The Ben Mulroney Show - Bidets for all, a culture change for some? And big jobs up for grabs!

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

- Aliya Ali - Norman Wickboldt, Chief Human Resources Officer at PowerCo Canada If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Mulruni. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney's show. It's always a pleasure to spend some time with you on a weekday. And today is no different. And wherever you're finding us, whether it be on social media, on a streaming platform, on YouTube, on radio, or on a podcast, we say thank you. A country like Canada is an interesting experiment. There is a push-pull of the culture that exists versus the cultures that we bring in. And what part of one's culture does one leave in the country they're leaving in order to adopt part of the Canadian identity?

And that question is sort of playing itself out in real time on the campus of the University of Toronto. where, for, in my humble opinion, very valid cultural reasons, there is a need for Muslim students, female Muslim students, to avail themselves of a bidet. If you don't know what a bidet is, it is in a lot of, if you go to a fancy hotel, there's a toilet and there's a bidet. It kind of looks like a toilet, not a toilet, and is there to help clean you. It's there to clean you. and there are various ways to provide the service of a bidet. You don't have to have a full unit. There can be a hose. But anyway, this, because there have not been any,

this presents unique and very real challenges to the educational goals of a lot of students. Let's listen to a short little Instagram video that lays it out. There were students that have recorded holding it in for, more than 14 hours because they're not comforting people using a washroom without the day. They're not drinking enough water because they don't want to use the washroom. They're leaving exams early, leaving

classrooms early because they want to head home and use the washroom. People don't feel at home because they don't have bidetis. All right, so let's welcome to the show, a student who is spearheading a movement at the University of Toronto. Bidase at U of T. Alia Ali. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And I wondered what you thought of my preamble, what I posited off the top of the show. Because when I first heard this story, my first instinct was, well, everybody should just use the bathroom that they have. But then I thought about it some more. And I read the story.

And I was like, no, no. This is an aspect of one's culture that one should not have to sacrifice. And this is not like, this is not like other things. And therefore, I was like, no, if we welcome people here who have certain traditions and they have certain requirements and we say come make your home in Canada, then this sort of thing should be available to them. 100%, 100%. Canada cannot be my home unless it has bidet. Let's be real, because I come from a country. So I come from the UAE, so specifically Dubai.

And in Dubai, you have bidet in every single washroom. You don't have to think twice. You step out of the house. you don't have to carry water bottles or anything. It's going to be everywhere. So coming to Canada as an international student, the biggest culture shock was the lack of bidetis. It was really like you were losing a part of yourself.

And it's really critical to our daily well-being because I've been using it in my entire life. Alia, may I ask you in any way that you're comfortable to just explain what that means? Sure. So whenever we use a washroom, right? So when you defecate, et cetera, we use the bidet to clean up after ourselves, right? It's kind of like, you know, you're cleaning a dish or you're taking a shower, right?

Any, like, you use water as a primary means to clean up after yourself. So why do we stop? Like, why in Canada people stop down there, right? So that's how critical it is to us. It's like, I mean, it's crazy how insane, requesting people feel without it from our culture background. Listen, speaking as someone, who has availed himself of a bidet, I can speak to the wonders of that invention. But as I said

off the top, you know, I started with one position, then I thought about it and I read about it and I came to the complete other side. But there are some people out there who heard of this and just dug in, right? And there's an anti-Islam pushback. This to me is not a big hill. This is not a hill to die on for those who would have an issue. How would you explain it to someone who would say, hey, you know what? You should just leave that in the UAE because this is Canada. This is what we do here. And if we start accommodating for you, we have to start accommodating for everybody. Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world. Can you imagine what we would have to do if we had accommodations for the hundreds of different cultures that exist here?

100%. No, I feel like unfortunately there's a stigma and this is incorrect. that bids are just a Muslim thing or it's an Asian thing, but that's not actually true. In parts of Europe, let's say Italy, for example, it's mandated by law to have badees in residential buildings and hotels. And Italy is in Europe, right? You have parts of Africa that are accustomed to using water as a form of sanitation. So it's really, you know, ignorance and lack of information that people don't know that bade is actually widely used in parts of the world. More than 50% of the world uses water as a form of sanitation. And it's not, it's not just about a culture, but it's also about superior hygiene mechanism. You know, when you're cleaning anything, you use water.

And so, you know, the students that I surveyed more than thousands of students, a lot of them have reported experiencing UTIs, stomach issues, constipation, and all sorts of infection because they're not able to clean up after themselves properly. Students are experiencing dehydration because they're not drinking enough water. And also, sustainability, if you look at it, toilet paper is one of the, the biggest contributions to deforestation in the world. And if we switch to Bidase, we would be saving 15 million trees a year. So you certainly don't need to wrap your hand in toilet paper. Alia, talk to me about the moment you realized that this was going to be a problem and it was

going to put pressure on your education. And then talk to me about how you then mobilized to create Bidays at U of T. Yeah, 100%. So when I... realized this was the thing, I was not willing to accept it. I was like, this cannot be my new norm. You know, UFT and Canada, they boast about being inclusive, being diverse, being accommodating. So if that's really true, then they should, you know, help us with installing bidet's. And so there was an application at our campus, so I'm from the Scarborough campus. And they said, if you want to leave a legacy on campus and improve campus life, we're giving out this fund for you to do that. So I applied to that.

I actually got rejected. I didn't get the money. But they did. back to me and they said, you know what, we're still going to make this an institutional priority independent of this fund. And that's how it started. We have a pilot phase already implemented at the Scarborough campus. We have another one coming up at the Mississauga campus, and we are advocating for a campus-wide installation. I mean, this is, it's a heck of a story of, you know, one student mobilizing to the betterment of more. What have you learned through the process of doing this? What have you learned about the rest of the students? What have you learned about the administration?

What have you learned about your fellow Muslim students? Yeah, 100%. I kind of became a celebrity on campus after the Mide's or implemented. They're like, oh, you're the one that implemented Bidaze. Oh, you're the founder of Badaez at UFT. Thank you so much. Like this really changed my life. Like, and it's not just for the Muslim students.

It's also for the Canadians, right? They're also like, oh my God, like this is completely an experience that I cannot go back on now, right? this foreign gadget now it's completely changed my life and in terms of what I've learned I've learned that you know my vision initially was to implement Canada sorry bidet is Canada wide or North America wide but then few people raised a few concerns saying that you know there's a lot of homeless population here so imagine if somebody took a bidet and started taking a shower right so you deal with that and those are some of the challenges that I'm facing now now that I want to expand it across different universities and public spaces but the reality is you know just

for a smaller population of concern, are you really going to, you know, stop the wider population from accessing this need, right? And if a homeless person really wanted to do that, they could easily take a water bottle or a jug, fill it up in the sink, and they could still take a shower. I mean, you know, if there's a

will, there's a way. Well, one thing that one of the things that did help me get to the other side of that argument was that, I assumed that toilets would have to come out and be replaced with bidetes, but that is not the case. that is not the case, so the same number of toilets can still be there.

Last question for you, Leo, what are you studying? I actually recently graduated last year. I studied neuroscience, and I'm currently a product manager at a tech startup. Well, congratulations, congratulations for your successful academic career, and congratulations for the legacy that you're leaving behind. Alia Ali, thank you so much for being here and keep fighting the good fight. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here.

Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye. Right. And Canada's largest EV battery plant is finally flipping the switch and starting to hire two years after it was first announced. The multi-billion dollar project is moving from promise to paychecks. So who's getting the job? We're going to find out next.

This is the Ben Mulroney show. And as always, I thank you for joining us. You might remember a couple of years ago, there was a big announcement in the province of Ontario in the town of St. Thomas, where I believe Doug Ford, the Premier, Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, were together to make a massive funding announcement for a new plant that was going to be building batteries for the new EV economy. And this was a hedge to ensure that Ontario, which is the ground zero for the automotive industry in Canada, did not lose its footing when the world ultimately made that pivot or transition to electric vehicles. And there was a lot of money

that was laid out and it's a big, big bet. And now it looks like the bet is paying off. We've gone from ribbon cutting and big checks to a plant being built and now jobs are being offered. Powerco has officially launched its first job recruitment campaign for what will be Canada's largest ever EV battery manufacturing plant located in St. Thomas, Ontario, unleashing hundreds of high-quality local jobs by the end of this year. So to talk about this, we're joined by the chief

human resources officer at Power Co-Canada, Norman Wickbold. Norman, congratulations and welcome to the show. Much for having me. As a reminder, the province and the country were promised 3,000 direct jobs at full production and up to 30,000.

direct jobs, is that still in the offing? So, yes, thank you, Ben, for the question. Obviously, we wanted to make sure that we state that we are completely committed to this project because it's a long-term project, and therefore the thousands of jobs that we were great, we are completely committed to. And I've got to ask, you know, we've been witnessing over the past few years a cooling of the consumer appetite for electric vehicles in this moment. I think we all will agree that the future of automotive is electric,

but I think a lot of people thought that the future was today and it's probably not until tomorrow. Does that change in timeline affect anything at your plant? So, yeah, you basically said it then. Tomorrow is 27 for us, yeah? So we still have a couple of years until we start our production, but there's a lot of work that we need to do at this site. So therefore we are building this plant.

now. And we with the Volkswagen Group and also our Power Co group, we are really committed to the EV industry and creating this industry here in Canada. So there's absolutely no change in plans for us. So, Norman, the batteries that you're

producing will be for the Volkswagen family of cars? Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. And does that include Audi? It includes Audi and then obviously Volkswagen and any other brands within the group. that are interested in our batteries, obviously.

And how many batteries are you going to be churning out a year? Oh, it's in the millions. It's in the millions. Yeah. I mean, it is very exciting because, like we said, both levels of government sort of two years ago said, we want to make sure that Ontario is a cog in the supply chain for this future EV market.

Would you say that that, would you agree with that? that statement? Yes, for sure. So again, the Volkswagen group, I think it's different in the sense that we have really redirected our strategy towards e-mobility, so in EV-V cars, and therefore, I think the power core is a crucial strategic pillar in that strategy. So we are very much the ones with our plan in Spain and Germany and here to provide the group with those future battery cells. Norman, you're the chief human resources officer. So what sort of human resources are you looking for, are you expecting?

Who do you think is going to be applying for these jobs? And how many applications do you think you're going to get? Yeah, so we are very excited. So we actually already have around 200 jobs here in St. Thomas. And I give you a couple of examples, if I may. So construction engineer, manufacturing data analyst, equipment planner, senior supplier manager, and others. So we're actually around 50 jobs openings at the moment at our site, our website, powercoor. And we are looking to fill hundreds more this year.

So anybody that would apply, you could start here as soon as you can and help our project. So listen, we don't often talk about good news. In Canada, over the past few years, it's always been about shedding jobs or doing more with less. So to hear that a company like yours is hiring and hiring aggressively. and ambitiously, I want to live in this world for just a moment. So if somebody gets a job at this factory, it's going to be a brand new factory, what are some of the, I mean, is this going to be like one of those new job environments where there are amenities that make it an attractive job to have?

So yeah, Ben, that's very good. So obviously we want to be a very attractive employer. So we're monitoring very closely what working conditions are important to the business. are important to the people. We all know that all workers also have family, so we want to make sure that between job and your private life, you have a good balance and the kinds of benefits that we are talking are obviously also in-office benefits,

but also then, you know, vacation time, time-off, work-location flexibility for some of the jobs. So we are looking at the entire portfolio of benefits and compensation to make sure we're attractive, also relocation, if you don't live in the region. So it's a Canadian-wide campaign. So we are also welcoming any other Canadians that don't live so close. Yeah.

And Norman Wickboldt. One more time, please tell us what the website is so that if anyone's listening and they want to apply for a job, they know where to go. So, Ben, thank you very much. It's powercode.ca. Yeah. And then you can just click on join us and there you find the current job posting. Well, congratulations, sir.

I know it's a big day for you. And every day moving forward is going to be big, but we congratulate you. Thanks for having me. These vets. These vets wrote the playbook, and they have all had to earn their stripes. How did you win Survivor?

Manipulating people. Same thing I'm going to do here. And now, new threats will enter the game. Hungry to forge a new legacy. Once we train them, it's going to be hard to contain. This really, truly, is the most even matchup that I've seen in a long time. The challenge, vets, and new threats. All new Wednesday on Slice and stream on Stack TV.