The Ben Mulroney Show - Can you defend your home in BC? Also, a different path to reconciliation?

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

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And 10 pound bags of white potatoes just 1.88 each. Only till January 21st. Shop in store or at metro.com. All conversation, no cancellations, all across the nation, let's go. Yes, indeed, it's the Ben Mulroney show. It's the first show of the rest of your life. Welcome to the show today on this 20th of January, 2026. Hey, do you remember the Calgary woman who killed her attacker, which the police say was justified?

Well, let me tell you, British Columbia ain't Alberta clearly. Police are investigating whether someone inside a Surrey home returned fire during an extortion-related shooting early Saturday morning. Let's listen to a piece from Global News. Global News has learned that a person or persons inside the Galway Crescent home, which was shot up early Saturday morning, are now under investigation for allegedly returning fire. It's not known how many shots were fired at the extortion suspects or if their getaway vehicle was hit. We've also learned the residents who are connected to a local business had been receiving threats for some time, threats they had reported to police. Surrey police tell global news, quote, they do not condone vigilanteism or anyone illegally using firearms or weapons of any kind. It puts the community at risk, and if you do, you will be the subject of a criminal investigation.

Okay, I'm still learning about this, but at first blush, This feels like institutional gaslighting. It feels like the power of the state is gaslighting us. So let's just lay this out. So there is a gang, a violent India-based criminal organization called... We don't know if they were responsible for this, but they have been responsible for so many other extortioning cases. Yes, indeed.

But we don't know. But what I'm saying is this is the temperature that people are living with. They are aware of a gang that has been escalating extortion campaigns targeting South Asian families and businesses. So that's happening. And they know it's happening.

And as of Monday, January 19th, there are 21 victims, 16 repeat victims, 34 repeated extortions, seven extortion-related shots-fired incidents in the city of Surrey since the beginning of the year. 19 days, 21 victims. There have been more victims than it have been days of the year. And if you take a Surrey police released a photo from one of these sessions that they had,

they had an extortion sort of session for people in the neighborhood in the area. Yeah. Every single person in that room was wearing a turban. So they are being targeted. They're being targeted. They're being targeted. So this is what I'm getting at. So there's a gang that's out there.

This may be related to them or not. There have been more cases of extortion this year. than they're having days in the year, people are being sent threatening correspondence with pictures of them from security cameras and stuff. Like, we see you, we see you, we see you. Then one of these people has their house shot up

and you think it's a bridge too far that the person in the house returned fire? The term used, and this is the thing that I have a problem with, vigilantism. So, you're really going to, you're really going to, You're really going to call this vigilanteism? Vigilanteism is when you leave your house and you go track the person down.

Because vigilanteism is you're replacing the role of the police. Yeah. You're doing the investigation. You're going out there. You're the equalizer. You're going out there and you're doing what the police should be doing. The police should not be firing back in your house. That's your house.

That's your house. If they've gotten your house, the police have failed. They've failed. You're not replacing them. you're protecting yourself. And they're turning around calling you a vigilante. This is gaslighting. This is gaslighting.

I cannot believe this. Well, how, it's really interesting because we're talking about last week this woman in Calgary. And we had the conversation, and there was conversations across the board. And it was like, it's Alberta. And the police were like,

this is justified. This is the clearest case of self-defense we ever saw. No charges. And we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call 416-870. 6400 or 1-8-2-25. Talk. I mean, it feels like a tale of two realities.

On one hand, you've got sanity in Alberta where a woman is attacked. She pushes back. The guy dies. And everyone says, yeah, that's how that's supposed to go. Because the guy doing the attacking is a bad dude. And he should never have been out on the streets because he used our own judicial system against us. And he's done, and he had done it before. And so this woman said, if it's him or me, it's going to be him.

And I'm going to save myself. And God, love her she did. And thank goodness, the police and the prosecutors had the wherewithal to recognize that this woman was only defending herself. Meanwhile, these people are getting their houses shot up after being intimidated and threats of extortion. And they do what should come naturally to all of us, which is return of fire. And I'm sorry, if these guys have been acting with impunity, and extorting people all over Surrey, the police with all due respect,

I have a great deal of respect for them, they haven't really cracked the case yet. And if we're getting to the point where they are escalating to shooting at people's homes, yeah, I'm going to try to, my best to hit one of them to make sure that I send a message to them. This house will be defended.

And instead, the police are turning around, turning the homeowner into a criminal, that's garbage. Or as Veronica Corningstone would say, grade A. Bologna, grade A. Bologna, Mr. Burgundy. We got a call. Sorry, I don't have to.

Can we, who's the first call? Mario, welcome to the show. I saw our former prime minister who turns my stomach say this on camera. You are not allowed to defend yourself in Canada. Yeah, I mean, he said that? On camera? Yeah, I don't remember that, but it does sound like something he might say. It is.

Yeah. And look, they're coming to take the guns. And some people don't, shouldn't have guns. But all the legal gun owners have been doing pretty much what they need to do, hitting some pretty high bars. Jumper there's a great many hoops. And all those guns are going away. You know, people got to defend themselves.

I'm sorry. No, I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry. You're living in an increasingly violent country. And people are shooting at your house. Shoot back. That would be my recommendation. except not in British Columbia, clearly.

Don't take my advice. It's not legal advice I'm giving. But I thank you, Mario, for your call. I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm not giving anybody any advice as to what to do, but I tell you what I would do. If I had a gun and somebody was threatening me, calling me, giving me threatening correspondence,

letting me know that they knew where I lived, and then they come to my house and shoot into my house where my kids live, I'm shooting to kill. I'm shooting to kill. And I will take my chance in court. Jim, welcome to the show. Hey, Ben, how are you doing today? I'm well, thank you.

First of all, I think that we're far beyond being able to protect ourselves. This has been going on for far too long. In Ontario, as you know, you can't even defend your home. Please are selling us to leave her keys at the door. I can tell you this. My house, my house, you come in. It's body bag unless I'm invited you. Yeah, I don't understand why that is too much.

You're not coming for tea, Ben. You're coming to hurt me or take my stuff or both. Yeah. And how do I gauge that? How do I know that? Do I ask them? Yeah, exactly. This is the people who are making these rules, the ones who told the judges that people on bail need to be released on the least onerous conditions.

They have security details. Yeah, they have security. You're right. You're absolutely right. Yeah, they're not living in reality. They are untethered from reality. And if you cannot, if you cannot appreciate the reality of those people who you're going to affect by your legislation and your decisions, you shouldn't be in office. You should not.

One more thing, quick. Have you seen any of the videos of the guys in Brampton running around taking 20 and 30 shots at houses? I saw one of those. They're extortion. It's been going on. If you look, just look up right now. You look up Brampton. It's happened like 34.

40 times. Yeah. I just like honestly. Automatic gunfire at people's homes. Baby sleeping in the night. Yeah. Who cares? Yeah.

They could have hit a kid. They could have hit a kid. And if I shot back, I'm somehow the criminal. Like, when did, when did this happen? When did we move into the upside down? This is crazy. Hey, thank you for the call. I appreciate it.

This is just, yeah, let's, this is, this is, this is nuts. This is nuts. Like already, there's so few legal guns anymore that I don't know how big of a problem this is. But let's ask Tim. Tim, am I making a mountain out of a molehill here? No, Ben. Here's the thing. I think it's absolutely pathetic that Canada has degenerated into a tribal warfare system. Like, it's discussing. I got to leave it. I got to leave it there, Tim. I'm sorry, but thanks for the call. Hey, don't go anywhere. When we come back, we're talking to Carmie Levy about all the big tech stories out there.

with the pacer never met a dance floor. They never did me any good. Keep this going. Yes, indeed. I've finally found something I'm good at, 25 years in media, and I think I found my thing. Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show.

Hey, somebody who's very good at his thing, and I'm very glad he's here to talk to us about it. Carmi Levy, tech journalists. We've got lots to get to, Carmi. We've got to talk about Starlink. It's being put to a very big test in Iran. Probably the biggest test. of its relatively short history, it's pretty much the only way that telecommunication access is

being granted to anybody in Iran right now. Of course, the regime has shut down regular internet access, regular phone access, wireless phone access. They have banned Starlink terminals in the country. Yeah. They banned those just after the 12-day war with Israel last year. Carmen, do we have a sense of how many people have these terminals? Because Starlink, is only effective if you have a sort of a terminal on the ground. Yeah, so there are, there are an estimate human rights organizations that monitor these things. They estimate about 50,000 terminals are in the country right now. They've been smuggled in over the last couple of years.

No indication of how many of them are actually operational now, but whatever footage we're seen coming out of Iran is usually on a Starlink connection. The regime is using military grade jamming to mess with the GPS signal because the terminals need to have connection to a GPS satellite as well so that the Starlink network knows where they are. And if you lose that connection, it just simply doesn't work. So it's kind of off and on. It works sometimes. It doesn't. It's very sophisticated.

But there is a band, obviously, of people on the ground who are doing everything they can to make sure they can get at least something. connectivity some of the time. Yeah. And it seems to be working. It's not completely dark now. And what it feels like this is, I mean, Elon Musk seems like the type of person who would view this as a real life worst case scenario, right? And something tells me, because he's the real, he's the real life Tony Stark.

Every time Tony Stark would get in a battle as Iron Man, and he would find a failing of his suit and he would make sure that that suit would compensate the next time when he built a new one. He would iterate to make it better. And I have to assume that he is viewing this as a real world test for his technology so that whenever the next generation comes out, it'll be that much better. I think he is. And he's already issued a statement saying that anyone in Iran, they can have free access to the service. So he will not charge anyone within the country doing everything they can to support it. As they did in Ukraine, they will upload updates to the network to try to overcome any blockages to it. So it's almost like this pitched battle. And certainly, investors are watching

this. SpaceX, which owns Starlink, they're reportedly considering an IPO later this year. Are they, are they spinning off Starlink from SpaceX, or are they going to IPO the whole thing? Depending on which report you're reading, it could be an IPO for SpaceX and a separate IPO for Starlink as well. So either way, lots of eyes on this technology. And the more robust it is, I'm sort of breaking through this very high-level blockage from the Iranian regime, obviously, the more the company is worth. And so it's definitely on test here in Iran. And thankfully, it seems to be working it to at least a certain degree.

Okay, we got to talk about this Atari Hotel. I didn't know anything about this until I heard that the plans for a Las Vegas Atari Hotel shut down. I didn't even know it was a thing until I was told it was no longer a thing. And look, I get the desire to. to live in the past and the nostalgia of it. And Nintendo World is a huge success in Japan. But does anybody want an Atari hotel? Not as many people as they originally thought.

And I think the reason that it's sort of it stayed below the radar is talk about spectacularly bad timing. In January of 2020, they announced that they were going to open up eight Atari hotels. They called them a modern version. true reality experience, the first immersive gaining hotel in the Western Hemisphere. And so they picked eight cities across the U.S., including Las Vegas and Phoenix, and they said they're going to be open in a couple of years. And, of course, we all know what happened two months later, COVID.

So thanks to that, obviously, it never really got off the ground. They've sort of been slow walking the plans. They were planning on opening one in Las Vegas, the only one. All the other ones have just been absolute radio silence. But now they're saying they have shelved those. plans. They are saying that they are moving ahead with the one location in Phoenix, but they're also saying that now they're looking for upwards of $40 million from investors to actually fund it. So I'm thinking, it almost feels like this is how software companies and technology companies

operate. If they don't have funding, we call it vaporware. So they make an announcement, get everyone to kind of go, oh, that would be amazing, but they don't actually have a plan to make it happening. It feels like that. And I guess in a few months very quietly, they will not have achieve their investment targets and Atari fans from way back when who have a very nostalgic soft spot for the brand and a lot of people do and let's face it, it was one of my first gaming experiences as a little kid. Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to stay at a hotel with an Atari logo on the top of it. I mean, I just, I've never, I don't think they're solving a need. You know, it's what need are you solving? They aren't. And maybe you'll go once, but that's

about it. Like, it's not really a sustainable business and it gets a lot of headlines because there's a lot of love for Atari. But is there, like, I'm looking at this. I have love for Nintendo and I got love for Sega and, and, uh, turbographics and, uh, what was another one? Uh, in television, I, those were all of mine, right? I loved all of those. Uh, the NC-64 and the original PlayStation. I'm looking at the artist's rendering of this and it looks like I would, people get a migraine just in the lobby. It's so busy. And it feels like you'd be spending a night inside, inside Tron, and I've never wanted to spend a second inside Tron. Yeah, me neither.

I just want to play the game on my living room floor. And I mean, remember when Disney tried it with the Star Wars Hotel experience, that lasted, what, a year or so before they shuttered it. Well, because there were no windows. There were no windows. Exactly. And, of course, you pay a premium for that. And I mean, try to, maybe you, you know, we might have played those games as kids.

This isn't something I'd really be able to sell my wife on because she sure didn't and she think I'm just being silly. So years ago, I had a pocket square company called Hank. Great name for a pocket square company. And I was thinking of partnering with the CFL to take all of their logos and put them on my hankies. And the thing is, when you wear a pocket square and you sort of ruffle it up, the colors of the logo, they just look like a pattern. It doesn't look like that. And so I told my brother-in-law about it.

And he said, Ben, in the Venn diagram of CFL fans and people who wear pocket squares, there is no intersection. there is and in the people who love Atari and the people who want a great getaway in a hotel, I don't believe there's an intersection. It's just, it doesn't, this is a terrible idea. Maybe 10 years too late and I don't know. And whatever they thought they were going to do, the sphere is doing better, I think. Yeah, it is. And I mean, we keep seeing headlines.

Vegas isn't doing too well these days. A lot of people are pulling in their spending on those kinds of experiences in Las Vegas. and Las Vegas is crying for it. So even their existing hotels can't attract people to stay there. There's really no indication that a gaming scene hotel would do any better. Okay, in 45 seconds, can you tell me what's going on with GROC? Yeah, so GROC people were sharing sexualized images on the platform. They were grabbing images off of other people.

If you posted a photo, for example, someone would grab it, sexualize it using the GROC chatbot, and then they would share it on their feeds and it would go viral. Originally, Elon Musk mocked them, you know, didn't respond. Then the company said, sure, we'll take them down and we'll put the capability in GROC to sexualize images behind a paywall. But now researchers and journalists have actually gone and tested it. Companies said they would take that capability away. That's not the case. You can still sexualize images to your heart's content, even with the free version.

So do we believe that Gok is doing something to correct or fix this mess that it created? Probably not. Thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate it. Thanks so much, Ben. On the other side of the break, we've got a story that we are so proud to bring you. This could be possibly how reconciliation really works. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show.

And I am so very excited to have this next conversation. We talk a lot on this show about uncomfortable news as it relates to reconciliation. And I'm so glad to be bringing you a conversation that should give you hope and should give you optimism. about the future of everyone in this country. There is an organization, a private equity group out of Regina called Flowing River Capital. It is indigenous led and is founded by four university classmates to promote business ownership and investment capacity in First Nations and Métis communities. And they've been doing some really interesting business and acquisitions and investing in companies

that I think are going to be a net positive. and so joining us to give us a state of play of his company and have a broader conversation is Tom Benjo the CEO of Flowing River. Tom, welcome to the show. Hi, ready. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, this is very exciting.

So before we get into a broader conversation, talk to me about how you had the idea for Flowing River Capital, how you got it off the ground, and what sort of deals you've been doing recently? Yeah, well, we've been in this, space for some time or I've been in the space sort of indigenous investing. I actually worked for tribal council built, built a large investment firm in the past and had tremendous success there.

But, I mean, in terms of, you know, our team and sort of coming together, so, you know, four university friends all went to University of Regina, all took the business program, Went to school both at the University of Regina and First Nations University. But had, you know, we've all gone sort of our own separate paths and built significant careers for myself around indigenous investments and commercial banking. I had Cadmus DeWorm, who's former chief of Cowes' First Nation, obviously worked in politics, was, a very big proponent around economic development and led some very substantial economic development projects for his community. You have Eric Clark, who's been in private equity for all of his career and has quite a lay of

the land on private equity in Saskatchewan. And then you have Tyler Roeux, who's one of the best M&A guys in the market in Saskatchewan, connected and, you know, bringing our expertise together and building on a mandate of, you know, let's do indigenous investing a little different. And what makes- Yeah. Talk to me what that means. You know, I would be lying if I said that I understood private equity as much as I

understand, say, the lay of the land in Hollywood. But, but I know a little bit. But what makes your business plan indigenous? So we own the entity. It's shared ownership. We're majority indigenous owns. And I mean, it's the four of us as partners have come together. And I think really what makes us different on the investment side is the indigionization playbook.

So when we look at opportunities in the market, I've had the privilege of sort of working around the indigenous procurement policy side of things for quite a number of years and seeing that trend very positively for indigenous participation. One of the things that I found interesting was the types of relationships that our communities have been forming in business. And in most cases, we're seeing a lot of joint ventures or partnerships. And so there's been a lot of just sort of papered companies that have been created to participate and to me that's that's not that's not enough right we we need to actually own these

companies we need to build capacity we need to own assets we need to build assets and so you know taking that indiginization playbook it's you know where we're running a very typical investment firm it's just we have a focus of you know how do we build up indigenous capacity how do we bring strategic capital to the table how do we look at deal How do we look at certain sectors and industries like the defense sector, like the resource sector? And I want to talk about this, Tom, I want to talk about this investment that was in the news today. And I wonder, so what's the name of the company that you, that we, the, you announced today that you've, what's it called? Marshall.

Marshall, Marshall Land Systems. Yes. So this is, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so Marshall Land Systems is a very large. a defense company that does have manufacturing capability out of here in Moncton, as well as Cambridge in the UK and Netherlands. And so we have about 600 staff across the globe supporting our infrastructure requirements for supporting a lot of our NATO. clients. And Canada happens to be, you know, a pretty substantial client of ours now. And we're just at the beginning stages of a very large contract. And so, Tom, I want to jump in. So, so as part of

your, your indigenization, a policy, so it, so you, you invest in a company like, company like this. Am I, am I right to assume that part of it is, you know, indigenous employment, indigenous, mentorship, indigenous, you know, knock on effect, like hiring subcontractors who may be from the communities. Is that part of it? Yeah, we're going to be a little bit more, I would say, patient. And I think we'll have, you know, a little deeper connections into community to be able to focus on those things. I know a lot of industry, you know, over the years would question our indigenous capacity building. And they often say, well, you know, when you're indiginizing a company,

are you, are you, you know, planning to have 50% 100% indigenous talent in the company? I told them, no. You know, we still need diversity in how we build a company. We need indigenous allies to work for us and to continue with their capacities because, you know, every business is unique. And there is very specific talents and skills that are required. and in some cases and, you know, Marshall is an example. There are some very highly technical skills that we just don't have in our communities.

You know, it's interesting that you say that. Yeah, years ago, I was working on a project that never got off the ground, but my job was to reach out to different cultural communities to make sure that our company was a reflection of the country. And I was having some conversations with West Hall, from Black North. And I expressed to him my frustration that we weren't able to get to

the targets that I wanted to get to as quickly as I wanted to. And he pointed out, he said, very similar to your outlook. He said, it's a crawl, walk, run situation, Ben. What you do is you start hiring at the lowest levels first and you make sure that you get as many people

as you can there. And then within a few years, a lot of those people are going to move up to middle management. And by the time, and of course you hire at middle management when you can and you hire at the executive level if you can.

But the goal is to make sure that they help build the company from the ground up. And if you're willing to be patient, then that's an entirely appropriate way of doing it. It sounds like that's the approach that you're taking as well. Absolutely. That is exactly the model that we utilize. And again, because of the relationships that we have in our own communities, we're able to be a lot more patient. and we're able to look at other unique strategies about investing in, especially our young people.

It's creating that brand recognition, creating an opportunity to understand about careers, and hopefully, you know, just even just with the acquisition itself, we're now at a completely different level. I mean, this is the, we're now the largest indigenous own defense company in the country and in our history, right? And so hopefully that inspires other young people to say, well, I want to do what these guys are doing. I want to invest. I want to be an investor. I want to buy companies. I want to build capacity.

See, this is inspiring, Tom. This is really inspiring. And one of the things, again, I learned during the entire upheaval after George Floyd, you know, was a line. It rhymed. But just because it rhymed doesn't mean it's not true. You can't be what you can't see. And putting people in positions of leadership like you to allow younger people to see what you do and say, I want to do that is really exciting.

Tom, don't go anywhere. We've got much more to talk about after the break right here on the Ben Mulroney show. And I'm so glad to be in conversation with Tom Benjo. He's the CEO of Flowing River Capital, which is a Regina-based indigenous-led private equity firm. And after their investment and actually full ownership, their acquisition of Marshall Land Systems, they are now the largest indigenous defense, I guess, contractor in the country. So I want to congratulate you, Tom, and thank you so much for sticking around with me. Yeah, thanks, good.

Now, I want you to know where I'm coming from. I've done some research on you and your company. I want you to know where I'm coming from. And by 2015, I think I tweeted, I said, the prime minister who achieves real reconciliation this country will be remembered as one of our great prime ministers. And I gave a speech in Saskatoon just a few months ago where I said my vision for Canada's future, the fullest expression of Canada is a country where one of the things that we are known for is that indigenous Canadians are the most successful and have the most agency over their lives

and that they are full partners in everything that we do. I said that to me is definitional for a successful Canada. Unfortunately, as somebody reads the news here a lot, I feel that as far as reconciliation goes, it feels to me, and you'll tell me if I'm off base, but it feels to me like we're going in the wrong direction. And what I mean by that is we've watched the amount of money transferred to First Nations triple over the past 10 years, but it also feels like anger and mistrust has also grown.

Now, I'm not making a judgment call on whether or not the money is enough or not enough. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is the formula seems off balance. and I wonder what you think of my perception. You could tell me I'm completely wrong. And I wonder if what you're doing in your life and building your business is an alternate path. No, I think about, you know, the situation that we're in. We think about, you know, economic participation.

And, you know, I'm highly motivated as an entrepreneur. when we put the individual and their aspirations, because sometimes we are so focused on communities sort of advancing business. And I have this conversation all the time. And I serve on the Canadian Chamber as well. And I share my thoughts. And, you know, I look at the programs that exist across the country in terms of supporting indigenous businesses. Now, there is a lot of dollars that does go to community-owned enterprises, and it's one of the discussions that we have often with, you know, potential funding opportunities because there's a lot of government programs that can be tapped into. I know, you know, we got frustrated asking some of the organizations for support around, because we did try to actually raise a fund of our own.

and you know we we kept being met with well you're not a community yeah no we're entrepreneurs but we have the capacity we have the experience we are very successful have been very successful in our careers managing businesses and growing businesses and now you know there's there's an opportunity for us to really demonstrate and you know we didn't qualify for a lot of those things and so that was a bit frustrating to know But, you know, there's limitations for entrepreneurs. And, you know, the one thing that I often share with folks is if you look at our economy, you look at the size and scale of our economy and you look at, you know,

what percentage of our economy is managed through entrepreneurs and what percentage is state-owned or government-owned, Crown Corp owned. And, you know, it's, I think it's 92%, you know, of our economy is managed by entrepreneurs or investments. Yeah. And, you know, the other 8% is managed through Carlin Corpse or state-owned, you know, government-owned. Tom, you're talking to my language. My dad would tell me nonstop. He said, he said the lifeblood of the Canadian economy is the entrepreneur.

He said, without them, we have nothing. Absolutely. And we have to do more to foster. But it occurs to me as we're talking, because I've had conversations with, you know, tribal leaders and individuals from First Nations communities. And almost to a person, when I've asked about what's one glaring issue

that you would like to have addressed that could not solve problems, but make the solving of problems easier? And they said, property rights. Property. If people on reserves could own their property or have some more control over their property. that would that would create and foster an environment of of the individual.

Not to say that the community is not important, but it seems that it's almost a binary choice. Do you feel that you're facing headwinds, maybe even in your own community of community versus individual? I mean, you know, we live in an interesting world of rules, you know, as indigenous people. and, you know, there's policies that exist and have existed for, you know, over 150 years since we've signed treaty. You know, is it my job to try to change those rules or do I just work around them? And as an entrepreneur, I just work around them. Fair enough. You know, when we look at, you know, being able to leverage property, yeah, I get where the idea came from originally, but at this point in time, you know,

we're there's there's other strategies that we can utilize you know we didn't have access to the tools that we did back then you know and and those historical relationships are treaty relationships are still very important um but at the same time i need to be practical in how uh we mobilize our capabilities as indigenous investors and so we just have to be smarter and so we're we're taking advantage of the tools that are made available to to us. We're leveraging the network that we have and the relationships that we've built over the years. And we're now creating an opportunity for ourselves and for, you know, hopefully other First Nations that, you know, will eventually invest in us, invest in our funds or invest in the companies that we bring to the table. You know, we hope that they see value in working with us and partnering with us and CS as another option for their own participation in the economy. Tom, what happens when you meet a young indigenous Canadian who has, you recognize in them that entrepreneurial spirit?

We got to support them, you know, and if there's an opportunity, I'm going to scoop them. I want them to come and learn from us. I want them to be inspired and, you know, I hope that, you know, they, you know, they, they take the torch and they go further. Are you, are you? Are you, are you, are you,

are you bullish on, um, on the future of, of, of your people? Are you bullish on, uh, striking a better relationship with,

uh, you know, those who came after. Are you, are you bullish on the Canadian economy? Those, that's three separate questions. I appreciate.

Well, I, I think, you know, I'm, I'm very optimistic. I mean, the,

uh, you know, when we look at, uh, You know, a lot of our previous generations, they, you know, I'm a first generation of my family not to go to residential school. Oh, wow. So I don't carry a lot of the weight of intergenerational trauma. There is still, you know, some of that that that trickle into, you know, my generation within my family.

But, you know, I chose to work against it. chose to try to see the opportunities that have been afforded to us and so when they think about our young people that are still maybe caught up in some of the intergenerational trauma that they face you know I want them to think about the things that we're doing

to stay. I could choose to either continue you know feeling down or not trying to make changes for myself or, you know, I could see the positive. I could see, you know, be thankful for the things that I do have today and be able to, you know, look at doing things for our community in a different way and then find purpose and find opportunity and, you know, hopefully participating in the economy.

Tom Benjo, I've so enjoyed this conversation. I hope next time you're in Toronto, I get a chance to shake your hand. Perhaps you can come in for a live interview, but I thank you very much. and I wish you the very best with a flowing river, and I look forward to seeing what's next for you. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Ben. All right, just a reminder, if you want more BMS, we put our podcast every day.

Thank you very much. Buck returns this January on Global. My mind is trying to tell me something. With gripping new cases. If it doesn't work, you'll kill him. It will work. They're going to make you the fall guy for this. I just don't want to fail any one ever again.

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