The Ben Mulroney Show - Canada Day, thankfully not taking transit from Rogers Stadium

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

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Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Rogers Stadium with Go Transit. Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday, anywhere along the Go network. And the weekday group passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online Go Pass ahead of the show at Gotransit.com slash tickets. This episode is brought to you by Dzone. For the first time ever, the 32 best soccer clubs from across the world are coming together to decide who the undisputed champions of the world are in the FIFA Club World Cup. The world's best

players, Messi, Holland, Kane and more are all taking part. And you can watch every match for free on Dazone starting on June 14th and running until July 13th. Sign up now at Dazone.com slash FIFA. That's D-A-Z-N dot com slash FIFA. Welcome to the Ben Mulrooney show and thank you so much for joining us the day after Canada Day. From what I can tell across this country, it's more or less it was beautiful. Some places, some people will say too hot. I don't complain about the heat ever. I don't care how hot it gets. I will not complain about the heat because I reserve the right to complain

about the cold. And were I to be somebody who complained about heat and cold, I would just be a complainer. Now I can just say, I don't like the cold. So I think that is a perspective that we should all share. And that is free advice for you on this July 2nd. And thank you so much for being here. So it was a big day yesterday, and I hope everybody celebrated in whatever way you wanted. I spent a lot of time as a kid leaving our home to go sit with a suit on, or maybe just a tie and a blazer at Canada Day events. Dad was Prime Minister for nine years and I don't know if we went nine years in a row but it felt like that.

And it also felt like almost every year it was that day that you just wanted to be swimming and barbecuing and having fun. And so I've had my share. I think I've done enough big crowds on Canada Day that I don't look forward to doing that. Some people love that. And I've done it, I loved it. And now I'm in a part of my life where I like to celebrate in smaller settings and buy a pool and buy a barbecue with the opportunity to go watch

whatever's a sporting event is on. So that's me. But regardless, I hope everybody enjoyed it in the way that they deserve because frankly, we deserve all the happiness and all the fun that we can get these days. A number of people were elevated in the Order of Canada. And that is Canada's, I guess, our highest civilian honor. And some of the people who and that is Canada's, I guess, our highest civilian honor. And some of the people who got that award, and it's a big deal. When my dad got the Order of Canada, it was a very, very big deal,

and it was a very proud moment for us as a family. And I send out my congratulations to all the families of those who were invited into the Order on Canada Day. So Bob Ezrin, who's a legendary music producer. He worked with Pink Floyd, and he's also been big in music education and other music charities. He became an officer.

You've got Michael Douglas Hill from Calgary. He is a leading stroke researcher who revolutionized acute stroke care globally. Congratulations. Maureen Anne Jennings, author of the Murdoch mysteries. My God, that show has been on forever. I remember when it was taken off the air at Rogers and then CBC, I think, aptly picked it up.

That's what the CBC should be doing. That's what the CBC should be doing. That's what the CBC should be doing. That's a Canadian story. And it gets numbers. Like, there you go. Do more of that CBC. Heather Rankin of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, iconic singer songwriter from the Rankin family.

And she's also been big about mentorship in music. And of course, Ryan Reynolds, actor, producer, philanthropist, why am I even saying is what he did? Everyone knows Ryan Reynolds, but I think just as significantly as his contributions to film and television and marketing is the work that he has done with so many charities. Most notably, I think for the people of Toronto,

is the work that he does consistently for sick kids. Every year he helps with their Christmas fund. He wears his ugly Christmas sweater and he makes a video. He makes a ton of money for them. And it'd be very easy for him to phone something like that in and he doesn't. He gives it his all. And congratulations to Ryan and his family.

So that's the order. Then you've got members, Scott Oak, who is a celebrated sports broadcasters. Matter of fact, we had him on this show. He's a recovery, an addiction recovery advocate. He wrote a book that came out just a few months ago, a heartbreaking account of his son's descent into addiction and subsequent passing away and the healing that he had to do.

And George St. Pierre, I saw him, sorry, George St. Pierre, the famous UFC champion. I saw him at UFC 100 at my best friend, Glenn Zuyev's bachelor party. And we went to go see George, and I've interviewed him a number of times. Also, if you are a fan of the MCU, then he had a role as a bad guy in Captain America, Winter Soldier, and then it came back for one of the shows.

So congratulations to George. So all of this happens, and of course, every year on Canada Day, the Prime Minister sends out a message on social media. That didn't happen back in the day with my dad, but social media makes it so that you can put out a message. And Mark Carney, our Prime minister, had a message, one of optimism, one of realism, but optimistic realism.

That's what we'll call it. And look, we're gonna play a little bit of it for you. But it's first thing in the morning, the day after Canada Day, and we don't wanna put you to sleep. So we're not gonna air too much of it. And just keep that in mind. Keep in mind, it's dry.

It's not inspiring. But after nine years of performance and theater and dramatics from the previous prime minister, this to me is the refreshing tonic that I was looking for. So let's listen to a little bit of this. The world is changing. Old friendships are fraying. Our economy is being buffeted by a trade war we didn't start. Our values are being tested by attacks on democracy and

freedoms that we must resist. As the world becomes more divided and dangerous, Canadians are uniting. Together, we will build one Canadian economy, connected by major projects, powered by Canadian energy, transformed by Canadian technology, and crafted by Canadian workers.

All right, so if you're looking for inspiration, you know, watch Al Pacino's speech in any given Sunday, watch Rudy. Don't look to our prime minister necessarily to be inspired by his tone. Let's hope we'll be inspired by his action. We will talk about, you know, something we talked about on our last show, but that is getting increasing attention, which is our prime minister's backing away from the digital services tax, which is being praised, not because it was a strong tactic, but because he finally cut loose something that they should have done months, if not over a year ago.

But we'll talk about that later in the show. Everybody, if you live in Southern Ontario and you watch the bills, the Buffalo Bills on Sundays during the NFL season, then you know that a big contingent of the fans of the Buffalo Bills are Canadian. They are members of the Bills mafia. And that is not lost on the Buffalo Bills. They wanna keep their Canadian fans happy.

So here are a couple of members of that team thanking Canadians and congratulating them on Canada Day. Happy Canada Day to our Canadian friends, wishing you a great holiday, full of Canadian pride. We are grateful you're a part of Bills Mafia, eh? Anytime an American throws an A in there, I'm trying to figure out what the parallel is. Because it's sweet, it's cute. Sometimes they do it to be insulting. These guys were not trying to be insulting. But there's only a certain type of person that says A in those contexts. By and large, it's not something that's it. And also in the world that we're living in, in the Canada that

we're living in, that that is more multicultural than it's ever been before. There are fewer and fewer people saying a now there are places in the country where that happens. But I don't know how many people say a that much anymore. So it kind of, I don't know, it. It's adorable. It's adorable. Thank you very much. And you might be asking yourselves, because I just brought them up. What is Justin Trudeau doing? Some of you are saying, please, we don't want to know. We don't want to know. We've turned the page. He was avoiding the crowds with his two of his kids

going rock climbing. And he said, happy Canada Day. great day for getting out with the kids let's all celebrate our Canada the very best country in the world look the man is retired he's with his kids I'm happy to see that he's thriving I'm very happy and I'm happy that he's spending time with his kids I'm not I'm never going to attack kids and I'm certainly not going to attack a private citizen if you ever hear me complaining, it will be about work that was done on the job that I think has led us to where we are. I've all, and I said before,

got a lot of time for Justin Trudeau. He did a lot of things personally. He was very kind to my dad and he treated our family with a lot of respect and he has my respect for that. But as a citizen, as a taxpayer, as somebody who deeply loves this country, I think there were a lot of moves that were made that took us down

a wrong path that Mark Carney is now responsible for fixing. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to in the show, including the disaster that was weekend one at the Rogers stadium. There's a lot of Rogers stuff around. We're going to speak with James Pasternak, who is the city councilor in that area, about how we move forward. That's next on the Roger stuff around the corner. We're going to speak with James Pasternak, who is the city counselor in that area about how we move forward.

That's next on the Ben Mulroney Show. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've been following the news, like really following it, you know how exhausting it can be. Politics, conflict, uncertainty, it's a lot to carry. And for many men, there's this expectation to stay calm, stay in control, and not talk about how it's affecting you.

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five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you for joining us. All right, the Much Ballyhooed Rogers, what's it called? Rogers Stadium opened on the grounds of Downsview over the weekend to a K-pop concert and over 50,000 people in attendance. This was going to be sort of the central to bring in people to that area for the summer. And I remember following the announcement and thinking, geez, this thing's gonna be built really fast. And I saw the flyovers. I was like, oh, it really isn't a permanent structure.

There's a lot of scaffolding and what have you. And I said, but I'm sure they figured it out. They wouldn't open something like this if it wasn't ready. And this weekend in what was essentially a live fire rehearsal for the rest of the summer, things did not go as well as they thought they might go. And it started at the beginning, as things do, as people are trying to get in to the Rogers Stadium. And here's some audio of somebody waiting

in line. And if you could see the video from where this person is standing to get in, you can barely make out the stadium in the distance. So I'm like at Rogers Stadium and the line is insane. Give me two secs. There's Rogers Stadium and everyone lined up. Are you kidding me? Oh my god. Yeah. And from there it only got worse. It took after the concert was done. They had crowd control and exiting delays up to two hours just to get out of the stadium. People were released in staggered batches that was causing bottlenecks. They funneled people towards Downsview Park station because don't forget you were urged to take the TTC but there's only one there's only one point of access to the TTC so you got

thousands of people and they had more trains but it clearly wasn't enough. Meanwhile, the TTC go stations overwhelmed underprepared, water was hard to come by warm water was at the refill stations and if you didn't yet to be charged between seven and 12 bucks for your own water. Anyway, many, many problems with everything from infrastructure, long bathroom lines, noise complaints, limited numbers of facilities, problems trying to get, if you weren't taking the TTC, find your parking or get an Uber.

Some fans have vowed never to return. Some fans are selling tickets for the next show, which is coming. And it's for that reason that we're now joined by the city councilor for that area, James Pasternak, who says they've got a lot of work to do before Coldplay descends on the city and another 50,000 people have a kick at the can. Councillor Pasternak, thank you so much for joining me.

Good morning, Ben. How are you? Well, I'm well. I have to assume that this is going to take up a lot of your time leading up to Coldplay coming to town. There is no doubt. were completely flooded with with concerns and complaints. On the positive note, people love concert, they love the sound system. And it was people came from all over southern Ontario to see it. Unfortunately, when it came to crowd management and anticipation of what was needed to run a successful event, it fell short.

Counselor, I've got to ask though, I mean we have computer programs that can model crowd movement. It's par for the course, it's standard and it feels to me if they had this many problems with bottlenecks and issues with getting people on trains. It seems to me that if they had this software, if they had this computer, this ability to model crowd movement and crowd control, they didn't use it or they didn't pay attention to it. I'm struggling to understand why this was even a problem

in the first place. Well, it was a surprise to me because Live Nation has a strong track record in promoting and managing large crowd events. So they are the experts and we did have a city working group on this, although our office was not informed of it until after a year of meetings. And quite frankly, you know, we've been looking at all the suggestions and taking all notes and and and there's lots of things we could do to fix it in the coming days.

But but a lot of nation has to come to the table, whether it's whether it's crowd control, whether it's washroom access, whether it's access to to fresh water. These are the kinds of things we have to fix in the coming days. And counselor, whose responsibility is it? Because there are a lot of stakeholders, you got Rogers, you got live nation, you've got the people who own the land, you've got the city, who, where does the buck stop? Well, certainly the city has some clout. We can set down parameters and rules for the governance of this event and put conditions

in place. Obviously, we're highly dependent on TTC and GO Transit to move people in and out of this venue. And they have to be, it has to be military precision to move a crowd of 50,000 people. I mean, there were everything from from the distance from the drop off to the stadium, the way in which people had to walk from the stadium to the Downsview Park station, the frequency of the trains, and many of the porta potties had twist ties on them, they were locked. There weren't enough of them that weren't close to close to the stands. And of course, water became an issue as well. Yeah. Well, I did want to go back to one thing you said about a live nation having the experience I recently watched. And you may want to watch this, sir, on Netflix, the the the documentary about what's called the Astroworld tragedy, which took place in Houston, that was under

what's called the Astroworld tragedy, which took place in Houston. That was under Live Nation's Watch, where because of an inability to manage the crowd control, I think 10 or 11 people were crushed to death. Now, I'm very glad nothing like that happened here. But not only do they have experience with these events, they have a lot of experience with bottlenecks and too many people being in a place at the wrong time and not being able to deal with it. And the guy who sort of looked at it afterwards was using all of these computer programs to figure out what went wrong. And just because he was using it as a hindsight tool doesn't mean they can't use these things predictively. That is true. I mean, there really should have been better planning. Our office was not brought into the conversation on whether there'd be a stadium at all until about three weeks before the announcement. No months negotiations had been going on. And of course, this working group at the city had been going on for a year before we heard about it. So we're the ones feeling the brunt of this. And people are not just sending notes of criticism,

they're sending suggestions. And we're going to be putting those all together. I mean, to compensate people's bottle of water and then charging $7 inside for water, I think it's outrageous. And then if you're going to have water stations, you just can't have two or 50,000 people, especially in the summertime. And, and, and, and it can't be warm. I mean, at the very least room temp room temp should be the bare minimum. That's right. And we have to, we have to confirm whether TTC, uh, medics medics service standard, one train every three minutes.

But I must say, even with that, a train can hold 1200 people and that's it. Yeah, yeah. Remember, we're trying to move probably three quarters the people by transit. Yeah, and I know that's the goal, but not everyone is gonna use the TTC for whatever reasons. And therefore, taxis and rideshare

are going to be part of the equation. And it seems like that even wasn't well thought out because so many Uber drivers didn't know where to go. And when they got there, they were so frustrated with the lines that they just canceled. So if it's a valuable off ramp for the TTC to avail themselves of, it's a pressure valve that they can use to offset any any pressure that they have on the TTC to avail themselves of. It's a pressure valve that they can use to offset any pressure that they have on the TTC. I've got to ask, counselor, I know that you said you weren't really brought into the fact that this stadium was even being considered, let alone was on the eve

of being constructed until late in the game. But I have to assume that you've got this vacant plot of land that Rogers has now thought to themselves, all right, we can make a go of this and we can bring a lot of people up here and therefore there is money to be made. If this thing is successful and if and it yields the results that they're hoping for, is there talk about making this a permanent attraction in the area. Could we see them break ground on a more robust permanent Rogers stadium next year or the year after if this works? No, no, I don't see that happening. The zoning there is for residential development and the temporary zoning is for the stadium.

So it's, it's my understanding it's five years or less. And then is dismantled and taken away. Remember we have established neighborhoods there. Yeah, yeah. Then they did complain about the noise and the traffic chaos. Yeah, and I can't even imagine being a resident in the area where all of a sudden 50,000 people.

And yes, true, most of them were gonna get on the TTC, but that's still thousands of people oh, oh, we're gonna have to leave it there. Councilor Pasternak, and I know you got a busy day. And I appreciate the conversation. I really do hope you guys get this resolved to the satisfaction of the city and the people who are going to go to the concerts over the summer. We appreciate it. We have to fix it. Thanks, Ben. Thanks. Take care. That was Councilor Pasternak talking

about Rogers Stadium, the disaster of the first concert and hopefully a path forward so that everybody who has tickets to the concerts over the course of the summer gets to enjoy them as they deserve. Thank you. Okay, so I have a little bit of work to do. Design expert Paige Turner joins David as they ask homeowners the all-important question, Are you gonna love it or are you going to list it? You wanna tell them? Love it or list it. All new Sunday at 9. On Home Network. Stream on Stack TV and the Global TV app.