The Ben Mulroney Show - BC's Conservative party in turmoil and why the tanker ban only hurts Canada

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Guest: Dr. Eric Kam, Economics Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University GUEST:   Francys Sims  /   associate dean of Humber’s Faculty of Applied Science and Technology 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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Yeah, we got to talk about what's going on in British Columbia. It seems like every day we start a segment with what the heck's going on in British Columbia. And a few days ago, it was the queering of the forest by the BC Teachers Union. Sometimes it's the tanker ban. Sometimes it's the Cowichin Tribe and the land claims. Today, it's what's going on with the B.C. Conservative Party. John Rustad has been the leader of that party that led them to

a level of electoral success that they have never seen before. And in just a few short years, it looks like his leadership may be over. Apparently, he's been removed as leader of the BC conservatives. That's according to the party's board. However, Rustad, well, let's listen to what John Rustad said. Some of your MLAs have said that their leader, they consider to be the interim leader Trevor Holford, someone said that you are their leader. What is your view? Who is the leader of your party? So I'm currently still the leader of the party. Nothing has changed

since we discussed this this morning. Do you plan to step down? There's been all this opposition. I got to get into question. I've got to get in. So the party says they've removed him. The party board says they've removed me. He says he's not stepping down. So as of right now, unless there's been news in the past few minutes, we don't

know exactly who the leader of the BC Conservative Party is. And by extension, the leader of the opposition. Rustad said that nothing's changed. He remains leader. He added on social media, I'm not going anywhere. The board's decision apparently comes after months of turmoil in the party

that has seen some of the legislature members resigning or being kicked out of caucus. And so there's a letter here. And it's been signed by 20 of the parties' MLAs that say they've lost confidence in his leadership. And Trevor Halford, he's an MLA for Surrey White Rock, said he's been selected as the interim leader of the party. It's unclear, though, who will be the leader of the official opposition in the BC legislature?

Like when the next time question period comes around, who is going to be sitting in the leader's seat? I have no idea. So this is one of those wait and see kind of situations. But you'll remember, just a few short years ago, the BC conservatives were nothing, were nothing. There was a liberal party, and that went the way of the dodo bird. and a bunch of the people from that party went and formed, I mean, then there was BC United, right? The liberals became BC United, I think,

and then BC United disappeared and conserved assumed control. And they were ascended in the last election, ascended to the point that I think they scared the bejesus out of the NDP, forced the NDP to walk back some of their more destructive policies on safe supply and drug use around that province. I think that probably saved them. But at any given point in the last few days of that election, it was either going to be a NDP victory or a BC Conservative Party victory.

And just a few seat changes could have taken you from a majority to opposition. And David E.B.'s party eked it out, won the election. But it looked at the time like you had a new stalwart. conservative party based in British Columbia. And when I see this, after just, you know, having tasted, comes so close to tasting victory, they're already at each other's throats. It lends credence to what I've said before, which is the difference between the conservative conservative party in this country and a liberal party, is that the liberal party is a political

party. A conservative party looks like a political party, but it's actually a political movement that has all the trappings of a party, but it's actually at its heart. It's a movement. And what happens with movements, people move in different directions. And sometimes when you don't get what you want or you're unhappy with one aspect of that party, sometimes you take your toys and you go home. You splinter off and you form your own offshoot. And I don't know what's going to happen here. But it feels to me like there's a civil war brewing. I mean, think about it. Back in the day, Jean-Cretzien and Paul Martin did not like each other. And they had their own rumps within the liberal party. But you know what they did? They worked together. Why? Because

the liberals know how to win. And they know at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is staying in power. Because if you're not in power, all you're doing is chirping from the cheap seats. Conservatives don't know how to button things up the way the liberals do. They do not know how to park their issues and fight for things they have in common the way the liberals do. And that is one of the reasons why the liberals and the liberal brand has been so successful in Canadian politics at multiple levels of government. Anyway, that's that's that. We'll keep an eye on that, but I did not wake up this morning thinking I was going to read

this story to you. More to come. And more to come on the Algoma Steel fallout that we've been talking about all week. Algoma Steel based in Sue St. Marie, despite $500 million in loans, $400 million from the federal government, $100 million from the Ontario government, saw a thousand jobs evaporate overnight because of tariff headwinds and a pivot in their business model. And news came out that Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, got a heads up that these laws. losses were coming. Let's listen to Doug Ford being interviewed by Global News, Colin DeMello. Yeah, well, we put in $100 million. The feds put in about $400 million, what the CEO told us that there'd be a dramatic change. If we didn't put it in, it'd be a lot more than a thousand

people. We need the federal government to start ramping up the procurement for the military, and we want to allocate all that steel, no matter if it's for the military or for the pipelines over to Algoma until they can have a full staff there. Some people might be quite surprised to find out that you were aware that these job losses were on the horizon. Well, you know something? We have two choices. The Titanic was shipping, sinking up there. We either save, you know, two-thirds, or we don't save anything. And I believe in saving the company up there, allocating funds to keep them going,

and that's exactly what we did. What if we put in more money? Would that have saved more jobs? Well, again, you'd have to talk to the people at Algoma because we're there to help as many people as possible. And if we didn't put up that $100 million and the feds didn't put up $400 million, I don't think that plant would be standing right now. Yeah, and we talked about this yesterday, like the idea, or a couple of days ago, the idea that putting money into shoring up a company like Algoma, if this is the best result that we could get from $500 million spent, then we are. are not yet on a positive, aggressive footing in terms of growing this economy. I mean, if the steel industry is like the canary and the coal mine, then what this little interaction demonstrates is that we are on our back foot,

that this $500 million was a defensive strategy to protect as best we could a faltering industry. And so for the premier of Ontario to say, yeah, you know, had we not invested that money, it would have been more than a thousand jobs lost. We're like, we're not growing anything here. We are doing our best to minimize loss. And I do appreciate what the premier said here, that we got to get going with military procurement. We got to get rid of,

we got to start building things that require steel. We've got to start building and getting contracts signed and firing up manufacturing lines for all sorts of things in this country that require steel so that we can grow, Algoma, not spend money to prevent more loss from Algoma. And we are not there yet. So anybody who thinks that we are at the point where we are going to grow this economy faster than any economy in the G7, look at Algoma. We are not even in the growth stage yet. We are in the stage

where we are trying to prevent loss and we're willing to spend half a billion dollars to do so. This is not where we want to be. We want to be on the other side of this. And I do think that, yes, That plan that was laid out by Doug Ford is a great one. We got to get there. We got to get there right quick because, I mean, are more losses coming down the pike? I don't know. Could be. Could be.

We've got a lot more to get to in the show. I mean, I wish I had more time to talk about this. You know, the issues with immigration are not going anywhere. We found out that our immigration minister, Lena Diab said that she's warning foreign nationals, not to misuse Canada's asylum system. That's super. If you were looking to cheat the system, well, they've been warned.

They've been given a stern warning. That'll stop them. That'll stop them. Oh, Canada in 2025. Got to love it. Hey, how three native bands in BC are raking it in for the FIFA World Cup, what are they getting for all the millions that they've been given? That's coming up next.

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thanks so much for taking time out and helping us with this show. Otherwise, I've said it before. If we don't have you on the other side listening and calling in and joining us on social media, then I'm just some weird, angry guys screaming into a microphone. And nobody wants that. Well, nobody's going to pay me for that. So thank you.

A lot of people getting paid over FIFA. You know, the World Cup's coming to Canada. Some of the early games are going to be here. Some of the early rounds are going to be here in Vancouver. And, you know, in the city of Toronto, I can speak to the fact that there's been a lot of money that had to be put into adding to the stadium, Bimo Field, because it was not World Cup ready. But I think a lot of people are just excited to have something like that in this city. And they're even saying, damn, the cost. Like, we'll figure it out later.

It's going to cost a lot. Hopefully it won't cost so much that we can't turn a profit and we can't make some money back into the economy of this city that desperately needs it. But in the meantime, the excitement's building. I believe the draw is happening tomorrow. I know my colleague here at 640 Toronto, Greg Brady, is single-mindedly obsessed with that draw. And I'm going to learn a lot from him as to whether or not the matches that are assigned to Toronto and Vancouver are indeed big ticket ones. Although we are expecting one Canadian team Canada match here in Toronto, which is exciting. But on the other side of the country in Vancouver, where another group of matches will be played,

global news has learned that $18 million has been paid to the Musquium Indian band, Squamish Nation, and another First Nation, each getting $6 million. Now, of course, you want buy-in from First Nations on everything, right? This is, it's, whatever you build in this country, I think it's important to always have an eye in terms of reconciliation on having partners from First Nations. We want to help build their communities, want them to be able to build their communities with buy-in on whatever the projects are, whatever the big ticket items are. And so that's good. Except there's no mention of any specific conditions attached to the money. No one is saying what the money's for.

Like I don't know what it is. We've talked about this before. There's a lack of transparency between the money that's handed over and in a lot, if not most of the cases, it's rightly handed over. But I didn't, I learned a lot in law school, but I didn't remember a lot from law school. One of the things that has stuck with me that I will never forget is the appearance of propriety is as important as propriety itself. It's not just, it's not just that something has to be above board. it has to seem like it was above board because otherwise people will doubt

whether or not it was whether or not it's valid whether or not it's lawful whether or not it makes sense we have to believe in the process and the way you believe in the process is to be able to witness the process in action and handing over a check for $6 million

three times for a total of $18 million of taxpayer money with no idea as to why they were given the money or what we expect in return. Like, are you hiring staff for FIFA? Is it an educational program? I have no idea.

Is it security for the games? Are our First Nations security teams? Are we hiring different securities or First Nations companies to provide services or in and around FIFA? I don't know. And nobody does. And because nobody does, it doesn't look good.

And this is not a good look as we are trying to work our way through some really contentious issues these days, really contentious issues as it relates to land claims, pipelines, tanker bans, the AFN coming in and saying they want $367 billion additional dollars from the federal government over the next 10 years. This is a lot of money. And frankly, we don't have a lot in this country right now that we can just be handing over to anyone. And again, I'm not saying that that, that, that, uh, It's a hand out. I'm not saying that.

But I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's a contract for work to be done. I don't know if it's a contract or money to be paid for services already rendered. Nobody knows. And I don't know that there are more people today comfortable with this sort of transaction than there were yesterday. I suspect there are fewer. I suspect there are fewer. And that is a problem.

I mentioned on the show a few, a few weeks ago that we are in the, it's time for everybody to show us their cards on both sides of the table in this, in this negotiation on reconciliation. We got to know what you're working with and you got to know and you got to know what we're working with because transparency is the only way forward as far as I'm concerned. and there's too much opacity, there's too much clouding the relationship for people on either side to feel like they're getting the true honest truth 100% undistilled from either side. You can't have reconciliation

if you don't have open and honest and frank communication. Let's go back to the tanker band that I just referenced because the AFN chiefs unanimously rejected, the Assembly of First Nations chiefs unanimously rejected the new Canada-Alberta pipeline MOU Memorandum of Understanding.

Reaffirming support for the Northern BC oil tanker ban. We keep hearing about this. We keep hearing about this. I was talking with my producer, Mike Jolet, this morning. Like, why is there a tanker ban? And I asked them, I said, when was the last major oil tanker spill in Canada? And specifically on the West Coast?

Do you have any idea? Because you would think this tanker ban is preventing imminent disaster. That's why it's a zero tolerance game. Can't have it at all because these tankers present danger to the ecology and the environment on the BC coast. That's why we can't have any tankers there ever again. Full stop. When was the last time we had a tanker spill that caused damage off the coast of BC? Can you hazard a guess?

1973 1973 was the last time there was an oil tanker spill on Canada's west coast a freighter spilled hundreds of tons of fuel off British Columbia's coast in 1973 the last very large

widely known tanker spill was in the U.S. off the with the grounding of the Exxon Valdez on March 24th 1989 And that spill would be far less likely today because of the changes that were implemented

due to that environmental disaster. Double hull design is now standard. Better navigation tools. GPS, that didn't exist. Strictor regulation, constant monitoring, better trained crews, vastly improved emergency response capacity. Like an oil tanker spill

that would cause great damage is virtually impossible given the technology that has been come into play and the regulations that come into play after Exxon Valdez and even prior to Exxon Valdez it was 15 years prior to that that Canada saw

an oil tanker spill off the coast of British Columbia. So we asked, what are the odds of getting hit by lightning? The lifetime odds are 1 in 15,000. That's not, those aren't good odds. The annual odds the odds of getting hit over the course of a lifetime,

one to a million. Being in a fatal commercial crash, sorry, being in a fatal commercial plane crash, but one and 11 million over the course of your lifetime. What are the odds of a major oil tanker spill off the west coast of Canada? The odds are so slim, the chat GPT couldn't give me odds.

it's so insignificant that there are no odds to be given. I'm not making this stuff up. I'm asking this oil tanker ban that the AFN chiefs unanimously voted to uphold. I don't believe that it is recognizing the slim chance that we would ever have an oil tanker spill. We haven't had one since 1973. The big one in the U.S. in Alaska in 1989 led to all of these changes that would make a spill all the more less likely. So we have hobbled ourselves as a nation, prevented the wholesale of Canadian bitumen to Asia by way of tanker because of the fear that we might have. have a spill, and we haven't had one since 1973.

This is the most Canadian thing I think I can be reporting on for the next, ever. This is the most Canadian thing we could do. We shoot ourselves in the foot before we're about to run a race. My God. All right. The housing market is not good at all. What should you do if you need to sell? Welcome back to the Ben Mulrne show.

I don't care what anyways says. I love Santana. You know, I went to visit Santana in the recording studio, in his recording studio in Tiburon, California. Across from San Francisco. Tiburon, by the way, means shark in Spanish. Did you know that? You learned something new from Ben Mulroney today.

Oh, I referenced myself in the third person. Ten to merit points. Welcome back to the show. I really appreciate you being here. Look, good news. comes with bad. There's some good news out there, but we're not talking good news right now because there's a lot of bad news out there. Would you put your house up for sale right now, especially in the city of Toronto? Let's ask our next guest, Dr. Eric Cam, economics professor

at Toronto Metropolitan University. Eric, welcome to the show. All right, so there's the question. Should somebody sell their house right now? Not unless they really have to. I mean, we just look at the data, Ben. It's crazy. Home prices in Toronto, fallen for nine months in a row. They're down about 21%, say 25 for some types of houses, 18 to others, but about 21% on the supply side. New listings are way up.

And so you've got a recipe for disaster, right? When demand is low, supply is really high. That drops the price down. Now, here's some good news, because I always tell you, it depends on what side of the outhouse you're standing. This can provide a little improved affordability. for some buyers.

And so, you know, there may be some opportunities now for people to get into the housing market that were shut out before. Now, I'm talking in a vacuum because the economy hasn't gotten better. Right. It's just the fact that houses have gotten cheaper. So you might be one of these people that can dig in now and join the market. But in general, if you don't, you know, they say buy high, you know, they buy low, sell high. Yeah.

If you don't have to sell your house today, don't because if you sell your house. today, you're selling it on a deep discount. Now, I know that you're not a real estate expert, but is there a difference between like the high-end homes and those neighborhoods that wealthy people want to get into versus starter homes? Well, okay, I'm not a real estate agent, but I can only imagine the answer is yes. I mean, there's a really stratified sample of people that can buy houses in the three to four to five million dollar range.

And most of those people, let's be completely honest, they're not as affected by the economic downturn. I think the greatest effect for these things is in the entry-level housing market because I think it's a really razor-thin line between can I get in or can I not get in. So I'm always watching the houses in the $750 to $1 million range, and I can't believe I just said that.

But I guess the question also has to be, Eric, is, look, if you've got to sell your house, you've got to sell your house. And if you wait any longer, could it get worse? Like today may be the best time in the next, in the foreseeable future to sell your home. Yes, and that's the problem, right? You know, economics depends on expectations because we don't know, we don't know what's coming in the future. I mean, there are some strategies. I was actually reading about this.

If you really have to sell your house, you know, there's some kind of bookmark rules like list it 2 to 5% below market value, consider pre-listing appraisals. There are things you can do to, if you're going to sell your house, Ben, the best thing to do is sell it quickly. Yeah. So there are strategies, and of course,

call Frank Leo. Good call. And for those of you listening on the National Network, that is a real estate agent and his team that advertise on this Toronto radio station.

All right, let's talk about another strike coming to another airline. And I just, I got to get you to get, tell us about the story so that I can then tell you what my issues are. Well, I think that this is another example of short term stupidity. Air Transat thinks that they're going to go on strike. And they think what they're going to do is leverage the fact that this is the holiday season, the high travel season, and they're going to hold their bosses up to the wall for wage

increases, knowing full well, by the way, that a strike would go a long way to wrecking the peak season holiday travel business for many people. So, you know, as per usual, you know where I come down on this, Ben, there's a huge cost of striking. Not only would it disrupt flights, and so many people, pilots and everybody who works for the airlines would lose such a large amount of income and face hardship at the worst time in the economy for such a long time. I think that anybody, and I mean this sincerely, I don't care who hears me, if you're considering on going on strike right now with the economy where it is, I actually think you're a fool. Well, yeah, like we just said, pay attention. If you don't have to sell your house right now,

don't sell your house. I would say if you don't have to go on strike right now, don't go on strike. Like, this is, this is not the time. And I think you're going to alienate a lot of customers. And so once you lose them, you may never get them back. And this happened, I mean, We talked about it a year ago when Canada Post went on strike right before the holidays. And I said, please don't do this. All of the issues that you have today will still exist in January. Don't ruin everybody's Christmas holiday. And then they did.

And you know, Ben, sorry to interrupt, but there's two things about that. Number one is we've proven through data that if you're on strike for more than 10 or 12 days, you actually never make that income back. Right. Because you make almost nothing in strike pay. My wife's a grade 6 teacher. I think they wanted to give her $50 a day to walk around with a picket sign. So you're never going to make that money back if you're gone for more than a couple of weeks.

And number two, we live in a really interesting time. And I have to admit, I kind of like this. But have you seen what happens, what happens to public sentiment for companies that go on strike at peak periods? You may never get back to goodwill in that. industry and you know the airline industry as much as we need way more competition for the first time in years there actually is a little bit and you can rest assured that right now people in the board rooms of air canada and porter are praying for air transat to do this yeah and look but can i also say something that i was quite struck by because i heard this this news of the air transat pilots being

in a strike position a legal strike position but i also heard uh people who said that they are still going to go on their vacation and hope for the best. Now, unless they bought travel insurance, they're going to find, if I hear these same people complaining about being stranded wherever they are, that's on them. If you know that you might not have a ride home, you don't take them, you don't take the first leg of that trip. Well, that's for sure. I mean, you've got to be an educated smart consumer. So your point's well taken. But you know, I laugh hysterically when I hear the people at Air Transite. I say, well, we have an overwhelming 95% mandate. to strike well of course you do it's an ecosystem you've just pulled your own people and you know at some

point if you're going to be on strike during a huge economic downturn and risk losing your customer base yeah milton free then milton friedman was right when he said in his book you're free to starve when i was younger i used to say really dumb stuff like tuesday is the new friday that's how much i used to go out and i used to go out the nightlife in this city back when i was going out was great i don't go out anymore but now i'm learning most people aren't going out of anymore. No, they're not. And there is huge pressure on the hospitality, the bar sector, live entertainment. People are just not going out anymore. We know it's terrible for bars and clubs and restaurants and especially things like live music venues that have had to pay talent. And so

this is pretty bad, right? In a recent survey, I read it says something like 41% of Canadians have reduced their alcohol consumption, their restaurant consumption. And this is a real, maybe a seminal shift then in consumer spending habits we talk about people cutting back and i guess this is the first domino to fall they're falling back by eating at home and doing their entertainment on home figuring if i've already paid for netflix hell i'll stay home and watch a movie yeah no and that we've also seen that uh that they're uh you know younger generations are spending more are are drinking less and they are perhaps um enjoying um cannabis a little more and so there's not that there's not that social nightlife culture in cities like Toronto and Vancouver today as there were before the kids just aren't down with it

well the kids just aren't down with it and I could argue this is about the economic downturn because I think most things go back to economics but you know this also just might be a real shift in preferences right the demand for discretionary nighttime social spending is shrinking because much like so many other things, you don't really have to leave your house today to have an adult beverage and watch a movie. Yeah, that's true. No, you're absolutely right, which makes me feel better because I don't go out because I don't want to, but also because I can't. Not these days. Hey, Eric Kemp, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I'll go out with you anytime, Ben. Thanks, brother. Hey, cybersecurity is something we've all heard about, but not everyone knows what it means. Who do you call? Hopefully all, hopefully a future Canadian college grad is in the future. Don't go anywhere.

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Mmm, designed for indulgence. Precision crafted to navigate every corner. corner of my mouth. All for just $18. Okay, okay. Try the season's hottest flavors from the PC Holiday Insiders Report. Please feast responsibly. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. And we've been warned, right? Everyone's been warned. Be careful. Be careful online. Be careful who you trust. Be careful what you buy. Be careful what websites you go to. Be careful what emails you open. Why? because cybersecurity threats are real and they are growing and they're becoming increasingly sophisticated and with 87% of organizations experiencing a security incident last year and national

cybercrime costs expected to exceed 200 billion. Let me say that again, national cybercrime costs in this country are expected to exceed $200 billion in 2025. Now I'm not an expert, but I can assume that some of that $200 billion is avoidable. right but all that means is we need more cybersecurity experts in this country enter the associate dean of humbers faculty of applied sciences francis sims who's got some news for us on that front francis welcome back to the show yeah happy to be with you again ben yeah so this is this is a problem that's not going away no matter how sophisticated we get no matter how many uh how much security uh we put software that we put on our computers and on our phones there's always somebody this one step ahead

and you know the thing is is that we don't hear about how we don't hear about probably 80% of the breaches like when a breach occurs they only need to report at a company if there's real risk of significant harm that's the term people can look up which we'll and uh francis I'm talking to significant harm. We're talking about financial. We're talking about breaches in data. Like you think for your social insurance number, right? Your bank account information. But right now in Canada, we leave it up to the company to make that decision. And then if they make that the decision that's met the threshold,

then they'll go to the Privacy Commissioner in the province or at the federal level. And so the bottom line is we're not hearing about all the cyber attacks that are occurring, which is why there's so many jobs in this space, because many companies, it's not in their best interest sometimes, if they don't think it's causing this harm, the only thing that will happen when they report it is likely they'll get sued. So many companies across the country

are having this type of issue, and they're just not, they don't know how to do anything about it or they're scared to even report it, period. Which is why you need professionals in the space. And there is worry, like, you know, a lot of times we think banks, we think credit card companies,

we think a hack of some sort of, you know, a company that, like a Google, a hack of Googler of meta, But more and more, there are attacks on water, on energy, on agricultural systems, critical infrastructure, right? Like, this is a big, big deal. Yeah, and we talk about these major projects in Canada, and every project that we're building, there's going to be critical infrastructure that needs to be protected.

There's a story about this water treatment facility in Florida where somebody logged in via this app that would allow you to control your computer from home and started changing the chlorine level, right? Just something very simple. and started putting it in a toxic range. Like something that would never, ever, ever have been on the internet before. Yeah. Everything is on the internet today.

Okay. And that's the problem that we're facing. Okay. So we've identified the problem. It's a growing problem. It is a problem that is affecting more and more industries. So clearly, being on the security side of the cyber attacks is a growth industry. 100%.

And that's what we're doing. What we've done at Humber, like many of our institutions, is we've introduced an applied masters in cybersecurity that will start in April, because we see that there's growing demand. And the masters, like other organizations, are focused on, is on how do you take the people that are in the IT, you know, cubicles and turn them into the managers that can protect these types of attacks, because the attacks aren't just about getting in some backdoor, like you might see a hacker do on TV. It's about social engineering, right? It's about, you know, not like Donald Trump says, some guy in a basement doing these attacks. It's more.

likely somebody's stealing your password, right? And that's something that's accessible. That's something that everybody can deal with. And if they're trained properly, it can be excellent jobs in that space. Okay, so talk to me about, you just said like taking somebody who's in IT and turning them into one of these cybersecurity experts. But take a step back from that for me. Let's say I'm a, well, my sons, for example, right? They're in grade 10, right? What sort of path do they need to be on to eventually end up in a program like this one? Yeah. So I think, what they need to do, like anybody that's thinking of the university, is to get that foundation credential, right? Whether it's in the arts, whether it's in business, whether it's in technology,

and that's where you really learn the critical thinking and the skills, you know, that are resilient against AI, right? Because we talk about how AI is a threat to our institutions, but you've got to learn those foundational skills. And then when you learn it, then you can come into a program like the one that we have at Humber that takes you and builds on those critical skills and gives you the technical piece but also the management piece. It's kind of like a mini MBA for techies because we're gone are the days where cybersecurity is only in the tech domain. It's 95% of all the attacks start with social engineering. So it's something that everybody needs to think about, which is why we think there's so many jobs that'll be opening

up in that space. Yeah. And that's the thing. So and break it down for me because in my mind, when I used to think cybersecurity, like I always thought two things. They either like an in-house cyber security team for a big company or um like an outside contractor that's built on cutting edge technology and being like hiring the best of the best they would help governments and they would help the you know they'd be brought in to solve a cybersecurity attack sort of the you know working hand in hand with the FBI in a movie sort of thing yeah like mission impossible right something like that yeah but there's there's I'm guessing that those are probably my brain made but most of that stuff up but

there are more everyday jobs in cybersecurity than just the ones we just talked about. Yeah, I mean, there's jobs in training organizations in building, you know, building policy and guidelines because what happens when you're attacked? A cyber friend who's the head of technology at one of the law leaving law firms in Canada, and he said he goes into these organizations

when there's a ransomware attack, and then they tell him to go and talk to the head of IT. But the head of IT doesn't actually know how to talk about business continuity or disaster recovery. Those are the skills anybody can learn. And they're independent of really the technology. The technology is a foundational layer. But those are things that anybody, that's why we treat it like an MBA.

Those are business skills that, you know, if you did an arts degree or you did a health science degree, you could imagine working in the hospital and do the same thing, right? Yeah. Now, you said that these people are going to have skills that are impervious to AI. But I have to assume AI is going to play a role in assisting human cybersecurity experts. in identifying sort of outlier pieces of data that could signal a breach or something like that. Yeah. So it's no different than the coders and how we say AI is coming after coders.

Entry-level coders, there will be systems in place that do that job, right? The same thing is going to happen in cybersecurity. It's going to mean that maybe some of the basic cybersecurity, you don't need to write a script anymore. You just buy an off-the-shelf software. I'm just like you can buy ransomware as a service on the dark web and deploy it, without any coding skills, you can now, because of AI, do the base level cybersecurity prevention in a small business without a lot of coding skills. And I think arguably it's the business and the people skills that are more important now than ever, because you can buy those

tools. And maybe you're going to need that black cat hatter that you're a hacker type that you see on TV for the hardcore stuff. But for most of it, for the everyday thing that can protect your business, you don't need those skills at hand. So for this new Humber Polytechnic Master of Computer Science and Cybersecurity Operations and Management, when's it going to be up and running? How long is the program? And how many students are going to be open, are going to have slots to take on this? So we open in May.

The plan is to open it in person, possibly online, so it's accessible for the across the country. And we'll probably be, you know, enrolling up to 100 students, depending on the demand. So our doors are open and we welcome people from lots of different. different backgrounds because it's not just it's not just a humber thing it's a Canada issue and we have if we want to talk about sovereignty and security yeah we have to do it across the board now as you as you teach as you teach this course or is a I'm the type of person if if I would came in as a professor I would just sit there and show people every episode of Mr. Robot like that would be that would be me if

if if a real professor was sick and I came in as a substitute I'd say okay for you as a guest lecture any day you do not buddy if you're trying to build a university where people pay you attention a school where people pay attention and take you seriously you do not bring me in for that sort of thing

I think I know technology but you know people and we'd be lucky to have you Francis I'm always pleased when you come on the show always pleased to hear that that it feels to me like Humber is growing it feels to me like its ambitions are growing and I'm really happy to hear that because I think that

any institution has got you as part of it, you're taking, you're building it with intention. And I thank you very much for your time today, sir. Thank you for having me then.