The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 4 - Dr. Eric Kam, Dr. Oren Amitay, Joseph Neuberger

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

Best of the Week Part 4 - Dr. Eric Kam, Dr. Oren Amitay, Joseph Neuberger Guests: Dr. Eric Kam, Dr. Oren Amitay, Joseph Neuberger, Daniel Hiebert 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 where the economy goes from here and is it time to reconsider how we pick judges? Enjoy. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and nearly 44% of voters cast a vote for the Liberal Party and Mark Carney because they believe that he is the right guy to shepherd us through a tumultuous economic environment. And so let's talk about the environment. Let's talk about the economy and let's talk about with somebody who knows far more about it than I do.

Eric Kam, welcome to the show, my friend, the economics professor from Toronto Metropolitan University and great friend of the show. Benedict, two quick things. First of all, excellent work on Monday night. Thank you. I couldn't turn you off. Number two, way to keep your lunch down during the course of the evening. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. Well, listen, not good news at all right now. Deloitte has

put out a report suggesting the Canadian economy is headed for a recession this year. What do you make of the report and do you agree with it? Well, I mean, it's like saying the Leafs might blow another playoff series. It's very predictable. And of course, I agree with it. All you have to do is open up any publication that shows you macroeconomic variables. And we know that our economy is quite stagnant. We effectively have no real GDP growth, no employment growth, no growth in anything

that you can hook yourself onto and say, I see positive signs for the economy. And in fact, I'm actually quite worried because through it all, the resilience of our economy has been our labor market and the bottom hasn't fallen out of it. But I'm just kind of holding on for dear life that it doesn't because you and I talk a lot about GDP going down and economy is not growing and price stability and all of that is interesting but it's interesting if you have a job and you can pay for your life's necessities. If we start to see unemployment bloat that's people losing their jobs and then everything else we discussed then is irrelevant if they can't put food on the table or pay their rent. So I'm really watching to see unemployment statistics over the next few months. And when you say next few months, or two, three, six months, what?

Yes, exactly, Ben. bad news, north of the border, south of the border, the US economy shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter as Trump went in every direction with his trade war and his disruptions. So I'm going to ask you a chicken or egg question. When the American economy stumbles, it usually correlates with something going on elsewhere in the world. Is that the case or is this the US setting off a chain reaction? Yeah, this is I don't know if it's chicken or egg, but this is the US setting off a bit

of a train reaction. First of all, it's the largest economy in the world, right? And so there's a bit of a follower for the rest of the world with the United States when they tend to do something. It tends to permeate like waves in an ocean through other economies. And then of course, you know, smaller and smaller economies, especially. But what you've seen here is that Trumpy has taken a stand, right? He's come out and said almost, we want to, we want our economy to be strong in the long run, but in the short run, I'm willing to accept some pain. And he knew, he knew there was going to be some economic pain. So what he's done in his country is he's created a tariff war. That's the same thing as a trade war. That's the same thing as a tax on consumers.

And Trump knows this is a tax on international consumers, but also a tax on his own consumers because prices have gone up in his own country. So I don't like the strategy, but I see what he's trying to do. He's saying we're big enough, Ben, that we're going to be able to see this through, even if in the short run we have some price increases and some decreases in our gross domestic product. We're big enough and we've been powerful enough over the last few years to withstand it. And he's right. He's probably right that they're going to get past this. The bigger question, of course, are the economies and those waves and ripples we talked about, because a lot of countries are not as able to handle these

exogenous shocks as well as the United States. Is it possible for the Americans to go into recession, but the rest of the world to weather that storm or if the Americans go into recession, so too does everybody else. If the American economy tanks the now you can't make a statement like the rest of the world every single economy will tank because it's an interesting fact. The world is a closed economy, right? So for every country that's in a surplus, somebody has to be in a deficit. But you can absolutely say because of the size,

just the sheer size of the American economy, if that economy starts to contract, it will absolutely 100% take other economies down with it. Eric, what happens, we know that Mark Carney wants to start renegotiating NAFTA as soon as possible. He's going down to Washington in short order for his first bilateral with Donald Trump. If they can work at lightning fast speed to update NAFTA 2.0 into 3.0 in a way that the

tariffs go away, could we stave off the worst of what we're expecting in this recession? I think we actually can. And I think your point's really well taken. What matters to me right now, and we've talked about it before, is uncertainty and risk. And the faster that we can remove those terms from our lexicon of the economy, the better. Right now, what Trump has done is put uncertainty and risk into an international economy,

the likes of which we haven't seen in a very long time. So if these two leaders can come out of a room and have a deal, no matter what that deal is, I mean, we have time to worry about the deal later. Right now, I would like there to be a deal to at least remove some of that of uncertainty from the economy And so we can bring back some stability especially to consumers who are waiting on the sidelines Consumers and investors to say I need to see what's going to happen with some certainty before I make any decisions

So when you hear Mark Carney say things like the global order is is is Reshifting that our old relationship with the United States is over. First of all, what do you think he means by that? And don't you think that adds uncertainty where we don't need it? Yeah, he's saber rattling. He absolutely is. He's doing his country a disservice when he says things like that, because far too many people better going to read into that and say what he's is, I'm going to teach the United States a lesson that we don't need the United States. Well, let me tell you something. He's not going to teach the United States anything. And we absolutely need the United States. I don't care if tomorrow we tear down every inter-provincial trade barrier

we have. I'd love to see it. But you are never given the geography, given transportation costs, you are never going to live in a Canada that doesn't rely on trade with the United States. So I don't like the saber rattling. It's like the little mouse trying to scare the big lion. It's impossible. He's got to go in there and make a deal to bring some stability back to the system and stop trying to scare somebody who basically you can't scare. Eric, the Hudson's Bay Company gone, Canadian Tire Closing stores, PV Mart going under, now Hakim Optical.

Is this all just a coincidence, just a bad moment in retail, or is this a major signal of huge problems? You know, it's kind of two things, Ben. We could sit here and talk about the economy, but we already have, we know that our Canadian economy is somewhat slipping into the toilet. But let's not be repetitive. Let's look at something else. With

respect to economics, one of the hardest things to gauge is consumption based on consumer preferences. And we are seeing a an almost unprecedented shift in the last few years in the way that we shop. People are shopping online. If you look at my almost 21 year old, why would she ever go to a mall? You only do that if you absolutely positively

have to do that. So consumers are moving away. They don't like the idea of the cost of getting to a store and waiting in a store and customer service that in this country isn't so wonderful. They would rather shop online. So while I do see it as a problem with the economy, it's a bit of a two-headed monster. And the second part is even harder to fix, which are shifting preferences. People are buying online, they're buying in bigger box stores to take advantages of their price power in the market and relatively smaller places like the ones you just mentioned are being left aside. But it probably was inevitable the minute that the internet took on shopping.

The knock on effects for real estate in big cities and small are going to be significant because of this shift. Everything is going to be significant because of this shift? Everything is going to be significant because of this shift. This is a real sea change in the way people spend their disposable income. People have really gotten used, and you can blame the pandemic if you want, and there's definitely an argument to be made. People were told to, you know, what did Doug Ford say?

Stay a la maison? Well, people did, and they decided, you know, what did Doug Ford say? Stay a la maison. Well, people did. And they decided, you know what? Part of me kind of likes this. I can shop online. Everything can be delivered to me. I don't have to leave my house. And so we were kidding ourselves if we didn't think that was going to have some reverberation effects in the market. So as we see eBay's and the Amazon soar, other places are damaged then. Eric, thank you so much for being our economic sherpa. We appreciate it. Stay healthy, Ben. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And I think a lot of us across this country are still trying

to make sense of the tragedy of the festival attack in Vancouver, the Filipino Street Festival, where a man weaponized his car and mowed down, oh gosh, I mean, at this point, I think 12 people, 11 people have passed away with people still in hospital. And I will admit that when I first heard it, based on the information that I had, it sounded to me like a crime that required throwing a guy into jail and locking him away and throwing away the key But the more I've heard about the plight of this man

the more I think that it is so much more complicated than that and so we're gonna talk about it now with Dr. Ornamete, psychologist who can help us make sense of the pressure and the unique situa- fairly unique situation that this man found himself in. Doctor, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ben. So, what I- what I learned and what a lot of us learned after was this was a man who was already suffering from mental health struggles and his brother was murdered, his mother attempted suicide, there was pressure on the family where they might

lose their house. This was, I mean, this man was not tethered to anything resembling a community. He didn't have his tribe anymore. And when I look at it through that lens, I ask myself, what do we do? How do we, how do we help someone like that? Well, it's really difficult because unfortunately, we're losing nuance these days.

People want to take such a black and white approach. All right. So people are saying, walk him up. He's a monster. And others are, you know, like the too soft on crime that we know exists in this country. So trying to find nuance and say, okay, let's look at the circumstances. I don't know yet whether he was in touch with reality or not. If he had a psychotic break, if he temporarily lost touch with reality, then he would not be not, you know, he wouldn't be criminally responsible and there'd be other, you know, remedies and that would be more about like mental health care for him. If he was in charge of his faculties, if he knew what he was doing,

he still, you know, needs to get that mental health treatment, but he has to be held accountable. So that's one area. As far as what to do to prevent it, I don't think people fully understand how powerful two factors that are relevant in this case are. One is stress, okay? I have so many patients and whether it's your memory,

whether it's your cognitive functioning, whether it's your physical health, stress triggers, exacerbates and maintains all physical and mental problems more than anything else. Number one and then number two as you mentioned, isolation. When you feel disconnected, when you don't have that community, when you don't feel grounded to either a group of people, to a healthy belief system, to some meaning and purpose. It's very easy to get lost and to do some of the, you know, to do terrible unimaginable things. Yeah. Listen, I'm not the type of,

you're talking to somebody who it wants Canada to get tougher on crime. I'm that, I'm that guy. And yet I look at this situation and I think it would be really difficult to shoehorn this event into that conversation that we were having during the election campaign. This to me doesn't feel like that. It feels like mental health, it feels like loneliness, it feels like somebody who is not anchored to anything resembling a community and when that happens, I don't know if this is a predictable outcome, probably not, but it is an outcome that you could that clearly happened. Well, it's not predictable because most people won't do this, but it's not surprising, let's put it that way. Okay. Right? And that's why I was saying when people are pushed

to the brink uh... they can do the most unimaginable things especially if any and we don't know this yet if they lose touch with reality to have a psychotic break because we know that he was under some mental health care he was part of the programs uh... and that part of that program he was granted release he was able to go into the community

and uh... you know it's not always that easy it's someone might be looking you know reason like they're doing reasonably well and hence they're you know they're kind of the the reins are loosened a little bit given some you know freedom to go back into the community and sometimes these tragedies happen at other times people who are known dangers who clearly are you know are not in control of their faculties more as you know given some other indications that they could cause harm, they are also let go at times. And that's a total failure of the system.

So one way or the other, I don't know, again, we don't have enough details, but it does seem like, as I've said to you in the past, that there's not enough care, attention, or financial resources, or any kind of resources, allocated and dedicated to helping people who are struggling. Dr. Now that we've seen this, this tragedy, now, now that we have this as an example,

and it's a shame that it had to come with such loss of life and such tragedy, but it happened now, but now that we have it, is there something, can we use this as an opportunity to create some new pathway for people like this man in the system that we currently have? I would like to say so, but unfortunately we've had other examples in the past and there hasn't been enough, you know, of a push from the people in charge to, you know, to facilitate that kind of change that we need to have. So let's hope that it happens this time, but I'm not holding my breath, unfortunately. All right.

Well, let's, let's pivot to a video that shocked a lot of people. There's a video of a man pushing a shopping cart into a Toronto bike lane and it collides with a rider sending him crashing. And I suspect all things being equal, that the guy with the cart didn't know the cyclist. And I see things like this pop up on my social media feed where people just snap, unprovoked attacks. I don't know if they're more common today

or they're just, they feel more common because I see them on social media. But we hear stories about, you know, somebody pushing somebody into the subway, onto the tracks, common because I see them on social media, but we hear stories about, you know, somebody pushing somebody into the subway, onto the tracks, random attacks that seem to have no rhyme or reason, or even general outbursts on people in public for no reason. Now this, we've talked before about like the Karens of society, but this is something different. Karens yell.

Karens don't necessarily get physical. What does it take for somebody to get physical and put hands on somebody they don't know? Well, this is the problem. We don't know what was the motive in this person's case. So there are several different factors. One can be where someone, let's say, is on drugs or some other substance. Another is that they just have that temperament. They might have psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder, just like a really short temper. For other people it's as we've talked a few minutes ago about it's the stress, it's getting to them, it's being confined or feeling confined, feeling disenfranchised, disempowered, feeling that the world is against you or there's no hope and then just lashing out

unpredictably. For others, sorry, the other one is that you or there's no hope and then just lashing out unpredictably. For others, sorry, I was gonna say the other one is that there just seems to be such a, we're finding this disconnect between individuals where the person really isn't thinking about the consequences of their actions. It just seems like something to do, whether they think it's funny or whether again,

they're just angry, they're just kind of lashing out and they really don't consider that there's a real potential consequence to harm somebody. Yeah, you know what? That makes a lot of sense because I saw a video just yesterday, popped up on my social media feed of a dad lashing out at the referee at his son's wrestling competition. He literally walks up to the ref and shoves him about six feet. The guy lands, fortunately on a mat. What the guy didn't know is the guy was a part-time referee,

full-time lawyer, and he made sure that the police found him. He had crossed eight lines and he was getting a manicure. The look on his face when the cops picked him up, it was not the look on his face when he shoved the guy. Like, it looked like two completely different people, one guy was seeing red and the other guy was feeling confused and probably sad and responsible. So I understand what you're saying.

Like he did not know or he wasn't facing the consequences when he shoved the guy in the first place. Right, and we're seeing more and more of this, I do believe, you know, where people, you know, whether it's just the stress of living, whether it's feeling overcrowded, whether it's feeling once again that that the world is not fair, that all these injustices are happening to me or my kind or my people, you know, whatever it is, it seems that people are more likely to just lash out. And I would say part of it is social norms.

We are seeing more and more videos of this. And it's for the most, for the average person, it's not necessarily going to make them do the same thing. But as social animals, we do mimic the behaviors that we see. So there is a certain proportion of people who will just kind of see this as the norm. And you know, again, they're just not thinking about the consequences in the moment. They're just acting on their impulses in that moment. And again, once again, we are seeing, especially with smartphones, especially

with this instant gratification culture that we have right now, that the delaying the gratification, they're not acting on impulses. They're trying to regulate your mood and your actions. These are becoming things of the past for more and more people. Dr. Orin Amitay, thank you so much. We really appreciate your insight today. As always, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you, 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 Well, we experienced peak Doug Ford yesterday when he went on one of his folksy rants where he was so upset, so upset over the judges of the judiciary yet again in his estimation, sticking their nose in his mandate. He was elected on a mandate and yet again they come in and stymie his attempts to do what he says he was elected to do. The focus of his ire yesterday was the injunction

on the bike lanes that he was elected to remove on the main arteries in the city of Toronto. There's an injunction now that's staying this, his dream to clear up those streets and get Toronto moving and he was not happy about it. He started musing about maybe, maybe it's time to start electing these judges. Let's listen. But why don't we have the next election, the PC party, the Liberal party, the NDP party, the PC party, the Liberal party, the NDP party, the Green party, and the judges party? Because they overturn everything, right

down to the bike lanes. So we get democratically elected and some judge slaps an injunction on bike lanes. Don't the judges have anything better to do than worry about if we're taking out bike lanes or not taking out bike lanes? One judge says, yeah, not a problem. The next judge, not because of law, If there's anything better to do than worry about if we're taking out bike lanes or not taking out bike lanes,

one judge says, yeah, not a problem. The next judge, not because of law, because of their ideology. Their ideology is thinking, well, maybe we shouldn't take out the bike lanes. What right do they have an unelected, politically appointed

judges determining their budgets? Because of the decisions the judges have made in the past have cost us $10 billion. And we ran on a mandate. We got elected democratically. Last time I checked, there hasn't been any judges elected. Maybe that's the problem. We should do what the U.S. does.

Let's start electing our judges, holding them accountable. And that's my rant for the day, because I've just had it. All right. As soon as we heard that yesterday, we knew it was going to be a huge topic of discussion today. For the record, I do not know enough about this to have a strong opinion.

However, we've invited somebody on who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, Joseph Neuberger of Neuberger and Partners Criminal Lawyers. He's also the host of the podcast, Not On Record. Joseph, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Ben, thank you so much for having me on. Okay, so he laid out his frustration. By the way, I share his frustration,

but I don't know if his conclusion is something that I can get behind. What say you? I agree. You can't get behind that. And, you know, I say this as a person who's generally a supporter of the conservative party, something that I can get behind. What say you? I agree. You can't get behind that. And you know, I say this as a person who's generally a supporter of the Conservative Party and I'm in favor of doing something about congestion in in Toronto. But there's a lot of layers here and I got to just have some laneway, pardon the pun,

to talk about this. One, the judiciary and the justice system is a branch of our democratic process to have checks on government action. That is in any civilized democratic society. It is vital that people who feel that the government has done something unconstitutional that they have a right to sue the government, bring an application to adjudicate on that. And it's not necessarily on ideology. This judge specifically said, I got to wrap my head around the constitutional aspect, which is being brought by the plaintiffs here, as to does the charter apply to this, does it cause a risk to bicyclists etc.

That's all he needed time and so that's legitimate and you want that to play out. If the judge does not rule in favor of the government, there's an appeal system. Now let's drill down about appointments versus elected. We do not want to import US language or systems because it doesn't work in the United States. Okay, tell me why. Okay, well first of all, the majority of judges in the United States are appointed by the federal system or even by state governors. So let's get to whether what he said was accurate or not. There are state judges dealing with state authority and jurisdiction, that is criminal

matters, family matters, and others. Many states will have appointments made by the governor and by committees set up by the governor, much similar to what we have in Ontario. And Ontario, as much as many of us were concerned, has a really good committee for appointments of judges that Doug Fordís government oversees, and theyíve done a relatively good job. In the United States, if a citizen feels that their constitutional right has been violated, letís say a highway law, they can either bring an action in the state court or there's concurrent jurisdiction by a federal court and these are appointed judges.

So just by saying that let's have an election of judges, that's not even accurate as to what the United States does. And you do not want judges to be political entities that are beholden to a segment of your society that can then overrun the rights of minorities or push through or rubber stamp laws which trample on your liberties. All right, so Joseph, let's park the election of judges for a moment and let's talk about the state of the judiciary right now because that's really what Doug Ford is, was complaining about. He was musing about a conclusion, which we don't necessarily have to deal with,

but what is the state of the judiciary? He's claiming that they are ideologically driven. Who's appointing the judges that he's taking issue with right now? He is appointing judges. His government is appointing judges in Ontario. He appoints the judges of the ontario court of justice and with all due respect three of my former

colleagues in my office to associate to the law partner or all judges in ontario and they're all excellent appointment and he points tons of crown attorneys to the provincial bench and their excellent judges the committee who i've spoken to on numerous occasions are well-minded, thoughtful individuals who want to make the right decision for Ontarians. They take into consideration multiple factors, most importantly merit. They want to appoint people who are smart, capable, who can move cases along, who will

be fair in the system. We have, I say this all the time on the podcast, I'm a criminal defense lawyer. I complain about stuff all the time, but we should be very proud in Canada of the judiciary we have. And you know what's shameful about what he said yesterday? He actually came out with proposals regarding what we've been talking about, Ben, about bail reform, which were actually pretty good

because it sounds like he was listening to your show when you had me on because they're focused. I said we need to be measured. So what he wants to do is invest in a dedicated unit of crown attorneys who will handle serious violent criminal offenses and repeat offenders. Something we talked about. We have the guns and gangs unit. This will be like an extension.

They will be tasked specifically with dealing with these types of cases. Restrictive bail conditions. No problem. If it's serious violent offences and repeat offenders, good for you. That makes good sense. Guess what? Investment and funding of police. So the bail check units can actually go out and go to these people who are on bail and

make sure they're complying with bail. And if they're not complying with bail, they're going to bring them before the courts and they can astreat the bail that's been put up and they will have enough resources to go after those sureties who haven't done their job then you and I have spoken about this many times I think he's been listening to our show I think yes just I just want to talk about because clearly Doug Ford is drawing a line in the sand as it relates to his relationship with the judiciary. Is there anything that he can do with the powers that he has to, I don't know, create a system that

makes him a little happier? No, if he does, he ruins our process. If he does, he erodes democracy. He erodes liberties. And he will be upset with that once it hits home to family friends or others and he does not want that my advice would be I understand the frustration but your policies will get through if you allow the system to work through it you have excellent lawyers that you have who will go to court to

litigate on behalf of the government policy and eventually if the judge doesn't make the ruling you want there are appeal systems and if you have to god forbid you can use the not withstanding clause which is something none of us are really in favor of but and you know he's complaining because this judge is appointed by the federal government not necessarily a liberal appointment again many the appointments of of of the liberal government and their system which is set up appoint people from various different stripes not just those who are ideologically you know to the left or to the right so he does not want to play with our

judiciary it's good it works hard some things need to be fixed within how we administer criminal law but we're getting there and like i said the measures yesterday were pretty focused and pretty balanced and i thought this was very good. It's very important if you want to express frustration, he says, I want to move Canadians forward. I want to clear up. I'm going to do everything I can, but honor the system because it's the lack of due process

in the United States, which is killing Trump's numbers. That's not a good thing. Due process is important. We need to ensure we protect it here in Canada. Joseph, last thing, let's go back to the case that led to this injunction. From what I understood and what I read, the bicycling, the people who were pro-bicycle, bike lane, came with numbers, came with data, came with a case, and the apparently the government came with anecdotes

and that's one of the reasons they didn't get the ruling they wanted. Right it's a failure to present proper evidence. They did their homework so what they're saying is this I like I didn't read the brief but I know what the general arguments were that you know there are a lot of people in Toronto who use their bikes on a daily basis to go to and from employment and if they don't have bike lanes there are statistics that say they're at risk of harm from vehicles. We know pedestrians and people on bicycles are hit by cars and God forbid killed many times. So those statistics, if you remove the bike lanes, which are there for protection of bikers, that can have an impact on

their rights under section seven of the charter to, you know, security of the person, which in essence protects them. Joseph, we gotta leave it there. Thank you, my friend. And I wanna hear from you next on the Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Time now to turn the microphone over to you, our listeners at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK.

In our previous segment, we talked about Doug Ford musing that maybe it's time for judges to be elected because the status quo as he saw it yesterday was stymying his ability to push forth his democratically elected mandate. He took great issue with that. We had a lawyer, Joseph Neubergeron, who said, listen, all the ways that doesn't make any sense. The question now to you is, would you like a Democratic say in who makes it to the bench? Give us a call, 416-870-6400.

And let's start this chat with Dean. Dean, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Good morning, Ben. I have felt for more than 30 years that all of our judges should be elected. I don't like that they are beholden to political parties that are in power, who are jam-packed, lawyers themselves. It seems like a big self-perpetuating system.

They should be beholden to the unwashed masses. I know they look down upon us like we don't have the in-depth knowledge of the charter and all the rest is to make appropriate decisions about who be in enforcing our laws, but we do. And we're kind of tired of being treated like we, our concerns don't matter, that it's only the political party that appoints them that matters. But Dean, what do you make of the argument that Joseph Neuberger gave us in the previous segment, that these judges, a lot of these judges have been appointed by this progressive conservative government? So it's just been broken. It's a bunch of lawyers that are, not a bunch, a lot of lawyers in our governments, MPs and members of the committee and so on. They're lawyers and it's one big system

they've built. I actually love his passion, though, because normally you could talk to Joseph about something criminally related, a poring behavior, he'd be very clinical and data driven. And this time he had passion. Oh, he definitely had passion on this one. You're absolutely right. Dean, thank you so much for your call. Let's welcome Tom to the Ben Mulroney Show. Well, number one, I'm not going to believe too much what your guest said, because he's a lawyer. He probably argues cases in front of those judges. So what's he going to do? Go out there and run on the radio and say half these guys are idiots? He probably knows a thing or two about the judicial system. Well, he does, but he probably argues in front of these same judges. So of course he's going to say good things about them. But that being said, of course they're going to bring their biases. There's such a thing called judge shopping. I'm sure you've heard of it.

No, what's judge shopping? Well, judge shopping, your lawyer will pick a judge. Say you've got a trial, say on the 4th of September. And he'll say, oh no, we can't go there because that judge is da-da-da-da-da. You should take this judge here on September the 14th because it's a it's a better judge for for your for your in particular problem but you know if you go to the city of seaboard or pay any attention to what goes on in the state now that's where judge shopping really happens you know they they go there and they pick the judge that's sympathetic to their cause. So they'll bring it, you know,

see what happened to Trump. So we don't want to import that here. We don't, absolutely not. No, so I, you know, I don't know, I honestly don't know what the fix is, but it's a big problem, you know. I mean, we don't want to, probably, Lactin is probably like your previous caller, probably the way to go, you know, as probably like your previous caller probably the way to go you know as far as as far as being being you know the government saying who should be in there it's right for abuse. Well thank you very much for the call let's welcome Eddie to the show Eddie does do you want to do you want to be able to vote on judges? Absolutely, I do. I agree with Doug on this one, because look, why is it that I can name every United States Supreme Court

justice, every one of them, all nine of them, and I can't name you a single Supreme Court justice in Canada? I don't even know what a building is, where they work. I don't even know who's in charge. Who is our Supreme Court justice, chief justice person? Is even that what a building is where they work. I don't even know who's in charge. Who is our Supreme Court judge, justice, chief justice person? Is even that what they're called? Why are these people hidden and they're not in the public? We're moving on our lives every day.

We don't know their name. We don't know anything about them. Well, that mean you could, you could research it. You could find out. Why do I have to? They're a public person. Make their face public so that I know who they are and what they lean on. Why are they always hidden? Do you even know how these people are appointed and who appoints them? I have no idea. Our system is backwards. We need, well, I agree with Dougie.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, the Supreme Court and what Doug's taking issue with are two separate things. And look, I don't know what to tell you. Doug is getting upset over an injunction. And I think he's right to be upset. But the fact is, from what I understand, and if I'm wrong, please call in and let me know. From what I understand, the government went in to that case ill-prepared.

And that's why the injunction was thrown down. They did not show up with the data and we would not be sitting here waiting to pull out those bike lanes had the government come correct. That's that seems to me that's the problem here. Not the judges. Because the the bike lane people showed up and they showed up with data and they showed up with a case and they got their injunction. Mike, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Good morning, Ben. How are you?

I'm well, thank you. Awesome. You know, they say that democracy is for the people, by the people. But the people are stupid. All right. We don't need to be electing judges. Last Tuesday, I think it was Pearson's show,

they had people calling in saying that they would rather the Leafs win the Stanley Cup than have a conservative government elected. So I can't tell you. I mean, these people, they live in their own little bubbles and we don't need them piping up and electing people that affect the lives of people that actually do pay attention. Well, I appreciate, listen, I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Look, I defer to judges because I know how hard it is. I went to law school. I know how hard it is to be a great lawyer. And from a great lawyer, you become a judge and eventually a great judge. I know how hard that is. I was not built to be one of those people. I took a lot of great stuff out of my legal education, but I knew very early on I would

not be a lawyer. And so I appreciate that it is there is a lot that goes into becoming a lawyer and ultimately a judge. And look, turning them into politicians politicians i don't know is the solution who do we have next we've got michael michael welcome to the show good morning um yeah i like the idea that they're elected and they're held accountable but look at the previous mayor's election what there were 101 people and a dog and and ever and you know olivia chow had that special in this group uh rally around her and that's how she got in.

I just think too many special interest groups vote, and people that care don't vote. I think you're right. That's the issue. Yeah, I think you're right. I think we would make the system worse. I think we would end up with agenda-driven politicians who are trying to get elected to become judges. And I think we would end up with single issue judges who care about one thing and one thing only. And the people who care about those issues would come out and vote.

I think you're absolutely right. I think you're on to something there. Frank, who do we have next? We got, is it Frank? Frank, welcome to the show. Good morning, Ben. Good morning. You know, good morning. The United States and in their states, they have some flexibility in how they go about in in a point in even

electing judges some states are specifically have nonpartisan commissions that actually appointed judge but after a certain term uh... of service has completed what it's four years six years eight years they're then mandated to go through a large in process so to me me, that's a pretty good check and balance that exists. And you know, in complaining about judges, there are options instead of having to appeal. There's a formal internal complaints process. You can complain formally writing to the judicial counsel. And then you have the Chief Justice of Ontario, if it's Ontario that applies, that will actually

minister and decide that complaint. So I think there are sufficient safeguards in place in Ontario. But you know, Doug's idea and suggestion about election, electing a judge could work if it follows similar models in the United States. Frank, what do you think? Maybe the middle ground is whatever the process is by which they select judges, they weed them out, they interview them, maybe that needs to be changed or tweaked a little bit.

Whatever questions they ask to determine whether somebody is eligible and should be on the bench, maybe that formula needs to be tweaked. That's a great point. I think that what they would need is an independent legislative body with politicians from different stripes, conservatives, and the liberals, hooked in with some senior judges from the judiciary. So there's an open forum to maybe make some rules to kind of work out some of the problems that may exist, you know,

during a term of a judge and what legislative framework should be followed to kind of manage the process. Frank, we solved it, my friend. Thanks so much for calling in. All right, let's, we've got time for one more call. Stuart, give me your pitch in 30 seconds. Hi there, Ben. Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate our Canadian style of justice.

We have a professional judiciary. The last thing in the world we would want is to go to an American system that is tainted with politics where the judges and the district attorneys are elected. Yeah, I agree. It's not our system. We don't know how to do it. I would not jump into that. Thank you very much for your call. Thank you all for your calls.

Well, one of the conversations that we've been having on this show since we started was the sort of the breaking of the consensus on immigration across this country. For the for generations, whether you're on the left or on the right, whether you were poor or you were rich, there was generally speaking, everyone agreed that we had a great immigration system, and it was one of the things that we relied on to build our economy and build our population. In this radio host's humble estimation, that consensus was broken by the previous government, and now it's about rebuilding it in a way that makes sense for Canada of the 21st century. However, there is a new study out of the C.D. Howe Institute that says Canada cannot rely on immigration alone

to address the challenges posed by its aging population and relentless decline in fertility rates. That's according to this new report. Without a broader population strategy, rising immigration could fuel rapid growth while straining housing, healthcare, and infrastructure without fully resolving rising old age dependency ratios or labor force pressures.

So this does not sound like good news to me. This sounds like a looming storm on the horizon. So here to discuss it with us and break it down is Daniel Heibert, the emeritus professor of geography at the University of British Columbia. Professor, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. OK, so what I just read was just the top line of this C.D. Howe Institute study, but it doesn't sound like good news.

Uh, well, it's good news if everything goes right. If immigration is done with very careful foresight and there's all kinds of additional factors that are brought to play to make sure that it's done properly. So it can be seen as a good news report but it's more of a sort of call for action to really sort out what Canadians want and then to make that happen. I was always under the impression that to grow the population you had two options. You either did it from rising birth rates or you did it through immigration or a combination of the two. And given the fact that we are just not having kids in Canada right now, it looks like we had to put all of our eggs in the immigration basket. But this study is

suggesting that that's unsustainable. So what do we do if we have to grow our population and people don't want to have kids? Yeah, sure. Let me get to that in a second. Can I just emphasize the point that you've already made, which is that there's these two ways of growing a population, natural increase versus immigration. Fertility is so low that natural increase is basically going to be zero for the foreseeable future in Canada. That means that immigration policy determines so much of Canada's future.

If you want to know how many kindergarten kids are going to be in Canada, ask immigration. If you want to know how big is the Canadian labor force going to be in the future, ask the immigration ministry and so forth. So it's absolutely the foundation now of what Canada's future looks like and the choices that we make on the scale of the immigration program Determine all kinds of things So that's that's sort of question. You didn't ask. Okay, and I appreciate it. Thank you. You did my job for me So now the question is how do you do it smartly and of course then then the first question That needs to be answered on what is a smart immigration

program is how big should it be? And I really do believe there needs to be a national conversation about this. I don't think that someone who is, say, an expert can walk in and give a magic number. I think Canadians have to face the hard issues that are out there in terms of what an aging society looks like, in terms of the kinds of labor market shortages that arise and so forth, face these hard issues and make a decision how big should it be? And then the second question should be, once we know the size, what kind of configuration

should it have? What is the best ratio, for example, of economic immigrants to family folks and refugees and so forth. So tough questions need to be asked and need to be really debated nationally, in my opinion. I agree with you. I like to look at every crisis like an opportunity. And the fact that the consensus was broken and we got immigration wrong for so long, it gives us the opportunity

to take it down to the studs and build something even better for the future. Yep, I would completely agree with that. And again, it's got to be this mix of, let's get the facts right. And at the same time, let's think about what the vision of Canada should be. So it's an economic question. It's also a political question, it's a social question. It's a really big issue. Well, yeah, absolutely. And what you said before about having really tough conversations, we have to be honest with ourselves.

We have to be willing to say the tough things about what hasn't worked. And we have to be able to say the things that might offend people, because it's not a politically correct conversation to have, given who we are as a nation and what we've prided ourselves on. Multiculturalism is our strength. Our diversity is our strength. Well, we may have gone down a road

where we have tested that theory, a little, stress tested it a little too hard and we might have to come back and say all right are we bringing people in from the right parts of the world that allow for social cohesion right we have to have that conversation all those issues have to be on the table and we as you say we have to face the tough questions now. And is this something that can be built on the fly? I mean, we need people coming in at a fairly regular clip. Is this something that we can build bit by bit, or does an immigration policy have to be created

and dropped in fully formed? It's a great question. You do have to fix the machine while the machine is running because you can't just stop it and wait. So that adds to the sort of urgency of this particular issue. We need to be thinking and doing at the same time. And as you're implying with your question, that makes it much more difficult. And when you throw in the fact that each province

has a say as well as to who comes in, this is going to be, it has to be a national conversation. It has to happen at various levels of government. I have to assume cities like Toronto have to be involved as well because people, places like Toronto are stretched beyond their capacity as it relates to social services, hospitals, schools. So this is not a small conversation.

It's probably, now that I've had this conversation with you, I'm realizing it's probably one of the most important and biggest conversations that we're going to have as a nation. Absolutely. And do you have time for me to give one little example to give people a sense of just the issues that really have to be faced? Professor, I absolutely do. Yeah, okay. So since the current Liberal government got into power back in 2015, we've seen three different levels of immigration. When they came into power, Canada's immigration rate was about 250,000 a year, give or take. Then they lifted it between 2015 and last year was the sort of high watermark of immigration to Canada.

It was 485,000, let's call it 500,000, let's say it doubled over that period. And then this year, they've scaled it back to about 400,000. So that's three different rates of immigration. year they've scaled it back to about 400,000. So that's three different rates of immigration. Now what my study does is it asks the question, what would happen if you extended those same rates 50 years into the future? And I know I'm giving a lot of numbers, but I'll just give you three more numbers and I think it really tells a big story. If Canada stays at the earlier rate, 250,000 immigrants per year, by 2071 we end up with 45 million people. If we go to the rate of last year, the high watermark of immigration, et cetera, et cetera, we end up with 67 million people in 2071.

That's a difference of 22 million people. That's half the population of Canada. So that's a big difference. And it requires tons of forethought, tons of planning, tons of thinking. Thank you so much for joining us. You've given me a lot to think about. I promise you, prior to this conversation, I was not thinking what I'm thinking now. I really appreciate your time.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. 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.

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