The Ben Mulroney Show - A window into the future for Vancouver? Toronto? Introducing Portland, Oregon

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

GUEST:   Kevin Dahlgren / youtuber / Substack – “Truth on the Streets” .   truthonthestreets.substack.com 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

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known for his powerful worship songs heard around the world, including so will I and gratitude. Share the wonder of Christmas with friends and family at Roy Thompson Hall. Tickets are on sale now at Salvationist.ca slash Christmas. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show Wednesday, November 12. Thank you so much for joining us. And as a reminder, wherever you are listening to us, however you're consuming the show, there are so many other ways to consume the show. If you're listening on radio, you can also listen on a streaming platform or on podcast platforms. You can follow us on YouTube or indeed on social media. There are a lot of people out there who want to keep their heads in the sand that issues that are affecting our cities and indeed our smaller towns as well are, listen, if they're bad, this is bad

as they're going to get. Well, they can't get any worse. And so what's the problem? People on this show feel that it's important to sound the alarm and yes, every now and then get angry because it doesn't have to be this way. And when I see people in the throes of drug addiction in Toronto, my heart

goes out to them saying, we can do better for you. You deserve better and you deserve a city that has policy in place that prioritize you getting off of drugs rather than anything that propagates and furthers your struggles with addiction, the same with homelessness, the same with so many issues. So if you're thinking that it's as bad as it's ever going to get in Toronto, there is, and we just have to adopt some best practices, consider the fact that there are some worse practices. And consider the fact that there are cities out there that are actually

in worse shape than what we're dealing with. And we could be headed there if we don't take stock of where we are, what we're doing, and how we can do an about face on a number of these key issues. And to talk about a worst case scenario, we're going to go to the city of Portland, Oregon. And we're going to meet, we're going to talk right now with Kevin Dahlgren. He's a YouTuber. He also has a substack called Truth on the Streets.com. Kevin, thank you so much for being here. Hey, thanks for having me on, brother.

Okay, so you got in Portland. Well, well, you know, for those who don't know Portland, give us, give us the lay of the land, give us a snapshot of Portland on, on its best day. Well, first, yeah, we're a West Coast city, million population in Oregon. You know, it is a, it's in the Pacific Northwest, so it really is a beautiful city if you look up.

But what's happened to our city is absolutely tragic. you know, after we decriminalized drugs, had lax policies on homelessness, it's just become this absolute chaotic, free-for-all hellhole, which is just tragic, because Portland, again, used to be just so beautiful.

Yeah, I remember, I've never been to Portland. I remember a time where I really wanted to go to Portland. Isn't their motto, like, be weird or something like that? Oh, um, um, it used to something like that. They embraced the oddity of life. And back in the day, maybe 10 years ago, what I knew of Portland was it was the food truck capital of North America. That is no longer the title that it necessarily holds.

Yeah, what we used to say is Keith Portland Weird. And so lately we've seen some bumper stickers that says weird isn't working. Jesus. Yeah. Okay. So now, so that's the beauty of Portland. and that's the opportunity that once was. Talk to me about what it is today

and talk to me about what you do with your time that you view is vital. Well, I'm an independent journalist. I report on homelessness, addiction, and really the dysfunctional homeless and dental complex where we spend almost a billion dollars per year on homelessness, yet just a few days ago we announced a 61% increase in our homeless population,

which obviously, could tell any common sense person, if money were the solution, we would have sold it by now. Yeah. The problem with our city is we become very radicalized. We have radicalized progressive who run our city. They believe everybody has the right to use drugs. They believe all crimes are committed. It isn't really the fault of the assailant.

It's maybe blamed on capitalism. Yeah. Right? So someone smashes a window, someone smokes fentanyl. All of a sudden, it's like, well, it's not their fault. They're a victim of a capitalist society. And this is just kind of. how Portland went to hell is it, it's the politics, which is just a real, real shame.

And so a lot of people will get stuck on, like you just said, they'll blame ideas and institutions. But what they don't necessarily come face to face with, which is where you come in and you do such a vital job, is you remind people, you bring it back to the human cost of these terrible policies and, and I think, detrimental worldviews. You know, you talk to the people, people suffering with drug addiction. You talk to people who are living on the streets. And I just, before we go on, I want our listeners to hear a little bit of a conversation you had with a homeless woman when you asked her if decriminalization has worked.

I think that if you feel that de-friminalizing drugs is making people's lives better, then maybe you should be an addict out here on the street. Because out here on the streets, it's not making it any better. It's making it worse. it's making it to where violence is a lot worse out here on the streets people can go and do things to people and not have any penalization and since drugs are decriminalized did your life get worse absolutely yeah so there's clearly a disconnect between what you're hearing on the streets and the vision for remaking the the community of portland by the the progressive politicians would you agree with that statement I would 100% agree, and this was not isolated. I knew once I started interviewing the homeless and asking those questions that all it would happen is the critics would say, oh, that's just one out of 100, right?

So I said, all right, fine. So I went out and I interviewed over half of our entire homeless population. Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second. How many homeless people in Portland? Oh, gosh, several thousand. And you interviewed half of them? Over half. easily over half.

All right. So, I have thousands of interviews. Thousands of interviews. And I have to assume that not every one, not every time you interacted with them, you felt safe. You felt like this was,

this was the smart thing to do for your personal safety. But you did it. You did the hard work. So I think, I don't know anybody who would argue that, you know, you've built up some credibility in that space. You're an expert in that space.

You've talked to enough people. What is, what are the high level themes that you took, you took away from those conversations? The overwhelming response was while we were happy to have more access to drugs, it ruined our lives. You know, these are addicts. Yeah.

In the very, very beginning, they were like, wow, this is great. We can use in front of anybody and not get in trouble. The problem is very quickly they realized they were dying left and right. I was finding bodies everywhere. And the homeless just realized we're literally in our own hell that we created, because, you know, an addict isn't good at, like, limits. No, an addict, a addict, Kevin takes... They need someone else to tell them what's going on.

An addict takes the, I heard this from an addict. An addict takes the path of least resistance. That's how they are built. That's how their brain works. And if it means, okay, if I need, what do I need to do to get more drugs? Well, if the quickest path to getting more drugs is to beat this person up or to stab this person or to steal from my family member or to break into this car, that's what I'm going to do. They are not in, they are not in a position to make decisions that,

benefit them. And therefore, it's incumbent upon us to recognize that and make policies that deal with that. But I want to continue with some of it. I want our listeners to know just how devoted you are to this sort of work. You were out filming when a woman unexpectedly showed up and threatened to shoot a man you were talking to because he owed her money. And let's listen to that interaction. Hi, I want my mom's money now. I'm going to get my gun. I want my fucking money now. Ma'am, okay, I gave it to my friend that lives across the thing to go get your mom's $20. Somebody's going to get it. Go get it.

Go get it. Go get it. So we only have about a minute left to Kevin, and before we go, I want to bring this back to the Canadian experience. When we come back, yeah, when we come back from the break, I want to talk to you about what cities like Toronto, like cities like Vancouver, they're dealing with very parallel problems to yours, could learn from. the Portland experience. And I also want to ask you if you're optimistic that the ship can get turned around because, you know, these are our homes.

And more importantly, these people suffering from drug addiction and these people on the streets, they are our brothers and our sisters and our fathers and our sons and our daughters. And they are part of our lives. And we should cherish them and value them and do everything we can to keep them safe. So don't go anywhere.

When we come back on the Ben Mulroney show, we're going to continue our conversation with Kevin Dalgrine. YouTuber, and you can find his words on substack, Truth on the Streets. Don't go anywhere. The Ben Mulroney Show continues after this. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show, and welcome back to a conversation that started last segment with Kevin Dolgren.

He is a YouTuber from Portland, Oregon. He's also got a substack called Truth on the Streets, and he has made it his mission to document and interview and get to know those affected by some of the most corrosive aspects of living in big cities in North America these days, specifically homelessness and the drug epidemic. He's interviewed over half the homeless population in his city. And I think it's incumbent upon us to talk to people who are on that front line so that we can see if there's anything that we can learn from the experiences of cities like Portland

to avoid in cities like Montreal and Toronto and Calgary and Vancouver. Vancouver. Kevin, thanks so much for sticking around. Absolutely. So you, a lot of similarities between a city like Portland and a city like Vancouver, beautiful gems on our Pacific coasts, a lot of people who love the outdoors and cities that really seem to be geared towards a more environmentally friendly version of big city living. And yet both of them are sort of in the throes of these terrible self-made crises that we've been discussing. You yourself went to Vancouver a couple of years ago and you

somehow gained access to a safe consumption site and recorded it. For those who haven't seen it, talk to me about how did you get in? What was it like? How did you feel? What did you witness? Well, I was on H-Steams. First of all, when I arrived in BC, I was just shocked and not shocked. I heard you guys had also decriminalized drugs and I just like, well, I was like, wow, this reminds me of Portland, right? It was just bad. So, uh, it was about 10 p.m. And I, uh, you know, when I did my research and learned where all these so-called safe injection sites were, I simply walked in the front door. Of course, there was no staff. So it was very cheesy, right? And if you watch the video, you'll see there was really,

there was no staff monitoring anything. It was just this absolute free, for all. Just people passed out in bowls of soup, overdoses, people screaming in the bathrooms. I mean, just, it was, it was scary. I certainly did not feel safe. It's just, it's like one of the worst things I've ever seen. And I was in there for about 20 minutes when I talked to a few people. And it was just like, it is the absolute opposite of what the officials insisted is. It was a safe, clean place to go to use. Yeah, and that's far worse. That's one of the most offensive things.

If I, as a member of the press, by way of my producer, tried to gain access to a place like that, I would be told I'm not allowed to go in because it would somehow infringe on the human dignity of those inside. Oh. I love you use the word dignity. Are you kidding me? Yeah.

Yeah. Give me a break. That's part of the, that's the language. That's the permission structure that we've created on that side. And don't forget, these people are, you know, we're living in a world, as you said, where the underlying bad guy is our systemic issues, right? The underlying bad guy here is not the drug, and it's not the person availing themselves of the drug. It's this, it's our society that has made them do this.

And so the solution is not to get this person off of drugs. The solution is to remake society. which I think is the ultimate goal here. It is. Now, I want to go back to something that you talked about off the top, and it was an expression that you used that I think I'd love to drill down into. You talked about the homeless industrial complex. What do you mean by that?

Well, we have built a system that is benefiting from the homeless and the addicted population. What once was this cause has just kind of morphed into this billion-dollar industry. and I've done this for decades and I saw that witness that firsthand because I work in that system for two decades. Tell me how so. You work in what capacity? I worked in homeless services.

I was that homeless outreach worker. I am a drug and alcohol counselor by trade. I have that educational background. I understand this population. I work in those nonprofits for many, many years. So I witnessed firsthand where. we kind of pivoted from treating us as some kind of parity to a billion dollar industry. And it was scary to see where we kind of stopped focusing on the solution and started focusing

on the social justice aspect of the homeless person and the addict. You know, and that's what you said. The purpose is to change the system, not the person. It's a social justice movement, which is of some. something that radicalized progressives are really big on. Well, we have a woman in the city of Toronto. She's the chief of staff of one of our local politicians who gave a TED talk. And she proudly announced that she and the progressives of her ilk.

And this is a direct quote. We are the people who let cities break. And she was proud to beat that drum. So if there is a problem with homelessness, we're not going to improve it. We are going to let it reach crisis points. Because only at that point can we finally do the things we need to do, which is reshape society. And we're dealing with a lot of these problems in cities like Toronto. There's a gentleman here named Daniel Tate of a group called Integrity T.O. And I'm sure the two of you, if you ever met,

would find common cause because he tries to attack similar problems that you do and using tactics that are similar to yours. And most recently he posted and his group posted a video of something that you can have delivered directly to your door. It's a bag full of all sorts of drug using implements, and I'm talking handfuls of these, and inside are tips on how to use them, how to take that first hit. The expression that they use is called chasing the chasing the dragon kit. It's full of colorful language, colorful imagery, very, very attractive to young minds and young eyes, and this can be delivered directly to your door.

And I have to believe that a lot of people are getting rich off of these sorts of contracts that cities like Toronto, cities like Portland are more than happy to dole out. Yeah, we call it harm reduction. Yeah. And it's very big here where we'll give a person a straw, foil, a needle continue to use the deadliest most addictive drug in history where people are just dropping off like flies. I wanted to comment really quick that chief of staff lady, I hope she's listening because I just want to say directly to her, you have blood on your hands to even have that attitude because I witness people dying every single day under these radicalized policies. So how many people must die before you reach this sort of idea of a utopia, which is obviously your plan, right? And that's what just really bothers me is when people like that say that, because what they don't understand is the human element, how this is actually affecting this population, that overwhelmingly are like, why are you killing us?

Yeah. Because it's important to know really quickly is an addict. They lack rational thinking and critical thought. So why would you think that decriminalizing drugs, would be okay for them when they don't understand limits. Yeah. You know, they need structure. They need accountability.

You know, that, in responsibility, to be honest. Yeah. So, I mean, it just bothers me when people say that. Well, Kevin, and I'm speaking with Kevin Dahlgren, a resident of Portland, Oregon, who's been shining a light on the homelessness and drug addiction, uh, epidemic of his cities. You know, in a city like Toronto, what I'm noticing is regular people who would otherwise just sit on their couch and let city politicians do what they want are.

taking far more of an active role at community meetings, at organizing various political action groups. It does feel to me like there's a mobilization in a city like Toronto. I can't speak for Vancouver, but I wonder what you think is happening in your city. Are people getting fed up with this? Or have the average voters just, they've had their fill of the Kool-Aid and they're just they're willing to see what happens next? They are.

The tide is turning slowly. You know, a lot of my reporting and some reporting from my friends that finally started to make a difference because we've really just kind of had to show it on their faces for a few years because they've always blindly voted the same way over and over again. And finally, people are realizing, wait, maybe it's this city is not as great as it's portrayed. Because, you know, not many people are boots on the ground. They will voice certain areas and just kind of stay numb to the reality of the streets.

So, yes, I'm feeling at least cautiously optimistic. We still have a very challenging, you know, city council and mayor and governor. But the fact is the citizens are getting frustrated and starting to ask a lot of, lot of questions. And Portland, of course, has been on the national map the last month and a half because of President Trump has been talking about Portland and has been talking about the work we're doing here. here and basically saying it's not it's not the city it once was yeah that's unacceptable Kevin Dalgren of truth on the streets you can find his substack truth on the streets dot substack dot com and you can find them on social media as well as YouTube thank you for being here thank you for sharing the stories thank you for the hard work that you're doing on behalf of the people of that city I can tell that they matter to you I can tell that those who feel lost right now you want them to find their way I really wish you the very best and I hope that the best days of Portland are ahead of her.

Thanks. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it. Standard. Parallel parking perfectly while someone watches. Uncommon. But in a Subaru, standard-ish. Subaru, uncommon, come standard.

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