The Ben Mulroney Show - Another anthem debacle?? Also, a spotlight on building in Toronto

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

GUEST:     Remo Agostino, Chief Development Officer - Daniels Corporation GUEST:  ERIN BURY/CEO of Willful, online estate planning 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

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. With Wise, you can send, spend, and receive up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Plus, Wise won't add hidden fees to your transfer. Whether you're buying souvenirs with pesos and price, you're buying souvenirs with pesos and price. or sending euros to a loved one in Paris, you know you're getting a fair exchange rate with no extra markups. Be smart. Join the 15 million customers who choose Wise. Download the Wise app today or visit Wise.com. Tees and Cs apply. Welcome to the Ben Mulrudey show. Happy third. Welcome to the Ben Mulrudey show. Thursday, October 30 is so much to get into today. Before we do, got to say hello to the entire Ben Mulroney team. Of course, my intrepid producer, Mike Droulet, sitting there looking all

kinds of disheveled with his playoff beard. It's glorious, isn't it? Well, listen, apparently you went into some building and they asked you if they could help you. I went to the Toronto Small Business Forum yesterday, and the security stopped me. They were like, no, sir, what are you doing here? I was like, no, I'm legitimate. Yeah, you're legit. and they stop me i swear to god that's what a mobster says when he's when he stopped like i'm a legitimate businessman they're like no no no they're like i don't think so sir really yeah it's the beard we got gourd rennie joining us today on the board welcome to see you

welcome welcome to see you welcome to having you in the place where you are it's pleasure to be here dave is off sick because i don't know he was sick yeah he wasn't feeling well yesterday we saw that coming hope he gets better he doesn't have the blue j flu that's no no no he's he said that his partner got a little sick and he got that too. It is flu season, by the way. I got a text from Shoppers Drug Mart saying that I should make my appointment

and I'm going to definitely do that today. Thank you for the reminder shoppers. But yes, are you guys flu shot people? Yes. Yes. Amy Siegel, our video producer, welcome. If it's around. Yeah, I don't go to my way for it.

She makes me. She makes you. She like brings me to the pharmacy. I'll go get the shot. I'll go get the jab. Oh, God. The jab. Okay, so we've got to start the show with a little bit of this,

a little love for the Jays. And we're going to delve into the National Anthem debacle a little bit later. But let's just start with a couple of highlights. The fact that if you tuned in immediately, you were rewarded. Immediately. Immediately. First pitch of the game, Davis Snyder, on the very first pitch. And my favorite part was his dad was, you know what?

We'll do this part first. Let's just listen to the first pitch of the game. Line drive left field, Miles Straw, puts it away. What? And the Blue Jays have tied this series. See, that's not it. Okay, that's not it. There we go.

You know what? First pitch of the game, home run. Dad goes crazy. Dad was sitting, what? I don't know, like 30 rows up. So excited that his son was leading off the game. Posted it to social media. Let's listen to the dad's reaction to the first pitch.

Oh, oh no! No way! No way! No! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! You gotta be...

You gotta be kidding me, because he was going to say something different. But the whole Schneider clan was there. All of them were there. And can you imagine that? Your dad's watching that, and he just wants to get the first... His son leading off a game.

He wants to get that there. Yeah. And, yeah. And just a few weeks ago, remember when Trey Yusavich, family was there for him pitching in the playoffs for the first time and he won people go nuts and yesterday my god he

12 strikeouts the most by a rookie in World Series history this team there's nothing to not love about this team is what I'm learning as a late a late band I'm a late bandwagon guy I don't know

tell you I wasn't I was excited to go to a game for the sake of going to a game but not and You know, I really do hope that if we get to a point and the Jays win this thing, I hope the Rogers team puts together a documentary chronicling what people thought at the beginning of the season, what they thought this was going to be, because that's part of the lore. That's part of the legend. Anyway, I want to put something out there.

Go for it. If anyone in Toronto needs a plus one to the game to know. I thought you were going to put something like that to the benefit. of our listeners. I didn't think you were going to use this as some sort of like hub stub hub or something. Yeah, this is like some weird dating.

No, no, no. This is the BMS dating show. I'm a great sports fan date. Go sports. Okay. So listen, I was not at the game. I was not watching the game until the end. But, because I had to be in an event last night,

I was at the automotive center down at the, by the Princess Gates for a massive event for the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center which is a huge human rights and anti-Semitism watchdog group and last night was an event in support of allies and they had seven really stand-up people

who have done yeoman's work standing up in favor of the Jewish community against this onslaught, this wave of toxic anti-Semitism. And for people who are, don't know, Simon Wiesenthal was the legendary Nazi hunter. Simon Wiesenthal famously said, he was a guy who said, didn't he say for evil to thrive,

good men need, need do nothing, something like that, something like that. Anyway, yeah, he's a, and he's an incredible man. That was Elie Wiesel. That was Ellie Wiesel. Anyway, so seven people get this award. My brother, being one of the Mark Mulroney, who was, I mean, the pride that we felt as a family my mom was there my brother was there my sister where they were all there and we had a great time my brother had friends who flew in for this they were so proud of him and um and i'll tell you what i found interesting was the other guests who were there you had from the city from city council

you had josh matlow brad bradford easy right like allies and then you had uh dug ford and i don't a third of his cabinet were there allies and then you had um federally you had vinska Sparrow, Leslie Church, liberals, allies, and a number of other conservative MPs. And then you had from the mayor's office, you had, the mayor was there, gave a great speech, a lot of applause, but not the mayor of Toronto, not Olivia Chow, no, no, no, Stephen Del Dukkah, of Vaughn was there. And I spoke to him afterwards and I said, I need to shake your hand because what you said was incredible. He spoke about moral clarity. He said, he spoke about moral clarity. said when it comes to anti-Semitism, there is no need for context.

There is right and there is wrong. And standing on side of Jews who have helped build this country, who just want to feel safe in their own communities, who want to feel valued and want to feel respected, that requires nothing but support. There's no discussion that needs to be had. He also pointed out, he said, you know, to those of you who say, when I hear from Jewish friends who cry and say, I don't know if there's a place for me in Toronto. I don't know if there's a place for me in Canada. I say, please be patient. We're working it out. But if you can't be patient,

move to Vaughn. And his, you know, his municipality was, I believe, the first in Canada to create bubble zones around places of worship. And so a lot of respect for him. But then I was speaking to some well-placed sources. And I said, interesting that Olivia Chalmers, wasn't here and they looked me square in the eye and said she wasn't invited yeah when you listed off the people who were there i was uh i said so i think it's more who wasn't there she wasn't invited and then they followed up unsolicited and neither was mark carney interesting and i said really and they looked at me and said well this is an event for allies would you call them allies to which i said probably not now they would characterize themselves as and here's the thing i start put myself in the

shoes of Olivia's staff. And it feels to me like they would have said, you know what? Because I was like, what a perfect opportunity for here. War is over. There's a lot of goodwill. Like, the Js are playing. Like, there's a lot of ways for you to come in and say nothing, right? But I guarantee you, people on her staff are like, too big of a risk. Too big of a risk. If you are somebody who looks at what happened last night and the event and what it stood for and what their goals are. As a risk, you're not living in my reality. And you're not living in a reality that I really respect.

But it wasn't that she wasn't that she declined to go. She just wasn't invited. That's even worse, dude. It's terrible. When you're past the point of being viewed as somebody who can help. When they've given up on you. You're the mayor of the city and this group has given up on you as an ally. And the fact that Mark Carney, six months into him being prime minister, they've already written him off.

Not to say he can't be redeemed because he's got a lot of runway here. Olivia, I don't know. And let me just be very clear here. This event was about support of Jews. It was not about putting anybody else down. There are people who will watch this on social media and will say, I'm against this and I hate this. Find one word I've ever said in the context of Jews and the defense of Israel. find one word where I have tried to diminish anyone but Hamas, anybody but a terror supporter.

Find one word, I challenge you. And if I have, bring it up to me and I will apologize for it because that is not my intent. My intent is to make people who deserve to feel safe, feel safe. And by the way, if you're a masked person calling for the death of Israel in Canada, my contention is you already feel pretty goddamn safe and you don't need my help. And on that note, we're going back. we're going back to the World Series after this because after that J.P. Sacks

debacle of an anthem at the World Series, certainly the next guy was going to hit it out of the park, correct? Oh, no. Oh, no. We're going to discuss next. This is the Ben Mulroney show, and thank you so much for spending a little bit of your Thursday with us. I'm sure some of you like me, a little bleary-eyed today, as I just told you, I was at an event last night,

but the second I got home, turn the TV on and watch the last couple of innings of the game. All of us were stayed up a little bit later than we probably do, and that's going to be the case for at least one more game as the Jays come home and hope to close it out in six at the Rogers Center, but we all, there's two left, so fingers crossed. Like, I don't think any of us are taking it for granted, but I'm enjoying every game.

Every game. It's just so much fun to watch these guys. And they look like they're having so much fun. They are enjoying themselves. I don't like their away uniforms. What, the powder blue? Yeah. The powder blue are great.

I love those. Oh, God. They've leaned back into like the OG 70s look. And for a while they went away from that. Every night and then you see one of those red tea blue jays hats with the musly, cartoony blue jails. Hopefully they don't go any time ever do a retro thing to like 2005. I always thought that a good look

would be similar to the Orioles look which is just the Oriol's like a regular looking bird to just put a blue jay up there that would be a great one day but listen I'm not you don't mess with what works this works keep going but I would say the opposite

for everybody who seems to get it almost everybody gets up there and sings our friggin national anthem so you'll remember that J.P. Sacks got up and decided to make it all about him And yesterday I was optimistic that Rufus Wainwright, three-time Grammy nominator Rufus Wainwright. Love him.

Yeah. We spent a lot. He was a staple of E-Talk back on the day. You were adamant yesterday. He's going to knock it out of the park. I thought he would. I thought he would. And he's because he knows music.

Like he's written opera and he's performed live. And he's a songwriter and a performer and a composer. I just thought here's somebody who. appreciates, I don't know, this live music at its best. And this is, there's nothing better than an anthem. But then he, he, he, he, he, he, he screwed the pooch. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, True Patriot love

That only us command Whoops Yeah, here we go He has broughte the Pei He That last word's not even a It's not even a word.

It's not even a word His French is terrible. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Hanlon's razor is a maxim that suggests never a tribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. And J.P. Sacks was malicious in that he had an agenda. He's like, I don't like those words, and I'm going to change them.

I don't like what they mean, and I'm going to change them. That's malicious. It's also stupid. It's malicious. In my humble estimation, there are so many things wrong with what he gave us that the only unifying theory that brings it all together, all the different types of mistakes, is he didn't know what he was singing. Rufus, you're talking about Rufus. Or he got nervous. No, he wouldn't get nervous.

But again, in that moment, the only thing that explains all the screw-ups and they're different, and we're going to break them down, is stupid it. And when I say stupidity, I mean, like, he forgot. He forgot. He was nervous. He didn't think about it. He just assumed he was too cavalier. Oh, I know this perfectly. I got this in my back pocket.

He showed up, oh, shoot, I don't remember any of the words. Wouldn't they put them up on a screen? No, I mean, they could. They could. Like, it's, there's such a simple solution to this. So the French, everyone's going over the English ones a lot. So that's been done. But in French, so what he did, the line is,

carton bra se porte lepe he se porte la croix so while your arms know to hold the sword it also knows to hold the cross right something like that and he took out the first say so he said carton bra and that's why the the cadence is messed up because he took an entire word out carton bra porte lepe that doesn't mean anything okay that's what that that literally is bad french And then the next line, your story is an epipet of the more brilliant exploits. Your history is an epic

of its most brilliant exploits. He changed the word epope to apope. Which doesn't mean anything. Apopet is not a word. So in one case, he excised a word and in the other, he created a word

out of whole cloth. So those are two completely different types of mistakes. And then the third one is Oh, your story is an apopé instead of saying

de pluriant of its most brilliant exploits. He said, de tre glorious exploits. But he didn't say exploit. He said something else.

Yeah, he did. Oh, yeah. And it was exploit. So. But he messed up that entire last bit. And the mistakes came from so many different

like it wasn't just I'm going to change the words in which case you could you could describe motivation. The motivation here was he just doesn't know the song very well. And a lot of...

Is he not French Canadian? No. No, he was born in New York State. Oh, okay. He's an American Canadian. He moved to Montreal. He's got a great Canadian musical pedigree. He spent a lot of time in Montreal.

And I think he's been splitting time forever as so many... Listen... Like a Leonard Cohen. Yeah, but so many... There are so many proud Canadians who don't set foot in Canada except every now and then. We don't question how Canadian they are. we could

but we don't and I just don't think he's thought long and hard Gord you say you look like you want to say something This explains why he was Grammy nominated and not a Grammy winner Oh

Oh that's harsh Oh harsh Have you been on X? Oh yeah Thank you So okay so there's a couple of them here One is it So Rufus Wainwright

Chains the English lyrics And forgot the English ones French ones cool That's the nice one The best one is That Canadian anthem was not actual words It was just sounds like when your brain dead drunk buddy tries to do Buster Rhymes. And that's just a fact.

But the difference, no, the, what unites J.P. Sacks and Rufus Wainwright is a lack of respect for the national anthem. And by the way, I'm not suggesting that we hold it up like the Bible, but recognizing that it is not yours to change. recognizing that it is a song to be taken seriously every time it is sung. Recognizing that when people take off their hats and hold their hand to their hearts, it's because it means something to them. You don't do that for any other song. There is no other song in Canada that everybody stands when they hear it because it's the only one that matters to everyone.

And for anybody, anybody to suggest or to believe that they know better, that their version is better, immediately should disqualify them. As a matter of fact, moving forward, it should be in the friggin' contract. You read the words that are written on the page. You read the national, you sing it as written, or there is a financial penalty for you.

Like, honestly, that's what we're giving you a global platform to present yourself as a singer to the world. Japan's going to hear you, all of Canada, all of America. Rufus Wainer, as big as you are, you ain't never had a platform like this. this before. And if you're not going to take it seriously, and if you're going to butcher the words, you are going to pay up. The anthem should not overshadow what happens in the game. Yeah. Alessia Cara, nailed it. Deborah Cox, nailed it. Nailed it. This is not rocket science

here. So you're either too obtuse to appreciate that you're not better than the anthem or you are too lazy to actually practice it. In both cases, you brought shame to yourself and you have us as a country talking about you in a way that your manager should be really upset with you about. So personally, I think moving forward, if we can't trust you to do what's right on your own, then we need to legislate that behavior. And it should be in the form of a contract that says if, unless you sing the anthem as intended, you pay up.

I just want to know if he walked off the field and said to himself, nailed it. No way. No way. No way. There's a certain level of self-awareness. But anyway, that's my humble suggestion. All right. Up next, what are the people who build our homes and condos saying needs to happen

to get the bricks and mortar stacked? That's next. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Hey, thank you so much for starting your day with us, or if you listen to us a little bit later in the day via podcast or on YouTube or maybe you find a little snackable bites on social media, no matter where you find the Ben Mulroney show each time that you engage with us really means a lot. It helps us build this show each and every day into something bigger than it was the day

before. And that's, by the way, sort of what we always thought was happening in the city of Toronto, that tomorrow would be better than today. And the more people were moving here and we were going to be able to satisfy the need with construction and cranes in the air. I think right before the pandemic, there was some number that said

there were more active cranes in Toronto than there were in the top five American cities combined, something like that. That is not the reality of today. We hear stories of how slow construction is and how slow the sales of condos are. And we speculate from the

comfort of these chairs and these microphones, but it's always really important for us to get a better sense of what exactly is happening by the people building these homes and the people who are trying to build the Toronto for next year and the year after that.

And so we're very privileged to have the chief development officer of the Daniels Corporation with us. Remo Agostino. Ramo, thank you for joining us. Oh, good morning, Ben, thank you for having me on the show. So, look, the numbers that we hear, Remo, of, in sales are pretty dire that it's never been, it hasn't been this slow in, what, 20 years or something like that.

From your perspective, how stressed are you, how worried are you and your colleagues and your community of builders? Well, I think we're all concerned in terms of where we're at right now. You know, this is a bit of a delayed concern. We all are looking at completions happening this year in and around, I believe the numbers around 30,000 units to be completed this year, another 20,000 to be completed approximately next year. And that is all coming back from these projects that started construction

two or three years ago when sales were there, where we're seeing those completions. And what we're worried about is the lack of construction starts starting now, and what that means, call it two to five years out, and not having that supply there. Okay, so give us a little snapshot of the Daniels Corporation, some of the projects you're working on, because it's not all doom and gloom.

There are some high points, the Kith Condominiums being one of them. Tell us about that. Yeah, the Kith Condominiums is a condominium development that we've developed in Mississauga, at the corner of Aaron Mills and Eglinton. And it's part of a community where we had two other buildings and other condominium called McKindred

and a third building that we built for amic or mature lifestyles of seniors' residence. But specifically at the Kith Condominium, it is a condominium that's recently been completed and occupied. And last Friday, we were able to, along with our partners at BGO, our developer partners in the building, and with community living Mississauga, we celebrated the move-in of four individuals with intellectual disabilities and two of affordable two-bedroom, two-bathroom suites. Well, it seems to me, Remo, that there are, you know, for every project, there's a different, there's a different motivation behind it. There's a different ethos. There's a different raison d'etre. You know, we told the story a few weeks ago of how in a lot of situations, as people are reinventing and reimagining what the, what the 21st century mall looks like, people are adding condo communities around them because those malls are not going to include, you know, necessarily as many stores, but you're going to.

have health care and schools and shopping and grocery stores and they're going to be like community hubs. And in a lot of cases, when they would plan eight towers, they're only going to build three now. And then you hear about the one, for example, in downtown Toronto, the probably the most prized location in the city where that's been failure after failure after failure. And every one of them either succeeds or fails for completely different reasons. But are there commonalities, common headwinds that every condo build is facing today? Well, I think on the

Convinium market side, I think there are a number of guidelines, and we've heard them all before. And some of it is things that are catching up to us that happened, you know, two to three years, even sort of still from COVID. And that was things such as, you know, higher

interest rates. They really sort of jumped up right after sort of the COVID period. And now we're starting to see some certainty coming back to interest rates. We know all know about construction costs. And, you know, 2022, where construction costs had increased over 25%. And even today, we still hear of construction costs, even in a slowing market,

where construction costs are still, you know, not growing as fast, but they are still growing. And, you know, things in terms of a challenge supply market, people can't afford to buy what we're able to deliver at the cost that we are able to deliver. So all of these things are headwinds. You know, we all hear about the government charges and how that is an additional sort of cost. Are any of those improving? I think that it is absolutely improving. I think that we are having conversations at all levels of government in terms of recognizing this challenge that we have.

And I will say that at all levels of government, those conversations are probably having more and more productive today than they had in the past. Remmel, what happens when a builder puts forth a concept for a building and they start offering up pre-construction opportunities for people to buy early on? And what happens when that construction stalls and, in fact, then might, or that, because it can stall, right, and then can slow down. But then there's also the situations where once you get past a certain point, you have to finish the build anyway, even if you don't, even if you haven't hit the targets. What happens to that building? What happens to those who got in early? Well, I think that, you know, I can speak to the Daniels experience in terms of when we would start construction. We would always start construction once we do we had the financial needs to sort of proceed forward.

What does that mean in terms of hitting a certain minimum thresholds for pre-sales and always sort of, you know, being cognizant of the buyers and being able to deliver on time? So, you know, typically if you're not able to hit the pre-sales, and that, you know, generally we have been pretty good at that. We've only had a couple of projects where, you know, we have just not started construction. So generally, we'd like to be thoughtful and be of our purchasers and make sure that when we're starting construction, that we are going to be completing the building. And so, and what happens, though, if, what happens to somebody's investment if they put some money down and a build doesn't go forward? Do they get their money back? Yes, those are protected, and they will be getting to get their money back. Now, if you had the ear of all different levels of government,

because every level of government has a hand in the diminished landscape that we live in, but they also play a role in improving it for the future. What piece of advice or recommendation would you have municipally, provincially and ultimately federally that would help unlock the potential of the condo market? I think the reality is with the condo market, it is challenged today.

And that is a lot of the supply that is out there. We know that there, well, it is a supply issue. There are a number of units there that still need to be purchased. So that is sort of the first site. So I think we have to be realistic in terms of the condo market.

will be challenged for potentially a number of years. That doesn't mean that we can't be doing residential construction. There's a great opportunity, and we just heard about yesterday, about an increase in the number of rental buildings that are under construction right now. It won't make up the exact volume of condominium markets, but that is something to look at and maybe be targeted at this point in time around policy to promote and rental development also. So more people are looking at the lay of the land and saying I'm more comfortable with a long-term rental than I am with purchasing a condo?

I think so. I think that people are looking at that. Now, we have to also be realistic. Rental is also very challenging to get built and very sensitive to a number of different cost factors. So it's about creating and maintaining a positive environment for that investment to keep on happening. Well, Remo Agostino, Chief Development Officer at the Daniels Corporation, I want to thank you for joining us. I want to wish you the very best. A city like Toronto requires visionary builders, and these headwinds are not going to make it easy on you guys. So I guess this is where you earn the big bucks.

Well, great. Thanks for having me. And we look forward to continuing. We've been around for four years, and we look at continuing building in the city. Thank you very much. And we just heard from Remo, who said that one of the headwinds is that people just don't have. have as much money today to make the decisions that were easy days before. So in our next segment, the numbers have been crunched. How much more expensive is 2025 versus 2024? This is the Ben-Mal already show. It is also today in Toronto.

And so I'll take the win, Gordredenny. I'm just fumbling the ball all over the place today. It's all good. It's all good. It's your version of the next. National Anthem. Yes, right. Just call me Rufus for today.

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And in our previous segment, we were talking with a builder from the David's, the David's, I'm sorry, my friend is David Daniels. And so Daniels Corporation about how hard it is to build in this city and to have fine customers who can afford to buy in this city in a way that was not necessarily the case just a few short years ago. So it begs the question, where's the money going? And how much less money do people have in the city of Toronto and in the province of Ontario today than they did last year? How much more expensive has life gotten for you, the listener of the Ben Mulroney show? We're joined now by Aaron Burry, the CEO of Willful,

which is an online estate planning company to discuss Wilful's 2025, the Great Delay Report. Aaron, welcome to the show. Ben, great to be back. Okay, the great delay. What does that mean? Well, in 2024, we noticed that a lot of people, I mean, we sell estate planning products, wills, powers of attorney, and these are things that people tend to procrastinate,

first because obviously it's uncomfortable to think about our own mortality, but also because it can be expensive and you're having to set money aside for it when it's not necessarily a priority in the day to day. So we did a report that found most Canadians are putting off these important financial to-dos and having to sacrifice future goals for just surviving today. We did that survey again this year and found even though interest rates have gone down, even though some of the pressures have alleviated, new ones like tariffs have cropped up. And if anything, we're actually less optimistic this year about our finances.

And we haven't been able to achieve those future plans. Well, I mean, the high-level stuff, the top-line stuff from the report, it's just, Ontario's total expenses are estimated to have gone up 17% this year. Now, that's compared to 21.3% last year, but 17% is still a big nut. It's a big number, and that's compounded, right? Our expenses went up 20% last year. This year, they've gone up 17%. I mean, I look at the cost of 10%.

So I don't mean to interrupt. Thank you for putting it that way, because I was looking at one number and a silo. I didn't, didn't even think about compounding them. Exactly. And I mean, I think we've all felt that, right? I look at the cost of everything from diapers to everyday groceries. And you can tell that even though some things have gone down, interest rates have gone down, if you have a variable rate, moreover, if you have a line of credit that's tied to interest rates, bully for you. That's great. But a lot of us don't, right? A lot of us don't have, don't see any immediate benefit from interest rates going down. And as someone

whose mortgage renews in 2026, even though interest rates have gone down, my mortgage payment's going to go up. Yeah. I locked into it five years ago. It was actually, you know, a better story. So I think that's what the data shows us is, you know, our day-to-day costs have gone up. You know, over half of us in Ontario said tariffs negatively impacted our ability to budget. And 40% of us said we're in a worse financial position now than at this time last year,

which, again, is a bit surprising since we have seen inflation. ease a little bit. We've seen interest rates drop, but yeah, the picture is it's still really tough for us to budget for the day to day while thinking about the future. And you know, so thank you for saying it that way as well because, you know, yes, some of the key metrics should indicate that life should be getting better. But, and one of the metrics here is on average, Ontarians would need about $840 in additional monthly income to complete their financial goals compared to 947 last year. So that has improved.

It's still about $10,000 a year. But the way I'm looking at it is that's yet another year where people had to dip into their savings, that savings that they did not top up. And so in that way, even though, yes, we need less additional funds this year, we have less in the bank because last year was so bad, the year before we bad and so on and so on. So the only thing we can do. as I'm making these choices as well. We all make them in different ways and at different levels, but we're all making these choices. I've had to liquidate assets. I've had to sell stock.

I've had investments that I had for the future. I had to say, okay, well, today's the rainy day. And the way I'm choosing to look at it, I'm sure a lot of people who are listening are thinking the same way about it, Aaron, is, okay, there are problems I have to deal with today and there are problems for tomorrow. So I'm going to address the immediate problem, which is I need to pay X, Y, or Z, and I will worry about tomorrow tomorrow. And the problem is we're all running out of runway. At some point, this plane has to take off or we're going to crash. Well, exactly. And I mean, when we asked people in last year's report, you know, what are your top three financial goals for 2025? So the year coming up, what do you want to achieve? No surprise. Number one was, I want

save for the future. Number two was I want to pay off debt. And number three was I want to create or update a will. Again, speaking to that emergency planning piece. And when we actually asked people this year, okay, you told us you want to do that, how many of you have actually done it? There's a big disparity. So, you know, of those over half who said they wanted to save for the future this year, only 30% have actually done it. Of the, you know, 30% who wanted to update a will or create one, only 10% actually have. So that's really what shows in the data is we all set out goals every year, right? We're coming up to January. I'm going to do that too. What do I want to achieve in 2026? I'm going to have all these financial goals. But then as you actually get into the year,

it's exactly what you said, Ben, which is, okay, I want to stay for the future, but I need to worry about my monthly budget. How am I going to do both? And, you know, some people are getting creative. My sister is a cat sitter on Rover outside of her full time job to bring in extra money. I know lots of people who are, you know, not just trying to reduce their expenses, but they're realizing that's kind of impossible. Yeah. And so how do I actually just make more money?

Yeah. I think a lot of us have gone as far as we can in terms of cutting costs. I'm sure I could still do some more. But everyone has had that conversation already. And now it's about the reality setting. And like there's a budget shortfall. Nobody's given us a raise in any meaningful way. So what do we do?

I'm not going to lie. I spend a lot of, I've stopped going on Instagram because I'm tired of having people try to sell me programs to make for side hustles. I'm not starting a drop shipping company. But Instagram keeps telling me that's how I'm going to fill the void. I really don't know what a lot of us are going to do because the numbers don't number.

Well, and now we're also having to budget for game six and seven of the World Series. I mean, I don't know where that's going to come from. The cost of now skyrocketed for that. Oh, yeah, gosh. I went to a game and I bought jerseys for my sons. That is a cost that will never come back. But they're now lifelong Blue Jays fan.

So I think I justified it in my head that it was worth it. Well, exactly. And I mean, there are things when I think about, you know, saving in RESPs for my kids or saving for retirement or, you know, checking off those to-dos like life insurance or wills, you can start small, right? There's nothing that says that you have to max out your RESP every year with $2,500 per kid. You can put in $20 a month.

You can start really small because that's the beautiful thing, especially if you're younger than I am sitting here at 40. Compound interest is going to do its magic over decades, but even starting small, chipping away at those things and achieving two or three small things is great. The other part of this is talking to your family, opening up the conversation, about future planning is free, right? In the survey, it found so many Canadians, majority of folks have not talked to their family about emergency planning.

What happens if one of us became ill? What happens if one of us passed away? Where is all the important stuff stored, especially those of us like me who have aging parents? This is a really important part of our financial and estate plan. And so that's free, right? If there's any takeaway, it's, okay, you know, let's find those ways to carve out savings,

in the budget. Let's try to incrementally chip away at this. But let's also, as we head into the holidays, have the conversations with our family. So at least we're empowered with information. Aaron, Bury, CEO of willful. Thank you so much. The report is called The Great Delay. We appreciate it. Just a couple of key points before I say goodbye. There are a whole lot of us, including myself, who have accepted that we will never retire. We will work until the day we die. And if we die, we're going to have to walk it off. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you being here. Thanks, Ben.

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