The Ben Mulroney Show - Art can be subjective. But has Nuit Blanche in Toronto veered too far one way...

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

 GUEST:   Ari Goldkind/Lawyer GUEST:    Vincent Geloso, senior economist at the MEI (montreal economic institute) GUEST:  Arpan Khanna / MP  Oxford 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. Hey, thanks, son. What do I owe you? Don't worry about it. It's payday. Payday, huh? I bet you it went straight into your bank account and you didn't even check your pay stuff. My what? Your pay stuff. Back in my day, you had to wait for a physical check. Then, you had to go to the bank. Deposit it, and wait for it to clear.

Your pay really meant something. Payroll is incredibly complex. It's art and the science. It literally keeps the economy moving. Parole professionals do a lot for us. You know, it's about time we do something for them. How about we ask our leaders to name a day in their honor, a national day to recognize payroll professionals?

I got it. This is perfect. Why don't we explain to people just how important the roles are the payroll professionals play in our lives. We can even ask them to sign a petition. We can even ask them to sign a petition to recognize the third Tuesday in September as the National Day to recognize payroll professionals. We'll rally support and bring the payroll party to the nation.

National payroll party? Precisely. Sounds like a plan, you know, just one thing. What's that? I'm choosing the music. What? And I'm sitting in the backseat. The whole way?

The whole way. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've been following the news, like really following it, you know how exhausting it can be politics conflict uncertainty it's a lot to carry and for many men there's this expectation to stay calm stay in control and not talk about how it's affecting you but the truth is you're allowed to feel overwhelmed you're allowed to say i'm not okay right now and trust me i have been there whether it's the state of the world stress at home or just feeling like you've got to have it all together and have all the answers you don't have to hold it in better help is here to

help with the world's largest network of licensed therapists. They've already supported over 5 million people. You can connect with a therapist online from wherever you are. No wait list, no office visits. And if it's not the right fit, you can switch any time. It's time to put your mental health on the agenda. Talk it out

with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Mulrooney today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com slash Mulrooney. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Friday edition of the Ben Mulroney show. It is Friday, October 3rd. We have made it to the end of the week.

The Jays have made it to the postseason, and the game is set. Yankees versus Jays on Saturday at 408 p.m. They've never played in the postseason before. The Jays and the Yankees have never met in the postseason. This is very exciting. Very exciting. What are the Bronx bombers going to see and expect when they arrive in Toronto? Well, they're going to see Jays gear everywhere.

Everywhere. This city is blanketed with blue. And I'm very, very happy about that. But they're also probably going to see something else. We told you the other day about that Harvard professor who said Canada was too woke for its own good, that we have this opportunity to snatch up great thinkers from, south of the border, but the problem, in the academic world, but the problem is, on the academic side, we are just, we're too woke for our own good. And some poo-pooed that notion. However,

I give you Exhibit A. Take a look at Toronto City Hall. So there's, Nui Blanche is a big artistic event in the city of Toronto, where I guess you can walk around the city at night and experience public art. And there is an installation at City Hall, It's called Protect the Sacred Voice, which asserts indigenous sovereignty in civic space. And there's this big poster that says English is a foreign language. Other phrases include nurture resistance, love revolution. And my personal favorite, Western art history, is colonial propaganda. Like buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, word, buzzword, word, word, word salad, word salad.

Word salad doesn't mean anything. Who's the artist, by the way? person by the name of Demian Deneyazi, an American, indigenous queer artist, writer and curator whose work confronts the entanglements of settler colonialism. I mean, come on. Are you surprised? Are you surprised? I'm not.

This is the world we live in. This is the city we live in. This is, this is, I've said it before. If there is a war on woke, and I'm not saying there necessarily is, but if there is one, The final stand of Woke will happen in Toronto. But we have a lot in common with places like Harvard, for example. Yes, Harvard has hired a drag queen named Lahore Vagestan. Lahore Vagestan.

And in Lahore, the W is a capital. Yes, Lahore Vagestan is a visiting professor for a class about sexual dissidents. This is a real class, and that is the professor. Professor Lahore, Vagestan. But so back to this a Nui Blanche installation, it feels like another Sankofa. There's another land acknowledgement,

another African land acknowledgement. This is exactly what Progress T.O. wants. This is that, this is, this is their Toronto. They're building this. Another, and look, I, I want everyone to feel represented. I want everyone to feel respected.

But the land acknowledgement on top of the land acknowledgement is getting to be a bit much. You'll remember over the summer when those kids went missing in Nova Scotia, I believe. And before the member of the RCMP could give an update as to where those kids were, they did a land acknowledgement. That was an acknowledgement too far. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's the performance of it, right? It's the performance over actually making meaningful change. And listen, they're posting English is a foreign language. Western art history is colonial propaganda.

Just do a thought exercise in your own mind. Imagine a right-wing slogan. I don't know what they are, but imagine one. Right? I don't know. And immigration, right? Something like that. Or even just revisit immigration.

Close the borders. Canada is the greatest country in the world. I don't know. That's not even, that's not right wing, that's just... Support our military. Support our police, right? Imagine those slogans being anywhere near City Hall. Of course that wouldn't happen.

Of course it wouldn't happen. Nobody would let that happen. But this is, this is, there'd be calls of racism. There'd be calls people would, they wouldn't be rioting, but there would be demonstrations. Oh, yeah, because and those slogans would be, and whoever put them up would be TARD as an extreme right-wing reactionary. Absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, look, I'm not saying, I'm not saying I support those slogans. I'm just trying to do a thought exercise with you. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. Hey, why don't we take a few calls? Give us a call, 416-860-6400 or 1-8-225 talk. Are you surprised that this is where we are as a city? Are you, when you see these things, do you tune out?

Do you feel that it's one rule for thee and one rule for me? I kind of do. I think that we have created a permission structure for people on the left to do and say a lot of things that does not exist on the right. It just doesn't. There's an entire system in place that allows for this level of dialogue and enthusiastic dialogue to take place. 416870-6400 or 1-8-2-2-5 talk and I get it look I get that art is typically more I mean it's it's it's progressive it wants to push boundaries it's meant to it's all in the eye of the beholder but it's meant to create discussion and that's great and typically the artists are probably they probably tilt left I get that but that doesn't change the fact that we've got one system on the left and one system on the right. It's going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out during the election campaign,

during the municipal election campaign. Well, would they bring this stuff up? I mean, could you imagine, you would never, I don't think you would ever see this art installation on city hall. It's all over city hall, right? Yeah, yeah. If, say, would John Torrey, if he was mayor or if Brad Bradford was mayor, would you see that, do you think?

Would you see this stuff? Yeah. Probably not. I mean, there's a lot. Well, maybe, maybe because, you know, city council has a lot of progressives on it. So maybe. I don't know if it would be this big. No. I, but they're also, I mean, those two men are open to free speech. Yeah. They are. It's just, the question is, it's just how far left does the left go? I just, look, listen, I, I'm all for free speech. You say this stuff, do all this stuff. Put those posters up. Do whatever you want. I have no. problem with that. Like none, right? I want to live in a world where everyone can do and say what they want, so long as it doesn't infringe on somebody else's rights. I just, I don't, I'm just tired of the language, you know, the settler colonialist, Canada is a genocidal colonialist

country. I find it unhelpful. I find it very unhelpful to get us to where we need to go. I don't, I don't know where that language fits in the dialogue that we as a nation. need to have. But give us a call. 416870-6400 or 1-8-2-25 talk. Would love to hear from you and let us know your thoughts on, am I right? Do you think that there's a permission structure on the left and no such permission structure on the right? But it's also, there's the question of, for this sort of thing, is it creates debate.

And we love debating. You love arguing about stuff. But you don't agree. You don't agree, right? But we were talking about this yesterday where somebody didn't agree with us and when we just wanted to have a conversation and they lashed out.

One of the first things I learned in TV from my very first executive producer, Morley Nirenberg, who's now the executive producer of the morning show, he said there is nothing less interesting than watching a whole bunch of people sit around a table and agree with each other. Yeah.

Like the most interesting and exciting television or by extension content that we make is when people disagree with us and when we disagree with them and we have a conversation that gets us somewhere else. And I, yesterday, our good friend, has he gotten back to us, by the way, Michael DeForge? No, he hasn't, huh? Do you think he will? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. We got a couple of texts. Oh, yes. Can we stop calling them progressives as they are completely regressive? Very good point. Very, very, very, and as soon as the the conservative party ditched the progressive part of the progressive conservative party, the left grabbed hold of that word and they've been using it ever, ever since.

All right. Coming up, hypocrisy in the justice system. Have we got an example for you? You are not going to believe this story out of our justice system. Don't go anywhere. This is a Ben Mulrushche. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. You'll all remember the story that captivated so many of us over the summer when in an effort to rebuff and push back a home invasion, a man in his home shot a man as he was running away, and he got charged with murder, I believe.

I'm pretty sure that's what it was. And I guess the rule that we all thought was the rule was if you shoot somebody as they're running away, you're the aggressor. That's what I took from that case. But then I read a story in The Star about a young man who shot another young man in the side as well as the back. And he was on trial, but he was acquitted because the judge said the first kid, the one who got shot, had annoyed him or something like that. So make that make sense for me. and the person who's going to do that for us, hopefully is Ari Goldkind, great lawyer in the city of Toronto. Ari, welcome. Good to be with you, Ben. And I have to say that it is uncanny that the ad that was played, two ads before you and I talked, was for Toronto community housing. That will play a role in the answer.

So I don't know how that ad got placed there, but it's uncredible timing if you want me to explain why. Serendipitous, yes, please, because there are high-level similarities, aren't there? There are. So here's what happens. And it's a judge alone trial. You have to remember that. A judge alone trial, not a jury. It's an experienced criminal judge.

He does not, does not get rewarded with a self-defense finding. That's the case that you and I, and you've been dead on accurate about that case in Lindsay, where I've said there's got to be more to the story. We're not being told the story, and I'm tired of this. Well, it's before the court, so we can't talk about it, blah, blah, blah, okay? The reason he gets found guilty of manslaughter, which is a lesser offense, as most of your listeners will know to murder, is as follows. It's a really fascinating, unusual part of the criminal code, and it gets juicy. Just wait 30 seconds.

Okay. It gets juicy. This young man with his friends is in the stairwell of a building in an area, playing loud music and smoking marijuana. Now, remember, he doesn't live there. Okay. Imagine living in that kind of housing, whether it's community housing or not, you're low income, you go to work, you're trying to make a living, you're just not wealthy, you weren't born with a silver shovel in your mouth, and you're trying to live peacefully.

He's there with his friends. He doesn't live there, causing whatever he's doing in the stairwell, okay? Okay, all right. The other boy, we'll call him a boy, I don't believe a 17-year-old is a boy. I think that's a misnomer. comes up to him and they start getting into it. And there's some indication there's a stabbing. Now, I don't know if that's a typo in the reporting.

I don't have the decision, but they get into it. When he empties, the accused, the 16-year-old you're talking about today that's got all this attention, he fires and fires into the back, into the side and the back as the victim is running away and kills him.

his clip, and somebody else has gun and he grabs it. That's an astounding little detail there that would make most of your listeners go what to fill in the blank. Yeah, yeah. Judge Corrick asked to deal with the issue, two issues, provocation and self-defense. She says, no, this is not self-defense. You intended to kill him. Yeah. That's a pretty profound statement. However, because he testified, and this is the interesting part, Ben, He testified, and once he testified and the judge accepted, there's a, quote, error of reality, end quote, not my language. She said that the crown hasn't disproven, disproven provocation beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim essentially said, if I see you again, I'm going to smoke you.

And that was still in the context of shooting him in the bank. And here's what provocation is for this 16-year-old. and I haven't gotten to the juicy part yet. Okay, all right. Okay, because it's very juicy. The wrongful act, the murder, the shooting, or the provocation itself, let's go one step at a time. The provocation has to deprive this 16-year-old of his ability to control himself.

Okay. Think about that. Yeah. He's got to be out of his, out of sorts. He's got to be out of his mind temporarily. Correct. And a bunch of other terms, which I don't think would apply to Ben Maroonie. I don't think it would apply to 90% of your listeners who are at work or driving to work today,

or who are taking their kids to daycare or who are not walking around shooting people. And the second one is that there was no time for his passion to cool. That's the term. Okay. Now, again, here's where it gets juicy. The court is entitled to take into account his race, his color. culture, his background, his circumstances. All right, we've heard a lot of these stories recently.

We heard about the First Nations guy who did something horrible. I can't remember what it was, and he got less time in prison because of his circumstance. Correct. And that's called glad due factors, and that's a huge factor in sentencing, as cultural factors are. Now, you're going to have people who say that's the greatest thing. That could be that means the system is working great. and we have to give deep sentencing discounts depending on culture, race, background, how somebody grew up. And then there's an argument on the other side that is a less popular one to advance,

which is, are we getting to the point where there's a two-tier system? And so this case stands out. Now, you'll never hear the part I just talked about, get talked about broadly, because it's verboten and people don't. But if you look at the case law, there's even a case from the Supreme Court that says, yes, when you're assessing the individual, even on an objective basis, objective, not subjective, you can take into account features such as the one I said. And so there's something about this story that if people delved into it, I don't think it would sit too well with people.

I think his defense lawyer, who's an excellent defense lawyer, gave a very smart comment at the end, which is look at what the carnage of guns do. Are we going to do, I'm paraphrasing, are we going to do something about the carnage of guns or are we not? And then the last question that people have is, is the criminal justice system working? Hopefully it is. This is a judge who sat in the best perch to assess everything that happened there. We only have the benefit of the reporting. I don't even have the full decision. But this is certainly a very, very troubling case. And I circle it back, Ben, to the ad you played, which is there's a whole bunch of law-abiding people living in areas that aren't as nice as the bridle path, Forest Hill,

Rosdale and they have to be surrounded by this and here's the point nobody's doing a single realistic thing to stop it and it's a very sad state of affairs are these these glad you what is glad do what is it called i do factor glad do factors are where are they entrenched in a law yes they're very much not only entrenched in law they come straight from the supreme court they're not only entrenched in case law, including directives to judges below from the Supreme Court, they're codified in the criminal code. And in fact, it would be an error nine out of ten times for a judge to not consider it. It doesn't mean you're supposed to give a sentence that is manifestly unfit.

But you and I could sit, and so could your listeners, Ben. This is not rocket science. And we could Google, I mean, I guess you could chat GPT, which everybody cheats with, these days. And I could come up with 10, 20 cases in the next 30 minutes that would make somebody have questions. I'm not saying right or wrong. Who am I? Yeah. So, Ari, I don't have a lot of time left, but are you saying that with these glad you things, you could have five different people commit very similar crimes, but if they have five different backgrounds, they're going to get five different sentences. That is about as astute and succinct the way as you can put

it before we have a hard out to an ad. That is exactly how the system is now working. Some would say that's how it's supposed to work, Ben. Others would say maybe we should have an honest conversation about it. What do you say? My view leans towards the more unpopular, that it makes me more and more uncomfortable as Canada changes and changes and changes. And, you know, some people can say arguably for the better. I think Canada is changing arguably for the worse. I have a real problem with anything that gets into two-tier policing, two-tier justice system. To me, adults have agency, and when you're a 17-year-old or a 16-year-old, I'm not sure it's got to. Look, I'll answer in 30 seconds. You got 10 seconds. Unless you can really point to something like in Gladou

where somebody was terribly abused and never had a start and was faded because of horrible parenting to never succeed, I think sometimes there's a risk of overusing it. All right. Goldkind. I appreciate it, man. You were a heck of a guide through this a really odd legal path. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. How feasible is it for Canadians to out-earn their parents and improve their living standards? Well, it depends on where you live. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney. show. And the promise of Canada has always been that our kids will have a better life than us.

That's the bargain that we have struck with this country. And over the past few years, it's felt like maybe that bargain was broken. Maybe not. Maybe it's just a feeling. But we're now joined by the senior economist at the Montreal Economic Institute, Vincent Joloso. And he actually looked at how feasible it is for residents to out-earn their parents and improve their living standard. Vincent, welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here. So, yeah, when I was reading what you sent us, that's how I looked at it. I looked at it as the promise of Canada and whether or not that promise still is in effect. That seems like a good way to put it. We're looking at more, I would just add the little

following team. What we're looking at is the things that should allow the environment that leads to the Canadian dream being fulfilled. And what are those elements? What is that environment? What does it look like? So there's two parts of it is one of it, you could call what are the natural barriers to income mobility across or social mobility across generations. These natural barriers is, you want to think of it as the simplest possible, the social capital in society. How much do people trust each other across income lines, across social classes, across linguistic groups?

It's kind of the, in French, we would say, the tissue social, so basically the level of social connections that people have. That's the natural barriers. In the artificial barriers, you would want to think of government policies, zoning laws, occupational licensing, discouraging taxation that is so high that it has discouraged people from work, from acquiring new skills, from making investments, from starting their businesses, all of which lead to. to together, those two types of barriers, artificial and natural, lead to breaking the Canadian dream if you have too many of these barriers. And, Vincent, is there an ideal situation? Is there an ideal level of barriers? Well, yes, it's zero. Zero. Okay. So good to level set. So ideally, there are no barriers either natural or artificial.

But that's obviously not the case. So that then begs the question. Where are the barriers highest? So they're highest in Quebec. So Quebec is the dismal performer in Canada. It has a relatively weak level of social connectedness between people. You can see it in things like voluntary service, charitable donations. These things are relatively discouraging from Quebec's benchmark. But Quebec decides to pile it on by having very, very large.

sets of artificial barriers, such as high occupational licensing, meaning that if you're in a particular trade, you have to spend great resources to just get the license to work in the other sector. And that means that you're trapping people into, say, sectors that have a downturn and they can't move elsewhere, that blocks opportunities upward. Same thing with zoning laws. Quebec has decided to go to full Ontario route on that particular sense by heavily regulating. housing in recent years. That means that if you're trapped in a region that has a downturn, you can't leave for the region that has an upturn. So you're stuck in a suboptimal condition. So, Vincent, does that mean if you've been able to quantify the level of barriers in Quebec

and you say it's the highest, does that, is there a direct line between that, those barriers and the social mobility of the next generation? Yes. So if you look now, you look at the, you look the determinants and then we compare them with social mobility outcome. So we have series of this and look at it from you relative to your parents, how much wealthier you are than your parents. But not only that, we can look at how high on the income ladder you've grown relative to your parents. So have you climbed up the ladder and you're just wealthier in absolute terms? And both of these are well correlated with the index that we mentioned. So Quebec is a place that not only has the weakest determinants of income mobility,

it's also the place where there is the weakest level of income mobility across generations in Canada. All right, so Quebec comes in at the lowest rank. What's the highest rank in the country? Alberta. Alberta. So if parents want their kids to succeed better than they did, Alberta's the place to do it.

Alberta's the place to do it. It's not ideal, but it is the best in Canada. and the reason why is Alberta has a very open entrepreneurial environment. It has, it doesn't discourage work through heavy income taxation or true high payroll taxation. It is very open in terms of zoning laws, so it's really easy to build. So that means that you can move to the place with high opportunity. The one bad thing about Alberta, Alberta is nearly a small. bad as Quebec in terms of occupational licensing.

So if Alberta was to get rid of that, it would actually jump even higher in terms of incomeability. Is that, Vincent, does that have to do with the interprovincial trade barriers where if you're licensed in one province, you can't then go work somewhere else unless you get licensed in that province? Yes, to some degree, yes, but sometimes it's also within province where, for example, this is my favorite HVAC operators, so people who do heating and venting and they're conditioning services, not something that requires very burdensome training in terms of cost.

People can learn it through an apprenticeship normally, but the regulations are very intense in terms of what has to be acquired in multiple provinces. And that means that a person has to spend many thousands of dollars, many years, many multiple hours in schools, mandatorily to just get the right to do the work, not having started to do any work, just the right to do the work. Same thing with hairdressers, same thing with hairbreaders, which you think is not lawyers and doctors where we think, oh, yeah, some occupational licensing is mandated. But no, we're talking low-to-middle-income jobs. Vincent, I've got to think we're looking at this province by province, but I have to believe that some of the barriers are set up federally that apply across the country. Yes.

so when we we account for some of this for example we account for in taxation so we account for federal taxes uh so the federal government does set some of the barriers to mobility uh the however the lion's share of barriers to mobility are erected by provincial governments so the federal government has a role but it has the smallest of all the roles and have Have you looked at the sort of the historic nature of these? Have these barriers been going up over time? Have they been going down? Is it harder to achieve that mobility today than it was, say, 10 years ago?

Yes. So social mobility in Canada is waning modestly relative to where it used to be. So Canada used to be a far more mobile society in terms of your parents relative to you and where your parents were on the latter relative to you. So there's been some losses. for Canada in the last decades. And a large share of this is actually due to one set of policies. And when I said, it's not the federal government that has the lion's share. It's the sub-national governments, the provinces, but especially the cities. Because the biggest factor that explains

people being able to climb up the ladder and climb up income-wise is being able to go to the places where there is economic dynamism, to leave the place where there's economic, there's no economic dynamic. If you put high zoning laws, which what Toronto, Vancouver, and now Montreal, unfortunately are doing, because I'm from Montreal, are doing, this is creating huge barriers to mobility. So of all the types of government you'd want to look at, the biggest culprit right now is our municipal governments who are doing horrible things to income mobility by massively restricting land use, massively delaying construction and additions of new housing, because they make it inaccessible to go to these places where opportunities are.

unless you're able to pay a massive increase in rent. Vincent, before we go, is there a call to action here? Is there a request by your organization for these provinces and these municipalities to do anything? So in the report, we have a shopping list of things that politicians could pick from that are the cheapest things that they could do to improve social mobility. It includes zoning deregulation, it includes occupational license, deregulation. It improves tight-ne property rights for people

inside provinces. They're all things that end up being relatively low-hanging fruits for provincial, municipal. This is the easy stuff they should be able to do. Vincent Jolosa, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate the report, and we thank you for joining us on the Ben Mulroney Show.

It's a pleasure. Crime, crime, crime. We have yet to hear any substantial changes from the federal liberals on bail reform, but are they at least listening to the opposition? Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. I think a lot of Canadians were hoping that whoever won the last federal election, a government that was focused on fixing the problems with our criminal justice system would be paramount.

And unfortunately, for someone like myself who really pays attention to these things, I have been disappointed that the liberal government has not moved the ball on bail reform or the soft on crime approach that Justin Trudeau had for years has not yet changed. And so it looks like it's falling on the Conservative Party to introduce an opposition motion calling for just that. So please welcome to the show, Conservative MP for Oxford, R. Pencana. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me on, Ben. It's great to be here. Now, before we talk about the bill, tell me about your riding and tell me about crime in your riding.

Look, I'm from rural Ontario, Oxford County. It's known as the dairy capital of Canada, great agriculture community, but we're starting to see that crime starting to seep into our community as well. When I talk to our local Woodstock police officers and the OPP, they're demoralized. They're going, their officers are going out there, and they're getting the same. guy is over and over and over again, and they're being released on bail. Yeah. And just recently we had a TD bank that was robbed. It was a repeat violent offender who showed up with a gun. And one of the police officers' daughters messaged me saying, how much more does my dad have to do to keep Canadian safe? Like, he's catching the same guys

over and over again, yet, you know, he's playing his life on their risk. And yet these guys are getting a free pass. And that sadly become the liberal reality in Canada. Yeah, it's, uh, I, I I was really shocked. I was really surprised that this government that promised to move at lightning speed has really been exceptionally slow on the file that matters so much to so many Canadians. This is typical liberal behavior. Mark Carney promised the world to Canadians during the election. He promised that he would take this decisive action.

He would get crime under control. But we haven't seen anything. And it's been six months. It's the same liberal bait and switch. That's why conservatives have been taking the... a lead on this. We've been introducing lots of tough on crime, common sense solutions that

would get crime under control that would reverse the liberal soft on crime catch and release laws because, you know, the liberals already did bill reform. I know everyone's talking about bill reform. The liberals did that. They did that in 2019. And it was their decisions that have caused the mess

we are in today. So my jail, not bill act that we have... Yeah, tell us about it. It's Bill C-242. Exactly. So after consulting with law enforcement, with premieres, mayors, stakeholders, victim advocacy groups right across this country, I've traveled right across this country to put together a comprehensive bill that would, you know, put repeat violent offenders behind bars. We are looking at repealing the principle of restraint that the liberals brought in in 2019. Tell us what that means. What do you mean the principle of restraint? So the liberals in 2019 brought bill C75 and they mandated that judges must. Just release, not maybe, must, must release those that are caught arrested on the least restrictive conditions at the earliest opportunity.

So they handcuffed judges in using discretion and almost made this automatic bail system where anyone that gets caught gets released on the least restrictive conditions. Have you ever asked anybody what the justification for that was? Like, why would we do that? From the debates we saw in Parliament, the McGinty, who is now the defense minister, was probably boasting that it's fair for those that are being arrested. So we've seen this liberal government before. They put the rights of criminals first, not law-abiding Canadians. They usually talk about the charter, but what about the charter rights of Section 7?

Life, liberty, and security. All right, so you've got this, you've got this Bill C-242. I have to assume it's going to be taking aim at, as we just said, some of these laws that the liberals passed so many years ago. Absolutely. The principle of restraint will be gone. We're going to replace that with the principle of public safety. So a judge must look at public safety as a primary consideration.

We're going to make sure that we start a new category of major offenses. So if you have been a charge for extortion, carjackings, home invasions, the stuff that we hear in the news headlines almost every day now, which has become a norm, those will be reversed onus. It will be tougher for them to get bail. We'll be tightening up the risk assessment for those that are being arrested, for example, making a mandatory for judges to look at someone's criminal history. I think it's common sense.

I think we should have been doing this long time ago, but also tightening up the conditions that folks are being given. Right now, we have criminals vouching for other criminals as sureties as guarantors. That makes absolute no sense. So we're proposing not hyperpartisan, but common sense solutions that will get safe streets back in our country. And we hope the liberals put their partnership aside and support us. Well, yeah, let's talk about that because it feels to me,

I've done no polling on the matter, but it feels to me like Canadians want this parliament to work. I don't think there's an appetite to go back to the polls anytime soon. And I think that when you guys were sent there with your big numbers as the opposition party, I think the hope was you guys would find common cause with the liberals as much as possible. Now, we've already seen a little bit of that, which has been great to see. What's been the reception of this bill from the government? Look, they're saying that they have their own bill bill coming sometime in the future.

We're not sure what that's going to look like. We're not sure when they're going to do it. They keep talking about some sort of hypothetical date down the road. But every single day, Ben, that goes by, 1,600 violent crimes happen in our country in a single day. Yeah. 100. You do the math on that? one per minute.

So every day the liberals delay, deny, and deflect and distract Canadians from their failed record, we're actually losing lifestyles. You know, the number of one call I get in my riding, people are saying they're scared to go out to get groceries, seniors don't want to go to the bank anymore, that's not Canada. So when the Prime Minister promises to take decisive action now six months in, we don't see any, I think Canadians are asking questions why, and that's the reception we're getting, where the support right across the country, there's only one party that's asking

the way that's the liberal party. So, but talk to me about how, how, listen, if you're not getting the reception that you probably need from this government, how then does this bill become a law? Look, we are asking for them to cooperate with us. We've been pleading with them to either get out of the way or support our bill. And so we'll find out Monday. Monday is a big vote happening at around 4 p.m. So I encourage all your listeners to watch it.

It's an opposition day motion to fast track and pass my bill. And we'll see it where they stand. I think that's the day we'll see. do the liberals stand with law-abody Canadians or are they going to keep putting the rights of criminals first? Okay, and then let's play a hypothetical here. Let's assume for a second that this bill doesn't pass and the liberals come to the House of Commons with their own version of bail reform, their own version of getting a little tougher on crime. What role do you and the conservative party play in making sure that that bill that originates from the liberals is the best version of itself?

look, I think our job as the opposition, and I think peers have been very, very clear on this, is to we will look at each bill, we'll make sure that if it helps Canadians, we will support it, if it makes things better, if it does provide some sort of safety and security to Canadians, we'll support it, but if it continues

on the same path, the same changes they brought in in 2019, that continues to put the rights of criminals first. The same laws that softened the criminal code last time, we will oppose it. But the same time, I think Canadians want the conservatives to keep on proposing new solutions as well.

So that's why Pierre and our team have been putting forward I think record numbers of justice reform bills in the last few weeks. So we're telling liberals, take our bills, take our ideas. You've stolen them before. Take it for this one as well. So we're working extremely hard and we'll keep raising this. And again, if there's some good ideas, we will support it. But if it's going to keep on the path we're going, we will oppose.

And the people in your riding, when you tell them that you've been working on this bill, What sort of reception do you get from your constituents? But honestly, this is one issue that unites all Canadians. It doesn't matter where they're from, what riding they represent. If they've been here as immigrants, or they've been here for generations, seniors, every age demographic I've seen. I have tens of thousands of signatures on petitions. Canadians aren't scared.

They're scared to get basic groceries. When you hear about a 70-year-old grandmother who's out getting groceries, stabbed and killed, that's a problem. When you have an eight-year-old lying in bed in Toronto and his mom's arms, supposed to be the safest place in the world. Your own home is shot and killed by a stray bullet. The liberals have failed them. When you have Bailey McCord out in Colonna, who was murdered by her ex-partner,

who was just released on bail after being convicted three hours before, and it's brutally hammered to death in a public place. Yeah, no, listen, these stories are far too common. We report on them as much as we can on this show, and it didn't used to be this way. Now, just remind me, real quick, when is this vote in the House of Commons on Bill C. 242? Well, the motion to fast-track this will be happening on Monday at 4 p.m. All right.

All right, Arpan, Kana, thank you very much for joining us. Good. standard heated front seats standard high ground clearance standard eyesight driver assists to help spot the scooter delivery guy texting merging and eating all at once uh standard parallel parking perfectly while someone watches uncommon but in a Subaru standard ish Subaru uncommon come standard hurry into your local Subaru dealership today for lease rates from 1.99% for 24 months on select models and get great value that you guessed it come standard conditions apply seat dealer for details