The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 4 - Anthony Koch, Jennifer Dundas, Craig Baird

Episode Date: May 18, 2025

Best of the Week Part 4 - Anthony Koch, Jennifer Dundas, Craig Baird Guests: Anthony Koch, Jennifer Dundas, Craig Baird, Neama Rahmadi 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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Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees exclusions and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great discussions this week, including the latest twist in terms of the Diddy trial plus should Canada follow the UK's lead on immigration changes? Enjoy.

This is the Ben Mulroney Show. And thank you so much for spending a little bit of your Thursday with us. The story of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is an interesting one, right? So after years of inept leadership by the Conservative Party in the UK, Keir Starmer's Labour Party sort of reinvented itself as being a hodgepodge of left and right, specifically to the, they ran to the right of the Conservatives on immigration, bungled immigration, a lot of people believe, and if you see the visuals of the UK these days, you can

appreciate what that means. But, and then he goes the visuals of the UK these days, you can appreciate what that means. But, and then he goes through a period of time where he just appeared feckless and useless. Then he comes back and turns it up to 11 on immigration, where he's recently been taking the toughest of tough lines on human migration and immigration to the UK. He recently tweeted, I've already returned over 24,000 people with no right to be here and I won't stop there. I know you're angry about immigration. I get it.

Mark my words, I will take back control of our borders. That means cutting migration, ending the use of asylum hotels and ramping up our efforts to stop small boat crossings. We will smash the people smuggling gangs at source. I mean, these are tough words, and I believe it will be followed and has been followed at least up until this point with tough action.

So here to talk about whether Canada should and does Canada have the capacity and ability to follow suit, because we have our own issues with immigration is Anthony Kosh. Anthony is the managing principal at AK Strategies and former national campaign spokesperson for Pierre Poliev. Anthony, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on.

Okay, so I don't think it's, I think it's accurate to say that Keir Starmer's taking a hard line. I think the right line, because things are reaching the red line when it comes to immigration and the issues that come from unchecked immigration in the UK. 100% but it's just shocking. Like this is the Labour Party. This is the party that is to the left of the Liberals in Canada on most issues and has been for quite some time. And has supported this sort of vision of mass migration. And that's the thing that's even more amazing too. It's not even so much the policies that Prime Minister Stammer is taking, it's the rhetoric that he's using around

them. Right? He says, we're going to end Great Britain's open borders experiment. That's something that you would never have heard from the left that probably would have been attacked for everything. You know, he had a tweet that he put out today talking about how he's meeting with officials in Albania to cut down drugs rings at the source. He's going off about it. It's not just legal immigration. He also put out a tweet saying, you know, it's time for common sense. If you want to live in the United Kingdom, you have to speak English. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Board to board legal immigration, illegal immigration. They're cutting down even by the way, on the amount of time that graduates from UK universities have to stay in the United Kingdom before they find a job. There used to be 24 months, now it's 18. The most shocking one up until recently, the way it worked in the UK before you got settlement,

so basically the equivalent of permanent residency in Canada, you had to live in the UK for five years and then they would allow you to apply for citizenship a year after that. He's doubling it. Not five years now. Now he wants ten years before you get PR. These are kind of things that conservatives couldn't have ever even dreamed of proposing six months ago and now all of a sudden he's going full pit. It's obvious this is partially a result of the reform party surging in the UK, but it's still just incredible to see. So, so let's take it to our side of the pond. We've got a new government that has the chance to define itself as not the guys from the past. Taking a hard line like this would,

would do a lot of good for Mark Carney on a lot of fronts. First of all, he would appeal to the 41, almost 42% of the people that didn't vote for him. Two, he would solve some real problems that were the creation of his predecessor, demonstrating on a further point that he is not Justin Trudeau. But do you think that this government has it in them

to do something like this? I certainly hope so. I think it's possible. You saw there was already some movement in this direction actually under prime minister Justin Trudeau. It was a little bit too little too late to piece me as I argued in my piece. But you saw Mark Miller was openly talking

about a couple of things. You know what? We made it too easy for people to just sort of show up and scam the game on international student visas. He even went as far as to say, you know what, we're actually probably taking too many people from the same countries, which is making it more difficult for people to integrate. Again, stuff that five, six years ago would have been impossible to say.

And then you saw there's been some early indication, Mark Carney has said on a number of occasions that we need to have certain immigration caps, that it's clear that our numbers have been too large, that that's resulted in negative. Anthony, like, yes, I've sat in front of this mic for too long and I've talked too often about a government under this liberal banner. I know it's a different government,

but it's this liberal banner. They love talking. They love talking. They love, they love talking a mean game. And, and my fear is that we are going to do the most Canadian thing we do, which is talk a mean game, and then putting a series of half half measures that don't do anything. And in some cases, because you haven't gone all the way, you make things worse like that, to me is a very realistic possibility. Correct. And yesterday is a great indication of that, right? Everyone is expecting, like you said, Oh, we got a new government. And then you've got Gregor Robertson, the former

failed mayor of Vancouver coming out and telling everybody, Oh, actually, we're not doing anything different on housing. Right? You've got Anita and Anne coming out and basically saying, Oh, you thought that Melanie Jolie leaving as foreign affairs was going to result in a different posturing. No, we're not changing that. You had what's it, uh, Stefan Gibow, who's now minister of culture deciding that he wants to opine once again, as if he was minister of the environment and saying, oh, you know how Carney was talking about potentially building pipelines and getting rid of C69?

Yeah. Not happening from my perspective. And then you have Sean Fraser saying that he's going to mail it in and spend more time back at home even though he's attorney general, he's minister of justice. So you're right. It's weird. We're getting mixed signals. A lot of the stuff is indicating that we're just elected a fourth Trudeau term and nothing's

really going to change. But I'm saying if the liberals want to, not only has Keir Starmer given them some ideological cover, but Mark Carney has also laid some of the groundwork that would justify some of these changes based on his previous rhetoric. But you're right. I mean, we've had 10 years of a government that said a bunch of things and did very little,

or like you said, the things that they did do made things worse. I'm just saying that they've given some opening to themselves that if they do decide to go down this pathway, it wouldn't be coming out of left field. Yeah. And they would have a lot of people from across the spectrum congratulating them for the tough decision to do the things that need to get done. And in our last couple of minutes, I want to talk about this, this riding in Quebec, terrible, where the after a recount, the liberals beat the Bloc Québécois by one vote, and then we find out that a vote that could have gone to the Bloc Québécois was denied because

it was a mail-in ballot, and the address that was printed by Elections Canada for Elections Canada to be sent to Elections Canada had the wrong postal code, and they refused to count it, which would have effectively resulted in a tie. Elections Canada then comes around and says, you know what, we don't care. We're certifying this election. This is a problem. This is a real problem.

Correct. And it's annoying because at a time when mistrust in institutions is at an all time high, Canadian institutions have an obligation even more so than they already do. Forget just being by the letter of the law, going above and beyond both in perception and in reality. And it wasn't just ter bun.

You also had an incident where an elections Canada worker forgot that they took a ballot box home with them. And oh, there was 800 votes that we forgot to count. Now we got to count them. And it's very similar, by the way, to what happened in British Columbia. Elections BC had a similar thing. Ballot boxes missing because workers brought them home. And then a couple of writings flipped as a result of it.

And here's the point. I'm not here suggesting that there's foul play. But at a time when people are having serious doubt, smell things, even the appearance of foul play is a problem. This is rookie stuff. Get it done. Get it done properly. Yeah. What's the line? Never ascribe nefarious intent when incompetence is probably the reason

behind it. There is incompetence here, right? And simply certifying something and saying, well, this is the way it is. That doesn't give people more faith in your institution. And despite what the CBC tried to peddle, there isn't, there aren't a whole lot of people in this country that don't have faith in the final result of an election, but stuff like this doesn't help. Correct, it really doesn't. Yep, Anthony, I want to thank you very much for joining us. And honestly, man, the article is,

the UK is ending open borders, immigration, Canada should do the same in the national post-diary. It's everybody to read it. It's an important conversation. It's a hard conversation, but one that we as a country have to have. Anthony, always great to talk to you. And we'll have you back on real soon.

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everyday purchases. The PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard, the card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit PCFinancial.ca for details. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for joining us. We are going to move away from Canadian politics and go to the into the legal world. One of the most salacious explosive cases that I think any of us can remember I'm talking

of obviously of the Sean Combs criminal case that is taking place in the United States right now. And we are now joined by Anima Ramani, legal analyst, former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial for an update. Anima, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, Ben. Thanks for having me as always. So this is, I mean, listen, you cover these cases, you cover far more cases than we talk about on this show. But I have to believe that this is in a league of its own, even by your standards.

No question in terms of the graphic and explicit nature of the testimony, Cassie Ventura, the government star witness on the stand, and she has been telling an unbelievable story over the past several days that she was given drugs to the point where she would throw up that did he would pay sex workers to urinate on her that she was forced to have sex when she was menstruating and bleeding and even when she had a UTI. And today, the defense gets the chance to cross-examine her. I believe that today and tomorrow will make or break the case, depending on how well Cassie Ventura holds up on cross-examination. So do you have, do we have any sense on how long this case is supposed to go on for?

Like, and how long until it goes before the jury? The case is scheduled for two months. I don't think it's going to go that long. I think we're going to wrap sometime in June. But the judge in the case, Judge Supermonia, has told the jury they may be here through the 4th of July. You know, the Canadian legal system, different than the American, talk to me about the decision by a judge to either allow cameras in a courtroom or in this case, deprive the viewing public of watching it in real time. What went into deciding that there would be no cameras here versus say the Amber Heard

Johnny Depp trial that everybody was following with bated breath. One big difference in the United States is you have different state courts, you have federal courts. And unfortunately, in federal courts, there is a specific rule, and you can blame the United States Supreme Court for this, that prohibits cameras or any recording devices

in any federal court in the country. So it was really out of the judge in this case's hands. It was really up to the Chief Judge, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He hasn't been inclined to overturn this rule, which is why we see the courtroom sketch artists and not the cameras that we saw

in the Johnny Depp emperor case. Yeah, I don't know about you, there's a big part of me that's glad that I can't hear the words coming out of Cassie Ventura's mouth because I need that distance, I need that buffer of hearing it from, you know, an interested third party. To hear it directly, I think would be,

it would be too much for a lot of people. It would, and you know, the jurors are seeing images of the free cost themselves because combs would record them reportedly for his own sexual pleasure and to maintain control over Cassidy and other participants. So even the spectators in the courtroom, they're not seeing those explicit images. There are privacy screens set up. So just the jurors can see them. Anima Rani, at this point, do you know the list of people that are expected to take the stand,

or is that a surprise every day? It's a surprise every day. Usually the parties will discuss it the day before. We know that Cassie's testimony is gonna continue until at least Friday. There have been several other victims named, but I also expect former employees, members of Diddy's entourage to testify. What makes this case unique is there are a lot of people involved in setting up these free costs, procuring sex workers, getting the hotel rooms, getting the thousand bottles of

baby oil and all the drugs that were involved there. So expect to see some of those employees as well. And that's what I was going to ask as well. Is there going to be a spillover effect from because this is again, this is a criminal enterprise, right? With Diddy at the top making the calling the shots, but he had plenty of willful participants on his side, specifically members of his staff. We heard yesterday from Cassie Ventura that there were doctors that Diddy could rely on for prescription drugs that would be made out into the names of anybody he wanted

so that he could get a lot of them. Is there going to be any sort of legal effect on those people as their names are brought forth? Potentially, yes. I expect the government to lean on these individuals, cooperate them, flip them, and say, listen, you're gonna come testify in the case, or you're gonna be prosecuted.

That's what I did when I was a prosecutor, and it worked almost every single time. And look, I don't want to assume anybody's guilt. I would never do that. But in the court of public opinion, there are some pretty big celebrity names that have been in the orbit of Diddy over the course of decades.

And it has been assumed that because they knew him and because they partied with him, they could have had some sort of association to these freak-offs. Is there an anticipation and an expectation that those names of very big celebrity friends of his are going to come up in this trial and either they could take the stand

or they could face legal punishment of their own? That's the biggest question in the case. Everyone wants to know who else participated in these freak offs, who witnessed them. So far, no big names yet, but there's a lot of speculation out there on social media. Really the only big name so far is rapper Kid Cudi, and that's just because Diddy was jealous of them

and threatened to blow up his car. Yeah, threatened to blow up his car and do it while he was out of town so he could maintain his innocence. This is the stuff. I mean, I can see them right in the Netflix special threatened to blow up his car and do it while he was out of town so he could maintain his innocence. This is the stuff. I mean, I can see them right in the Netflix special right now on this case. I'm blown away by what we're learning every single day. But it's that celebrity angle. You know, hasn't hasn't received satisfactory information as they would as they would see it when it comes to the Epstein files. And I think there's a similar

expectation here that, you know, the people the rich and powerful that partied with Diddy, I think there's this hope that they won't if there is justice that needs to be extracted from those people. I think a lot of people are expecting that and probably want it more than anything. Oh, no question. I mean, this is one of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood. And it's not just Cassie Ventura. There are upwards of 100 victims who have filed civil lawsuits. So I'm not saying all of those are meritorious, but definitely when there's an abuser, they usually abuse more than one person.

I think that's what we're seeing in decades of committing these types of abuse. I think that is finally going to be brought to justice. And Nima, what do you make of the allegation that Diddy was, I mean, there's so much video, right? There's so much document to prove, do we know if there are any celebrities and big names who are seen in these videos? We believe that there are, according to Cassie Ventura and some of the other civil plaintiffs,

but those names just haven't been made public yet. I don't know if the government is just taking a cautious approach. They don't want to really expand the net here, make this into even more of a circus, but the civil plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits have said that there were other participants. There's plenty of folks that did these infamous white parties. I'm expecting that shoe to drop any day now, but it hasn't yet so far. And lastly, what does, I mean, it doesn't seem like this is going to end very well for Sean Combs. With the mountain of evidence that seems to be presented, what would have to happen

for the prosecution's case to collapse entirely? There are some members of the public who disbelieve these types of claims, especially when they're raised years later. And the question they say is, well, why didn't Cassie leave? Why didn't she tell anyone when this was happening? Of course, as a former prosecutor, I know that's the psychology of an abuse victim and that's not a typical, but some people believe that this is all fabricated because Combs is a celebrity and these victims want money, fame or revenge. All right, Nima Ramani, thank you so much for joining us and giving us an update on this

explosive trial. We appreciate it. Thanks Ben. Talk to you soon. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show on the Chorus Radio Network. All right, it's time for a segment of semi-regular segment where we like to look at municipal governments and the inanity that lies therein. And the example that we're using today, if you've been a listener in Toronto for a long time, is the case of Henry Dundas, staunch abolitionist who was pushing for the end of slavery, and but didn't do it fast enough for certain people in the far distant future. And for that

reason, his entire contribution to British history, Canadian history. Well, we're just gonna get rid of it. We're just gonna get rid of it. There was an announcement by the Toronto Transit Commission Board that is voted in favor of renaming Dundas Station in favor of a, as I see it, a pathetic name, the Toronto Metropolitan University Station. And I say it's, the Toronto Metropolitan University Station. And I say it's pathetic

because Toronto Metropolitan University has a persnickety little reputation now of having created a hostile environment for Jewish students. So you're trading a good for a not so good. We're joined now to discuss this, the ludicrous nature of this entire, the tenor of this conversation and the people involved in it. Jennifer Dundas lawyer, former Crown Prosecutor and political affairs reporter for the CBC and her last name should give you an indication of her expertise on the topic. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ben.

So did I say anything off base in that in the first part of this intro? No, you got it bang on. Absolutely. Henry Dunnbass was very committed to abolition of the slave trade and the slavery. And in fact, he was the lawyer who led the legal team that convinced Scotland's highest court to declare that no person could be a slave in Scotland. And at that time he was representing a black slave from Jamaica who was fighting for his

freedom. And he did that pro bono. So that tells you where he started from early in his career. And then he built on that later by developing a comprehensive plan to end and wind down the slave trade in a way that would actually work because he was gonna get buy-in from all of the players. Yes, but Jennifer, that's not good enough. Why didn't he use his time machine to come to the future and see that the people of 2025 would have been upset

that he didn't have a magic wand? In fact, why didn't he use his magic wand to get rid of slavery immediately? I mean, those are the rules we're expecting people from the past to play by. They need to know what the future was and they need to have a magic wand to change their present. Yes, it's completely unreasonable to hold people from the past to these standards, but I have to say even so, what Henry Dundas did

in the late 18th century stands up very well to modern scrutiny. Part of what's been missed wasn't just on abolition and slavery. There were a range of other human rights issues where he also, even by modern standards, would be considered progressive. No, listen, I like to reverse the equation and say, how would we have acquitted ourselves

back then? I think most of the people doing the passing judgment today would have acquitted themselves very poorly back then. They would have been, I don't know that they would have espoused the progressive values that they so valiantly wear on their sleeve today back then. But that's another hypothetical. So it doesn't really, it won't bear fruit. Let's talk about the here and now.

Let's talk about what I think is just a sham of a process that is eliminating a key person from our history with the Toronto Transit Commission coming out in favour of renaming Dundas Station. Talk to us about that. Okay, I'm so glad you raised that the Transit Commission coming out in favour of renaming Dundas station. Talk to us about that. OK, I'm so glad you raised that because the process here says so much about why it is we shouldn't be approaching these historical figures in the way that we tend to.

So Toronto started out with these terrible allegations against Henry Dundas. He was a monster. He was a horrible person. In fact, I heard city councilor use some of those words. But yesterday when the TTC actually voted on renaming that station, councilor after councilor stood up and said they did not accept those allegations. And even though they were supporting the renaming, they did not support and they were basically

severing themselves from those allegations in making this decision. And in fact, some of the counselors said they agreed with us and our submissions in defense of Henry Dinda. So we've gone through this whole process only to end up where counselors are now taking the floor and saying, I don't believe this stuff.

I'm still gonna vote for renaming. Yeah. But it's not based on any allegations about the person after whom this was named. No, no, they've pulled a bait and switch. So when they realized that their desire to get what they wanted by way of besmirching his reputation was going to fail

because the history was finally coming to light, that this was an honorable man worthy of celebration and commemoration. They decided to pull a bait and switch and say, no, no, there's a financial incentive here. Look at all the money we're gonna get for this. Look at this innovation hub that we're going to be creating. And so they're dangling a carrot now, even though they failed at the first part.

But again, I then go back to what I said off the top, that TMU in very short order has demonstrated that it is a hotbed of anti-Semitism and that there are Jewish students there who do not feel safe. And so you're replacing a man who should be viewed as on the pantheon of abolitionists as a hero and you're replacing that guy with the name of a university whose name is should be bringing Torontonian shame. Exactly and it's similar to renaming Yongeonge Dundas Square after Sankofa, which is a word that comes from an African tribe that was one of the foremost slave traders in Africa and colluded

and cooperated entirely with the African, the Atlantic slave trade. So these decisions are just bizarre on that level, but what I saw yesterday was counselors trying to have it both ways. They wanted to appease the people who want renaming of anything that has to do with settler and colonization, at the same time, appeasing those who are in favor of historical accuracy. I mean, but you can't have it both ways. What's happened here is really a travesty because it shows that these decisions are being made on the basis of very specious and unsupportable foundations. And there should be some guidelines like

But weren't there guidelines in this entire process? Weren't there already guidelines and guardrails that they blew past? They, didn't the TTC ignore its own policies in moving this idea forward? What it did was it was in total breach of its own motion, which required staff to come back with a plan for public

consultation. They allowed staff just to defy that motion and come back with a recommendation to move straight to renaming. So they just blew off all of the people who were waiting to have something to say, including historians who had been waiting for a chance to speak their piece about all of this. So they shut that down. But the larger question here is should they even be doing this in the lack of a broad consensus among historians about what the facts are around these figures? Because there are historical figures we would want to distance ourselves from. But not every allegation of racism against a historical figure is going to be accurate.

And we need to have a process to determine, is this actually valid before we start moving ahead? And Toronto never did that. Toronto was just all too happy to move ahead on this. Toronto's reputation or its nickname was Toronto the Good, this is Toronto the petty. This is Toronto the ideological. This is Toronto the sad. This is Toronto the Petty. This is Toronto the ideological. This is Toronto the sad. This is Toronto the middling.

And I just it's this is Toronto the disappointing. Jennifer Dundas, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for your interest, Ben. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days, and we want to make it even easier for you to get the news you need. That's why you can now get Global National every day as a podcast. The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award-winning global news journalists. New episodes drop every day so take this as your personal invitation to join us

on the Global National podcast. You can find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show. And it's time for our weekly history lesson by with the great Craig Baird of Canadian history ex Craig, welcome to the show. First time I get to see on camera. Yeah, it's really nice. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And normally we talk about aspects of your show and

stories that that you want to share. But in this case, you're here talking about a pretty seminal moment, your very first history book, Canada's Main Street. Tell me about that. Yeah, it's, it's about the story of the building of the trans Canada Highway. Yeah, you know, something that I get think it's got overlooked quite a bit in our history, we tend to focus on the CPR and the building of the railroad across Canada. But the building of the Trans Canada Highway was, you know, a very big project that involved all the provinces working together all of these things going on. And it was a really

cool story to to research and write. And yeah, my book came out yesterday. Congrats. Congratulations. No, the see, I don't know much about the history of highways in Canada but I do know about the sort of the interstate highway program in the United States and how it was a massive sort of infrastructure program to modernize the United States, get people moving, get people moving more quickly, get goods from place to place far quicker and there was elements of the military had a big hand in it as well. They want to make sure that they had these straightaways in various places to ensure that if they needed to, they could use them to land planes in emergencies.

Was it that sort of national ambition that governed the growth of the Trans-Canada Highway? What so much? that govern the growth of the Trans-Canada Highway? What so much? The first person to actually drive across Canada completely within Canada on a road didn't really happen until just after the Second World War. So we were very much behind the United States in that. And with the Trans-Canada Highway, it was kind of the federal government saying to the provinces, we will pay for 50% of the cost, you pay the other half,

but you all have to decide the route. We're not going to choose the route. So all the provinces had to kind of figure out exactly where this route was going. So it wasn't just jagged line going across the country because every major city wanted the Trans-Canada Highway. Edmonton fought hard to get it, but obviously Calgary eventually got it. So it was a lot of that. And then eventually the federal government kind of started paying more and more because the provinces just couldn't meet the deadlines and couldn't pay for the entire thing. So it was very much something that I, I don't know if it would actually happen today, because everybody has to

agree on everything. And it would, you know, it took a while to get it done back then for sure. Were there any parts of it that in retrospect, if it had to be done again, were put in the wrong place or could have been put in a better place? I think that where they had it is pretty good. I mean, it runs pretty close to the American border. And I think that was a big part of bringing tourism up. I mean, it goes through Banff and that kind of changed Banff and made Banff this massive world-class attraction, but various other areas, I think it kind of just went

exactly where it needed to go. There wasn't really, even though Edmonton fought hard for it, there was very little chance that Edmonton was going to have the Trans-Canada Highway because for that to happen, it would have to go from Winnipeg up to Saskatoon or from Regina up to Saskatoon, then to Edmonton, then back down because obviously it ends in Vancouver and then Victoria.

But yeah, I think where it went, it kind of just more or less follows where the CPR went. What about when it gets to a city? And again, the only model I have in my head is the United States where for a lot of cities, it gets to a city and then there's this ring of highway around the city and it rejoins at another point before it gets to another city so almost like a node.

What was the design like when the highway would come up against a city? Usually it went straight through the city. The ring roads and such didn't really happen until well after the fact. I mean, in Calgary, 16th Avenue is the Trans-Canada Highway and it goes straight through the middle of the city. Same thing in Montreal,

it goes through the middle of the city and Winnipeg it did. And these ring roads started to pop up afterwards because people got tired of taking the Trans-Canada Highway and driving through the downtown core and dealing with rush hour and things like that on a vacation. So that when it was built, they weren't really doing environmental assessments and they weren't really worried about the migration patterns of animals and things like that. It was just they needed to do it and they did it. Pretty much. Yeah, there was very little of that. There was no real figuring out exactly what's going to happen with the animals or building through wetlands. It was kind of cut down trees and build this highway straight through the these areas and you know,

we'll put up things like the Wawa Goose to get people to come into our community as they drive along the highway. All right well that I'm looking forward to reading that book it's called Canada's Main Street it's available now. Craig let's talk about a historical figure that again I had no idea about until he popped up on my screen thanks to you. Tell me about Anthony Hende. Well if you if you live where I do outside of Edmonton, you know Anthony Henday because the ring road around Edmonton is called Anthony Henday Drive. But a lot of people, even in Edmonton, have no idea who he is.

And he actually worked for the Hudson's Bay Company. And from 1754 to 1755, he journeyed 2900 kilometers by foot and canoe into modern day Alberta and met the Blackfoot to kind of encourage them to trade at the Hudson's Bay Company. And during this time, he actually became the first known European to actually see the Canadian Rockies. And he stayed with the Hudson's Bay Company for about 12 years from 1750 to 1762, and then kind of just disappears from history. So we don't know too much about him before or after the Hudson's Bay Company. But then because there's this belief that he may have actually been in the Edmonton area, we don't even know that for sure. We named one of the most important roads around Edmonton in his

honor. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating. Let's listen to a snippet of Anthony Henday. On October 14th, Henday counted 322 tipis on the top of a hill near modern-day Pine Lake in Innisfail, Alberta. It was a massive Blackfoot encampment, and one tipi was large enough to hold 50 people and was the chief's home. Now Hende was invited inside by the chief and met with 20 Blackfoot elders. And while Hende spoke, his translator translated what he said into Blackfoot. Hende invited them to York Factory to trade with the company and, while the chief actually

did appreciate the offer, he refused to leave his territory. Because traveling to York Factory meant going through creepy land and there was a real risk of an attack. Plus, the Blackfoot already had a trading partner they liked, the French. Hende wrote, We have no hopes of getting them to the fort, as what cloth they had were French and, by their behaviour, I perceived they were strongly attached to the French interest. Now despite their refusal, the Blackfoot treated Hende as an honoured guest. He was offered boiled bison meat and 12 bison tongues, a delicacy reserved only for the

honoured guests. Wow, just incredible. Was he the only person as part of this trek when you say he was the first person to see the Canadian Rockies, first European to see the Canadian Rockies? Was he alone on that trek? Well, he was the only European on that trek. He was joined by a Cree interpreter. And then as he journeyed from York Factory all the way into modern day Alberta, more and more

Cree families started to join up with them going through the territory because obviously there was strength in numbers because the Cree and the Blackfoot were very much at war during that era. Absolutely amazing. Hey, before I let you go, I want to get your take on a historical story that's playing out in real time, which is sort of the canceling of the history of Henry Dundas, especially in the city of Toronto. There's now talk that the Toronto Metropolitan University is going to get the naming rights for Dundas Station, which is part of the TTC.

Henry Dundas was an abolitionist in his time, but there are people today felt that he wasn't working fast enough. And for that reason, he wasn't a real abolitionist. And I want to as somebody who knows his Canadian history, what are your thoughts on Henry Dundas? Well, I think, like you said, he was quite slow with the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, but obviously still kind of ahead of his time with that. There was still a lot of people even in Canada,. People like James Simcoe, who was a Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, was very much against the slave trade as well. But we did have a lot of slave traders and slaveholders in

our government at the time. But I think with him, the fact that he was advocating against the slave trade is a big plus, no matter how slow it might have been, because it was very much against the idea of the time. He was decades ahead of his time in advocating for that. Yeah. And for the life of me, I do not understand why we have to hold him to the standard of 2025, when he most certainly did not live in 2025. And I often ask myself, how would we acquit

ourselves were we to live in that time? Would we live up to the standard that he was setting? Most of us would probably fall short. I would say probably very different times, very different people. And you know, you're growing up in a society of what you feel is right. And, you know, hundreds of years later, what you feel is right might not be what actually was right. Craig Baird, always great talking to you. Congratulations on the book and congratulations on the podcast. And we'll talk to you next week. Sounds good. Thank you, Harvey. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulroney Show podcast. We're live every day nationwide on

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