The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 4 - Lauren Heuser, Dr. Oren Amitay, Craig Baird

Episode Date: April 27, 2025

Best of the Week Part 4 - Lauren Heuser, Dr. Oren Amitay, Craig Baird Guests: Lauren Heuser, Dr. Oren Amitay, Regan Watts, Craig Baird, Francis Syms 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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Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great discussions this week, including taking a deep look at the housing plans from both parties and how they compare. Enjoy. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. I want to talk about housing and the housing crisis in Canada. and I want to talk about the solutions that are being brought to bear by both the Liberals and the Conservatives. They both have put forth their housing plans but before we get into that I just want to remind everybody that this is a problem. It is an insidious problem. It is when people

cannot access adequate housing at an affordable price. It causes so many knock on effects. Last week on this show, we had a discussion about Canada's dwindling birth rate and the problems that come from that. And despite all of the incentives that the government offers people to make their lives more comfortable, to give them the freedom to go back to work, to hire somebody to help them in the home, it is it is not helped. And so I went to the calls and I asked the listeners of the Ben Mulroney show, are you somebody who has stopped at one kid, even though you wanted four, and almost to a person, the answer was, we can't afford

the house that we need to grow our family. So that's just one example. That's not just about a house. It's about a family. It's about a community. It's about safety. It's about all sorts of things. So that's why to me, this is one of the paramount issues of this election. And so we're gonna, right now we're in this next segment. We are going to compare and contrast the blueprints

for fixing the housing crisis in Canada with Lauren Huser, founder and publisher and editor of Canadian Affairs. Lauren, you wrote a piece in The Walrus. Why don't you tell us, let's go through them. Let's talk about the differences between the Conservative plan and the Liberal plan. Thanks, Ben. So I'd say the key difference between the Liberals and Conservatives, the Liberals under Carney have proposed proposed how what he said is getting the government into the home building business. So he has proposed creating a new government

agency called Build Canada Homes that would actually develop affordable housing and also offer favorable financing to affordable home developers as well as prefabricated home developers. In terms of similarities, the key similarity I'd say is both the Liberals and Conservatives are offering to cut or abolish the GST. The Liberals are saying it would be just for first-time home buyers on homes under a million and for Conservatives they're saying it's for all home buyers on homes under 1.3 million. I think of those two proposals the conservatives is preferable because it's applying to all home buyers so it doesn't blunt the impact of that measure in the same

way. What we want to do is kind of spur housing development. And it doesn't really matter if it's a first time home buyer or a multi time home buyer. And I want to get back to the expression we're going to get the government is going to get back into the business of building homes. I don't think that I'm a right wing crackpot to suggest that the government has no business in the business of building homes, they should make they should create the environment so that the people who are good at building homes can do so. Absolutely. And I, as I said in the piece, I agree with the

conservatives, their criticism is that under the Trudeau government, there is not a particularly strong record of the government, even, in some cases, quite basic services like passports or immigration. And so it doesn't inspire confidence when we then are thinking about creating a new agency to solve what I think can be solved through the right incentives for municipalities

and provinces as well as the right incentives in the private sector. Let's talk about some of maybe some misconceptions that are out there. I want to make sure that as we discuss this, we're discussing the facts and not, you know, the rumors and the speculation that tend to find, you know, seeds are planted online, they find purchase and next thing you know, you're having a debate about something that isn't even real. Is it true that the liberal platform is has a plan to build these prefabricated homes on crown land in other words that you'd buy a home that rests on land that you don't actually

own? So I guess I want to separate two points there. They have talked about building on public lands. The Conservatives have also talked about, I think, using public lands to, or opening up public lands for development by the private sector. The Liberals have said they would offer favourable financing to prefabricated home builders. So what that means exactly is, I'm not sure, but there are certainly more and more providers of either prefabricated materials that are used in the construction of original homes or the the

developers of the the the homes that are entirely prefabricated and kind of quite easy to put up. And and that's that's something that's a sticking point that if people think about it just long enough, because I don't wanna just beat up on the liberals and suggest that every idea they have is terrible. You know, there's this notion 30, 40 years ago, even as like 10 years ago,

the idea of a prefab home, we all knew what that was. That was a double wide trailer or something like that. But prefabricated homes today are not what they once were. With new technologies and 3D printing, you can use these new technologies to build homes indoors and then ship them at scale and you can build them a lot faster. And the amenities are there

and the quality of the build is there. So it's not the knock on a prefab home is not what it used to be. Absolutely. I totally agree. But I do think that we want to be careful in the effort to address the housing crisis. We also want to be creating neighborhoods that long term people want to live in. And I do think there's a risk in just trying to get things up quickly and in expensively that we create a whole neighborhoods

that don't actually stand the test of time and aren't aren't ones around which families actually want to build communities to circle back to your initial point. Lauren, I think it's a very smart political point for the liberals to say we are gonna build homes at a rate not seen since the end of the Second World War when all the soldiers came home and they deserved an affordable place to live.

The fact that in the minds of voters, they're putting us on a quote unquote war footing as it relates to the threat from south of the border. I think politically, that's a very good emotional string to pull. What are the differences in why we were able to build those homes back then versus why it's so gosh darn hard today? Well, I think what Pauliev has been credited for, not just in Canada, but throughout the Western world is identifying that there are barriers at the municipal level that need to come down to address

the housing crisis and these are things that have built up over time like from the kind of 70s 80s on that have fostered NIMBYism and have enabled people to oppose dense construction in urban areas. So that's the change, I would say, the key change from the post-World War II era. I think that the Liberals claim is that their incentives and proposals are gonna lead to 500,000 new homes being created in the first year. And I just, I don't think that's realistic because last year there was about 250,000 homes created.

That was up just slightly from the year before. And so to suggest that we can double the number in a single year is not realistic, whereas the conservatives are saying kind of in their first year, there would be 300,000 new homes, and then it would kind of incrementally increase from there. So I think it's more realistic to look at the numbers they're putting forward.

I think it's far more realistic that the liberals in an endeavor to build homes double the size of the bureaucracy that oversees home building. I do to build homes double the size of the bureaucracy that oversees home building. I do not see them doubling the size of the number of homes that they actually build. And it does feel to me like the Tories are, have adopted as it relates to the municipalities,

a carrot and a stick approach where they've got incentives. There's money for you if you build more homes and there's penalties if you don't. Yeah. And I personally think that that's the right approach. You know, I think this housing is a provincial and municipal issue. And so there are limits to what the federal government can do, but it is across all sorts of policy matters. Yeah. The municipalities and provinces want money from the feds.

And so I think you have to give them reason to get that money, right? Because this is such a crisis for all Canadians. And so creating those incentives, like you say, that the carrots and the sticks, that they're incentivized to address housing barriers, and then they're actually rewarded if they exceed housing targets. Lauren, we're gonna we're gonna leave it there. Thank you so much. The article is called which party has the best blueprint in fixing the housing crisis. It's in the walrus.ca. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ben. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And welcome back on whatever platform you find us on, be it radio, be it a

streaming service, or Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon radio, be it a streaming service or Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music. If you're the type of listener of The Ben Mulroney Show who enjoys the podcast, just search up Ben Mulroney or The Ben Mulroney Show on the podcast platform of your choice and have at it at your discretion. Please welcome to the show Dr. Orin Amate, a psychologist and good friend of the show. We've got a lot to talk about with you today, Doc. I hope you're doing well. I'm doing great. Thank you, Ben.

So enough time has now passed since the legalization of cannabis in Canada that we've been able to do some significant studies. And there's a new one that says that teen cannabis use has increased by 43% after legalization and the knock-on effects are significant. Well, yes. And look, cards on the table. I had my first joint when I was 12. I don't remember high school because I was high through almost all of it. So I'm not someone who's like, oh, you know, what is this devil's weed? I know what I'm talking about. And I do know that there are significant psychological and neurological effects, or potential neurological effects, especially on teenage brains.

And we should point out that there's this survey that was done that we're referencing right now. 106,000 students aged between 12 and 17. So not a small sample size. This is massive. It is. And, you know, it's self report, but you know, all these studies are self report. So if it's a change, it's showing that something has happened. And the 46% actually was increasing edible use, I think it's 23 or 26% for regular marijuana, 46 for edible. And that's an important point, because for a certain portion of the population, the taboo nature of

weed is what is its appeal, right? But for many others, the fact that it's normalized, that it seems harmless, that everybody's doing it, especially if it's an edible, it's in a package, it's like a gummy bear. It's a gummy bear, right, exactly. And the fact is, we should highlight that 12 to 17 means the people that are self-reporting technically are not allowed, according to the law, to be consuming cannabis in any way, shape or form. And I'll take people back to 2015 when the Liberals sort of cobbled together this vision of a cannabis legal Canada.

One of the justifications was to ensure the death of the black market, but also to protect kids from cannabis. And this tells me that at least on one front, they weren't very successful. Well, I would say on both fronts, because the black market is still thriving. Of course. So yeah, and it's important. So again, I look like I'm a big fan of marijuana. I know many people who benefit from it medically, but that's the cannabino, cannabinoids, that's the, you know, that's not the THC, that's not the part that's fun that kids aren't smoking weed for, you know, just for the, oh my gosh, the non-fun effects, right? There's some coconut to get high,

but they're also, unfortunately, when you're young, and you start to develop it as a habit, it becomes an unhealthy coping strategy. Now it's a way to escape. And what is it doing, based on the information that we have today, what are the effects that cannabis is having on those still developing brains? Well, so most of these studies, anything on human has to be correlational because you can't ethically do a study where you subject kids to smoking weed and potentially destroy their brains. So it's correlational in humans, but it affects the the the structure of the brain, it's affects the cortical development, especially, again,

these are presumed effects, but it seems to also affect the prefrontal cortex, and that's where we have our judgment, our motivation, our decision-making. So if that's becoming impaired, even if it's a 5% reduction, 5% motivation, 5% drive. I'm not even saying 5%, it can be much more, depending on how much you use, depending on the brain's natural vulnerability, depending on who the kid is. So it can have significant impacts on how they function. And also we do know one of the most powerful psychological effects is anxiety. When you ask people, if they say, you know what, I've asked so many patients and students and they tell me that they had their first panic attack, they had the first bout of anxiety after using weed, usually inedible, they had the first bout of anxiety after using weed, usually in edible, they had too much.

And it's called the scar effect, meaning that once you have it, it makes you more susceptible to future episodes. So if somebody is being plagued by anxiety, it makes it much harder for them to function on their daily tasks. So there's the neurological, there's a psychological, there's a behavioral effects. It's not this benign product, especially for kids. And you know, that's a really important point because I, it feels like a different world from say the 1980s when we were told, oh, marijuana is the gateway drug and if you start that, who knows what

path you're gonna to go down. I don't know how accurate that was, but the flip side to that was also, I remember proponents of legalizing marijuana would say things like, no one has ever overdosed on marijuana, which may or may not be true, but it's sort of a false flag to suggest that there are no negative effects to marijuana. It's from the earth. It's a natural herb. And it just, it feels to me that we went into this legalizing enterprise, possibly without our eyes open on either side of the debate. Well, exactly. And the problem is the debate is, you're right, it's either side. Very few people have a nuance to take. It's black and white. And some people say, look, and there are numerous people. Joe Rogan's an example where he gets high every day, Snoop Dogg,

every day, all day, and they're very ambitious. They're very creative. You know, they live a really rewarding life, but they are probably the outliers. Most people, when they get high, they get lazy. I'm like, it's better than alcohol, but if I had to force someone to take a drug, I'd be saying weed over alcohol. It's not harmless, it's not benign. It's not benign, especially on 12-year-olds. And you just mentioned Joe Rogan, which is a perfect segue into what we're going to talk about next, because one of his regular guests is Jordan Peterson. And Jordan Peterson is putting forth a new theory on, I guess, narcissism and how it has no political stripes. The problem is that 4 to 5% of the population, something like that, is cluster B, that's the DSM-5 terms, histrionic, narcissistic, antisocial, psychopathic, or

they have, and they have dark tetrad traits, they're Machiavellian, they're sadistic. That's about 4%. Okay, so the question is how do these people maneuver? And the answer is they go to where the power is, and they adopt those ideas, and they put themselves even on the forefront of that. Right. But the ideas are completely irrelevant. Right.

All they're doing is, they're the Pharisees, they're the modern version of the Pharisees, they're the people who use God's name in vain, right, as they proclaim moral virtue. Yes. Doesn't matter whether it's right or left or Christian or Jewish or Islam, they invade the idea space, and then they use that, those ideas, as false weapons to advance their narcissistic advantage. All right, Doc, do you think that Jordan Peterson is on to something? Is this an accurate assessment of what's going on?

Is it all about the power and not necessarily the ideas? Well, two things. One, he made a huge mistake when he talked about cluster B, when he talked about the narcissism, antisocial, histrionic, and then he said psychopathy or psychopath. No, it's borderline personality disorder. Like, psychopathy is not in the DSM.

It's mentioned as part of antisocial personality disorder. But that was a crazy mistake that he made. I'm not sure how he made the mistake, but you know, hey, it happens. But as for hers, what he's saying, yes, this is why societies, you know, a, let's say a communal society, this is why socialism never works, because there is a certain proportion of the population between one and five percent who will have some of the most dark, you know, let's say sadistic, terrible traits, and they will take advantage of people. And yes, they will

sell you what you want to buy, they will tell you what you want to hear, they will be the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing, and they know how to manipulate. And the best way to manipulate, and this is really important because it's happening in Canada right now, the best way is through fear. You tell them there is an enemy, there is a pandemic, there is something out there to get you and I'm the one I have the ability to lead us through this and then people will give up their rights in order to feel safe and secure so yes he's absolutely right and the narcissist the psychopath they're the best at doing this Dr. Orinamite really appreciate you sir all the best to you and I hope to talk to you again soon thank you Ben always a pleasure

and I hope to talk to you again soon. Thank you, Ben. Always a pleasure. We're getting close to the end of this campaign. I've said this before, that it just feels to me that with the amount of venom and misdirection and misinformation coming out of the liberals, it doesn't feel to me that those are the tactics of a front-runner campaign. I don't know what their internal polls are telling them,

but it doesn't feel to me like these are the tactics of people comfortable with seemingly what looks like a very big lead. And here to maybe challenge that and to drill down into some of the stories that are bubbling up on the campaign trail were joined by my friend and yours, Regan Watts of Fratton Park, Inc. He's also a former senior aide to the late great Jim Flaherty. Regan, welcome back to the show. Hello, my friend. All right. So Mark Carney and the Liberals, as I said, they seem to have resorted to full out smears

and look, I'm not a politician, so I'm gonna call them lies on the campaign trail. Let's listen. He draws his inspiration. He draws his inspiration from President Trump. He copies his ideas. His first instinct, Polyev's first instinct when our nation was attacked was to call Canada stupid. It was our fault. He even chooses, Pierre Polyev

even chooses to be willfully blind to the growing threats facing Canada by refusing for some reason to get his security clearance. What's he hiding? I don't know. Yeah, lost to unpack there. Let's not forget that he asked Mark Carney asked point blank why about the security issue on during the during the English language debate and he got a fulsome good faith answer, and he's pretending like he didn't hear it. Meanwhile, Sean Fraser, the man who was out,

then he was in because he saw it as politically opportunistic to get back into the House of Commons, said this, he said, Pierre is in my riding tonight hosting one of his Trump style rallies. If you want to help make sure I'm there to take him in at the house after the election, chip in to help our campaign.

Nevermind the fact that he's unfairly besmirching anybody who shows up at those rallies. It's factually inaccurate. I've now said a lot. Time for you to comment, my friend. Well, Ben, there's death and taxes as two certainties in life. The third that many of your listeners will know is that the liberal parties will throw the kitchen sink at conservatives no matter where we are in the campaign, no matter where they are in the polls. Sean Fraser, that beacon of high political moral turpitude

coming out and throwing this type of nonsense, and I'm calling it nonsense because it is, not because Mr. Fraser's a bad person, he's not. He's actually a very nice man, and I know you've met him. I like him personally quite a bit. To shake his hand is to enjoy his presence, but this is a man, when he talks about Trump-style rallies, let's go to Mr. Fraser's record.

He is the man who destroyed the Canadian consensus on immigration when he was immigration minister. If people are upset about housing and issues related to immigration in this country, guess what? Mr. Fraser is the one who oversaw the complete collapse of Canadian immigration and the consensus around it in this country.

He was also the minister of housing who lo and behold didn't get any houses built. And so when Mr. Fraser starts throwing the kitchen sink at Mr. Poliev as Mr. Carney did in his in the comments there earlier, it tells you a couple things. It tells you that liberals only have one campaign. They want you to think that they want Canadians to think that they're hopeful. But the liberals only ever ever have one campaign, which is to throw the kitchen sink and see what sticks. Yeah.

And so when they say things like Trump rallies, and they're talking about other social issues, I mean, it took a little while for for the liberals to get to social issues on this campaign. But Mark Carney misrepresented the phone call, his initial phone call on the 28th of March with Donald Trump. The story popped up on French Radio-Canada, which means it took a little bit of time for it to bubble up and translate into English, but it does seem to be finding traction, at least on social media. He claimed that in that initial call, Donald Trump respected, recognized Canada's national sovereignty. Turns out that's not what happened on the call. And that was the whole thing.

Like that's what kicked things off for him. Look how much he disrespected Justin Trudeau. Look how much he now respects the new guy. So he started the whole thing on either a misrepresentation or a lie or a miscommunication. I shouldn't be surprised, but I am disappointed. Well, Mr. Carney, you know, this is not the first time he's had like a really strange relationship

with the truth. You know, there's any number of places we can go here, Ben. And by the way, Mr. Carney, like Mr. Fraser, is a very nice man. To shake his hand and to be in his presence is enjoyable. He's a nice man. But he lied about this interaction with Trump, according to the reports in the media today. It's such a strange thing for him to lie about because you would think that the Liberal Party of Canada who, back to my comments earlier, only know how to run a kitchen sink campaign, that is they'll throw everything at Canadians to scare them away

from voting conservative. This is, you know, you would have thought that they would have wanted to leak out that this 51st state talk continued. No, no, no, I disagree. I disagree. I think they needed to show that this was the guy who was going to command the respect of the White House. As a matter of fact, he wasn't going to talk to him until he got that respect, but he had to do something. And so when the respect was not given to him that he thought was due, he created it out of whole cloth. Because I can tell you, in a lot of the interactions I had with with liberals on social media they hung on to that like grim death that was the that was the the brass ring that they were they were grabbing at look how things are different look at what he's done Canada is now respected by the White House turns out not at all well would this be the first time

a liberal political leader had challenges with telling the truth on an issue that was of serious consequence to the country? Of course not. I don't understand why he's not being straight up with this. It's really strange. It speaks to some of the other issues around his personal financial holdings. I don't begrudge a guy who's made 50 or 100 million bucks like Mr. Carney has, but my goodness, we should know what the guy owns before he becomes prime minister, not to mention his, you know, his, his expertise in tax planning. You know, it's, it's, it's not every day people set up a multi-billion dollar investment funds out of a bike shop in, in Hamilton, Bermuda, but here we are. So it's, it's part of a pattern for Mr. Carney.

It doesn't make sense to me. I don't know why he's doing it. I think Canadians would just appreciate it if folks were straight up with them. And for better or for worse, uh, we we need more more straight talk, not less. I think I think one of the reasons he's not telling us what he owns is because we're Canadians to see how what he's actually worth, they would get sticker shock, they would reinforce it. He really is very successful and good for him. I never begrudge anybody their success. But there is a certain type of person that's lining up to vote for the liberals who may think twice when they realize that he's worth 40, 50, 60 million bucks.

But that's a speculation on my part and of course, a speculation because he's not giving me any data. I do want to go to his, the undisclosed savings that are referenced in the platform. And, and well, let's listen to this exchange between a reporter and Mark Carney. They're saying your plan with the $28 billion of savings could lead to cuts. So how do you convince voters in places like this, progressive voters, that they can trust you with their vote? I think, Alex, if I may, one of the things that's very important, there's a few things. The biggest thing in this election is who's going to stand up to President Trump.

We're going to send Pierre Poliev or me to face President Trump in those negotiations. You go from undisclosed savings to Donald Trump. I mean, it's it's we're not having a serious conversation here. Reagan is a country at a time where we should. He's somehow the liberals have managed to convince a significant amount of people that having a serious conversation here, Regan, as a country at a time where we should. Somehow the liberals have managed to convince a significant amount of people that, no, sure the streets aren't safer.

Sure the drug problem isn't better. Sure our streets aren't crumbling. Sure our hospitals aren't paid for. And we're sure our military is falling apart. But Donald Trump, Donald Trump is the problem. Explain this to me. Well, Ben, I hate to to harp on the same point, three sections in a row, but death taxes and the Liberal Party and kitchen sinks are synonymous. They have one campaign,

which is, you know, they are the ones that are prepared to stand up to Donald Trump, and that is speaking to an electorate that is motivated to vote for them. I think it's reckless that they've got this obsession with Trump because I think there's more important issues, but it's highly effective. And let's face it, the liberal campaign itself has not been spectacular. Mr. Carney is not lighting up crowds with his prose or his vocal prowess, and their ads have not been great, but they have zeroed in on this issue and President Trump is an issue that motivates their voters. So I have to tip my chapeau a little bit. Mr. Carney, Mr. Carney has got message discipline and I think that

shows. Regan, we're going to leave it there. Thank you very much, my friend. Merci, see you later. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And you know, this election feels very close. It just does. I know that the Tories, their vote is far less efficient than the Liberals, so they have to do far better in terms of raw numbers,

just to get the same number of seats as the Liberals. I know that the Bloc vote has seemingly collapsed in Quebec. The NDP vote has seemingly collapsed across the country, which means everyone seems to be coalescing behind the Tories and the liberals. And depending on what day it is and what part of the country and what poll you're looking at, one's up or the other's up.

So this is shaping up to be one of the closest head-to-head races in the history of Canadian politics. All the more reason to bring back to the show Craig Baird, the host of Canadian History X, to talk about the last closest election in Canadian history. Craig, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So let's get in the way back machine and take us all the way back to the election of 1972. Yeah, 1972 was a very unique election. We were coming about four years after 1968, where you had Trudeau mania and the liberals had a majority government. But by 1972,

that had kind of started to wane and the economy wasn't doing great. So people were starting to look for some sort of change and they were looking towards the progressive conservatives and Robert Stanfield who would lead the party through the second, his second election. And by 1972, you had things like the October crisis that happened in October 1970 that hurt the liberals in places like Quebec. And then meanwhile, Robert Stanfield, you know, the progressive conservatives had the campaign of a progressive conservative government will do better. And the liberals had a campaign where it was the land is strong.

Let's let's let's stick with those slogans for just a second. A progressive conservative government will do better. That's really not shooting for the stars, is it? It really isn't. But it was better than the liberals. The land is strong because they mostly just had pictures of Canada in their campaigns and on television. Many consider it to be one of the worst campaigns in Canadian history just because of how inefficient

it really was. Listen, I'm going to editorialize for a second. You don't have to, but that's perfectly in keeping with the Liberal Party. Their campaign was nothing but pictures of Canada. well, the Liberal Party sees itself as Canada. So that's very in keeping with how they see themselves. Anyway, go on, my friend. And then the NDP, they were still led by or they were led by Tommy Douglas until 1970. And then he was replaced by David Lewis. So going into the election, one big change was that the voting age had been lowered to 18. So you had a lot of new people, but you also didn't have a TV debate. You had the first TV debate in 1968, but it was a very boring affair. Nobody liked it and it wouldn't return until I believe 1980. So it'd be a while. But this election was incredibly close. The liberals won with 109 seats and the Progressive Conservatives had 107 seats.

Wow. So it was a very, very close election. The NDP actually did very well. They took a lot of the seats from the Liberals when they had 31 seats and that would be their best to that point until the late 1980s under Ed Broadbent. But it was a very close election. Obviously the government only lasted a couple of years before it went into another election in 1974.

So yeah, well that's what happens. Typically in Canada, minorities don't last that long. Obviously, the government only lasted a couple years before it went into another election in 1974. Well, that's what happens. Typically in Canada, minorities don't last that long. We just came out of a very long, the longest minority in Canadian history. And so, yeah, I think people like minorities because they can pull the plug somewhere between 9 and 18 months. Typically, that is what it is. Yeah. And with this one, it was the NDP that was kind of helping the liberals stay in power until they fell in a budget vote in 1974. And then the liberals actually got a majority in that government and that election.

And I know you said that the liberal campaign was viewed as one of the worst of all time, but they had a slumping economy. They had the War Measures Act. They had a whole bunch of, they had baggage, right? So how is it that they still managed to outperform the Tories? You would think that it feels like it might have been a change election and yet it really wasn't. Well, the Tories did very well again in Western Canada, but they didn't do as well in Eastern Canada. The Liberals were able to win Ontario, a good chunk of Quebec, the Social Credit Party actually

won a bit there as well. So it was just, it was very split between the two parts of the country. And if a few votes had just gone a different way, Robert Stanfield would have easily won that election. And it was incredibly close. I don't think we've ever had an election that close before. All right, well we're gonna pivot from the performance in the theater of politics to the performance in theater of theater. And I understand

that hindsight is 20-20, so we can look back at the performance of Godspell in Toronto in 1972, knowing what we know today. But back then, it was a cast made up of unknowns who one day all became knowns. Talk to us about that. Yeah, when people would ask me, you know, when would you like to travel back in time to, I have various places I would like to go. But one is to see a Godspell performance in Toronto 1972, because it was just an unbelievable cast of unknowns. People like Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber. I mean, it was so stacked with talent that Catherine O'Hara actually auditioned for Godspell

and didn't get a part. So it just shows you how much talent there was in this. Paul Schaeffer was the show's musical director? He was, yeah. He'd actually come just to play the piano for some of his friends who were auditioning, but they really liked him, so they actually made him the show's musical director. And then Howard Shore was there, and he was playing saxophone. And then he would go on to win three Academy Awards for scoring the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's just unbelievable the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Like it's just unbelievable the talent that's in this. So he won three Oscars for the Lord of the Rings. Paul Schaeffer,

in my mind, the high water mark in his career was not David Letterman. It's the fact that he wrote the song, It's Raining Men. Exactly. Yeah. This cast and crew, I mean, they went on to earn four orders of Canada, 10 Emmys, five Tonys, three Oscars, three Golden Globes, seven Grammys and three stars on Canada's Walk of Fame. And at the time, nobody knew who they were. They were just a bunch of unknowns on stage and nobody knew what they were seeing in front of them. All right. Well, let's listen to a little bit above your episode on Godspell. News traveled fast across Toronto that the production was coming. Every actor in the

city wanted a role and over 500 auditioned for the 10 roles. During the first week of March, various auditions were held and with each one the number of potential performers slowly decreased. Until the final callback. Eugene Levy was one of those eagerly waiting news of a role. Originally from Hamilton, he never thought he would get far in the audition process. When he entered he saw six people go in before him and each one sang the song Aquarius from the musical Hare. He didn't know the lyrics but listened to the chorus of each singer to learn the words. He walked in, gave his performance in front of the directors and as he hit the high note they stopped him and said, all right that's fine thank you very much.

But it turns out the directors weren't looking for polish, what they wanted was raw talent and Levy had a lot of it. Absolutely incredible. Who was the director of this play? It was actually directed by uh it was created by Steven Schwartz and so it was directed by I believe him and some other people who came in to kind of put on because it was created by Stephen Schwartz. And so it was directed by, I believe him and some other people who came in to kind of put on because it was put on various performances in the United States and then Toronto and London.

So it kind of went all over the place. Every place had its own cast and crew and all of that. Yeah, but it's still fun. I mean, I can't even understand how they identified the talent that they put on stage so early on and how those stars went on to become bonafide stars around the world. I mean, I would love to pick the brain of that director and say, what did you see in Eugene Levy, Martin Short,

Andrew Martin, Dave Thomas, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber? I mean, that's a Ted talk right there. Absolutely. Like it was somebody who, if they were a scout for hockey, they had essentially picked a team of Hall of Famers, you know, on the first try. a TED talk right there. Absolutely. Like it was somebody who, if they were a scout for hockey, they essentially picked a team of hall of famers, you know, on the first try, like there was so much talent in Toronto at the time. It was a hub for performances and such that there was just so much to choose

from that you just chose the best of the best for this. Yeah. That's, that's, that's like getting, uh, you know, seven first round draft picks and every single one that you pick in one year makes it to the hall of fame. Oh, absolutely. And that's one reason why when it premiered in 1972 was only supposed to run for a few weeks. It actually ran till August, 1973 for what was then a record 488 performances. Did all of them stick around for the entire thing? Most did. Victor Garber, who people would know from Alias and Titanic and all these other

shows, he actually played Jesus and he was so good at it that they actually had him go and play Jesus in the movie that was made. So he left a little bit later and then Eugene Levy actually played Jesus and he had to be shirtless and asked him if he would shave his chest and he said, absolutely not. I'm not doing that. Hey, Craig Barrett, how can people find the show? You can find it on all podcast platforms

and you can listen on the Chorus Radio Network every weekend. Just check your local times. Craig Baird, the host of Canadian History X, always love having you on the show, my friend. Thanks for having me. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney Show and we've got a lot of online stories to discuss. We're living in an online virtual world and we've got to arm ourselves with the information

because the world keeps getting increasingly complex and we in our simple ways think that the rules of the everyday world apply to the online world. That's not necessarily the case. And so we're joined now by Francis Sims, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology at Humber Polytechnic. Francis, welcome to the case. And so we're joined now by Francis Sims, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology at Humber Polytechnic. Francis, welcome to the show. Hi, Ben, happy to be here with you. So it's very concerning when I read

that the cyber scam industry is spreading globally, according to the UN. Give me a sense of what this industry looks like, who they're targeting, what the scams are. Yeah, so no longer are the scams being done as Donald Trump would call it by some guys sitting in his basement watching an attack. These are now large scale data centers. And often what's happening is that people are being tricked

into working in those data centers. The UN said that it's like a cancer. People are being human trafficked and forced to make these calls that many of us have received day in and day out that's associated with fraud. It might start with a text to your phone. Somebody said they accidentally texted you and then they tried to hook you in and then get you to buy crypto. Or it might be the grandparent scam where somebody's calling and pretending to be the grandson in jail and needs money transferred. Well, what we're hearing is that this thing is now a huge business.

It's making billions and billions of dollars a year globally. It used to be that these organizations were operating mostly out of Southeast Asia, but now we've heard that they've expanded to warehouses in Latin America, in Europe. It's like the drug industry now. It's all over the place. And what's interesting is that the people, you know, we used to think of the people being scammed as victims and they absolutely are. But now the people calling you actually might be a victim as well. That's scary.

They're being forced into this labor, which is really sad and scary. Yeah. Oh, that's awful. That's awful. Well, let's move on to another story. There's a story on CTV news that suggested countries are shoring up their digital defenses as cyber warfare becomes increasingly complex and increasingly regular occurrence. Yeah, like what happened, I would say around COVID when everybody started to work from home, we put everything on the internet, right? And so what that meant is if you were working at like Yeah, like what happened, I would say around COVID, when everybody started to work from home, we put everything on the internet, right? And so what that meant is if you were working at like a water treatment facility, right, that switch, which would maybe change the chlorination level,

now you could do from home, which is great when you needed to do it. Well, what that also meant is that anybody that could hack into that system can do that from home. What happened in Texas recently was that, water started spilling all over the place. There was a case in Florida where somebody started to change the chemical level in the plant and almost killed lots of people. And what's crazy is that in our need to put everything, make everything accessible from home,

we inadvertently put all this stuff that we never thought would be on the internet available for hackers. And places like Russia, China, or those threat organizations, they don't need to send an army in to turn the water off now. They just need to basically enter a line

on a piece of code and that can happen. And that's what organizations, like that's what countries around the world are starting to get worried about. We saw it happen in Ukraine. Yeah. Right. With the war, those kinds of attacks launching. And I think increasingly we're worried that that's going to happen more frequently in Canada. We call that sort of our critical infrastructure and everything is on the Internet. And how do we protect it? Is that does that even make sense? And Francis Sims, I'm going to throw a curveball at you. And I really hope you don't mind. And if you can't answer this, no problem. We're going to move on.

But we were having a conversation yesterday on the Ben Mulroney Show about a promise that Pierre Poliev has made in this campaign that before he raises taxes moving forward, conservative government will put any tax increase on a referendum question to Canadians. And I'm still forming my own opinion about this, but I thought what an insane amount of work

would be going into and cost would be going into mounting a national referendum campaign anytime when you want to raise taxes. Somebody called into the show and said, well, we could do the whole thing online. Now I have to assume that there are certain countries in the world that are well ahead of the curve when it comes to sort of moving voting to the digital space.

Is that something that based on whatever knowledge you have, is that something that we could do? Could we see referendums in this country become more commonplace if we adopt best practices from other countries and use software and use apps and use sort of mobile technology? Yeah, I think 100%. But it all comes down to, you know, in my expertise is trust, right? And you trust the platform. We see, you know, you know, we see our friends south of the

border, you know, you know, saying that they can't trust elections, especially when it's mail in ballots, right? We're going to have the same kind of thing with the referendum. If we can build that trust, I think it's a fantastic idea. And there are platforms that do that. Yeah. We put our healthcare data online. Maybe we don't feel comfortable. But when you walk into a hospital, you know, you may in Toronto, you might be using MyChart or anywhere else in the country. All that data is accessible online to all the doctors and nurses that need it. So it's there. And so it's a secure system and we have policies around it. So I think for sure we can put that online. It's just

building that public confidence that it's safe and you can trust the result. That's what it really all comes down to I think. We've got this next story is an example of technology being used as a shield as opposed to a weapon. We hear about drone technology and how it's used in warfare and how terrible it can be and how destructive it can be. Well, now we're hearing that AI and thermal drones could help finding people lost in British Columbia's mountains or following an avalanche.

We know that every second counts following an avalanche and sometimes people only have minutes before they are going to expire. And this technology that exists today could help identify and find these people and save their lives. It's unbelievable and I think this is a perfect example of what AI can do. In January when I was on the show we talked about how Transport Canada changed the rule so now drones can you can operate them with non-visual line of sight which means means you can operate them where you can't see them. In this situation, a rescue drone with software developed in Squamish, BC, so Canadian Innovation,

great example, found a hiker within 30 seconds of the battery life of the drone. Wow. Right? It's just phenomenal. And every time North Shore Rescue sends, I think they say they get like a hundred calls a year or something, it costs them upwards of $30,000, right? To send a helicopter up to do that. Now a drone can cover the amount of distance that takes a helicopter two hours to do, probably in a half hour. And with this thermal technology, it's just, it has the opportunity to save so many lives

at a lower cost. And in fact, they're using it on Mount Everest, right? Because they're having that issue on Mount Everest now where people go up the mountain and they need oxygen. It takes a Sherpa, you know, these Sherpas are amazing. Two, three hours to get up, it can take 10 minutes. Yeah. It's only a kilometer and a half.

Yeah. So I think this is exactly the kind of stuff that we need with AI. But Francis, I get the thermal technology. I'm trying to understand what's AI bringing to the table? Is it the AI that's able to navigate and negotiate and fly it independent of having a human being do so? That's absolutely right.

So in this particular situation, what's happening is the camera has a whole bunch of pixels on it, just like when you watch, you know, you hear about the number of pixels on your screen on TV, and it's looking at every single pixel and basically looking to see if it's white or green or some other color, bright orange. And then if it is, then it's going to a place where it can communicate back. Yeah. Maybe it has satellite connectivity. It might not. It might have to fly back to somewhere

closer to the base where it can send a signal because these things are operating on their own. There's not necessarily a controller, a person piloting at the other end just because they're in some remote region. Yeah, Francis, so that's where the AI comes in. Francis, real quick,

could this technology apply to amber alerts if all of a sudden at a big giant, at the CNE, if a kid goes missing, or at the PNE out east, if the OS, if a kid goes missing, could 20 drones be fired up having seen a picture of that kid, identify that kid, and let the authorities know where that kid is? Absolutely, and in fact, at the Boston Marathon this year,

they used AI to pick out the number that was on everybody's shirt. So if you had a friend that was in the Boston Marathon, my brother-in-law was there, there's about 300 pictures of him all over the place because they used AI to find him in that crowd as they ran. In real time. In real time. In real time. And that's exactly what they could do. That's a great idea. Yeah, that's the shortening of the workflow, right? So that when AI hands it over to the human authorities, they are armed with far more information

in a shorter period of time than they otherwise would. And like we said, every second counts in the life of a climber and in the life of an abducted or missing child. And so this is a technology whose time has come. Francis Sims, thank you so much for joining us. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Ben.

Wow. I get excited about technology stories like that. Because if used properly, they can change the world for the better. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulroney Show podcast. We're live every day nationwide on the Chorus Radio Network. And you can listen online to the Radio Canada player and the iHeart Radio Canada apps. And make sure to follow and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your streaming audio. We release new podcasts every day. Thanks for listening.

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