The Ben Mulroney Show - A prison break by a 69 year old and once in a century Texas floods

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

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 Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with a TD Small Business Account Manager, you can get the proactive business banking advice and support your business needs. Ready to press play? Get up to $2,700 when you open select small business banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit td.com slash small business match to learn more.

Conditions apply. Are you ready for a life-changing opportunity? BC Cancer is actively hiring for all healthcare roles across all its regional centers in beautiful British Columbia. Join a dedicated team committed to ending cancer for good and experience the lifestyle you've always dreamed of in stunning BC. We're curing cancer here. Are you in? Apply now at jobs.bccancer.bc.ca Welcome back and welcome to the Ben Mulroney show and welcome I say that I don't know where

you're watching us or where you're listening us on you may be listening on the radio or on a streaming platform or you may be listening as a podcast or you may be finding us on YouTube and now I'm realizing you may be finding us on social media. See, I'm a little bit of a Luddite when it comes to that sort of thing, but we're on Twitter. We're on TikTok. We are on Instagram. And so wherever you find us, thank you very much for joining us. So I woke up this morning to a story of a prison

break. And I loved that show when it first came out first couple of seasons. Great. Everything after that was just nonsense. It was on for far too long. But the idea of a prison break, it's, it's got this, I don't know this, there's some mythos about it. There's an aura about a prison break where the idea of it is thrilling, right? Shawshank Redemption style. But in reality, it involves somebody who should be in prison, who's not in prison. And that should be of concern to all of us. And so I read this story about a convicted criminal named Bill Gurma, might be Germa,

who escaped a minimum security facility in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec. And there are rumors that he may be in Southern Ontario. And at the end of the day, when they were checking, they're doing a head count. He wasn't there. Now there's a couple of things in this story that concern me. One, he was convicted of first degree murder and he was in a minimum security facility. Now I was going back and forth with my producer on this. He was like, yeah, well, but he, you know, he's probably, uh, slowly bit by bit, given more freedom. And my answer to that is why? Why? You killed somebody. Last I checked, the person he killed is still dead.

And so, well, he played by the rules, he followed the rules. That's what he's supposed to do. You don't get, you shouldn't get credit for the things you're supposed to do. You shouldn't get credit for not starting fights, not shanking somebody in the yard, not stealing things, not being disruptive. That's what you're supposed to do. The reason you're in prison is because you didn't do the

things that society wants you to do. So at the very least when you're in prison, you should be expected to follow those rules. And the idea that simply following the rules when you are convicted of first degree murder gets you eventually into a minimum security facility to me flies in the face of what I now believe I espouse, which is my priority is firmly on the side of the victims and the victims families. I have very little empathy, very little sympathy for those perpetrating the crimes. I am, we are living in a time where it feels like the priority of our justice system is making the criminal feel as respected as possible at the expense of the pain and the suffering

and the trauma of the victims of those crimes. And I wanna live in a world where we find the balance, but we've lost that balance. It is off kilter now. So this guy is rewarded for doing what he was supposed to do. He finds himself in a minimum security facility and then he escapes. Like, hey, don't forget, like the guys in Shawshank, they were in there for murder too. And I, and they were in there forever and they never left their cell until Andy Dufresne figured out how to get out and I cheered him on.

But like, yeah, he played by the rules and he was in, I wanna go back to Shawshank. And I say that with my tongue kind of in cheek. But that's the first part that really concerns me. The second part that really concerns me. The second part that really concerns me is that this is the second prison break of a violent offender from this prison in the last two weeks. I'm going to say it again. Bill Germa is the second felon who was convicted of a violent crime

who escaped from this very prison in the last two weeks. So I have questions as I'm sure you do. Hey, prison people, hey warden, if there's a warden, after the first guy escaped, what'd you do? What sorts of conversations did you have with your staff to ensure that this would never happen again? Because me thinks you didn't do anything. Like after the second guy escaped, did they say themselves, oh boy, oh, we're gonna have to answer for this

one. Like what, what on earth happened? I see my producer, Mike drole, chomping at the bit to jump in. I have to wonder if somebody's gonna lose their job on this one. And yeah, when you have one person breakout, you're like, Oh, geez, that's a problem, Two, and this isn't an open prison. This isn't like some of these prisons that we have out in the wilds where people are living in huts and they can kind of wander around

because they're so, it's low. But this is, it's minimum security, but it still has a fence. It still has a jail. And yet I wanna know how a, I'm fascinated how a 69 year old guy broke out. What did he do? Did he, he didn't tunnel out obviously.

I'm saying obviously. But I want to know, did the first guy and the second guy talk it all before they plan their escapes? And did one guy, did they both identify two different ways of getting out? Like, and did one say, okay, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do the over escape

and you're gonna do the under escape. I'm on- On the laundry basket. Yeah, like, or did the first guy escape? And did he tell Bill his plan? He said, okay, so here's how I'm gonna escape. Don't tell anybody, but I'm gonna do this and this and this and this and this.

They better tell us how. They better tell us how. But maybe Bill noticed that after the first guy escaped, the prison didn't do anything to buttress against that. Again, he was like, well, I'm seeing the exact same scenario play out. So I don't know, maybe I'm going to try doing exactly the same thing that the first guy did way too many questions. And look, we're having fun with this.

But these are these are issues of public safety. You know, there's there. I personally think those guys, if you're if you're convicted of first degree murder, I don't ever want you leaving a maximum security facility ever, because you should be punished for as long as the family has to deal with the trauma. And I don't think you should be rewarded for just doing what you're supposed to do. But there are issues of public safety here. And it does not feel based on the information I have

that this prison has done the requisite work to make people feel safe because they're letting people escape. So anyway, we're obviously going to be following this. I suspect they're going to catch this guy. I'm not really concerned that he's going to live on the lam forever, but he's out there now. And I don't know what he's going to do. I don't think, is he a bloodthirsty criminal? I have no idea. I don't know, but I kind of don't like the unknown. We're supposed to take the unknown and put it in prison.

That's where they belong. And now this guy's out and about walking around and I hope he doesn't have any interactions with people that could lead him to, I don't know, snap. Anyway, we'll follow that. We'll follow it. The really interesting story out of Mexico City. There are some protests.

Apparently the people in Mexico City are upset with the quote unquote gringos, the Americans who moved down there during COVID because they had less stringent COVID protocols. And they were known as digital nomads doing their work remotely from a city like Mexico City. And the people in Mexico City, none too happy about it. They say that their culture,

their identity is being wiped out. Let's listen to the riots that occurred over the weekend. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you get an idea. They were breaking things. They were, it looked like Seattle from a few years ago, right? But here's what I'll say. If you are somebody who is completely

against the Americans taking issue with deporting criminals, and you say, well, you're on stolen land, Spanish is not indigenous to Mexico. It is as colonized as the rest of North America. And they don't get a pass. So they're saying our identity is being diluted It is as colonized as the rest of North America. And they don't get a pass. So they're saying our identity is being diluted.

Now, tell me the difference between that and when Americans have an issue. And the difference is, on one hand, you've got digital nomads, and on the other hand, you've got illegal immigrants who are doing crimes. So that's all I have to say about that. All right, don't go anywhere. Much more to come on The Ben Mulroney show. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show and thank you so much for joining us. All right. One of the saddest stories of the weekend was the flash floods in Texas that, well, by definition, a flash flood comes out of nowhere. And they're not commonplace,

but they are something that normally can be dealt with by the authorities and by the infrastructure in place. However, the death toll in central Texas due to these flash floods rose to 78. I think it's have now pushed past 80. And they say that there are 10 people from a camp, campers that remain missing. These are terrible stories,

harrowing stories of people being swept away, clinging to trees, rampaging flood waters, carrying cars past them. Others had to flee into attics. I mean, we're talking about a water level that went up 26 feet 8 meters in just a matter of hours and One particular place a camp called Camp Mystic was Was one of the worst hit because all young girls

And there was a cabin full of girls who held on to a rope strung by rescuers as they walked across a bridge with water whipping past their legs. I want you to listen to the sadness in the voice of one little girl talking about her lost friends at Camp Mystic. I've been scrolling through videos and pictures on my mom's phone. Really good friends lost a daughter that was at Camp Mystic. They've just had so much loss that I mean it's unimaginable.

And then, you know, they're still pulling people out of the river and we don't even know to the extent of who we know that has lost their lives. My friend Nene was just so funny. I've been scrolling through videos and pictures on my mom's phone and watching it over and over again. Her dancing when she's excited. She was so nice and I just miss her so much. So that's what I want to focus on. There is a conversation right now around who's to blame. And of course, you're going to want to get to the bottom of that you do a post mortem after an emergency like this to say, where were the

failings? Where were the pain points in our system? Where did the system fail us? And of course, there is a type of person that wants to immediately blame Donald Trump. And of course, he has made a number of cuts to services that are delivered by the US government. And one of them is to the National Weather Agency. And there were, did those cuts lead to this or not?

That is a conversation that will be had. We will be part of it at some point. I think you can have the conversation this early. There's nothing wrong with that. I personally think it's too early. I mean, as you said, they're still pulling people out. There are still people lost. I, that's where my focus wants to be. too early. I mean, as you said, they're still pulling people out. There are still people lost.

That's where my focus wants to be. And hearing that young girl watching videos of her friends dancing at camp. You know, we were stuck indoors because of COVID for years. My kids missed out on two years of summer camp. And my kids are resilient, really resilient. There's not much that gets them down. Whatever circumstances presented to them, they find a way around it or over it. But that second year that summer camp was canceled, that was the first time I actually saw them defeated. And it broke my heart.

And my wife and I made a point where like, they're getting right back on the they get right back out there as soon as they can the next year they're going to camp and they love camp. They last year my sons went on a 23 day canoe trip. No phones, no nothing. And they loved it. And for two kids who all things being equal, they're gonna be in front of their computer. When they're gonna be in front of their computer when they're home.

The fact that they responded so positively to being out in nature and pushing their own limits and exploring that, those are the things that they remember. I remember those things from when I was a kid. Proud to put my kids out there. My daughter is going back this year. She is so excited.

And so I look down here, yes, it's Texas, but it's also parents sending their kids to camp. And those memories that are made at camp. And this is where kids, this is where kids' sense of adventure is satiated. This is where their sense of adventure is quenched. And it is so very sad, so very sad. My heart breaks for every parent whose kids were at that camp, whose kids are not coming home.

You know, we send our kids out there and we trust that the camp is going to take care of them. And then when Mother Nature comes in and does something like this, I mean the parents' only crime was sending their kids to camp. And you know that right before that happened these these girls were. We're probably singing by a campfire. Doing a play doing a dance recital on horseback. I don't know, learning survival skills.

And then this happened, and everyone's lives are changed forever. So there will be a time, there will absolutely be a time to discuss who is to blame. But for me, that's not today. That's not today. I wanna spend just today Letting the families out there who lost a daughter

Whose only crime was she wanted to be outdoors? I Want to say I'm sorry Okay, we're gonna move on to happier things, the Middle East. And I say that as a way to just turn the, turn the page. So we know that the prime minister of Israel is in Washington in the hopes of securing another ceasefire. You'll remember that last week there was a big ceasefire deal on the table that Hamas rejected. Hamas rejected it. That is an important point when you hear our streets of Canada taken over

by people saying ceasefire now ceasefire now. Okay, go tell your friends in Hamas, anyway, the point is Hamas wants, they want assurances that the fighting will end if there's a temporary end to fighting. And Israel is saying, no, we will get off of a war footing when you stop, when we are no longer in a state of war. And so Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are meeting right now in the hopes of coming to a consensus that will then be palatable to Hamas.

We'll have to wait and see on that. But I do wanna make that point again. There was a ceasefire on the table last week. It was agreed to by Egypt, by I think Saudi, by Qatar, by the United States, and by Israel. And who rejected it? Hamas. So just remember that the next time you hear somebody wearing a kaffir, cosplaying as a resistance fighter demanding a ceasefire.

Just remember that. On the other side, another one of Israel's enemies, Hezbollah, has said that they are not going to disarm fully, even though there's a truce right now, until Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon. And Israel is saying, we're not leaving southern Lebanon for now because we need a buffer zone between our country and you because you keep lobbing rockets at us and so until Until you disarm we are the people on our side of the border are not safe and And and so it's a chicken or egg sort of situation, but all things being equal

if And so it's a chicken or egg sort of situation, but all things being equal. If if if Hezbollah doesn't want to put down their arms, you know, Israel is going to find a way to get them over the weekend. We saw an explosion that Israel launched on Hezbollah, where they they destroyed a cache of what, three thousand of their rockets. They were able to get to these people with beepers, with drones. You want to hold on to your weapons? Hezbollah, you go right ahead. Israel will find them.

And if you happen to be holding them when they explode, that's on you. But if you are on a war footing with Israel and Israel comes at you, you know as sure as I'm sitting here that they will find you and they will beat you and and and you f around you're gonna find out Now the competition has begun. What will you need to stay in this house? What do I need to give you to get you out of that house? This wall has to stay. This wall has to go or we go.

What do you think of the house? I hate it. Okay, so I have a little bit of work to do. Design expert Paige Turner joins David as they ask homeowners the all-important question. Are you gonna love it or are you going to list it? You want to tell them? Love it to list it? You want a tablet? Love it or list it. All new Sunday at nine.

On Home Network. Stream on Stack TV and the Global TV app.