The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben says don't tell me how to raise my child

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Guests and Topics: -The Moldy Whopper: A Case Study in Advertising Effectiveness with Guest: Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founder of Chatter AI -Ben says don't tell me how to raise my child with Guest: Dr. Oren Amitay, Psychologist -Manitoba engineer helping to build alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink with Guest: Philip Ferguson, an associate professor in the university’s mechanical engineering department, is helping develop the technology at Telesat 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

Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show and I don't know if anyone's seen this on social media but there is an ad campaign by Burger King. They're trying to demonstrate that their food is without preservatives and so there are pictures, very high resolution pictures of a whopper that is completely covered in mold and it's, I mean, it could be strange. It could be, but they're trying to position themselves as, hey, McDonald's uses preservatives, we don't. And so I find it really interesting.

And I wanna ask the question, because we've seen Pepsi take shots at Coke, a bunch, right? We see it all the time. But I wonder about this idea. if you're in second place, is it best to go, you know, take aim at the king? And so to talk about this and many more stories, we're joined by Tony Chapman, host of the award-winning podcast,

Chatter That Matters and the founder of Chatter AI. Tony, welcome to the show. Always a pleasure to be with you, Ben. Tony, does a picture of a moldy burger make it more likely that you will eat that burger? You know, the interesting thing they're trying to do is to create a point of difference between themselves and McDonald's.

You can't do it with price. You can't do it with the number of locations. Can't even do it with your menu. So where they feel they have an advantage is that they don't put preservatives in the food like McDonald's does. And they want to say that to the consumer. This is something that you should think is material to you making a decision. My question is, is somebody that's looking to indulge in a fast food burger actually going to go to that

step? And I don't think they will. Yeah, I mean, look, I remember for the longest time, Burger King was the flame broiled option, right? And Wendy's was a fresh, not frozen. And I think Wendy's also did the square patty as a way to differentiate itself. So those are all differentiators. This one just happens to be really disgusting. And I just, I don't see it as being a smart move,

but we rarely hear McDonald's going after Burger King or Wendy's because they are at the top of the mountain. Is that standard in marketing that the people, sort of the rebellion goes against the empire, and not the other way around? Absolutely. You put your slingshot out and try to get, try to take Goliath down, but McDonald's doesn't need to do it. McDonald's competition is share a mouth.

Can they get more people to buy their burgers? Right. More people to buy fast food. And that's what they do very well. And they do it things like their dollar menu, their two dollar menu, their free coffee, anything they can to drive traffic into their stores. The other ones are even, you know, another one is a great Canadian company, Harvey's. It's all about personalization.

You know, you can, you can top it any way you want. McDonald's doesn't care about it. McDonald's says our proposition is quality value, cleanliness and service. You go anywhere in the world. And if you remember Pulp Fiction, a quarter pounder is a quarter pounder. Yeah, but, but now you, now you can customize anything, which I think a lot of people appreciate and we'd appreciate it more if the price has resembled what we used to pay, say, five years ago, but that's a conversation for another day.

You gotta make heads or tails of this next story for me, because I tried reading it and tried understanding it, and I just can't do it. Elon Musk said over the weekend that he sold X, all of Twitter, to another company he owns, X.A.I. What exactly is this about? What am I not understanding about this story? Well, what this is about is that AI is a shiny object and it's raising billions, if not trillions

of dollars of capital around the world. He thinks with Grok, he was last to the party and he wants to, he wanted to elevate it. It's not getting the attention of the other platforms. So he feels that by combining his AI company with Twitter and convincing people that this will be the new social platform totally powered by AI, that he's going to get the currency and capital that he feels he deserves. And so that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to say one plus one equals five here.

The question is, and knowing Musk, because he's a very brilliant guy, if he can in fact use AI to make advertisers get a bigger bang for their buck, then he's gonna succeed with it. But it's not that he's the only one trying to. I mean, that's the whole mandate of the meta. That's what everybody's trying to do, is to use AI as a secret weapon to hyper-personalize ads.

But I think that we're missing all of this is that the master plan for me for Axis, he's going to use it as a platform for digital currency. And much like he did with PayPal, he's going to use this as his base to have his coin be the one that starts becoming the coin of choice. And when doing that, it'll be a rounding area with his company's worth, if he pulls that off. All right, well, let's turn our attention homeward. And Canadians have been spending more of their vacations

in Canada, spending more dollars in Canada. So it's sort of like a elbows up for the tourism agency, industry, I suppose. But look, I contend that what we're experiencing now with this rise in Canadian pride is not a movement, it's a moment. So how would the tourism industry find a way to capitalize on this moment, but turn it into a movement

that propels domestic tourism forward. Listen, that's a brilliant way to frame the brief that every tourism operator should be giving out. And I'd add one audience to it. I think there's a lot of Americans that want to signal their support of Canada and can do so by traveling here as well. Well, the Canadian dollar is so cheap. Yeah, but I also wouldn't make it domestic. I'd also say, hey, come and come and show your support rally for Canada. But I think you're right.

The thing that we're dealing with, though, is affordability. What we've got to also understand that how many Canadians can, in fact, afford a vacation this year. And this is what, so you've got to first and foremost go, you've got to target people that still have the ability to have the discretionary time and income.

They're not working two jobs. Uh, they're not trying to just cover their mortgage payments or the property tax increases that we just experienced in some cities. So all of those discretionary dollars are being soaked up by government. So we've got to target the right Canadians. And then we got a signal, not, not just pride, but what the actual experience is, cause people feel often in Canada, they're going down market if they stay home versus the excitement of traveling abroad.

And I think we've got to reverse that psychology and say, hey, when you go to Fogo Island and Newfoundland, you want to go and go for hiking or an eco tours, the best hikings in Canada, the best cities, the best multicultural, you got to start packaging. This is almost the international experience at Canada and in Canadian dollars. All right, what I would do All right Well, let's let's finish up with the conversation about streaming and a lot of people have believed for a long time that streaming services were the Extinction level event for traditional broadcasters in this country And if you didn't believe that before you should now

46% of Canadian households do did not have a television subscription with cable satellite or a telecom based provider at the end of last year That's up from 42 percent forecast to rise to 54 percent in two short years But explain to me because the value proposition was always I'm willing to give the money Upfront so I don't have to pay. I don't have to waste my time with ads and somehow front so I don't have to pay I don't have to waste my time with ads and somehow these companies are now running ads even with my subscription dollars and people don't seem to have a problem with it how have they able been able to double dip and what was once so offensive to people sensibilities on TV is now acceptable on streaming. This is again the double dipping is once I've

conditioned you to move away from cable and come to me, I have a sticky customer, I can start monetizing it. We'll expect the same from Amazon when 50% of America now shops online through Amazon. Same thing happens, you start taking advantage of that position. And that's what Netflix is doing. Apple streaming, Amazon Prime, they're all saying we can feed from the advertising dollars. But the difference is Ben, where you might have bought an ad on CBS and not sure who gets it, with streaming,

the data is, I know what Ben watches, I know how long you watch, I know when you tend to go to sleep, how much of the show you've watched, I know when you stay with the program or not, what you like, and all of that is incredible data for advertisers. So not only are they going to be able to monetize with advertising, they're going to charge

an incredible premium because guess what? They can fly fish the ad to the right people versus the drift net advertising was characteristic of network television. And part of me feels, and I don't have any data to back this up, but part of me feels is if you get a hyper targeted ad to exactly what you like, you're gonna respond to it differently than if you see an ad that doesn't affect you at all. You're gonna probably even have a positive interaction with it and it'll keep you entertained,

it might keep you engaged, but it's not like what you just said, they just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. And you're gonna be able to click on that ad without interrupting your thing saying, send me information to my bot. Tell me more about this. And then when you have time, it's going to give you the, your bot's going to go out and

do an analysis and it's going to rate and everything else. The world is changing in terms of marketing. Consumers, you've got to realize your data is gold and that gold is being monetized and streaming services can do it in the way that conventional television can't. Expect more advertising or pay a massive premium to turn it off. Tony, we're going to leave it there. Yeah, we're going to leave that there. But thank you so much, my friend. Always a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. All right, we got to talk about this right now.

If you've ever heard me on this show, you know that I think it is the exclusive domain of parents to parent their kids. When my kid comes home and says something, says anything, I can, as the dads say, I want you to reconsider that. Here's why that's a great idea and I'm going to support you. Here's why that's a bad idea. Here is my life experience and why I think you may be going down the wrong path. But it is my job and my right as a parent to make those decisions. And I will not listen to anybody who tells me how to parent my kids. And when I hear that newly published advice for Canada's pediatricians

in their, in the Canadian Pediatric Society's flagship journal, that they should charge full steam ahead with gender-affirming care for children expressing questions about their gender as low as six years old, because it could harm the child if they don't. I have a problem with that. That is not your job to tell me as a parent that my choice to tell my child, hey, let's just slow down here. If you're questioning your gender,

let's just slow down, you're six years old. You got a lot of growing up to do. That is somehow harming my child. I reject it and I reject the fact that you think you can tell me that. That is not your place. Stay in your lane. And so to discuss this more,

I am joined by Dr. Orin Abene, who is a psychologist who may have a thing or two to say about a thing or two. Welcome to the show, Doc. Thank you, Ben. Yeah, look, I normally, I try to stay out of this stuff because it's exhausting. As soon as you say something, you are a transphobe or a, look,

if my six year old came home and said, I don't feel like a boy, we would have discussions about that. But one thing I wouldn't do is tell you, well, then you're definitely not a boy. Like, and the fact that with dubious and weak evidence, Canadian doctors are being told, no, no, that with dubious and weak evidence, Canadian doctors are being told, no, no, we have to affirm this

in people with kids as young as six, and if you don't, you're harming the kid. Yeah, and that's based on a flawed, I would say fraudulent policy paper by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2018, and people can just look up Dr. James Cantor and the AAP and his policy paper because what they claimed was evidence that this is the best way to go. The gender affirming care is actually not. The papers they cited

were actually about watchful waiting which is what every sane compassionate and evidence-based clinician used to do which was basically you don't push the child in any direction. You validate them as a human being. You listen to them, but you don't push. You wait and see and you determine from there with proper assessment, proper treatment, how things are going. But the point is you never push them in any direction and gender affirming care is pushing

them. They talk about conversion therapy, Bill C6, where you're not allowed to keep them in any direction and gender affirming care is pushing them. They talk about current conversion therapy, Bill C6, where you're not allowed to, you know, to keep them in their natural state in their biological form. The fact is conversion therapy is when you tell a child, no, no, you are the opposite sex. Yeah, no. And listen, when a kid is six, and an adult with a with a white lab coat and a stethoscope tells them that, oh, you think that you're born in the wrong body? That you're absolutely right. That's a person in a position of authority.

You're gonna believe them. And frankly, that flies in the face for me of just parenting. I don't believe a doctor has the right to do that. Well, it gets even worse, as I'm sure you know. Not only are they saying that, but they are telling this to the children and to the parents that if you do not affirm their, uh, you know, this other gender, then

they will kill themselves. Yeah. How many parents I've had tell me that directly that that's what they were told. These are good parents. All they wanted to do was help their distressed, struggling, confused child. And the doctor or the counselor, I put quotation marks around these by the way, or therapist told them, would you rather have a healthy trans child or a dead son or daughter?

Disgusting, unethical principle. What I, listen, I always thought that these conversations were gonna stop at some point, like the activism was gonna butt up against the legal principle of consent. A child cannot consent to a great many things, which is why even if a 14 year old says, no, no, I wanted to have sex with that adult,

that is rape because a child cannot consent. And so you want to tell me how that notion of consent is not applied here. Like, I'm sorry, you don't have the requisite intellectual ability to decide that you were born in the wrong body. So we are just gonna slow play this. We're gonna be here to support you

and we're gonna be here as your parents and as the support in your lives, we're gonna be here to give you what you need. And you know what? When you get to the point in your life where you can form consent and you decide you're still in this frame of mind, well, then there we go, you have the ability now to make that decision. But until then, you're you're a child. And you and let's just leave it at that. The fact that we we cannot have that conversation is mind numbingly

stupid. Well, and it's dangerous. It's so harmful. And the children that these advocates or activists with quotation marks again, are ostensibly helping are being damaged irreversibly. And the way it's being sold that, oh, you know, if we affirm their gender, all we're doing is socially affirming it. Well, the social affirmation leads in most cases to the desire to go on puberty blockers. And those puberty blockers in 98 to 100% of the time then leads to cross-sex hormones. And those hormones are the ones that can cause so much serious damage including permanent sterilization. You're letting children go down the path in the ages of four or six, I don't care if it's 10 or 12 either, making decisions that will have

lifelong implications. Not to mention the numerous children, numerous girls who are having their breasts healthy, breasts removed via double mastectomy at the age of young as 13. People say it doesn't happen, it happens. There are cases that this has happened. I've often said that almost jokingly that long after the wave of insanity, the woke wave of insanity that crested over the Western world long after it's gone insanity, the woke wave of insanity that crested over the Western world,

long after it's gone, Canada will still be holding up a torch for it. We will be the torchbearer in this country. And it is laughable sometimes, the silliness that we see that outcrops from it. But this isn't silly. This is, and I struggle. The fact that in the scientific community, this is, they are being hijacked by social activism

is to me a failure that the medical community is gonna have to wrestle with for a very long time. The medical community, the mental health community, and what people have to understand is when they say there's consensus, like Rachel Levine in the States a couple of years ago ago, I called that person out saying it's not consensus. They believe that if it says consensus, then all the experts agree. No, what actually happens is a tiny group of quote unquote experts in various fields

within those larger fields, they get together, they make these policies, and then everybody else who's not an expert, they trust them. And they go along with it. And many people speak out against it. And more and more are speaking out because they've seen the damage that has this has caused they've realized, as with the CAS review in the UK just last year, that the so called evidence is not good. It's weak at best. That's literally from the report. It's weak at best. So explain how from the report. It's weak at best.

So explain how does this work then if this is the governing body, the Canadian Pediatric Society's governing body, if you are a pediatrician, and you're part of this society, and you choose not to follow this advice, what can happen to you if anything? You can be sanctioned, you can lose your license, A nurse and I believe was BC just last week had her case. I mean she's been going on for a couple of years but she declared that you know men cannot become women and vice versa and she had her license revoked if I'm not mistaken. Eileen Ham I believe is her name. So you can suffer severe consequences and because of people who do not know what they're talking about because

they've they're part of the government they have made it a law in Canada that if someone were to to perform quote-unquote conversion therapy that they can not only lose their license but they can be arrested this is bill c6 people should look it up and a few of my colleagues again james cantor is one of them dr james James Cantor and Dr. Ken Zucker, they fought in the Senate against this saying the way the policy is written, the way this law is being proposed, which is now law, they say it is going to be very difficult for anybody to be able to explore these things in a way that doesn't put met risk for being once again, not just having a complaint filed against them, but to be

arrested for doing their job for helping confuse people. My goodness, if I was if my child was was presenting with these sorts of questions and doubts and I was worried, I was worried for them. I was worried for their future. I was worried for what this meant. And I sought counsel from a doctor and the doctor, whatever they gave me, I would trust as the lifeline that I needed because they were the experts. And the fact that that's not happening is a shame.

Dr. Ornamaday, thank you very much. There's no limit to how far criminals will go to cover their tracks, but investigators will go even further to uncover the truth. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for Global News. This season on Crime Beat, I'll take you from the crime scene to the courtroom and inside some of Canada's most high-profile cases and some you've likely never heard

of before. Search for and listen to Crime Beat on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.