The Ben Mulroney Show - Feds promise change at Canada Post, Union reax with strike

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

GUEST: Dr. Dustin Costescu, obstetrician/gynaecologist and family planning specialist based in Hamilton, ON 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 Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Hey, thanks, son. What do I owe you? Don't worry about it. It's payday. Payday, huh? I bet you it went straight into your bank account and you didn't even check your pay stuff. My what? Your pay stuff. Back in my day, you had to wait for a physical check. Then, you had to go to the bank. Deposit it, and wait for it to clear.

Your pay really meant something. Payroll is incredibly complex. It's art and the science. It literally keeps the economy moving. Parole professionals do a lot for us. You know, it's about time we do something for them. How about we ask our leaders to name a day in their honor, a national day to recognize payroll professionals?

I got it. This is perfect. Why don't we explain to people just how important the roles are the payroll professionals play in our lives. We can even ask them to sign a petition. We can even ask them to sign a petition to recognize the third Tuesday in September as the National Day to recognize payroll professionals.

We'll rally support and bring the payroll party to the nation. National payroll party? Precisely. Sounds like a plan, you know, just one thing. What's that? I'm choosing the music. What? And I'm sitting in the backseat.

The whole way? The whole way. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. It's the Friday edition. It's Friday to September 26th. The Blue Jays won yesterday. And so Dave, I got to ask a question. What's the latest on the Jays?

I'm sorry. Yeah, so they are, they're tied for first place right now. They still have the tiebreaker versus the Yankees. Jays won yesterday and the Yanks won yesterday. Unfortunately, yes. They got three games left. So if they go three and O, then they, take the division if they go

two and one because the, sorry, if they go, they win twice and then the Yankees lose one, they win. So there's a lot of math involved and my brain's not really working at this time of day. So they just, all you have to do in general is just win. Just win. They're coming down to the wire. They're making it exciting. Anything adds up to three is good.

And he wins and losses for the Yankees. And look, you know, let's look at the fact that a lot of people with big brains and big contracts and big paychecks who are paid to know what's what, told us at the beginning of this season that the Jays were going to finish in the basement, right? So what they've done, this is like free baseball as far as I'm concerned, right?

Because it wasn't supposed to. Baseball at this time of year wasn't supposed to matter for Blue Jays fans. And so congratulations to the Jays. They're making it exciting all the way to the end. All right. So that's the good news that we're starting this hour with. But that's all the good news I'm giving you right now. And I hate to drop this on you on a Friday. The interim parliamentary budget officer Jason Ajax was asked in front of a committee yesterday about public debt charges, which $53 billion a year, by the way. They're claiming that it's going to be the projections are $82 billion by 2030.

That's just money to service the debt. That's just so that's the interest that we're paying on the debt. And every dollar that goes to paying that is a dollar that we don't spend elsewhere. That is money just to pay to keep it under control. And I'm not used to accountants speaking this way. I'm used to them speaking in numbers. I'm used to them speaking very academically. I'm used to them speaking like a Vulcan, like Spock, with no emotion.

Let's listen to a little bit of Jason Ajok talking about the terrifying outlook that's before us. Again, how alarming is that for the average Canadian and for the taxpayer? Because there is only one taxpayer, right? It should be very alarming, right? These are, I don't know, I think I use the words in French, which the translators probably got really well. Like, stupefying, shocking, right? This is not, it's not a, it's not a funny fiscal outlook.

It's a really serious fiscal outlook. It's, and we don't lightly use the word unsustainable, right? Unsustainable means you don't have the option of saying maybe I'll wait a couple of years. I'll see how things go. It means if you don't change, this is done, right? So it's very serious. If you don't change, this is done. What's the this?

The party, Canada. I don't know, but what he's saying is we don't have the luxury of, you know, a budget that blows through whatever guardrails we said we had. And I had a little bit of a, a little bit of a moment earlier today. And I asked myself, if instead of being the parliamentary budget office, this was, I don't know, some environmental watchdog. and instead of talking about the fiscal cliff that we are facing, they were talking about climate change. I wonder what sort of attention that would get from this government. Well, I know what it would get.

The sky is falling and we've got to marshal all of our resources. Everybody has to pitch in. It's going to suck. But everybody's going to have to pay. We've got all these new taxes and regulations. We have to do everything to stop our slide into a future where the planet's on fire. That's what we would hear.

But because it's our money, there's always more money. There's a certain type of politician that always believes there's more money. And there's always tomorrow. We'll get our house in order tomorrow. And the PBO is saying, no, no, this is it. The kerosene has been poured all over the house and the match has been lit. And if you do not change course right now, the match will drop into the kerosene in the the house will light on fire. That's what he's saying. And it's a little jarring. So money is very,

very tight. Money is very, very tight. And with that in mind, yesterday the federal government said Canada Post is bleeding money and needs a major overhaul. The Minister Joel Lightbound announced that door-to-door mail service will be phased out. Some rural post offices will close and letters will move by ground instead of air. He's giving Canada Post 45 days to come back with a plan, Calling the change is the only way to keep the Crown Corporation alive as fewer Canadians send mail and the loss is mount. Now, to be fair, the Postal Workers Union pointed out, look, this is all happened under the watch of this management. Why are they still have jobs? Fair, okay.

Let's give you what you want. Let's turf them upper management. Now what? That still doesn't solve the problem. Let's listen to Mark Lubinsky, president of Cup W Toronto Local. He was on this radio station a little bit early. today these other changes that he's doing to the public postal system he did not mention he gave no indication this was going to be happening or he would be making such an announcement

and giving canada post the right to cut and destroy the public post office that was not given to us no we were caught off guard but our reaction was we need to defend the post office the public post office is the service canadians want and need and door to the delivery is what they want They don't want to go to a community mailbox to pick up their parcel. Okay. Again, they don't want it. That's irrelevant. What Canadians want right now is they don't want a service that is costing us millions of dollars a day.

It's a failing business model. What they want is they want a Canada post that is reliable and affordable. And not for nothing, but years ago in 2013, Stephen Harper, move to phase out door-to-door delivery. These community mailboxes, that's what he wanted to put in place in 2013. And during the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau's liberals,

promised to, quote, save home delivery. And after winning, they halted Harper's plans freezing further conversions to community mailboxes. So now we find ourselves 10 years later, God knows how many billions of dollars in the hole, and only now are we coming back to the idea that was killed

10 years ago that was brought into effect 12 years ago by Stephen Harper? The big bad conservative wanted to kill the post office and fortunately the liberals came to save it. Ask yourselves, did the liberal government save Canada Post? Are we having a conversation today

about how great Canada Post is? What has happened over the past 10 years? What has the government been doing over the past 10 years to fix this? They took a position that Stephen Harper bad and any of his ideas bad heartless shameful a reactionary and we're going to fix it

because we're the party that cares we're the party of Canadian values okay so now explain community mailboxes today why is it that today 12 years later now it's a good idea I'd like a little bit of of introspection by this party because it's not like they woke up and Canada Post was a basket case. They've had to pay these bills each and every year. Why weren't they sounding the alarm last year or the year before or the year before that?

Why has it gotten to this point today? And so, yeah, I think before we start celebrating the fiscal restraint of this government, we got to realize they've had 10 years to fix this.

Ten years. And I'm a frog. God's sake. Stephen Harper did the heavy lifting for you. Stephen Harper did the heavy lifting. He's the one who paid the political price for getting rid of door-to-door mail. You're the ones who brought it back and you didn't keep your eyes on the prize. And I'm sorry, you don't get credit from me for fixing something 12 years after it already been fixed. That's all I have to say about that.

But I'm sorry, Cup W saying, oh, they want door-to-door. It doesn't matter what Canadians want anymore. We're way past that. We are way past that. You want to do that and you want pensions and you want to keep your jobs. A little water in your wine is going to be what is required here. A lot of water in your wine. Heck, it should be water with a drop of wine if you want to see tomorrow as an institution.

Up next, what percentage of births in Canada would you guess are unintended? Surprise, you're not going to believe this. We're going to tell you next. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Turns and conditions apply.

Learn more at amex.ca. In the 70s, four young women were found dead. For nearly 50 years, their cases went cold. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for global news. In the season finale of Crime Beat, I share how investigators uncovered shocking evidence of a serial killer. And hear exclusive interviews with the killer's family. Listen to the full season of Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon music by asking Alexa to play the podcast, Crime Beat. Welcome back to the Ben Mulruni show.

And, you know, we have a conversation in Canada about population growth and how more or less our, our fertility rate in this country of people from Canada has flatlined. You know, we're not just not, people in Canada are not having the babies that we used to have. And that's one of the reasons to justify higher rates of immigration, right? And there's a debate as to have we got that balance right? But one thing you can't deny is we're not having as many babies as we used to have. And so this next story is going to be all the more perplexing to you when you realize that a lot of the babies that we are having

we're not even intending to have. And so to talk about this, we're joined by Dr. Dustin Kostetscu, obstetrician and gynecologist and family planning specialist based in Hamilton, Ontario. Doctor, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. So let's go through some of the numbers,

but there's 72% of Canadian women of reproductive age are on some form of contraception and that's far higher than Europe far higher than Australia and despite that almost half of Canada's total pregnancies 46.5% are unintended

can you square that circle for me yeah that's a great question and I know it's often a surprise for people when they think that you know about four and ten pregnancies are unplanned people are using birth control in this country but we're still using methods that were used generations ago.

So when you look at the most common methods of birth control using Canada, condoms are number one. The pill is number two, and actually number three is the withdrawal method. So people, you know, taking it upon themselves, you know, to hope that they don't have a pregnancy when they're sexually active. And so when we look at other countries with sort of similar or even slightly lower contraception rates, they're using much more effective options. And what are those?

pregnancy. Yeah. So we tend to lump these together something called long acting reversible contraceptives or larks. So those are our IUDs and implants. And those have a really low failure rate and they last a very long time. So they allow people to delay and space their pregnancies more reliably. Interesting. So we have a higher rate of use of contraceptives, but the ones we're using are not as good and we have a high, we have a higher rate of unintended pregnancies. Correct. And what's also really interesting, because context is everything. So we have a high, our rate of unintended

pregnancy is about 4 and 10, maybe a little more than 4 in 10. In sub-Saharan Africa, it's about 34%. Yeah, and part of that has to do with sort of what the intentions are for people to have kids. So, you know, let's take adolescents, for example. So, you know, someone who becomes

sexually active as a teenager in Canada want to delay their first childbirth by about 13 years. So, you know, they don't plan to become moms to almost 30. In other countries, you know, they start their families a bit earlier. And they also maybe are only intimate when they are, you know, in a stable or a relationship or a marriage. And so when we look at developing nations, yeah, their expectations are different as well. So that's a very interesting piece of information as well.

But what's really surprising to me is as the context that I brought up off the top of this, which is that we have a very low birth rate to begin with in this country. And so it shocks me that, now, to be fair, not all of those unintended pregnancies lead to the birth of that child. We've got about 100,000 of those unintended and in abortion each year. So this is, this is a, listen, people can do what they want. I'm a big believer in choice, but we're not, we're not setting ourselves up for success in terms of population growth in this country if this is the plan, moving forward.

Yeah. Yeah. These are big global questions that we look at in the family planning world, right? What is the right number of humans in the entire world, right? And what does that look like? Within our country, you know, we're steadily seeing people really, you know, choosing families that are smaller. And, you know, I'm on the medicine side, but I see this every day in conversations with patients. And these are really economic decisions. Right, you know, can we have more than one child? Can we have two? And, and you just, you just don't see people with very large families anymore. And honestly, the most common reason we hear is just, you know, changing their economic status and the lives they want to have for their kids. No, I agree. There's a, there are, there could be some very interesting, uh, tax proposals that could allow for people to have the, the, the ability, the financial ability to have larger families. But we, we at the government levels aren't having those conversations. and so we just default to all right well we'll just we'll pick up the slack on the immigration side

now how long have you been an OBGYN yeah I've been an OBGYN for 13 years so for 13 years so do you remember so the conversations you were having 10 15 years 10 12 years ago and and how do they compare to the conversations you're having today yeah it's interesting I I am based in Hamilton and so you know for listeners kind of know that the real estate market goes through these very large swings and so our city gets very busy when housing gets very expensive in Toronto when people move out to the suburbs. And a lot of times when we see newcomers to the suburbs, they're starting with their first kid.

And, you know, we're seeing them back again a couple years later for their second. I think, you know, big inflection points just in my own practice, you know, are around the pandemic. I think people who stayed at home with their kids really struggled with that. And then just the complete upending of the economy, you know. So these conversations change. Sometimes it changes within a pregnancy, right? Early pregnancy and then someone loses their job and now we're really stuck not knowing what to do.

But I think, you know, 10 years ago, kind of at the beginning of my practice, it did seem, you know, as sort of an index of, you know, economic happiness, people were excited to have families and to have more than one kid and you see a lot more soul searching and thinking that goes into each pregnancy now. Doctor, what do you believe the reason is for us having, I mean, the only way to I see is this is an inefficient system, you know, we're using birth control more than anywhere else and it's just not yielding the results that are, the intended results. Is this because of bad sex ed? Is it, what's exactly driving this inefficiency? So, you know, thankfully, we've seen improvements in sexual health education in the last few years. But, you know, even five years ago, we would still see some students with sort of abstinence-based

education. And what we know from that when you promote abstinence as the main form of birth control, teenagers don't know what else to use. And therefore, when they are sexually active, they're more likely to be sexually active and they're less likely to use birth control. Canadian teams are actually pretty good with their birth control use. I think a big challenge for us is access to health care providers. You know, an implant and an IUD will get you. to that finish line, but you need a family doctor or a nurse practitioner or access to a clinic, you know, someone is actually going to do that. And from a provider side, you know, we need, you know, hundreds and even thousands of practitioners to do that. And then they need to

be compensated fairly further time. So unfortunately, it does come back to the same issue of, you know, a strained healthcare system and access to preventative medicine. When you've had to tell somebody with the news that they are pregnant, when you drop that information on them, I have to assume you get every reaction under the side. Yes. What? Yes. Yeah.

Do you have anyone that sticks in your mind as one that you remember forever? You know, yeah, that's a good question. I think there are some funny ones. I think the ones you tend to remember, I remember a patient, you know, I walked into their room and it was, they were in the hospital for a completely unrelated issue. And when I walk in and introduce myself. And I say, oh, what, you're going to tell me you're pregnant, right? And I kind of pause and I say, well, actually, yes.

And just the expression from sarcasm to the realization that their joke flopped, you know, was really important. And, you know, I think that technology is good and apps are great and people are tracking their cycles. But a lot of this comes back to first principles that, you know, people need to look for the symptoms and signs of pregnancy. They need to be, you know, reflecting on those risks. But, yeah, I felt very sheepish that day when I confirmed her sarcastic belief. Oh, well, Dr. Dustin Kostescu, thank you so much for being here. And I wish you the very best. I'm a very busy man these days.

And I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Great. Thank you so much for having me. He's got his hands full. We're renovating a hotel, expanding our resort, and breathing some life back into the lakehouse. Out of here. All while raising a family. It's messy, it's real, and it's all us.

Exciting. I can't tell if that's your exciting face. This isn't just construction. This is our life. Who needs sleep? Building Bomber. all new Sundays on Home Network. Stream on Stack TV.

I do.