The Ben Mulroney Show - Canada's "high tech" refugee entry system/What's going on with THE AI company

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

GUEST:   Miles Harrison / Principal at Praktikai / business management consultancy firm focused on implementing AI 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 Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. It is the Ben Mulroney show on this. Friday, November 21st. I just realized welcome, welcome, welcome is the John Oliver thing.

Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, welcome, welcome. But you have to bang the table the same time. I stop watching him. I stop watching him. You know, I used to love his show so much. So did I. He's taking a turn.

He's taken a turn and his selective interpretation of certain facts on certain issues, like on its face it's it's just not correct it's inaccurate yeah uh and he purports to be fair and and he said oh i'm sure he would say well i'm a comedian i was like well then get your facts straight if you're going to be trading in facts get your facts straight you can have an opinion on things absolutely listen he is that show was probably still is objectively objectively funny but you were really good at doing it by being by being fair and then to turn around and make it so patently and clearly one-sided. I was like, yeah, I'm not your audience anymore.

Sorry, you don't need me. You're not trying to keep me engaged because I would have, I would run home to watch that show. That's how much I loved it. Yeah, it's interesting. I stopped really kind of watching it off. And I watched an episode the other day. Yeah. And it was on public broadcasters.

It was well done. Yeah. Interesting. And he's doing another one of his bits, which is funny. But for the most part, I'm like with you. It used to be appointment viewing, no longer. Well, appointment viewing now, for me, is parliamentary committees. I love them.

I love them. And they really do seem to be the place where the beginning of conversations or the details in conversations that make, that answer questions that politicians won't, right? And a few weeks ago, before the budget, we had the interim PBO officer, yeah, the parliamentary budget officer being interviewed at, at, committee talking about where the country's finances were. And if we didn't see a change in this budget, things could get markedly worse. So that was the context a lot of us had going into the budget. And many of us had never heard a parliamentary budget officer speak, much less say what he said. And he was exceptionally candid. And now it looks like his job. We don't know if the interim is going to get removed or that he's going to get removed. We'll have to see. But anyway,

that's the value to me of these committees. And Mark Weber is the national president of Canadian Border Security Agency, the CBSA. And he was in Ottawa for a committee meeting looking at border security. You'll remember that lots of promises have been made on the border. Some of them were made in response to the pressure put on us by Donald Trump. We're going to hire a thousand new border agents. We were going to hire more RCMP. We're going to have drones.

All that stuff, right? So a recognition that the border matters, right? And who we let in and when we let them in, all of that matters. A border czar. A border. We had a border czar. Remember that? That didn't go anywhere.

Even that guy said, I have no budget. I have no office. I've got no manpower. Great. Yeah, he's got nothing. Yeah. You'll probably be able to infer from my tone that we get really excited about announcements in this country.

And then we don't follow through. right? There's a lot of ribbon cutting with big scissors and big checks and then nothing happens or very little happens. And the problem is if enough doesn't happen, then things get worse, right? And so just as background, the Canadian Border Services Agency, Union has been warning for months of issues at the border. And the union president, Mark Weber said flat out, CBSA doesn't have the people, the equipment, or the infrastructure to do their jobs properly. And a point of A specific point is the issue of how we deal with and introduce Canada to refugees. In essence, to speed things up, because we are short-staffed, we're allowing people into the country without first doing that security screening.

Okay, hold on a second. So you're saying that a refugee claimant coming to Canada goes to a machine and says, I want to be a refugee in Canada. hits a button and they're in the country. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, it's not a machine. It's an application. So the one-touch system, they're given instructions on how to use that. That connects directly with IRCC, and they're given that documentation to complete on their own once they're in the country. We're not doing that so basically they take out their phone theoretically and they tap it a few times and they are now in the country as a refugee accepted by our country. Yes, we get some basic data from them and

again, we do the biometrics. Beyond that, they're doing that. on their own, yes. Okay. So someone comes here. We've done no security check on them. We don't know who they are. We don't know if they have a valid claim. They get into the country.

They're here. They pick up their phone. And tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. You're a refugee. Okay, fine. I can live in that world. I can live in that world. But what sort of protocols do we have in place to ensure that that person has been truthful

with the information they're giving us? And if we find out there are not being truthful, what's the protocol for going to find them and getting rid of them? And how many people would you estimate are taking advantage of this lack of a system and just disappearing into the ether and never be found again? How many people, how many of these refugee claimants just disappear? I don't know if I'd use the term free-for-all, but for the most part, it's self-decloration on the claimant's part, yes. And so from your perspective and your members' perspective, this is not a good thing? This is a terrible thing. It's during the interview, and again, I spoke to it in my opening statement about human interaction.

That's where we ask follow-up questions. That's where we establish whether there's coaching, whether it's legitimate claim. That's how those files are built so they can be dealt with properly. Later, that's where we gain that intelligence, and that's currently been lost. Not to mention that about 10% never complete the forms through, one touch. So you figure with about 100,000 claimants a year, that's about 10,000 people who are allowed into Canada, who we just, they disappear. They disappear. 10%, 10%,000 people a year come here, they give false information, and we don't have the manpower or the technology

or the workflows put in place to know who they are, what they're doing, where we can find them, and how we can get rid of them. Or we don't do anything about it because we haven't done We put our heads in the sand. Or we go make another announcement about another project or another program. Now, here's what I think I know about Mark Carney. Like, he doesn't really want to put up with mediocrity. And he's demanding more of his team than I think the previous boss did. And we hear that in meetings he apparently gets very loud if someone is not living up to the expectations he is set.

The problem is, you put lipstick on a pig, it still. a pig. And a lot of the people that are on this team were on the other team. And I don't know how much, how high this group can, how high they can fly. Right. So he may, he may have to just play the hands he's dealt. And we may have a, this may be a problem that continues for a very, very long time. We got to keep on going with the Ryan wedding saga. Because I would just want give everyone in context. Like, you don't, the numbers sometimes, if you hear a number, 60 metric tons of cocaine, that's how much he was responsible for importing every year to the United States.

60 metric tons. How big is that? That's nine African elephants. I've stood face to face with an African elephant, and then I turned around a high-tailed out of there because I'm a coward. But nine of those guys, this, it's the equivalent of about 40, mid-sized cars. That's a lot of cocaine.

That's a lot of cocaine. The street value is roughly $5 billion a year. So just think about what that means. Like, think about, I'm helping build a number of companies as, you know, as a member of a startup advisory groups. When we hit $100,000 in revenue, that's such a big deal. When we hit $500,000. And some of them are doing pretty well.

Well, there's one that's, you know, we are on, on target for some, really, it's going to be our best year yet. It'll take us a hundred years to hit what this guy was doing. In one year. In one year. And so that's, that's a big deal. We also, we also have a, like yesterday we're talking about the cocaine lawyer, right? His cocaine lawyer has apparently been implicated in the murder for hire, right? Didn't talk much about the lawyer because he's been arrested.

His name is Deepak, Balwant Paradkar, high profile, flamboyant Mississauga defense lawyer. He represents the bad guys. And by the way, nothing wrong with that. You know, everyone deserves a defense. And if you believe as I do that you're innocent until proven guilty, then you have every right to defend yourself in any way, shape, or form. And I always think it's the laziest thing in the world to look to a lawyer and say, shame on you for representing that person.

I wish we had more time, but we don't. Up next, why are we talking about the AI bubble? It's solid, right? The holiday season is full of choices. Cranberry sauce or gravy, red wrapping paper or green. Squeeze your child into last year's coat or layer them up. Buy your family dinner or buy your daughter medicine. Find childcare or find a new job.

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when they need it, no matter who or where they are. From November 25th to December 2nd, your donation will be doubled. That means every dollar goes twice as far to help build a future where no one's seeking help is left behind. Donate today at camh.ca.ca. slash giving Tuesday. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney's show. AI is everywhere. And we are beginning as we depend on it more and more. We probably never think about it.

But there's, if you're asked the question, as somebody who is leaning on it, depending on it, integrating it into your life, you hope it never goes away. What happens if it goes away? And Elon Musk a few days ago was giving some sort of talk and he predicted that within 20 or 30 years, AI is going to eliminate poverty and it's going to make work optional. Now, I don't know what that means.

And I actually don't want to live in a world where work is optional. I don't want to. But eliminate poverty, I don't know how that would happen. but that's how vital it's becoming, right? And so now we're hearing that we could be in the middle of an AI bubble. And given the impact of like the housing market bubble that we experienced, any time that there's a course correction in the market, this could have devastating effects.

And I don't even know what this means. So fortunately, I don't have to. I get to ask the question to somebody who probably does. Welcome to the show, Miles Harrison, principal at Practicai, business management consultancy firm focused on implementing AI. Miles, welcome. thanks great to be here so uh level set for us are we in the middle of an AI bubble and if so what the heck does that mean yeah uh i think uh lot of people are saying we are i i personally

is someone that work in the space believe that that we are and in fact there's even uh there's even people that have written blog posts and things like that that there's a popular one that says we're not actually in a single bubble there's like four different AI bubbles one of them is the data center and hardware bubble that people are most concerned with, but there's even bubbles in the software side. And yeah, it's more like a bubble bath. Things are pretty probably. It's a bubble bath. Okay. So what we're going to get into the evidence that we're in one in a moment. But what could that mean? Honestly, what could it mean? Does that mean that those leaders in AI, those those Titans that almost seemingly popped up overnight, I'd never heard

of open AI and then next thing I know it's worth billions upon billions upon billions of dollars and everyone in their uncle is trying to get in on it. Are we talking about a bubble that it's going to translate into the market crashing for these guys or are we talking about the use of AI in our lives? I, yeah, so a lot of people, you're talking about these companies that they call hyperscalers, right, that are doing this sort of thing. your usual sort of sucks are involved, like the fang companies, but you're talking about companies like Open AI and Cohere and Anthropic.

And I think, I hope that the bubble doesn't outburst. I hope that a bubble can just deflate, and I would love to see it all kind of reach a steady state and the hype to die down and people to kind of say, okay, you know, we don't use AI for everything. This is expensive, both in terms of capital as well as energy, right? But I mean, right now, like the comparisons to the even the 90s.com bubble are very obvious. There's a lot of similar indicators. And, yeah, I think if the whole burst, we would definitely see less use of AI and less people talking about it and all the hype around it.

And I hope that, you know, it would find this steady state where it's more pragmatic about how we're using it. and companies are more selective about where they're offing it. Yeah, it's like a gold rush. I mean, I'm hearing the numbers that are being thrown out there. I mean, trillions of dollars in investment by these companies. I mean, I don't even know if that's doable. Some people have suggested that they're... AI is the only industry where you're allowed to speak with this level of hyperbole

and it's accepted. And at one point, the valuation of NVIDIA recently was over $5 trillion, which puts it like in the top 10 compared to countries' GDP. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you know, I kind of have to myself reread

some of these things because it says, yeah, I'm like, am I reading that right? Is it a B or a T? Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but most people, you'd be forgiven if you didn't know what NVIDIA was. They make chips and apparently they make almost all the chips that make AI possible. So like just like all the, every road leads

to roam, every AI company depends on on Nvidia. Yeah, we all found out about this company when I think it hit a trillion dollar market cap. And now you're saying it's $4 trillion? It reached $5 trillion recently. It's around 4.5 or 4.75, I think, now. And part of that is the other thing that I just reading about is that, you know, Nvidia GPUs, processors used to be for gaming. and now 90% of NVIDIA's revenue comes from data centers. Wow. Wow.

So it's making up the majority of their business, and it's just been an absolute market ship. Something that a lot of people don't know, because I'm someone that's worked deeply in the space, is that they also kind of have a monopoly on the software side. So they really have had dominance because, just because of market forces, a lot of software developers Is it build a code that make these AI systems run? They basically don't have a choice. If you're AMD, it's very difficult to work with their products. And this has been going on for, you know, more than a decade at least.

Yeah. I mean, I remember back in the day when companies would roll out their new laptops, for example, it either was an AMD chip or an invidia chip. Now, it feels to me like the only game in town is Nvidia. And I haven't heard any talk of a worry that they have a monopoly. like if that company were to falter or if they were to sign a contract with i don't know chinese developers like that that could have massive massive implications for not just the a i industry but the knock on effect is the economy writ large right so much so much of of our

economy will be dependent on the work that these ai companies do and so much of their work is dependent on invidia well yeah and the other the other factor that is people nervous. I'm actually just at a a future of manufacturing summit here. And they were talking about if you take away the growth in the U.S. economy that is

part of AI software, hardware, that accounts for about 70% of the growth. And if you take that away, the U.S. is technically in a recession. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. So, so right now, we keep talking about the American, Donald Trump keeps saying the American

economy is stronger than it's ever been. This is the greatest economy in America, and there are a lot of metrics that support that. But you're saying that if you take away the part of the economy that you can account for that is AI driven, the rest of the economy is in recession. Yeah. And the other thing I wanted to talk about today is this idea that people talk about about this circular economy. So all these big companies are working together.

So Open AI invests in Nvidia, billions of dollars, right? And then, NVIDIA sells their compute to open AI for billions of dollars. So if you look at their profit, like their P&L and their statements, you know, the revenues, this is why it's getting inflated. But that money is not really real, right? It's being shuffled around. And there's a big, there's an image, a big network of all the different companies are investing each other.

And the money is all going, you know, some of it is for hardware, some of it is for services. Some of it is capital, you know, venture capital investment. but it's all being circulated around, and that's what people are worried is inflating these numbers about, you know, profit and revenue. It's like, is that really real profit and revenue if it's just money that the company put into Invidia and then they took right back.

Well, yeah, and we keep talking about Nvidia, so let's talk about for just about a minute left, but the stock went on a roller coaster ride yesterday, and it grew by the equivalent $450 billion in market cap only to fall by approximately commensurate amount. And the reaction, the knock-on effects for everybody else were significant. The S&P's 500 was down 1.6%. The Dow Jones went down almost 1%.

NASDAQ was down 2.2. So how NVIDIA goes, so too goes the world. There's got to be, we're going to have to leave it here, but there's got to be talk on the hill in Washington of doing something about invidia because it feels like they have a monopoly here and that's not uh that's never good i mean they're bigger it seems at this point they're bigger than google ever was in terms of the ecosystem that they're in and and google had to came up against some solid antitrust um legislation yeah yeah i don't believe there's such a thing that's too big to fail and you don't want to have this

much dependence right and so that there is talk yeah like even a md is getting more investment making stride so yeah good we need to we need to diversify yes we do hey thanks so much for the chat today. I appreciate it. Yeah, pleasure. Thank you.