The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 3 - Erin Bury, Anthony Farnell, Mike Moffatt

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

Best of the Week Part 3 - Erin Bury, Anthony Farnell, Mike Moffatt Guests: Erin Bury, Anthony Farnell, Mike Moffatt, John Turley-Ewart, Craig Baird If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Find an agent today at Desjardins.com slash business coverage. Welcome to the Dilemma Panel. No question is too awkward, no problem too petty, and no opinion goes unchallenged. Our panel of over-thinkers is here to dissect, deliberate and sometimes derail the conversation entirely.

Grab your popcorn. This isn't just advice. It's a front row seat to life's most hilariously relatable train wrecks. Here's your host, Ben Mulrooney. Yes, indeed. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show, the dilemma portion of the show.

And I want to remind you that we can't do the dilemma unless we know what your dilemmas are. And the pathway to getting us that information is askben at chorus and dot com. That's a S K B E N at C O R U S E N T dot com. Just let us know what it is. It could be anything. It could be a household issue. It could be a professional issue. It could be something that ticks you off at the gym, you could be asking us, am I the a-hole, anything. We'll try to solve it. We probably won't, but we'll have fun trying.

All right, we're joined now by two great guests. We've got Erin Burry, the founder of Willful and Global Male Columnist, and frequent guest on the Ben Mulroney Show. Erin, welcome to the show. Thanks, Ben, great to be here. And our other guests will be joining us in just a moment. Erin, it's just you and me for now. So let's put our heads

together and make Canada a better place. Shall we? I'm on it. Ready. All right, here we go. Let's we're jumping into the first one. Dear Ben, I'm in a serious disagreement with my husband over something I did that I thought was responsible parenting, but he sees it as a betrayal of our daughter's privacy. We have two kids, 13 and 16, and lately I've had a bad feeling about our older daughter.

She's been withdrawn, spending more time alone in her room and acting off. Call it mother's intuition, but something didn't sit right. So while she was out one day, I looked through her drawer. I wasn't rifling through her underwear drawer. I just checked her desk and bedside table. I didn't end up finding anything, but that's because my husband stopped me

after barely 15 minutes of searching. Well, 15 minutes sounds like a lot. He said I violated her trust and that if she finds out, she'll never open up to us again or worse, she'll deliberately hide things. Was I wrong to look? Is it not a parent's right to know what's going on in their kids' lives?

Assigned anonymous. Well, this is a mother who wrote, talking about mother's intuition. So I'm gonna pass the mic to you, Erin. Well, Ben, I'm curious as to your take, because your kids are a bit older, mine are one and a half and three and a half. So I'm not at this stage yet, but I'm trying to put myself in my shoes when I was a teenager, I'm very close with my mom. And I definitely kept a journal and I'm sure I had things from her. And I would have felt it was a huge betrayal of trust for her to go through my things. And I would take that same approach to my own daughters.

It's not that I wouldn't try to figure out what was going on, but I think there's probably a way to do it without really violating the children's trust. Because if anything, that would have made me actually pull back from my mom versus the opposite, which is what she's trying to get her kids to do here, which is really to open up. Also, I think you have to present a united front as parents.

And if you're really on opposite ends of the spectrum here, one of you is OK with snooping, the other isn't, you have to come up with some kind of compromise and go forward with that. So I'm going to say here, I don't think snooping is the answer. I do think open communication, whether that's going to family therapy or having open family dinner conversations or asking open-ended questions might be the way here. Not saying it's the solution. Again, I'm not the expert on teen kids here. So

Ben, I'm going to throw it over to you. What would you do? Have you snooped, first of all? I haven't had a need to snoop, but I reserve the right to do whatever I want in my house. I'm the one paying the bills. I'm going to say I, I mean, me and my wife. My kid, I come from, I was raised by an old stock Serbian lady. We had old school parenting. And because of that, I knew that I was, I was living in my parents' world.

As my mom used to say, I didn't have kids to live in their world. I had kids so they would live in my world. And that is, I subscribe to that. Like I, I don't want to be friends with my kids. Friends are a dime a dozen. You can throw a rock and hit a friend. I'm the only dad they're ever going to have. That's a special relationship. And it is not a, it is not a marriage of equals. I have information to impart on them. I've been around the block and they know in my house, in our house, I should say, that if I think something's off, I'm going to do whatever I want to do and whatever I think is necessary to right the ship.

And if it means going through their stuff, I'm going through their stuff. And they've never given me reason to. We have open levels of communication, but we have levels set from the beginning. They know they live in my house. They know that the room that they live in is the room I pay for. Those doors do not get locked,

but they've never given me a reason to barge in. So those are the rules of my house. But Ben, it sounds like the threatening to snoop actually eliminates the need to snoop because they're going to be open with you and tell you why. I agree. So I like that. I'm going to borrow that.

Well, thank you very much. And we're joined by our third member of the Dilemma panel. Welcome to the show for the first time, Anthony Farnell, chief meteorologist at Global News. Anthony, thanks so much for joining us on The Dilemma. Thanks for having me on, Ben. So jump right into this conversation we're talking about, would you snoop on your kids?

There's a woman who rode in who wanted to snoop on her daughter because she got a bad feeling about her. The husband felt it was a betrayal of the daughter's trust. And what do you think? I mean, I'm kind of with the husband on this one. And I don't know the level of mistrust or what the reason or what they're looking for in that room. I guess that's kind

of what it comes down to if you think it's maybe drugs or there's something that you can help with but if it's just snooping around to try and find information about a teenager that maybe is being a little bit distant, I don't know. For me that seems like a bit of an invasion and then it's gonna lead to exactly that. Maybe trying to go behind your parents back and hiding things better. For me it's about expectation of privacy. As a child in my house you have no expectation of privacy. I'm kidding, I'm trying to make a point, but I'm like Ronald Reagan, trust but verify. I trust you, so long as you give me a reason to trust you. And the second you take that reason away,

I become J. Edgar Hoover. All right, we're going to move on. What is the reason though? What would be the reason? If all of a sudden my kids were, if they had a precipitous drop in their grades, if the level of respect that they were giving us at home changed, if they were not precipitous drop in their grades, if the level of respect that they were giving us at home changed, if the level of communication that we had all of a sudden stopped and they weren't being the people that I was raising, if all of a sudden

it felt like something else was influencing them and I didn't know what it was, absolutely I am tearing that room apart. Would you try talking to them first? I talk to them every day, that's my point, that we fostered that relationship. We have that. If something came in and changed it, yeah, I would say, what's going on? Let's talk. And if they didn't want to talk, yep, you're darn right, you're coming home to a police state. But like I said, we haven't gotten to that point.

All right, let's move on to the next dilemma. This is a classic Reddit am I the a-hole? Am I the a-hole for refusing to give my sister the wedding dress I bought even though I'm not getting married anymore? Am I? So you think give my sister the wedding dress I bought? Okay. So I'm a 29 year old woman and I was supposed to get married last year, but my fiance and I ended up breaking things off a few months before the wedding. It was mutual, no drama, just a realization we weren't compatible long-term. The thing is, I'd already bought my wedding dress custom. It cost me nearly four grand.

After the breakup, I packed it up and put it in storage. Haven't really, haven't been ready to sell it or do anything with it. It's emotional. And here's where it gets messy. My younger sister recently got engaged. We're not super close, kind of different people. And she's always been a bit entitled, honestly.

She came over a few weeks ago, saw the dress when we were organizing my storage closet and asked if she could have it for her wedding. I kind of laughed and said, no, that's mine. She got annoyed and said, but you're not even getting married. You're just gonna let it rot in a box. I told her again, it's personal to me. Our mom is now involved and thinks I should give it to her

quote, as a gesture of sisterly love and because it's going to go to waste, Ouch. So now they both think I'm being selfish. Am I being the a-hole? Anthony, I'm going to go to you first. If you had something that was personal to you and somebody else wanted it and you weren't really using it, what would you do in this situation? I mean, I would say no.

I would be like, this means a lot to me. Number one, you don't know that I'm not I would say no. I would be like, this means a lot to me. Number one, you don't know that I'm not gonna get married shortly and meet the one. And also when you start making it custom for yourself, it's kind of yours. It's yours to do what you want with. I get the sister asking.

I understand that. There is kind of this, hey, it is. It's getting dust there. Why can't I use it? And we can kind of celebrate it together. But for me, I don't know, it has a deeper meaning when it involves a breakup and just seeing your sister who's younger and trying to kind of fill your shoes, I guess. Yeah, I agree. Aaron, it feels like the two are ganging up on the older sister here and saying, it's going to go to waste. That's got to feels like the two are ganging up on the older sister

here and saying, it's going to go to waste. That's got to hurt as somebody who has not given up on love. Yeah, not a lot of confidence from the family that she's going to find lasting love. And listen, Ben, I am uniquely positioned to answer this, because I was literally a bridesmaid in my sister's life. If you can answer it in 30 seconds, please. I'm going to. This dress is hers.

And not only does she have a chance to wear it again, she could also pass it on to her kids, which is something I hope to do to my daughter someday. So keep the dress in its hanger. Don't give it away. Hold firm. And tell your parents you're going to find love. That is a mic drop to end all mic drops.

All right, guys, thank you so much. Don't go anywhere. Much more with the Dilemma panel when the Ben Mulroney show comes back after the break. Welcome back. We're double dipping with the Dilemma. Welcome back Aaron Burry and Anthony Farnell. Very much appreciate you guys. Anthony, what are you making about the warm weather here in the city of City of Toronto. Finally. I know. Jesus. I mean, it's been a long time coming. Did you predict? I don't want to hear anybody complaining. Did you predict the cold? Did you predict the cold May that we had? I knew it was going to kind of be a rough month where it had some false, false hope early on. So yeah, yeah, we saw that. I

wish you'd told me because I was sad the whole month. All right, let's, let's jump right back in. Here's the next dilemma, guys. Dear Ben, one of my closest friends asked if she could borrow my car next weekend. Her car is in the shop and she has a big family event out of town. On paper, it sounds harmless and I do want to help her,

but the truth is I really don't feel comfortable saying yes. She's not exactly the most responsible person. She's gotten a couple of speeding tickets once backed into a pole and she's the kind of driver who texts at red lights and laughs it off. I've made excuses before, oh I need it that day or the brakes are acting weird but this time she pushed harder and I could tell she was annoyed when I said I'd get back to her. I know she'll take it personally if I say no and I hate the idea of offending her but I also hate the idea of anyone else behind the wheel of my car. Am I being uptight? Signed, Megan.

Let's start with you, Anthony. What do you think? I mean, a car is expensive. A car is expensive and you kind of need it. So if you get in an accident or something happens and you don't have access to it when the weekend's over, I don't know, I would maybe be the same way. I think it's all a finessing

situation where if you really don't want to lend your car to somebody, it's how you tell them. I wouldn't maybe lead with, I don't trust you, you're unreliable. But I don't know, I would find a way to say it better. I agree. So many of the dilemmas that we have are rooted in people not being fearful of honest communication with the other person. And this to me, Erin feels like, look, this is your friend. If this person really is a friend of yours, have an honest conversation about what your concerns are and see what happens after that.

Absolutely. Ben, I'm turning 40 this week. And you know, the older you get, the more willing you are to set boundaries. I've loaned a lot of sweaters and books and jewelry to friends. And guess what? I either never see it again or it comes back with a coffee stain. Sometimes it comes back in perfect condition, but nine times out of 10, it's still missing a couple of years later. A car is a really expensive item and you have a deductible on your insurance policy likely, which means you'd be out of pocket if anything did happen, not the friends.

So I agree with Anthony, set the boundary and set the boundary, I don't lend my car to anyone. This isn't about you, this is about this being one of my largest assets, if not my largest asset and I'm not willing to hand it out like I would a paperback novel where the stakes are really low. Yeah. And look, if you're able to have it, that's, that's the most direct way to go get to a no, you're not getting my car. But if you're open, having a conversation, saying,

listen, I have watched you, you are unsafe behind the wheel. You're unwilling to do even the basic things like keeping your hands off your cell phone. I cannot trust you with this unless like unless we talk this up. Maybe maybe the person will say, look, I commit to being far more responsible. I don't know. And that's up to you to decide. Or you could just lie and say, I checked my insurance. I'm not my car doesn't doesn't. My insurance does not allow for other drivers other than me. So unless you want to pay for the change in my policy,

we're sort of we're up we're up the creek here. Yeah, at the end of the day, I mean, it's your decision, right? It's that you're not, if you lose a friend because of this, I don't know. Right, exactly. You think your friendship's stronger. Exactly. All right, here's the next one.

Dear Ben's panel, my mother is getting remarried in a few months and I'm struggling with whether or not to attend. The man she's marrying is the same man she had an affair with. And while she's still married with my dad, their marriage fell apart because of it and it was painful, humiliating chapter for our whole family. My dad was devastated and I had to watch him try to hold himself together while my mom moved on like nothing happened. Now she's throwing a big sunny wedding and expects me to smile, sit near the front and toast to her new beginning. I just can't. I haven't fully forgiven her and every time I picture myself there

I feel sick. I've told her I'm uncomfortable and all it led to was tears on her part. My sister is going and has urged me to reconsider but I'm going to spend the day with my father instead. Do you think I'm making the right decision? Signed Whoo, boy, that's a doozy. Aaron, jump right in, please. Right in the deep end. Ben, why do I feel like you always choose these based on my personal background? So I have a family member in this exact same situation, they are married to the person they had an affair with 30 years ago that broke up their marriage. And based on that, I would say to this person,

at the time, it's very contentious. At the time, I can understand not wanting to sit there. But 30 years later, all of the parties involved are happily remarried. It's water under the bridge and it's in the past. And I would ask myself, in 30 years, am I going to wish that I was sitting there at my mom's wedding? And the answer is yes.

But Erin, in this case, it doesn't seem like all is forgiven like it's water under the bridge. It does- But if it is, well, they regret it. But yeah, but I'm looking at it from the perspective of, look, the mom had the affair. Affairs are not just, don't just affect the couple. They have residual traumatic effects on a whole bunch of parties,

including most notably the kids. And it seems to me that the mom is not giving the proper weight to the trauma that her daughter endured from watching the safest relationship that she was supposed to see her parents crumble. And then to see the mom sort of celebrate a new... I mean, she's being re-traumatized. I'm reading it in real time here. And I just don't know that they've talked about it enough

and the mom is just hoping that a big party is going to get her over the hump. Anthony, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, a wedding's a great day. A second wedding, some would say, is maybe less important. And I think you do have to look at it in the big picture. And yeah, 30 years down the road. But is that wedding day in particular going to mean that much attending or not attending?

Maybe the dad needs support in this moment because he's having a tougher time and really needs somebody to be with that day. And I don't know, I see it kind of the opposite way where it doesn't mean you're going to never talk to your mom again, but right now it's too raw and it's going to cause more harm over the long term than maybe good. Yes. Yeah, I'm seeing it. You're going to be Aaron.

Aaron, don't you think like the don't you think the fact that the daughter doesn't want to go to the wedding speaks to a responsibility that the mom had, because she's the responsible party, she made a decision for herself to blow up the family. I'm not criticizing that or judging that, but she made a decision that impacted her daughter. And now her daughter is in a place where she says, I don't feel like celebrating with you.

It's incumbent on the mother to make the daughter feel comfortable, not the daughter to figure out how she can live with herself by going to this wedding. The responsibility is on the mother here, in my opinion. Well, absolutely. I mean, I think if she was empathetic to the situation, then she probably would have given the option, hey, I understand the trauma that this has caused. And I want to make space for you. I'd love for you to be there, there will

be a seat. But I also completely understand if you can't because of the situation, and I'll respect you your choice either way. It sounds like actually the dilemma here is not should she attend the wedding. The dilemma is should she address that lack of empathy and respect with her mother? And the answer there is yes, although I'm still going to the wedding. Yeah, I see. I don't, based on the limited information we have, Anthony, I think you're right, Erin. It's a lack of empathy from the mother. I think she's, she made a decision that I'm sure was the right one for her.

We don't know why she cheated, but she seems happy now. But she's not considering the spillover effect of an affair and breaking up a marriage and then having a big celebration when the father is still hurting. And it seems like all that empathy, it seems like the daughter has almost dug a deeper well of empathy to compensate for the lack of empathy from the mom, Anthony. Yeah, I mean, I see that too. If you really want to blow this wedding

up, your date could be your father. I could lead to some fireworks. But yeah, no, I think at the end of the day, it's kind of her decision. And the fact that the other sister maybe isn't affected the same way doesn't mean anything. So it's really up to her. She might have been too young to be affected the way this sister was. But so to this person who signed it anonymous, I think you're not doing anything wrong. You've made the right decision. But you might want to open up a conversation with your mother to discuss these things to see if there's a path forward for her

to be understanding as to why you're not there. That would be my suggestion. But guys, thank you, Anthony. Thank you, Erin. Really appreciate you joining me on The Dilemma. And I hope we can do it again soon. Thanks, Ben. you, Anthony. Thank you, Erin. Really appreciate you joining me on The Dilemma, and I hope we can do it again soon.

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The Ben Mulroney show marches on on this Wednesday Thank you so much for spending a bit of your day with us here at the show if you believe that a problem is Serious and you want to solve it, I think it's incumbent upon us to examine it from as many different angles and interpret it through as many different lenses as possible. That's how you understand the problem better. And the better you understand a problem, the more armed you are to attack it, deal with it, and solve for it. And so I'm very glad to be joined by our next guest. He's an economist, Mike Moffitt,

he's the founding director of a place center and the cohost of Missing Middle, because I had always viewed home ownership as an act. And then you buy another house and that's a separate act. But he and his group are viewing home ownership as a journey. And so to discuss that and what that means and how we maybe could look at the problems differently, we're joined by Mike Moffat. Mike, thanks so much for being here.

Oh, thank you for having me. Yeah. Up until I read this piece from the Missing Middle Initiative, like I said, I thought, okay, so you buy a house and that's great. Now you're on the real estate ladder until you're able to save up enough to move up the ladder. And it's just a series of separate isolated acts. But reading this is like, if you're reading this, you're on the real estate ladder until you're able to save up enough to move up the ladder.

And it's just a series of separate isolated acts. But reading this is like, you've got an example of one common middle-class housing pathway. Someone starts by living with their family. Then they rent with roommates. Then they rent alone or as a couple. Then they own a one or two bedroom home.

A one to three plus bedroom home large enough for a family. And then owning a smaller seniors friendly house. It's all part of one organic journey. Yeah, it is, or at least it's supposed to be. And that's how things work for a long time. I think both you and I are Gen X, and that's how a lot of us got started,

where we live with our parents, and maybe we went away to university, rented with some roommates, rented a loan and then late 90s, early 2000s, bought our first condo, saved up some equity, then use that to buy a three bedroom home where we can raise kids. What we say in the piece is that that journey, you can think of it a ladder, you can use a number of descriptors, that's broken for a lot of millennials in Gen Z. They might get up to the point of renting, though many aren't, and staying with their parents. But those ownership steps have just been eliminated for them, unfortunately.

So fully eliminated, or is it a choke point that's slowing it down? Where are those eliminated points as you see them? Well, I think a couple things. So there is that choke point, I think, between staying with your parents and then kind of going out on your own. Though most are eventually making that jump, but it's taking a little bit longer than it has.

I think there's a couple of really big choke points. The one is the sort of first time home buyer going from renter to owner. A lot of it is that rents are so high, it's hard to save up enough money to get that 5% down payment. So that first time home buyer problem. But what we say in the piece is there's also a second home buyer problem where we're not seeing people being able to move from owning a condo to a larger home unless they have a lot of family wealth their parents are able to help out or something like that. But if they're on their own,

they're not making that jump. Yeah, I was lucky enough to get some help from my family. It wasn't that I was prevented from buying a house. It's that had I bought it on my own, I literally would have been house poor. I wouldn't have, they'll buy groceries. And so they were able to help me with that. And yeah, the bank of mom and dad is a real thing for more and more Canadians, but not for everyone.

And so yeah, it does exclude people from that journey. It's, I was really stunned because you opened my eyes to another problem as well, which is how seniors are prevented from downsizing when they are empty nesters or they may want to have some more money in their pocket to fund their retirement. Talk to me about that scenario, because I hadn't thought about that one. Yeah, we are seeing that. We are seeing seniors, not just age and place in the sense of not going to a facilitated living community, but actually staying in their large suburban homes.

And a lot of that is due to the fact that it just doesn't make financial sense to downsize. So let's say you're in the city of Toronto, you downsize, you get hit with a 2% Ontario land transfer tax, a 2% city of Toronto land transfer tax. There's all of these fees. So yeah, you're cashing out of your home to go into something smaller.

You might think, okay, well, that's a windfall, but not after you pay all of these taxes and fees. And oftentimes the places you're going into do not necessarily meet seniors' needs. They're like a high rise on the 37th floor downtown where seniors often want something smaller and more community focused. And actually it's really interesting that you bring that up

because the narrative that had been pushed on me was that seniors were selfish and they weren't selling their home, which could then go to a younger family. They want to stay in that house that they didn't need. But you're pointing out that in a lot of cases, it might have something to do with the financial disincentive to move.

Yeah, absolutely. So some of it, people wanna stay in their own house and it's their home. If they wanna stay there, we shouldn't, we shouldn't call them selfish or otherwise. They worked hard for us. But I know there are a lot of, I use my parents as a two-person focus group.

My dad has threatened to move every year for the last 25 years and has never done it. Because when he looks at, he starts to look around, he can't find anything that meets his needs. Or if it does, he says, I'm just going to get dinged so much on taxes, so much on condo fees. It's just not worth it at the end of the day. So there are a lot of folks like my parents who would love to downsize, but those options aren't there and taxes and fees just make it not worthwhile. So is the sort of the general solution that we would be looking for a sort of reduction of those taxes and regulations

to give those seniors the mobility that they might want, to give them the options that they currently don't have? Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give you an example. British Columbia has a exemption on land transfer tax if you're going into a new home, a newly built home. And what that does is it lowers the price of a new home. It gets more new homes built, but it also causes those fees to go down.

It becomes more attractive. So those kinds of lowering land transfer taxes, looking at things like enhanced GST rebates. Right now the federal government's talking about it, but only for first time home buyers. That helps them, but it doesn't help those second time home buyers I mentioned. It doesn't help those seniors.

What is the reticence? I always hear, I heard it from everybody on the political spectrum in the last election campaign. It was like, it was always, everything was for first time home buyers. And I didn't understand that as well. Like this is a crisis that defies one silo over another. It's not just a crisis for defies one silo over another.

It's not just a crisis for first time home buyers. So why aren't we addressing this writ large? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think there's an over-focus. I think sometimes comms kind of gets in the way of policy where it's easier to kind of express, you know, the needs for first time home buyers and that infects policies. But you're absolutely right that this impacts

all of these other groups as well. And kind of ironically, this might actually end up hurting first time home buyers. Cause what we're hearing from young people is that, hey, I really one day wanna own that three plus bedroom home. If I buy that smaller condo today, I lose all of those first time homebuyer privileges, I can't access them again.

And they're so much more valuable to me. So I maybe maybe I'll rent and hope I can skip that that rung on the ladder and go from renting right into that into that forever home. Well, exactly, because you get a much better, bigger GST rebate that way. So it's these unintended consequences when you make policy a little too targeted, a little too cute. So that is one of the big fears that I have

that in a lot of markets, this is actually going to reduce first time home buyers because millennials are smart, Gen Z's, they're smart. They do the math and say, it's just not worth it. I'm gonna continue renting, and then I'm gonna use those first time home buyer benefits when they're really valuable, and that's buying the three bedroom home.

Is there, what's the solution you would bring to bear on that first part that we addressed, that renting, the renter trying to get into the condo market, but they can't because rent is so high, they can't save anything up. What's the solution there? Yeah, so there are a few things to do besides just getting rents down. Some provinces like PEI have a program where if your credit rating is good enough, and you've rented for long enough, they will actually front you some of the money, they will loan you some of the money for the

deposit. Is that tends to be where the challenge is, getting that 5%. Mike, I wasn't watching the clock. I do apologize. I'd love to continue this conversation at a later date. Take care, my friend. Yeah, you too. Take care. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And if you're like me, you got an iPhone. If you're like almost everybody I know, you got an iPhone, except for those weird people with the androids. But John Turley-Uart, contributing columnist to the Globe and Mail, he's also a regulatory compliance consultant and chorus radio contributor,

has written a fascinating piece in the Globe and Mail entitled, Why Apple Can Make iPhones Only in China and What Canada Can Learn From It. John, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Ben. So we keep hearing Donald Trump saying he wants iPhones built in the US. What's your pushback to that?

Reality. All right. My pushback is reality. When you hold your iPhone in your hand, you're holding a testament to modern day manufacturing that we just haven't seen anywhere else. and you're holding uh... you know a testament to modern-day manufacturing that we just haven't seen anywhere else and it's a combination of of of things that we see in china

and uh... you know i i don't think that obviously credit for all this research but the research it really comes out of uh... a book called apple in china that just came out by uh... patrick mckay who's a canadian uh... reporter uh... and who is reported on Apple for years and did an in-depth study on Apple and interviewed 200 former Apple employees. And here's what we learned,

and it answers your question as to why Mr. Trump will never see Apple produced in Apple iPhones produced in the United States. So first of all, Apple has been investing billions of dollars in China to build manufacturing capacity. How much? $55 billion a year. A year? A year? $55 billion a year, starting in 2015 for five years. So half a trillion dollars.

Yeah. This is, this is in today's dollars. Um, but if you looked at the Marshall plan in today's dollars, Apple has put in more than double what the Marshall plan was to rebuild Europe. To rebuild Europe. That's amazing. Um, they have also trained, you know, well over, uh, 25 million people in China.

And when I say train up, there's two levels of development going on in China. There is high skilled engineers who have been trained by Apple. There's high skilled managers who've been trained by Apple. People who do supply chain management, all that sort of thing, and also fine tooling manufacturing for all the little bits and pieces you have in your iPhone. And how many bits and pieces you have in your iPhone? You have about a thousand.

And in a Chinese factory that produces iPhones, they produce about half a million iPhones a month. That's 500 million parts a month going into that factory. Yeah. So, but I mean, if you say it's reality and you've just laid out a pretty, what sounds like an airtight case, then what's Donald Trump not getting? So, you know, well, how to read his mind? I think what he is trying to do is to get Apple maybe to move more of its cloud service work back to the U.S., its servers to the U.S.

He's using this as a negotiating tool. I mean, I saw an analyst put a price on an Apple iPhone made in the US of $3,500. That's just wrong. There's no dollar value because it would never happen. And here's the other piece that's so important for people to understand. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Let's just live in that hypothetical for a moment. So let's just live in a world where Apple was able to ramp up sort of the training and the infrastructure and the workflow to build something here. And they've got more money than any company. So let's just assume they could pay for it. And let's say that happened today with American workers being paid American wages, with the

cost of production, the cost of labor being what it is. Do you think that they do you think it would be 3500 bucks? You think it'd be more than that? No, I think it'd be far more than that. You're probably looking at 10 or $15,000 a phone. And so here's the thing about the factory maybe factories and china employ about a hundred thousand people but they turn through twenty five thousand a month in some circumstances

meaning twenty five thousand people hate the work so much they quit uh... and and he he he he he he he china abhi the only way this works is because the communist government Beijing keeps an exploitable workforce available for their manufacturing base and for Apple. This exploitable workforce comes from rural China. They work 12, 15-hour days. There is more than 300 million of these people who are available for just in time manufacturing and you know one of

the really interesting things have done is that uh... apple and other manufacturers in china have uh... so refine the manufacturing process they can train someone in twenty minutes how to do the jobs i need to be done that is no throwing in the camera lens or putting in a screw or whatever it is in a particular phone. So people are readily replaceable once they get exhausted by the monotony and the conditions of the work. That's fascinating.

Absolutely fascinating. So I had no idea that this phone was built on the backs of exploited workers. I had no idea. I just assumed Apple, a great American company with high ethics and morals and what have you, I had no idea. That's a little bit disappointing. Well, it is. And I suppose to take Apple's side on this and give their perspective, they certainly tried to manufacture in the US.s. and try to manufacture in europe uh... they did manufacture in in taiwan i think what they would argue is that is that those workers who are coming in

uh... you know to do the uh... the labor uh... are better off than working in in the field several parts of china and and i think the answer to that question is compared to that absolutely because they can make some more money but you know that the beijing government prohibits them from moving into the cities in a permanent basis their children are back home in the rural areas where they come from

and the first shift around the country and certainly to make better money than in the rural areas but in terms of how we look upon that i think they could stay in the cities, if they had other choices, they'd likely make them and we would see iPhone production change. In the sort of the reality that you just laid out about what and how Apple has built out its existence in China, is that unique to them? I mean, is Samsung doing something similar?

Are the other competitors to Apple doing similar things in China? Or is this a unique Apple experience? I would say this is a unique Apple experience. Because again, we're not just talking about iPhones, we're also talking about their desktops, their laptops, all the machines they make. What Apple is known for is the quality of their design and the quality of their product. And so when you have an Apple laptop, it's got that metal case around it. That's an incredibly fine bit of machinery that makes that metal case. Those machines cost millions of dollars.

And Apple, you know, basically spent millions in China buying those and putting it into their supply chain so they could make those beautiful laptops that feel so good that you can get in pink or silver or whatever. John, a few years ago, I mean, I heard the story that America wanted ago, I heard the story that America wanted to, to sort of diversify where they were getting a lot of these manufactured goods from and we're asking American companies to move from China to places like Vietnam. The great irony was then Donald Trump comes in and terrors Vietnam as if that was somehow not a plan of the American government is, is China the only place this can happen because of the sheer number of people they have available

to create these workforces? Or could they offshore from China to a place like Vietnam? I don't think they could. I've had, you know, some people argue that, you know, Apple is making things in India and Brazil. But if you look deeply into this, what they're doing, for example, in India is called final assembly. That is all the manufacturing for a particular product happens in china

they ship it over a can it get uh... you know put together thrown in a box and then it says final assembly are assembled in india uh... in india you don't have a government that forces rural people uh... into a situation where they have no choice we don't have that kind of available workforce. And I will tell you, like, you know, one of the interesting things is they prefer Chinese women in these workforces because their hands are smaller.

Right. Think about that. Like it is such a refined manufacturing process that has real moral implications. John Turley, thank you so much. It's a heck of a story. It opened my eyes to this entire thing. So I really appreciate your time today. Thanks so much. Thank you. to your Petro points account. You instantly save three cents per liter at the pump, and you earn 20% bonus Petro points. That's like 1.2 cents per liter, plus 20% bonus Avion reward points. That's like 2.8 cents per liter,

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You're listening to the Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and the Edmonton Oilers are in the Stanley Cup final. Starts tonight. A lot of Canadians beyond Edmonton excited that, per chance, perhaps, another Canadian team can win the Stanley Cup final, hoist Lord Stanley's Cup. The last time that happened was in 1993 when my Montreal Canadians beat the Los Angeles Kings. And here to talk about here to take us in the way back machine, to take us all the way back to 1993, we're joined by our great friend, our Sherpa of Canadian

history, Craig Baird. Welcome to the show, Craig. Thanks for having me. So I was at that final game in Montreal when the Habs beat the Kings. I remember it as vividly as this moment that we're experiencing right now. And I also remember that there were riots outside and after they won and we had to take refuge across the street at the RCMP offices, their barracks

and we had to wait out and wait until the police got control over the crowds. Yeah, it was kind of like a, it was a very important year for Canada in 1993. I mean, obviously beyond the fact that it was the last time that a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup. I mean, just looking in politics, we had three prime ministers that year. Obviously, your father was the prime minister for the start of the year, then Kim Campbell came in, and then Jean Crescent came in. That's only happened four times in Canadian history where we had three different prime ministers over the course of a single year. And then we had somebody like Catherine Kulbeck who won the PEI general election. She became the first female premier

to actually lead her party to victory in an election. And that was also the first year that we had two female premieres in Canada. And that's something that wouldn't happen again until 2011. So just in politics, it was a pretty amazing year. It was. But in sports, if we can go back to sports for a moment, it was a really exciting time for sports in Canada.

The Habs won. It was the last time. We didn't so yeah, I mean, the Habs won. It was the last time, we didn't know it was gonna be the last time, it just happened to be. But also let's not forget the Blue Jays. Yeah, I mean, the Blue Jays winning the World Series against Philadelphia Phillies. I mean, I remember exactly where I was when I saw Joe Carter hit that home run, you know,

sitting with my father, watching the game in our house. And then the Sacramento Goldminers became the first US CFL team. And we had the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds win their only Memorial Cup. Edmonton won the Grey Cup. And the Toronto Raptors were kind of approved to be the newest team in the NBA. Obviously, they wouldn't play till 1995 though. I remember when I was living in the United States

for the summer, I was watching ESPN and they had a whole show on trying to teach Americans the difference between American football and the rules of the CFL. It was really funny. I remember that because there was that, yeah, the Sacramento gold miners, but then there was also,

yeah, it was this like failed attempt at expansion into the States. They had the Shreveport Pirates. I don't know if you remember the Shreveport Pirates, but they essentially lifted, they totally copied the New England Patriots logo. They just changed the colors, and the Patriot became a pirate. It was really funny. Yeah, it was a very odd experiment that only lasted two years. By 1996, we had actually seen the end of the American teams that played in the CFL. But the Baltimore Stallions actually were pretty successful. They did win the Grey Cup. I remember that. Oh my God, I can't believe Baltimore had the Grey Cup. That. That's right. Hey, and I cannot believe that in

1992, there was no such thing as this hour as 22 minutes 1993, it launched and it's been eponymous ever since. Are you exactly they? Yeah, they launched that during the election campaign, actually. And so that was a very big part of, you know, entertainment. But we also had like the first albums from Jan Arden and great Big Sea and Shania Twain. So even just in entertainment, it was this huge year. And lastly, because I was there when it was first announced, but the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, Nunavut Act were passed. I was with my dad in what was to become Nunavut for the big announcement.

And I just remember that being, I remember being there and knowing something special was happening. Yeah, the creation of an Inva, like you mentioned, and even the Social Credit Party ended its run as a federal party this year. So it's like so many things happened in 1993. And you don't really think about it when you're in that year how important that year was to Canadian history. Well, let's talk about your episode this week

as we are launching into Pride Month here in Canada. There was, I mean, I couldn't believe this. I thought I was reading an article from The Onion. There was a machine used by the federal government to what, sniff out gay people? Yeah, essentially that's exactly what it was. It had the rather unfortunate name. It was given the name by the people who administered it.

They called it the fruit machine, which was a very unfortunate name. And yeah, it was a series of psychological tests that were given to anybody suspected of being gay and working for the federal government. It was actually created by Dr. Frank Robert Wake, who is a psychology professor at Carleton University. And this program actually ran from 1960 to 1964. So it's not really known how many men actually lost their jobs because of this testing, but it could have been in the hundreds. But it did allow the RCMP to collect files over 9,000 people. And really it just used a lot of pseudoscience to determine if a person was gay just based on their responses, like their eyes dilating. So let me see. So somebody's just a

bureaucrat, a pencil pusher going through their day, and then somebody doesn't like them and suspects they might be gay, and what lets the authorities know and then they have to go in for psychological testing? Yeah, pretty much. They were told that it was stress testing, and then they have to go in for psychological testing? Yeah, pretty much. They were told that it was stress testing, and they were just put into a chair that looked like a dentist chair, and then just shown essentially pornographic images

of men and women, and then their responses were analyzed. And like I said, it's very much pseudoscience. There's no real basis for this, but for a lot of people that, yeah, just on the suspicion that they might be gay, they were put through these tests. All right, well, let's listen to a snippet of this week's episode of Canadian History X and the LGBT history of Canada. But why was the federal government interested in outing people in the civil service, armed

forces and RCMP? At the time, it was a commonly held belief that gay men suffered from a mental illness and had weak character. During the Cold War, the government saw gay men as a security risk. In their paranoia, they believed that they could be turned into Soviet spies by agents who preyed upon their quote unquote weaknesses. To determine this so-called security risk, the government began to compile a list of men and its employees that were suspected of being gay, but the process was taking too

long. So the government turned to Dr. Wake to build his device. If a federal employee was suspected of being gay, they were called to a room for the purposes of undergoing a stress test. The subjects sat in what looked like a dentist chair, and as their heart rate was analyzed, images of naked men and women were displayed. A person next to the subject would analyze the size of the subject's pupils and measure any changes through a camera. Another test had a subject hold a bag of cobalt chloride and silica gel in their hand as they read quote unquote homosexual words like circus, bagpipe, blind, camp, fish, and so.

The test was supposed to measure changes in moisture, as it was believed that sweat would change the colour of the crystals. It goes without saying that the accuracy of these tests was highly questionable. I can't believe this happened and I I get that in 2017, the federal government apologized for the machine. But if I were the descendant or the relative of somebody who had been traumatized and embarrassed and marginalized because of a test that was like a witch trial, I would need more than an apology, Craig.

Well, I agree, absolutely. I mean, you had careers ruined by this. And I mean, I when I mentioned the homosexual words, I don't understand why something like bagpipes, you know, is in there and how this is determined. But yeah, I absolutely would say that people are deserved to be compensated because we would ruin lives and ruin entire careers. Which could lead to ruining families. I mean, a lot of these people, I mean, whether they were in the closet or not, some of them might've been married,

but whether it's straight or gay, some of them might've been married. And this could have derailed the entire course of their lives. They might've lost their homes. They might've lost their, they might've committed suicide after this. This is, this is, I mean, it's got that dumb name,

the fruit machine that might make people smirk, but this is a, this is a human rights abuse that really, I do hope, I mean, I just don't feel that an apology from the government is enough for something like this, but I do, I do thank you, my friend, for highlighting it. This is the type of thing that Canadians need to be armed with. The more we know about our history, the more we can move forward with our eyes open.

Hey, thank you very much, Craig. Thanks for having me again. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulrady 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. To celebrate the Days of Our Lives 60th anniversary, W Network and Stack TV invite you to enter

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