The Ben Mulroney Show - Class Action by Refugees for refusing Shelter Beds

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Class Action by Refugees for refusing Shelter Beds -Teaching students the basics and job skills are top priorities, survey finds with Guest: Annie Kidder, Executive director of People for Education If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, so I do want to take your calls on this on this next story. And it was something that sort of surprised me, I'm sure it will surprise a number of our listeners. There's a class action bid right now that's being launched on behalf of refugees who were denied access to Toronto shelters. So a couple of years ago, refugees were trying to get into a shelter, even though they had plenty of beds. And over the course of refugees were trying to get into a shelter, even though they had plenty of beds. And over the course of many interactions were denied access. Now, this is a listen, if there's merit to any lawsuit, I believe it should get shepherded through the courts and it should reach its ultimate conclusion.

Justice should be served one way or another. I don't have all the details of the story. But what I have read is shocking to me. How did these people know that these people were refugees or not? Do they have to show ID? And what is it about this city? You actually had beds available and you turned anyone away, refugee or not. It makes no sense to me.

So I'd love to hear from you at 416-870-6400 1-888-225-TALK. You know, we talk about Toronto the Good. I believe that's a reputation that I'm sure was warranted at some point. We are not Toronto the Good today. There is too much animosity, there is too much protest, there is too much hatred on our streets.

And when I see institutionally that we as a city are depriving our most vulnerable from the care that we have for them and turning them out onto the streets in Toronto, when it gets real cold at night, I have a problem with that. I have a real problem with that. I do not believe that this city is Toronto the good anymore. And I would love to

hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. I mean this story is again I can't judge it on its merits I can only judge on the points in the story that I read and there are a number of refugees who sought refuge in one of the city's shelters and there were plenty of beds available and they were denied access. And there are images of them sleeping out on the street. What kind of Toronto the good is that? Where is the kindness?

Where's the compassion? Where's the empathy? Where's the connection to your fellow human being? These are all things that we have taken pride in in this city. Remember back in the day they said Toronto was like New York City run run by the Swiss? That's not the case anymore. That's not the case at all. I think it's you got to take the world as it is, not as you want it to be. And we all want this city to be viewed by the people here and abroad as one of the great cities in the world. We are not that. We are not that by a long shot. I'm not even talking about the petty fights that we have, the things that get my goat like bike lanes. That's meaningless compared to human dignity and helping those who need our help the

most. If you're telling me that we run shelters in this city and we are turning anyone away who needs to avail themselves of our help, that to me is a problem. Hey, Pete, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for calling in. Good day, Ben. Hey. The only thing that I can see, obviously, we don't have all the details of what's going on here, but I know that there are so many hotels

along the 401 corridor, especially where I live in Durham, that are jammed with refugee claimants that have been brought in by the federal government. So I'm wondering if the shelter responsibility in Toronto is more to people who are unhoused in the city and they're looking at it as a the federal responsibility is to make sure there's housing for people who they have brought in as refugees.

Yeah, listen, I think you're right. I think this is a larger problem. I think the Trudeau liberals really effed up a lot of files and they land in the lap of city, of the cities and our responsibility of municipal governments, I get that. But I don't think that a refugee is thinking about whose jurisdiction it is when they are on the streets

in October, November, December with their kids and they're worried about whether they're gonna survive the night. 100%. Now, the other issue is if you're on the streets with your kids, looking for a place, sometimes a men's shelter is not really the place for that. So I'm wondering if there's, they may have been willing to go to certain places that are shelters, but not understanding the designation of those shelters, because most of them aren't mixed, and it

makes it very difficult to sort all that out. And obviously, they've dumped the responsibility on Toronto, which is really unfair. If they could do something, I'm sure they would. But you can't say to, like, a family with three daughters, a mother and a father, who you're trying to integrate into society, you can't say, here you go, stay at the Fred Victor mission. It doesn't make any sense. You're absolutely right.

There might've been a language barrier there that prevented it, but you know, we've got so many politicians, bleeding heart politicians who wanna show you how big their hearts are in this city. And we can't figure out how to direct somebody who may have a language issue to the appropriate shelter. I just, I think you got to pick a lane. We're either that, we're either that city or we're not. But George, thank you so much for the call. Let's have Billy jump into the conversation. Billy, welcome.

Billy Good morning. I don't think you can narrow everything down to this incident that Toronto is no good anymore. There's a lot more reasons like Toronto has become trash. Oh, I've given I've given a lot of those reasons. My thing is where people run in these shelters, they hire anybody, it's not the person at the shelter who turned these people away their fault. Toronto has lost control at every level of government, their offices, they're all like garbage, they're not renovated, they just hire whoever to hire

for DEI. And unfortunately, this is what's happening. But as your previous caller said, beautiful hotels, great hotels that we've had are being paid by federal level, municipal provincial levels to house these illegals. Well, I don't know. No, not necessarily not necessarily illegals. Certainly people here who are brought here. We did in numbers we didn't have the bandwidth for but that doesn't make them illegals and I certainly don't listen. My family came here my mom's family came here from Yugoslavia. There's

absolutely nothing different from the the wishes that my grandfather had for his family than some of these people who have fallen on bad times. I'm empathetic to that. I identify with that. That doesn't make them, that doesn't make their journey here any less valid than my family's. And if they have fallen on hard times and can't find a place to sleep, it's incumbent

upon us. We invited them into our home. We got to give them a bed. Anyway, thank you for the call and let's welcome George to the conversation. Hey, George. Hey, good morning, Ben. How are you? I'm well, thanks. Good. Yeah. The last couple of callers sort of took away my thunder there. I'm just more or less saying that, you know, like Canada has basically brought in refugees without a plan and which is ridiculous. But that being said, that being said, how can how can you be calling yourself a shelter

if you don't offer shelter? Because that's not their fault. Well, that's my point. I mean, these people came here with the understanding that, you know, it was going to be a better place for them. Yeah. I read. Hey, George, thanks for the call.

Yeah, thank you. Look, I remember when Justin Trudeau got elected, he did that photo op where he was handing out coats to Syrian refugees. And I thought to myself, my goodness, this guy knows communication. But years later, as I look at it, I always thought somebody should turn it into a meme that said I came as a refugee from Syria and all I got was this stupid coat. Like that was they were sold a bill of goods and we did not deliver. We got time for one more call Scott, welcome to the show.

Hey, I think that we're missing the bigger picture that this isn't just a Toronto problem. This isn't a nationwide problem with all of our politicians. They have a tendency to over emphasize everybody else and everybody else's causes and issues and forget about Canadians. They're supposed to be working for Canadians in Canada first. We're wandering our money and only that our economy is not what it was 10 even five years ago and we're're having some extremely heavy, heavy economic trouble.

Yeah, well, and Scott, but fortunately, we now have Mark Carney, the smartest guy in the room running everything, and I'm sure everything's going to be fixed in short order. Hey, thank you all for your calls. Now that the warm weather is here, is it time to get rid of your old car? Oh, sure, it's served you well, but you know, it'd be kind of nice to have something new. Maybe a convertible. Maybe something with a sunroof. I know, I know, car shopping can be an overwhelming experience. Is this a good price for the vehicle? Am I even looking at a vehicle that's right for me? This is a big purchase and you need

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cargurus.ca. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show. Thanks for joining us on this Wednesday. Time to take your calls again. 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. There's a new Democrat MPP named Catherine Fife, who is hoping to enlist the help of public health units to warn parents about the potential harms of social media. She notes that Australia has taken

steps to ban social media. We know that certain school boards in Ontario have sued some of the big social media sites. And I'd love to know what you think about this because in my humble opinion, I do believe that Catherine Fife's heart is probably in the right place. But what I would humbly suggest is while your heart might be in the right place, you need to get your head in the game

because we got lots of issues with our kids. No one is disputing the corrosive effect of social media. Nobody. There is data to support everything that Catherine Fife is warning about. But let me figure that out as a parent. The horse has left the barn, right? The train has left the station. The time to regulate this was a long time ago and level after level of government dropped the ball on that.

So now it rests in the exclusive domain of the parents. The one place where the city or the city, the province, could take a leadership role is having a full cell phone, smartphone ban in public schools across the province. We haven't really seen that, right? So until you do those things, it rests on my shoulders to determine how to regulate my kids. Now, what we can do on the other side is like,

if the goal is to help kids, then I would love to see Catherine Fife and other MPPs standing up against school boards in this province doing anything but educating our kids, taking positions on anti-Palestinian racism or taking kids to politically charged charged field trips where anti-Semitism is running amok. I say, I'd love to hear every NDP, members of all political stripes standing shoulder to shoulder saying, hey guys, hey teachers, hey school boards, get back to what you're supposed to be doing.

Educate the kids, hold their feet to the fire, demand better results from testing. That's what I wanna see from my politicians because at this point, we as parents have been left to fend for ourselves against the corrosive effect of social media because the time to do all of this stuff was years ago. And I'd love to hear from you at 416-870-6400

or 1-888-225-TALK. Feels like they're not looking at the right thing at this point. We have an immediate clear and present danger in terms of cell phones. Ban them in schools outright. Give the teachers the ability to punish kids who break the rules.

Find a way to make sure that during school hours, nobody touches their phone. That would be of benefit. That would be helpful. That would help the teachers, our frontline teachers, allow them to rest control of their classrooms, have kids focus on their task at hand. And then when they come home to me, their dad and their mom, we can be the ones to figure out how to regulate the social media stuff. Because the time, the time for government to be involved, that was a long, long time ago. And I don't think I'm, I don't think I'm being overly political or taking advantage of a situation.

I do believe Catherine Fife is trying to do good, but I think far better good could be done by getting people to stick in their lanes. And let me know what you have to say. Let's, let's jump in with Richard. Richard, how do you see this? Hi, Ben, how are you doing? I'm well, thank you. Happy Wednesday. Thank you, thank you very much. And thanks for everything that you do.

I have to tell you, the NDP is really trying to stick their agenda, and their agenda is very anti-Semitic. Yeah. It's very clear what they're trying to get across between them and then unions and all they want to do is villainize Jewish people and villainize the state of Israel and they do that through the school system and it's very sad to see that this is happening in this country.

Yeah I would say Richard that that anti-Semitism that's allowed to run amok and the politicization of our schools by way of, you know, unchecked, untested definitions of anti Palestinian racism, I think that's far more corrosive than kids doing TikTok dances. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I'm with you on this, Ben. Yeah, well, thank you very much for the call, Richard. And I'm not conflating things that shouldn't be conflated. This is all part of one ecosystem. And I'm not for nothing.

These are serious issues. The idea that the Toronto District School Board can go and rename schools that were named after our first prime minister without checking with any historians about the value of doing so, without the historical context. You are teachers. You're not historians. the value of doing so without the historical context. You are teachers. You're not historians. What are you doing? Where's the evidence to support these things? And if you're going to do him, why aren't you doing Julie Payette,

who bullied people not five, 10 years ago? Nevermind. Like, and again, time is binary. For every minute you're spending on nonsense like that, that's a minute you're not thinking about how to better serve the students and how to better support your teachers. Okay, that's it's just a fact, right? This is this is it's not just busy work. It's work that's taking away from your actual core job. Stay in your lane. You've got a real role to play in helping build the next generation. And this sort of thing doesn't help. And the politicians could be speaking from one script. They could be singing from the same hymn book.

And they could be keeping the feet to the fire of these school boards that, in my opinion, have lost the plot. And while, yes, social media is an issue, we are past the point of politicians being able to play any meaningful role except in pushing for schools to be smartphone free. That to me is the best use of your time on this front.

There's no way you're gonna get a 16 year old who's been living with Snapchat for three years to give it up tomorrow. I don't care what regulation you put in place, they will find a way around it. So that's busy work that helps no one. Give me a ban on smartphones across the city, across the province, and then we can talk. Also, get those test scores up. Oh, I did want to start. Listen, I love I love Barstool Sports. I love Dave Portnoy. And I love One Bite Pizza Reviews. They pop up on my feed all the time. The algo knows what I like. And I like his pizza reviews. And he came to Toronto like just over a

year ago. He was back in town a couple of weeks ago for a crypto conference. He took advantage to go to a do a number of pizza reviews. Really love seeing him showcasing our city. And wherever he goes, he's got acolytes in tow. Right. And so he went to a he went to a place, Taraz, I think, and I think they got a pretty good review and a whole bunch of little kids were standing behind him recording on their phones. And let's listen to the beginning. He comes, he comes out, he goes, he goes, one bite pizza review, everyone knows the rules. And he's about to about to do his pizza review. And everybody's waiting with bated breath. And this is what happened. This old school Taraza

one bite, everyone knows the rules. We didn't get here the first time. Place is very cool on the inside. We got it. Frankie Lozani's whole story, which almost seemed borderline not believable. See, there we go. There we go. What are you guys laughing about? Exactly. Yeah, there's anyway. So here we go. One bite. Everybody knows the rules. We won't let that get into what is that Toronto? Toronto hospitality. That's terrible. Yeah, so kudos on him for keeping his composure and he keeps going. But also he's no stranger to antisemitism.

He speaks on it all the time. He says in his whole life, he's never experienced the level of hatred directed at him for being a Jew, as he is experiencing today. There's a lot of ways to look at this. Had that been F the black people, F the this, F the that, we would be up in arms.

The mayor would be commenting on it. It would be an embarrassment to the city that would require all hands on deck. But because it's the Jews, that's okay. That's okay, people are angry. That's a form of protest. And a lot of people are giving, are taking issue with the kids in the back for laughing. And I have no time for normalizing anti-Semitism, but I've seen the video and if you go watch the video you'll understand. These are

three other stupid kids, look at their haircuts. They've got the alpaca haircut. There's stock and trade required at that age. They've got their phones. They live and die on their phones. This guy, Dave Portnoy, is their hero. They don't know, they don't know anything about anything. And to me, it sounded like nervous laughter. I do hope that they are, they learn from it. I hope that whoever their parents are explain what's actually going on in the world. But I am not gonna sit here and tar those kids who are, they're probably too naive

and don't know enough at this point. They should know more, but they don't. And so I'm not going to make them the problem. The problem is the anti--semite who shouted that and The fact that if that had been directed at any other minority This city would have a PR nightmare on their hands, but we have normalized it in Toronto the good shameful stuff Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and we are going to keep talking

education and what, what are, do we need to reimagine the priorities of the public school education so that we can prepare more practically our kids for the landscape that they are going to have to navigate once they get out of school? There's a survey that found that Canadians top priorities for schools is to quote, teach students the fundamentals in reading and math. I think we all, that's not surprising 72% agreeing it is critically important. And the next priority is to quote, equip students with the skills they will need to get the types of jobs and

careers they want with 69% saying it's critically important. 60% of respondents said helping students to be good citizens was critical and 58% said it is key to teach students to manage their emotions and get along with other people. So a lot of really interesting stuff. To break that down, we're joined by the executive director of People for Education, Annie Kidder. Annie, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you very much. I'm so glad that you're talking about. Well, listen, just a few days ago, I went to a charity event where the keynote speaker was a young man by the name of Brandon Farbstein. And he's a keynote speaker, an inspirational speaker. He's he was born with a severe case of dwarfism. He's three foot nine.

And he was so severely bullied that he helped usher through legislation in his home state of Virginia that requires a component of emotional learning at each stage of education. It became a law in Virginia, so that there is, so they teach, there's like empathetic education. And I wonder what you thought of that,

because I think that fits very well into this notion of helping students to be good citizens. To be good citizens and to kind of, to be prepared for life. Yeah. So even if you think about everybody going, they've got to be prepared for jobs, which definitely they do.

And sometimes when your kids are inside school, you go, but school isn't about work. As your kids get older, you go, I really care if they get a job. But what employers are recognizing now as job skills include empathy. Guess what? They include because jobs are changing so fast

and because really you have to be able to keep on being able to learn, dealing with new things, collaborating, communicating, understanding AI and all of that. So job skills now include what people refer to as transferable skills. Sometimes they call them soft skills, but they're actually vital to be able to succeed

in today's world. So to ask what's interesting about the survey is that absolute, I think it goes without saying, reading and writing and math are vital. But I don't think anybody's arguing that they're not important, but I think that the other parts of it are recognizing, and especially right now, given all of the various things

we're facing as a country, that we need to be sure that we are preparing our next generations to be resilient, to thrive, to help Canada succeed. So our argument is we need public education now more than we ever have, good, strong public education. I completely agree. I just wonder how far back we have to take things. For example, I've been a very strong advocate

for a complete ban of smartphones in schools because my contention was the cell phone and what it does to a child runs completely counter to the goals of a teacher, right? A teacher's goal is to get kids to calm down, focus, work together, build collaboration, think critically and think long and hard. Phones do the exact opposite, and there are 30 of them for every teacher. work together, build collaboration, think critically and think long and hard.

Phones do the exact opposite and there are 30 of them for every teacher. So it's a losing battle on day one. And so I've got to wonder when we say preparing kids, how do we counter those negative effects of cell phones, for example? I think it's a really, really great question and I think we have to recognize.

That's why why I mean, we're launching this big initiative today and part of it is looking at health, but health writ large, so all of the negative crap around cell phones and social media, taking care of yourself, understanding misinformation. But I think what's hard in education right now, I'm very old and I'm struggling with it, is that we can't just ban things. We also have to understand what are the skills that you need to use AI, for example, and to use technology. Because again, if you look at jobs, but also the world, those are the kinds of skills that are needed. So not, I think initially we had this feeling of, A,

their phones are distractions and AI is cheating, but now it's everywhere. And we need kids who are able to use it. Yeah, we need them to appreciate that AI is a tool that can help them become the best versions of themselves, not a tool that they can use as a crutch, right? As something that can help them cheat. But when I say banning cell phones, I actually think that there's a real lesson, a positive lesson in that, which is, there are rules in the world and sometimes you are going to be in a situation

where it's just you and you need to be comfortable in your own skin without the safety blanket of the cell phone that you are so used to. I like that. I like that a school would be a place where you are, you know, you're there to be judged on who you are and what you bring to the table. No, and I think that what the sort of elegance of bands,

it's so simplistic, but I think I have no evidence of this. It was actually a better, easier solution to just go, you can't have them at all. Rather than sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. I agree. We're all total junkies for our phone. I mean, maybe you aren't, but we're all addicted to our phones. Yes, indeed. So, and I think you're right about that, that time then in school where it is really important.

Kids have to learn to interact with other humans to have those conversations. We have a citizenship scholar we're working with, and he talks about how kids need to learn to not get along. So understanding that in a human conversation, debate, whatever, that you can understand other people's perspectives, your own, and have that conversation. And on the phone, you just find all the people that agree with you.

I'm glad you brought that up because that's another concern. And again, my experience is anecdotal. I don't have data to support this, but my experience is that their young kids today are expecting the world to bend to them and not to adapt to whatever new environment they're going to be going into. For example, when I text with my kids, they think my simple use of punctuation is aggressive. And that is insane. I've been using, I've been texting before they were born and I've been using punctuation before they were born. And rather

than assume I have information to impart and they should be learning from me, they want me to start texting like them. And I think that portends a larger problem for when they go out into the workforce, expecting that how they live their life is going to be accepted by their employer as opposed to them learning the rules of this new arena that they're entering. And learning to call I love that you say that because I have adult children who have given me hell for because if you put a period at the end of a text, then you're angry and it's like no, it's punctuation.

But I think that you're really right about, we live in a polarized world, like, and we need to be working as hard as we can in schools to deal with that and to help kids understand that you don't just have to be on a side and you're not right and somebody else is wrong, but that you have to listen, you have to compromise, you have to work through conflict.

Otherwise we will stay in the mess we're in right now. Andy, we got to leave it there. But congratulations on the initiative. I wish you the very best. I have some eye-opening data here. We got a lot of work ahead of us. Great. Yes, we do. But we're starting. Thank you so much. To celebrate the days of our lives, 60th anniversary, W Network and Stack TV invite you to enter for a chance to win the ultimate fan experience by watching new episodes of Days of Our Lives. You and a guest could win a three night stay in Los Angeles, a VIP Days of Our Lives set tour, a helicopter ride over LA and so much more.

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