The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben talks with a Human Trafficking Survivor about her story

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Guests and Topics on Today's Show -Incredible story of surviving human trafficking with Guest: Lurata Lyon, Human Trafficking Survivor, Author of Unbroken -If the courts won't let Ford clear the homeless out of the parks, Sec. 33 will with Guest: Adam Zivo, National Post columnist and Executive Director for the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy -'World-first' AI camera targets drunk-drivers with Guest: Mohit Rajhans, Mediologist and Consultant, ThinkStart.ca -The gun ban is not working, Trudeau already knows this with Guest: Gage Haubrich, Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation 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

Hey everybody, it's Ben Mulrooney. We had a packed show today, including talking to a survivor of human trafficking. The gun ban is not working and believe me, Justin Trudeau knows this. Plus, can AI solve the problem of drunk driving? Enjoy. A lot of us know the expression human trafficking. We have an understanding of the broad strokes, but for so many of us, we will never collide with this cultural cancer with it in person. And so it exists almost on a separate plane of reality. It exists in secret, in the darkness, in the shadows. It happens in parallel to the life that we live out loud.

And so it's really important to understand the impact and the scourge of human trafficking, the best way to understand it, to appreciate it, to know how many people it affects, is to hear directly from those who've been affected by it, the victims of human trafficking. And that is why I'm so pleased and honored to have this very important conversation with a survivor of human trafficking, the author of a very important book called Unbroken, Loretta Lyon. Loretta, thank you so much for joining us on the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you very much, Ben, for having me on.

Super excited. And I should tell you off the top that my mother came to Canada from the former Yugoslavia as well when she was a child. I don't know a lot. I don't know a lot of Serbo-Croatian, but I do know. Thank you. I also know, before we get into the serious stuff, the most important words I ever learned from my mother when I would go shopping with her were pazimitashnu, which to our listener means watch my purse. Of course, pazimitashnu. Of course. But thank you so much for being here. And, you know, listening to your words and the interviews that I've seen with you, they are so very powerful. And I'm pleased that we're able to share your story with our listeners because so many people just don't even know that this is happening. Sometimes so close to them in a building next to them in a hotel next to them it's happening everywhere around the world 24 hours a day that is very true actually you you just never know even the people that are begging on the streets they are

part of the human trafficking kind of gang just to to sort of bring it in perspective uh we don't hear about it because most of the sort of victims they never make it out, especially children. I'm not even going to go into it. It's a whole new sort of segment on that. But we don't also hear about it because I think it's become such a taboo thing that we

shelter our kids not to know that such a thing exists. So the parents never really explain to them the danger that lies around that maybe they're not informed themselves but and also the the government i don't like to get into politics i think they try to hide stuff because they don't want to scare people but actually sheltering them is more scary than actually explaining what's going on and i think instead of them focusing on who's going to have the next hot seat in the governmanship, I think they should focus on actually making a difference.

If they can track the drug trafficking, for example, they can track human trafficking a lot more. So I think we just need a collective initiative to make people aware and also work collectively with the audience, with the audience now, I mean, but just with the people, with the society to bring down this kind of crime. It's the biggest business in the world. Yeah. Well, Loretta, let's start at the beginning

in your personal experience. And tell me who you were before this all happened to you. I was just a happy kid, born in a very sort of humble family. My dad was a doctor, my mom a professor of languages, and they lived in Formula Slavia. We grew up very poor, but we were rich in love and respect and just so informed in so many different ways. But little did we know that human trafficking was a real thing. We thought it was something you see in movies, you know,

when they kidnap and so on. It was fiction to us. And so this whole thing happened when the villages and different towns in Serbia got affected by military for ethnic cleansing, for religious reasons and all sorts. It's a whole new story. I mean, people can learn in the book

a lot more details. But for me, it started when my dad said to me, look, I need you to go and find NATO in Kosovo, cross the mountain on your own, find NATO and also search for the Red Cross. And I'm like, Dad, I'm 17. I haven't got a clue where Kosovo is,

how to cross the mountain, you know, all of this. And to make the long story short, I made it to Kosovo, got discovered in the streets of Kosovo by two American police officers that served United Nations at that time, Peter and Brian, which I'm really grateful, and they're my superheroes.

And they gave me shelter. They didn't send me to the Red Cross because the Red Cross was compromised, and I was from Serbia. And so they knew what was going on with the human trafficking, but NATO couldn't interfere as much as the governments of Kosovo should have, and they were all involved. And so they gave me shelter, but I got taken from their apartment because their translator had given me up to the human trafficking and said, there is a young girl, same with two

Americans, she's from Serbia, huge cargo. So I got taken from their apartment. Yeah, you were thrown in the back of a van. You were walking down the street and thrown in the back of a van. It was as simple as that. I did, I just, yeah. And that's a lot of people,

a lot of people assume that those who end up in human trafficking, they start on the streets or they start with drugs or they start. But it can happen to anyone. It could happen to anyone. I work with lots of survivors now. If they have been lucky to have been rescued by undercover agents, then I work with charities and so on.

And some of which get trafficked through boyfriends into like European countries from the UK. Some of them get sort of threatened that they're going to kill the family so therefore they get into the prostitution but you should never assume if someone is in that line of work that like you see the people working on doing something don't assume they are there by will literally i can with sort of guarantee say that they are always they never take their money home. They're always, someone is on top of them. Someone is always looking, you know, pushing them down,

kind of repressing them. So human trafficking comes in different forms. And so it's about being open and not judgmental and trying to see signs of distress and hopefully help. Because it's also a very dangerous kind of thing to just decide to take matters on the on hand and try to help somebody so it has to be done properly otherwise that you know you can end up quite nasty loretta i think a lot of people are trying to wrap their

heads around the journey that you went on and the descent into the hell that you experienced. And I think they'd be curious to understand what pressures were put on a 17-year-old girl to then have to enter this world and do all the terrible things that were required in order to survive. Well, even as I talk to you, and every time I do an interview, because I recall every

memory and everything sort of i start shaking it's not because i'm nervous it's just because i'm reliving it and now that you've asked me that question i just you know from being groomed to being in a solitary confinement and daily mentally and physically abused, that kind of stuff. I mean, you go through a real, if you even... Yeah, go on. Well, Loretta, what I was going to say is rather than embark on the answer right now, we're going to take a quick break

and then we're going to come back on the other side and we'll jump into this. And I appreciate your honesty and your courage for being here. So everybody come on back with more with Loretta Lyon on The Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back to The Ben Mulroney Show. We are in conversation with Loretta Lyon, a survivor of human trafficking. She's written an incredible book, Unbroken, and she works with survivors of human trafficking.

It is a scourge that far too few of us appreciate, far too few of us know about. And I'm so pleased that she's here to share her story because the more first-person accounts we can get, the more real it can get for those of us on the outside looking in. Loretta, welcome back. Thank you, Ben. Thanks for having me back. So let's talk about, I want to talk about the descent that you had to go, how far down you had to go. And, and what gave you courage to go on Loretta? What gave you courage to say, I just want to make it to tell them, mum and dad, I'm about to die.

Just to give that message. It was really bizarre kind of analogy of this. But the love that I had for my parents, and I always will, is just incredible. And because I think because of that, because I wanted to make it through for them, I actually pushed through. Even when I was being starved or I starved myself, I just wanted to go. At times where things got really dark and nasty in my head and physically and mentally in a way, I still remembered my mum and dad and I thought, actually, they don't deserve not to know what's going on with me. So I just kept pushing and it taught me a lot of resilience. But look, everybody has a different kind of experience.

For me, I also spent six months in solitary confinement. So I didn't have any human interaction besides the people that abused me. And what was that? At this point, do you understand why they did that? Why that was part of your programming? Was there a reason that they put you in solitary? Well, the first time, because you see, Ben, you haven't probably gotten to read the book yet, but the first time I got taken, it was human trafficking. And so they groomed me and sold me to the highest bidder. And then when I escaped them, I gave an interview. They got arrested.

And I had to go back to Serbia because I was being hunted by the human trafficking gangs. When I made it to Serbia, at that time, Milosevic had had an army that was formed from the prison, by prisoners of wars and that kind of stuff. And they literally wore trainers instead of like the whole army did boots they took me from my mom and dad's garden and they put me in the solitary confinement so this was the second time i got taken but by two different parties and on this particular one i was in solitary confinement for six months. And you asked the question, you know, what went through my mind. I think learning there and then to see them as victims rather than myself, it really helped me not feel the pain.

I felt sorry for them because they were so monstrous that I just didn't understand where he was coming from, who made them live bad. And the same was with the Kosovan army, the gangs. I mean, they too were absolutely mad. So I think I just got really unlucky with two groups, and they showed me so much cruelty. They showed you cruelty. Do you remember the day? Can you take us through the day where you realized that you were free of them? Not necessarily free of the experience, but physically free. Physically free, yes. I got rescued.

The first time I escaped them, I obviously rescued myself and, you know, given in to you. I obviously rescued myself and, you know, given interview. But second time I got rescued by my dad and got put in this truck to send me to the UK as a child political asylum seeker. I don't know how I felt, really. I had very conflicting, emotional kind of conflicting feelings where I thought, OK, well, I'm being sent off somewhere. I don't know where I'm going. I'm saying goodbye to my parents. And what the hell, the driver is a man again. And don't get me wrong. I love men. Men taught me so much love and passion. I've got two boys. I'm married. So I'm not like that. I don't think law of men. But at that time, I was really scared of male gender. So when I made it to the UK, it was the battle between the freedom that I got given and the prison that I still had mentally.

So I had to work on that. And now that you are a mother, and we talked off the top of the conversation that this could happen to anyone. How do you feel as a mother putting your children into the world? Do you feel that you're more apprehensive? You're more cautious? You're more of a helicopter mother? Or tell me what your perspective on motherhood is. I think as long as we have good communication with the children, they are actually such, such good listeners and so understanding understanding and my kids know my story they've known it from very little and i don't think it scared them at all they just know that

i need to know where they are not because i want to know what they're up to but rather just want to know they're safe and just about they they aware of danger they aware of if somebody look doesn't look right on the street they're like mommy something's not right here so they tell me and so i i am i was really a nerve-wrack kind of mother to begin with but i also that was a learning process for me to learn to give them the freedom that they deserve that they've been born in into but also to make them aware of the danger that could take their freedom away. So I think it's a really fine balance. Yeah, I've become a lot better, I have to say.

And I've gotten them into martial arts and stuff. Not that that will save you, but it's just a peace of mind for me to know that they know some self-defense. So given everything that you've gone through and the fact that you work with other survivors and you understand the lay of the land is far more about this underground world that so many of us have never given a second thought to. Are you optimistic about the future? Do you feel that governments around the world are doing enough? Or is this something that we're going to be living with for a very, very long time? Considering it's the biggest business in the world, I really, I hate to say, I think it takes,

it's very few of us that want to make a difference. And this doesn't include the general public. I'm talking about ex-soldiers and people that work with charities to support human trafficking survivors. I don't think government, genuinely speaking, is doing enough. No. It could be a lot more. I think this could be, if this was the topic, we will forget about everything else that's going on

and the world will be a better place because we will be collectively trying to fight such evil to save our children and give them a better, safer future. But unfortunately, they don't. Maybe I need to speak to the government of the world. Yeah, well, but conversations like this are very important. As we end this conversation, we're coming to the end of 2024. What's your top hope for 2025? For me, it's always been about to see less numbers of human trafficking and more people to get involved. And I think it is happening.

I mean, I get constant feedback from soldiers saving children. Recently, I read an article in India, two police officers, female police officers have rescued loads of children, that kind of stuff. I just want to say farewell for our kids because our time has gone. We're halfway there. But the generations to come, it's what pains what pains me you know they don't deserve this we bring them into this world but we don't want to make it safe for them it's really unfair loretta lion uh thank you for your honesty uh thank you for this conversation your resilience as well as uh there's there's there's optimism in your voice i know that you're a realist, but there is optimism.

And I think the more conversations we have like this, the more prepared more of us will be to tackle this head on. Thank you very much. And I hope you have a happy holiday season. Thank you, everybody. Happy Christmas. Doug Ford gets it done for developers. We interrupt this ad to ask, does get it done mean strip $3 billion out of school funding? Because yep, Doug Forrester got that done. Now, can we have an undo button, please? Help us get back to investing in schools. Visit nomore.ca. That's K-N-O-W-M-O-R-E.ca.

This message has been approved by Kidsplain. A message from the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association. If you live in a big city, heck, if you live in any, say even small towns across this country, you have seen the convergence of a number of crises affecting our public spaces. The affordability crisis, the mental health crisis, the homelessness crisis, the illicit drugs crisis, they all converge in encampments that have been popping up, myriad encampments across this country. And deep within those encampments, oftentimes are people using drugs, and a lot of them are hard drugs. And in Ontario, there is movement to shake up this status quo. Poverty activists are condemning Doug Ford's Ontario government

for threatening to use the notwithstanding clause to clear homeless encampments. Invoking the clause, however, according to our next guest, is an entirely justifiable response to a recent precedent-setting Superior Court ruling. And let's just jump right in with Adam Zivo. Adam, thank you so much for being here. Well, thanks for having me back on the show. Okay, so yes, this is not a situation that is specific to Ontario, but it's an example of how to proceed moving forward. So talk to me about what's happening on the ground in Ontario

and what Doug Ford's government is trying to do. So essentially, the Superior Court of Ontario ruled that it is, that you cannot evict homeless encampments unless there are enough shelter spaces to absorb people who have been displaced. And that sounds fairly reasonable on the surface, but when you look at the underlying jurisprudence, what you realize is that there are some elements there that are much more contentious that the public is not broadly aware of. And I think that given these details,

the four governments' threat to use the notwithstanding clause to essentially nullify any charter challenges to attempt to evict encampment is very justified. But it's that legal context that I was writing about that I think that people need to better understand. Right. So talk to me about what the pushback is. What are the poverty advocates saying? Well, okay. So they're basically using a legal argument that's based in BC. So starting in 2022, sorry, in 2002, you know, there was this court case where the city of Victoria tried to evict an encampment. And the judge in that case essentially said that it would be a violation of these people's Section 7 rights under the Charter, which is the right to liberty, freedom, security of the person,

because if you were to take away any of their shelter, they'd have no ability to protect themselves. You know, they need to have some kind of dignity. And so that judge essentially said that you can only evict that encampment if you have enough shelter spaces for these people to go to afterwards. Now, successive legal cases in BC have established and further expanded upon this right to shelter. But this precedent was not necessarily binding in Ontario, but it still did inform some of our discussions. So in Hamilton, for example, you know, they tried to evict their homeless encampment about two years ago, one of like a particularly notorious one. And they were able to do so because they could show that they had enough shelter space. But last year, there was a ruling that essentially said that you couldn't

evict an encampment in the region of Waterloo because not enough shelter spaces were available. However, when you look at the judge's ruling, what he was essentially saying is that shelter spaces need to be quote unquote, low barrier and accessible. And what that means is that open drug use should be permitted in them, according to him. Right. Sorry, I was just shaking my head here i mean i see people i see people get stopped by the cops if they're smoking too close to the opening of like a public building downtown yeah and that's the thing right and you know a shelter space you know it hosts many vulnerable people people who often don't use drugs and essentially what this judge was arguing is that the region of Waterloo, you know, could have enough shelter spaces. They could theoretically do that.

But if the spaces did not permit open drug use, then they didn't count because they weren't accessible. And in fact, when you actually go into the ruling, the judge argued that even if the region of Waterloo could show that it had enough shelter spaces, that he still would not grant an eviction because that would not address the other issues faced by homeless individuals in the region, and granting an eviction could negatively

impact other homeless individuals by basically using up spaces with these displaced residents. So now you've got Doug Ford's Ontario government is essentially trying to use the constitutional nuclear option, which is the Notwithstanding Clause, to override these decisions by the courts.

And anytime a premier wants to use the Notwithstanding Clause, you know it's going to get pushed back. But in this case, you're saying that he's not wrong. Well, yeah, because essentially the very reason why we have the notwithstanding clause is to prevent unelected judges from overreaching and engaging in activism and essentially setting policy in areas where policy should be determined by elected counselors or uh provincial parliamentarians and this is a clear example of that because essentially the judge is saying that i'm going to use encampment evictions as a bargaining chip to ensure that you guys push all of these broad and contentious reforms like allowing drug use in shelters.

And that's not his place to do that. That's for us, for the public to have a debate on. You need public consent for something like that. So, you know, one of the conversations we don't often have, we seem to stop short is this notion of activist judges. Has there been a shift in culture, in values of the judges that are sort of ascending the judicial in Canada that I'm unaware of? You know, we don't talk about it a lot, but has there been a change in culture and perspective

in the highest ranks of our judicial system? So I would be qualified to answer that question. But what I can say is that in this particular policy area, there does seem to be a large amount of judicial activism at play. For example, the Supreme Court rulings in BC that informed the Ontario decision, you know, were mostly made by this guy named, you know, Justice Hinkson. He is, I believe, like the chief of the BC Superior, sorry, Supreme Court. And I reviewed one of his rulings back in January of this year, where he essentially said that attempts to block drug decriminalization were not permitted because it could once again violate people's Section 7 Charter rights. And when I looked into that ruling, I realized there was almost no evidence to actually back his claims.

He was especially inventing new rights out of thin air with very, very shoddy, thin evidence. And that's not how judges should be going about their jobs. And I think that this undermines our trust in the integrity of the judicial system and makes the notwithstanding clause a necessary remedy. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people hear it and they automatically think that a government is trying to get away with something that is wildly either unpopular or partisan. In this case, it does seem like the government is wearing the white hat here and It looks standing up for, for pretty much everyone, whether, whether the,

the poverty advocates want to believe it or not. Doug Ford wants these people to get off drugs. Yup. And if you essentially just say that, okay, we're going to put you in a, in a, in a home,

sorry, in a shelter where you'll be able to essentially use the shelter at the drug den. That's not safe for them. That's not safe for anyone. I mean, that dissuades other people from seeking shelter because safety concerns are already a huge issue. And you would think that the judge had strong evidence suggesting that this is something that's necessary,

but he didn't. I mean, he basically just listened to the testimony of Dr. Andrea Cerrito, who's a very controversial and, you know, kind of questionable harm reduction experts. And she cited a study that essentially interviewed approximately 40 to 45 homeless drug addicts. And most of them said that open drug use would be essential in homeless shelters. Well, I mean, of course they would say that. They're drug addicts. We can't drug addicts so simply. We have to show more skepticism. And just because someone wants something, that doesn't mean that there's a human right to that.

Yeah. Yeah. What where does this case go next, Adams? Well, so the the region of Waterloo case was not appealed. So that's done with. Right. Yeah. So that legal story is concluded. However, with Doug Fortino, legislation enhancing municipalities' ability to evict encampments, the big question here is whether or not there's going to be a constitutional challenge. I expect there will be because, for example, the aforementioned Hamilton case is being challenged right now.

In fact, actually, I think that that law might have already been challenged. I have to look into this. And then the question here comes, well, OK, well, if Doug Ford ends up evoking the notwithstanding clause, well, what's the political fallout there? I don't think there's going to be much because I think that people on the whole are exhausted with these encampments. Yeah, yeah. And what does it say about our larger relationship between the judiciary and between our elected governments? Adam, thank you so much for highlighting this. I love having you on the show, and we'll talk to you soon.

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. The article is, If the Courts Won't Let Ford Clear the Homeless Out of the Parks, Section 33 Will. Back when I did the weekend show on 640 Toronto, it was my pleasure to speak on all things technology related with a good friend, Mohit Rajans. And I'm so glad that he's joining us now on the new Ben Mulrooney show, mediologist and consultant with thinkstart.ca. Mohit, welcome to the show.

And one of my most exciting parts is the bumper music you always play. It always gets me jacked up, whatever genre you choose, because it gets me in the mood. I appreciate that. And congratulations on the new show. Thank you. Thank you. Well, one of the story I want to start with is Elon Musk. So years ago, I remembered that Twitter was, when it was Twitter, was thinking of adding email functionality, where you could have an actual email account at twitter.com. And that went the way of, well, the Twitter bird. And now Elon Musk is hinting at something called X-mail. And I just want to know what that's about. It sounds cool. And I guess, what does that signal about his larger plans for the platform?

I think what Elon Musk is trying to do is prove out that X is actually significant still to a wide range of people, even though it has been banned in a few countries. And many people, because of Elon's antics, really don't subscribe to Twitter and X as much anymore. So what he's trying to do is basically say, listen, there's communities here, there's an ecosystem here of people that have been around for a long time, and let's create other communication devices that can help you do business and maybe stay connected. However, it's still not something an entirely new generation needs. I know people that don't check email at all anymore.

Yeah, no, I get that. I just wonder if his plans are for it to live natively and exclusively inside the app or whether this is something that I'm going to be able to say, use with my, with my mail, my mail app on my iPhone. I think what Elon's approach to this is the fact that we're seeing a lot of encrypted services actually fail. And so when you look at meta,

for example, with WhatsApp, et cetera, the promise has been that there needs to be some privacy in the way that people communicate. He's hoping that X mail gives the people on X slash Twitter. I hope we can stop saying that at some point. But what he's hoping is that that second set of privacy is there,

that two-factor authentication that you're dealing with somebody. Eventually, what we're going to see is Elon wants to create a larger marketplace through what was formerly Twitter that makes people feel less about the fact that it's just a fleeting thought that they're hoping reaction get reaction to. And it's more of an ecosystem of a place that you go to for all of your types of information. Yeah, that's right. I'm reading that he's also considering video chat and shopping and all sorts of stuff. He wants it to be like an everything app. But let's not forget that Jack Dorsey wanted that too. Yeah. It's not like he's invented, you know, Twitter has been around to go

after this market and has had maybe possibly a leap forward for the longest time, but they've never done this yet. Okay. Well, let's talk about a world first. I love talking world first tech with you. There's an AI camera. I believe it's in the, that is going to target drunk drivers. So explain what this is and how AI is going to be able to identify whether someone's drinking or not. So basically what's happening in the UK now is that they're recognizing that through driving patterns and not through just field sobriety tests, they're able to actually identify when people might be distracted driving was the original test with this. And then eventually it became one of the guidelines associated with handling the data that they were getting

was saying, well, we need to make sure that we're just not surveying people based on their driving habits or we could be impeding on things. So basically the UK said this is going to help law enforcement understand who might be drinking or intoxicated while they're driving. And what's happening the same way that we are in surveillance technology that can catch a red light runner is the same way that through a certain amount of movement being tracked that they're going to be able to detect who is actually intoxicated on the road or who's under the influence of something and might be driving.

Now, of course, this is creating a lot of problems associated with the fact that is this really a responsible policymaking or is this about actually collecting data and surveying people? Right, right. Well, also, but listen, the UK has a long history of surveilling people. They've got more cameras, I believe, in places like London, CCTV cameras, than anywhere on Earth. It's the most surveilled city in the world, from what I understand. I only know what I see Tom Cruise go through when I'm watching him. But you are right.

Most of the technology that we hear about when it comes down to this generation of artificial intelligence and surveillance does come from the UK and the greater European area. So it'll be interesting to see what we start to adopt in Canada as a result. All right, Mohan, you know, and some of our listeners know that I don't care about TikTok. I'm not on TikTok. I don't get the appeal. I don't know that it necessarily fills a void that Instagram doesn't fill in my life. But it's a thing and it's very important to a lot of people.

And they recently launched TikTok Shop, which is already very big for certain people. But the potential ban that Donald Trump has been talking about for years looks like it's going to come into effect. That could change everything. Yeah, well, I think there's a couple of things here. For one, Canada hasn't really made it clear about what we're doing with reference to TikTok moving forward. But in the U.S., a ban will have an impact on people who create content and work. And not only create content and work, there's marketers that use TikTok quite a bit to sell to their markets. You can see that this Christmas time.

I think, you know, TikTok has got such a bad rap for so many different reasons, and rightfully so. And unfortunately, the Canadians that sell on TikTok might have to find different ways in the near future because it's not clear about how their items are going to be able to be sourced and actually documented properly within that app, and whether they're going to have to pay a certain levy associated with doing commerce on that app. This is all inside baseball, though, Ben, just to prove out that ByteDance still hasn't really answered the question about what's happening with this app, why it's such a security problem for so many people. Because the truth is it's still number one for search in a certain demographic. We can't discount that.

So marketers and brand people are using this platform readily. I get that. But nobody has promised TikTok. I'm sorry. it's just not. That's a good point. And if it goes away, then somebody will fill the void with a new version. Like somebody somewhere will develop something

to fill that void. I agree. I mean, nobody was promised MySpace, and then it went away. A bunch of people, I'm sure, did very well for themselves. Oh, yeah, Vine. What about Vine?

Vine was there for a while. People were making tons of money on Vine, and then one day it just went away. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who say, my livelihood's on TikTok. Well, you're going to look. I mean, a lot of people's livelihood was in newspapers. A lot of livelihood was in bookstores. A lot of livelihood was in cabs. Like, the world changes.

Figure out how to adapt. I think the bigger conversation in this honestly, then is why can't the company answer to how the data is being used? That's the bigger problem because moving forward, we won't see social media companies working in Canada. If we don't have clarity about how they're able to use data and information within our country, that's the bigger problem. You're right. There's going to be so many more tech talks in our life.

We're going to look back and say, Oh yeah, what happened to that app? Exactly. Exactly. At some point, we're just going to forget because that's, that's how the,

that's how entrepreneurs work. They, someone, someone builds a better mousetrap. And, and so all these people are saying, but my livelihood, what did you port your people over to wherever you go next?

If they like you on tech talk, they're going to like you on whatever's next. At least that's... And I'll tell you, you've saved a lot of your time by not being on TikTok. Well, let's talk about that. That's our last story. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Pew Research really did a deep dive into how essential these are and how much time teens are spending on them.

Yeah, definitely. We can't discount the fact that younger Canadians are shaping their identities through digital platforms. I speak about this actively. And one thing I love about our conversations we have is that we know it's ongoing. There's no wagging of the figure that says, oh, you shouldn't be on this or you should be on that. The truth is that there are many people now in the country that are committed to understanding how different information sites are important to them. The question is, how are they being regulated? And so this research is pointing out that while there are some healthy online habits, we still aren't aligned with how this teaches to be empathetic, how it teaches to be informed,

and how you can decipher between the different types of digital encounters that you have online. So I think what we have to get back to is just this weird sort of like talk to each other part of this digital connectiveness. Otherwise, we're going to suffer a lot from what's next and on the horizon. Mohit Rajan is a mediologist and consultant with thinkstart.ca. Thank you so much for joining us on the show, and I hope you have a great week. Okay, Ben. Take care. We're joined now by Gage Hobrick, who has written a piece. He's the Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and he's written a piece in the National Post.

The gun ban is not working. Trudeau already knows this. Gage, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so when I read that they were adding more guns to the gun registry, to the ban, I thought, well, I didn't know that they hadn't bought back any guns yet. And yet they're adding more to a bureaucracy that's already cost us a lot of money, but hasn't bought back any guns and certainly hasn't made our streets any safer. Why did you want to write this piece? Just to point out those really essential things, right? I'm a firearms owner myself.

I used it to hunt in the winter and go target shooting in the summer, completely following all the rules that the government sets out to me. But then they came up a couple of years ago and said that, no, that's going to be more dangerous. We've got to take these guns off the street and we've got to spend a buttload of taxpayers' money to do it. But now we're four years along the line. As you said, they haven't bought back a single gun. They spend millions of dollars. They're only like, it's going to get more expensive.

And all of the experts, the cops, academics are saying that it's not going to work. Why are we continuing down this path? And I learned something last week as well, which is because as a legal firearm owner, a lot of firearm owners are now in possession of guns that are technically illegal. The insurance that they have to carry for those guns has gone up. No, and it's especially difficult for all of the firearms retailers, right? The government said,

now you can't sell these things that cost you thousands of dollars to bring in. You have to keep them in a back room somewhere, and maybe we'll get to you eventually. They said they're going to start that part of that program soon soon but they've still been waiting for four years with those guns just sitting in the back room paying money on them gage what data did the government use to justify banning these guns we were promised when justin trudeau was elected in 2015 we were promised evidence-based policy what evidence are they looking at besides the fact that guns all guns shoot bullets i mean that's not evidence enough to to to to create this bureaucracy and create criminals out of innocent people who follow the law well you know in all honesty i'm i'm really

not sure right because if you look at canada's gun violence rate since they put in the ban they've gone up every year that we have data we look at Canada's gun violence rates since they put in the ban, they've gone up every year that we have data. If we look at other countries that have done buybacks, we see New Zealand, they've had like 400 more buybacks, more criminal gun offenses this year than they did when they did their buyback. So it's showing that it's not working with that data. Then you look at the experts in the field, the union that represents the RCMP says that it's a waste of money. The president of the Toronto Police Association says we should focus on criminals instead. So everyone is telling the government that this is in the wrong direction and they don't seem to be listening. You know, all morning we've been so we've had

so many conversations about how so many people believe that Justin Trudeau's time as prime minister is over. And I pointed out a little bit earlier that in two consecutive elections, the people gave his party a minority mandate. And then in 2021, he didn't like the fact that he had a minority mandate. And so he went and formed a partnership with the NDP so that he could govern as if he had a majority. I think one of the reasons there is such anger towards him is because he's been able to push through policies like this that normally you would only do if the people had given you a

majority mandate. But the people said, we don't trust you with one. And yet he's behaving as if he has one. And that's one of the reasons people are so angry. No, I think that's definitely part of it, right? And especially there's that you combine that with how much it's going to cost everyone and the general incompetence of how they're doing it, right? It's one thing to do a policy and actually get somewhere, even if you disagree with it. But for four years here now and nothing has happened except the fact that law abiding firearms owners aren't allowed to use the property that they have. Talk to me about, you know, you reference millions of dollars, but this thing has ballooned already. No guns have been bought back. The streets aren't safer. And how much money has been

spent and could potentially be spent on this program? Well, to go back a little bit down memory lane, in 2019, the government said that the total cost of buyback would be about $200 million. But now there's other government said that the total cost of buyback would be about $200 million. But now there's other government documents that show that the total cost could be over $2 billion with a beat. And part of that is because they're spending money and not doing anything. So, so far in the four years, $67 million without a single gun bought back. It's absolutely incredible. And so you're a legal gun owner. It's absolutely incredible. So you're a legal gun owner.

It's part of who you are. Listen, I don't like shooting guns. I don't like having guns. But as far as I know, hunters, I've never looked at a hunter as a danger or somebody for whom it's been part of their family and their traditions and their culture.

Never viewed those people as a problem. You must be part of larger communities of gun owners. How do they feel in this environment where they've been vilified and demonized simply for being responsible gun owners? Well, they feel cheated, you know, because you're in Canada. You can't just go out and buy a gun willy-nilly. You have to go get your pal. You take a test, show that you know how to do things safely.

When you're hunting, make sure you get a license. You wear all the right clothes and equipment. You take a test, show that you know how to do things safely when you're hunting. Make sure you get a license. You wear all the right clothes and equipment. You do and everything by the book. Everyone I know does everything by the book. And then the government one day steps up and says, actually, you guys are the problem. Everyone who's following rules are the problem. And that gets them pretty angry. And I've got to I've got to think you must take extra offense when you see almost every year like clockwork on the on the anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre. The liberals trot out that that that terrible blight on our national history as a reason to mobilize against legal gun owners. No, exactly. Because as awful as that is, it's not done by everyone here in Canada who's following the law, which is, you know, almost all gun owners.

And it's really difficult to see when the government comes up and says that, especially when they say, what we want to do here is stop gun violence with these programs. But as we just talked about, in all the cases where they've done buybacks in the past, Canadians own firearms violence numbers. They're all going up despite the government doing these policies. Gage, ultimately, this government will fall. All signs are pointing to a Pierre Poliev majority government. What would you want them to do on this file?

The best thing to do is basically cancel the buyback and eliminate all guns that were added to the prohibited list, bring them back to where they were before, and allow Canadians to use their justly acquired property in a law-abiding way they were doing in the years before the buyback. And just for anybody listening who just – they get their back up at the thought of more liberal gun laws. Tell them what that would mean if you're a responsible gun owner what does that mean in terms of the hoops regulatory and security hoops that you would have to jump through in again in a world where this entire program has been scuttled well if it's been scuttled we kind of go back to where we were a couple of years ago so what you do if you want to go own a gun you go go down to some class, usually at a gun shop, and they teach you about all the safety things that you need to know, how to load a gun properly, where to point it when it's loaded,

how to always treat it as loaded, all that sort of stuff. You take your test out, you send in a criminal record check to the RCMP, and they say, you're good to go. And then you can walk in, buy yourself a firearm, and then go to a range and learn from the best on how to be safe and hopefully hit some targets. Yeah, so in that system, you're in the system. They know who you are. They know what you bought. They know where you live. They know what you look like. They know that you've

been registered. You've been licensed. You've been trained. These are not the people who are wearing masks and shooting up malls and innocent civilians in cities across Canada. Well, that's exactly right. And the professors are even saying that. They're saying that buyback programs don't really work because the people who are actually going to go participate in the program, someone who wants to follow the law, even if they don't agree with it, are not going to use those guns to commit crimes. Hunters aren't doing that. And as the Police Association always says, too, you've got to focus on the criminal. What this buyback does is just make it more difficult for people who are already following the law.

Gage, I want to thank you so much for joining us. And I appreciate it. This has been Gage Hobrick, Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. You take care and have happy holidays. Thank you. You as well. Thanks for listening to the podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you'll join us tomorrow for another loaded edition of the Ben Mulroney Show.