The Ben Mulroney Show - Donald Trump says Canada will be a part of the Golden Dome Defense System

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Donald Trump says Canada will be a part of the Golden Dome Defense System -Taking a historical look at Tom Longboat with Guest: Craig Baird, Host of Canadian History Ehx -New Orleans jail escape: What are the odds that all fugitives will be caught? with Guest: Bryce Peterson, CNA expert in corrections and policing who has conducted extensive research on inmate escapes 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

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over deliver. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us on this Wednesday. We appreciate you. We appreciate you joining us. We appreciate you helping us build the Ben Mulroney Show into something really something we can all be proud of. Someone who should be very proud of himself is Mark Carney. He did what a lot

of people thought was impossible bringing the Liberal Party back from the brink of annihilation under Justin Trudeau. It looked like they were going to possibly even lose official party status the juggernaut of the Conservative Party was unstoppable and Mark Carney came in and changed the fate of the Liberal Party. They are now on the cusp, on the precipice of having a majority in the House of Commons. He prosecuted a very successful election and so he's riding high with his fellow liberals. That being said, despite the fact that there is a lot of love out there for Mark Carney,

there are a number of caucus members who want to adopt the Reform Act, which was championed by conservative MP Michael Chong. It came into effect in 2015. And it allows a party, the caucus of a party to decide whether to adopt four powers set out in the law, one of which is to launch a leadership review if at least 20% of the party's caucus wishes to do so. And if that threshold is met, a leader can be removed if a majority of members vote to oust them via secret ballot. There's a whole bunch of other things in this in the Reform Act. But that's the gist. It gives the caucus the power to remove the leader if they get to a point where the caucus decides we can't keep we can't go on with the leader in in and have any success in an election. The

conservatives have used it. That's how Aaron O'Toole met his demise. And because Pierre Poli have lost the election, he's going to face a leadership review at some point at a convention. But you'll remember there was no mechanism by which the caucus could do anything about Justin Trudeau, despite him being an albatross around their neck.

There were a great many of them that wanted him to step aside for the good of the party. He he did not. And a lot of people thought that was going to spell the end of the Liberal Party. It did not. So he's you could even argue that he made the right choice for the party. But now there is a movement afoot for the caucus to have this pressure valve, if you will, right? If there is displeasure in the caucus for whatever reason, because things can change on a dime, right?

When things are going well, things are going well until they're not. And Mark Carney is very popular today, but that doesn't mean he'll be popular in a few years. And the caucus wants the right, or at least some of them do want the right to be able to challenge his leadership or any leaders leadership in the future, should they feel that they can't move forward in an election with the

current leader, I think that I think this is accountability, I think this is democracy. And if the liberal party decides this is what they wanna do, more power to them. Meanwhile, you'll remember the new housing minister was asked about the importance of lowering the cost of housing. He put his foot in his mouth a couple of times.

And then a couple of days ago, Mark Carney tried to massage the messaging of the housing minister by saying certain parts of the housing market are going to see a reduction in the cost of housing. But overall, that's not the goal that his government is going to try to achieve. Kate Harrison was on the CBC and she referenced the fact that, well, she said what no one has the political courage to say the truth about housing. This is a generational issue. Emily is right. No one has the political courage to say what the truth is, which is that in order to bring affordability, to increase affordability,

prices for others will have to come down and your resale value will come down. But some have more capacity to let those prices come down than others. They do. They do. And I think Gregor Robertson, the new minister, was trying to, you know, have his cake and eat it too in terms of threading that needle. I think the prime minister did perhaps a little bit better job massaging a message that is a difficult one. But to be totally candid to solve the housing issue in Canada, it's not going to be done just through temporary modular housing.

It's not going to be done just through half. Every level of government has something that they need to do to bring to the table here. But it will involve some political courage on the part of federal leaders as well as provincial and municipal to, you know, admit that yes, for the boomers that were lucky enough to, you know, secure low mortgages and pay those off, their values will have to come down in order for young people to knock on the door of home ownership. Yeah, I mean, I think I think the reality of the housing crisis is coming home to roost. And one of the knock-on effects of dealing with it could be the fact that all of us who are current homeowners

might see the value of our homes go down. And if that's the case, it's sort of the bargain that we've made. If we're serious about fixing the housing crisis, then it's gonna be an all of housing solution that we need. It's not just gonna be for low cost housing or condos or apartment buildings. It's going to be an all of housing solution.

And if that means that in order to rest control of this crisis, everyone has to chip in and carry their own share of the burden and in the form of possibly seeing the value of our homes go down, at least in the short term, it's the price I think we have to pay to right this ship, which has been wrong for a very, very long time. So I did not see this ship, which has been wrong for a very, very long time. So I did not see this coming, but Donald Trump has put forth an idea for a ballistic missile shield estimated at $175 billion.

It's a concept called the Golden Dome. Of course, it's called the Golden Dome. Of course, it's called the Golden Dome. From what I understand, it's sort of modeled on the Iron Dome of Israel. But it's the system is envisioned to include ground and space based capabilities that could detect and stop missiles coming into North American airspace from at any point in their attack. And he claims that this will be operational before the end of his term in 2029. Let's listen to what he had to say about this defense system. In the campaign, I promised the American people that I would build a cut-in-edge missile defense shield

to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack. And that's what we're doing. Today, I'm pleased to announce that we have officially selected an architecture for the state-of-the-art system that will deploy next generation technologies across the land, sea, and space, including space-based sensors and

interceptors. And Canada has called us, and they want to be a part of it. So we'll be talking to them. They want to have protection also. So as usual, we help Canada do the best we can. You know, I gotta say, for the Prime Minister and the elbows up claiming that our relationship is over, there are a lot of overtures happening to the American president. I'm not hating it.

I don't hate this at all. It's just not what we were promised. You know, we were told relationships over, they wanna break us so they can own us. They want our land, they want our natural resources. They wanna come across the border and take us over. Now we're entering into a new military partnership that's going to see us all under one beautiful golden dome.

I don't know how you square those two things. Mark Carney was elected on the promise that what is ahead looks nothing like before. And he looks like he's he's integrating our relationship with the Americans even further. Make that make sense. Let's listen to Donald Trump a little bit more on whose idea this whole thing was. Very protective. I think you can rest assured there'll be nothing like this. Nobody else is capable of building it either. Did they ask you to do this? Well, let me put it differently. I suggested it and they all said, we love the idea, sir.

To which it's gotta be, right? Look, I'm glad that Canada wants to be part of this. How the heck are we going to pay for it? This is a $175 billion system. Are we paying for 10% of it? Where are we getting $17 billion? Where are we getting anything? We don't have two pennies to rub together at this point.

Anyway, we'll have to see. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us here on Wednesday. And look, I can't guarantee that when I speak, you're going to learn anything. Every now and then you might accidentally learn something from me, but I promise you every week in this segment, there is something for everyone to learn. Please welcome back to the show Craig Baird from Canadian History X. Craig, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so we're going to be looking at

Bloody Sunday today. Now I got to say again something I didn't know anything about and the only Bloody Sunday I knew anything about was 1972 in Northern Ireland when the British killed a whole bunch of innocent people. That was the bloody Sunday I knew of, but there was a bloody Sunday in Canada that went back to 1938. Yeah, this one isn't quite as famous,

but it was on May 20th, 1938 that 700 unemployed men actually sat down in Vancouver's post office and they refused to leave because they were protesting the fact that unemployment was high and there wasn't any work and a lot of projects that were created as relief projects were shut down. So you had the 700 people sit in the post office in Vancouver, another 200 went to the Hotel Georgia and 300 went to the Vancouver Art Gallery. And it was a peaceful protest. They were just going to sit there and, you know, there was their side of against the government. And then the Hotel Georgia, they actually left because the owners paid them $500 to leave and they agreed to leave,

but they actually stayed in the Art Gallery and the post office for about four weeks. And in the Art Gallery, they closed the Art Gallery, but the people, they didn't do anything with the art or anything like that. And in the post office, the people who were protesting always made sure they stayed out of the way of anybody coming and going. They weren't trying to impede business or anything like that. But then the RCMP, the city police and the government, they weren't very happy about this. And that led to what became known as Bloody Sunday. It was on June 19th, 1938, when tear gas was used to evict the people from the art gallery, as well as the post office. And

then as they were coming out, the police started to beat the people who were protesting, which led to about 42 injuries. Many quite serious, actually, the person who kind of led the protest, Steve Brody, he suffered, he was beaten unconscious by police and actually had a permanent eye injury from it. So obviously, it wasn't as bloody as the more famous Bloody Sunday, but it became known as Bloody Sunday in Canada and especially in Vancouver. And that same day, 15,000 people actually had a march to protest what the police had done on that day. It was also Father's Day. So had the police soft-played it, they wouldn't have had to deal with 15,000 people

taking to the streets in protest. Yeah, absolutely. And the people were just looking for more relief, you know, help during the Great Depression. They weren't really hurting anybody. They were not impeding business in any way, but it was a very bad look for the police and the government and they very much wanted

to get them out of the post office because it was gaining a lot of press. Who was the person, there must have been somebody who made the call that they were gonna escalate. Well, there was the Vancouver Chief Constable who was WW Foster. He was a former colonel and he was known for diplomacy and a lot of people thought that's how he was going to pursue things. And that was kind of the image that he was putting out there. He was talking

to the protesters, but in reality, he was actually working behind the scenes with the RCMP and the government to evict these men. And that's when the tear gas plant was brought up and the art gallery didn't have really that's when the tear gas plan was brought up. And it was the art gallery didn't have really any violence. The tear gas was thrown in the people vacated because there was this worry that they would start damaging the art, but nobody ever damaged the yard. Yeah. And how long had they been in the art gallery before the police decided to throw the tear gas in?

About four weeks. They were there for four weeks and they hadn't damaged anything. Yeah, exactly. They've been very peaceful, just kind of more or less living in the art gallery. I mean, it's the most Canadian protest I've ever heard of just hanging out and not getting in the way, not impeding business. They just wanted to show that they weren't happy with the government in the most polite way possible. And, but the reaction, was there any, were there any consequences for the police, for the RCMP, for what feels like an escalation that shouldn't have happened?

Not really, other than the protests that happened, the 15,000 people, there really wasn't. And then obviously history's kind of judged them quite harshly because like you said, they weren't really hurting anything. They were just sitting on the floor, minding their business. They had a ton of public sympathy. And I think that really played into the fact that the RCMP and the city police really wanted to get them out there because the public was very much on their side. Well, yeah. And we were in the great depression, right? So everybody could sympathize with somebody who was down on their luck. Oh, without a doubt. Yeah.

Everybody knew a husband or a brother or a son or an uncle or somebody like that who was trying to find work and couldn't find work, especially in places like British Columbia. All right. Let's now talk about the show from this week. It's a story about Tom Longboat. Who's Tom? Well, Tom Longboat is probably one of my favorite historical figures in Canadian history. He was arguably Canada's greatest marathon runner and one of our greatest athletes. So he won the Boston Marathon in 1907 and he actually set a record that stood for a decade and then he competed in the 1908 Olympics,

but unfortunately he failed due to dehydration. And there was a whole bunch of stuff with the 1908 Olympics, with poor planning on the organizers part. And he also competed against some of the best marathon runners in the world and drew thousands of spectators. Like he would compete in Madison Square Garden and people would just watch him run for three hours on a track against other people, which I can't imagine happening now.

So, yeah, from running, he went into the war? Yeah, he served in the First World War as a dispatch runner, which was a very dangerous position because you were constantly running through near enemy lines, you were running through no man's land. And he was actually mistakenly reported as dead twice, but actually wasn't killed. And unfortunately, that led his wife to believe he was dead and she remarried. And then after he came home from the war, she kind of decided that she was pretty happy with her new husband. So she decided just to stay with him, even though her current husband wasn't in fact dead. What? No, I can't believe I didn't know about this guy.

Yeah. No, I can't believe I didn't know about this guy. Yeah, he's very, very interesting. And he was, he returned to Canada and he died in 1949. He's a member of Canada Sports Hall of Fame and on Toronto Island, I believe every year there's a 10 kilometer race called the Tom Longboat Marathon, a race that honors him, but he's one of our greatest, greatest runners. Well let's listen to a snippet of Tom Longboat. Meanwhile, the rivalry between Tom Longboat and Durando Petrie wasn't over.

Five days after Longboat's wedding on January 5th, 1908, Longboat ran against him once again, this time in front of 11,000 people in Buffalo. The two runners clocked a time of 2 hours 26 minutes over the first 24 kilometers. But Petrie once again collapsed, this time at the 30 kilometer mark into the arms of his brother. Longboat continued for the next 12 kilometers of the race and staggered across the finish line, bleeding at the knees. He won that race but then, shortly after, lost his manager. Despite the money, or maybe because of it, Tom Flanagan complained that Longboat was unmanageable and soon sold his contract for $2,000 to a New York promoter. In truth, Flanagan was looking to make money off Longboat quickly and selling the contract was the easiest

way to do that. Longboat was hurt, especially considering Flanagan had been the best man at his wedding only a month earlier. Longboat said, he sold me just like a racehorse to make money. Craig, we got to go back to the fact that his wife remarried. Did he ever remarry? He did actually. He remarried just a few years later and had four children and a very happy life. He did have trouble with managers. He actually kind of pioneered the whole concept of rest days for runners. But back then people would equate that with what was a quote unquote Indian laziness because he was First Nations. But in fact, he was a pioneer for stuff like that.

It's just a remarkable story. And you know, we've talked about this before. If Tom Longboat had been born and raised in Boston, where he ran the marathon, everybody in the world would know this story because Hollywood would have made it into a movie by now. Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, even just his war service would have probably made a great movie. Well, yeah, the idea of being the guy who...

Because he had to run the letters, right? The communicates. Yeah, he did. And then he would also compete against other people in races and such. So he was still famous on the frontates. Yeah, he did. And then he would also compete against other people in races and such. So he was still famous on the front lines. But yeah, he was really running through no man's land and things like that and being under enemy fire. Just unbelievable.

Craig Baird, it never ceases to amaze me how many stories you find that blow my mind, open my eyes to aspects of Canadian history that I just didn't know. I know a lot of our listeners feel the same way. Tell us again, where can people find the show? You can find Canadian History X, that's EHX on all podcast platforms and you can listen on the Chorus Radio Network every weekend. Just check your local times. Craig Baird, thank you very much.

Thanks for having me. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind

you've been searching for. Public Mobile, different is calling. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and we are ending the show with one of the wildest stories that I have seen in a long time, a massive jailbreak in New Orleans that saw 10 people escape in, I mean, this is straight out of the movies. This is straight out of Birdman from Alcatraz, 10 left.

A few have been caught. And so we're joined now by Bryce Peterson. He's an expert in corrections and policing, who's conducted extensive research on inmate escapes. Bryce, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Hi, thanks for having me. Okay, so tell our listeners exactly what went down in New Orleans.

Well, I'll clarify first and say I'm not at all involved in this particular escape or investigating it, but from what we can tell, there was 10 individuals who escaped from a local jail in New Orleans. They were able to work with a maintenance worker who was inside the facility. At least that's the latest news coming out that he was involved in some kind of way who turned off the water.

And so they were able in the middle of the night to sneak out of the facility. They they they ripped the toilet off of a wall, created a hole inside the wall, climbed through the walls, got out, climbed over a razor wire fence and were able to escape that way. They were out for, it looked like at least 12 hours or so before they were detected. So yeah, it's pretty wild escape. How often does something like this happen? How often do people escape from jail? Well, people escape way more often than you think.

But this type of escape where we're seeing with, you know, the number of people who escaped at the same time, the kind of methods that were used, this is a pretty unique event. But in terms of escapes, I mean, they happen every day, actually, either from jail or from prison. So, yeah, so we, you know, when we were putting this show together, my producer and I kept going back to the show Prison Break in our head. And those guys,

a lot of those characters, I mean, some of them are bad dudes, but the main characters were extremely redeemable. One of them was even innocent. He ended up putting himself in prison so he could get his brother out. But we're not talking about good dudes here, are we? Well, not based on the charges and the convictions, no. No. What sort of convictions do these guys have? Well, most of them are facing charges. So they're in a local jail here, which means that most of them are in jail awaiting trial. So of course in America, they're innocent. The charges that they're facing are mostly violent offenses.

Most of them are facing murder charges. There was one who was convicted of murder, I believe, who was in the jail awaiting sentencing, so he'd already been convicted. So yeah, they're what we would call very serious offenders. Yeah. So yes, and from prison break, I then go in my head to the movie, The Fugitive,

because Harrison Ford was on the lam, and then the marshals went and found him. How has the manhunt gone so far for these 10 guys? Well, from what we know in the news, at least, so five so far have been recaptured. I believe one was either recaptured this morning or late last night. So there's still five out on the lam.

Five been recaptured in terms of what that looks like. So the movie, The Fugitive, you know, it's a movie, of course, but that is pretty typical of how they would go about searching for someone. So it's usually a coordinated, especially with within escape of this magnitude, you know, they're going to coordinate with local state, federal law enforcement officials, they'll look at everything they can. So they'll look at known associates known places, they'll go back to call records and the inmate

phone logs and everything like that to try to figure out where they went. And Bryce, after someone breaks out of a jail or a prison, I have to assume that every single safety protocol, that all of the workflows have to be reviewed and thrown out and they've got to come up with a new way of doing stuff, right? Well, certainly they'll do an extensive audit. And especially with, again,

something that's this magnitude, right? Something that's this high profile, there's going to be an extensive audit that will happen of the jail facility. They'll look at every protocol. They'll look at staffing levels. They'll look at training. They'll look at the security features within the jail. What was working, what wasn't working.

Are things run down? Yeah, they'll look at everything nuts and bolts on up. This is, I mean, what would your recommendation be to the people of the community who are might be a little uneasy right now that there could be these alleged criminals in their streets or around the corner? Well, first and foremost, of course, you should exercise caution

and listen to what the authorities are saying. I will say, so I've done research on this specifically. I think you'd be surprised to know Well, first and foremost, of course, you should exercise caution and listen to what the authorities are saying. I will say, so I've done research on this specifically, I think you'd be surprised to know how few individuals after they escape actually use violence in the communities and where they escape. I think partly that's because they're just too busy trying to stay out of custody, right? They're focused on finding food, shelter, somewhere to hide, somewhere to get away. Also because in general, when people escape, they are recaptured relatively quickly. So there's not always a ton of opportunity for

them to commit additional violence. Now, that being said, it does occur. So certainly, and this is a type of situation where even though violence is unlikely, this is a type of situation that's kind of has the ingredients for violence, right? So they're all facing serious charges. They've been out of custody for a long time. The longer they're out, the more So they're all facing serious charges. They've been out of custody for a long time. The longer they're out, the more desperate they're likely to get. You know, there's an extensive manhunt for them, kind of adding to that atmosphere of despair.

So certainly, you know, if you, if anyone sees one of them, they shouldn't approach them themselves. They should follow what the authorities say, call in the police, et cetera. Now, Bryce, what, let's go to the inside man. What would, what would possess somebody who has a job in a jail to help the prisoners escape? Well, again, I don't know about this particular case, right? From what's being reported in the news, he's at least saying that he was threatened to do it.

That certainly happens. I've seen plenty of examples where people are threatened, their families are threatened, so they're kind of coerced into doing it. But I've also seen plenty of examples, I do a lot of work on how contraband gets into facilities, right? And staff are often involved in that process as well. And it's simply a money thing, right? It's economics, they're not paid very well oftentimes, they're overworked, they're underappreciated,

whatever it is, and that's at least the narrative that they're working off of in their own heads. And that kind of leads them into colluding with people who are in prison, right? So these inmates who are in jail and prison, and they'll bring in contraband, they'll do small things for them. Like in this case, they didn't directly help with the escape.

He just turned off the water. So I think sometimes in their head, it's easy for them to justify these small actions. And oftentimes, it starts with really small things, right? Like you might let an inmate get away with something, right? Like a minor infraction that you don't write them up for if you're a correctional officer, or you might bring them in a small thing

that's technically contraband, but it's just a letter, or whatever it is, and inmates kind of build on those relationships and wind up taking advantage of them in more serious ways, like what we're seeing here with an escape or in some cases bringing in kind of more hardcore contraband into the facility. Bryce, one of my favorite movies ever is the rock. It's a terrible movie, but it's a great movie. And what do you make, if I can ask you one question off the cuff, what do you,

what do you make of Donald Trump's suggestion that he may want to reopen Alcatraz as a prison? I honestly have no opinion. I've never even been to Alcatraz. So I mean, it's, it's a, it's an interesting idea. I think there's a, it's a lot harder to renovate a dilapidated facility that's been out of use for a long time. It's extremely expensive.

And to be honest, I mean, we have very secure prisons. I know there's not the best time to talk about the security of our prisons in the United States, but we do have prisons that that are, quote unquote, rock solid, right? That's not to make the pun there. But um, we have we have prisons that are I mean, we have a federal prison in in Colorado that is known as basically Alcatraz of the mountains, right? It's it's almost impossible to escape from. It's a very, very secure. We have prisons like that around the country. So I don't know what the use necessarily would be

of opening up something like that that would cost a lot of money. So I guess we'll see what the proposal looks like and if that actually moves forward. And just all this talk of prison breaks, I'm gonna go home tonight and I will watch The Rock because that needs to be watched once every few years. You're best. Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and the prom queen, Carlo was the prom queen. It's a great movie. Hey, Bryce Peterson, thank you

very much for joining us. Thank you so much for giving us The Lay of the Land. I really appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. for giving us a delay of the land. I really appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. 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. Watch Weekdays at One and look for the weekly code word to enter. Days of Our Lives, all new Weekdays at One,

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