The Ben Mulroney Show - A walk in the woods? Not if you live on the east coast. The fight begins...

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

-  Christine Van Geyn, Litigation Director, Canadian Constitution Foundation - Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founding Partner of Chatter AI   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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the Ben Mulroney show on this Monday, August 11th. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for being part of the Ben Mulroney show. Ben Mulroney show, now hatless for the first time in about a month. Some of you have taken great umbrage to the fact that I have been wearing a baseball hat on this show. For some reason, a baseball hat worn backwards prevents me from being authoritative or having any opinion whatsoever. some of you were quite nice in your criticism. Some of you not

a little less so. But I promised you that by Monday I would have the hair gel situation resolved and well, the facts speak for themselves. All right, we got to jump right into some important news because I live in the city

of Toronto and we have been dealing with the smoke that has been billowing over from the forest fires in Manitoba in Saskatchewan. We have not been complaining the way some Congress people have in the United States about it, but it has affected the air quality here. But that doesn't mean that Ontario is exceptional and doesn't deal with its own fires.

As a matter of fact, there are a total of 57 active fires in the province of Ontario. There are notable hot zones around the province. A total fire ban is in effect across the city of Coortha Lakes as fire crews battle of forest fire in the Burnt River area. The Corthol Lake Fire Rescue Service has been working to contain the significant fire since Friday. And yeah, there are a number of hotspots across southern Ontario and into central and eastern Ontario as well. But we tell you that because it doesn't matter where you live, fires are an issue. And in the province of Nova Scotia, they are taking a unique position. On Friday, we alerted you to Tim Houston, the premier of that province,

telling Nova Scotians that until this fire season is over, it is absolutely illegal to walk through the woods. And you can face as much as a $25,000 fine if you find, if you are found to be walking through the woods. And we started last week, we tried to put a smile on it by highlighting a piece on social media where one person was pointing out how one place is the woods and another place that looks exactly like that is not technically the woods. And he just went out and about showing this is the woods, this isn't the woods. This is the woods.

This isn't the woods. That's why we highlighted it. But it turns out that man is a man by the name of Jeff Evely. And he is, he's a little bit of a rabble rouser. He has been, he deliberately, in an act of civil disobedience, got himself fined $25,000 plus tax so that he could have standing to then challenge this policy in court. let's listen to his thinking i knew right away that i was going to defy the ban and i was going to take the fine um so that was my immediate response i delayed it by a couple of days because my

immediate reaction was that i was furious um and this is the second time that they did this they did it also back in 2023 and at that time uh i submitted an application for judicial review on uh charter grounds just self-representing and ultimately the court declined to award me standing, because apparently my rights don't really mean anything in a Canadian court. There has to be money involved. So they said because I did not get fined, I didn't have standing, and declined to hear my case on the merits. So when they did it again, I said, well, I know what I need to do now. I need to go out and get fined and make sure this thing gets hurt on the merits so we can nip it in the bud once and for all. Okay, so who is Jeff Evely?

He's a retired master warrant officer with 20 years of service. And he said he would break the law. He did. He got himself the $25,000 fine when you tack on the taxes and fees. It comes out to $28,872. And look, he's protested drag queen's story hours. He was charged with mischief during the Freedom Convoy. And some people look at that.

that and see that that's all they need to see to decide that they are going to discount this man entirely and completely that he is he is a regressive right wing maple maga right and uh i don't think i think it would be foolish and i think it would be uh it would be wrong and dumbheaded to to do so look at his actions and look at what he's doing he is using the tools available to to legally and peacefully try to get a change to a policy that he thinks is wrong. He is availing himself of the tools available to anybody to peacefully and legally get something changed.

As far as I'm concerned, that is the most responsible use of democratic rights that you can have and you can use. it is that is far more effective and I think far more responsible than any of the nonsense we see when somebody to a group of people decide to take over a downtown street because they they want to protest X, Y or Z making my life harder and your life harder. He's not making anybody's life harder. He's making his life harder to the $28,872. And this is where you do this. You test these policies in court. And if the court finds that this was overreach, if the courts decide that this is using a bazooka to take care of a fly, if they decide that this is illegal, if it's a

charter violation, then we should thank him because I don't want my government, bit by bit, slowly but surely, taking things that they don't have the right to take. or the courts may uphold it, in which case I'm fine with it as well. And I thank him for asking the courts, for taking it upon himself to assume the $30,000 burden so he can have standing so that we all can benefit from a court ruling. I'm glad he's doing it.

I wouldn't do it. And anybody who looks at him and sees a problem, He's not a problem. The way he is behaving right now is not problematic. This is exactly how the system is supposed to work. He knows it because in 2023 he tried to do it and it didn't work out. They said you don't have standing. And I find it really interesting.

Being a citizen, being a taxpayer, being somebody, being a Nova Scotian, that's not enough. You actually have to have a financial stake in the game. I think that that's a bridge too far, but he learned his lesson. from 2023. So now he's doing it the way that the system is set up. He's not even complaining that the system is set up this way. He is just playing the game that the government has set out. And if the end result is the government is told you've overreached, you've overstepped, then that is to the benefit of everyone, including the government, who will know where the line is. I have no problem with this. And anybody who tells you that this guy is a problem,

but the protesters in a city like Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal aren't have got it twisted. They've got it twisted. Meanwhile, let's move over to New Brunswick because, as I said, this is a pan-Canadian problem. There are currently 10 wildfires burning in that province. And on Saturday, New Brunswick announced it was closing access to crown lands due to extreme wildfire hazards. So hiking, camping, fishing, the use of vehicles in the woods, not permitted, trail systems off limits. Camping is allowed only on campgrounds, but the public is being asked to reconsider their camping plans

until such a time as the forest fire risk decreases. And in Newfoundland, this is my favorite. At a Saturday update, Premier John Hogan says he hopes a snitch line helps. There's going to be an award, along with the ability to provide information anonymously, which can lead to charges or convictions to anyone responsible for starting fires. I don't like the idea of snitching. lines. Snitch lines were one of the reasons that we got ourselves a Trudeau government in the first place. You know, people were focused on the religious snitch line that was being proposed

by Stephen Harper as opposed to the fantasy land that the Trudeau liberals were proposing. And that's what we got. So I don't like this. It's a distraction. It's just a bad idea to pick citizen versus a citizen. All right, we're going to take a break, but is Nova Scotia's forest ban even legal? That's what we were just talking about. We're going to talk to a lawyer about that fight next. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show in our previous segment. I was giving you my take on this man, Jeff Evely in Nova Scotia, who in an example of civil disobedience got him.

himself a $25,000 ticket by contravening the prohibition of going into the woods that was laid down by the Nova Scotia government so that he could have standing to challenge the prohibition in court. We're now joined by Christine Van Gein, litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation. And Christine, your group is still in consultation working on whether or not, you can challenge this in court, correct? Yeah, so we're not working with that individual who you just described. What

we are looking for would be public interest standing, and I actually think you wouldn't necessarily need to actually have received a ticket to do a challenge to this proclamation in Nova Scotia. I think as a public interest organization, there shouldn't be an issue in challenging it, because it applies

to everybody, everyone in Nova Scotia. Right. Yes. So, So, okay, so if you, so what are you looking at right now? What, what could be the barriers that would prevent you from launching a lawsuit? I mean, there really aren't any, it's sort of a cost issue, really. We would be retaining outside counsel, someone local in Nova Scotia. We'd have to fundraise to bring the challenge. And we're looking at sort of different procedural options.

There's all kinds of different ways to attack this. proclamation that it's so broad that it bans all kinds of activities that aren't even dangerous. Like what? I mean, bird watching, foraging. I got off the phone this morning with a woman who runs a small business where she does eco-tours in the forest where she teaches people how to collect herbs and different mushrooms and talks to them about healthy living. And so she's prohibited from running that.

it prohibits having a picnic, by all means, ban fires in a dry environment. That's reasonable. And I understand that, but the counter argument would be, look, with a big enough data set, with enough people, like you're going to get idiots, you're going to get morons. I mean, that's our lot in life. There are some really dumb people who think the rules never apply to them. And so if you're, if you're looking to create the safest environment possible, you got to, you got to just ban everybody. What do you say to that? I mean, then you should ban us from leaving the house. Yeah. I mean, that would keep us safe too, wouldn't it? This is Minority Report kind of thinking about the future crimes, right? Yeah. Ban the, ban the dangerous activity, ban the criminal activity, punish arsonists, which by the way is how the majority of Nova Scotia fires actually are caused.

by arson, if you look up the statistics on the natural resource website for Nova Scotia. I don't really think that criminals are too concerned with a prohibition on entering the woods if their intention is to go and burn down the woods. They don't really care about this other prohibition because they are criminals. So ban and punish illegal activity don't prohibit things that come with really zero risk. Yeah, I always go back to the, I always go back to the, I always go back to. to the example of the one moron at the at the Toronto Blue Jays game so many years ago who threw a beer into the into uh onto the field and the reaction by the blue jays and by the organizers was to

ban beer sales for an extended period of time as opposed to just banning the guy who threw the beer and making an example out of him so that everybody knew if I do that in the future this is what's going to happen to me so I'd better not do that I don't understand but you know I guess Christine, the problem that I see here is we have a very, I don't know if it's a permissive sort of populace or, or it's just our belief that the government is always working in our best interest, but there doesn't seem to be the popular pushback to things like this that would make your job easier. I actually am not sure I agree.

I think there are people who are defending this, sort of the same people who defended the COVID lockdowns that went on for an unreasonable amount of time. But we've had thousands of people sign our petition asking the Premier in Nova Scotia to, you know, undo this over-the-top ban on walking in the woods. If you're interested in signing it, it's at the ccf.ca, and we've had thousands of people sign it. It's, so if you do go ahead, talk to me a little bit about the process. And, I mean, and tell me what, I mean, what happens if, of their own volition, the Nova Scotia government just decided to lift this in the next few days.

Is that it? Are you, uh, can you, can you challenge something that doesn't exist anymore? So that would be a mootness argument. And I think if the government were to repeal in response to our threat of litigation, that would, that would still be a win. I would still count that as a win. And maybe they would learn their lesson and not do this kind of over the top thing again. Um, another approach would be to seek an injunction against the government, which would pause this proclamation and put it on hold and allow people back into the woods. Another approach would be what's a process that's called a judicial review. That's where you review the administrative decision to issue this proclamation. So the Premier or the Minister of Natural Resources administrative

decision for whether or not it's reasonable. And that means, means it needs to have like a logical chain of thinking, I don't think it does because it bans activities that don't cause fires in the entire province, which is a pretty wooded province to begin with. And another approach could be a charter challenge to rights like the Section 7 right to liberty or security of person for people who might use the woods for mental health. there could be an equality claim under Section 15 or even a mobility claim under some interpretations of Section 6 of the Tudor. Yeah, well, some people were pointing out, oh, all the beaches are open. I was like, sure, but what if you don't live anywhere near a beach?

Or what if you live in the middle of the woods? Or what if you don't like the beach? There's any number of reasons why that's not enough. And especially, but you know, you pointed out there's a lot of people who make their living by exploring those woods and by touring those woods. Yeah, we're at peak tourism season in Nova Scotia. There are a lot of businesses that rely on giving people tours of the beautiful landscape of Nova Scotia. Yeah, it's a very heavy-handed. I was very surprised that I didn't hear the Premier use the expression out of an abundance of caution,

which was every politician's favorite go-to when they were about to really use a bazooka to try to kill a fly. Yeah, I mean, this is what, this is a mentality. that I call safetyism, which is where safety is the primary value that governs everything in our life and zero risk is tolerable. And any trade-off that might come with some risks, like I suppose walking in the woods comes with some remote possibility of risk because there could be some idiot, I suppose. But we don't live our lives with safety as the dominant value at the expense of everything else. Or we wouldn't get in a car or it wouldn't get on a train or we wouldn't get on a plane.

It's, I call it legislating for the lowest common denominator. If we have to, if, if our government is going to make broad-based decisions that apply to everybody based on the potential behavior of the dumbest among us, then we're never, as you said, we're never going to leave the house. Yeah, punish the idiots who do things that are illegal. You know, last, the 2020, three fires in Nova Scotia were caused by people doing intentional burns, pile burns and things like that. They weren't caused by walking in the woods, so there's no need to ban walking. Yeah, but the problem, this is not the conversation we're having, but we're also living in a time where it just doesn't seem like there's any crime you can do that's going to, that's going to send a message in terms of how long you spend in jail or how big your fine is. it seems like we're living in a country right now where no matter what you do no matter what the crime is no matter what the ill is that you perpetrate you're going to get a slap on the wrist and you're going to be sent home yeah that's the thing that's bizarre about this is this is a $25,000 potential penalty and there are all kinds of criminal offenses that are committed that don't come with that high penalty no it is it's very very odd well uh Christine van guyne thank you so much for joining us please let us know uh how this goes for and if you guys decide to proceed with litigation We'd love to keep our listeners updated.

Yeah, we definitely will. Thanks a much. All right. That's the luck. Enjoy your summer. Just so long as you don't go in the woods. Ever tried walking and tasting greatness at the same time? Meet the walking swarma.

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In the 70s, four young women were found dead. For nearly 50 years, their cases went cold. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for Global News. In the season finale of Crime Beat, I share how investigators uncovered shock. evidence of a serial killer, and hear exclusive interviews with the killer's family. Listen to the full season of Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon music by asking Alexa to play the podcast Crime Beat. Welcome back to The Ben Mulroney Show.

Thank you so much for spending some of your Monday with us, and I'd like to point out that we are ever so close, edging ever so close to the magic number of 30,000 followers on Instagram for the Ben Mulroney show. You can find it at Ben Mulroney Show. And if you're not following us, please follow us. Like our content. Share it as well because the more people who know about the show, the more people we can build a community with. And also, not for nothing. Once we hit 30,000, my boss owes us all on the show, ribs and tequila. And that's coming in short order. Very excited. But thank you very much for that. Okay, so there's a new ad by A&W. And gosh, I love me a teen burger. I really do love a teen burger. And I love the

French fries. I love the chubby chicken. I love it all. A&W is, it's a, it feels like healthier fast food, even though I know it's not. It's just good. It's good stuff. And there's a new ad that is causing a certain amount of controversy. I always discount a controversy that I here on social media, because social media is where outraged communities find other people who are equally outraged. And it's like commenting if a news story was that today in news, water is wet. Like, outrage lives on social media. So there's a certain amount of discount that I'll put on it.

But this does speak to something kind of, if not new, something that is accelerating in Canada. there is a new offering on the A&W menu and it is a it's a it's a Hindi ad for a new burger it's a it's a vegetarian what's it called the masala burger it's I can't what's it called the masala veggie burger and and that and it's supposed to connect with the Indian community as you know we've got more and more Canadians who have have come here from India. And so this is a way to gain market share. This is what should do.

Except the ad, the ad is entirely in Hindi. Let's listen to it. A proper vali burger, bus. Is it asking for too much? Absolutely not. A&W's masala veggie burger. I don't have a problem with this at all. Like I don't have a problem with it at all.

There are people who are saying that, Oh, this is, this is proof that our culture is eroding. I don't see that. You know, we celebrated in 2017 when Hockey Night in Canada launched its all Punjabi color commentating of the game for that community. I don't have a problem with that and I don't have a problem with this. Oh, oh, do we have them now? Oh, I did not know. Well, let's, I could talk about this all on my own,

or we could do the responsible thing and talk to somebody with far more insights than I. Tony Chapman, the host of the award-winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, and the founding partner of Chatter-A-I. Tony, welcome to the show. Ben, I thought you were doing a great job. Well, thank you. Okay, yeah, I don't have a problem with this, but, you know, some people do. What do you think?

I think it's brilliant. I think A&W is always being three moves ahead of the fast food. first of all going to a better for you offering in terms of free range chickens and trying to be more on animal welfare. And this is just another example of an organization that says this is a huge pocket of consumers. They're going to respond to this product. Why not market to them? With social media now, you can flyfish your ads to people that speak that language. Yeah. So why, why not? To me, it's just, it's the way of the world. Technology is allowing us to have hyper-personalized relationships. And because of these hyper-personalized relationships, smart organizations like

A&W say, well, let's make sure it's personalized by speaking a language with the vernacular and the cultural norms and nuances that this group of consumers value. And like I remember years ago when McDonald's launched salads. I don't know if they still have those salads, but they launched the salads and people say, come on, who's going to go to McDonald's for a salad? And that wasn't really the point. They lost money on the salads, but they realize that if there's one health conscious member of the family, that can prevent the whole family from going to McDonald's. So by giving that one person an option,

that allowed them to sell more Big Macs and more chicken McNuggets. And that could be the same thing here. I mean, we're looking at this as if the Indian community is this one big block and they're all going to be traveling together. But there could be a group of people and there's one Indian person and all of a sudden A and W becomes. more attractive to that one person and therefore to the entire friend group. And so I don't know how much money they're going to make on the burger itself,

but this could be an opening for larger groups of people to go to A&W as opposed to somewhere else that doesn't have this offering for that one person. Without question. It's the same reason when you go into a community that's like even Markham, which is very Chinese now, and you feel like you're in a different country. And you go, well, how's that possible there in Canada? Because they're appealing to the people that live there. That's what marketers do.

Marketers identify unmet needs and they say, how can I get your attention and communicate and deliver against those needs? And that's capitalism. It's not about being exclusive. It's about being inclusive and inclusive today in a multicultural society. It's just a natural move. And again, I love what you said at the beginning. as these social media slingshots, you know, they're, you know, hiding in their basements and just

ready to leap on anything and everything, as opposed to just sitting back and saying, if you were speaking English in a foreign country and somebody was smart enough to advertise to you in your language, wouldn't you appreciate it? Yeah. And, of course you would. Absolutely. All right. Well, let's stick with those people who complain from the comfort of their basements and go back

to the Sydney-Sweeney, quote-unquote, controversy. I always put in quotes because I don't believe it's a real controversy. And look, the proof is in the pudding. A American Eagles stock prices going up. There are other companies that are copying them in terms of the ad campaign. This is not going away because I think the pendulum has swung back. I think I've figured out what people's problem is. So that the outrage community is outraged that what you had in this ad was a single,

solitary white person. There's never been a problem if that white person was buttressed by a plus size model or a person of color. That's okay for those people. But to have undistilled, as they would say, whiteness on display, that cannot happen anymore. They thought they would never see that again. And to see that was they had to reverse engineer the outrage. That's why they pulled in Nazi imagery.

That's why they pulled in eugenics. That's why they pulled in any number of things. But she's one good-looking white girl selling. And somebody said, she got the job because she has incredible boobs. That's why she got the job. Her boobs are so magical that she can sell genes. Those boobs can sell genes. But the outrage machine is upset that it was a white person alone.

And I think that's where we are. And I think, you know, the bigger question is how long were we going to let a fringe group of people dictate the norms of society? And I think, you know, when we saw how fast Budweiser backed off of their campaign with the transvestite Dylan McVaney, they, they, you know, we can put pressure on these big corporations to fold their cars. And I think what I love about what we're seeing now is, no, I'm going to double down. I actually think this campaign is a clever use of the word genes and genes. And it's driving traffic into stores that were vacant and selling jeans that weren't moving off the shelf. That's great marketing. It's not offending anybody.

And I think the fact that Trump has even come out and the Republicans are taking this as a cause against the woke only gives the marketer hundreds of millions of dollars of free impressions. So I think the fact that they doubled down as opposed to apologizing in the past. I'm sorry I offended you. They're saying, you know, basically screw off. This is a clever campaign and we love it. And the more you complain about it, the better we're for it. So thank you. Keep, keep snapping.

Well, because it worked for a while, didn't it? I mean, five years ago, those people from their basements who could manufacture outrage found a very pliable sheep in the public who didn't want to be on the wrong side of the mob, and they would jump on that bandwagon as well. But people are too busy with their lives and they're tired of being outraged, and they just want to live their lives. So that same group of core outrage soldiers, they don't have their army anymore. And I think that's where we are. Somebody did point out, like, everybody can agree.

Sidney Sweeney has got great genes. It is coded language. But the outragers believe that that means that's coded language for whiteness. What it's supposed to be, Sydney, Sweeney has great boobs. That's what the coded language is. and, and, and if you, if you've, if you've, if you've, if you've, if you've seen Sidney Sweeney, that's, that's the joke. That's what they're, that's what they're selling. And, um, and, but I guess it's, I guess it's because they are great boobs. But how it was in that ad, nobody would have said anything. You know, there's a lot of other people that could have been in that ad. And the interesting thing is, uh, she, she's fantastic for selling. Yeah. You know, she's got to leave it there, but thank you very much, my friend.

Grace, chat soon. Did you know your brain releases the exact same mix of chemicals during orgasm as when you spot a UFO or break your leg? I'm David Cooper, and on the last show, curiosity is king, and discovering the science behind what makes us all tick is what we're all. about. It's where science, sex, and comedy hookup. So prepare to have your mind blown the last show with David Cooper. Subscribe and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.