The Ben Mulroney Show - Blue Jays weirdness and what a successful entrepreneur says Carney needs to do next

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

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It's gone. Vlad Jr. strikes again with his fifth home round of the postseason. You're listening to the Ben Mulrooney show. The Blue Jays took flight in Seattle yesterday, tying up the ALCS two games to two. They've done everything they need to do on the road. Congratulations to them. Look, we are locked in today on the bail reform story.

That is coming up a little bit later. Ben Mulroney show. I'm Ben Mulroney. It is Friday, October 17th. Thank you so much for joining us all week long as we wind this short week down until the weekend. And yes, the Jays. They did great. They won 8-2, tying the series to 2. Look, the highlights are everywhere, right? If you want sports scores, if you want insight into the game and the insight into how the players were feeling and the tactics by each team, go somewhere else. That's not what this show is. We've got a lot of fun stories about yesterday, including the fact that thousands,

thousands of Blue Jay fans were in the stands in Seattle. Well done, Vancouver. Yes, indeed. Because they all come from Vancouver. This is annoying to Mariners fans. To say the least. To say the least. Let's take a listen to Dave Softie Mahler from KJR Seattle talking to

SportsNet 650. I don't want to hear your nonsense. I don't want to hear your Blue J BS, okay? I just sit next to some douchebag last night, literally in the stands, grown man, grown man. And I will send you the picture to prove it, wearing full Blue Jays uniform,

pants, jersey, hat backwards. The only thing he was missing was a cup and a jock strap for his little Canadian Bs and eye black, right? That's the only thing he was missing. Okay, so full, listen, everyone wears the jerseys now. Are they like the bleat, by the way?

Something with a Blue Jays insignia on it. But the full, the full uniform? That's committing. That's commitment. That is commitment. Well, listen. Well done. Keep it up.

Toronto Blue Jays fans across this country. The Jays need our support in any way they can get it. And they did great yesterday. I think they're coming home. Well, yeah. They absolutely were. They have one game today. What times are the game?

It's like 6 o'clock? Six o'clock. And then they play again for sure 100% on Sunday in Toronto. And then if there's a game 7, Monday in Toronto. Meanwhile, we've seen this before, you know, when pilots decide they're going to fly in a particular route so that they can draw something in the sky, right? There are computer programs out there that follow the transit line of a plane, and that line stays on the screen so you can actually see what the shape of the design is.

And this guy in Nova Scotia, 63-year-old, Dimitri Neonakis. Good Greek guy. Good Greek guy. Drew the team's logo, and he did it well. It was precise. It was precise to show his support for the team. He took his Cirrus SR 22 aircraft. I have to assume that's a small like, yeah.

Yeah, like a puddle jumper or something. And the flight took just under two and a half hours. And the drawing was caught the attention of flight radar 24. I guess that's the program. That's the site. We saw the video. You can see it. It's over the entire province.

Yeah. So the flight path, he just went everywhere to draw this massive blue. Jay's logo in the sky, it was exceptionally accurate. And he didn't have, if it was just him, he's the one flying. Like he doesn't have the precise instruments of a Boeing, for example. He said he used an iPad with a GPS to be able to do it. I love it. I love it. Follow the line. But also the fact that that was in Newfoundland or in Nova Scotia, we talked about British Columbia showing up in droves for the Jays. And now in Nova Scotia, there's a fan. You would think that in the Atlantic provinces, they might tilt towards, I don't know, the Boston Red Sox, right?

Or back in the day of the Expos. I guess, I mean, listen, Rogers, to their credit, have been pumping that this is Canada's team for a very long time. And Vancouver is super close to Seattle. Yeah. Yeah. So you'd think, and there's a lot of Seattle fans in Vancouver. But maybe just by definition, because Vancouver and Seattle might compete on certain things, they just, they do not want to support what's coming from the rival city. Maybe. And also it's the Canadian element too. All right. Let's also tip our hat to Max Scherzer, 41-year-old Max Scherzer, on the mound yesterday for the win.

And look, you know how it happens. at some point in a game, the pitcher, after God knows how many pitches, he's just not as, he doesn't have the stuff anymore. And the manager has to decide if he's going to pull his starter. Happens all the time. And he comes out and he touches his arm for the lefty or the righty, right? It's a tail as old as time.

Max was having none of it. He was in the game. He was having none of it. When the manager came out to tell him his time was done, I mean, I didn't watch it live, but you saw it. Yeah, I was laughing because he has a reputation. His nickname's Mad Max for a reason. Yeah, yeah.

He's intense. Yeah, and he screamed, screamed at his manager. Say, you're leaving me in, and he left him in. And this is what John Schneider said about it after the game. I've been waiting for that all year for Max to yell at me on the mound. Loved it. There's a little more of that in between to send him back. got for the six, too, talking about how we don't talk to him when he's starting. I definitely

talked to him. And that was another fun conversation in the tunnel. So he was awesome, man. And when a guy is in it, when a guy is in the arena performing and doing well, I'm going to trust him to continue to do it. Well, there you go. I mean, that's when you're the manager, you got to know when to defer to other parts of your team, right? Yeah. And that's why his team, That's why this guy's team loves the manager. Yeah. And also, I think he was a little scared of him. All right.

We got to also have, we got to talk about Ernie Clement. Ernie Clement, the journeyman. Played third base yesterday? He played third. He plays second sometimes, short, sometimes he's been in the outfit. He plays everywhere. So he's been everywhere. Cleveland, Oakland, they gave up on Ernie.

He found a home in Toronto as a utility player. Fans love him. He's tough as nails, right? Yeah, they call him. They say he's sort of like a hockey player because if he gets hurt, he still goes out. Yeah. And he just, he doesn't want to get pulled out of the game. He just loves playing baseball.

But the assumption is that when you're playing at the highest level, that all your tools will be of the highest caliber, correct? Exactly. Right. So your cleats. Your cleats, your helmet, your bat, and your glove, you would think that every major league player has the best version of whatever glove they want. Not so with Ernie Clement. Let's listen to his story. Hall of Fame baseball writer Tim Kirchard told this story the other day.

I go up to Ernie Clement before game one and just casually at his locker and he's got a rather old-looking glove on. So I said, is that your gamer? Because, you know, people use a game glove separated from, you know, any other glove that they have in their locker. And he goes, yeah, this is my gamer. I said, well, what's the story behind it? Just a casual, naive question. And he said, yeah, I got it on eBay a few months ago. He bought a baseball glove on eBay, and now he wears it in a major league game.

And he doesn't just wear it. He's a magician with it. So he told me he has to wear a glove underneath his glove because there's no padding at all in this glove. And so he needs something to wear underneath it. Jeff, there's somebody out there who put a glove up on. eBay, and now a major leaguer is wearing it. Am I overdoing this, or is this one of the most interesting stories you've ever heard? Yeah, it is interesting. It is interesting. And look, if it works for him, he's going to keep doing it. Baseball players are notoriously superstitious.

They're not just, I'm not superstitious. I'm just a little stitious. Yeah. Remember that line? Yeah, yeah. Name the show. The office. The office. Yeah, I'm not I'm not superstitious. I'm just a little stitious. A little stitious. Anyway, congratulations to Ernie Clement. There's no way he's not going to use that until it stops working. There's some guy out there, though, who is probably watching TV going, that glove looks. That was my glove. And I sold it to some dude on eBay for 20 bucks. All right, we got a big, big show coming up, including why businesses in Canada are struggling to compete. This is a conversation you need to hear.

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. The third Wednesday of every October, I don't know if you knew this, is International Pronouns Day. It is recognized annually, dedicated to promoting respect and educating community members about personal pronouns and making them commonplace. Recognizing and using the pronouns, individuals determined for themselves is basic human dignity. Here is the problem with that day. It is also, I believe, international or national Pug Day. And my producer, who is a pug papa. Aficionado.

Believes that's a bridge too far. You can't take that day from him. You can't take Pug Day and make a pronoun day. That's how he feels. Look, I want to respect anybody if they want their pronouns said by me. I will say them. I don't want to go through life offending anybody. I don't share my pronouns because it's pretty evident.

And my problem with this is simple, and it's not a big deal. But one day we woke up and decided that this had to happen to show respect, which implied that for all of time prior to it, we weren't being respectful. We weren't being as respectful as we could be. And that's a problem for me because I try to live my life being as respectful to people as I can possibly be. And to suggest that I wasn't and could be more because somebody decided that this was a new thing, kind of rubs me the wrong way. So if I'm with somebody and they tell me what their pronouns are, I will absolutely respect those. But I don't believe that I'm showing any more or less respect today than I did five years ago.

And so, yes, if you want to have International Pronouns Day, you go right ahead. Something tells me that my producer, however, will be celebrating Pug Day as he has forever. You can, I will respect your pronouns. You got to respect my Pug Day. Okay. All right. Well, let's look at something that is probably a little more important than International Pronound Day. And that is the landscape of small business in this country. A survey by the Canadian Federation of independent business found that 73% of small business owners say high taxes are a main reason they discourage someone from starting a business now. And by the way, let's back up for a moment. Small business is the engine of the economy. I know that because my dad used to tell me

all the time. You got to respect the entrepreneur. You got to respect the person who bets on themselves. They have an idea. They want to go into the market. They're going to test it in the market. The market is going to tell them whether they got it right or they got it wrong. They have no safety net. Most times they'll put their own money in the business. They'll bootstrap it until it gets going. And once it gets going, we all benefit. We all benefit because these small businesses are anchors on streets. They are anchors in communities. They bring people together. They're community touchstones. They employ the community. They pay taxes in the community. They are responsible members of the community, there is nothing more noble than a small business owner.

So when they tell you that they would discourage someone from starting a small business today to the tune of 73% because high taxes are a problem, we got to wake up. 59% report, they're already struggling with taxes and operational costs. And so let's talk about this tax burden on small businesses. a micro business, which is defined as four employees or less in Canada, pays 20% more in taxes than a similar firm in the United States. Many small business owners report hundreds of hours per year lost to paperwork, reporting, regulatory red tape.

I mean, these small business owners are talking about the same issues that we hear from family doctors, that they spend more time on paperwork than they do with. patience. And these guys are spending more time on paperwork than they are on their business. And you know what that leads to? That leads to burnout. It leads to people wanting to sell their business. It leads to them wanting to shutter their business because they didn't get into business to do paperwork for the government. And so the government, I do believe Mark Carney wants us to have a robust, small business community across the country. But there's something about, so the powers that be in Ottawa, they just don't get out of the way.

And you have to expect that Carney will want to address these issues because he's a business guy. And he has said, you know, getting the economy going is goal number one. So small businesses and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business needs this stuff. They need government to get out of the way. We're talking about interprovincial barriers. We've been hearing those come down. I mean, obviously bail reform is the big story that we're talking about now. There's so many issues out there that he has to deal with.

Oh, yeah. Where would you rank this one? Well, like I said, small and medium-sized businesses are responsible, I believe. I don't have the number, but for the lion's share of employment in this country. The majority. The majority. If you want to make sure that we have high employment in this country, you've got to make sure that small and medium-sized businesses are the fullest expression of who and what they can be. And if you get in the way and you limit their ability to grow, you limit the ability of the economy.

economy to grow and of people to get jobs. And what happens when you get a job? You pay taxes. You buy things. All that stuff stimulates the economy. Without that, without small and medium-sized business, you might as well not even start the race. And so, yeah, I do believe that Mark Carney far more pragmatic than his predecessor. And at some point, I think he's going to look at the lay of the land.

He's going to see these numbers. And he's going to realize that we are not doing enough to allow them to flourish. because they absolutely need more freedom to do what they need to do to succeed. Oh, thanks for these numbers. 99% of all Canadian businesses are small or medium-sized enterprises. And small is less than 100 employees. Medium is up to 499. And together, they account for about 52% of Canada's private sector GDP.

So it's the thing. This is the thing. and if you want them to, if you want the economy to grow, you got to take care of this 52% of the GDP. But here's the problem. Here's the stumbling block. Government collects their piece of the pie first. Then businesses get to collect theirs.

Meaning employers must withhold and remit income tax, CPP and EI from employees pay before paying themselves or seeing any net profit. A lot of incorporated businesses pay quarterly tax installments based on projected income, even before knowing how the year will end. So essentially, the taxman comes and says, we did some math here, and we think you're projected to make X, so we want the taxes now. So what happens if you have to pay the taxman before you made any money? You don't have any money to reinvest in your business. The key word in every one of these points is before. Yeah. Before. I don't understand why. They have to get their piece. Yeah. I mean, we have,

they need to get their tax base. And it's important. So, but you have to, these, when you take away the ability for businesses to reinvest into themselves, yeah, to take chances, then you're, you're not being supportive. Yeah, because that's, that's the ethos of a small business, of an entrepreneur. It's the taking of chances. And you need to have capital to do those things, right? And if you don't, you might as well just stay home. And a lot of these guys are staying home. So I think this is, uh, the, I think we gave you a good snapshot as we, are leading into Small Business Week next week. And of course, we're going to have a talk just after

the break with someone who was a small business owner and it's a bigger business now. Hey, if you love true crime podcasts or can't get enough true crime documentaries on Netflix, we got something for you. 640 Toronto is excited to announce a new show, Crime Time, two hours of the best true crime stories hosted by Dark Putine's Mike Brown from shocking real cases to unbelievable twists. It's all right here every single week. Crime time starts this Friday night at 9 p.m. Completely uninterrupted, two hours of true crime right here on 640 Toronto. You can stream it on the IHeart Radio app, the radio player app, or at 640 Toronto.com.

And we had a conversation with Mike Brown yesterday. He is so excited to be able to do this. And the fact that we are going to be presenting essentially a show in podcast form, on the radio is going to give people access and an introduction, in a lot of cases, to podcasts that they've never had before. So I commend this radio station. I commend Curious cast and true crime, the dark putine guys for doing what they're doing, and I know it's going to be a huge success. All right. Up next, the CEO of a franchising superpower tells us his secrets to success. Don't go anywhere. The Ben Mulroney Show marches on.

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Conditions apply. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thanks so much for sticking around. All right. Next week is a small business week. So we thought in anticipation, we would have a conversation with somebody who started a small business in this country and has grown it by huge leaps and bounds. Peter Mammis is the CEO of FoodTastic. And he grew a small Montreal business into a national franchising powerhouse with over 1,200 locations and 27 brands. Peter, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here, and congratulations. Oh, thank you, Ben. Glad to be here. So when you started this company in 2016, what were your ambitions?

Honestly, it was just to, you know, grow our brands and grow the company for sure. You know, in my head, it was like, you know, can I reach $100 million in system sales? That was the goal. But fortunately, I've been blessed. with a lot of great people, and we've grown to over a billion dollars in Canada. And when you started the business, how many of you were part of the business to start, and what sort of capital were you working with? And where'd the capital come from? Yeah, so I used to have other businesses, and we sold them. We were three partners,

and initially we invest about $100,000 each that we had accumulated over the years. and we opened a restaurant in Laval called La Belle de la Beque and from there we just started opening a couple more and more and more and then we created some new brands and grew those and then we started acquiring

larger larger brands and we grew the company to what it is today well listen you've got freshie you've got Casada second cup pita pit pit milestones one of my favorites Rotisri Benny

I love that place I'm a listen San Suberia is the granddaddy, but Benny is amazing. Yeah, thank you bear is the exactly, like you said,

the granddaddy, but Benny is the better chicken and the better, the better tasting product. So Peter, tell me, if you had to start to,

instead of 2016, you started this business today. Is it harder today than it wasn't 2016? Oh, yes, definitely. Why? Harder, especially in the restaurant industry.

Banks are really tough on small business right now. There's been a lot of tightening. I think what Trump and the U.S. are doing with tariffs that scared a lot of people in the country. You know, we just heard like Delanis moving their Jeep production to the states. You know, all these things that affects consumer confidence. So people, you know, though they're discretionary spending, they're a lot more careful with it.

So the restaurant industry is at risk from all this macroeconomic news. And what sort of – oh, keep going. Yeah. Yeah, on the other side, I think the other problem is staffing. Yeah. It's a lot harder right now to get people to work in kitchens. And, you know, nobody wants to grow up and be a dishwasher, right? So, you know, getting more foreign workers that will actually do that kind of work is important for the industry as well.

And what advice would you give a small business owner who wants to go? grow their business as you have. Yeah, I think right now, I think they, they got to be a little bit more cautious than we were in 2016. Things have changed. And you know, you just, we just see like Trump will tweet something and, you know, the stock market drops or people lose their jobs. It's a much different environment right now.

So I would say be a lot more cautious. Make sure that, you know, any leases you're signing make sense. don't sign a location just because it looks like a great location. Make sure you do your homework and, you know, you could get the sales needed to support and release. And talk to a lot of professionals. I mean, I can't stress enough talking to the right lawyers and the right accountants to make sure you're on the right path. What keeps you up at night?

I guess right now it's a lot of staffing issues throughout the change. I mean, we're the franchisor, so we're not really operating. the stores ourselves, but we have, you know, hundreds of small business owners that are franchisees, and what keeps me up is their problems, which is, you know, finding the staff, getting the people to come into, into the restaurant, and also commodities. I mean, you know, you just go to your local supermarket, and the price of beef has gone up 100% in the last year, right? So there's a lot of things that keep me up at night's bed. And talk to me about the difference. As you grow and scale a business and you go from being a startup, a small

business to what you are today, your role and your responsibilities changed drastically. Was there ever a learning curve for you, or did the company grow at a pace that allowed you to learn on the job comfortably? No, there was a massive learning curve. You know, you have to understand. We started the company in 2016. By the end of the year, we were doing about 20 million in system sales. You know, we were mom and pop. We were about six people at the office. You know, we were hosts, waiters, cooks.

You know, we were basically manual labor. Now it's become, you know, over a thousand restaurants. And now we're more in the management business. So it's managing people. We have over 250 people just at our head office. So it's managing all these people. So it's changed dramatically. We've adapted quite well.

But the one big thing we did do right is we always hired the best people possible. So, you know, we weren't scared of, you know, sometimes like some companies and some people will hire people that they could control or some people that, you know, will not be better than them. You know, we had the different mentality. We said, you know what? We're not accounted. Let's get the best accounting guy we can.

You know, we're not great IT guys. Let's get the best IT guy to run our systems here. You know, so we always hired really great people, and that allowed us to scale quite rapidly. You know, if there is credit to be given to Mark Carney, it's that he's not afraid to reverse course on policies of his predecessor if he doesn't think they've been working. And we were talking about some data that says that our small businesses across this country are hurting, and they're hurting because of taxes and regulations and red tape. If you had the ear of Mark Carney to give him some information on what he should do to possibly make life easier for entrepreneurs across the country, small, medium and big business, what would you tell them? Yeah, I think for sure it would be financing, talking to the banks, and streamlining the process of small businesses to get loaned. I mean, we help our franchisees a lot, but on the other, on the flip side, it's, you know,

the guy who's really starting out his own business without any support is having a lot of problem securing money to grow and money to start off. The second thing, like I mentioned before, it's foreign workers. Our industry really needs them, and I would reverse course on that one right away. So I guess those two things. So there's no way to make the economic. of a business like yours work without temporary foreign workers?

No, you can. You know, we don't have the problem, let's say, in the urban area. It's more when you get into, you know, the outskirts of town is where we have a lot more issues. People don't want to travel there to work. It's quite a big problem, to be honest with you.

Yeah, I've got to say, I'm always surprised in this economy that people are being selective about the jobs that are available to them. You mentioned being a dishwasher. Well, no one says you have to be a dishwasher forever and you can learn skills. And if you're in a company like yours, I have to assume that there are pathways to move up in a restaurant and possibly even move into management. So no one says that that's the end-all, be-all.

And yet people are being selective saying I'd rather stay home and not work. Do you ever scratch your head about that? So I started off as a dishwasher when I was 12 years old and, you know, today I'm running this company. So, you know, there's always a path forward. And for sure in restaurants, I would say maybe 15 to 20 percent of all our franchisees are off as dishwashers. And that's how they learned the business and they moved up to chefs and waiters and managers. But today, I think, you know, things have changed in the last eight, nine years, especially since COVID. I mean, here at the office, you know, our HR team,

When they interview people, the candidate's first question is, what's your work from home policy, right? So people are looking for flexibility. They're looking for, you know, cherry picking where they're going to work. And sometimes I do scratch my head because you kind of see employment edging up, unemployment edging up. And you're saying, like, you know, do these people understand that it's not that easy to get a job out there? Yeah. And you can't be a dishwasher and work from home. That's something you have to do on location.

Hey, Peter, I want to thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on all your success. I hope we get to talk to you again soon. All right. Thank you, Ben. Canada. Canada's oil sands produce the energy the world needs, but it's the benefits that flow to all parts of our country. Like hundreds of thousands of jobs in oil and gas,

and along the supply chain, and revenue to invest in roads, bridges, our national defense, and more. You see, we're building more than a strong oil sands sector. We're helping to build a stronger Canada. We're Pathways Alliance, six of Canada's largest oil sands companies working together to help grow Canada's economy. Learn more at Pathwaysalliance.ca.