The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben asks has Toronto become a lawless city?

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Ben asks has Toronto become a lawless city? -Do we need to diversify our trading partners? with Guest: Dan McTeague, Former Liberal MP and President of Canadians For Affordable Energy -Liberals Mea Culpa, Kevin O'Leary impressed by Danielle Smith, Jean Charest gives some food for thought -What to do with Old City Hall If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1-888-225-TALK. There is some disturbing video that was released by Toronto police of essentially a recording studio on Queen Street West where over a dozen people were in this studio. I don't know if they were making music or listening to music. And almost every one of these people was brandishing a firearm of some type. And they were, I know they looked like they were drinking alcohol, and they were playing with them as if they were toys. And then at one point, the video shows one of the guys with what looks like a semi-automatic weapon just showering the outside of the studio with bullets. Over 100 bullets were discharged.

The guy was behind a metal door and he's shooting the gun and then all hell breaks loose. And so some arrests have been made. But you know where this is going. We're going to get a news story about anywhere six to 18 months from now where someone is arrested for a violent crime. And in the article, it's going to reference that they were out on bail from this very incident. We know this. We've seen this. We've seen this story before.

The lawlessness that we've allowed to run roughshod in this country. Never mind the fact that all these guns aren't even supposed to be on the streets. I thought I thought we banned all the guns. So I want to hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. Do you feel like the city of Toronto is a less safe place today than it was 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago? I haven't felt less safe in my day-to-day life, but I know that the city is less safe. Have you had an incident where you have felt less safe? Have you been on the subway? I've been walking down the street? Have you come into contact with

gun violence in a way that you never have before 416-870-6400 or one triple eight two to five talk? I mean, the video here is is actually quite gross. It's the cavalier nature with these young people are brandishing these weapons. And each one of them could go in a separate direction in the city with one of these weapons. I don't wanna be next to somebody on a subway who's carrying. I don't want that at all.

And you know that it's just, you know, they get arrested and they're out on bail within a few hours, because we just don't, we don't take this sort of thing seriously. Let's welcome Tom to the show. Tom, is Toronto the good a little less good these days? Since the longer Toronto the good is Toronto the bad. Yeah.

I've seen a decline rapidly. I've been working downtown Toronto in the last 10 years and the last several, I'd say the last four or five, I've seen a drastic decline. And even in the surrounding areas where my family lives in North York, you can see a drastic decline. And you know, I was reading some articles Ben about this and they're saying that we have roughly around the same population, you know, the GTHA as Los Angeles, million people. I think they have like 15,000 police officers and we still have 9,000 in total. It's not even less than that. But I know we're half of what we should have.

Yeah. So the funding towards, you know, the police is, you know, if you increase population, which has occurred in Canada, right? Big time. You have, everything else has to increase with it. Yeah. And then it hasn't, and we could see the effects. That's one piece of the onion. There's many to increase with it. Yeah. And then it hasn't and we could see the effects. That's one piece of the onion.

There's many other factors to it. Tom, I wanna thank you very much for starting this conversation for us. Let's say hi to Mike. Mike, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Good morning. So, you know, I got three young kids at home and years ago I put together a fire plan

and the event that there's a fire, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that. We're there's a fire, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. We're not going to do this. We're not going to do that. Well, it's now I now have a plan in place for all home invasion. Yeah. How pathetic is that? Oh yeah. Like this bail thing. Like I just don't understand like who is it that we need to talk to as a population to get this happening. Like, we needed Donald Trump to tell us to protect our borders before we started doing something. Like, what do we have to do? Like, I'll lead the charge. Pierre Poliev. Pierre Poliev. He's going to fix the crime. He's going to jail not bail. I mean,

I know it rhymes and it's trite, but... Yeah, let's jail not bail. I'll sign up for that all day long. Yeah, because I... And thank you for your call, Mike. He's right. Like this is this these guys, these guys are going to be let out on bail. And if anybody thinks they're not going to go back to their ways and if they were if they if they're so comfortable around firearms, I don't think it's going to be hard for them to find another one. Almost every person I saw in those videos was was either brandishing a gun or they were like super comfortable around it. I mean, if I if I stumbled in that room and saw those guns, I would get the hell out of there. This was a group of friends, or looks like friends,

who were just very comfortable with guns in their lives. Like this is not the first time these guys were hanging out with guns. And it won't be the last. And if they're not in jail, they're gonna be out on bail, and they're gonna go right back to their ways. Eric, welcome to the last. And if they're not in jail, they're gonna be out on bail and they're gonna go right back to their ways. Eric, welcome to the show. Yes, good morning.

Good morning. Jane Creva, Galloway Boys, Dixie Gang, we can go on and on. This is nothing new and it's absolutely increasing tenfold all the time. Now, I remember back, you know, I was born in 64, I can tell you 75, in the year 75 and 80, you know, I never heard of such a thing as home invasions, people shooting in the streets, etc. It just didn't, you didn't hear it in the news, it wasn't around. I mean, I got into fights in high school,

I never saw a weapon, I never saw I mean, I got into fights in high school. I never saw a weapon. I never saw a knife. I never saw a stick. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a it's far more. It's a far more violent city than it was before. And I don't think it's just because we're seeing more of it on social media. I don't I don't think it's if it bleeds, it leads sort of thing. I think this is a reflection of the city we're living in right now. I don't know if it's entirely accurate. We may be sensing it's a little more violent than it is just because of the immediacy of the videos that we see, the smash and grabs and the home invasions.

So we may be seeing more of it than is actually a reflection of reality, but there's no way you can tell me that it is not a more violent city than it was before, a more dangerous city than it was before. Welcome to the show, Tracy. Thanks for calling. Hi, how are you? I'm well. I agree with all of the callers, except the first one was referenced Los Angeles and police. We do, of course, we could use the police, but if the police are just going out there

and doing their job and arresting people, but then they're getting let back out the next day it's kind of it's more about the justice system at point i'll add to your interest here one hundred percent thank you for the call and uh... happy friday events welcome to the show yeah hi i'm i have a business in the atopo co area and uh... we were robbed a few months ago and i literally saw it the robbery take place on my security cameras.

And it was just a brazen robbery. They parked their vehicle right in front of the cameras, had no problem. And I was literally watching the robbery in my store while I was at home. I'm sorry about that. It was just a very normal thing for the police. It's, you know, I feel sorry for them. But I just want to say, like, are there not statistics that, you know,

either the police or, you know, the politicians can literally tell us that is it higher, is it lower? So, you know, we can react accordingly and make this an issue. Well, I think it actually I don't have those statistics handy, but I have heard them before that violent crime is up across, and make this an issue. Well, I think it actually, I don't have those statistics handy, but I have heard them before, that violent crime is up across, certainly across the GTA,

and everything from the smash and grabs, to the home invasions, the car jackings, all of those are up, right? And so, but I don't have the numbers to give you right now. I wish I did. I wanna thank you for the call. Steve, welcome to the show. You remember when Trudeau and Blair

had that press conference on, we're gonna make the city safe? And they spent millions of dollars taking guns away from law-abiding gun owners. Yeah. And changed. Yeah, oh, absolutely. And like every one of those weapons,

those handguns, they're not even supposed to be on the streets. This is a border issue. You know, we go right back. This is a border. We can't stop the the illegal guns from coming into the city. There's no way that those guns are registered. No, they're not in the millions of dollars you spent wasting the money, take that money, use it to, I don't know, better border

services. Yeah, but it's no how they run it. And they don't care about the city. No, of course, it's all it's all about performance on stuff like this. We're going to make bold pronouncements and we're going to say the city safer and Canadians are safer because we've done this thing. And in fact, it's done the exact opposite because it wasn't about it was never about making the city safer. It was about appearing like you were doing something.

Thank you so much for the call. Hey, Aaron, thank you for calling into the Ben Mulroney show. Hey, morning, Ben. How you doing? I'm well, thank you. Hi, just talking to the screener there. I had the opportunity, a good friend of mine was a bookmaker. We back in the day during the rock machine held angels in Montreal and he used to do some stuff for the resettlement family as well. And

we'd be there hanging out with the HA and with with those made guys and I saw any of those guys carrying guns and like I just said the screener you look around Toronto still we know there's a mafia presence we know there's a couple chapters of the HA yep you don't see those guys making videos flauntant weapon you know showing off weaponry my friend of mine is a cop in Jane and Finch she's arrested the same guy in three months, three times with a loaded handgun. Well, thank you for the call, Aaron.

And listen, Aaron is right at least on one point. It would make sense to me. I understand in a big city, there's a criminal element. I get that. But for the love of God, can we take it seriously enough that these young Torontonians who are so comfortable just shooting up a neighborhood, could we at the very least demonstrate to the people of this city that we take their safety seriously enough that if these guys

get arrested, they will not be released until their trial. They are a danger Their willing willingness to spray an entire neighborhood with a hundred bullets God knows the damage they could have done to innocent Torontonians So show us that it matters to you give us the tools that we need to keep these violent offenders behind bars Until they until they they their trial like that wouldn't at least make sense to me this is a crazy system that we have um who do we have now we got danny danny thanks so much for calling in and thanks for being patient good morning ben um listen you you started off the the

question was do we feel more safe or less safe? Yep. But tell all the bleeding heart liberals, this is 100% their policies. And just during while I was waiting, I looked up some stats, Canada statistics. In 2021, Toronto's firearms-related violent crime went up 36% just from the year prior and 93% higher than the low in 2013. 93% higher from a decade earlier. Now, hang on.

Ask yourself what happened after 2013? What was the year we stopped or ended stop and frisk in Toronto? That was 2014. And the cops warned us this would happen because if you're not going to check randomly and people aren't scared of getting pulled over for any small incident on the road, like speeding or whatever and finding your gun, guess what? You're going to carry guns around. And I walk by that studio once a week.

Yeah, you could have been a victim. The cops warned about this, but the policies are, oh, no, we can't do this, we can't do this, we can't do that. Well, now you suffer the consequences. Jane Kreba, when her death happened or injury happened, everyone, all the politicians are all about empty words, but they won't back it with hard, hard policies. Danny, thank you so much for your call. Thank you very much

for your call. Yeah, and like, I'm, this is getting so out of hand. I'm done having the conversations about, well, what are the root causes of this violence? It's poverty. Now, you know what? I don't want to have that conversation anymore, right? We've got issues with poverty. Sure, the root cause of criminal behavior

is criminal behavior. I'm done. I've reached my limit of empathy for, to understand, oh, well, you know, let me understand the mind of the criminal. Okay, at this point now, it's things have gotten out of control. If you're gonna do crime and you're a criminal, you're gonna go to jail.

Like, that's it. I don't care anymore. I care about the victims of these crimes. We've been coddling these victims, these criminals for so long, mitigating their responsibility. the victims of these crimes. We've been coddling these victims, these criminals for so long, mitigating their, their responsibility, saying, oh, well, it's because of this or because of that. No, you're, if you've chosen that at this point, I want you behind bars, because I'm more concerned with the people who could get shot than the person doing the shooting. This is what has happened. This

is what has happened. This is where the pendulum swings and I'm not gonna apologize for it. So that was a good call from Danny and let's say hi to John. John, thanks so much for calling in. Hi Ben. Hi.

A couple of points. I love the way you've got such a great way of delivering the truth. It's fantastic. But anyways, I work in the prison system, the provincial prison system for over thirty years now and one of the problems of the politicians are not mentioning when they when they were a preacher they're going to have bail reform and and and i agree

with the other percent uh... conservative in my values and so on but there's not enough jails they're busting at the seams they need to build some facilities in order to do this. But who is in the jails? This is what I don't understand. Who's in them? There's a lot of mentally ill people in the jails who are suffering mental health issues, drug addicts. I mean, a good 25% of prisons are drug addicts who are street people and they should have different types of classification facilities for them and have,

but also there's no consequences for the bad guys. Our justice system is a big failure and I believe and I'm not sure of the details but I'm pretty sure the Liberals actually tried to introduce a bill to reduce sentencing on gun crime. Oh God. And I know for a fact that's not what Canadians want. I couldn't even figure it out. I thought, am I living in the Twilight Zone? John, you're absolutely right. Thank you for the call. We got time for one more. Let's say hi to Janelle. Janelle, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Hi, Ben. Thank you for having me on your show. I just wanted to be really quick about this. I've grown up with grants my whole entire life. I'm 39 years old. And I remember back in the days,

like Drift Boy, Galloway, Regent Park, all of the fights that they had were tourfoures. You know what I mean? And it's now, it's just, it's exceeding, right? And I think the violence has extremely increased and not, like, I don't think it's just the justice system. I also think it's media and what our kids are playing on video games and stuff. You have kids going on TikTok and putting up a whole bunch of money

and having fun with them and things like that. You know what I mean? So I think it's less serious for them today. So I think our justice system needs to pick up on how to punish these children. And not just that, I think mental health has a lot to do with it as well. Yeah, no, I think you're right.

Janelle, thank you for the call. Thank you. And thank you to everybody for your calls. It's a tough conversation that has to be had. But I think some people have reached their limits and they're done with trying to put themselves in the shoes of the perpetrator. And it's time for us to start looking at the victims of these crimes.

And the victim is the community at large. If you had told me that we would be talking this much about Canada's energy sector, our oil, our natural gas, since Donald Trump got elected, it would have come to a very big surprise to me. And yet here we are. And Donald Trump yesterday talked about not needing Canada's oil, but he also said this about OPEC. And I'm also going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil.

You got to bring it down, which frankly I'm surprised they didn't do before the election. That didn't show a lot of love by them not doing it. I was a little surprised by that. And that was of course comments that of love by them not doing it. I was a little surprised by that. And that was, of course, comments that he made at the World Economic Forum. And rather than have me just talk to myself in circles here, we're joined now by Dan McTagg, former Liberal MP and President of Canadians for Affordable Energy. Dan, he says he doesn't need our oil, but he does need our oil. Oh, big time. Listen, I'm not here to you know to basically wrap myself in the flag but one thing has happened that half of the U.S. refiners,

especially in the Midwest and the Gulf Coast, some even in California have reconfigured the refineries to take heavier slates of oil not because it's cheaper. There's a $15 discount discount that Americans get when they buy what's called West Texas, rather sorry, WCS oil, which is our brand of oil. What it does suggest is that the federal, the government of the United States needs to import about 4.4 million barrels of heavy oil to make things like diesel. You don't run your machinery, equipment, transportation sector on diesel and diesel is the global workhorse. The United States produces 13 million plus barrels a day, tight, light, shale oil mostly.

That's great for gasoline, but it does benefit, it's terrible for producing diesel, which is why you need Canada. I mean, he's gonna come to this realization at some point, right? It's so odd that he's, I paused it in the last segment that maybe he's, maybe he wants to get to a place where he doesn't need all these things from Canada,

but we're not, he's not there yet. No, then I went through this in, you know, from 2016 to 2020, when I was working with gas, but most of my interviews were in the United States, dealing with the American media at the time, this was very much as, so we have signaling how we want the gas prices to go, but you're not going to get OPEC to back off, you know, the 5.7 million barrel a day cut that they have put in place because if they do that, they will flood the market. You'll have 4 million barrels plus a day in excess

that will plunge the price. And guess who's going to hurt? American producers. Yeah. More than anything else, you have to be very careful. So, so, Dan, what's behind his request of OPEC to bring down the price and you guess who's gonna hurt? American producers. Yeah. More than anything else, you have to be very careful. So, Dan, what's behind his request of OPEC to bring down the price of oil? I think his pledge has been to bring down

the price of energy in order to help him with his executive order, which is to create an economic superpower in the United States to allow manufacturing and business to flourish with lower energy prices, which I think is all laudable. We all want that, but I think we have to be practical. The rest of the world doesn't necessarily operate the same way. More importantly, for countries like Canada, which play a pivotal role

in which most of our, unfortunately, most of our products are only destined to the United States because you don't have the infrastructure to carry anywhere else with some limited exceptions, it really means that what Donald Trump is trying to achieve cannot be achieved in any way, shape or form without Canada's energy. And that's not necessarily what I call the Trump card, but it is an important one that's been built on over several generations by various leadership in this country. Well, we heard former Quebec Premier Jean Charest talking about how many 20 years from now we may end up thanking Donald Trump for forcing us into having some really tough but important conversations about how we manage our economy how we manage our natural resources and it does seem like former

opponents of our ability to diversify Who we sell our oil to and how we get it to market they seem to be Coming on board to the idea that yeah, we probably should have some pipelines that go to the east and to the west. What do you make of this sea change? Yeah, well, interconnectivity in terms of hydro and also interchangeability between Canada, the United States on for instance, natural gas, and to a lesser extent oil has been in play for some time. As you quite rightly pointed out the outset Ben, you said, you be talking about these things, but it has now come back into focus and energy security

is becoming paramount in terms of the dialogue from the new administration. And I think the better part of this is to be able to make a very strong argument. And I don't, in all due respect, after spending 18 years as a Liberal member, I believe, just and true Liberals or Liberals are in a position to talk about this because they've been blocking pipelines left and right like it or not, finding all sorts of ways to really, you know, to hem in our energy ability to help not just ourselves, but to, you know, to provide more energy for Americans, but also more energy to the rest of the world. We keep saying there's no business case and nothing could be further from the truth. Reality is very different in 2025 than it was in 2015, to use Trudeau's old comment, because it's 2025. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Hey, I want to go back to

a conversation that Pierre Pauly had with Jordan Peterson a few weeks ago that really went viral around the world. And he makes a really interesting and strong case for Canadian LNG. National Bank did a study, you want to talk to these environmental loons that hate our energy sector. They said, great economist, Stefan Mariano, out of Calgary, National Bank said,

if we displaced half of the electricity demand that India will have added to its grid over the next 20 years by supplying our natural gas instead of them using coal, it would reduce global emissions by 2.5 billion tons, which is three times the emissions of all of Canada. So in other words, by exporting our gas, which is half as emissions intensive as coal, we could do far more than we could even do if we shut our entire economy down and disappeared from the earth.

When I heard that, it blew my mind, Dan, that we're not willing to do those things. That we talk a mean game about reducing our emissions, which would be insignificant to the global emissions total. But if we did something like this, we could really move the needle. And then I did a little bit of research into it, and it turns out it's all based on the Paris Accords and how everything involving the Paris Accords is about keeping your own backyard clean before going out and doing anything else.

But to me, we've boxed ourselves in from actually making meaningful environmental change. And by making this case for Canadian LNG, it's, I mean, it just blew my mind out. Long before the Americans built the seven that they have now, part of it using Canadian gas through our various pipeline configurations going south of the border, we had these things ready to go. And it was lawfare, it was obstructionism, it was a government that was overly compliant and willing to bend over backwards. Look, Ben, I didn't even talk natural gas.

I mean, it costs us 34 billion bucks to build the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion, which would have been zero for consumers. And for Canadians, had we not interfered and had we stood up and defended the integrity of our permitting process, that we have been played for the past 10 years. And the ones that have been doing the grifting,

the ones who have been advocating for these policies have been uniquely and uniformly going after our own wellbeing. I say the same thing with the leadership, the Liberal Party, from what I see today in terms of what I'm seeing now, no different. They plan to do very much the same, and it's going to be the detriment of the country. The world is walking away from this being responsible. We were responsible years ago. We cut coal generation many years ago,

long before it was trendy, before the Paris Accord was even signed. That's why it looks like the Americans are dropping it. Yes, they're shutting down their coal plants in favor of natural gas plants or other forms of energy, but Canada never took that into consideration. Said, yeah, we can move the benchmark, the goal close to fuel even further,

by punishing ourselves by basically shutting down our economy to satisfy the dictates of individuals who believe that Canada is somehow nasty and it's not. Quite to the contrary, we're one of the best in the world. Do you think, very quickly, do you think that Pierre Poliev is going to have the ability and the power to do what he says, build these pipelines and diversify our client base? He better have. If not, he'll have to face an obstructionist senate and even green funds that have gone to municipalities who got two billion bucks a year to continue this nonsense. Look, it's failed. It's wrong. It's hurting Canadians. They understand that it's time for a change. And if he doesn't, if he's not successful, I'm not sure what the country's going to look like,

but greater poverty, I think is not too far away. Dan McHague, former Liberal MP and president of Canadians for Affordable Energy, thank you so much. My pleasure, thanks for having me, Ben. It's really quite something to watch the liberal leadership hopefuls abandon the policies that have been so signature to their ethos and their vision of this country. They're abandoning these things like a bad habit.

I've never seen anything like it. And for reference, you know, when my father left the Progressive Conservative Party after nine years in office, there wasn't a single one of the people who were running to replace him who suggested that the party abandon the goods and services tax, free trade or NAFTA.

None of them did. And all three of those policies endure today, much to the benefit of this nation, I might add. And so when Karina Gould, who's one of the latest candidates to throw her hat into the ring, And so when Karina Gould, who's one of the latest candidates to throw her hat into the ring, sort of had almost like an awakening on a number of files,

it puts me in a certain frame of mind. I think we have to be honest about the fact that Canadians have lost trust in our party. And part of it is because I don't think we responded to the issues that they were telling us mattered to them. I think when it came to the end of the pandemic and the spike in inflation, Canadians were saying things are really hard. And we didn't say, you're right. We didn't say, yeah, things are really hard right now and here's how we're going to fix it. It took us too long to understand that Canadians were struggling to make ends meet and instead

of taking a moment and listening to Canadians we said here's all the great things that we're doing for you and I don't think that was the right approach and you know when mortgages were going up, when rents were going up, when groceries were going up, we didn't respond quickly enough to the areas where Canadians were struggling. And I think we have to do a better job of that. Okay, you know, welcome, welcome to the team, I guess, you know, people have been telling you this for a long time. And you

and your, your government, Karina Gould, we're telling people don't believe your eyes, don't believe your ears, Karina Gould, we're telling people, don't believe your eyes, don't believe your years, don't believe your bank account, don't believe the prices that you're seeing going up, don't believe that stuff, everything is fine. We are delivering for Canadians, delivering for Canadians, investing in Canadians.

So it's fine that you're coming to that realization now, but it's a day late and a dollar short. And it's not really, and you didn't really come to this realization, you're positioning yourself in order to stave off political irrelevance. That's why you're doing it. If you were riding higher in the polls,

you wouldn't say these things. It's sort of like when you catch a friend in a lie and he acknowledges it, he goes, yeah, yeah, I lied. Well, when were you gonna tell me? Well, I'm telling you now. No, you're not being honest. And I think one of the things that all of these liberal leadership hopefuls have in common is

they're trying to, they're trying to de-claw Pierre Poliev. As I said to him on this show a couple of days ago, you can't have an axe the tax election if everybody agrees it's time to axe the tax. He suggested that they're being disingenuous and they're going to absolutely keep the tax or do something very, very similar. But yeah, I mean, and if Canadians have if you acknowledge that Canadians have lost trust in you, then make the case that you are deserving of four more years,

even with a different leader. The attack ads write themselves. So I'm scratching my head here. I'm scratching my head why this is a good idea. Why admitting that you messed up and that you didn't listen to Canadians is in this moment advantageous to you because I can't make that case for you. Donald Trump is trying to make the case that he doesn't need Canada at all.

Here's what he said to the World Economic Forum. One thing we're going to be demanding is we're going to be demanding respect from other nations. Canada, we have a tremendous deficit with Canada. I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing.

I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing. I think that's a very good thing. and very tough to deal with over the years. And it's not fair that we should have a $200 billion or $250 billion deficit. We don't need them to make our cars and they make a lot of them.

We don't need their lumber because we have our own forests, et cetera, et cetera. We don't need their oil and gas. We have more than anybody. Yeah, I mean, he's... You've heard me say on this show, you gotta take the world as it is, not as you want it to be.

I know he wants to live in a world where our economies aren't interconnected as they are. I know he wants to live in a world where he doesn't need our lumber or our gas or our cars or our oil. And maybe he's trying to lay the groundwork to create that world where the United States is completely self-sufficient on all of of those files but they're not there today

and they won't get there tomorrow and so when he says we don't need their oil maybe he means I want to live in a world where we don't need their oil but you need it now so you know as he's he's asked his I think his commerce secretary to make the case for these tariffs I think his commerce secretary to make the case for these tariffs, I think the commerce secretary is going to have to come back and say, look, yeah, you know, we can probably get there one day, but it's going to take years. And until then, 60% of our imported oil comes from Canada. So be very careful here, sir, tread lightly, because this is going to hurt us. If we if we go down this path of tariffing Canada, that's my hope.

But again, hope is not a strategy. I as a private citizen can hope our Prime Minister and his team Canada better have a good strategy. Someone who certainly has laid out her vision for that strategy and how to deal with the United States has been Alberta premier Daniel Smith and Kevin O'Leary gave us his take on her time at the Trump inauguration. Energy is power in the sense that you don't want to buy it from anybody else. And so here today, I don't know, I'd like to watch the schmoozing. I noticed Daniel Smith, the premier of Alberta here at the inauguration, schmoozing because she sells four and a half million barrels a day and she wants to go to eight. And that's music to Trump's ears because she's the only partner he needs to get that pipeline done.

And so there she was. You know, that's, that's what these inaugurations are about. It gets pompous ceremony, but this business has started at 1205. Yeah, well, I don't think he said anything that surprises me. She's been integrating herself into his inner circle for since he got elected. And I think she'd be doing a great job at it. And if you have the ear of the president, you have influence.

And he might not listen to you, but he might listen to you. He might take 5% of what you say, and that's 5% more than he had yesterday. So I'm I'm all for that. I really am. Jean Charest, the former Premier of Quebec, a good friend of mine, Captain Canada during the 1995 referendum without whom I do not know that we have a country today. That's that is my impression. That's what I witnessed. That's what I feel. But he is now a very strong voice that is helping shepherd us through this tariff threat. He's been put on the prime minister's task force on this matter. And here's

what he said about, you know, where we might be in 20 years. It is a general wake up call about the country. I think in a few, in 20 years from now, we may thank Donald Trump for having done this and allowed us to have a very hard look at ourselves as a country on how we have managed our economy, how we work among the provinces and our position in the

world, because it used to be that we could take the Americans for granted. We can't anymore. And for Mr. Trump, the world is an arena. For Mr. Trump, there is no global community. The world's an arena. In the arena, there's the vanquished and the one who wins. And they bring to this, in're in their view, power, and they embrace that.

That's what we're seeing right now. So I think one day we should, and don't expect us or the government or people to talk today about what the retaliation will be. Let's keep her powder dry, stay cool, be very well prepared for the scenarios. And rather than talk about what we'll do, do it. Gosh, I his is a voice I'm glad we have on this file. He sounds

like an adult in the room. I could not have said it any better myself. Old City Hall is one of the most architecturally striking buildings in the city in my humble opinion. I think it's beautiful. I think it's gorgeous. And it's about to be without a tenant. It is the courts that currently are housed there are moving into more modern, a more modern venue. And so people are wondering, what do we do with this thing? And and why are they leaving? Why couldn't it have kept up with the times? The cost to restore and upgrade the building to modern standards was pegged in 2019 at about $225 million. Now the world is very different from 2019 right now. So that number I'm sure would go up to 300, 350, $400 million at this

point. And the report that that details all this cites an inefficient floor plan that renders only about 40% of the buildings 430,000 square foot gross floor area rentable. So there's very few things you can do with it. Now I heard a rumor that there's gonna be a massive reno of Queen's Park and one of the suggestions for Old City Hall was to use it to house, temporarily, to house the legislature. And I think that's a great idea.

But I love this building. I absolutely love this building. And I heard a story about it. But here, my question to you is, what should we do with Old City Hall? Should it be preserved? It's premium land. Should it be sold to developers? Should it be raised to the ground and something new

erected on its site? I'd love to hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. What do we do with Old City Hall? One of my most favorite stories about Toronto is that after they had built new City Hall, there was a debate at City Hall about whether or not we should destroy old City Hall. And the deciding vote that would have been cast in favor of destroying old City Hall was not cast because the guy was stuck in traffic. It is the most Toronto story I could possibly tell you today.

And not for nothing, but I have a problem with new city hall. I believe government buildings are symbols. They, that's why we have the peace tower, right, in Ottawa. What does it say about city Hall and our City Hall? You can imagine it right now. What does it say about that building? That it doesn't have a single outward facing window.

So nobody working there has a view of the city that they govern. Rather, every single window looks inward at itself. Symbolically, what does that mean to you? I think I don't like the symbolism of it. I also don't like the building itself. But that's just my taste. Steve, Steven, welcome to the show. Morning, Ben. Fantastic show as usual. Thank you. My pleasure. And I'm going to be one of the worst people out there. But I say knock it down if it's going to cost like $300 million to retrofit it and it's still like you were saying,

$400 or $500 whatever amount of square feet to do it, knock it down. But before that, document it beautifully. Set the blueprints up somewhere. Make a model of it. Take the best pictures that you can so people know what was there in the past. Maybe do a nice plaque, but give that space a new place to live. You don't even give it more because with 300 million dollars, I'm sure you could put something beautiful in its place. And listen, that's a hot take for sure. I think

you make really valid points, but I gotta say we've been terrible in this city at preserving our heritage. There are little pockets of it here and there, but if you ever go to a city like Quebec City, where I lived for four years, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site because they've preserved so much of the old city behind the ramparts. And when you walk through those ramparts,

you are transported back in time. The value of that, you could make a very similar case, that, oh, we could, we could have gotten rid of all those buildings and replace them with glass towers that would have been more efficient and cost less money and spurred more business. But there is something to be said for preserving our history. And we're so very bad at it in in in many meaningful ways, that sometimes I think you got to just bite the bullet. It costs what it costs. But our history matters. That's

my take. Al, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. What do you think we should do with old city hall? Hi, Ben. I'm a bit of a history not like you maybe I don't know I'm not calling you and not that that that architecture is awesome. Yeah. And And just like the Parliament buildings, you know, like it's that era. My suggestion is we make it like into an O'Keeffe, not a theater, but like an opera house. I think the exterior could be kept and it could be, you know, like a giant Massey Hall. That would be awesome. That would be like an entertainment center. The exterior, I used to work at Hydro One and I used to stare at the guys replacing the copper roof. It was

right off right outside my window is watching that the scaffolding and all the rest is amazing. But the exterior is I think it's sandstone or something it's super strong and then you can have you know have an amphitheater and have the balconies and everything it's sandstone or something. It's super strong. And then you can have an amphitheater and have the balconies and everything. It's tall enough for that. Yeah, yeah. Listen, I think we should be really creative and we should think, I love that idea and thank you.

But it reminds me of the Hearn power generating station. We have so many movies have been shot there. It's this super industrial park, like big big power plant. I was there for an art gallery opening once it is a really, really cool space. And they are redeveloping it right now into its own district. Like it's, it's they want to turn it into a series of shops and restaurants, I believe condos as well. But they're going to keep a big part of the structure as well. Like these are the things the Hearn power

generating station has no business being being there, we could really turn that into you could just build towers if you want, but instead it's been reimagined and reinvented as this really really cool space, I cannot wait to visit that when it's done. And that's because people thought long and hard about how can we bring the new into the old? And that's what we should be doing more of in this city, rather than just tearing down our history, acknowledging it and then turning it into something new. Susanna, you're our last call on this subject.

Welcome to the show. Yes, I love that building. It's close to the art museum and it can be, it should be kept like it is, also rented to artists and for performing art, for music, for everything to develop to. So the artists will do everything. They will be like vendors, and they will do everything

and then observe how awesome they can do something from something. Yeah, you know, maybe an art gallery would be a great idea. Thank you so much for your call. Thank you to everybody for calling in. Home Network is here. I love it. Discover the best shows and your favorite trusted experts

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