And Andy, I put some of it on the communication strategy of Doug Ford's conservative government. They should have on day one before they said anything. They should have dropped a comprehensive plan with a deep detail like renderings and charts and letting us know how this was going to impact the downtown core positively, how it was going to impact gridlock going out to the airport, how much new business this was going to mean for the downtown core and on and on and on. And that didn't happen.

And because of that, it allowed space for the opposition to take root. Yeah, the opposition got to define it. I agree with you, Ben. But also in their defense, the expansion of Billy Bishop Airport is popular in Toronto. It is supported by the people of Toronto. People like the facility. They want responsible usage. They want travel options. And I don't work for port or don't get confused here. But it is a popular airport. And people, even on the waterfront, support the expansion. So what surprised me the most is there's different issues. here expanding the runway modestly to allow planes to land people aren't opposed to jets today are as quiet as the planes of land there currently that one's nonsense that's nonsense it's not really a stretch it's not really a stretch to do those two things I think where they lost people is on the expropriation of parks and it just felt like they were moving forward too fast and in the absence of what you say which is a responsible plan yeah for the facility. But the thing that surprises me the most is everyone should have known all of these

things, whether it's McKinnon or the transfer minister or the premier, they all knew these things when they all held hands. And nothing has really changed unless you buy the theory that it's about the by-election. Well, there you go. And that's what I want. That's where I want to. But liberals can win that riding in their sleep. I don't think they need to trash Billy Bishop to win that by election. So it's a bit of a head to Regan, when I heard that they did polling and 87% of the 89,000 people

they talked to, resoundly said they did not want this. I thought to myself they went out and found 89,000 members of the NDP because that is not representative of the city, which means to me I don't trust that poll. That was done because they

wanted a result so they could turn this down. At least that's how it feels. So I'll fact check you a little bit there have been because you're spreading some fake news. Just kidding. 89,000 people were engaged in the process. It wasn't a poll, though. It was a comment period that Transport Canada opened up as part of the plans to expand the runway. And so they got 89,000 responses. Obviously, there was some organized political activism there. 87,000 of them were against the expansion of the airport. But it was a public consultation.

It wasn't a poll. A poll for 89,000 people is not. and is like impossible to do. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I'm sure the Liberals polled on it and I'm sure that they found mixed reactions. You know, you can take, Andy's a great example of taking the boy out of the airline, but you can't take the boy the airline out of the boy. You know, there is not universal support for all of this. I've seen no empirical evidence that suggests otherwise. And the Premier and his Transport Minister and the federal government and Porter Airlines did not make the public

case to bring the public on board. I'm kind of agnostic on whether you expand jets there. Like I buy the noise argument. Like I get that. But you've got a responsibility as a company. If you want to do something big and you need the government to make rule changes to make it happen, you have a responsibility to bring the public along with you. And nobody did that, especially Porter.

Yeah. Well, but now we got the by election coming up. And this is, and you think you guys, where do you think? If Mike Layton jumps into this race and runs as a member of the federal NDP, you don't think that this is, went from horse trading to it. You don't think it's a horse race, Andy? Well, if Mike Layton runs for the NDP, then that will give a lot more credence to the liberals need this for the by-election.

Because it's been a long time since we've had a liberal with a big, an NDP with a big name run around that place. So if indeed that comes for fruition, that's the best chance the NDP will have. I mean, there's a statue of his dad in the rioting for God's sake, right? So, you know, like you've got to think he's got a great shot at that. And that would give more credence to the by-election. But again, the by-election prospects for the Kearney government were known.

The issue here, Ben, is the liberals pulled the plug. Why did the liberals pull the plug? What change for them? And I think the Toronto Caucus, whether it's Vince Casparro or Julie Drewsson or Evan Solomon, I think they put their hand up and said, no, we're not doing this. All right. We're going to take a quick break when we come back. Regan's going to keep his hands at 10 and 2.

And when we come back, imagine having your life torn apart. Five children in your family have been killed in a collision with a car. And the police will not even tell you the name of the person who did it. What's this all about? We'll delve into that when we come back right here on the Benmorey show. When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel.

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Conditions apply. Details at freedommobile.ca. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and very glad to be joined yet again by Regan Watts. Regan Watts and our good friend, Andy, Andy, I'm sorry, I just blanked on your name. I apologize. Andy Givens. I had Kim Jong-un in my head. And so I apologize.

Anyway, now we have to, we have to, we have to, turned to something a very heartbreaking. But six weeks ago, we heard the tragic news of a family losing five children in a collision at an intersection in Mapleton Township. And five of the kids, Susie, Maggie, Sarah, Helena, and Peter, their ages were four, six, eight, ten, and twelve were killed when they were, they collided with another car, a car collided with them, rather. The mother did not have a chance to attend the funerals of her five children because she was still in hospital. And six weeks later, the police have not released the name of the man who is responsible for the death of these children. What do you make of this? Andy, we'll start with you.

I think it's unbelievable. And it made me think of the tragedy with the Saskatoon Humbolded Broncos. hockey team. Now, most of that team died in that terrible incident, we all remember. But the driver of the truck who committed the crime and was convicted, you know, we all knew who he was. There was a public debate about his background, where he was from, where he got his license, it was all in the public domain. And Canadians had a good debate about whether this gentleman should be deported or not based on his crime, because based on his crime, he should have been based on the letter of the law and can't have an informed educated debate about that tragedy and what should happen

to someone who commits a crime like that and i just thought in this instance i don't like these nanny state trying to protect people like things have to be in the public domain and they have a right to know and this poor mom in a hospital bed spending time hiring a lawyer shopping for a lawyer yeah to get information about the death of her children yeah like they've got to fix that by by 10 a tomorrow then after that story. It's absurd. I said on this show in a case similar where we talked about the news withholding certain information about certain types of people, that if you're not going to tell me, I'm going to unfortunately have to assume. And I don't see the value in the news

if my job is to make inferences and try to understand implication. And if what they're doing here is what I suspect they're doing, which is they believe that they don't. want to stoke cultural issues. That's not their job. That is not their job. Let culture and society figure it out. Your job is to give us the information we need, as Andy just said, that we can then use to navigate these complex stories.

I agree completely with both you and Andy. And the idea of being a parent and losing children is just like it's the greatest fear I have in my own life. like the order of life is not parents bearing their children it's the other way around um and i you know look society is in particularly in this country after the long national nightmare known as just and trudeau we've got a big mess a bunch of things we need to fix in this country and you know the if your assumption is right ben and i don't know if it's right but your assumption is right that they're not revealing the name because

they're worried about uh certain uh cultural communities being targeted, as was the case in the same cultural community. I think your hinting at was involved in the humble crash. I don't know, but that's my point. I don't think that's the role for the police. We don't know. We don't know. That's my point.

I don't think that's the role for police. So, you know, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we should release the information and, and, and, and, and, you know, let, you know, let justice be served in the legal sense. And then in the moral and, in societal sense, uh, the chips will fall, uh, where they may. I want to move on to another story. You know, there's a big conservative talking point that we should, you know, why are we sending,

why are we sending aid to various countries where we can't take care of our own people? I'm of the opinion that aid is, you know, we are a wealthy country and it is incumbent upon us to help other countries. However, not all aid is created equal. And there's a story that we spend somewhere between $12 and $14 billion annually on international assistance. and I wanted your take on this because I remember when Justin Trudeau during that long national nightmare so flippantly just tweeted it tweeted to Trevor Noah. Hey Trevor, thanks for everything you're doing to celebrate Nelson Mandela's legacy at the Global Citizen Festival. Sorry I can't be with you, but how about Canada pledges 50 million for education cannot wait to support education for women and girls around the world?

Work for you? Let's do it. Now, the reason I bring that up is I can, I don't think that's a one-off. I think that's actually, we're peering behind the curtain. I think that's how a lot of decisions in Justin Trudeau's Ottawa and in his government were made. Quickly like that, if it feels good, let's do it. And I'm, I'm not sure that every aid initiative that's coming out of Ottawa is optimal

and is going to organizations that are spending money properly. And to say that is not a conservative thing. It's I respect for the taxpayer thing, but also respect for the people who are expecting the aid. If $50 million is going out, I want $50 million to show up to help educate girls. Andy, what do you think? I'm a supporter of foreign aid.

I'm traditional like you. We have wealth and international obligations, and we have to do that work. I'm with you. I didn't like the global citizen. I didn't like the deal with the We brothers. And I don't like conservative politicians cherry picking one aid group to scapegoat and to be overly political either. So we have to have some way of getting the right information about these aid programs and making sure they're meeting the actual needs.

And part of that is probably cutting off, you know, fat NGOs with VPs who make half a million dollars and all of these things, right? We can cut the bureaucracy out. But and also we should note for your listeners, Canada on a procal. but a basis does not pull its weight on international aid. It does not. It's been dwindling, and we have no conversation about that nationally right now. Riga, not for nothing. This education cannot wait that we gave $50 million.

Sorry, Justin Trudeau gave $50 million to. They have operational costs of 20%, so 10 million went to operating that organization. There are other non-U.N. adjacent organizations that do virtually the same work that have operational costs somewhere between 12 and 14%. That's a big difference if your goal is to educate people. But my fear is there are a whole bunch of line items in our foreign aid budget that look like this. Yeah. So aid is a, and I won't surprise your listeners and viewers, I agree with Andy and yourself,

and that aid is a thing that we must provide. as a wealthy G7 country given the blessings we've received from the good Lord in this in this nation natural resources people wherewithal we create wealth we should share it um I like an aid to marketing and what I mean by that is there's a saying in marketing that you know as a marketer you're wasting 50% of your budget you're just not sure which 50% and I suspect that that principle also applies to aid you know there's some very worthy projects in the foreign aid space that should continue. But when we are funding Fat Cat NGOs who have big salaries, who fly business class all over the world to go to conferences and create a carbon

footprint that even Justin Trudeau himself wouldn't like, that's where I have a problem. And so I'm not suggesting that we should cut aid, but I do think we should go and do a deep dive line-by-line audit on aid and make sure we're getting the value for money because it is Canadian's money. And honestly, that was something I was hoping this new prime minister would use to separate himself. He said this is a new government. I think that would have been an easy way for even people like myself who didn't vote liberal to say, yeah, finally. We're getting a little bit. But he's got there's a lot to do.

I mean, look, I'll be quick. And Andy, I know has something to say here. Real quick, because we're up against the clock. Left an absolute mess. And there's only so much on Carney's desk that he can take care of. Some things just have to wait. Yeah, fair enough. last word to you, my friend.

Well, when I was a teenager, I worked at Robinson's IGA on Marravelle, and I carry a mop around and do the spills. But imagine you're Mark Carney. There's a clean-up and aisle, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. You know what I mean? Yeah. Let's cut them some stock on getting to aid. Yeah, fair enough.

Andy, thank you so much. Regan, please drive safely. We'll see you back here in the city. Hi, I'm Jane Koston, former writer and podcaster for places like the New York Times, the Atlantic and National Review. And now I'm here to hang out with you. five days a week on what a day, Crooked's Daily News podcast. That's right. Now who's respected on both sides.

Okay, yeah, it's not me. It's probably still just Dolly Parton. Moving on. These days, it's hard to separate what matters from all the noise, especially when the noise somehow also feels like it's made out of knives? That's why every weekday, the team and I scour the headlines to bring you the stories that matter most to the way you live in just 20 minutes. Listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Before we continue, a very happy birthday shout out to Regan P. Watts. I don't know why he didn't tell me it was his birthday.

I'm going to stick it in my phone so I don't forget next year. But happy birthday, my friend. I don't know if you're listening on the IHeart radio app. But if you are, I hope you celebrate in a way befitting how wonderful you are. And now, on that note, let's move on to another guy who's just a tremendously positive guest that we have. I love our chats every week. We talk about human connection. Please welcome to the show, Pete Bambachi from Genwell. Pete, welcome. I hope you're having a great summer. Ben, thanks. It's so great to connect, funny enough. It's always great to have these chats. And I love the fact that you,

you and I hope the listeners take away so much positivity out of the fact that if we all focus on just building a little more connection in our lives, we'll all be a little bit happier and healthier. Well, I remember the first time we met, Pete, you told me about the origin story of Genwell and it happened during that big blackout that, what was it, 20 years ago? Yeah, 2003, 23 years ago. 23 years ago. And maybe remind our listeners about how you got the idea to sort of build out this initiative and this movement.

Yeah, well, the original inspiration was that night. I went to a friend's house in Toronto and at about 9 o'clock. at night. He had built a bit of a fun barbecue going on in the backyard, and I walked out to the front porch, and I looked at this street that was filled with people. There was kids riding bikes, throwing footballs. I think somebody had a hockey net. Parents were eating and drinking. It was truly, you know,

an inspiring night how when we shut off all the distractions, everybody came together. So just being the, you know, inquisitive person that I am, I walked out to the street and said, hey, this is amazing. I wish I lived on a street like this where everybody knew each other, and they all paused, looked at me and said, we don't know each other. And it was that point, Ben, when I thought to myself, wow, why do we need to wait for a crisis to talk to the people that we live beside? And as I listened to people for the next several years, it was, yeah, that happened in my office, that happened in my classroom, that happened in

every aspect of life. It was the excuse that gave us the permission to talk to each other. Yeah, but now it feels, Pete, I mean, you can absolutely make a case that while that was, you know, a one-off in that we haven't had a big blackout like that since between the smoke coming in from wildfires or blackouts or floods or ice storms. Like, you name it. We're lurching from, you know, localized crisis to localized crisis. And it's almost like we've got a low-grade fever that we're dealing with. There's always something that we are dealing with either as a city or as a country.

And so we kind of are almost always in a crisis, aren't we? Yeah, and I almost, I love the way you kind of articulated that Ben as a low-grade fever. I think we're facing a lot of challenges right now. And, you know, when we think about the blackout, that was probably the nicest challenge we could have unless you lived in a high rise or you were elderly or had a disability. But when we think of, you know, in Calgary, they had floods. In the West we've had fires. Now I think we have over 900 fires in Canada right now. You know, we're all under a lot of pressure right now,

whether it's the economy, whether it's fires, whether it's, you know, cost of living, all these things. And I think what we need to recognize is, you know, there's three things that a gentleman by the name of Dr. Kwan McKenzie said to me nine years ago. He said, Pete, when you build healthy connections in your life, it helps you cope with the challenges that you're facing. It helps you find solutions to overcome it.

So whether you're needing shelter or you need food or support for your family, when we have people around us, that's how we find those solutions. And then ultimately, it builds the resilience that helps us all get through it, whether it's the economy, whether it's job loss, whether it's, you know, family issues, or unfortunately, if it happens to be a fire or some other catastrophic weather event, when we have those connections before we get to that crisis, we're all going to be far better off. Yesterday on the show, my friend, we had the president and CEO of Kids Help Phone.

And she joined us because they had discovered some really troubling data. The first six months of this year saw a rise of 24% in terms of kids reaching out via text compared to the first six months of last year. And a lot of what they were bringing up were issues of anxiety and depression and loneliness. and intrepid made a very good point. Like the kid in crisis today becomes the man or the woman in crisis tomorrow. And, you know, you said, like, we've got to get this stuff. We've got to nip this stuff in the bud before it gets any bigger. You can absolutely look at it from the perspective of we've got to help our kids and build those connections with them.

It feels they are the least connected group of young people that I've ever seen because we killed. any sense of community that they had during the pandemic. Yeah, well, you know, Ben, I think you and I can probably flash back to, you know, we finished school at the end of a school day. And maybe somebody, maybe even if you were bullied, maybe something terrible, maybe a failed an exam or a quiz or a test or whatever, you know, you went home. And even if your parents weren't home because they were working, there was kids on the street. And you'd go and you'd forget about what happened during the day.

You'd go throw a ball, pick a ball. you'd go kick the can or hide and seek or whatever. You'd just be with your friends. Yes. I mean, I see, I see what you're saying. I got into the back of a Crown Victoria with two armed guards, and I was brought, I was whisked back to 24 Sussex Drive, and I stayed there until I went back to school.

Anyway, but continue. You have a unique experience, my friend, but I totally. But all the more reason, I appreciate what you're saying. I saw that. I know that that was important. Yeah, totally. And so your isolation, which happened for different reasons and maybe not as connected to your buddies, those opportunities to connect in our communities on our streets and stuff don't exist the way they used to. And frankly, it's around the collective consciousness because it's, you know, we can't burden the kid who's 10, 11, 12, 13 years old to say, you need to build more connection. It's actually about the collective community saying,

hey, how do we help organize these kids on our streets to play a game, to do this, to do that? And I think it's just awakening the broader population to the importance of this. Yes, we can put it into crisis. We can say, hey, it's a fire with the blackout. It's some type of crisis. Or we can actually say, why don't we do it proactively so that we help everybody thrive a little more, you know, get through the challenges and set them up for success down the road. Yeah.

This number was so, it would be one thing if that number was slowly going up, but an explosion of 24%. That's the iceberg on the horizon. Yeah, well, you can see the numbers. Again, Jonathan Hates' book, The Anxious Generation, really tells us, you know, with the catastrophic effects, we're up against teams of behavioral science. Now, scientists, now we're up against supercomputers

with incredible algorithms and their sole purposes to distract us from living the lives that we just spoke about, the ones where we're out and being socially connected with other people. And I think we're just as a society starting to recognize what that does to us, whether you're young or you're old, a senior, or somebody who's got three kids, I was chatting with somebody this morning with three kids, no time to connect with their own family, their own friends, because they're so focused on their kids.

And so we need to recognize that social connection comes in every aspect of our life and be more conscious and intentional about taking advantage of them. We'll help our kids, we'll help our seniors, and it will help us as well. Pippenbachi from Genwell. Always love our chats, my friend. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ben.

Really appreciate the time. Yeah, I was glad intrepid that we had that conversation yesterday. I was glad they could dovetail today into this one. Yeah, well, I mean, yesterday's conversation was eye-opening, wasn't it? Just to remind our listeners, especially the ones who, because we talked about it during our Toronto hour. We spoke with the head of the kids' help phone who said

they'd seen an increase of 24% in the number of text. message they were getting from from kids from this time last year. That's not a gradual increase. It's such a spike. Yeah. And it's terrifying. And they said it's, I mean, there's anxiety issues, mental health issues. And to deal with it now, you have to deal with it now and address it now. Otherwise, it'll get worse later. But I love what Pete said. It could be as simple as, you know, if you live in a neighborhood setting up some sort of like street hockey competition for the kids of your neighborhood to play in. It's, you know, it's an appointment. It's an activity that they can all do together and that that that I don't know if that helps but it certainly doesn't hurt uh anyway I

appreciate uh appreciate the chat with Pete Mina was just walking her son to the school bus when it happened a large IT job fell out of the sky it landed on Mina's back with a wet splat the job stained her top with a great salary and child care benefits it smelled like a promotion in six months better jobs don't just fall out of the sky But you can raise your earning potential with Academy of Learning Career College. Get started at academyoflearning.com.