The Ben Mulroney Show - Air Canada CEO caught in french language debate

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

GUEST:  Mike van Soelen / partner at Oyster Group / crisis communications expert  GUEST:  David Wand / co-author of recent Macdonald Laurier article 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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Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Well, I've got a head scratcher for you today. As we in this country are ingesting the new information as it comes in on the tragedy that happened at LaGuardia that saw two young pilots dying all while saving the lives of. all 72 souls in their plane, learning about the logistics, learning about the systemic failures, learning about these pilots so that we can mourn their passing and mourn the life not led. It was finally time to hear from our prime minister. And prior to hearing from him, the unilingual, CEO of Air Canada put out a social media message of condolence that started, I believe,

with the word bonjour and ended with the word merci. And every word in between was English. There were embedded translations. But with that as the backdrop, here was the issue, according to our prime minister. But, you know, that said, we live, as I just said, in a bilingual country. We proudly live in a bilingual country. And companies like Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages regardless of the situation.

I'm very disappointed, as others are, rightly so, in this unilingual message of the... the CEO of Air Canada, it doesn't matter of the circumstance, but particularly in these circumstances, lack of judgment and lack of compassion, lack of compassion. And as you know, the committee of official languages has summoned the CEO to appear before it. Okay, so this is the head scratcher. Because everything that he said, you could, depending on your perspective, you could say, he's got a point or he doesn't have a point.

Why now? Why this today? All of this was germane and will be evergreen and you could talk about it later. And I suggest we talk about it later because as an institution, Air Canada is mourning. They are mourning the loss of two family members. And speaking of loss,

those two young men have not yet been buried So to bring up bilingualism today in that way is odd for its timing. It's also odd because it comes from this prime minister. And I'm asking a good faith question. I'm asking you listening right here. Does that sound like him? Have you ever heard him speak like that? Like Justin Trudeau.

And I'm sorry, that's what it is. It's all emotion and not much substance. And not that there's anything wrong with that in an emotional moment, but it's just not who he is. And I did some research today. He's never given a speech, not one speech in over a year, on bilingualism. I don't know that he has thought long and hard. He's a banker. Why would he?

It's not in his wheelhouse. So why does he care now? Like now, today. And before I launch into what I think it is, let's listen to Lisa Raid, former transport minister, who was on with Greg Brady on 640 Toronto this morning. So I'm a former transport minister.

And I got to tell you, my first instinct would not be to try to drag the head of Eric Canada before a committee, to be honest. I would want to make sure that whatever resources the Transportation Safety Boarding Canada needs in order to be able to go down

and be part of the investigation. That's priority one. priority two you know for the MPs who have the the pilots in their ridings do they have enough support do they know what's going on how can we help them number three it's never going to be about official languages um and the reason being is that air Canada is of itself a private company if the president decided he wanted to do an english only message which is what he did with embedded um i understand they did have embedded translation at the bottom in a scroll they had subtitles if that's what he chooses to do and it's wrong, then that is the problem for Air Canada. That's the problem

for the management team, the board, the shareholders. That's their problem and they can suffer the wrath of whatever's going to happen to them from the public if they've made a mistake. The minister weighing in and summoning the CEO to talk about the tragedy in this way is beyond the pale. I do not understand where Mr. McKinnon is coming from. I, Steve, Steve McKinna is a friend of mine. I do quite like him. He is very political. And maybe they're seeing the politics on this.

But for me, this isn't a political issue. This is a pure tragedy. Yeah, I agree with everything Lisa Raid said. Now, let's be fair. This CEO, who was selected by the board, has caused a major controversy a few years ago. He delivered a near all-English speech at the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal after living in Quebec for 14 years.

without learning French. Here's what Michael Rousseau said. I've been able to live in Montreal without speaking French. And I think that's a testament to the city of Montreal. Look, that's his opinion. And there are some people for whom the CEO of Air Canada not speaking French is a big deal. That has to be a very small amount of people because nobody buys a ticket for Air Canada and the value judgment that they've got the litmus test as a CEO. and if you've ever flown Air Canada, you know it is a perfectly bilingual company for everybody who buys a ticket. I know that because I speak both languages and I get annoyed every time I have to hear the same information twice. That's what matters to 99.9% of people.

But I understand that for some people, it's not, it rubs them the wrong way. But again, why today? Why now? And the answer that I came up with is one word. Terbon. The by-election in Terban scheduled for April 13th. That you'll remember was won by the liberal by one vote. And then the Supreme Court turned around and said, ah, you know what?

There was some problem there. The mail-in votes didn't come in. So time for a by-election. And right now, the secularism bill of the Quebec government is at the Supreme Court being challenged. Now, the federal government isn't the one challenging it, but the BQ during that election could very easily say, look at what they're doing to us, Quebecers. Tehrbon, look at what they're doing. They're coming after our laws.

The people who don't live here, don't understand us, they're coming after our laws. And you know how important it is to this government to bring as many people in as possible so they can get their majority. We've seen it happening. Why wouldn't they care this much at a by-election? So how do they counter this narrative that they are, um, people who don't get Quebec, by telling Quebecers they get Quebec. You got to vote for the Liberal Party because we are the ones who will stand up for the French language, even against the insensitivity of the biggest airline in the country.

You see what our prime minister did right there? He stood up to the callousness of that CEO. He hauled him before a committee. We have that power. We will do that for you, Techebon. We will do that for you, Quebec. We have your back. we have the back of the French language in this country.

That's what this is about. And before anyone says, oh, Ben, that's really cynical. Really? Is it any more cynical than the backroom deals that we've seen that brought a few conservatives and a member of the NDP into the fold over the course of a couple of weeks? Is it any more cynical than that? Are you telling me that is beyond the pale

that the liberals won't do what they have to do to, win? They are the winningest machine in political history. They know what it takes. They will do the thing that other people won't do to win, even if it means politicizing this tragedy when the bodies aren't even in the ground. Mark my words, this is a counter move to what's going at the Supreme Court, which is going to be used by the blokebecua, so this is their counter move so that they can win Terbon and they can strengthen their effective majority that they have in the House of Commons. I don't like it, but in the words of our Prime Minister from Davos, I take the world as it is, not as I wish it to be. All right, don't go anywhere. When we come back, we've got Mike Van Solan from Oyster Group.

He's going to break this down with me as well as a number of other stories. Don't go anywhere. This is Ben Morini. All right. We're going to continue talking about this, the oddity of chastising, in my opinion, chastising the CEO of Air Canada just a few short days after that company lost two of its youngest pilots, who I'm sure had bright futures in that company, because the CEO didn't say enough words in French. And we're going to do so.

not with me. I've done a lot of talking or joined by a partner at Oyster Group crisis communications expert, Mike Van Sullen. Mike, welcome. Ben, great to be in again. So before, during the break, I was corner letting you know what I had said in the previous segment. So you're up to speed on that. What would you like to challenge? What would you like to add? Look, what I know is that, you know, being an airline CEO, as hard as it is to land an airplane, be an airline CEO to land the right message the day after a tragedy is really hard. You go back in history. There's never a time when a CEO hit the right tone. They're always too corporate. They're always too lawyered. They always get it wrong because they never meet the moment. When people

die, it's really, really, really difficult. And you've got lawyers in your years. You're thinking about liability. You're overtrained. So there's a whole bunch of reasons to think he wouldn't stick this landing. Now, what you may not have guessed is that this would be the reason that everybody would get up in arms, you know, the language. It wasn't about tone. It was about language. So this is an odd critique. And I think, I think in English, Canada, used to, you know, thinking that, you know, crazy Quebecers, they're in their language laws, and then they're sticking in our face and they're going in places that, but, you know, give me your piece, but, you know, and I was going to say, this feels to me like a manufactured crisis,

because I told you, I don't know that most Quebecers, like just the regular people, care one way or another about the CEO. And what I mean by that is, I was talking to a friend of mine who's a French Canadian, he's a separatist radio host. I do a thing with him every day. He didn't even know about this. Right. He didn't know about this.

And yes, this CEO has some problems in that he promised to learn French and he never did. But he's not a government official. He's a CEO who's duly appointed by the board of his company. And it's a private company thanks to Brian Mulerty. And, and yeah, like, this is, and this is something that could have been brought up two or three weeks from now after the company and the families have had a chance to mourn. Because, yes, I have a friend who works at Air Canada. The company is gutted right now. And the fact that there are people chirping from Ottawa about bilingualism, our prime minister, no less, who's never given a speech on bilingualism. It's just very rich that it's all happening now. And I find it tacky. I find it really tacky. It can both be tacky, but politicians will politic.

And this is 100% about politics. Oh, of course. It's about terrible. It's about 10,000. And they're going there, and everybody wants to be the most, you know, the biggest champion for the French language. As someone who helps companies in difficult moments like this, think about how do we respond to a tragedy, there had to be some thought at Air Canada. Do we put up the CEO right now? He had made commitments to speak in French. You know, this should be on the risk board in Air Canada's HQ. Yeah.

This should be something they're thinking about. Was he the guy to deliver the message? Could we have, could they have overcompensated or found a way to sort of deal with it? And I also understand one of the pilots was French. Yeah. So. But we don't have all the, we don't know the whole story. We don't know if who reached out to the families.

we don't know in what language did they reach out to the families. We don't know any of that stuff. All we know is the public facing stuff. And you're right. Like an easy fix would have been had the president of the company done the French one. So you had the CEO do one in English and the president do one French. I mean, you could have done that, right? But that didn't happen.

Right. But all I can do is grade what I saw happen. And this wasn't a great effort. This was we can take issue with the politics. And I'm right there with you. They are politicizing a tragic moment and for political opportunity. Air Canada still doesn't get top marks for how they handled and responded to this. Of course not.

Of course not. It's a company that prides itself on being perfectly bilingual to service everyone in this country in both national languages. And in the moment when the tip of the sword need to present himself, that same bilingualism did not rise to the top. I get that. I will say this. if the liberals did not have a by-election in Terbon, I don't know that they would be making hay about this. Fair, fair.

And I will, and I'll use a second story that it's not on our radar here as a segue into our next one, which we are talking about. Right. Last week, last Friday, when Olivia Chow, the mayor of Toronto, stood up and said, I want all of city council to get behind my motion to say that Toronto will not cooperate with ICE, that operates in Toronto during FIFA because immigrants are understandably anxious. That was making up a crisis that didn't exist.

Right. The people who work for ICE in Canada have nothing to do with what we see down in the states. Nothing. They are bureaucrats who help us deal with human trafficking, drugs, international slavery, money laundering, all things that will be happening during FIFA. Right. And she created a crisis that did not exist. I believe on a different level, for different reasons,

I think the liberal government made hay about something that didn't need to be talked about until a few weeks from now. Yeah, but politics isn't served cold. Politics is served in the moment when people are thinking about it. Yeah, except but to gin up anxiety in immigrant communities and to take advantage of the death of two, of two pilots to win some votes in a francophone riding, they're both really tacky to me. They're both really tacky.

Sure. I mean, you're taking issue with how politics has operated in this country since the beginning of time. And politicians, when they see opportunity, even when it's tragedy, like we love for restraint.

We love people to be the better person. But politics is a tough sport. And people run at the ball. I had a front row seat, but I'm just saying, And what I've witnessed right now is, is this is not a bright shining moment for elected officials. That's all I'll say. Agreed.

Okay. So from that, I want to bring up ICE because the next story is, you know, we hear the stories of all of these illegal immigrants being rounded up and stories of people. And it doesn't necessarily hit home until there is a point of resonance for the people at home. Well, now there's a point of resonance. At least that's what it seems like right now. A Canadian and her daughter who's on the spectrum living in. Texas who were caught up by ice and found themselves and still find themselves today in detention. So round out that story for us.

Yeah, sure. I mean, this story sounds terrible. Everything that's been shared, a seven-year-old girl sleeping on a concrete floor for many days now in what looks like a jail cell. This is not humane treatment. You know, to go back to your Olivia Chow comment, what she said about ice, though, Well, we don't, we discount in Canada how Donald Trump won that election because of the issue of immigration. I've always been taught and always believe that the voters are right.

They said that this is an issue and it had to be solved. What Olivia Chow was describing is making Toronto a sanctuary city. And we don't appreciate the idea and the level of stress, you know, Americans feel. The idea that, you know, San Francisco or Chicago or New York could declare themselves a sanctuary city and just say, even if we find, even if we put into a jail, someone who's a criminal, who's here illegally, we're not going to report them to federal officials. It just created the stress of this. It created, it heightened it all.

And Donald Trump won on this. Now, this is a tragedy. Now, you see, now, of course, Donald Trump, the ideas may be sound. You may agree that immigration system should be properly run. execution of this administration is terrible. And that's what we've seen here. This is a tragic story. Well, hold on. You know what?

We've run out of runway in this segment. So we're going to pick that up. It's a terrible story that we want to share, but there may be some threads that haven't been pulled at yet. So don't go anywhere. We're going to start right back up with Mike Van Solan when we get back right here on the Ben Mulrenu. It's time. We're going to continue with Mike Van Gogh.

and Solentataka crisis, how to deal with crisis. And there's a crisis for a young, a mother and her young daughter in Texas. Canadian woman and her daughter living in Texas and got caught up. I have to assume in an ice dragnet that found them, even though according to the news reports, Mike, their paperwork was in order. Yeah. And they found themselves in what the mom described as abhorrent conditions where she was singled out and made fun of by the ICE agents. Oh, we got a Canadian. Oh, we got ourselves a Canadian here, kind of dehumanized. Oh, we caught a catfish, right?

Yeah. And look, for somebody who was just going about her life living as a law-abiding citizen to find herself in what felt like a prison with her daughter who's on the spectrum, that's got to be traumatic, right? And so right now there's a MLA from British Columbia, because that's where she's from, working with the federal government. What do you see in this story that maybe the everyday person is not seeing? Right now, having been involved in different versions of stories like this, we do have one account of the story. And of course, they've not just gone to the MLA, they've gone to media.

And here in Canada, we have a dim view of Mr. Trump. We have a dim view of ice and what they're doing there. And there's a lot of stories that suggest that these are just clowns, security guards, mall cops executing this stuff. So it all sounds terrible. We also have to just take a beat and know that we don't have the full story yet. The rule of law still exists in the United States. Let's see how this plays out.

but it sounds like a horrible story. And if I was the lawyer for the woman and her daughter, I would do exactly what they are doing, which is they are telling the story. Because until there is pushback, if there is a counter-narrative, let's have it. But right now, as told, this is terrible. Yeah.

So is the fact that we haven't heard, it just feels like something that Mark Carney would speak on by now. If it's just speculation. Right. So is the absence of any words from our prime minister, do you read anything into that? Well, sure. And I even, you wonder how the information is coming out. I just, you know, I read all the stuff like every, like many people did.

And the story is terrible, but it is purely one-sided. And if, even if the immigration minister wants to, you know, also wants to add his voice to this, go go for it yeah i i i just feels like though there will be another piece to this story we all want to believe that trump is a big bad guy trump is the big bad guy yeah but but that and that's why i'm wondering like if it was cut and dry right then then our prime minister would have come out quickly and forcefully in the way uh and i'm i'm just picking this parallel out because not because they they match identically right the two michael's in china right if it if it if This is an unlawful detention like they were.

Then I don't know why he wouldn't come out immediately. The only reason not to, or a couple of reasons, one reason could be saying anything critical of Donald Trump does come with some risk. And you have to, and the prime minister will have a job, of course, to balance us with everything else he is trying to accomplish. But there are ways. There is an immigration minister. It doesn't have to be the prime minister. There is also a premier in BC who could say something. who hasn't yet that I've seen.

I think this story is half-baked, you know, more to come. Let's watch what happens. We can all agree on the account of the story given so far. It sounds horrid. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And maybe, as I said that, maybe the prime minister is, I'm sure they're working diligently behind the scenes. I have no doubt in my mind that they want to make sure that Canadians are broad

are safe wherever they find themselves in peril, especially if according to them they haven't broken the law. And so I can imagine a world where they are holding off from saying anything publicly, you're right, not to offend the guy we have to negotiate with, but waiting until they actually have some good news to say, we have secured, after working diligently with our partners, we have secured her release and her daughter's release. And they are now deciding whether they don't want to stay there or come home. I could see that happening to. Right. Absolutely. And this story could go in ways we don't yet. We can't yet imagine.

But this instance, as you talked about Olivia Chow, needless politicizing of events only creates problems down the road. There's political opportunity in the moment, but I don't think you're like Olivia Chow. I don't think she's doing favors to Trontonians for politicizing ice before FIFA. We are going to have, like, I'm told this is going to be bonkers here. Oh, yeah. And so politicizing it and getting people on edge before the event happens is not the type of leadership that would be most helpful in this moment. The leadership we need is how much to make sure the subways are working? How much to make sure the streetcars are working?

How much to make sure that people aren't stabbing each other in the streets before we're about to welcome the world? Like those are the things that I think she should be worrying about. Like, call me crazy. But there are some lanes that are. She should be dedicated to before worrying about not helping out with human trafficking. But whatever. We don't have to go back to that. Let's instead stay in the province of Ontario because a few weeks ago, some changes to the Ontario student assistance program that helps a number of a great many Ontarians go to university, pay for university.

A lot of the outright money that's given to them has been turned into repayable loans. And a lot of kids are upset about that. a lot of unions are upset about that. And there have been a number of protests. A couple of them have even turned violent. But Ontario has been pretty clear. Like, we've run out of money here. We can't just keep giving you money to go to school.

If your education matters to you, then you have to have some skin in the game. And, you know, I've been clear. My parents paid for my education. Very lucky on that front. But all things being equal, if you've got skin in the game, it's going to probably matter to you a little more. All things being equal, Ontario is still subsidizing universities

to an incredible amount, billions and billions of dollars. Tuition has been frozen since 2019. Doug Ford just, and universities are crying. Can you imagine operating a business in this province since 2019 where your means of revenue is capped through the inflation of the pandemic and everything else? And they're keeping the lights on.

universities are doing incredible work. Right-sizing OSAP because you have to decide where this money goes only makes sense. This is reasonable. Students, of course, are in student unions. They are in the business of taking issue with this type of move. But it needs to be done. Yeah. I mean, but when I saw the, when I saw the names of these protests, hands off our education,

I was like, like hands off Gaza, like hands off Iran. It's the same groups organizing this stuff. Yeah, no, this is, you know, the progressive student, student groups, you know, insert cause here, get out to Queens Park, make some noise. Yeah. And when I saw that part and parcel of it was the defacing of our statues, well, then clearly, clearly you haven't had a proper education because these are the people you should be revering and understanding and learning from. Right. And if they also want to appeal to Ontarians, they go in protest. want to appeal to Ontarians, what I know from the work I've done for years and years and years

is they will judge, are you being fair and reasonable? And when you do stuff like that, when you deface statues, you're not fair and reasonable. And you've lost the room. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So would you say that the Ontario government is navigating this crisis well? Yeah, yeah, they are. They are. I think they need to continue to tell the story. They are spending billions of dollars to support universities providing one-off, one-off payments to them. They have kept tuition rates remarkably low. You know, go across the border. We get an incredible bargain here.

There was not grants did not exist in the early 90s when I went to university. There was only loans. I didn't realize until the story came up just how much of grants are now available. Well, and that's the thing as well. If we're not careful, we are going to devalue these departments. to the point that they're not recognized on par with the other great universities in the world. A graduate from McGill or U of T will not be able to compete in the same room as the people from Yale and Harvard anymore. As of right now, that's the case.

You go to the best university in Canada and the best university in the United States and people will look at you more or less the same. Right. If we don't start investing in what it means to go to those schools, I don't know what 20 years from now what it's going to mean to go to U. of T. Yeah. I think we need to allow some of our best schools in this province like U of T and Western and Queens to actually raise the bar even more to stay on par with those in the U.S. Mike Van Solan, thank you very much.

A cavalcade of crises, and I do appreciate your time. Great to be here. All right. When we come back, a new research from the McDonnell-Loree Institute says that affirmative action is alive and well and living in Canada in our law schools and our medical schools. Don't go anywhere. And the hits just keep on coming. In a new paper on DEI and admissions in Canadian law and medical schools,

researcher David Wan from the McDonald-Loreate Institute found out that DEI is alive and well when it comes to deciding using race as a major factor in terms of admissions. So that's super. That's super. Let's welcome this researcher from the McDonald-Loreau Institute and co-author of the article. David Wand, David, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Ben. Glad to have, glad to be here.

Yeah, so how many schools are we talking about here? Well, in my survey, I managed to get six law schools and seven medical schools, although another 12 law schools refused to give me their race-based data, and another 14, sorry, seven medical schools refuse to give me their race-based data. these are public institutions. Don't they have an obligation to show us the books? Oh, I wish. My study recommends that the governments of these provincial governments should be making them required to produce this data, but the data they produce is useless. It doesn't have anything to do with race-based admissions at all. So I saw a clip on social media a while ago,

and it was a woman denying the existence of a white supremacist culture in North Carolina, in North America, I'm sorry. And her proof was this. She said, until you can show me somebody who believes that they have a better chance of getting into a university by checking the box Caucasian over anything else, I am a resolute in my belief that it's a fiction. Now, I'm sure that's one data point. It's a big one. So what is it?

You got to, we're, what my study is showing is the reverse is that white applicants to the law schools and non-black, non-Indigenous applicants to the medical schools are being discriminated against. They're not being admitted, uh, despite having higher grades and higher LSAT and MCAT score. Oh, yeah, no. That's what she was saying. That's what she was saying. There is, there is no, there is no, um, advantage that, uh, that these white students have

because if given a choice, they would check a different box than saying they're Caucasian. Well, they're giving preference in Canada, clearly, for the racial minority applicants. So, and these are, look, this is, these are, this is not, this is not the arts. You know, this is not, this is, these are professions that matter. These is life and death. This is freedom or jail. This is, these are, ultimately, we, don't we, don't we, don't we want the best of the best?

Yeah, that's the logic. And I think Canadians have to be aware. My study is just confirming that this reverse racism in Canada, I don't know if Canadians know this, but it's legal. That's why they're doing it. The six law schools have done their legal math. They know if a white or non-black, non-indigenous applicant were to sue them, they would lose.

But everywhere else in the world, even NDP-led governments in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands, they don't, will not tolerate race as part of the equation when you apply to medical school or law school there. And those are progressive, social democratic, multiracial democratic countries. They put a line in the sand. Yeah. But in Canada, unfortunately, we're unique. Well, because David.

We unfortunately legalized the reverse racism. Because David, we sort of put our hands up as a society about 10 years ago and just said, all right, all right, just to stop the screaming. Sure. Sure. Canada has built a white supremacist culture built around the notion of preserving the whiteness and our colonialist past is terrible and our systemic racism is keeping people down. And without necessarily the learned, demonstrable proof of it, we see data points that say certain communities are not performing well in X, Y, and Z. and we see others are, therefore that must mean there are systemic issues. And we just took it as a fact. And that is the foundation for this justification, isn't it?

Well, yeah, they're using section subsection two, but there's a better way that we can follow the lead of most multiracial democratic countries and try to help certain racial groups that are underperforming academically. How is that? How's that? Yeah, what's that path? What's that path? Well, Roland Friar, the black economists at Harvard, says,

let everybody compete against everybody to get in, regardless of race. But if certain racial groups are underperforming, let's help them out. And you can do that with race-based equity without crossing the racist red line doing reverse racism. And you can bring in extra school tutoring. You can bring in better feedback for teachers on especially the ones, that are bad. There's all sorts of approaches you can do before they apply to medical school or law school. But once they apply, they're in the same pot of competition with everybody else.

And that's how most multiracial democratic countries do it. But Canada is an outlier. We don't do it that way. And it's going to create a big mess. It already is. David, on top of that, on top of that, what sort of rubs me the wrong way is, you know, a significant amount of taxpayer funding goes to a lot of the. these schools. Is that, that's, that's true, right? Sure, they're publicly funded. So, so my,

so my tax dollars are going to these schools and yet, if my kids who are Caucasian want to get in there, they will be at a disadvantage relative to the numbers. And so, uh, that to me offends me quite a lot, quite a bit, quite a bit. Well, it's pretty funny. Not only is it legal in Canada, But there's two other reasons why I think these reverse racists are comfortable with their racism against whites or non-black, non-indigenous applicants. And the other one is the numbers are pretty small. Like at McMaster University Medical School, they led in 14 blacks, but if you rank the top 217 grades or MCAT scores, none of them should have got in. There were thousands, over 4,000 non-black, non-indigenous got higher grades, but they were rejected. So some people are going to say, look, David, it's a small number.

14. Give us a break. And the third reason is we're doing some racial reparation. It's a social benefit. Let's let them in. It's a social program. Go ahead and do it. So that's the reverse argument. That's why six provinces are doing it. You know, that's the problem. I have a real problem with being told I'm responsible for alleged ills that were perpetrated 200 years ago and my kids are going to have to pay for it if they're on that cusp and they want to be a doctor and they've got the grades but they're told they're the 14 people are going to be ahead of you. I got a problem with my kid paying for something that he didn't do. I have a real problem.

That's the idea. It's replacing one form of racism in the past for another one now. If you're really got to burn your bonnet, you may want to go to change. org forward slash stop race admissions. That's change.org forward slash stop race admissions. I've got a petition. that up. So if you're opposed to it, you want to ban race, sign the petition and I'll circulate it to all the provinces. Bill 33 in Ontario is already doing it, but unfortunately,

Bill 33 in Ontario is so big. There's other stuff in there that even I probably don't like, but they are aiming to ban race from the application process, at least in the province of Ontario. But right now, it's going on in six provinces. And University of Calgary, University of Alberta, Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Toronto and Delhousie, all five of them, 10 schools, have refused to give me any of their race-based data, even though they're racially segregating their applicants if you go to their websites. That's, I mean, it's 2026. 10 years ago, there was a consensus that we were living in the most, the greatest version of our society in terms of racial harmony and equity that had ever

existed. And now we're being told that the whole thing needs to go. I have a real problem with that. David Wand is the co-author. And if they want to find your research, they can go to McDonald-Lorea.ca. David, thank you very much for your work. I appreciate it. Thank you for your time, Ben. Hello there. Thursdays on Global. I'm Madeline Matlock. She's the lawyer with a legendary name. Don't underestimate Miss Matlock. This woman's a sharp. You know it, baby. The one you can Trust, even if she has to bend the rules. Things aren't always as black and white as they seem.

To crack a case. This is how I get things done. Emmy-winning actress Kathy Bates is Matlock. All new Thursdays at 9 Eastern on Global. Stream on Stack TV.