The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 1 - Wayne Gretzky, Darrell Bricker, Craig Baird

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

Best of the Week Part 1 - Wayne Gretzky, Darrell Bricker, Craig Baird Guests: Wayne Gretzky, Darrell Bricker, Craig Baird, Daniel Tate, Tony Chapman 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 to the Ben Mulroney Show Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great discussions this week, including an in-depth look at our first prime minister and if the controversy surrounding Sir John A. Macdonald is warranted. Plus I sat down with Wayne Gretzky to speak about his goal scoring record being broken. Enjoy.

Send in Wilson on the flank, cross eyes, Ovechkin fires, score! The chasing days are done! Alex Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer in the history of the NHL! And with that, the baton was passed. Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals broke Wayne Gretzky's NHL goals record with 895. He's a great goal scorer, a great player, but he is absolutely not the great one. We're joined now by not only the one who goes by that moniker, a great player, but he is absolutely not the great one.

We're joined now by not only the one who goes by that moniker, the great one, but in my humble opinion, one of the great living Canadians, and I will die on that hill. Please welcome to the Ben Mulroney show, Wayne Gretzky. Wayne, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to join us here on the show. Yeah, thank you so much. It's been a whirlwind few days. Obviously we started in Washington and after the game I went out for dinner

with Kirk Muller and his wife and I asked them why they didn't put Alex on for the empty net goal. He could have scored easily and had a hat trick. And Kirk said that Alex didn't want to score the 95th goal, 895 in an empty net. I said I would have been jumping over the boards. I wouldn't have heard. But it was pretty surreal. And then obviously after Friday night, my wife and I and my son drove into the city. And it's kind of unique because yesterday morning I was walking around with my son and I said,

you know, it feels like the day I retired. I remember we played a Sunday afternoon game and I was walking around Manhattan and I was so excited and yet kind of nervous. And I said, I kind of got that same feeling today. Really? This of what I had the last game I ever played in the NHL. Really? Yeah.

It was a special day. Yeah. Listen, people ask me about it. Of course, my friends have been asking me about it for a year. This is the greatest thing for sports. It's great for hockey, great for Alex and the Washington Capitals. And I thought the NHL and the Capitals

were really special yesterday and how they handled it. It was really, really, I was touched to be part of it. And I wore Gordy House pin because I don't want everybody forget about Gordy House. He's the greatest player ever. But I love that you said that your entire career, your entire life, that in your mind, Gordie Howe will forever be the greatest hockey player ever. But at what point in his career, I mean, do you remember the moment where the conversation started? But you know what this

Ovechkin guy, he may be on pace to break this record. Do you remember that moment? So Vetchkin guy, he may be on pace to break this record. Do you remember that moment? I don't think I remember the exact moment, but when he got within a hundred, I said, okay, this guy gets 35, 40 goals a year. He's really consistent. I remember he was at 797 and he went two or three games without a goal.

And I called him and I said, Alex, I've been watching you play. You got to just relax. You're going to get to 800 so easily. You're going to get to 900. And as a matter of fact, they told him yesterday when he broke the record, I said, hey, do yourself a favor. Don't stop. Get to 900.

Be the first guy ever to get to 900 goals. It's great for the game and you're going to be so proud of it. But listen, I was just happy to be there. I loved it. People ask me all the time, does it bother you? I'm like, what's your, why would I be bothered? You also have 55 other records to your name. So they're dwindling. I told Sydney C told Sydney the other day, I said, Oh my goodness. I said there was another one, but you know, how great is Sydney and Alex been

for the NHL, uh, both for the respective clubs, obviously Pittsburgh and Washington and the NHL, but Sydney for Canada and what he's done for Canadians and Alex, what he's done for Russia. It's just really, really special. Yeah. Is there one record of the 55 that, you know, listen, let's assume they all get broken one day, which is probably impossible,

but is there one that, I don't know, holds a special place in your heart? Yeah. Well, listen, first of all, I remember the year I got 92 goals. There was a reporter in Hamilton that for whatever reason, he didn't have a kinship with me, let's say. And I remember when I got 92 goals, he said, you know, he's a good goal scorer, but Joe Malone got 44 goals in 22 games in 1926. And I remember my roommate, Kevin Loosa, and I started laughing about it.

So some records are just probably improbable. But I think for me, and I've said this to a lot of friends, my most special record was 50 goals and 39 games. I got a chance last night to sit or yesterday afternoon to sit with Brian Trotche a couple hours before the game, him and I were talking and you know, I said, you know, when Mike Bossy got 1550, I thought as a kid, wow, that's almost impossible. But I don't know, unless a lot of things change, a lot of real changes, 50 goals and 38 games would be the record I think is one of the hardest ones to beat.

Hey Wayne, for many people, sports has always been an escape from the news and from politics. Hockey itself played at a time when tensions with Russia at an all time high with the Summit Series. A Russian just broke your record. Take me into the locker room and talk to me about how players drown out everything

that doesn't matter in order to focus on the game. Yeah, well, first of all, when I went in the locker room last night with Alex, I didn't look at him as a Russian. I looked at him as a NHL hockey player and a guy that's been tremendous in the city of Washington and great for the NHL. And, you know, we always believe it or not, we really never talk politics in the locker room. That's never, we watch basketball, we watch baseball, we talk about the Blue Jays, we talk about the New York Yankees.

Hockey players, we just, that's never on the docket. It's just something that, you know, we stay in our lane, you know, prime minister and the president don't tell us how to play hockey and we don't tell them how to do politics, right? Yeah. And, you know, I think in the eighties, we didn't have a big rivalry with the U S it was more Russia and that started in 72 with Espozito and Bobby Clark and Paul Henderson and all those guys. And after the 87 Canada Cup, I remember sitting there and I said, if I had one dream left

in hockey, it would be to be able to do a summit series and play four games in Canada and then go over to that time, the Soviet Union and play four more games like they did in 72. But over the years, since 1978, when I played on Canada's world junior team, I got to know Igor Larry Onov and they're proud of their country and they wanted to come over to the NHL properly. And Hamlin Fedasov and Krutov and Makarov, Kasetonov, they all came over properly. They didn't want to defect. They came over legally, they came over properly and they were probably guys that opened the door for a guy like Alex Tabeckin to play in the NHL. But honestly, we never talked anything political.

We never asked them about living in Russia. That was just never something we did. We're human beings. We all get along and that's all we wanted. And yet, does it register with you, Wayne, that there are people out there with political agendas who use your name to further their own whatever they have on the horizon. Does that register with you? Yeah, that's okay. You know, I always say to my kids,

you know, I got five American kids, seven American grandchildren, American wife, 103 year old American mother-in-law. And I always tell them every day you be as proud of the United States of America as I am to be a Canadian and that's what your grandfather would have wanted and so you know what I don't worry about those kind of things because you can't make everybody happy but trust me I have no political power with the Prime Minister or the President that's between those two guys and that's why you hold elections. And that's why people get to do what they want to do and say what they want to say. But trust me, I have no polar power with either the prime

minister or the president. Can you imagine me telling your dad what to do when he was the prime minister? Your dad would have laughed at me. You know that. Yeah. I would have loved to be there for that conversation, Wayne. Hey, Wayne, I want to thank you so much. I know how busy you are. I know what this means to so many Canadians. And I just thank you for taking time. Thank you for the class that you've shown. Thank you that all you've done for hockey and for Canada, as well as for me personally.

I really appreciate it. And I hope you come back to the show again soon. I will. I would love to come on your show again. And please give all our love from my wife, Jen and I to your mother and your family. I will. And I thought it was so cute yesterday that Colleen Howard given my wife a gift when I broke Gordy's record and she kept the tradition going. She got Alex something really special for his wife so it's really that's one of the great things about our game.

Wayne Gretzky, thank you so much. Alright man, take care. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your Monday with us. We appreciate your support. We appreciate you joining us as we build the Ben Mulroney show into the best show that it can be. My dad used to famously say the only poll that matters is the poll on election day. But I can promise you just because he said that doesn't mean he didn't pay attention to the polls. And, you know, it allows it allows you to get a snapshot of where things are today. And it allows political parties to appreciate what's working, what's not working and pivot accordingly in the hopes of eventually swing said polls.

Well, there's a new poll out from Ipsos that paints a pretty specific picture of where people's voter intentions are. And to drill down on it, we're joined by Darrell Bricker, the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs. Darrell, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Well, thanks for having me on, Ben. And by the way, I used to work with Alan Gregg. Oh, you did? On your dad's I used to work with Alan Gregg. Oh, you did?

On your dad's polls. So I know exactly how much. Yeah, it was a great line, but he did, he absolutely paid attention to every single poll, but it served him well. Let's talk about this latest poll that I believe was commissioned by Global News from Ipsos. And according to this, I mean, I

mean, why don't you tell me what it says? Well, we have the liberals ahead by 12. Now there's been polls that have been in the last over the course of the weekend, we were out of field on Thursday, that have showed the race tightening up a little bit. But still, I mean, all of them basically show that, you know, if the election was held tomorrow, which is the question that's asked on the polls that the liberals will be knocking on the polls, that the liberals would be knocking

on the door of a majority. So listen, I would not be doing my job if I didn't speak on behalf of the listeners of this show. And I can guarantee you that there are regular listeners who are screaming at the radio right now with questions for you. And I'm going to do my best to be a vessel for them. Talk to me about the limitations of polling.

I mean, there are a lot of people who support Pierre Poliev who would say this poll doesn't match with what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing. So talk to me about what polls don't capture or have difficulty capturing. What they tend to have difficulty capturing more recently is people with really emphatic partisan views who don't want to participate in polls. Right. That's, and I remember that in the first Donald Trump election, his victory, where there were a whole bunch of people who after the fact came out and said, you know, I always intended

to vote for Donald Trump, but I wouldn't, I would never tell anybody that because I didn't want, I didn't want to be harassed by my neighbor, by my friends, by my coworkers. Yeah, so social desirability bias, and you'll see it in things like referendums in the in the province of Quebec, you know, the the federalist vote tends to be underestimated. I saw it in Scotland, for example, when they had the referendum. But I will say, you know, in 2016, in the u.s. the consensus of polls was that uh... hillary clinton was going to win by two percent she did

yeah she actually won the popular vote by two percent the problem was uh... we weren't measuring the right thing which was was happening intimate detail in very specific states and by the way there was no polling instrument available that would have been able to capture with donald trump was able to pull off. But what's happened since then is there's a lot more focus on that and polling in the US than simply looking at what is going on in the national horse race.

I'm speaking with Darrell Bricker, the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs. We're talking about a new poll that was commissioned by Global News that suggests that the liberals have opened up a double digit lead on the conservatives. There are listeners of this show who'll say, I'm seeing an enthusiasm for Pierre Pauliev, the likes of which I've never seen. I've heard people who've been on campaigns

their whole lives, they said they've never seen this level of enthusiasm. The numbers that he's bringing out to his to his rallies are blowing away anything that has preceded it, at least on the conservative side. What do you tell somebody who's listening to you right now, and you've done your research and you have your data, and it's far more extensive than anything I could ever do. But but how do you counter those who would say there's an enthusiasm for him that can't be squared with the numbers that you're putting out there? No, I would say that they're right. I would say that there is an enthusiasm for Pierre Poliev

among the people who are voting conservative. But that's not going to win you an election that gets you to 30. In fact, the Tories are currently polling above where they performed in any of the last three elections. We've got them in our, I think in our polling at 36 or 38 or something like that. So they're actually doing better, but it's not enough. And the reason is because the NDP has collapsed. So yes, you can pack an arena, you can pack, I don't know, the Air Canada Center or the, you know, whatever facility you want to go to, you can find, I don't know, the R Canada Center or the, you know, whatever facility you want to go to, you can find people who are going to do that. But it's not a large enough

representative group of, of the actual Canadian electorate. Daryl, I'll tell you the thing that has me scratching my head is this, I mean, 46% is a huge number. They mean they're not and I've seen some polls that have them knocking on the door of 50%. Now the last, last politician to get 50% of the vote in Canada was my dad in 1984. And that was when there were three parties. And that was when, you know, his party was, didn't have the baggage of having been in office

for 10 years. And he was a known quantity having been in the House of Commons for almost over a year. And I struggle to understand how a party being led by somebody who three months ago, two thirds of Canadians couldn't even pull out of a lineup and has the added sort of weight of 10 years of a liberal legacy to either defend or explain away. I struggle to see how that number could be so high. Well, it's basically because people don't know enough about him to dislike him. Okay.

So it's basically a situation that he's what we're seeing here is a lot of hope over knowledge. So expectations that he's able to do these things based on his pedigree, which they have, you know, all they know is that he's seems like a serious guy that knows something about the economy. The point that he made about dragging 10 years of liberal baggage, he seems to be getting a free pass on that at the moment. Now there's three weeks left to go in the campaign and all of this can change overnight. But at the moment, it go in the campaign and all of this can change overnight.

But at the moment, it's about the here and now. It's about somebody who people perceive as being specially skilled to deal with this particular moment in Canadian history. And they're looking for Mark Carney to be that. They see Mark Carney as being that person. The entire liberal campaign rests on the slender shoulders of Mark Carney. If he stumbles at all, this thing comes crashing down. Darrell, how do you reach out to voters to gain, learn about their intention?

Because I remember years ago, and I don't know if it's still the case, that most of the communication was via landline. Is that still the case? No. No. So most polls these days, they tend to be split between online surveys and telephone surveys the telephone surveys Pardon me are not landline there. They tend to be both landline and cell phone

Okay, and the online ones are people who've agreed to participate in surveys The best ones I think are ones that are a blend of these things, which is what what we do I think are ones that are a blend of these things, which is what we do. But all of those methodologies can do a pretty good job of estimating what's going to happen. If you take a look at the last three national elections in Canada, and you go back and you take a look at the average of polls, they're all pretty close. And lastly, before we say goodbye is I'd love to understand because we talked about the enthusiasm gap a few minutes ago. And voter turnout is everything in an election.

And typically younger people don't turn out in the numbers that older Canadians do. But if younger people are lining up to go see Pierre Poliev at his rallies, and it's acknowledged that the people who love him would crawl over broken glass for him. Is that sort of thing accounted for in the polling, meaning are you anticipating a higher than normal voter turnout for young Canadians? Well, we've seen it before then. I mean, in 2015, young people showed up for Justin Trudeau.

It was one of the reasons that he did as well as he did. It was actually quite high voter turnout that time. I think it was 69%. But so did all the other groups. They also showed up at higher than normal levels. This time around, I don't know what you're going to see. I think what tends to lead to higher turnout is a sense that there's going to be a change. So Pauliev has to get this thing closer and it has to make it look like he's actually going to win to get those people who might be really enthusiastic about him but think that the election is going to go the other guy's way, might get them to show up.

Oh, by the way, this is why Aaron O'Toole lost. He wasn't able to make people believe that he was actually going to win, so they didn't bother. I gotcha. Hey, Darryl Bricker of Ipsos. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your insights and your expertise and I hope you come back soon. Thanks a lot, Ben. You know, we're living in a moment where there's a resurgence of Canadian pride and this belief that the world needs more Canada and that our values are worth protecting and you know that only happens if there's a Canada and Canada didn't happen by accident and in the world in which it was formed in 1867 it's a hard thing to do it's a damn hard thing to do

and there was a man by the name of Sir John A. MacDonald that through his leadership and vision divined it, created it, helped build it, made sure that the Americans didn't invade it. And he is, in my humble opinion, the greatest prime minister in history. And I'm speaking as the son of one. So I appreciate what I'm saying. And to say that does not mean he was perfect. To say that does not mean he did not make mistakes,

but he's the one who got us here. He's the one who, he's the guy who dreamt of Canada and made it so. And so what I wanna do now is take some time with somebody who knows a lot about this sort of thing to talk about Sir John A. MacDonald. What made him great? What were his flaws? And how, how best can we remember him? And so let's welcome back to the show, Craig Baird, the host of Canadian History X. Welcome, Craig. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. So let's paint in broad strokes

off the top. Who was Sir John A. Macdonald before he became prime minister? Well before he became prime minister, he was a very prominent lawyer in Kingston and then in 1844 he was elected to the legislature of what was then called the province of Canada. And eventually by the 1850s, he became probably one of the most prominent politicians in that province which eventually led him to becoming co-premier and eventually starting to look at uniting all the parties into the Great Coalition with George Brown in order to seek this federal and political reform that would eventually result in the creation of Canada in 1867. And it wasn't a foregone conclusion that Canada would just be

created. I have to assume, Craig, that there were forces at play pushing against his vision. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean it's, Craig, that there were forces at play pushing against his vision. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it's important to note that he was one of several people who were trying to put this through. He was definitely the most prominent one, the one who kind of really kind of led the way. But, you know, very early on, it looked like the creation

of Canada would just be the province of Canada, which would be modern day Ontario and Quebec, and only a small portion of that. But, like John A. MacDonald were the ones who helped get the Maritimes involved and to create the four founding provinces that would eventually be Canada. So yeah, it was definitely something that was not a foregone conclusion. There was a lot of work involved. It took years to do a lot of negotiations with Britain that eventually led to what became Canada. And that's one reason why he was chosen by the governor general to be the first prime minister

before we had our first election. How long was he in office for? He was in office for quite a long time. He was in office from 1867 to 1873. And then after a brief time away because of the Pacific scandal, he was then in office from 1878 to 1891, and he was our first Prime Minister to actually die in office. So I believe he ranks third all time behind William I. McKenzie King and I think Pierre Trudeau in terms of longest time serving as Prime Minister. In our few remaining minutes, we're going to talk the good and the bad. So let's talk about his biggest accomplishments in office.

Well, I think probably the biggest accomplishments is probably the railroad. I mean, obviously, there's aspects to that that kind of fall into the bad as well. But without the railroad, we wouldn't have had British Columbia joining Canada. British Columbia originally just wanted a wagon road to connect them to the rest of Canada. And it was the federal government who said, well, we'll build you a railroad.. When he was ousted in the Pacific scandal, he had to resign as prime minister, there was actually a real possibility that British Columbia would secede from Canada. There was a real movement for that. It was his election in 1878 that stopped that from happening because work on the railroad began again. I would say that's probably his biggest

accomplishment because that railroad then brings in things like Alberta, Saskatchewan, builds up Manitoba and has a huge impact on making Canada coast to coast. But there's a wide variety of other things. There's the national policy that we really started to build up the industries of Canada. It had tariffs for other countries like the United States, but it had favorable tariffs for the British Empire. And so there was a lot that he did, but I definitely think that the CPR was definitely his biggest accomplishment.

And I only learned recently that it was built in four years and the debt was paid off in one. Mm hmm. Yeah. People think that like when BC joined Canada in 1871, they think that the work started then, and it kind of did, but there was a lot of surveying and things like that. By 1873, 1874, not a lot had been done. The Liberals weren't really in favor of having this railroad across Canada during their time in power. So really, yeah, from 1878 to 1885, and really from 1881 to 1885,

that's when most of that railroad was built. And yeah, there was a lot of debt and everything, but because of the terms that were used to create the CPR, it was paid off very quickly. I'm talking with Craig Barrett about our very first prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald. What do you think would have happened? I'm asking you to actually not be rooted in fact,

but instead be rooted in theory. What would have happened to the Western North America had that railroad not been put in place? Would the Americans have rushed in to fill the void? Well, I think they may have in British Columbia because there definitely was a lot of Americans who were in British Columbia after the Fraser Gold Rush. The Americans very much wanted Alaska all the way down the Pacific coast to Mexico.

They really wanted to have all of that. I think places like Alberta and Saskatchewan probably would have stayed in Canada because that was part of Rupert's land and the Northwest Territories that got transferred to Canada by the British government. So those probably would have stayed. But again, without having the Northwest Mounted Police being created and going west and getting the whiskey runners and everybody out of Canada and really kind of asserting our control over the Canadian West, we might have eventually had Western Canada becoming its own country

or joining the United States because of an influx of Americans coming in but really having the railroad going across Canada allowed us to start to settle the West and then prevent the Americans from taking that regions. Craig Barrett talk to me about the biggest controversies surrounding Sir John A. McDonald. Well there definitely are a few I mean there's obviously his policies towards the indigenous peoples he definitely gets blamed a lot for the Indian Act, but that actually came in under Alexander Mackenzie and the Liberals. But his government did expand on it.

After the 1885 Northwest resistance, a lot of the First Nations in the West weren't even allowed to leave the reserves without permission. The Indian agents had a huge amount of power. And there definitely was at times almost a campaign of starvation to kind of keep the First Nations under the control of the government. Another really big thing that he's remembered for is the fact that the head tax came in on Chinese immigrants. And the Chinese immigrants came in to build the railroad. And then as soon as it was built, it was kind of, you know, we didn't want any more, at least a lot of people didn't want any more

Chinese people coming into Canada. So that's where the head tax came in. But again, it's also important to note that the head tax was, I think, $50 when it came in. And it was actually increased by the Sir Wilfrid Laurier government to $500 eventually. So, you know, everywhere you look for at least the first century of Canada, you can definitely find a lot of bad for every single prime minister. Well, yeah, I mean, you don't have to look very far to find bad in recent history either. I mean, I'm not singling out Justin Trudeau, but he's the last guy and he's got his own controversies that haven't aged well. So the fact that we would be holding Sir John A. up to a social standard that is impossible even for us to live up to today speaks to, I think, a sad trend in Canada

where we're unwilling to appreciate that our history is made up of human beings. Yeah, definitely. I mean, every person from our past definitely has issues with them. And you know, I mean, our longest serving Prime Minister, William Lye Mackenzie King, was very much against Jewish immigrants coming to Canada. None is too many. None is too many. Hey, Craig, we're going to leave it there,

but I want to thank you so much for painting that picture for us today. No problem. Thanks for having me. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And in our previous segment, we spoke with Craig Baird, the host of Canadian History X, to talk about Sir John A. Macdonald, our first prime minister. And that was, by the way, what we wanted to do was set the table for this next conversation.

We want to give you the context of who he was, and in my opinion, why he is and shall remain the greatest prime minister that we've ever had, because without him, we don't have this country, full stop. And that is warts and all. And he's a human being with flaws that should be judged, but they should be judged in the context of his life. And I'm very happy to have our next guest joining me,

although under circumstances I did not expect and I wish were different. Daniel Tate has been a concerned, active citizen of the city of Toronto for a very long time. And I've been following him when he pops up in the news because he's acquitted himself, I believe, with honor when issues around our history, our values and how our city is spending our money.

He shows up, he gives his deputations, he comes armed with facts, he comes armed with reason, and he oftentimes comes head to head with ideology, and he is pushed back against by city councilors who behave in a way that is beneath the office that they hold. Today, I'm joined by Daniel, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Thanks, Ben, Thanks for having me.

But the reason you're here is not a good one. A lot of us know that at Queen's Park, there's a box around the statue of Sir John A. And it has been like that for years. And it's been put there to protect him from activists who would come and desecrate that statue. And you came across that box and had enough. Yeah, that's right.

It's truly shameful and frankly embarrassing as a country that we are basically pandering to these radical activists and cowering to them essentially by boxing up the great founder of our nation. We wouldn't have the freedoms and liberties. We wouldn't be Canadian. There would be no Canada if it wasn't for Sir John A. Macdonald. And the fact that he's been boxed up for five years is a true

national shame. And you know what I did is reflective of millions of Canadians who feel the exact same way. So what did you do? Well as a disillusioned and very concerned Canadian citizen, I went disillusioned and very concerned Canadian citizen, I went up there one day and I wrote, Free John on the cheap plywood that's covering the statue. Yeah, so chances are that if that plywood wasn't there, somebody would have come by with some paint

and they would have thrown it on Sir John A. in an act of protest. And I sincerely doubt that in the Toronto that we're living in today, anything would have happened to them. I also would humbly submit that if somebody had written free Palestine on that box, they probably would have been let go.

But you wrote free John as in free- Not even on the statue. On the box, free this man who means so much to our identity, to our history, to our culture, to our values. And you are now, what are you facing? Well, the maximum sentence for mischief under 5k is two years in prison. That's the criminal code. So it's now the state versus Tate that rhymes. But to your point earlier, that's problem number one is that people who are going up there, and again, these are radical activists.

They have a warped worldview. They hate Canada. They think it's some, you know, colonial racist state. And they were getting away with this stuff with impunity. And the problem is that emboldens them. When they realize they can do things without consequences or punishments, they tell their friends, hey, the government's weak, the police are weak, let's keep doing it. And so that was problem number one is that when all this stuff was happening five years ago or four years ago and nobody had the spine to basically handle business, now here we are five years later and our great founders boxed up, but also many other national monuments have been disgraced from coast to coast. Yeah, or erased or removed or demeaned and or reframed under sort of the social values of today

to make them look lesser than they were. And look, again, I don't like when people ascribe motivation to me just because I say he's the greatest Canadian, greatest prime minister in no way discounts the issues that he had in the day. I don't like when people ascribe motivation to me. Just because I say he's the greatest Canadian, greatest prime minister, in no way discounts the issues that he had in the day. Some of it was shameful behavior. Some of it I wish hadn't happened.

But, so two things can be true at once. And this idea that with one fell swoop, we cancel people because we don't like how they behave then. Well, good luck being judged by future generations because every single one of us will come up lacking. What really frustrates me for you, Daniel, is that this is happening to you at the same time as on everybody's social media feed,

we see protesters taking over streets, threatening Jews, threatening death to Canada, threatening lighting flags on fire, and nothing happens to them. Certainly not at a level that would deter them. They get chaperoned by the police. It doesn't make any sense. This is the environment that we currently live in in Canada, and every Canadian needs

to do some soul searching and understand what's going on here. This isn't just like two-tiered policing, which it is, but what is going on behind the scenes where it's appropriate for hate propagandists to choke our city streets every single weekend with police chaperone? And commit crimes, by the way, because they're defacing, they're vandalizing, they're putting hate speech everywhere. And I know this because I walk the streets of downtown Toronto and I look at the aftermath and it's disgusting Where it is not just the anti-semitism. It's anti-canadian. It's anti-police. These are Grotesque messages and please it's costing us now 20 million dollars as you alluded to

Earlier to to just watch these people and so again, we have a culture of impunity That's hurting the country hurting our city and we need to stop. What's your defense going to be? In court? Well, I'm just going to say I was following my heart, doing what I thought was right. Frankly, I don't even think it'll hold in court because it was the cheapest plywood you've ever seen. Literally, you could go to Home Hardware and buy that same plywood for $5. And by the way, when they let me out of the like security cell in which I was in at Queens Park, it had already been painted over by the groundskeeper.

You might want to reach out to Bonnie Cromby's office because I was in this studio with her when Greg Brady was hosting the morning show. I was sitting right there. She was sitting right there. And she said prior to the election, we need to get Sir John A out of the box. Yeah, we'll put your money where your mouth is. Yeah, I mean, listen, maybe the Liberal Party of Ontario might want to help you with your defense. Well, if, you know, we're elbows up right now, right?

Oh, we're all proud, patriotic Canadians. Well, then, where are these people who are elbows up when our founding father is being thrown in the mud, his history legacy is being thrown in the mud? People are equating Sir John A. McDonald to like Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler, which is historical revisionism on steroids. These people are getting away with it and we need to hold them to account. I went to law school years ago, I have no purport to be a lawyer, but I keep the

words selective prosecution keep coming up in my head, like the fact that they would choose to follow this court case to its conclusion and not myriad others that are probably more deserving of the time of the court is shocking to me. This is the wake up call I think a lot of people need to hear and need to see because if we don't change course, like as you know, we're in an election cycle right now We're at a we're at a crossroads rather than inflection point for our country And so now is the moment people need to wake up and understand what's going on This could have real implications for you if it goes sideways and if you don't win

Your life could be severely altered if people are listening to this and they really are offended and they empathize with you Is there any way that they can show their support for you? Well number one, I have to be at the courthouse today at two o'clock at 10 Armory Street, just near University in Dundas. You can come show your support there. I have no idea what's going to happen. We'll see. And just spread the word, you know, like let people know my story that again, I'm born and raised in this country. I love this country. I've been paying my taxes on time ever since I was 18 years old.

I went to university. I've worked hard my whole life in the private sector. And look what's happening to me. I'm now facing the prospect of two years in prison for trying to like protect the honor of the founder of our country who, yes, he did a couple of gross things. The Chinese had tax, not cool. Okay, we can have that conversation and that context without allowing radicals and other activists to deface our national monuments.

Yeah, well, sadly, it feels to me that there are certain people in positions of power who want exactly that. And it's incumbent upon people like you, people like me, to beat the drum and say, No, no, no, no, that's not right. But Daniel, I wanna thank you for coming in. I wanna say I'm sorry that this is happening to you. I do hope that you get a swift conclusion to your satisfaction on this, because this ain't right, especially when you see

what's actually happening on our streets. So I wish you, as they say in French, courage. Thank you very much. Thank you Ben, appreciate it. Yeah, this is a miscarriage of justice if I've ever seen one and we've got bigger fish to fry. Actually, this is not even a fish worth frying. Breaking news coming in from Bet365,

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who also acknowledge that the last 10 years have been a disaster. And yet they feel that sticking with this horse will change that, that's fine. We're gonna stick a pin in that debate. Instead, what I wanna do is I wanna look forward, and I wanna talk about what can we do as a nation to improve? What are some of the big picture ideas

that maybe defy policy, maybe they defy politics? Let's talk about the things that we as a nation can do so that the next 10 years look nothing like the last 10 years. And someone I love talking to about these sorts of things, Tony Chapman, host of the award winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, as well as the founder of Chatter AI. Tony, welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and happy Monday. Happy Monday. I love talking to you as well. So that's what I want to do. I don't want this to

be a rag on the last 10 years. Let's acknowledge that there have been massive failures that have put us in a hole. And let's let's look to the big ideas that could spur investment, get us get us moving as a country. And let's let's throw it to you, my friend. Well, the first one I would look at is tourism. It's it represents 10% of the world's global friend. Well, the first one I would look at is tourism. It represents 10% of the world's global economy. It is the last bastion for hiring workers that sort of are immune from AI. And Canada has some of the most beautiful places

in the world, but just instead of just relying on geography, if we focus on the place to be, the experiences, and I give you site two examples, upcoming podcasts, Fogo Island, where they took a finger out of Newfoundland and created the Fogo Island Inn that's now world renowned. Everything that goes into that inn is owned by the local people, the rugs, the furniture, the food,

it's created this circular economy and it's kept young people there. I would argue the same thing with Cabot, if you're a golfer and you look at the- Oh, I've been there. It's a this circular economy and it's kept young people there. I would argue the same thing with Cabot if you're a golfer and you look at the- Oh, I've been there. It's a special place. It's a special place and people from all over the world come and when they do, they share it on their social media. And this is what Canada first and foremost-

There's also Tofino BC? Tofino BC is a great one for surfing. And there's so many of them that we could be looking at beyond the fact that we have a high tower in Toronto and we have Niagara Falls. What are the exp and they're great places, but what are the places to be human again? Longevity rediscovering yourself, nature, everything that Canada offers, present that to the world, build it and they will come. Yeah, no, I love that idea.

Also making it easier to get to those places and maybe having look Fogo Island is great if you can afford it, but what they've proven there is that experiential model could work perhaps on a more budget conscious scale. So if you could have some sort of smaller, cheaper analog to Fogo Island somewhere in that area where people could experience and enjoy that, what we have naturally in Canada, but on a smaller budget, I think those are the types of things that could actually

help as well. Absolutely. And again, you can't be all things to all people. There's certainly places in Canada that are very much sort of that, you know, the youth economy that really wants to see Canada for $25 a day. My point is it's got to be about the experience. It's got to be memories that last a lifetime. That would be my first one. The second one I would call is old and new. So we've got these old resources sitting in Canada. Let's harvest them. Let's provide them to our allies. But as we extract them from the ground,

let's also take some of the royalties that we earn and fund a new economy, intellectual resources. So we're combining both to create this new wealth for Canada. And what I mean by intellectual resources is entrepreneurs, there's 100,000 less entrepreneurs today than there was 10 years ago. That is one of the most horrific statistics because entrepreneurship is going to power the new economy. I want these ideas staying in Canada. I want to capitalize in Canada. I want entrepreneurs around the world to say to get first mover advantage. I'm going to come to Canada. Yeah. And if we have that capital pool available, people are going to go where else would I want to build my dreams than a country that is as beautiful as Canada. So that would be my second thing. Yeah. And I got to say, I got to, I wish that the conversation around

natural resource extraction wasn't do we do it or not? I wish it was, how do we do it? How do we do it in the most environmentally sustainable way? How do we do it to have the most impact on Canadians? How do we do it so that we are selling it in a way that helps spread Canadian values around the world? How do we do it so that we can then take the earnings

and fund our social safety net, but as you just said, also with an eye towards the future and building the next economy. I think like that to me is how I wish that conversation was going. And it doesn't because it's either one way or the other. Think about the peace of mind to an ally that says, my house is being heated by Canadian liquid natural gas versus a state that wants to destroy me.

How about Canadian food? And I don't want to just sell commodities. We've got the largest reserves of uranium. Why aren't we leading in the new micro nuclear reactors? So we combine the two and say, listen, let's go upstream with these commodities. Canadian food around the world, where are you going to want to have your food? From the efficacy of Canadian soil, our water, our fresh air, or in a farm that's being manufactured in a country that has zero interest in terms of what you're eating and all, just focus on the profit they can make from it. So this is what Canada can stand for and really revitalize. One last one, Ben, look at your show. You've become one of the top podcasts already in Canada.

You're heading that way in North America. We're very good at content. You've got one of the top commanders in George. Why aren't we creating content and exporting it around the world? Instead of subsidizing CBC, say, CBC, look at BBC with Downton Abon Abbey with Top Gear some of the shows that they produced around the world that they're making a fortune on why don't we use Canadian content creators and export our content to the world versus just subsidize for a local news that might have lost its value and reference relevancy that's what CBC should be doing. Okay what do you mean by take the long game on health? Well here here's the other thing, like family doctors, we have three choices, beg them not to retire,

find a way to bring more in or build more medical schools. That's one solution. How about the other solution is the long game is AI. In the future, 99% of what a family practitioner does can be done by AI. As long as you've done diagnostic testing, as long as you have genome mapping in your body, as long as they know precisely who you are, that AI can prescribe 95% of the reasons you'd go to a family doctor. And more importantly,

it can point you in the direction to a specialist. And the family doctor can be revitalized and reinvented again, go upstream and solve big medical problems. Cause they got access to AI as well. So instead of just being this sort of facilitator and curator that moves people painfully through a system that still relies on fax machines, for God's sake, let's, let's use AI and say, we're going to lead the world. And there's a company called bioaero to Calgary that knows it's possible. Because guess what?

Canadian technology has been sold to Singapore and Saudi Arabia as we speak versus Canada would be leading at it. Reimagining education. Talk to me about this and we only have about a minute and a half left for both of these. We spent so much time on ideology and horsehair blankets and all the things we've done wrong in the past and not enough getting our youth to be focused on what is it going to take to compete in the future where jobs are in the cloud, AIs in every corner of the marketplace, collaboration, creative, critical thinking. That's the ideas that we need to foster.

And I want to draft these kids in high school based on their interests. Like we draft them in high school based on their sports and athletic ability, move them through a system where they graduate without any education expenses and hit the ground running. That's the future of education. So, there's betting on the winners. That also sort of seems to dovetail into this last one of reward the builders. Yeah, reward the entrepreneurs. I want $10 million that your capital gains is tax-free in the United States.

Reward people for building a business in Canada. You keep it here for 10 years. You hire people. We're going to provide you capital and we're going to let you to take your rewards tax free because you took the risk. And you've spread that risk in terms of building our economy. And for that, we thank you. We want to be the home, the epicenter for entrepreneurship around the world. Tony, I want to have an optimistic conversation that's steered away from the partisan politics that we have to deal with because there's an election. And I think you hit the nail on the head, man.

That was an aggressively optimistic view on how we can build the next 10 years. I want to thank you very much. I think you've set a great tone for this week for me here at the Ben Mulroney Show, and I'll talk to you soon. All right, pleasure, my friend. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulroney Show podcast. We're live every day nationwide on the Chorus Radio Network,

and you can listen online to the Radio Canada player and the iHeart Radio Canada apps. And make sure to follow and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your streaming audio. We release new podcasts every day. Thanks for listening. and we'll see you next time. your chance to win big. Amazing! Ha! The small details are the difference between winning and losing. Watch and win with Renovation Resort on Home Network.